although I've been sicker than I've been in the last (almost 11) years since I contracted Myalgic Enchephalitis and then developed Fibromyalgia a couple of years after that.

At the moment, I'm sleeping, waking every few hours to go to the loo, take more drugs, and attend to the cats if need be. Have a bath occasionally. Haven't seen TV in weeks. Almost caught up with my e-mail.

I have a good day every 4th day or so - which means I can spend 1/2 of it sitting up on the computer. I'm spending it on Etsy and Ebay - yes, very dangerous places. But I need 'excitement' or I'll go completely mental.

I'm choosing Christmas presents for my friends.

I've also discovered that Holy Clothing and a couple of other clothing companies I buy from are having huge sales at the moment. I've bought a couple of new summer dresses and a puffed sleeve top. Around $Au35 for a dress, including postage. That's cheap!

Since I'm not well enough to dress-make anymore, what I've done in the last few years is dress-decorate. I use vintage trimmings and whatnot and dress up existing clothes. Being an ex-Goth, I'm in velvet and sequins and beads and ribbon etc. I'm also currently in a transition from wearing all black with just a touch of maroon, white or purple, to wearing more colour (scary!)

So at the moment, I'm looking at design possibilities for an olive green elasticised waist full length dress (and it should be noted this is the FIRST non-black dress I've bought in 16 years, except a couple of ballgowns) and a Holy Clothing buttondown sleeveless dress.

I know for the HolyClothing one - since HolyClothing use crappy buttons - I'm going to replace all the buttons with a mixed variety of Victorian black ones. Not real jet ones - just interesting ones.
And I'll add trim to the bottom of the dress, and lace to the spaghetti straps.

The olive one - it has some crochet decoration at the waist and neck. I saw another dress, and I'm stealing it's idea - large fawn brown beads (about 7) spaced along the waist, and aurolis burolis (sp) small bead clusters above and below - all this on the waistband.

I plan to use more beads and sequins around the dress. It's got tier 'lines' tho it isn't actually tiered - I might put sequins/beads along those lines. Or just around the bodice. We'll see. I don't want any of this to cost very much.

I'll show some 'before' and 'after' photos.

The basic motivation is that I've been around this particular mulberry bush before, and in recovering from a long crash, (I've been in bed 20 or more hours a day since May now) I won't be up to doing Mary's Long and Short stitch lessons or my Sampler.

I need easy, straight sewing for a month or two. This is the time of my life in which I do the clothes. Then I'll do the lessons and then go back to the Sampler. Then, at some point (hopefully next year, or even the one after, please, Powers That Be?) I'll have another crash, and we'll do this all again. Recovering from my last crash last year (or was the last big one the year before? I forget) is when I took up embroidery seriously, (after some clothes re-vamping).

It's a matter of building my stamina up again.

Meanwhile, I get to look at many pretty scraps, and sleep lots. :-).