Two-Ring Circus

So, the dress is finally finished! Once I had bought the new batch of fabric and gotten down to the knitty gritty sewing it only took about 48 hours to make the dress start to finish. It's off at the tailor shop getting hemmed ( I could have done it myself, but the elongated shape would have been tricky and I wanted it to be very precise). I actually enjoy hand-hemming all of the garments I've made, but I'm a little particular about the quality, and couldn't allow myself as much time as I would have liked to do it right.

With the dress finished all of the other crafty wedding projects are exploding onto my to-do list. I shopped this week for the materials to make the jewelry and clutch purses for my brides ladies, helped Mr. Mammoth purchase the rest of his snazzy wedding clothes, and ordered envelopes and a return address stamp (in Pica font, which is exciting for reasons I will explain in my next post :-).

Today we ordered our rings, which I'm kind of dying to see and try on. We spent a lot of months deliberating over what sort of rings we wanted, and I had originally picked out a beautiful white gold and gemstone ring by an artist called Paul Hapip who we had seen at the KIA Art Fair Last June. Unfortunately Paul had nearly quadrupled his prices since we had seen him, and we could no longer afford his work.

After that we looked at some of the swanky new finger print bands that were popping up on Etsy (you could have your ring engraved with your spouses fingerprint), but somehow I never felt sure. We looked at a men's band inlaid with meteorite, and some that were inlaid with wood, but the meteorite was on the high end of our price range and I was concerned that the wood inlays might not stand the test of time.

On a whim I ran an etsy search for 'inlaid rings' and lo and behold, I found the unicorn of all inlays... Dinosaur bone! Both bands are sterling silver, and Mr. Mammoth's band from Mtroyalgems is inlaid with five strips of three different shades of fossilized dinosaur bone.

My ring is from Jewelerjim is inlaid with two strips of fossilized dinosaur bone centered by a raspberry colored sapphire.

 I'm fairly certain that they are appropriately nerdy for us, and it's going to be really antsy around here while I wait for them to show up in the mailbox!

Things, lately

Things have been a little frazzled lately here at Mammoth Manor. For those of you who hadn't heard yet, Mr. Mammoth and I are getting married in June. I am the sort of woman who finds bridal stores to be infinitely terrifying, and since I make at least half of my living off of, well, MAKING things, it seemed only appropriate that I should make my own wedding dress. I was hoping for something with a really simple style, that would be loose and comfortable in order to avoid medieval style torture devices disguised as undergarments, and comfortable to dance in. I knew I wanted something long since I wear dresses all the time, so having a cocktail or knee length dress didn't feel as special as I might have liked. Essentially I wanted this Jcrew gown:

Since I was going to save a lot by making my own dress, and the style was set to be so simple, I was ridiculously obsessed with choosing the perfect fabric. I hoped for a 100% natural fiber like cotton, linen, or silk; something that would breathe nicely in Michigan June humidity, and not look to wrinkled in the photographs, hopefully something off-white instead of bright white.

As it turns out, the mecca that is Kalamazoo only has two fabric stores. Only one of them is not a chain, and both of them apparently love polyester. All of the cotton and linen options wrinkled horribly and looked like cheap bed sheets. The silk options seemed to be narrowed down to either charmeuse, which was way to sheer, or shantung which is very stiff and, again, wrinkles horribly. Lo and behold, it took me nothing short of 4 months to find and decide on my fabric.

When I DID decide, it was perfect. It was 100% silk, a luminescent and pearly off white that felt like water pouring through my hands when I held it. I spent more than I had ever spent on fabric, and purchased a luxurious nine yards of it so that I could line it with the same delicious feeling fabric. And I ruined it.

I spend a lot of time working with cotton, canvas, vinyl, and wool. Silk is a very slippery fish, and despite taking the utmost care, the purchase of special pins and a new, thinner, needle for my machine, I was no match for this beast. No matter how many pins I used when laying out and cutting, the fabric slid against itself and came out wonky. I was panic stricken. I couldn't believe that I had imperfectly cut the most perfect fabric. I tried, oh man did I try, to fix it as I was sewing; to keep the seams straight where the cutting wasn't perfect. But I couldn't fix it. Partly, I suppose, because of my lack of experience with silk, and partly because my machine couldn't handle it either. The material was so slippery and unsure of its own grain that even the pull of the feed dogs on the machine forced the two layers of fabric against each other and made the bobbin side thread come out all crooked. Even my beautiful Bernina machine couldn't master this tricky fabric.

It was devastating. I felt like I had failed at something I had been so confident in my ability to do. I was terrified of having to go to stores and look at dresses, or exhausted at the concept of possibly starting again after WEEKS of struggling with this fabric, and really upset that I might have to embarass myself by admitting I had failed to everyone who knew I was making my own dress, or letting down my dad who was SO EXCITED that I was making it myself.

I had a MAJOR meltdown. I mean, I am talking about epic style. Sobbing, hiding under the sheets, the whole shebang. In retrospect I am pretty horrified about how badly I behaved, and what a miserable experience I know it was for Mr. Mammoth, who did his best to love and support my sorry, sobbing ass. It was not my most shining moment. or day. or week.

