Victorian Ball, Bath, and the Butterfly: part I

Before I start this pretty self explanatory series of posts, I'd like to dedicate it to Izabela at Prior Attire, who hosted such an amazing event which everyone in attendance thoroughly enjoyed.  In my opinion she should have spent the days proceeding the ball relaxing, but no, tirelessly she has begun to investigate next year's event.  She is by far the closest thing I can think of to a hero, and has my utmost respect (and envy.....you'll understand when you see her dress).  She has been pretty idol-esque to me these last few years, and it was a privilege to meet her in person, as it was the other guests.

I think with such an unusual hobby (in my world anyway) it's quite easy to feel isolated, so the ball was great for finally meeting with other like-minded people, whom I hope will become fellow sufferers for our obsession with historic fashions.

I'm going to begin this story where they are traditionally started...the beginning.  I left home on Friday morning, after dropping the beastie at the sitters (where he proceeded to make a new canine friend).  Aided by my satnav, and accompanied in the passenger seat by enough sweets to make me diabetic, I set off down the M6.  Why is that road always busy, can someone tell me?

I intended to take a detour ever since I discovered that there was a Farm shop somewhere off the M5.  Unfortunately to get to it I would need to turn off at Gloucester, and instead of following the M5 and then M4 to Bath I could just take this local A road straight to Bath.  Poor naive me, this was a mistake.

The Pound Farm Shop sold local produce, and to be honest I'm pretty sure I only went for the cake.  I wish I could say the detour was worth it, but it wasn't as big as I was expecting, and it's more of a garden centre and small local produce shop.  I'm glad it was a nice day though because the views of the Gloucestershire countryside were gorgeous.  What I saw of them anyway.

I began to drive down the A road, the A4173 to be honest, and holy hell was it a nightmare.  I know I complain about the motorway being too busy but at least it's relatively straight with wide lanes....no such luxury on this road.  Bending, winding, twisting, turning, trying not to put my car in the gutters at the edges of the road since I have terrible awareness of how much room my car takes up.  The cherry on top was when my satnav told me to go down this single width lane which was as steep as the side of a cliff.  I spent the entire way stepping on the break and praying to whatever force of nature that would listen that no one would come up the other way because my car may be small, but it isn't shrinkable and there were no passing places.

By the time I went through Stroud I had made myself car sick (that's right, I'm one of those...I blame my family).  Usually when I'm driving I'm too focused to feel it, but not when you've just snaffled half a bag of popcorn, some a lot of chocolate buttons and a few honey and oat biscuits you ended up buying at the farm shop the winding country roads turn into a prank made on you by Satan.

I also figured out that I have really bad lane navigation because I was in the wrong lane on a roundabout going into Bath and got beeped at (despite the fact I had began to signal I wanted in the other lane when the traffic lights were red).  To further my anxiety my satnav took me up these single track side roads in Bath that are not one way.....they should be!!  Twice I had to reverse into whatever small lane and tiny corner to let someone pass.  It was traumatic.

Upon arriving at my accommodation on the street connecting the Circus with the Royal Crescent, I had to park my little car in front of no 1 royal crescent, so my wee four wheeled baby is no doubt in many tourist's pictures.....she's chuffed.

I checked in, and waited until night time until I got the crinoline and boxes my dress was in out of the car and along the street, to save people's stares.  Not sure why I bothered really since the next night I wouldn't be carrying them.

My first issue was with food.  I go on holiday solo a lot, but have only once eaten on my own at a restaurant.  I must have grown up because I did it twice at the weekend....albeit in the same restaurant.  The restaurants in Bath had a dinner menu that didn't start until 6pm, sometimes later, so you couldn't eat dinner until then.  What if I'm hungry at 5pm?  What if I've been travelling all day and just want some nice food at 5.30pm?  Bath says tough.

Eventually they let me eat, and then it was home to relax and prepare for the next day.

I had a spa booking at 10am at Thermae Bath Spa, no link necessary, it's one of the only spas in bath, and the most famous. I went on my own and folks.....don't do this.  It's awkward as hell because there's nothing to do apart from people watch, and apparently that's not socially acceptable.  For 2 hours I was bobbing around in the water trying to think of things to do, and I really wish they'd invented waterproof books, or kindles.  My facial wasn't until 12pm, so there was 2 hours of awkward bobbing and jumping back an forth between the outdoor pool and the indoor one.

12pm couldn't come quickly enough.  This is definitely not an activity to do if you're on your own.  The facial was also a strange experience.  Multiple times I just had to stop myself from laughing because it was so strange (I've never had any spa treatments in my life).  It was good though, and my skin was happy.

Next was the fashion museum, which was awesome.  No pictures I'm afraid (I was too afraid to), but this was definitely an amazing experience.  Looking at extant examples in person is better then scouring pictures.  They had two on display not behind glass and I don't think I've ever had to try so hard not to touch something in a museum.

