Surrounded by another person's memories

When I'd seen my late friend last , she told me that she had a bunch of her bellydance stuff that she wanted me to have. Her husband got all of it together, got in touch with me, and I went over there this afternoon to get it. He showed me a picture album of her when she was bellydancing. She was so beautiful! I could tell from the pictures that she knew what she was doing and was very graceful and elegant.

What's more, she taught herself how to bellydance, made all of her own costumes, taught other people, and set up her own business delivering bellygrams!!!! She was a single mother with two kids, working somewhere and doing all of this to try and make ends meet. I looked through the things she left me and I have all of the jewellery she made and bought (the earrings! headpieces! neckpieces! sterling silver!) as well as all of the costumes she made, including the bras, belts, skirts, and veils, and the leftover embellishments. I also have the books she used to teach herself, the books on costume design, *and* all of her music. I was so excited when I looked through it! It was like finding the perfect pair of shoes (some of you have seen that reaction and you know how obvious it is).

Ok, all of this stuff is from the late 70s and early 80s (and the music is on cassettes), but in a way that makes it even more valuable and interesting. It's not just bellydancing costumes  and information passed from one bellydancer to another - it's a piece of history, both hers and the bellydancing community.

I wish I had known how much bellydancing she had done - I knew that she had bellydanced but not that she had done everything else - and I'm sad that I didn't ask more about it. I wish I had told her how much I admired her.

Tonight I went out with a group of people for dinner to celebrate my friend's life. We toasted her and conducted ourselves in the fashion of which she would have approved: lots of laughter, food, wine (for those who drink it), and yummy desserts. At least we could give her this. 

A bellydance workshop

I went to a workshop today on American Tribal Style (ATS) bellydancing. It's a new style of dance that's only been around for about 20 years or so and which borrows from several dance disciplines including bellydance and flamenco.

Conceptually, ATS is really cool because there's a limited number of moves, each with varying extra layers that can be added. A unique "key" move is associated with each move/layer combination. There is a "leader" at the front left on stage and that person indicates with these key moves which move is coming up next. This way, it looks like the troupe is moving as one, but really it's a completely improvised dance each time. The leader changes throughout the dance as well so everyone in the troupe gets a chance to lead.

It's a very interesting dance and one I'd love to study. The guy (yes, the instructor was a guy and yes, that's unusual for bellydance) will be giving ATS classes on Wednesdays in September. It would be awesome to take the class but I'm a bit worried about my lower back.

My goodness, I must be getting old. I have aches! And pains! I have degeneration in my lower back, possibly from when I first started paddling, that can hurt when I'm dancing if I'm not very, very careful with my posture. The posture used in ATS is different than that used in regular bellydance, with the arms at shoulder height or above the head and the chest held up and out with the shoulders slightly back and new. Keeping my back long during this new posture was tricky.

So I'll see how much my back hurts tomorrow and if it doesn't hurt too much, then I'll think about taking the class either in the fall or some other time.

How much is too much bellydancing?

Four hours of bellydance in one day might be a bit too much! I did two workshops today and I'll tell you, my belly is a bit tired :) My undulations were pretty pathetic by the end of the afternoon. I learned a lot and enjoyed the workshops very much; I'm looking forward to the next class in both series.

This evening, Ian and I watched Diary of the Dead, a zombie movie by George Romero. It's one of those first-person video movies, so it has a couple of people with a camera filming what happens when suddenly the dead rise. There are some flaws with the plot (would all the people really disappear in a day or so?), and the acting wasn't always the best, but I liked that the ending was left unresolved. Yes, there are zombies, but we don't know what happens to our people. There was a bit of humour in the movie, too, especially with regard to the zombies being killed.

I was looking at patterns for sale this evening (this is something I do - surf the internet looking for patterns or fabric) and I came across this one:


What I love best about it is that it's really only two pieces, each cut on the fold. I love the way it looks as shown in the stripe. The back is vertically striped and the front diagonally striped. I like this pattern although it would be a pain to grade and alter for my height; it's also most likely unprinted, and I've never used an uncut, unprinted pattern before. I might also want to shorten the sleeves a bit. I'll think about bidding on it.

My bellydance recital went well

Sorry I didn't write anything yesterday - a headache started yesterday afternoon and came back twice as hard after the Advil I took wore off. I went to bed at 8pm and I couldn't read or anything; all I could do was sleep until I got up at 3pm today.

I'm feeling mostly better, thanks. I still have a bit of a headache that comes (it's here now) and goes and I'm still very tired, but I'll be ok.

