Bellydance and Costuming

Well, after swapping e-mails with Onca for a couple of days I'm back in bellydance classes. I'll be bartering costumes for classes. Went to class this past Tuesday and had a ball. Onca waited until the third class to talk to me about any of it and then said she'd have me talk to Claire about patterns after the class and encouraged me to participate in the choreography class at 8:00. Looks like there were 6 people there learning (more like adapting) a choreography that had been used in a show back in February that I'd not gotten to see. Either one dropped out or just wasn't there this past week, so I was put in her spot. The choreography isn't that bad, but it'll take me a few more practices before I get it down completely. Not to mention, the dance was originally done with candles, but apparently the location where we're going to be doing it won't allow that so we'll be using Magnolia flowers :)

After class was over, I sat down with Claire to discuss patterns and what I'll be doing. Apparently, vendors show up at events with just about everything but pantaloons (harem pants). So, they want me to make a bunch for them to sell at the Tribal: Pura workshop in July. Claire said that because I do a lot of finishing work (serging edges and such) that I should be able to get at least $40 per pair. I'm currently waiting on samples from Dharma Trading Co. to pick out which fabric I need. Their 2.2 oz. cotton gauze looks too thin and they didn't have pics of the 3.7 oz gauze nor of the "Harem" fabric, which was the cheapest of the 3. I should have the samples sometime this weekend and will place the order for the fabric as soon as I have the samples and know which fabric I want.

Onca is also supposed to be bringing me dying agents next week. So, once the fabric comes in, I'll be trying my hand at garment dying for the first time :) I'll be cutting the fabric into 4 yd. strips and dying them different colors so we'll have a variety of colors of pants. Also, if there is time in there, I'll be making some tops as well. In the meantime, still haven't heard from Amanda about doing the costumes for her boys.

In other news, the jobs that aikidragon and I are wanting to put in for at Harrah's have still not been posted publicly. Spent a good portion of yesterday with satyrblade getting his and ladysnowleopard's computers connected back to the internet then going out and getting him a new hard drive. He'd filled up his 15 gig drive, so we added a 100 gig drive and moved most, if not all, of his document/image/music files to the new drive and set up his iTunes to find them there. I'm taking my beagle to the vet this morning, then meeting Aiki for dinner and then heading up to Morganton to spend the weekend with shdwkitten. Kitten is having oral surgery (outpatient) tomorrow and has to have someone to drive her there and back home again. They also want that someone to keep an eye on her for a bit to make sure she has no reactions to the meds. Kitten invited me to stay the weekend since emrys_nc will be at Mythic Journeys all weekend. I'm taking a slew of DVD's and we'll talk some costuming stuff while I'm there. Really looking forward to this trip!

Well, that's it for now.

Puppy updates

Well, aikidragon and I will have some decisions to make concerning my beagle, Sugar. Keeping in mind that Sugar is an odd dog. She gets knots and infections that medicines do nothing for and acts as though there is nothing wrong with her. She also channels Houdini, so we can't keep her on a tie line as she continually gets loose and loses the chain.

About a month ago, I noticed that one of her toes had swollen, but she acted like nothing was wrong. I checked it and couldn't find any puncture wounds. Last week, she started acting timid which is unusual since she has been acting happy and plays almost like a pup despite being around 12 yrs. old. Since last week, she has days where she's timid and others, like today, where she's pretty happy-go-lucky.

I finally took her into the vet today and he said he'd never seen anything like what Sugar has gone through in the past several years. So far, none of it has been cancer. This time, they want to take her toe off. It would come off back at the knuckle joint where the toe comes out of the foot. The vet said this is a fairly simple procedure and would guarantee that they got all of it. One problem though: He listened to her heart and discovered that she's developed a heart murmur as well. The good news, they could go in and take the toe off without much problem. The bad news, because of the heart murmur, she could die on the operating table. The surgery alone could cost $200. The vet said that some folks with animals as old as Sugar is don't do anything about it at all and just let the animal live out the rest of their lives. I'm not sure what I want to do.

This I do know, when Sugar goes I want a pair of beagle pups.