Geeking out in Napa

I took some video of the Robert Mondavi winery last week when we took a tour there, so here it is...the tour guide geeking out about wine. It was a great tour if you are interested in wine or even if you just like somewhat sciencey and historical stuff...

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Mondavi may not have my favorite wines, but it's a great piece of Napa/California wine history and this was definitely a tour I think you could take over and over and it would be different and interesting every time. I especially want to go back around August when we could taste grapes right off the vine!

Halloween part 2

My mom just found this picture of the cape (and tunic) that I made when I was 15.

So, I'm sewing my cape for Halloween this year (the fancy cape with the hood and lining and trim and such) and trying to make a dress to go with and remembering the dress I made for my costume the year before that had 18 pieces that had to be cut out and sew together (and then the stitches ripped out and resized, etc) and I think of the time, thought and expense of putting a costume together and I start thinking to myself, "why do I go to all this effort?"

I KNOW that pretty much everyone else at the party is going to go to the Spirit Store the day before or soemthing, and they are going to pick out a $10 "sexy cat", "sexy witch" or "sexy devil girl" one-size-fits-all generic Halloween outfit and that's that. I have to question why *I* can't do that. Why, why, why? But I can't. The idea of picking out a costume like that is just totally...icky...to me. I can't do it. I won't. No matter how little effort other people might be making, the idea of wearing one of those mass-produced, cheap generic costumes is completely anathema to me.

So this begs a few questions. The first is...why do these people run to the spirit store and grab a cheap, generic costume? Why are they content with that? That's a bit complicated I'm sure. You can't lump everyone in together except in perhaps the most general way. Maybe a better question is, "is it them, or is it their expectations of the party?" Is it the people that I know, or is our party just not fabulous enough?

Maybe it's a little of all of those things.

The other question is "why do I have this need to put so much effort into a costume?" And I suppose the answer is that I don't like to do anything halfway. This sometimes leads to not completing things or to miserable failure, and it sometimes leads to spectacular success, and sometimes it leads me to having a costume that looks really out of place.

My bf and I talked about it, and for us the solution is "have a more fabulous party". So that's what we're going to do. A fabulous party, with plenty of advance notice, an emphasis on dressing to impress, an expanded guest list that will hopefully include plenty of people who are already predisposed to put effort into an original costume, written invitations, and perhaps a costume contest.

We've already invited some people...I hope 11 months is enough time for them to prepare.

halloween

 Well, Halloween has come and gone, my month of yoga has come and gone and somehow the blog fell by the wayside. I was just so wrapped up in preparing for Halloween and then preparing/hosting out of town company that I got wayyyyyy sidetracked.

I didn't do yoga for the last week of October. It's funny, when I told my bf about my "31 day yoga challenge" he was like "why 31 days? Why not 3100 days or 31 years or something?" Hey, baby steps...I think that's a GREAT idea, especially after the yoga I did do, but it would be great to finish 31 days first. In the midst of working on my cape, I would be trying to do yoga so late at night (and for me that's pretty damn late) that I'd be falling asleep in the middle of a pose...and they aren't that comfortable!

I'm back to doing yoga now though...it feels so great and even three weeks of it definitely made me more flexible. I'm a little stiffer from my little break, but I can now do saddle pose without a bolster pillow, so I think that's pretty awesome! If I have some new yoga news to report, I'll be sure and do so.

 

So meanwhile I was sew, sew, sewing with several seasons of "Project Runway" to inspire me and keep me company. I don't know why a darned cape should take so long...part of it was the cutting out of the pieces which were too big to properly fit on the table I was cutting them on. Then there was the part where I put the two pattern pieces together wrong (two parts were pinned together and then were cut out of one piece of fabric) and cut them out. When I discovered one piece had been upsidedown when I was cutting (perhaps not the best idea to cut pieces out at 3am) I was so distraught I immediately went to bed.

Going to bed wasn't such a bad thing to do. I am reminded of a cape I made oh-so-many Halloweens ago when I was 15. I didn't really know how to sew...we had home ec. in middle school but although I aced  the cooking part I totally flunked the sewing part...and I was in my mom's basement trying to use her sewing machine to make a cape and I didn't have a pattern so I'd basically just cut out some big semi-circles that had a small part cut out for the neck and I needed to sew them together and then hem the whole thing. Somehow it all just seemed soooo beyond me and I remember crying in frustration. 

So here I was again, still not really any kind of expert sewer, trying to sew a cape, but this time with a lining and a hood and some trim and a clasp...and cutting the damn thing out of the huge piece of fabric (of which the fabric store had no more...and I actually checked several stores around town, nobody had it) totally wrong...and I didn't cry! Pretty good, if you ask me! After making sure I couldn't replace the fabric, I ended up cutting the big pieces back into two halves (like the way the pattern would be if you didn't pin it together) and flipping half of it. I was afraid it would be ugly, but in the end I think that new seam I created actually made the cape look BETTER. 

  

So I managed to assemble the whole thing, put cute little heart trim around it, sew a decorative border for the hem (little flower stitch) and the fox clasps I ordered

arrived in the nick of time, so I somehow managed to sew them on unevenly but what-ev. The petticoat and the wig actually showed up later the same day I was accusing the mailman of dastardly deeds in my blog, I whipped up a simple white peasant shirt (of which the elastic in the neckline broke during the Halloween party) and ended up forgetting about the dress (although all the pieces were cut out) and just wearing the peasant blouse with a black skirt, petticoat, white stockings and chinese style mary jane shoes. Oh, and the wig which I braided and I think it looked very cute but I didn't have a camera with me and nobody has sent me any pics yet!!!

I really think my bf and I had the best costumes by far at the party.

Karaoke didn't go quite so well...I ordered two Halloween karaoke cds and a large set (hundreds of songs) of non-holiday karaoke cds but NONE of them arrived in time, so my bf went to target and he picked out a cd of Frank Sinatra and his 15 yr old daughter picked out two more cds which contained mostly music I'd never heard of, and my bf was practically the only one who sang karaoke that night (he has a great voice for Sintra stuff)...BUT we have about 700 songs now including "Me Gustas Tu", so we are way over-prepared to have another karaoke holiday party.