Bellydancing pic

My new favorite photo of me bellydancing:

Pepper Lotus Tribal performing at the People's Choice Festival in Boalsburg, PA.

Bellydance costume revamp

Last year I bought a bellydance costume from a friend. It had been her sister's, and had belonged to who knows how many people before that. It's fun and funky, but it was showing its age. I decided to give this bra and belt set a makeover on a budget.

The problem was these paillettes. While the sequins still look great and the rhinestones are in good shape, the paint on the paillettes was badly chipped, making the whole costume look beat up. My solution: nail polish.

3.5 bottles of polish and countless hours later...

Ta-da! The paillettes are back to shiny and colorful. Much better. An inexpensive (though tedious and a bit stinky) way to revitalize a tired-looking bra and belt set.

Now it's all set for my next performance!

Caftan!

Presenting my very own caftan, designed by J and sewn by yours truly. As a bellydancer I regularly need some sort of robe-ish thing to wear over top of my performance costume. I have a couple of covers which have worked okay, but I have wanted a good, reliable, pretty cover-up for a little while now. I bought this fabric 2? 3? years ago after J said he'd make me a bellydance-appropriate cover-up as a Christmas present. Well, other projects have come to the forefront (thesis, dissertation and baby come to mind, plus a bazillion small things too), and the fabric sat. And sat. Until I approached J and proposed that we work on my caftan. One guilty look and a "yes" later, I was looking at styles, we were drafting a pattern, and voila! Caftan!

I love the shiny blue prettiness. And the secret zil pocket inside. But my favorite thing about it is that J put so much thought and effort into making it just right. I love it.

Do me a favor, please: don't remind J that I haven't yet completed my gift to him, promised that same Christmas. Oops.

C.A.D.D. and the bellydance top

I have a confession to make. I'm afraid I'm a bit A.D.D. when it comes to crafts and baking. I start one project and have to work on four others before I can finish the one I started. It's pretty annoying.

Case in point: remember all these projects I have lined up? Plenty to work on, right? Guess not. Instead of working on ANY of those, I decided to design and sew Doodle a new bellydance top today. True, she only had one top up until now and it was constantly going missing. This frequently lead to games of "find the bellydancer's top buried in the toy bin" or talks of "no really, bellydancers ALWAYS wear tops. You need to wear something. Anything. Please." So a little sewing project in the name of sanity preservation, even if it wasn't something on The List, is overall a good thing. Right?

Here are photos in the now-standard crappy, flashless quality. The top is made of some purple velvet scrap I picked up at the thrift store, and tied with ribbon in the back. Doodle's gone a bit tribal too.

Craft piles ahoy!

J is home and all is well. The kids and I survived our week without him, though we're all much happier to have him home. Now that J's back and I have a little more free time, the crafting has resumed. Oh yes.

On my desk I have the following projects either started or in queue:

• first knitting project - a scarf. I'm ~12 inches in.
• feather-and-fake-orchid hair clip fluff things for tribal bellydance costuming. I believe they're called "fascinators" on Etsy. Not sure what's so fascinating about feathery hair decor, but whatev. I will be fluffy and tribal, and soon!
  
• bra to deconstruct and reconstruct as a tribal coin bra of awesomeness.
  
• satiny cabaret bellydance skirt to sew.
• bellydance cover-up (caftan) #1 to finish sewing, figure out pattern details (J's design!)
• bellydance cover-up #2 to cut out, sew, decorate.
• pajamas for Roo.
• pajama pants for Doodle.
• Valentine-themed banner to put together.
• a couple of these for Doodle and Roo for Valentine's Day.
  

So far I've made one feathery fascinator thingy, and one headband. Caftan #1 is mostly done, and I'll hopefully get that done yet this naptime. (Thank you forces of the universe and/or basic human physiology that require my son to take a nap every day, without which I would accomplish even less than I already do.)

Also, on Friday I had my first solo bellydance performance in a non-hafla setting (Indian Restaurant) since MAY. It had been far too long between performances, but I feel it went really well. I'm glad I did it, I had fun, and I really hope I get to do it again. If so, I will bring my video camera next time. This stuff needs to be documented, yo!

I keep thinking I'll get around to posting photos and links for all the fun things I made for Xmas. That's on the pile too, along with sharing more Maui stories (though I'm still lacking photos) and maintaining sanity and making lots of yummy food and oh, what's that? We're pretending that you're the mom and I'm the kid and Roo's the baby and we're flying to San Diego?

Duty calls. Anyone want to work on my craft piles in the meantime?

Cabin Fever!

Roo's been sick so we've put ourselves in quarantine since Saturday. Stuck in the house with a four year old, a 15 month old, and a restless mama. We've done lots of reading...

(Roo is signing book here. He signs that and 'sleep' regularly.)

