All in all I feel pretty accomplished.  The hectic work schedule has eased up a bit and I'm getting good sleep again.  Which means I have all the time in the world to finish my projects and practice my hoopdance before these two awesome festivals come up.  Leaving for Mo-No in less than a week!  I'm so excited.  I had this huge list of projects with a very ambitious scope.  Things like re-building a cart for hauling all my shit around and water.  Re-upholstering my reclining camp chair.  Making hoops to sell, trade and give away.  Finishing my costumes!

Let me just rant about that for a minute.  I finished my tree-inspired skirt just last night!  Now the first skirt I made, it fits on my waist and sort of bellows out from there, and I was a little disappointed in the puffiness around the tummy area, although it's a beautiful garment I'm really proud of, I don't think it is as flattering of a cut as it could be.   With this tree-inspired skirt, I vowed to learn how to actually construct a garment that rides at the hips and is flat against the tummy.  It turns out you have to make a waistband using a fairly complicated bit of geometry involving parallelograms, but I taught myself how!  I catch my breath at the beauty of the thing I have constructed this past week, the gorgeous prints of the fabric and how they are cut and combined to give the shape I want.  I dreamed of this costume, a twirly skirt in various prints that resemble rich mahogany bark, and tipped at the end with billions of multicolored and textured leaves.  Cutting out the leaf shapes got pretty boring but I dearly loved constructing this thing, which turned out pretty much exactly as I had envisioned.  Except it's so nice and unique I feel like wearing it every day, not just for festivals!  Today I plan on making more matching fabric leaves (UGH) to encircle my wrists and ankles.  Hopefully that doesn't take too long because I really want to make a couple bikini-type tops with my leftover fabrics and I have to teach myself that too coz I've never done it before.  :)

All this gaining skill as a seamstress got me thinking:  I'm pretty awesome!  And I just wanna make stuff all winter this time instead of playing video games.  There are three things I know how to make: dog harnesses, rubberized hoops, and really cute skirts, apparently.  Anyway, I looked into selling hoops at the Farmer's Market next summer, and you have to have a legitimate business.  Why not?  I've been trying to think of a name.  I'm going to buy the business license (only $75!) and invest in hoop making and sewing supplies, and build up an inventory this winter, being all crafty in my new studio space.  (I knew it would be great for hooping, but having an empty room has been invaluable for laying out projects, as well!)  The point is, next summer I could have like a million hoops, a festival clothing line, and my own table for selling or trading them, thereby spreading the accessibility of hoop culture as I live in a remote place with no established supplier.  I want to make tons of simple beginners hoops that I can sell for SUPER cheap like five or ten bucks just to get newcomers into it.  Then have fancy hollographic hoops for sale as well!   Oh and the best part is I would bring my boombox to the farmer's market and perform instead of sitting there all bored coz there aren't enough people in my town to support a hula hoop business.  LOL!  It's not about making money, coz I don't think I will.  I just want to get out there in my adorable costumes I'm gonna make and put these hoops in people's hands so EVERYBODY can get in on this!