Friday, October 30, 2009

A little nonsense now and then...

Ok, so it's Friday, and despite yesterday's fluff, I got nuttin'. So I thought I'd just sum up some things going on with me lately.

When you walk past the Halloween candy and see the little boxes of Nerds, does anyone get the voice of Ogre screaming "NERDS? NERDS!" in their head? Or is that just me?

Mad Sweeny, in all his stinky, neurotic, swamp-cat glory, got his Blogosphere debut via his belly the other day on The Two Zaftig Chicks. I hope the fame doesn't go to his head. He's already pretty insufferable. By the way, that's why his nickname is "Buddha Belly".

I bought a new sewing machine!!! It's a very cheap, very basic model to replace the one that broke. It may have fewer stitches, but it has all the basics I need to get back behind the needle. Now that I can sew again, I'm lusting after this particular mandarin collar vest pattern, which I hope to make out of the brocade in my attic, lengthen to the knee, and wear as a dress for New Year's eve.

The pattern will be part of my present to myself for purging my closet. Once I've got it I'll post a review on their patterns, because if it's any good then it'll be one of the few places you can get womens' clothing patterns up to 6X.

I've discovered that no one makes chunky-heeled knee high boots that will fit my 22" calves of over-muscled doom and my 11W feet. My only options are to buy super-wide calf boots (which max out about 20") and have a leather worker or bootmaker put in an elastic gore, or save up $300 for a custom job. Still, that brocade dress would look pretty killer with knee high black leather boots...

By the way, before someone mentions it, DuoBoots.com's website only allows you to choose up to a 50cm calf. Mine are 55cm. I suppose next time I can justify $300 for footwear I can call and find out if they'll custom them up. Also, wide width does NOT equal wide calf, and http://www.widewidths.com/ only really goes up to about 20" unless you wear a size 13.

I have crazy people dressed up for Halloween running around the office. I asked one guy if he was dressed as Erkle since his pant legs were rolled up...he just looked kinda crushed and said "I'm 80's guy".

Yeah.

This is what happens when supervisors get creative :-)

Happy Halloween and Samhain and all.

4 comments:

Boozy Tooth said...

Congrats on the new machine, JoGeek. I asked for a sewing machine a few years back so I could fix my own seams and maybe hem slacks and MAYBE even make an easy pattern once in awhile. Hubby got me a nice one. Much much much too nice. So many bells and whistles, I can't figure it out. Don't know what to do with it. Tried to wind a bobbin once and it looked like a spool of barbed wire. Can't get it threaded right. Don't know how to attach the foot. I'm hopeless. Wish I'd known you were in the market for a new machine. Would have shipped you mine.

Maybe I should invest in some sewing classes?

intransigentia said...

I'll keep an eye out for your review- it looks like she designs nice basics with plenty of scope for tweaking and turning into other things, and I'm a big fan of new places to turn for patterns.

Also, your costume in your previous post was hella awesome, as was your partner's.

Anonymous said...

Hi. I totally appreciate the struggle to find knee high boots. My calves are about 20-21 inches. I just bought an incredible pair by Tadashi (I believe). They are black leather in the front with the back half a stretchy, but very firm, material. They are a riding boot design - and they are amazing!! I bought them in Minneapolis at Macy's. They are regularily $199 but I got them on sale for $149 and I will live in them this winter. They feel very trend-forward and feel great on. Note - I could not find the boots on the Macy's website - nor have I found them noted anywhere else online. If you have a Macy's near you- might be worth checking out! I also have a pair of black knee high with more of a heel that are a stretchy black suede by a german shoe maker label - Gabor. I've had them for two years - great quality and they fit my calves really nicely..and are really sleek and sexy. Hope that helps!

Bron said...

The boot thing totally sucks! So many people have the same problem - I don't understand why there isn't a better range!
I'm not sure whether they ship internationally, but boots for broads do custom reasonably cheap -http://bootsforbroads.myshopify.com
good luck!