[sewing] --next project

I'm wrapping up the black wool kirtle. I know! It's really exciting. The eyelets are more than half done. After that I have to do the sleeves but there's little creative challenge in that. I'm mostly looking forward to trying it on, which I can't do until the eyelets are done.
Then I will make the Uber-Diary of Everythingness. And take photos of the alterations I made to the pattern.
But should I do short sleeves, or long? Hmmmm.

But! Anyway! What should I do next??
I have a wonderful stash of fabrics. Gold lamé, blue silk twill, gray wool flannel, blue pinstripe linen/cotton, and some real linen for linings... I also have a bunch of patterns I got from Reconstructing History which I haven't yet made. The Turkish Dancer has a beautiful caftan pattern that I want to make. And the Shinrone Gown looks like a good follow-up to the 14th century stuff.
But perhaps I should make my next step be adapting the fitted-bodice kirtle pattern for a more modern use. I will need something nice to wear for Baby Sister's Sorry-I-Ran-Away-And-Got-Married-Without-Telling-You-All Reception in June. I bought the blue silk twill to do another fitted dress but I'm thinking about using it for the modern variation.

Or I could do some embroidery as a break. Hmmmmmmm.....

1) Turkish caftan
2) Shinrone gown
3) Self-supportive modern dress
4) Silly modern outfit in gold lamé
5) Embroidery project
6) Another no-waist-seam linen-lined supportive dress, 100% hand-sewn and with more exhaustively-researched details
7) Um, a chemise to wear under the historic stuff that's not incompetently made of muslin. Hm.

I'd make a poll but I'm still coming up with new options. Pondering, pondering.
Anyway, that's taken me three hours to write while I bind eyelets-- I now have only nine more eyelets to go. Woo!

fi

Fi is home from Vegas then NY-- the latest round of shows.
She is sick. Sicker than I ever was. Fever, coughing, exhaustion. Producing disgusting mucous.
She went to the hospital when in NY. The main reason was that her coworker, 21 and athletic, was having chest pains-- which I immediately said were obviously cramps in the muscles between her ribs, since I had the same thing happen to me in my early 20s. "Exactly," Fi said wearily. "They told her it was musculoskeletal and she refused to believe them and said it had to be a heart attack." Um, yes. There was an attack of the drama queens. The girl's parents went to bed, even knowing their daughter was in the hospital in a distant city with alarming symptoms, because they know she's a goddamn drama queen.
Meanwhile, Fi, while she was there, got checked out.
The doctor scornfully told her it was a "mild cold", even though she had an elevated temperature and no voice. So she spent a few more hours kicking around the hospital, trying to track down her friend's test results, since the staff wasn't exactly informative. And every medical professional she spoke to said, "Good God, you sound awful! You should get that checked."
"Your staff informs me it's a mild cold," Fi would answer in her smoker's-lung voice. "Now about my friend, is she dying or what?" By the end of the night Fi more or less thought she better be. But no. It was musculoskeletal.

If Fi doesn't improve starting tomorrow (she's slept about 18 hours since arriving home), I'm taking her to a doctor myself. Around here they'll take her seriously-- no less than three of the (young, fit, athletic) women on my league have gone down with pneumonia in the last two weeks, so around here they're not going to fuck around with respiratory problems and an elevated temperature.
You don't get a fever when you just have a "mild cold", I'm sorry.

It was slightly sweet, Fi confessed, when after all this drama and her coworker whining and complaining, she mentioned quietly to her boss that she'd been working with a fever all day. Her boss, one of twelve children and the mother of several herself, put the back of her hand to Fi's forehead, and started backward violently. "Good Lord!" she said.
"We're not all babies," Fi croaked.
"Apparently not," her boss answered.

So yeah. For some unknown reason, not knowing Fi was sick, I'd set up the humidifier in her room before she came home-- I just thought it'd be nice to get off a plane and not have to sleep in a dry room too. So we're keeping it cranked. I made a vegetable-based soupy pasta dish for dinner with loads of garlic. I'm feeling sort of lucky that I'm just still blowing my nose a bit, and the rest is cleared up.

Vitamin supplements for this house!

(OT: Four eyelets to go!)