Next on the agenda was the dance workshop.  Not much to explain here, I met everyone and tried to learn the steps.  A tip to people, don't wear brogues on a wooden floor, there's no grip.  They were, however, one of the only pairs of shoes I had brought with me.

We learned most of the dances on the program for that night, and one I was pleasantly surprised not to have to learn, The Dashing White Sergeant (thanks Scottish curriculum), although I have to admit, the English really did take a ceilidh dance and make it much more civilised.....that's not typical or anything.

It was quite a warm day, I hear whisperings of the hottest weekend so far in 2016, and the dance practice wasn't really warm because I only had a top and skirt on, but boy did it get warm quickly in Victorian garb, I don't understand how woman managed.

I'll leave the Victorian Ball till the next part:
Part II

Writing Endings: a weekend of new experiences

This is quite a random post, one done as a form of procrastination from my latest, almost finished, novel.  I've had quite bad luck with ideas this past year, and most of what I have managed to finish has been mediocre at best.

In 2015 I've had many ideas, and only a few that became something more.  From December 2014 I've been working on three pieces, and finished one about a month or two ago.  At one point I was working on all of them at the same time, two alternating during the week and one at the weekend.  It was hectic and something I don't really like doing because I struggle juggling that many characters in completely different stories, worried about accidental overlap.

One I began in February is now coming to an end, and that's where the difficulty begins.  By the halfway point of a novel I usually have an ending, at least an outline, but with this one I kept writing, having a vague idea, hoping inspiration would slot into place as the words kept flowing.  Not quite as much luck as that.  Now I'm on the final chapters and have an ending...one that I don't really like.

I have writer's block on how to change it.  When you read articles online about "how to write an ending", guides which, as you know from reading this blog, I have a staunch opposition to, or read another author's blog you hear about the ending conundrum.  I'm proud to say I've never been there.  It's been a charmed writing life.

I began writing this evening, the final chapter, and I hesitated.  My fingers were positioned over the keys, my mind trying to form an introductory sentence, a brief outline of the direction of the words.  I got about 400 words in and looked at pinterest, a tactic either due to boredom with a story, or being stuck.  The latter is the case now.

I loved writing this story, I can't remember a time when I was so engrossed in a tale that I wrote from start to finish.  Is it pressure?  My pride and love of this writing is stifling me from fitting an ending onto it?  Am I being too picky with my decision?  There is something bland about the ending, even to me, and I'm the Queen of Vanilla.  Some advice may be to take a step back, take a break, work on another idea and then come back with a fresh mind.  Advice I'm in the process of doing.

Onto another new experience.  A sewing machine.  As some may know due to my other posts, I hand sew everything I put on here because I don't have a sewing machine.  That all changed before I left Leicester.  Unfortunately due to laziness, and more of being lazy, I've not had a chance to use it...until this weekend!  I feel as though my eyes have been opened, Fate has enlightened me, reached out its hand and pulled me from the darkness.  It's so quick, I have no words to describe how fast it is compared to hand sewing,  I did half of a mock-up of my latest corset in less than an hour!  it would have taken me at least 2 days to do that by hand.  Was this what Victorian women felt like when it was first introduced?  I share their feelings whole-heartedly.

It did take a bit of getting used to, and at the time I thought it was more complicated than I had ever thought, but after using it a few times I'm in love.

The third and final new experience.  Someone out there in the world read one of my novels.  Since publishing on Amazon kindle I've stopped checking the reports about book sales, because there has never been any.  Then they introduced the sharing library, and it gives another report.  I had an influx of blog views over the weekend (Thank you, Russia) and one of the pages was one of my first posts about the publication date of my novels.  Out of curiosity I logged in and looked a the reports, expecting to find nothing changed, the line remaining depressingly at 0.

One of the graphs spiked.  I blinked, full of disbelief.  It wasn't a purchase, it was a number of pages read using the Kindle lending library.  Someone had read my book....all the way through, or at least that's what I assume since the page count on the plot encompassed the length of my novel.  I was amazed.  It'll be a year in September since I unleashed both into the world, and I've reached 1 person.  Sounds pathetic, but it made me very happy.

That's all for this weekend's life update, hopefully more soon.

Social pitfalls: The Gym

We all know that there are unspoken social rules, many of them, and it also depends on what gender you are, there are slightly different rules for men and women.  The experiences I've had in the last few years, and the focus of this week's awkward moments, is the gym.

Leicester Uni has a gym, in fact I think it has two on campus and one off, but regardless the membership is a bomb, a whopping £200-ish for a year's membership.  I say it's a bomb because I was paying £60 a year for Glasgow uni.  What they do have instead for alternatively busy students like myself is pay as you go.  On Tuesday of my coursework week I got up, put my dust covered gym stuff on and walked out in the icy cold air to the gym.  I actually had to look up whereabouts on campus the gym was; I came to Leicester Uni as a postgraduate, and my department is the only one that isn't on campus.  Despite being a Masters student if I was ever made to go around campus I'm pretty sure I would look like a fresher.

