I'm ok, I'm here, don't panic he he!

Well I must be the worlds worst blogger, where did this month go?

I'm so sorry I went missing, I seem to be apologising for this a lot lately, life just got stupidly busy and it's the end of the year and I'm tired.....

So what have I been up to, well I made my 2 dresses, yes I promise I will take pictures, but I haven't yet, but I did make this

Out of this! However the complicated neckline looked bloody awful. Really didn't sit right, so I had to work with it, I did ok in the end and got lots of compliments which was nice, I promise I will put full make up on & the jewellery I wore and take a pic, honest!

I then added a black velvet top to the dress made out of this, that didn't fit. The skirt fit so I just adapted it to the new top half. I got lots of compliments in this too, promise I will take pics.

Then of course I went to the Rhythm Riot, did I have fun, yep, did I take pics, nope, I really am the worst type of blogger ever, I do interesting stuff I just get all excited whilst I'm there and well, I forget! Perhaps I should quit blogging, or just get my act together anyway.

I saw some great bands at the Rhythm Riot, including these guys Lil Mo and the Dynaflos who I've never seen before they were fabulous live! One of the best bands of the weekend.




oooh I tell a lie I took a couple of pics on my phone, first up this is in the chalet with my friends, and it was only 5pm on the first day, those glasses had/have huge cocktails in, talk about peaking too soon!

And I got some fabulous new saddle shoes from Rocket Originals, they are gorgeous and a slightly amended style, and I have to confess they are even better than their first ones!  Here is a pic in the apartment at Pontins, note the very luxurious carpet ;o)

Just before I went to the Rhythm Riot I finally found out what is up with my knee, remember how well I was doing exercising then I had a pesky knee problem that stopped me in my tracks. Well I thought a bit of physio and all would be good. Sadly not, I need an op, I have torn my cartilage, I guess it explains the pain, but it's blumming annoying well and painful! So now I just have to wait, apparently I shouldn't have to wait to long but still it'll be too long for me I'm sure. The Rhythm Riot didn't help on the knee front, getting drunk and thinking I could dance through the pain is not a good idea, let me tell you now you can't, I nearly didn't make it downstairs it hurt so much, that'll teach me, or will it?!!

Post Rhythm Riot has been recovery, it's true, I used to go to these events, come home and go out that night, now it takes me a good week to recover, it's shameful!

So there you go, I've been up to a lot, just forgot to take photos, shame on me!

Talented Friends!

Ok this is a bragging post, I have very talented friends and I'm going to brag about a couple today I do hope you don't mind! I'm so proud and sometimes you forget if you are surrounded by these people and then sometimes you think, these people are my friends and they are amazing, I need to shout about this!

First up is my very good friend Bloater, or known professionally as Big Boy Bloater , he's just about to embark on tour with Imelda May as her support band, then he kicks off his own tour in Feb.

I love this promo shot of him!

I've known Bloater and Lisa (his wife) FOREVER, we are old, it's true, actually Bloater isn't old, he's the young fella, he's 40 soon, mmm that'll be quite a night ha ha!

They are really good friends who saw us through some of the worst times of our lives, we've had some of the best nights of our lives with them - New Year's Eve 1999 comes to mind, oh dear - and I couldn't think of nicer people this could happen to, oh and they're pretty good next door neighbours too. Bloater is such a talented musician, you just have to look on his website, if you see high praise from people like Jools Holland and Mark Lamarr you know you're pretty good. Anyway things are really taking off for him, and I'm so proud!

If that's not enough Lisa is going out on her own with a 5 piece band as Lil Lisa Jane, I was at her first solo gig and it was marvellous,  can't wait to see more! I hasten to add Lisa played Sax for years with Bloater's original band, so she's not a newbie to the stage.

They were also responsible for my worst hangover from hell after my birthday last week, those are friends I like to keep, you can see this woman would mix up some hellish cocktails can't you?