The bellydance recital went really well. I danced well enough, as did the people who were in my class, and many of the choreographies were interesting. I don't totally understand why one choreography was repeated twice, though. The funniest thing that happened was that the pink pailettes on my new pink hip scarf left pink on my stomach after I'd been wearing it for a while :) I had to go and scrub my belly off and then I applied some bronzer, which masked the pink. My head-jewelry left divots in my head, too :)

Just sitting around

We just finished watching the Across the River to Motor City mini-series. Yes, I know that it aired back around Christmas, but it takes a while for us to get around to watching things that we've recorded. Anyways, we both thought that it was quite good. There are several intertwining stories told in a series of flashbacks between the 60's and 2001, set in Detroit/Windsor. The first episode wasn't great but the series got a lot better with each episode.

I didn't want to do much today because tomorrow I've got my bellydance recital. It's sold out! I'm in one of the last choreographies, so I hope that people stick around to see me :)

Bellydance practice

I practiced my bellydance routine today. It turned out that I was a little off of the other two doing the choreography and so I have to make a couple of adjustments. I don't mind doing that as long as the choreography looks good. I'm going to wear my new pink top and hip scarf :)

The recital is on Mother's Day - this coming Sunday, from 2:30-4:30pm. I'm looking forward to it. The night before is the Funkabelly dance - I sort of want to go but I don't want to go by myself. We'll see. It might not be an idea to be out late with the recital the next day.

Lots of sewing but less for me

The core needle biopsy area is still sore, but at least it's stopped bleeding. I think it's slightly less red, too, which leaves me feeling quite relieved!

Someone is asking about a messenger bag from me and while I hadn't planned to do any bags like that for a while, well, I'm not going to turn anyone down, am I? I took pictures of the different outer fabrics and linings that I have. I'll edit them tomorrow and put them somewhere so that the person who's interested (as well as anyone else) can choose from them.

I've also planned to make some drum bags for the upcoming open house on May 4 at the bellydance studio. That way, people can buy them if they want to. That would also be a good day for my class to practice the choreography for the recital on May 11 :)

Of course I decided that I wanted to make a dress out of the fine cotton fabrics that I bought :) Some of them shrunk quite a bit in the prewash! I've got a pattern adjusted and I've decided on a layout; the actual sewing should be quite straightforward, I hope.

Reading about bellydance costumes

As you might remember, I ordered some bellydance costuming books. They came today, a whole week early! All of the books are by Dawn Devine Brown and they cover everything from the technical aspects of making a costume to the design elements that emphasize or minimize things. I'm reading them all, cover to cover. Next I just need to design my own costume. So exciting!

For all that I have no compulsion to sew, I've been sewing a lot. I'm working on this great shirtdress right now out of a tan fabric with black embroidery and black tulle accents. I'm using black for the collar and sleeve bands and black buttons and the dress is coming together quite nicely. I actually managed to get the collar on properly!!!!

The way I did the collar was first to stay-stitch the neck and the clip the neck to the stay-stitching to make it fit around the collar curves. I add drops of Fray-check to the points, but since the seamline is outside the stay-stitching, it's unlikely that the fabric will ravel through on those points.

Tomorrow I get another Pamidronate infusion; I wonder how long it will knock me out this time?

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping

Sorry there was no update yesterday - I was pretty tired and my back was very woogly. I couldn't even read my book and ended up sleeping until almost 4:30pm, or about 16 hours. I still wasn't feeling fully awake and so just watched tv this afternoon. Later I got up enough energy to do some sewing.

One thing I did yesterday was to buy some books on making bellydance costumes. They were very expensive on Amazon.ca (one was $65 which is what I paid for all 3!) so I bought them from Amazon.com. They're due to arrive around the beginning of May. I'm doing more and more bellydancing and thinking more about costumes, so I'd like to be able to some good ones. I can't afford the $500+ to buy a beaded costume that will need significant alterations anyways. So we'll see how things go once I have the books. :)

FunkaBelly fun

Last night some of the Haft Vadi students headed to Toronto for the FunkaBelly dance. It's a monthly party thrown by one of the instructors in Toronto and it's full of bellydance music, dancers, and fun. There are some performers and a nightful of dancing. I had a great time! I didn't love all of the music they played, but I definitely loved the performances and the opportunity to dance with and meet people that I had seen but didn't know.

I'd been really nervous about what to wear and ended up wearing one of my long, black, bellydance skirts and a black top that I love. I didn't bare my belly because I didn't feel like it but the top and skirt made me look really curvy. The theme of the party was "An Homage to Plumage" and I bought a red feather boa out of which I made bracelets and a choker. I also wore my usual bellydance scarf.

