Here be dragons - some other day

I have been battling with the little cake topper dragon most of the evening and it's not really a success. One problem is that there are very few free patterns out on the net, so I decided to go for trial and error. It's been mostly error so far but I'm slowly making progress. I will eventually solve this.

I have also bought the wool yarn I'm going to make my fake dreads from. Or some of the wool dreads at least. I haven't decided if I'm going to have some brightly coloured dreads or not. Maybe I should have ribbons instead in bright colours. The yarn I bought today is dark brown and will blend in with my own hair colour. These fake dreads are meant to add more length because though I don't have any real plan yet, I want to have them tied up somehow.

Something like this I think.

Via Offbeatbride.com.

Mushu and piglet

We're not religious and we don't believe that stars decide our personality and what will happen in life. However, it was rather funny to realise that the key personality traits we have, are the traits we should have according to our Chinese zodiac signs.

I'm a pig, homely, crafty, creative and a rather kind and gentle individual who likes to care for people I love with treats and little presents. I really am that way! Darling is a fire dragon. Bold, dominant, brave and passionate, with an air of a male lion in public. He's even up-scaled in size, 6'5 tall and nothing but muscles. If he only was the show a fire dragon can pull off I wouldn't been interested, but he has other, more gentle sides and we have many interests in common and think alike in many areas.

We've been joking about our signs since we found out, which was shortly after we became friends. I call him Mushu sometimes, and he calls me his little piglet.

Today I realised that toppers based on our Chinese zodiac signs would actually be rather fun. I made the little piglet today and will try and make the dragon in a day or so.

Sleeves! And a complete design.

I think I have the design now. I only need to decide on the colours. Yellow is wonderful. Do I use it alone or do I add another colour? Navy? Cerise? And that crochet I was thinking about, will I use that idea? I'd rather not think about that now. But having decided on the design is a great step since I can now go ahead and make the pattern and make a dummy.

I'm going to use the sleeve design above. This is a top from Banana Republic which they sold in 2008. Those along with the cut on the vintage 60's dress from this post and some tweaks on width, length, and neckline and adding pockets will be the final design.

Dress

So I've been thinking. 50's? 60's? Sort of? Freestyle crochet? Possibly. Sunflower yellow and dark blue. That's a winner though I am hesitant to use blue and yellow since it's our flag's colours. I don't want people to think of our flag when looking at me. Sunflower yellow and cerise? Now that's a glowing combination! And I could make a visible tulle petticoat in yellow with dark blue satin trimming to go with that. Or it could all be too much. Inspiration pictures:

I'm not wearing white. Why? There are several reasons for that.

• I've been married before
• I don't really like white on myself
• I want to have fun in this dress and wearing it on other occasions
• We're offbeat in so many other ways that I don't feel like dressing traditionally

White is really a rather new thing. Just wearing something nice looking was the way to do it for a very long time until European nobility decided white was the thing - and that had a lot to do with the 19^th century screwed up ideas about female sexuality. White has for a very long time been the virgin colour. Well, I'm not a virgin.