And if that's not enough, my good friend Sue from Pennychoo Cards! I haven't known Sue anything like as long as Bloater and Lisa but I feel like I have, you know one of those people you meet and you just click with, you can have grumpy old people conversations straight away with them, but then roll around laughing the next minute, well that's Sue!

Sue is a very talented designer and I mean big time talented! She's done all sorts of work for many many amazing people. But I wanted to show you some of Pennychoo's christmas card designs, I bought some straight away, I love her work, I don't think I've ever seen anything she does that I don't like in fact, I know sickening isn't it?

So here are some of her Christmas cards, love em all!

From the Boibles range
http://www.pennychoo.com/boibles-shop.html

From the Eggnog range!
http://www.pennychoo.com/Eggnog.html

So there you have it! I of course have other very talented chums, but I just felt the need to shout about these for now. Sharing the love :o)

Birthday Celebrations and Sewing Mayhem!

Hello! How are you all? Well I've had a busy busy week.

Sooo as you know it was my birthday last weekend, I didn't have any plans apart from to watch old movies and drink fancy cocktails, I didn't take many photos but here are a few from Saturday.

This was the first of many cocktails, I always feel very special when I drink from these fabulous 30s cocktail glasses, I've never seen any more like them I would so love to buy more!

As I wasn't going out I thought it was only right to bring 'some' sparkly to the celebrations so apart from sparkly earrings I wore my 50s sparkly slippers!

After a few I tried to take a pictures of myself none of them turned out great, but here is me after a few.

Here is Paul after a few

And here's the state the cocktail cabinet got in! This is after serious cocktail mixing YAY

So all in all I had a great day, I was dancing round the living room to some great tunes and all was good AND I didn't wake up with a hangover on my actual birthday.

However this is where it all went wrong, I intended to have a similar easy day but not go over the top as I had to work on Monday. I knew my mates from next door would pop round and we'd probably have a drink or two. Well it didn't quite work out like that, Lisa took over the cocktail making I don't really remember what happened. What I do know is that I woke up on Monday morning with the worst hangover I've had in years, ouch! I sat in my PJs all day, ate pizza and general felt sorry for myself, mmmm won't be doing that again for some time!!

So the rest of the week I spent catching up on the work I didn't do on Monday.

This weekend I started my sewing projects for the Rhythm Riot in a couple of weeks. I'm afraid I have nothing finished to show you, I've nearly finished one, but  I wanted to do the cutting out of the other dress whilst I had a good amount of time this weekend, so I don't have much to show you.

One thing I wanted to show is some of what I'm doing, and one of the things I always have to do is alter my patterns. I'm rather chunky and I have a big bust, I also rarely buy patterns in my size, not only are they hard to come by in larger sizes but if I see something I like I always think well I can alter it to fit. This can be very complicated if the pattern is complicated, but I haven't found anything I can't resize yet!

Here's the bodice of a dress I am altering to fit.

As you can see I've cut it up the middle of the pattern piece and seperate it the amount I need, however by experience and knowing how I'm built I know that I never need to resize the shoulders, I actually have quite small shoulders, so I have increase where the bust is and where the waist is, and I will increase the darts at the waist to resize the waist back down.

Now I have no idea if this is the 'correct' way but it works for me, so if you need to alter a bodice or a blouse this could help you, if you want to make it smaller then fold where I have cut!

This bodice is black velvet and it's going on to a skirt made from this fabric, which was originally a whole dress which no longer fits, so I adapted!

You can't see very well but it's very sparkly, I do like sparkly!

The next dress I've cut out is this pattern

In this fabric

This again is far more sparkly in person, it's kind of gold/silver lame sparkly, anyway once I'm done I'll let you see!

I just wanted to assure you I AM sewing, I'm just not finished! There are soooo many pieces to the dress above and as it's such a beautiful dress I don't want to rush it, I want to get it right. 

So there you go, that is what I have been up to, fun, hangover, work and sewing.....