After gingerly walking through the front door to the gym and getting blasted by the heating I shuffled my way over to the reception and asked for pay as you go.  Forking over £4 was easy in my ignorance because I don't have an idea how much pay as you go is supposed to be (and to be honest I don't want to be enlightened).  I'll tell you, folks, it was well worth it.

What is really strange is the layout of the gym.  In order to get to the changing rooms you have to walk around the gym equipment.  It feels a little like the people working out are on display for not just those coming inside, but outside on the path and the entrance-way into the building thanks to the floor to ceiling windows.  The changing room was so posh; the lockers had shelves and even a proper hangar for your coat, I was impressed.  But this is the first point of awkwardness.

At Glasgow Uni gym there was a communal area, by communal I mean benches around the side under the lockers, and also private cubicles where you could get changed.  In Leicester there was corner booths that reminded me more of retail changing rooms, and there was only about two or three in the entire changing room, as opposed to the five on one floor of Glasgow, and five on every other changing room floor.  The benches were situated in the middle of locker areas.  My first thought was "no privacy!".

In glasgow uni gym it was an awkward moment when someone strutted around naked in the changing rooms because there was no real cause for it.  I think it's definitely a British thing, or perhaps a my generation thing, that it's just really awkward when you have a towel, or clothing, on to protect your modesty and then there's someone just walking around, chilling in their birthday suit (for those who don't know this phrase it means naked, charming British colloquialism).  Thankfully on my first day I was kept from this reality, but that ended by day three.  This worried me.  For those ladies, or gentlemen, who have attempted to put clothes on whilst maintaining a towel as cover, it's a difficult thing and requires flexibility that I don't possess.  To solve this I thought about taking my underwear into the shower cubicles with me, but they were all the way at the bottom of my bag and taking them into a water infested area posed problems for their dryness.

Actually, I watch How I Met Your Mother

Regardless, I went into the gym and left the problem of maintaining my modesty until after I'd worked out.  But as with all problems in life (and don't let anyone fool you otherwise) the problem was still there after I had finished.  Walking over to my locker felt very unusual as the changing room had suddenly doubled its numbers.  Everyone was dressing after their gym session and I needed to shed mine in order to shower.  Whenever I went at Glasgow it was during the summer when all of the students were at home, it was early enough in the morning that everyone was at work who had jobs, but too early for those like me, and so everything was quiet, I could take my clothes off in front of my locker, with the cubicles at my back, without the fear of being seen (and folks, I never was).  But there was nowhere for me to hide at Leicester, the changing room was taken, and so I had to shed my top very quickly and slide on my towel which poses other problems of how I was going to undress whilst keeping my towel around me.

I failed and ended up walking into the showers with my underwear beneath my towel; I emerged with only a towel.  By the time I had my shower the changing room was free, and boy did I sprint for it like an Olympic athlete.

Over the next few days I saw others who did not share my sense of modesty and who were just changing naked out in the open, thankfully leaving the changing rooms open for my use, but I did start taking my clean underwear into the shower cubicles.  I wondered what sort of person does change in the public area of a changing room?  Is it only Glasgow university that has changing rooms with many private cubicles?  I know I couldn't, but perhaps it's a self-confidence matter rather than a cultural one.  Your thoughts?  Your awkward experiences?  I mean when someone is walking towards you with nothing on where do you look?

Yet another really strange experience happened to me in the shower cubicles.  At Glasgow uni the shower cubicles are not opaque, you can't see a thing though them; the walls between are a cloudy green-ish glass, and the doors are solid plastic type stuff,  and although this is a good thing it does cause its fair share of problems with people opening your cubicle door not seeing the towel, your towel, draped over it (yes, that did happen to me).  At Leicester they have seen fit to make the cubicles out of barely opaque glass, and rather than handles in the doors there is a massive big whole where it should be, one that is certainly transparent.  I didn't think it was that bad until someone got in the one beside me, and then another person in the one opposite me, and I could see almost everything in hazy detail.  After that I stayed as far away as I possibly could from the glass, which is impossible despite the spaciousness of the cubicles.  It does seem partially unavoidable for everyone else in the changing room to see you either naked, or in your underwear.  When I saw the girl in the one beside me I was shocked, but at least there was that glass between us or it would have been more awkward.

Over the next few days I worked out a system where I could emerge from the shower with my clean and dry underwear underneath my towel so if the changing room wasn't free I would just have to awkwardly manoevre into my clothes from beneath my towel, but is that more awkward than just dropping the cover and strutting my stuff in my underwear?  there's not really any difference between that and a bikini, but I wouldn't wear one of those either.  Am I of an old-fashioned mind?  Are we walking along with the times in that there is no shame in strutting around a lady's changing room naked?  I hear there's communal changing rooms in some areas of Britain, and they're even introducing communal toilets.  Am I grasping onto modesty from the days gone by, or is it these new things that don't have a place in a British society?  We are famed for being reserved and prudish, and although that's not true when it comes to some things, I think it still holds in other areas.

