“MeMadeMay (2020) day 7. It’s been a week already? I’m finding it substantially easier to dress myself this year, lol. This lil’ tunic came from a 60’s pattern and more Mood fabric. I want to love it, but I need to take the whole thing apart and fix it. I made it in a rush last year, in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to repeat all my outfits 6 times, and it came out too big and boxy. I added French darts tot the front to take in the excess there, but left the back and made some *ahem* interesting choices when it came time to hem. So, it’s super cute, but quite problematic in its current state.

Cameo by Kenneth, with his “no mask, no problem” solution to standing in lines.”

Is there anything left to say about the Ugly Snowflake Tank that I haven’t already said? It’s still Simplicity 8246. Every time I have to link it to the Vintage Pattern Wiki (and therefore see the envelope illustration), I think to myself maybe it would be worth the trouble to try that pattern again. After all, 99% of the issue was that I was bad at math. On the other hand… I actually like this one, with its million extra darts to fix the fit, much better than the original version with just bust darts.

And… as a completely unrelated note, can I just say that typing these posts into WordPress ENRAGES me, because every single one ends up having a terrible “readability score”, which really just means that the words I use are too big. Or that my sentences are too long. Which, fair. I write exactly the same way that I speak, rambling and full of side quests. I know it doesn’t actually mean anything. But I want to Win at Blogging, which is both reasonable to want and possible to achieve. /s

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 29. This is literally the third time I’ve tried to post this, and I don’t even like my outfit. Today can die in a fire.”

Look, sometimes things just don’t work out. This outfit is one of them. It’s a mess. The proportions are a mess. I have no idea what I was actually thinking when I put this on my body and then left the house in it. …That’s not true, I do know what I was thinking. I was thinking that it was very nearly the end of May, I was out of options, I’d worn every make in my closet 8 times already, and I was desperate to try anything different.

The Ugly Snowflake Tank is still Simplicity 8246. I *loved* that weird little collar/choker thing. I think it fell apart, I wore it so much. I *still* have those jeans. Look, I know it seems like I never get rid of anything, because I say in literally every post “oh, I still own that.” but I actually got rid of something like 9 garbage bags of clothes during COVID, and I also sold a ton of stuff when I still worked at Ampersand. I still own those jeans, but they are currently relegated to my small pile of “hoarder house set up” clothes, which is what I wear to work on houses where I already know I don’t want anything accidentally touching my skin. The only drawback is that they don’t have pockets, so I get to wander around all day wearing a fanny pack (*cough* bum bag) to carry my phone and gloves. Also, after 10 or so years, the really cute ring-pull exposed zip (which you can’t actually see here) gave up the ghost, so I’m constantly secretly in danger of a really hilarious and especially unfortunately-timed wardrobe malfunction.

So… that’s a thing you now know about me.

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 20. In the home stretch. Some days are super easy, some days, like today, are a struggle to shoehorn makes into my wardrobe. This is the second look at these pants. They look fantastic, they are a pain in the ass to wear. Also, my third photo accurately expresses my feelings about Chicago’s weather situation. Photos take outside Beans and Bagels.”

Oh look, I’m finally getting the hang of writing the posts and tagging my location. Lol.

I will admit, whenever I look at pictures, I miss the Ugly Snowflake Pants (Simplicity 8246). I do NOT miss wearing them. They were extremely awkward in the crotch. I’m not gonna lie though, I do actually like this entire look. For something that really felt like a stretch at the time to put together, it was actually really cute.

Also, I cannot help but notice, when I look back at all these photos at once, that I wore the absolute sh** out of those little grey ankle booties. And I did, I wore the entire sole off of the heels. I had three pairs of them, but this particular pair was the winner, in terms of comfort.

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 18. No, I did not go out of the house like this. That is to say, I wore pants when I was outdoors. But since I’m in face for my show tonight (Raven Gemini), I thought it would be fun to be a little more risqué with my photos. You can see various cameo bits of Monterrey Jacques in the background. (mostly his feet, lol.)”

I’ll be REAL honest. These are some of my favorite photos. Ugly Snowflake Tank is still Simplicity 8246. I look fantastic, and it is hilarious to me to see Kenneth’s head randomly growing out of my arm.