Some people looked really awesome!!! One woman had closely beaded a bellydance belt out of iridescent sequins and it looked really amazing. A friend of mine also sewed sequins onto a bra and it looked fabulous! I'm so proud of her :)

More on the recital

I got some rest last night and feel MUCH better. I was able to go out to lunch with some friends, go and get more materials for drum bags, and go for a walk.

The bellydance recital was great; I'll be doing the same choreography on May 11 in that recital. There were a lot of different instructors and their students there, which was interesting. The atmosphere was quite a bit different from other recitals that I've attended; everything felt a bit colder. Most of the groups of students ignored the others. I was lucky and managed to talk (in passing, at least) with quite a few people. That was good, at least.

One of the best things was seeing all of the different styles of bellydance. There were little kids doing a simple choreography, an American Tribal group (there are different tribal schools out there, and the biggest studies something called American Tribal - apparently there's quite a bit of controversy there), some cabaret-type dances, and others.

I'm going to make another drum bag prototype for Wednesday. I need to change the one I made to be about an inch shorter and to have a pocket in front. They also want a bag for clay drums that has a half-inch padding throughout to protect the drum. I got the foam padding and some plain black broadcloth for these drum bags. The broadcloth is the same as is used with the quilted broadcloth that I'm using for the other drum bags.

Bellydance Recital

My recital went well today; I felt like I performed well. I saw a lot of different styles of dance, too, which was cool.

This is the second early day full of physical activity and I'm exhausted. I'm heading for bed (yes, at 7:30pm!) and I hope to have much more to say tomorrow.

Curling all day

We curled all day in a bonspiel; we ended up coming in second in our draw which was awesome! We all curled pretty well and the last game was so close that it could have gone either way. Needless to say, we're very tired. We did win 1L of maple syrup each plus another random prize so we came away ok. Hopefully I will be well-rested enough for my bellydance recital tomorrow.

Anti-depressants have made a HUGE difference in my life and I wish I'd found them earlier. I'll write more about that tomorrow, though, as I need sleep.

A fun shopping day

I got up early this morning to go to the Fabricland in Stratford. Vogue patterns are on sale for $5.99 and I wanted to go through some other discounted patterns and buttons. While I was there, I ran into the friend I went shopping with on Saturday and she helped me look through everything. I ended up getting a bunch of buttons, patterns, and trim on sale. We had a great time.

I took the drum bag to bellydancing today and construction-wise, it's fine. I need to shorten it by an inch, though, as it is a little long. And although the original specs were with no pocket, now I need to add a pocket that will hold a folded sheet of paper or two :) Also, there are some clay drums that are very fragile and break easily. They want bags that have 1/2" padding in them for those. The bellydance term is over for a couple of weeks and I'll have something ready when I go back.

Finished a drum bag

I finished the drum bag prototype for the bellydance studio today. I'd been meaning to do it but then wanted to sew only for me. Over the last few weeks I've had some ideas in my head and I was finally able to get it done. It's made of black quilted cotton broadcloth with piping and straps.

The bag is smaller at the bottom than the top, to accommodate the shape of the drum. For my first pattern, I just took the extra off at one end of each side of a rectangle to form a trapezoid... but then I realized that this wouldn't work because the seams wouldn't meet at right angles. The way to draft the pattern is to start with a big rectangle and then fold small, evenly-spaced darts out of one side to make an arch-shaped piece. This was perfect.

Then I realized that I'd included too much ease and had to trim it down a bit. Fortunately that wasn't too hard. I'm quite pleased with the bag, overall; I've serged and top-stitched my seams for strength and attractiveness. And now that I know how to make the bag, it would only take a couple of hours at most to make another one.

Hopefully it will be the right size and design and the studio will like them. If I were to sell ones like this myself, I'd probably sell it for $25. If the studio wants to sell them, I'll sell them for less (bulk orders get a discount, of course :)

Shopping, bellydancing, and Rock Band

I went to the new Fabricland in Stratford with a friend of mine - I haven't seen her in ages and was very glad to have seen her today. The Fabricland is bigger than the one I go to in Mississauga - in fact, it's about the same size as the Fabricland I used to go to that closed down in one of the malls. I did buy some fabric at 50% off and I'll be able to head there this next week if I want any Vogue patterns for $5.99 (which I probably will).

Even with all that shopping and chatting, I made it to bellydance to practice the choreography for the recitals April 6 and May 11. After that we did two hours of rather intense bellydance heart/chest movements.

I don't know if you knew, but people here were asked to turn their lights off/down for Earth hour between 8 and 9pm. Our sacrifice was to lay Rock Band in the dark with no lights or unnecessary machinery running. Lots of people around us turned their lights down, which was cool. And an even of Rock Band is always fun after a long shopping and bellydancing day.

Where did the snow come from?