Ordinarily I would never make a post this text heavy, but also, I have never been very good at admitting to needing help. I thought I could make my own wedding dress. What I didn't realize was that I couldn't make my own wedding dress ALONE. I needed my parents to tell me that they believe in me, for my dad to tell me how proud he will be to watch me stand to be married in something I made with my own hands, and for my future husband to help me figure out the geometry of pattern pieces, tell me that I will look beautiful in whatever I end up wearing (even if it's a paper bag) and to love me even when I am literally crying on his shoulder with snot running down my face and getting all over him. I put the pieces of silk in a bag and folded it into the bottom of my sewing cabinet, closed the door, and got ready to try again.

Two days ago I bought new fabric, and last night I started over. With the help of the people I love, I am learning to put a little less pressure on myself and enjoy the process. I am only going to get married once. I only get to make my own wedding dress once, and I am really, really going to enjoy ever minute of it.I have a surprise addition to the dress waiting in the wings, which I will reveal after the wedding, but until then, I promise no more long-winded monologues or stress about the dress!

Post-Christmas tear down

Having a full fledged crafty business means that almost every weekend during the holiday season I am out of town vending at shows. Last year, between craft shows, getting engaged and buying and moving into our new house I never had time to put up a tree or deck out the house for Christmas. I spent all of 2011 getting excited about being able to decorate our new house for Christmas this year, and as an end result, I might have over compensated just a little...

Along with all of the usual fanfare of the tree/ornaments/indoor and outdoor lights, I decided to test drive some decor ideas I was thinking of using for the wedding. I had been seeing some really fun paper pinwheel backdrops on wedding blogs this year, but I wondered how practical it would be to try to complete such a large scale display in a limited amount of time.

I'm guessing this is probably the best our big, blank dining room wall has ever looked.

I like that Horrocks had cut greenery in their flower section so I could make a winter white arrangement accented  with pine boughs.

The dining room wall looked so festive that I couldn't resist making a photo backdrop for the basement. Since I didn't want to deal with the mess of adhesive on our permanently installed blackboard, I hot glued this set of pinwheels to a foam core board backing, then propped it up on the blackboard ledge. Since it's not actually attached to anything, I was able to take it down afterwards and keep it for use in future years!

Anyone who knows me well is aware of my obsession with all things Anthropologie. Among other things, their store displays are always awe inspiring, and on a very large scale. A  couple of years ago their holiday displays incorporated huge hanging flurries of paper snowflakes. I decided to make my own 'snow storms' in two opposing corners of our basement. To make the displays I used Honeycomb balls and pinwheels from a local party supply store, disco ball Christmas ornaments I already owned, round paper lanterns from Party City, silver stars from the dollar store, and some tissue paper poms I had made for a party last spring. I was really happy with the overall effect, and in total I spent less than $50 for all of the supplies for both the pinwheel displays AND the hanging snowstorms.

A snow flurry in the basement.

To cap it all off, once the house was decorated I couldn't resist having a party. Since I've always believed that a themed party is infinitely more awesome than an ordinary party, we threw a masquerade ball. Check out what Mr. Mammoth and I wore:

Mr. Mammoth sports the Honey Badger scarf I made him for Christmas, along with a very poetic thrifted jacket.

If I could get away with dressing like this every day, I probably would. Vintage Sequin dress purchased years ago at a church rummage sale, tiny tophat from the party supply store, and a really fun makeup job thanks to the lovely Bre.

First post ever! Whoa!

Two weekends ago future Mr. Mammoth and I drug ourselves out of bed really early and headed halfway across the state to set up my shop at the summer Shadow Art Fair in Ypsilanti. This was my second time at this show, having done the winter version of it in 2009, and it is totally one of the best Michigan shows to vend at. It's held at the Corner Brewery, which is the official pub for Arbor Brewing Company beers, so they have tasty beverages and really friendly staff. The best part, though is the seemingly endless stream of really awesome customers.

I sold my last shark to this little guy who then spent the rest of the afternoon running around the show making chomping sounds. If he can't make you smile, there's probably no hope for you.

I was slightly devastated when my first ever purple hippo walked out the door, but apparently this guys mom LOVES hippos more than anything, and has a huge collection, so I figure First Hippo Ever is going to a good home where he will have lots of other hippo friends to play with.

When we first bought our house, it was the middle of winter, and my studio space upstairs needed a huge amount of work and custom built-ins before it was going to be ready for use. Unfortunately my dad who did the woodwork for me, had to wait until spring to set up his wood shop in the garage. It meant that I went about four months without sewing or producing anything new for the Woolly Mammoth line. I figured it was a long shot when I applied for SAF, since they don't usually allow repeat vendors. I had a bit of panic when I got my acceptance notice a month and a half before the show and had no product, but I think in the end I managed to put together a pretty decent amount of stuff (which I then sold almost all of and am back to square one. sigh.)

That's me, making awkward faces and sewing on seahorse eyes behind the booth.

Future Mr. Mammoth, awesome as he is, helped me scramble to get read the night before the show, and assembled all of my bitty bunting necklaces. I'm not entirely sure how I ever survived without him!

Probably the best BEST part of the whole day was when a girl came up to the booth to tell me that her brother had given her one of my monster change purses for christmas, and that they had loved it so much they made their own blog out of it. Awesome.