Well, I got the new understructure sewn, boned and the fashion fabric pinned to it, and I still didn't like how the V opening sat at the waist, so I pulled out all the side seams, re-set them, and re-sewed them. Now it lays like it is supposed to. But, the issue of the Italian gowns is how the front of the V is treated. With English gowns, women wore corsets underneath their gowns to give them the desirable flat and conical shape (man, tell me THAT doesn't sound sexy!). There are no surviving Italian corsets or dresses from that period, so this subject is theoretical, and involves a lot
I think it's just impossible for me NOT to have a project to work on. And, Faire season is coming up. Who doesn't want a new gown each year? : ) The French gown is too hot to wear during the summer months, and the gold gown, well, I don't really have an issue with that one. But I did want a new gown. I wanted something fairly light and cool, and I'd been looking at darker blues and green fabrics and dreaming.
Wow, I haven't blogged in a while. When Sydney Sue was sick, especially at the end, I didn't cook much, so all of my blogs became about her and her updates, and not about food. After she passed, I took a bit of a break from things. We're getting everything back together. Jessie went to a new adoptive home a a few weeks ago; they bounced him the very next day after he kept trying to eat their cat.
The day after Shae was chattering for her dinner, we woke up early, and I ushered the kids out to potty. I went back inside, leaving the front door open for the dogs to come back in, and I turned on the coffee pot and was waiting for it to brew. Interrupting the silence, I heard a long, solemn "rooooooo". I could tell it was from Stewart. I went outside to check on him, and saw him standing on the patio, his head straight up in the air, and he rooooooed again.
It's been so hard this week without Sydney Sue. The house just seems so empty without her. She was my rock, my constant, my unflappable girl. When we woke up Tuesday morning, Stewart and Shae padded around, looking lost and sad. We went outside to potty, we made coffee. It was so quiet. I finally fed them breakfast, having had put it off so that I didn't have to deal with the reality of only filling 3 bowls. I left Sydney's food bowl where it always has been, a silent sentinel in her memory. I didn't go to work that day.
The good news is that her weight is up to 62.5 lbs, that's a lot better than the 54 she was at for the last visit. She looks like hell, with the sores and the pee-colored fur and her fur just looks crappy even without the staining. She was laying on the rug in the entry way when the vet came out, he thought she was dying. That's a bad sign. She wasn't, well, she is, but right that minute she was just being a typical greyhound, why be upright when you can pass out on the floor with your tongue hanging out.
We are now eight and a half weeks post-diagnosis. Up until last week, she'd been doing really well. So well, in fact, that it was hard to remember that she is still sick. Starting a few weeks ago, she began leaking urine when she slept.
I did it. I tried 3 new recipes in one night. I made Julia Child's Coq au vin, or chicken in red wine; I made savory bread pudding with spinach, artichoke and brie, and I made muscat poached apples with a muscat sabayon. It all went over very well, everything turned out fabulously. Except maybe the apples, but I don't like apples, so it was hard to tell. It turns out the sabayon wasn't exactly my idea of a good time, either. 15 minutes of frantic whisking of a sauce so delicate it could break at any second is so not fun. The coq au vin is fabulous.
It's morel season. Well, not here in California, the desert is an abject failure of a birthing place for the little fungal delights. Morels grow best in damp, foresty areas, around the bases of particular types of trees, and are mostly found in Oregon and Michigan. Having been born in Michigan and relocated to Oregon as a child, I have participated in the Great Morel Hunt many times. My father would get all us all excited to go hunting, and the whole family would load up in the pick up truck and drive into the forest.
