An office special on a Happy Friday.

A quick and forced office special.

I have SO much sewing to do for the retreat and I haven’t spent any time on it. I have been in a bit of a funk since the last post, granted, and my creative muse has scampered off somewhere into the wilderness and left me uninspired and bland for a few weeks. The thing that sucks is that I have all this sewing to do, I should be drawing, and working on a book, I should be reading for my review site, and I am not. I am completely stagnant. I actually *forced* myself to draw my office special today. It’s not very good. I get up in the morning, barely able to peel myself from bed, I go to work, I spend the day at work, I go home, I idle about at my computer and TV until bedtime and then I struggle to fall asleep, only to find myself having to wake up five minutes after my head hits the pillow (at least that’s what it feels like).

My Dassenplank project has ground to a hideous halt because the carpenter who seemed so excited about the project took the seed money and has vanished off the face of the earth.  I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I don't have a good feeling about the fact that he is ignoring my emails. He did call and leave a message to me saying he'd been called away to Utah or Idaho to do some work out of state, so I'm trying to give him a chance to prove himself a decent person before I lose it. But it's hard when you give someone your trust, and think they're decent and they do something untoward like take money and then disappear. It wasn't a lot of money on the greater scheme, but in our financial situation, it would have helped towards one of our bills for sure.  We'll see if he comes through. I still have hope that he will.

Tag is still languishing in the wound-department. I haven’t spent very much time with him these last two weeks, except to swing by, overcompensate with carrots, brush his sleek coat down and take off. I’ve been working on the sidesaddle thing too. Until I can afford a full reflocking, I’ve ordered a cheap channel riser to lift the seat off of his back a bit and even out the saddle a bit, otherwise I’ll tip back off of him ::hahaha:: I also need to find the funds to have a balance girth made for him still. Blurgh!

The ORS Regency Retreat is totally sold out. That’s exciting! I have to sit down and finish up drafting the new set of bonnets and hats for the workshop. I’ll start posting the little minis as I go along, but I haven’t been making minis right now, since I haven’t been doing much of anything except exist.

So here’s a list of what I will need to sew before December 1 for the retreat:

• 2 day gowns 
• 1 robe
• 1 ball gown
• 1 redingote
• 1 new hat/bonnet (plus finish up the patterns for the workshop)
• 2 chemisettes
• 1 fishu
• 2 mob cap
• 1 false sleeves
• 1 dressing gown
• 1 night gown
• 1 apron
• 4 shifts
• 2 petticoats
• 1 pantelettes, maybe 2
• And the big one... A new set of stays. Garr!

I also need to save up so I can order three pairs of stockings, go out and buy some shawl(s) among other things.

What I want to make after the retreat stuff is done:

A regency period riding habit (here’s a little blurb about them I did on the ORS blog)

Today’s office special is sort of connected to a project I’ve started for Etsy. It’s a kitty cat (four cats actually, a calico, a grey tabby, a black and white cat much like the above image, and an orange cat) I’ve had them printed on fabric through Spoonflower (still waiting for the swatch/yard of kitty fabric to test them out) so I could make some bean/plush cat dolls. I’ll make them, dress them in little regency gowns with pinafores and pantalettes, or in a skeleton suit if they’re boys (orange cats are usually boys and calicos are mostly girls). We’ll see how well the doll-design works with my first test-swatch.

I’ve resolved to sew this weekend. I MUST!!! Hubby will be gone most of Saturday anyway riding around with his Italian mistress, the Ducati. ::hehheh:: I will try to sew on Sunday too, but I owe my horse some quality time this week.

Have a delightful weekend. I’ll get over myself, I promise, and will be back posting projects sooner or later. I’ll try to do some photos of my projects this weekend. TRY. If I can find a decent camera and enough light to make it work.

HC