I definitely like privacy when changing, I'm not saying those that do change in the open are exhibitionists, and a part of me has respect for them, but at the same time I ain't gonna do that.   Your thoughts?  Is it normal where you come from to change in the open?  Is it awkward when someone walks around naked or is it a shrug-shoulder moment?  Is it the same for men and women (I unfortunately can't comment on this because I have no boyfriend and I'm not a man, although the changing rooms did get switched for one day when I was at the gym and there were even less cubicles in the men's!)?

Travelling Scot: ALWAYS check your train!

I have been travelling around the country since I was 17; every summer I would chose a handful of places I wanted to go to, usually landmarks I wanted to see, and then plan accordingly.  My Most ambitious was the summer before last when I literally did a very large loop around England.  I travel everywhere on trains, short distances on buses, usually day trips, so I am a seasoned train traveller.  My first solo train journey was when I was about 15 coming back from my family in Newcastle in the North East of England.  That's six years and a hell of a lot of trains, even when I went to Carcassonne it was trains all the way.

I will now tell you a story that has stuck in my mind.  I was on a train to Newcastle about two or three years ago now, I was in my late teens and already by that point trains were comfortable.  For those of my readers who don't know England, or who have never been north of Manchester or York, there aren't many stops down the North-East Coast.  They usually begin in Aberdeen and end at London but the stops are few because there aren't really any major cities on the East Coast of England.  There is only one stop between Edinburgh and Newcastle, sometimes there isn't any, and that is the lovely town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, a place I go to annually.  It's roughly 40 minutes away from Edinburgh and probably the same, if not less, from Newcastle.  Edinburgh is a big station, and I mean big, I avoid changing there because it's just so vast and the platforms are every which way to Narnia; go up the stairs, hop on your right foot, click your tongue and roll down a ramp, there you are at platform 11.  On this journey to Newcastle we stopped at Edinburgh, from Glasgow anyway, and we sat there for about 10 minutes.  People get on, you watch them look around awed trying to find their seats and hope no one takes the empty one next to you.  We pull away from the platform after 10 minutes is up and this girl suddenly gets up and runs for the doors.  Turns out she's got on the wrong train, the next stop isn't for another 40 minutes until Berwick-Upon-Tweed.  I have told people about this girl for years, wondering how she managed it.

Folks, I no longer wonder.

I've been having a bad week, we all know what University stress is like, and so when I booked to see Love Labour's Won in Stratford-upon-Avon, I thought it would set this week up to be good.  The play was good, the fact I couldn't sleep at night was not.  I've been to Stratford many, many times, you have to change at Birmingham, the same for Glasgow, the same for Leicester.  I've only ever changed at Birmingham for Leicester once in the summer, it was quiet, the terminating station was Leicester, it was all plain and simple.  The platforms at New Street are not.  They have the evil letter subscripts, like 9a, 10b, etc.  The train I was booked on terminated at Stansted Airport, via Leicester, and was leaving from platform 9a, Crosscountry service,  The train I got on was a crosscountry, although not one like I'd ever seen before, and stopped at my platform.

I think you know where I'm going with this.

It turns out where I was standing was very near the border between 9a and 9b.  The train I actually got on was for Plymouth.  The next stop, I was to find out too late, was Cheltenham, 50 minutes away.  I cannot tell you how much of a bullet I dodged on this trip.  There was another guy, slightly older than me, who was not so lucky and had done the exact same thing as I had.  He had a flight to catch at Stansted, one he could now potentially miss.

Anyone could freak out, be worried, but thanks to my experience in travelling I honestly wasn't worried, probably the only thing I haven't been worried about for a few weeks.  All you do is get off at the next stop, which unfortunately for me was so far away, and then hop on the next train back to Birmingham.  I did have a booked seat on the Crosscountry to Leicester, but it was an open return ticket, meaning I could use it once at any time between now and the 14th January 2015.

I got talking to the Spanish PhD student from Birmingham who had made the exact same mistake as I had.  I thought it funny how two possible future academics can be so clueless about transport.  After all of these years of travelling, I make a rookie mistake.  The only thing I've done on trains that came close was getting an express train to an area of Glasgow with a bad rep by accident, but that was only 10 minutes away by train anyway.  Cheltenham was a whole other city!

The ironic thing in this pic is that I actually went down
past Stratford-Upon-Avon where I had set off from.

If anyone does do this by accident, the rail don't charge you for making this mistake, thank God, and so you just explain to a conductor what's happened and they'll tell you what train you need to catch to get back to your original destination.  Crosscountry staff were really good with us two idiots when we explained, and they did their very best so my new Spanish friend had a chance of catching his flight home for Christmas.

