Butterick 5101 & LED solar lights: What do you think?

So today I cut out and sewed up Butterick 5101. (oops, originally in this post I said it was McCall's)
Here's the Batman shot:


Here's so you can see the detail of the rouching and the knot. It's purple double knit fabric I've had in stash for 8 months or so.


Let's just say that cutting this out was a squeaker. I had 2 yards and an inch or two of fabric; the pattern calls for 2 and an eighth. The eighth is for the length of the ties. The ties were way too long anyway so I shortened them by about 3 inches. I had to take about an inch and a half off the length of the sleeves, so if I ever make this again, laying out the pattern on the fabric should be easier just with that edit.

Here's the back and a view of those dolman sleeves:


So, I'm not sure if I like this one or not. What do you think? Can I wear it to work? Is it too much like pajamas? Too much like yoga wear?

In other news, my solar LED Christmas lights arrived! Here's what it looked like when there were 50 lights on each tree:


It was too skimpy, so I put both sets on one tree:

Much better! The lights aren't really that bright in real life. In fact, they are much dimmer than regular Christmas lights. They're white but have a bluish tinge. But it is really thrilling for me to have outdoor lights for the first time ever in front of my very own house! It's awesome to not worry about where they will plug in, or timers, or anything like that. It was a beautiful sunny day today so the charger had plenty of sunlight. They came on automatically as it got dark out. I just checked now, almost 5 hours later, and they are still going strong (while my neighbor's solar powered walkway lights are all out)!

I wrapped some presents last night. The red and white ornament wrapping paper was rescued from a trash bin outside a Princetonian's house during the summer of 2008. I would have bought paper like that!


I've given up on curling ribbon and am using some leftover florist ribbon. I'm just knotting it instead of doing bows and I think it looks ok. Easier to transport, too, won't get flattened and no time spent curling!


And how could I not include some cupcakes??? Survey says that one in four cupcakes is in a festive holiday mood.



Good night!

Parting gifts

Tomorrow I host the "game show" for my class . Here are my "parting gifts", in aggregate:


and here's a blurry close up of one parting gift, consisting of: pretzels, Kit Kat, peanut M&M's, Nestle Crunch, Haribo gummy bears, Reese's peanut butter cup, and a promotional pen.


Don't you wish you were attending my class???

I went for a long walk after work today. Pete showed me a neat feature on Google maps where it calculates distances which is great because I wander all over my neighborhood and the adjacent one, and cross a foot bridge in between the two. Today I walked 2.5 miles post-work, and about a mile during work.

I practiced my intro yet again on my walk. I almost have it down pat. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. When it comes to classes I haven't taught before, I'm a little nervous. When I'm nervous, I try to pretend I'm someone else. Years ago I would pretend I'm Paige Davis from Trading Spaces. Today I sometimes pretended I was Heidi Klum (hello!) or Ted Allen (on Food Detectives, though he usually sounds to me like he's shouting a lot when he narrates).