I notice the days are getting shorter (no!) but the weather is still mostly good and now that we have a swing-couch in the back yard I will need to spend some time on the thing to finally finish the shawl/wrap that I am making with this pattern. It was originally started because I like the pattern, but now it has become something for my Orenda character Crissy. I've also worked on it in character.

So, what have I been up to since my last blog post? Well... on the first of July I could have gotten surgery for my hernia but I cancelled that. Then in the evening there would have been a little festival in Veenendaal on which Amersical would perform a couple of Mamma Mia songs. Alas, the weather sucked and it was cancelled. Retry on the 26th of August (and the weather looks to be boiling hot that day... omg.. I'll be wearing spandex....).

On the third of July there was an Orenda special; a picknick in a beautiful park. Both soggy (started with pouring rain) and sunny and quite thrilling. It left me aching for more. Fortunately we did not need to wait too long because 12-14 August the main event was held. More about that later.
So the rest of July was spent making a corset. Learned a lot, not completely pleased with the final result. In the end it became a "this will have to do" and there are some flaws that I can not ignore. However, it stayed up great and I got positive reactions to it. So I'll probably wear it again while working on a new corset with a self-made pattern. I also spend a lot of time finishing the wedding costume that was commissioned to me and a prop for Orenda. My back was behaving well until one day I woke up with pain again. That lasted for two days (but was bearable) and then things went well again. So I'm still a bit in doubt if I am fully recovered yet.

Instead of celebrating my birthday in the weekend following the 29th of July Matthijs and I went away for the weekend to a camping that we had visited before on a cycling holiday in 2013. Den Ouden Dam in Kesteren. We rented the 'Gite' which was a good thing considering the weather. It was mostly clouded and even a bit rainy, so not the best weekend for a camping trip. But it was way more relaxed than celebrating a birthday with the resulting stress and then not being able to sit in the garden. We did take the corset with us to tinker on it some more (the cups needed 5 iterations to become 'good enough') and we finally came up with something that would work at that point. Until that stress was gone I didn't realize it meant so much to me to have it finished. Stupid Muse, forcing me to make a mock-up into something wearable for the event....

So now I am planning on yet another costume upgrade. This time the skirt. I want to make a new mock-up (honestly, mock-up!) corset with a pattern that I will draft myself to prepare for the wedding dress (though we're postponing the wedding since we have so much fun in the time leading up to it). I want new covers for my other IC shoes (which will match the new skirt better than my current shoes) and I'm writing more IC letters and trying to come up with some more interesting/conflict generating background for my character. There'll be some IC chats as well, perhaps a special. But the main event will take a year (nooooo!) of waiting. However, this buzz should die down sometime... I'll just need to concentrate on the next fun thing: balfolk on September 11th in Wageningen.

I'm still learning German via Duolingo, doing some online Udacity courses on responsive webdesign (trying to figure out if I want to work in that field or not), planning to start home-training for belly dance again and in September Amersical and streetdance will start again too. Enough to keep me distracted. Oh... and of course I'll need to start looking for a job again in earnest, though I am still unsure what to do. I'll have a talk about that with UWV at the end of this month.