Spanish dude, I hope you caught that flight.

The reason for this post, well reasons, were that:
1. Always, always, always, check the train you're on.  It says on the front of the train, sometimes, but not always, it's kind enough to say it inside the carriage (not for me, of course).
2. To give everyone a laugh at my mistake

When I did eventually get back to Birmingham I got the 2 hour later train to Leicester from the same platform, and one of the platform attendants recognised me and had a good ol' laugh at what had happened to me.  I must admit I wasn't in the best of moods for this to happen to me this week, if it was any other, less stressful, time of the year I would have laughed, and now I'm sitting in my flat at Leicester, I find it does have some mirth, and it will certainly make my friends laugh when I get home for Christmas.

Warning folks, always check your train, or you may find yourself seeing the inside of another city's train station, rather than the city itself.  Has anyone else done the same thing as I?  Did you get on an express train that didn't stop at all from one point to anther, 2+ hours away?

The social tight rope between the sexes

I was actually reluctant to write this post because of the obviously precarious subject matter; don't want to go insulting any of the four regular readers I have accumulated.

I don't have to deal with this much, the relationships between men and women thing.  My friends are girls, I now live with girls, and I don't have a boyfriend to worry about (not in that way but from what I've heard, boyfriends are....work...some of the time).  I live quite a male-secluded life.  There are men on my course, as there were in my old one, but as you can tell from my single status nothing's ever come of it, they're colleagues, people I am forced to see 5 days a week and then I get a Masters in return.

The relationship between men and women is a long stretching, complicated, dangerous, sensitive, and at times rewarding one, but how long has it taken us all to get to this questionable truce?  Hundreds of thousand of years, folks!  I do not consider myself a die-hard feminist, I simply believe in human equality and the right to make independent choices.  Women have had a notoriously oppressive history, seen as nothing but objects, deemed as "imperfect versions of men" (thanks Christianity), and restrained from reaching their full potential.  The world isn't like that now, this is the 21st Century and the bickering and fights between the sexes should be over.

In an ideal world yes, and although in economy, jobs and family life, etc, we all are, but what about the contentious area of actual inter-sex relationships?  I'm making this post sound so serious when it's not.  This post is simply about wolf-whistling and inappropriate methods of flirting with the other sex.  Unfortunately due to my limited time spent out in the real world I've been sheltered from the true horrors of inter-flirting, at least I think that but I have been told differently by several of my friends who have seen me oblivious to the flirting of the opposite sex (yes, I am that girl).

Living a life as a semi-hermit has its perks, it also has its understandable disadvantages.  I went to the local supermarket for an extension to my weekly shopping usually done in Aldi (I love you Aldi but sometimes...you know....you just aren't enough).  Everything was good, I bought too many tins of soup, and smoothie's that just jumped miraculously into my hands of their own volition, I swear.  Walking back down the busy road to my flat I was changing my Ipod, innocent, in my own little cloud world when boom!  or rather Honk!

It came from right beside me where the road was, the lane closest to me.  Cars and trucks beep at each other all of the time, but this was a short sharp sound that made me look up instinctively.  What happened was the most disturbing and weirdest thing that has happened to me this year (to my reflective knowledge).  I looked up and made eye contact with a middle-aged man driving one of the trucks pictured left (but the British version) and he gave me a sort of nod.  How to explain this nod is difficult, it wasn't a chin-up "how you doin" nod; if I was to explain it I would say it was an encouraging nod, but I think we can safely say what it really was.

I don't know if it's common in other countries to be beeped by passing cars, lorries, trucks.  It comes in different forms in vehicles, the most frightening and obvious one is of course the ominous engine rev.  It's the vehicular form of a wolf-whistle.  Was it, or is it, appropriate for men to still do this to women walking on the street?  On this line of thought is the outdated wolf whistle still appropriate?

I think even women are divided on this issue; some see it as a compliment, which I suppose it is, whilst others see it as an insult of one kind or another, a kind of objectification.  All I can say is that I was utterly gobsmacked.  This has never happened to me in such an obvious form.  I was the only one on the pavement and he was looking directly at me.  The first thing I said was "did that just happen?".  I thought it was funny, don't get me wrong, slightly gross but funny.

It was more of the shock of it happening that inspired me to write this post than any other motive.  At least I haven't heard one of those awful pick-up lines dropped, I would burst into laughter right in front of the poor sod.  The fact that it was a middle-aged guy, the fact that in all of the older movies you see the guys wolf-whistling, is it an outdated thing, beeping horns and whistling?  Is it as common for women to do?  Men seem to be more under the influence of their impulses, they can't control them as well as women seem to, for the most part.  I've seen attractive men and I don't start making noises in their direction.  Where did this culture come from anyhow?

Although my story is mild, very very mild, do you have an embarrassing story like it?  Did you get dropped a pick-up line when he was being serious (you poor thing)?  Do you think it is outdated?

Patterns: why a beginner should use them.

