Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17

Friday, September 26, 2008

Time flies. Too fast.

Okay, so we've already established that I'm not an everyday writer. But I have two things bothering me today so I'll write.
The first is I need to be an everyday sewer and I'm not. Everyday I wake up, convined I am going to take care of the baby (a newborn I watch for 4 1/2 hours evry morning), get the kids through schoolwork and have the afternoon to sew myself silly. I was so convinced of this I was sure I would have She-Ra finished up and in the mail over a week ago. But life intervenes. Always. Run the kids to soccer. Run the kids to Bible study. Clean the house. Again. Adult Bible study Sunday evening. Run to a meeting for the new show---oh, by the way we need publicity pictures. Throw something together in a couple of days just for picture purposes. And give up another afternoon to do the photo shoot. Mommies needing more time in the day is not something new and I am certainly not complaining about being Mommy. I just wish sometimes...

The second thing is I'm really missing Jane and my Encore friends today. For about five years I was a part of this terrific group of people who shared a love for theatre and a love for Jane. She's been gone two and a half years now; our group is scattered and I miss them so much. I think it was driven home two days ago... I was poking around a thrift store, looking for items for "Playboy" when I saw a velvet jacket on the floor near the costume rack. I picked it up and my mouth dropped open--- it was exactly like one of the narrator's jackets we used in "Joseph...". I thought "What a coincedence..." and started to move away when I spotted a dress of white and gold netting that looked like the Egyptian girls' dresses. From Joseph. "It can't be, " I thought, but a quick shuffle through the rack turned up three more. And the players' names were written in them. They were costume pieces from the Encore Players. In a thrift store. And my heart broke again. I checked the dresses to make sure "mine" wasn't there (I would've bought it in a second) and hurried to the register and paid for my one find. Then I went to the car and I cried some. Then I picked up the kids and went home to lose myself in Project Runway and try to forget.
The real kicker to the day was this though--- a fellow former Encorian, Rose Marie, had called me just that morning. We're having lunch next week. I can't wait!

Oh, and for my sewing friends out there-- my one find at the thrift store was a piece of 100 % cotton calico; 45" X (about) 4 yards long. Two dollars and ninety-nine cents. Yeah, baby!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Newest project

I figured that for me the most difficult aspect of writing a blog would be keeping up with it and I was right. It seems at 3:00 AM my mind is full of ideas, quips, and musings that seem like great fodder then and completely disappear from my brain when I actually try to write them down. I remember trying the notebook-by-the-bedside so I can scribble notes without even getting up but it seems that for as much as I'm thinking of writing, what I really want to do at 3:00 AM is just go back to sleep. I didn't sleep much when I was younger---4-6 hours a night at most. Now it seems it's all I want to do.

Unless I get hooked on a new project and hopefully I have-- (Oh, yes, She-Ra is fine and I'll be shipping her to her home this week. I'll take finished pictures if I can find the stupid card for the camera!) Two summers ago I helped out the local community college with their summer Shakespeare program and that led to costuming a couple of plays for them on my own. I loved it and thought it was going to be my gig for awhile but the previous costumer came in for the spring and summer shows and I was bored. And unemployed. I've been asked back though for the fall production of J.M. Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" and I'm excited again! It's a period piece, set in 1907 Ireland, so in between bouts of the gold and red I'm using to finish She-Ra, I'm looking for simple, peasant-y but not poor country style, late Victorian dress styles. This project is especially enticing because, unlike shows like "Bus Stop", which I enjoyed immensely, this show can't be costumed as much from a thrift store. I get to sew for this one! And research is an excellent excuse to putter around on the computer. And, of course, shop for fabric. Some of it will even be for the show! ;)