I finished the dress in plenty of time (and I think it looks awesome, even though I know it isn't perfect) but the weather turned against us. Snow started falling around 3pm or so and by 5:30 we had almost three inches of heavy, wet snow. The roads were slick and we decided that we shouldn't risk ourselves by driving to Stratford. We will have to remember Kevin in our own ways instead as we can't make it to the funeral tomorrow.

I was looking forward to seeing the team, even though the circumstances suck, but that will have to wait. I hope to see one or more people this weekend; that Fabricland is having a 50% off sale for members. I have a membership for Mississauga and I hope that it can be transferred to Stratford.

Tomorrow I have my Pamidronate infusion and if all goes well, they'll be using my port for the first time. It's really healed well, except for one end where the stitch came up. It hasn't dissolved yet so they'll have to take it off tomorrow. It's going to be a long day, as I arrive at 12:40pm for bloodwork and then I have the infusion starting at 2:45pm. If it started earlier, I might make it to bellydance, but there's no way that I'll make it there in time. I hope the infusion goes well tomorrow.

Yesterday was also port-a-cath day

Yesterday wasn't the best day ever. Not only did my friend die, but I had to have my port-a-cath put in. If I'd had a choice, I would have postponed it for a day when I was feeling stronger.

The best part about yesterday was when I was telling the nurse about everything that was going on. She gave me a big hug and when we both had a few minutes, she came and talked to me. She'd been a palliative care nurse and so understood the emotions I was feeling. I am very grateful to her for taking the time to talk to me.

The port insertion isn't all that complicated; the two main steps are to put the catheter part into the jugular vein and to put the reservoir part into a "pocket" that they make under the skin. To do all this they give local freezing.

You may not know this, but local freezing and I do not get along. It hurts like crazy when it goes in and I usually need extra because I metabolize it strangely. So the anaesthetic portion of my adventure was pretty awful and filled with howls and screams. Some would say that I'm a big baby when it comes to local freezing pain, and those some would be right.

Things got better after that. I felt a lot of pressure and things felt weird but they got the port in without any problems. I had to spend four hours in the recovery area but that turned out ok, too. I had a big, big nap :)

I now have a gigantic bunch of padding and tape over the incisions and I'm not allowed to get that area wet, so no shower for me until at least Monday :( The area is fairly tender to the touch and is stiff when I wake up. I'm taking tylenol for the pain and stiffness; I figure there's no point taking Percocet if I don't need to. Home-care nurses are coming in on Monday and again later in the week to change the dressing and make sure things are ok.

I'm going to my bellydancing workshop, although I missed the class at noon because I slept in. My plan is to take it very easy. Tonight is the juggling festival show and I'll be going to that, too.

Tomorrow is my friend's visitation in Oshawa; the funeral is Monday starting at 11am but I can't make it to that because of the home-care nurse coming in. I hope to make it to the visitation tomorrow; Ian's offered to drive me but there are juggling people in town and it would be better if he could spend time with them.

A lazy bellydancing day

I went to bellydance today for the first time in a while. I discovered that I don't remember the choreography, but that's ok. There are classes on Saturdays that are doing this choreography and I can take some of those to make up for the ones that I missed.

I've been meaning to do some sewing but I haven't been able to figure out what it is that I want to sew. You know how that is? I spent the afternoon looking at my fabrics and trying to think of what to sew. Nothing is shouting out at me, though, so maybe I should leave it.... but I feel like sewing. I guess it's good that I have a project to work on :)

I've also been wasting time over at FreeRice. It's a vocabulary game where for each word you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated through the UN World Food Programme to help end hunger. So my time isn't exactly being wasted if it's for a good cause, right? :) I encourage those of you who haven't played this already to start... it's quite addictive.

I want to make things

It is some kind of cold here in Edmonton! Between that and the change in altitude, I'm really tired. At least I've been sleeping. :) I'm hoping while I'm here to maybe find a bellydance studio that accepts drop-in students so that I can keep up some of my dancing. I'm going to wait on that for a little while, though.

I have almost all of my beads here in Edmonton (funny, at the Waterloo airport I watched them search my suitcase because of all of the little bits of metal in that bag) and I've pulled them out this evening. I'm hoping to create some new pieces as I've been itching to really make things. This happened when I took all those new background photos for the earrings - I realized that I loved making things and I wanted to be able to make more things. It's a vicious cycle, I tell you :)

Anyways, I'm hoping that I'll make some things while I'm here. I'm also hoping to edit my current items for sale with the new photos! I'll let you know when I do that, though - if you were to have put any of those items in your cart before I edit them, then you will have to remove and re-add the items when I'm finished editing in order to actually purchase your items. It's a little "quirk of etsy's.