Copenhagen

I'm enjoying my visit to Copenhagen, land of Hans Christian Anderson (that's the Little Mermaid statue in the harbor above) and Niels Bohr and Tycho Brahe. Since I'm here for work, I haven't done that much sightseeing, but I did get out and explore a bit this weekend. Can't be all work and no play!

I'm not staying in a hotel but in an apartment that was rented for visitors over the summer. It's much nicer (more space!) and there's a full kitchen so I can cook for myself if I'm so inclined. And it just feels more homey. Here's the building I'm living in during my trip:

It's in a very cute area of town, right along the canals. This is the view from the front of the apartment:

I see tour boats going by every so often with tourists and a guide speaking through a megaphone. It's a bit amusing, and makes me feel more like a resident than a tourist myself.

On Saturday, I spent the morning figuring out the public transportation so I could go find a fabric store and buy my one souvenir -- some fun cotton to make a skirt to remind me of Denmark. Mission accomplished, I met up with a friend and her family at the Little Mermaid statue and we wandered around a park and headed out to the beach. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was shining and it was pleasantly warm. Everything is blooming here right now, and the lilacs in the park smelled wonderful.


At the beach, there were even a few crazy people out swimming in the ocean. I put my feet in and promptly jumped back onto the sand because it was so cold! It reminded me of the water temperature in Glacier National Park in Montana. Lots and lots of boats were out and about, which would have been a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Today, I wandered around my neighborhood and just took it easy. There's a church nearby that I can see from the windows of "my" apartment and I hear it chime every hour, on the hour. So I wandered over to investigate.

I saw that the tower was open, so I paid to up to the top of the spire, figuring I would get some really good views of the city. I was not disappointed. The spiral on the spire is actually stairs going all the way to the top on the outside, and here you can see the stairs a bit better:

The weather was a bit temperamental today. It stopped raining for a few hours while I was out exploring, but it was really windy!

There's a reason I'm holding onto the railing in this picture!

Here's the view back towards the apartment and canal:

And further down the canal towards the harbor:

Denmark has lots of offshore windmills. I'm sure those mills were generating lots of energy today!

And here's a zoomed-in picture of the old stock exchange building. The spiral roof is the tails of 4 dragons wrapped around the spire. You can see three of the dragons at the base of the spire, the fourth is on the back:

I actually learned about this particular building from a movie - The Prince and Me - with Julia Stiles. Kind of a silly movie, but it's a fun one. And, apparently, educational!

I'm still here for another week, so I'm sure there will be more pictures to come.

So glad the semester is over!

I have several conversations like this every semester. I'm glad to be done with teaching for the summer. Now for all that research I'm supposed to get done!

Cutest Commercial EVER!

Just in case you haven't seen it yet. I never get tired of watching this!

Inspiration: Karen Millen

I don't pay a lot of attention to designers, and it's been a while since I've taken a trip to the mall to be quite honest. James and I happened to end up at the mall this afternoon and I saw a store I hadn't seen before that had some very cute dresses in the window, including the one above. I ventured in out of curiosity, looked at the price tag, and promptly walked back out the front door. I love cute dresses, but $380 is, ahem, a bit steep. However, I did take a good look at it before leaving, and even James said, "why don't you make one like it?" To which I responded, "I think I've seen a pattern like that, actually."

Vogue 8613 is cute with the short sleeves and it has a similar feel with the shirtdress style and the full skirt, although the collar is a bit different (the Karen Millen dress has a peter pan collar) and the buttons don't go all the way down the front. Finding a striped fabric would be the hardest part of recreating this dress (the Karen Millen dress is colorblocked, where each stripe is actually sewed on from a different fabric). I suppose I could always take a cue from Scarlett O'Hara, since I *DO* live in Atlanta now, and there seems to be a plethora of striped home decorating fabric...


Anyway, draperies aside, I got to looking around on line and found some more inspiration from Karen Millen. You may notice a theme in the following dresses.
Stretch cotton shirtdress with contrasting colour silk satin wrap shirt bodice. £165

Colour Block Full Skirt Dress, £140
Tribal Embroidery Dress, $380

Apparently I like black, white, and gray dresses. And colorblocking. And full skirts (most of the time).