I recently had a run in with my arrogance which is actually quite a rare occurrence for me.  I'm, of course, not saying I'm devoid of a little arrogance here and there, but it is so very often misplaced.  Since moving down to Leicester and realising that I have a chronic lack of clothes to wear I either wanted to buy them or make them.

Sewing historical clothes and fantasy clothes is an acceptable and cool hobby, but at the end of the day where can you really wear them except from in your home, in a secluded area for a photo shoot, or at one of those period dos that I have never once been to or find.  Making everyday clothes is practical, fun, and tailored exactly to your body.  I have made two cotton dresses and a chiffon top, all with patterns.

A few weeks ago I went in search of a fabric store, cause I like looking in them to see what they have.  When I arrived it was empty, yay, and I was really in the mood for a tartan skirt.  There is two reasons for this; one, I like tartan skirts, and two, all of the ones they sell in the shops do not suit me at all.  I will admit to being influenced by recent tartan UK fashion, but I do genuinely like tartan.  After finding a nice tartan I bought two metres knowing that I would make a skirt and thinking a metre may be too little.

This is when my arrogance butted in.  I am one of those people who occasionally underestimates how difficult something is.  I wanted to make a pleated, kilt like skirt, my taking my measurements, adding a seam allowance, and then pleating or gathering it.  I would like to mention here that I gathered the skirt on my 15th Century Italian dress and apparently after doing that I thought I was an expert.

Needless to say I got home, drew a little pathetic sketch of the skirt, measured how wide I wanted the box pleats.  What I was intending on doing was box pleating the front and then kind of knife-type pleating at the back.  I measured my waist, added a seam allowance and all of the extra I would need for the pleats.  That is the sound of a promising start isn't it?  Wrong.

My two dresses I had made were box pleated, but I had to change them to be smaller because I cut out the wrong size of pattern, and when I altered them manually the dress fit perfectly.  I had no measurements in that case and so I thought with the skirt I was at an advantage because I'd measured it out.  Oh no, I really wasn't.

Not once did I really take into consideration what type of skirt suited me.  For some reason the cotton dresses with the box pleats do, but when I did this with the skirt it was absolutely horrible!  The smaller pleats at the back did nothing to help matters either.  I loved this material, it is a polyester tartan, the same one all of the tartan skirts are made out of(-ish).  But it doesn't have a nice hang, obviously, because it's meant to be kilt-like pleated, and when pleated in any way it hangs straight, no flare, just straight.  Now that I think about it, the fabric is quite stiff, but it does have a drape of some kind.  Rather than just starting again with the remaining metre, I had cut the three panels wide enough to make a skater skirt instead, this time I used one of my current skater skirts as a pattern.

A few corners and edges were off, but that could be hidden within seams.  I'm going to jump straight to the end here since I finished it this afternoon.  The construction was good, I stitched down all of the seams (they weren't big enough to flat fell), I stitched on the bias binding waistband and I even sewed in the really bright coloured zip I purchased.  I knew it would be a bit big but that was easily sorted.  What an absolute disaster it turned out to be.

it actually looks quite good, doesn't it?  Do not be fooled by this picture!  The sewing, the seams and the zip are the best part of this skirt.  The hem is uneven (which, to be fair, I already knew), the side I put the zip in isn't even so bunches, and because of the zip the skirt sticks out at that point (I see now why some people use zips as a cheap form of boning for corsets).

I sewed down all of the seams because as I said earlier they weren't big enough to flat fell, and I hate any raw edges on garments showing it just makes me paranoid they're going to unfurl.  The entire thing was hand sewn and I love the tartan so much.

You can see the turquoise zip I chose.  I know the colour doesn't match but I like that colour and I think it compliments the tartan nicely.  The only thing that I am proud of is that before I went to buy the siz I didn't measure how many inches I'd left for its opening in the side seam, and so I had to estimate it when I bought the zip.  It fit perfectly, that's skill right there.  I do find I have a humble ability to approximate accurately the length of fabric, or a zip, or anything like that; it comes in very useful when I'm having to hem longer gowns on my own.

Ironically it wasn't actually the lack of a paper pattern that made this skirt horrible, it was that the material didn't suit the type of skirt I was making.  With skater skirts you need to have a fabric that can drape, cotton, polyester blends like this one, and other crisper fabrics just aren't the way to go.

I now have a metre left of this beautiful tartan polyester blend and a skirt that is only wearable under a very long and large jumper.  Thoughts on what to do with the leftover material are thin on the ground because it is polyester.  I might put it as a sneaky lining somewhere, pretend its a heavy cotton.  Hopefully when I begin to sew my Tempest gown over the weekend nothing this awful will happen.

Let this be a warning to other newbies like myself.  Patterns, it turns out, aren't necessary for beginners (but unless you like dancing close to expensive material death I would recommend them), but the right type of material for your project is essential!  Thankfully this material was cheap and pretty and I made the entire skirt for about £7, but it was a lesson well learned.

