Pattern Weights, the solution

What is something I have in abundance at my house that makes an excellent impromptu pattern weight?

Yep. Wine bottles. I actually remembered this at the beginning of July (the 1st, to be specific), but I didn't want to drop any hints about what I was making for Michelle's birthday.

Bloomers!

Also, some of you might remember the stories of how Jenn and Michelle used to make me cry by putting my clothes on the dog.

Revenge is sweet.

It is storming like nobody's business!

I tremble with the anticipation of the power going out at any moment! Lightning is dominating the sky like a fifth grader in four-square! I avoid leaning on metal while outside!

St Louis! the City Museum

So I'm in St. Louis visiting Clara and Brendan and we are having solid good times! We monkeyed around at the City Museum for several hours today and exercised long-latent muscles while climbing around. I didn't get any pictures of our outdoor feats of strength because the camera was in the checked bag for most of our time there, but here are some us-centric pictures from the dark hallows of the whale room.

There are ten or so floors to the City Museum and we only devoted time to about three of them; it will have to wait until next year when we're out for the wedding, which will be in the same building. whee! Most of today's time was split between the architecture section, the secret tunnels and slides (I was not sliding well today, too sticky), and the outdoor MonstoCity. MonstroCity is a crazy metal wonderland that stretches about five or more stories high and involves (sturdy) mesh tunnels, not unlike monolithic slinkys but without the movement, from each section to the next. Clara, Brendan, and I each scrambled through a wire tube, approximately four feet in diameter (sometimes a bit smaller) and 60 feet off the ground, to reach the inexplicably secure hollowed out airplane (looked just like the crashed on in "Romancing the Stone"!) 30 feet away. These numbers are all estimates since I couldn't find any hard numbers, but if anything, I'm under-exaggerating. Wonderful!

If we're back in that area on Thursday morning when we go to the arch, I'll try to get some external shots of the place, but you should definitely go there when you're in St. Louis.

Thoughts on the Sencha

I spent roughly an hour last night looking at the Colette Patterns Flickr page for Sencha inspiration. By and large, I was not thrilled with a number of the products, but I think I figured it out. People were using very busy fabric, which obscures the pretty design features of the pattern, namely the tucks. Here is a picture from the Colette website (via polkadotoverload)

Now imagine 80 billion flowers and garish colors jammed on that. Yeah. Hrm. Well, at least the people who made them were happy with their results; I will attempt a different route.
Unfortunately, that means I'll have to actually acquire some monochromatic fabric--this will be much more difficult (and slow!) than any of us imagined.
Here's another thought, you all can weigh in if you like...what about this top in a translucent gauze? As in, wear-a-camisole-under-it translucent? I might give that a shot in the future.