The finished froggies

Thanks for all the nice comments on the Halloween costume. It was fun to do. And I think it was a fun "corrective" in that I've been perhaps a bit too sober and grim of late about things, and it was nice to go into work wearing something a bit silly (as one of the people on ITFF commented: "tarantula fascinator for the win!") but I also got several people on campus telling me the outfit was "cute."


(Also, if people keep telling me I'm not bad-looking, maybe I'll eventually come to believe it....as I told one of my Rav friends who commented over there, I had a really long, bad awkward period in junior high and high school, plus I got teased a LOT by nasty people, so my self-image of how I look is somewhat skewed.

But that's changing. I always used to think of my 7th grade school photos as the absolute nadir; I threatened a few times to burn them if I could find them. Well, recently, my mom had them out when I was up there visiting, and you know? They really weren't as bad as I remembered. One big saving grace: I had fairly clear skin as a teen. Once in a while I'd have a blemish or two, but most of the time my skin was fine. And yes, I had an unflattering haircut - short and super curly and poodle-ish - and I took a lot of flack for that. But the 80s were a bad era for female hair in a lot of ways. ("honestly, that's how everypony was wearing their mane back then"). And the eyeglass frames I had - it was shortly after I started wearing them - could have been more flattering. But I've learned over the years how to choose better frames, and also, growing my hair out long made a big difference.

And I will admit, the pre-Raphaelite comment particularly flattered me; in the tiny bit of me I ever permit to be slightly vain about things, I DO think at my best I do look slightly pre-Raphaelite: I have that nearly-incandescently pale complexion that many of the models had, and the wavy reddish brown hair, and also my nose is more like some of the pre-Raphaelite models than the typical  retroussé cover-girl nose would be. I admit to feeling a lot of grief about my nose through the years. Even in recent photos I cringe a bit and think, "Crikey, my nose is SO BIG" but then again, perhaps I've grown into it, and perhaps the sort of nose I have looks fine at the age I am now, whereas if I had braved surgery and had it made small and turned-up (seriously, that was what I wanted for a time as a teen), it would look slightly ridiculous. (I broke my nose at 13 - which is why it's not perfectly straight and has a bump in profile - and had to have it surgically set. The memory of the recovery from that was enough to stay my hand from ever having it messed with for purely cosmetic purposes).

And at any rate, the shape and size of my nose may affect my ability to breathe okay, despite a deviated septum, and it may help me have the kind of resonance that my voice has.

So I am mostly making peace with how I look, as I get older. (Another reason I'm glad I will never have to relive my 13th year).

***

I spent most of my free time this weekend working on the frogs. And I got them done!



I may have to wet-block the lily pad so it will lie flatter.

The pattern is easy and it gets faster the more of them you make - the first one took a while but once I memorized what I was doing, the other two went fast.

They're made to stack up, hence the name Flapjack Frogs:



So that's another present ready to go.