Life has themes: this week's = Morality!

Recently I wrote a very long post about protagonist morality and whether a hero or heroine can ever be truly morally corrupt.  I meant to publish it to the world today until something unusual happened which mirrored that post.

We all like finding money whether it be in our pockets, pressed up against the washing machine door as your clothes are spinning, or in our bank accounts.  Some of us even like finding it outside on the ground.  When I was younger I never found money; I think I found a £2 coin once and was so happy.  Then adulthood hit and my belief system formed.  I am not a Christian or any of the other accepted religions of the world, I prefer to think I'm Wren Religion.  I don't want to go into the complicated labyrinth of my beliefs in deities but jumping straight to the main pivoting point of my entire life and the one thing that makes my decisions; Karma!

In the most basic definition of the word I have taken Karma to be simply, "what goes around, comes around" or sometimes "do good things and good things will come".  I mentioned in my post (soon to be published) about character morality that the reason why I staunchly believe in Karma is my childhood watching Japanese Anime and then my late adolescence and current life watching South Korean dramas.  Those cultures are very moral, they indoctrinate their youth with a clear sense of right and wrong from a very early age, obviously mirrored in their TV shows.  Like every population there's always outliers (showing my statistics roots there) but for the majority of people in Japan and South Korea they do the right thing; this is proven by the lowest crime rates, and highest reported safety by many foreigners that go over there to live.  I heard a story from Simon and Martina (if you haven't heard of them go and check out their blog.  They're a couple who have been living in South Korea for years and regularly post videos about life there) that someone lost their wallet in South Korea, they either went to the police station or someone handed it to them and all of the money, credit cards, etc, were still inside.

I never realised how much watching these things when I was younger affected me until my late teens, probably about 17 or 18, maybe even before that.  Getting back to the main point of this blog post, money....I mean morality.  Whenever I find things that don't belong to me, I hand them in, regardless of what it is, even money.

The first instance of this is when I was at John Knox's house in Edinburgh.  I found £40 pounds on the floor and handed it into reception.  They took my phone number and thanked me; I thought that was the end of it.  A few weeks later they phoned me saying none had claimed the money and did I want to come and pick it up.  I was probably about 16 at the time, £40 was a lot of money for me.  I told them to donate it to themselves (all heritage sights in Scotland are run by charities).  I gave away the money because it wasn't mine to keep.  Was it a stupid thing to do?  I don't think stupidity really factors into anything to do with morality.  Morals are very much based on individual beliefs, and people with none are usually the ones who say what I did was stupid.

The second instance was a few weeks ago.  There is a flat right beside mine, our doors are separated by a very small space.  As I was about to enter my flat I saw money, £30, lying on the floor.  It was over the border between my flat and theirs.  I wish I was joking when I said this but I stood there for what felt like 5 minutes trying to decide what to do.  What was the right course of action to take in that moment?  This is the problem with any belief system, there always comes a time when there's grey areas.  Good thing about my religion is I can make it up as I go along, change to suit circumstance.  Because it was lingering more outside next door's flat than mine, I picked it up and chapped on their door.  Handing it to the disgruntled occupant I entered my flat with a sigh or relief.  The money may not have been hers, and I'm not so naive in thinking she didn't just pocket it herself, but I did the right thing and my Karma is all I care about, not hers.  The only other thing would have been to trudge all the way down to reception and hand it in there, but from where it was positioned on the ground it either belonged to someone in her flat or mine, and it was closer to their door.  This was an exciting thing to happen in my life but it was soon forgotten, until today!!

So it wasn't as fancy as this but still

The elevator is out for the second time in 2 weeks (see here about my post when the lift was out of order the first time).  This means that the 200+ people in my block are all having to use the stairs again (but fret not, it's worth it because all of us got a small box of Roses chocolates and an apology note: I would walk up to the 14th floor of my block if it meant getting another box, but I am expecting a bigger box this time).  I ordered something from Amazon this week and got an email saying it had been delivered today.  Unfortunately it was too large to fit in our small mailbox and so I got a letter telling me to pick it up at reception.  Dumping my bag in my room and signing this little note, I went down the stairs again, and lone behold what did I find, £10!!

It was just lying there, on the stairs where 200 and more people walk.  To be honest it hadn't been there on my way up the first time, but on my way down there it was, crumpled and lost.  It was impossible to tell who it belonged to.  And so began another moral dilemma.  Now, I've been having a really Sh** week this week, my attempts at buying a new pair of glasses that actually fit me has left me out of pocket by more money than I'd care to admit (and no matter how many times they're adjusted they're still not right), and it's a coursework week which means stress with some more stress on the side.  I was on my way to the reception, and when I picked it up I did think about handing it in, but then I thought, what were they going to do with it?  There are 600+ people living in my building.  They would most likely keep it for a week and then if no one claimed it keep it themselves.  Yes, someone could have asked but that's not British is it?  We accept that if we lose money someone is going to take it.  Peeps, today I was that person, today, I was British, or more specifically, Scottish.  I was like any other person I know whose belief system is "finders keepers".