If I ever did decide to splurge on a Karen Millen dress, I'd be much more likely to choose something like this beautiful embroidered silk dress:Definitely a dress I couldn't recreate at home!

Simplicity 2638 Modeled

I wore my new dress to work today and quite enjoyed it. It was a little warm with some humidity and I stayed nice and cool in my office wearing the light cotton shirting. Here's the back, which still looks okay even after a day of sitting on it:


I wore it with some red kitten heels that I don't wear very often since they're not particularly comfortable. But I didn't have much walking to do, and they're cute with this dress. I also wore my opera-length necklace (I told you you'd be seeing it a lot!)


I'm inspired to make more cute dresses to rotate through my wardrobe for the summer. This one only took two solid blocks of time to make. I started it May 2 and finished it May 7, and most of those days I didn't work on it at all. I could probably whip one of these up in a weekend, especially when it's a nice light cotton that behaves and takes pressing well.

FO: Simplicity 2638, Take 2

So after spending a month trying to get the fit just right on my last project, I needed something a little faster for a bit of immediate gratification. I decided to make another version of Simplicity 2638, hopefully one that would turn out a bit better than the last one and be something I could wear. For the first version of this pattern, I cut a size 10, which was actually a size smaller than called for according to my measurements. It was too big and I had gapping issues around the armscyes and at the back neckline. The fabric was also a bit too heavy for this pattern, and I didn't like having all the extra fabric gathered directly over my stomach.

This time I trimmed the pattern down to a size 8. I had 3 yards of 44" wide royal blue lightweight cotton shirting with white pin dots that I had ordered from Fabric.com for $1.95/yard on sale.


I wanted to try a knee-length version this time, so 3 yards was plenty of fabric. And how did it turn out this time? I'm quite proud actually:

The inside almost looks as pretty as the outside! The pattern calls for lining the bodice, and since I had plenty of fabric, I did a self-fabric lining.

The waist seam (where the skirt is attached to the bodice) was pressed up, trimmed, and finished with royal blue seam lace.

I sewed French seams in the skirt, except for the back seam with the zipper. I pressed open that seam and bound the edges with single-fold bias tape (I didn't have royal, so I used some baby blue tape). I also didn't have a blue zipper or a white zipper on hand, so I used a dark purple zipper rather than run to the store. I hand picked the zipper and, since it's lapped, you can't really see it anyway.

Finally, I used a hook and eye at the top of the back seam, rather than a fabric loop and button. I only used about 2.5 yards of fabric, and all the required notions were in my stash already, bringing my total for materials for this project to about $5.27 including tax (shipping and handling were free).

The size 8 fits perfectly, with no gapping. I'm planning to wear this to work tomorrow, so I'll post some modeled shots soon. The only thing I would change next time is to perhaps add a bit more length to the shoulder straps. As it is, they're a little short so the bodice is providing support in addition to my underwire bra. I suppose I could get away without a bra at all, actually, with the way the bodice fits. Might be nice for those really humid days of summer that are looming ahead. But not for work tomorrow!

I finished the dress last night and had most of the day today to start a new project, so since I was feeling rather confident, I decided to make my first foray into the world of sewing knits. It may be a disaster since I'm doing the whole thing on a regular sewing machine for lack of a serger, but it seems to be looking okay so far. Here's what I'm working on:

I'm making the short sleeved version but with the cutaway skirt and collar. The jersey fabric I'm using has been rolling a lot, which has been a big pain but not an insurmountable problem. We'll see how the finished product turns out, and since I'm about halfway finished already, perhaps soon!

Why yes it is, Janice!

An opera length necklace, that is. I'd been hankering after a long necklace for the past few weeks. After searching several brick and mortar stores and lots of online shops too, I settled on this delicate sterling silver and cubic zirconia 36" long necklace at Amazon (still for sale here).

I was originally inspired by this outfit from a random episode of Cougar Town that was playing while I was traveling somewhere on Delta Airlines (not even sure what the episode was about since I wasn't wearing ear phones at the time):


My necklace is a bit shorter, so I can't wrap it around my neck for a double-layer look like Courtney Cox, but I really like it as is. It will probably appear here in several more of my photos (last seen here) since I've been wearing it a lot lately.

I need some R&R

I'm not sure, however, that I should take Dr. Spaceman's recommendation for rum and ritalin. Any other suggestions?