...and we've had lots of dance time. We watched Episode 1 and 2 of Project Bellydance, so now Doodle is alternating which awesome bellydancer she's pretending to be (the latest is Shems, a Utah lady now in Baltimore. We love Shems!). Note Doodle's innovative costuming - she's using the pink ruffly skirt as a bustle for her sparkle skirt, and a red sequined "scarf" as a hip drape. All her own design.

Sassy action shot

Bustle view. I think it works, don't you?

We've also been baking, perhaps a bit excessively - I've since crossed off (and eaten) the vanilla pudding too. Today: bagels maybe, or possibly pasta if Roo takes a nap and all the stars align just so.
I've also been teaching myself to knit, we've set up our own living room farmer's market, and since yesterday have been pretending to be cast members of Stomp (aka drumming on everything in the house. I had no idea it would be quite so popular with the kids, but it's a lot of fun).

Add in lots of coloring, outfit changes, and birding (see the sidebar bird list? we added that undetermined hawk this afternoon with much jumping and shouting of "Ooh! OOH!" while looking out the kitchen window. Some of the smaller family members may have been standing on the kitchen table to see. Birds are cool enough to warrant that behavior, after all). When we're lucky there's the occasional Roo nap and you've got a picture of what we've been doing for the past few days while J is out of town.

Only 46 more hours until he's home. Not that anyone's counting.

Me Things

Things I'm doing lately that bring me joy and make me feel fulfilled:

Experimenting in the kitchen (muffins, refried beans, improv dinners).
Chopping veggies for salsa after every one is asleep.
Canning the salsa and fresh tomatoes, storing away yummy summer food for wintertime family nourishment.
Reading for pleasure.
Back to bellydance class.

Ahhh. Feels good to be doing 'me' things again.

Videos from recent performances

Here are two videos of my performances at SpringFest - my solo and my troupe.

My Springfest solo.

Saffron, my troupe, at Springfest.

I have a couple of performances (troupe and a duet) coming up this Saturday at Club Cairo, our big dinner dance event of the year. After that I'll have a little dance downtime.

One down, four to go...

...bellydance performances, that is. Last night I danced at Indian Oven. It was an improv set of nearly 8 minutes. It had been a while since I'd done improv so I was a little nervous. It went really well, though, and I had a great time. (I also made $20 in tips, which was nice.) We rounded out the evening hanging out with some of our favorite people until way too late, and loved it. In all a fun evening.

Next up: a (yet to be) choreographed solo performance and (not quite polished) troupe performance for the Middle East Club on Wednesday. Then I'm performing those same solo and troupe dances at SpringFest, a big all-day bellydance festival in SLC on Saturday.

After that I have three weeks before doing troupe and duet performances at Club Cairo. *phew*

It feels like a lot of dancing when I'm in the thick of it, but I'm loving every minute.

Dancing at the Indian Oven

Bellydance is returning to the Indian Oven! There will be one Dance Night per month at the Indian Oven, starting Saturday, Feb. 27th. I'm performing at this first event!

Beer zills and bubble wings

Doodle, as you may know by now, loves bellydance. She loves to put on my bellydance CDs and will dance for over half an hour without losing interest. Sometimes she insists on wearing my tinted chapstick because she knows that when I perform I wear lipstick. She also enjoys the props: she has some small silk veils she dances with, and a hip scarf she'll sometimes wear. But lately she's been coveting two of MY props: zills and wings. The zills (or finger cymbals) I'll let her play with on occasion, but only once has she gotten to wear and dance with my silver lamé Wings of Isis.

So what happens when she asks her creative, resourceful Papa if she can play with my wings or zills? He improvises and makes some just for her. Behold the beer zills and bubble wings:

Beer bottle caps with holes punched in them and ribbon running through.
Doodle dubbed them "Beer Zills."

The wings are bubble wrap with chopsticks as the handles.
(Apologies for the fuzzy wing photos - they're from my phone.)

What a lucky kid.

Show, part 3

Here is video of Doodle performing during intermission. No audio.

Show, part 2

The real star of the show was Doodle. She owned the stage during intermission. She ate up the attention, loving every second of it.

I'll post video soon.

Show, part 1

The bellydance show last night went really well. Our performances were great, and went off without a hitch (or the breaking of water on stage). After all the practicing leading up to the show I will be glad for a little break from dancing. Lots of photos and video were taken, though very little by us. I'll post more as I get them, but this will have to do for now.

Can you spot the belly?

How about now?

Big

I feel big. Just... big.

Last night I decided to try on my troupe bellydance costume and make the necessary size adjustments before the show. Ho-ly cow. I knew I'd gained weight in my hips. And they've spread out some. I'm 38 weeks pregnant. This is normal. But inches? Plural? Whoa.

How my belt fits now - hooks are on the very ends of the pieces, though it *does* meet (thank goodness!)

