T minus 15 days

Dress:

• attach lining to dress
• sew on pearls and Alencon lace
• hem dress

Coat:

• attach sleeves to coat
• work out and attach shoulder pads
• attach lining to coat
• weave double-happiness ribbon
• attach double-happiness ribbon to coat
• attach trim to ribbon
• hem coat

Probably some other stuff I’ve forgotten, too.

The good news is that not all of this needs to be done for the shoot.  For example, I only need to do the lace and pearls in the front and on the sleeves; the back lace can be basted on, as it’s unlikely to be seen in photos.  The hem can be basted, not sewn on with five painstaking rows of hand-stitching.  That still leaves a lot of delicate handwork, but with two weekends to work it’s probably manageable.  But I’m getting a little nervous.

I’m getting my loom fixed by AVL.  The current thought is that static is building up in the solenoids and causing problems – I could fiddle with it, but in the interests of getting it fixed right the first time, I’ve packed the dobby box up and sent it to the fine folks at AVL, who are going to do a rush job on it and get it back to me by Tuesday.  In between now and Tuesday, I plan to work on applying the lace to the dress – that will take a few days at least, so I won’t lose too much time.  And AVL is going to install some stuff that should prevent these problems from recurring (I hope!).

And….drum roll please…today is my and Mike’s FOURTH ANNIVERSARY!!  Yes, it’s been exactly four years since that fateful night that we met in Coupa Cafe.  I’m unbelievably happy to have met him, and to have him in my life – we’ll be celebrating this weekend by going to La Fondue, a fondue restaurant in Los Gatos.