Sometimes, I miss being this person. Sometimes, I don’t miss her at all. Sometimes, I still make hypothetical playlists of new songs I’d do acts to, or think about how I’d have to remake all my costumes, and what I’d do differently this time.

I won’t ever really go back, I do know that. There’s really nothing to go back to. There’s one venue here in Chicago, and maybe a couple of really sporadic bar shows, and it seems to me like it’s just the same 15 or so people, passing the same $20 (or $50 or $200 or whatever they’re insisting on getting paid now) back and forth between each other.

And I burned all my bridges anyway. As I hinted earlier, my exit from burlesque was colossally traumatic for me, and there was a period of time where I couldn’t even think about other people still working in the business. I ended up blocking a lot of my friends on social media, not because I didn’t love them, but because hearing about their Zoom show (this was during lockdowns, no less!) would leave me losing hours to hysterical tears. I’m pretty sure most of those people took it rather personally that I chose to do that, but I’m not ever going to apologize for doing it, because I had to protect whatever there was left of me, and I certainly wasn’t in any right mind to try and explain that rationally either, particularly because no one seemed all that interested in treating me with any kind of patience or rationality (or kindness or understanding or nuance or, or, or) either.

…Anyway, there’s a reason why, prior to 2020, I never used my real name publicly, and was basically to the point where I had even asked Kenneth to just refer to me as Raven, and why, after that, I have never once used that name. She really just doesn’t exist anymore.

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 14. I… may have overdone the al fresco dining today. Now I’m chilling in my house before rehearsal with lots of aloe and water. Begrudging cameo by my constant companion in the third photo.”

For someone who has a very tenuous grasp of her own memories, I remember this one very well. I had met up with Alicia, one of my former burlesque students (and a lovely human in all regards!) at Hopleaf, it was one of a very few warm days that May, and my skin was NOT primed for the sun yet. Lol.

This pattern is the top half of the ugly snowflake set, Simplicity 8246, from 1969. Like the pants, I originally cut it like three sizes too large and then had to continually correct it from there. I have noted many, many times exactly what was done to this thing, but these photos were still sort of in the intermediate stages of that. Also, I didn’t have bias binding at my disposal at the time I made it, so I attempted to bind the hem with fold-over elastic, which… did not go well.

And, as I said in the original post, the cameo at the end is Action Cat, Handsome Cat Manitoba, the CEO of Timeshare Kitty Group, also known as my first cat, Cat. (He didn’t really have a name, so much as an endless string of nicknames. The name he came to me with was Sinatra, which seemed like too many syllables to call a cat, but then again, so is Handsome Cat Manitoba.)

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 4. Finished these pants literally yesterday. They are a total hack job on the inside because I graded them FAR too big, worked on them while depressed, threw them in a corner long enough that I couldn’t remember which way was the front, then hacked and slashed until I got what I wanted. They’re real weird in the crotch for that reason. Also, hey, what’s with the taped up fingers? They’re a cautionary tale against using a seam ripper pointed towards you. I ripped the entire web between those two fingers open. Yum.”

Oh, my ugly snowflake pants. They were Simplicity 8246 from 1969. I’d like to say that I miss them, and from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I kind of do. But they were a mess, and extremely uncomfortable to wear and as such, they have the distinction of being the only garment I’ve ever made that I threw in the trash (while still ostensibly viable. I’ve thrown out a few things that got moth-eaten in a rage, but one could maybe argue that I might have been able to salvage these with enough time and expertise. I did try though, and I wasn’t getting anywhere good, so… into the bin they went.) In another universe, one where I didn’t epically screw up both this piece and its matching ugly snowflake tank, I imagine that they’re getting plenty of wear as a really obnoxious set, paired with the blue Styled by Terry blouse that I now own that coincidentally would have matched really well…

Also, I still have a scar between those two fingers. I sliced them open, threw everything on the floor, stuck my hand in the kitchen sink, and wrapped everything up with paper towels and spike tape. Later that night, I had to perform a fan dance which… as you can imagine, requires the use and flexibility of your hands. I’m proud to say that I didn’t bleed all over my fans. For the record.

We took these photos outside of The Perfect Cup on Damen because I made Kenneth walk to the CVS at Damen and Lawrence with me to go buy actual sterile gauze to pack into that gnarly wound.

As always, if you’re new to the blog, or to MeMadeMay, you can read my overview here!

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