This is the question, was taking that £10 bad karma?  I have never kept money in the two instances before this.  Why during such a bad week did I find the money?  Coincidence would be what a rational person, and probably I, should say, but I am also a writer and I like to believe in more than that.  I was having a bad week, am having a bad week, and finding that £10 did cheer me up, before the onslaught of Karma worrying came.  I will admit, my belief system broke down a little bit, but don't they all?  I don't feel guilty about picking it up, after writing this post I do feel slightly guilty about keeping it, but aren't people permitted strays from their beliefs?

Some of you may think I'm contemplating this too much, it was only £10 after all, but for some people that could be something important.  Maybe it was just the fall-out from someone else's bad week (yes, pun intended).  It brightened up my week a little and has some new friends in my purse instead of being abandoned on the stairs with no one.  On the other hand, at least it came to me and inspired me to entertain people with this post, and at least I actually thought about doing the moral thing whereas most of the other people here would have snatched it without another thought on the matter.

What do you think?  To much contemplation or the foundations of future bad karma?

Halloween post: presentations are the most frightening thing

So for those of you who are my frequent readers, which I estimate to be about 4 at this point, you will know that I suffer from social anxiety.  There is nothing more frightening to someone like me than being told you have to stand up in front of people and talk.....about anything.  Even introducing myself is a nightmare.  I've figured out my limit is about 4-5 people, anymore than that and you can forget actual intelligible English coming out of my mouth.  So when I attended my course's induction and they said there would be a group presentation to do every week you can imagine what my feelings on this subject were.  Not only would I have to mingle with everyone I would then have to stand up and speak.

Thankfully they're not graded or marked in any way because I wouldn't even be getting 50%.  We're given about 2 hours to make a presentation together before we have to present them; this has led to something forever called "presentation Friday".  Since we're only in half a day on a Friday they decided that during the morning we would be subject to standing up and presenting the half-dashed attempt at understanding whatever we had done that week.  Then came this week.

We had not one, not even two, but three presentations.  You'd think after four weeks of standing up on a regular basis that I wouldn't be nervous anymore but this time I hit rock bottom.  On the first day I began to laugh to myself when I deviated from my script that was quivering in my shaking hands and then proceeded to start talking, just using any words that sounded relevant when someone asked a question and no one else in my group answered.  The second day was actually ok save from the sweat soaked script in my hand, and on the third day my poor little piece of paper had a heartbeat of its own and was shaking uncontrollably in my hands the entire way through.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank my group members who, by far, have made it the best group week I've had since I started.

Deviating slightly from the subject I will say a few words on student life, or rather Masters life.  I thought my undergrad degree was bad, stressful and upsetting in so many ways.  I thought, somewhat naively, if I could get through it then I could get through anything.......hahahahahaha.  Holy crap was I wrong.  Coursework weeks are not as kind as they sound; you get an entire week off classes just to do coursework!

Thankfully the deadlines were all met and to be honest because I break up the coursework into pieces and chip away at that giant iceberg from the moment we get it, things haven't been that hectic for me.  Unfortunately what did stress me out was everyone else constantly asking me for help, but I won't go into a rant about it here (believe me I could write an entire post about how irritating my classmates were on the last coursework week; why are you asking me, I don't know either!!!)

I haven't used a pencil for years, we weren't allowed to use one for my exams so all mathematical calculations had to be done in pen; cue many ugly scribbles adorning my notes and exam scripts (sorry lecturers).  Since I came down to Leicester pencil has been my saviour because with the amount of mistakes I made in the first few weeks my notes would have looked unreadable with the amount of ugly, but colourful, scribbles.

This happens a surprising amount; just remember, kids, highlighters aren't always your friend.  In fact I think I remember reading somewhere that they were actually detrimental to studying because your mind is busy thinking you should highlight it rather than read and learn it.

At the end of my undergrad degree I'm pretty sure my entire class suffered from this (it had been a long four years) and 8 exams within two weeks is criminal!

So if uni is so stressful and awful, why do people continue to go?  It would be so easy to be upbeat about this but the fact is, sorry folks, it's the done thing nowadays.  We live in a society that places a lot of importance on a university degree, and if your school was anything like mine, we were made to believe that if we didn't have one then we would never get a good job.  I know now that's not true but at the time we were impressionable.

It is easy to get stressed about uni, to get really irritated over the small things, but at the end of the day I chose to do a masters.  I didn't need one (actually I do but that's besides the point) but I like being a student; I like the stress and I like that it's interesting and challenging, how boring would life be if everything was easy?  My favourite saying is "anything worth doing is never easy".
Besides, it's all good, we get student discount!

If only they didn't have an expiry date on them