again with the lousy photography

I should really get the dress engineer to photograph stuff for me. It's really hard to shoot a picture of one's own arm for instance. At any rate, here are the new sleeves (um, only sleeves) for my green-dress-of-continual-improvement. The sleeve is lying flat on the deck railing because of the aforementioned complete inability to take pictures of my own arm. However, aren't the hostas lovely?
 
The sleeves were done using Julie's basic sleeve pattern, which every time I discover is just a bit too small for me. It fits, but I'm not at all fond of snug sleeves. After I got it sewn together the first time, I decided that it would annoy me, so I took it apart and reinvented it as a sleeve with an opening down the front. So here's the front opening, and while it's maybe not what I would have originally envisioned, it's a lot more comfortable (and presumably cooler). Since I have only the tiniest scraps of green fabric left, this is going to have to do!

  

bad photos and badder hats

This makes me think of Marilyn Manson for some reason. Oh right, because I look insane. But not really. Like nobody would *actually* be afraid of me, no matter how hard I try. I digress.

 
So the hat of extreme big-ness is done. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought (go figure) to apply the velvet layer. It is....ok. It's not great, despite all the handstitching down of pleats and whatnot. It's still got a lot of impact, seeing as how it's a hat that's taller than my head, eh? And if that's not enough impact, I can always head-butt someone with it...now THAT would be quite an impact. I can't wait to see Auntie Tina's jewel on there, but the vaguaries of the mail being what they are, I decided to post some pictures now anyway.

Taking pictures of one's head by oneself is pretty hard. Particularly for those of us who can't figure out how to work the timer on the camera, ahem, hint hint dress engineer. Oh. He says to read the manual. Here, I don't look quite so psycho in this one:
 

And here it is from the side. One thing I'm not sure I like is how far down the brim ends up curving in front and back. It looks very cool that way from the front, not so sure from the side. So I'll just sidle about the faire, turning madly this way and that in an attempt to always be looking at people face-on. Nuts, right? Yeah, well I'm the lady in the ginormous hat, I'm allowed to be nuts.