The difference. Inches. The finger on the right is pointing to where the hooks attached back in May. Finger on the left indicates where they attach now. Yep, bit of a difference.

Shazadi Soiree, Oct. 2nd

Because I just realized that I haven't posted info on the upcoming bellydance show...


...here ya go. I'm hoping to perform in three choreographies in this show, so if you want to see an immensely pregnant woman (39 weeks!) dancing a lot, come see the show!

This post is worthless without photos

Tonight at dance I got the comment "I don't think you'll make it [read: stay pregnant] until the show." Our big bellydance show is October 2nd, 8 days before my supposed due date. It's a reasonable guess that I may not still be pregnant then. *shrug* Ok, fine. Whatever.

This was immediately followed by "are you sure you're not having twins?"

Excuse me while my head explodes. Twins?! Do I look like I could be 33.5 weeks pregnant with TWINS?! No. Certainly not.

At least I don't think so. Time to take another round of bellypics, I suppose.

movin' on up

As you might remember, I'm a member of my bellydance company's student performance troupe. I've been dancing with them for... counts fingers... four years now. I love it. Being in the troupe gives me more performance opportunities, along with the challenge of learning new choreographies from different directors, and a fun group of girls to hang out with each week.

I've slowly moved up the ranks from 'rookie in the troupe' to 'still-kinda-new,' and from there to 'one of the veterans' (changed that fast in a year - we had a lot of turnover). This past year I've gone from veteran to Veteran+TroupeMom. Not anything official, of course, but I've certainly become the one who others ask for choreography clarification, the one who gets the "I'll be late for practice!" texts, and one of the few given the opportunity to choreograph a duet for a show... things like that.

I'm the most experienced in the student troupe. So it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when my troupe/company director pulled me aside a few weeks back to talk. (These talks are never just "hey, how's it going?" That can happen with other people around. This was one of THOSE talks.) So we sat, and she told me, "we'd like to invite you to join [name of professional troupe] for next year."

I stop breathing.

Internal dialog: What? WHAT??? REALLY??? Whoa this is awesome but OMG I'm going to have a newborn and we can't afford it and....
She interrupts my thoughtstream with: "...but we know it might be hard to manage with school and a newborn and stuff. So, know that we want you in the troupe. BUT if that would be too much, we'd like you to be a director for [student troupe]."

ok, breathing again.

She tells me I'm the most qualified, and they'd love to have me, but it is a huge time and money commitment, and if I can't do it this year, that's totally fine. They want to give me the opportunity to grow as a dancer, and choreographing for a troupe is a big step up from unofficial TroupeMom.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that's the scoop. I'm not moving up to the professional troupe next year (which doesn't kill me to say it as much as I thought it might), but I *DO* get to choreograph for and perform with the student troupe. It'll certainly be a challenge, but I'm excited about it.

My aching legs

The past few days have been very busy. I've been active, and now my leg muscles are on the brink of mutiny. I think the activity is good (I've been having fun), but wow am I sore. Here's an account of the past few days, from the perspective of my quadriceps muscles:

• Saturday: five (yes FIVE) hours of bellydance workshop. Lots and lots of shimmying, which means sore quads. Drove to City of Rocks in the evening.
  
• Sunday: woke up feeling stiff. Spent the day hiking around, plus one leg-intensive climb. Legs still sore.
• Monday: Scrambled up to rock outcroppings in Logan Canyon to help a friend catch bees at an endangered primrose. Lots of hill climbing. Legs? A bit more sore.
• Tuesday: Biked to campus to pick up minibus for field trip. Hiked around for nearly two hours looking for fungi on a hillside. Holy sore legs, batman!
  

Either I was incredibly inactive this winter and my muscles have gotten used to being lazy (a possibility) or I've just started doing too much physical stuff day after day after day lately. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that my legs are really stinkin' sore, and I may declare tomorrow a minimal-leg-use day.

At least the bike ride home from campus is all downhill.

Bellydance show May 15th

There's a bellydance show coming up next week here in Logan. Details are below. Tickets are $10 at the door, or $8 in advance. If you know you want tickets, let me know and I can get you the cheaper ones. But I need to know soon!

The Details:
Friday, May 15, 2009. Show starts at 7:30pm.
Location: USU Taggart Student Center Auditorium, Logan.
Tickets are $10.00 at the door, or $8 from me.
You can also purchase tickets at the Indian Oven in advance (I don't know if these are $8 or $10).

Join us for an evening of fun with the Shimmering Sands. Watch various Utah talent shimmy across the stage. Look for performances by Shazadi, Saffron (my troupe), Shimmering Sands Students and other great Utah talent. Plus special guest of the evening, Stephanie!

If you need more information, check out the Shimmering Sands School of Belly Dance website: shimmeringsandsbellydance.com