Ebb and Flow, and DIY

The thing about having a long engagement is that excitement for the whole thing can wax and wane with the cycles of the moon. Occasionally it can be perked up by the prospect of planning that involves eating (I'm looking at you cake tastings, I can't wait), but can also be brought down by the prospect of anything that may involve any kind of deeper though than "Ooh that's cool let's do that."


I started planning early on with a fair amount of enthusiasm and a paranoid desire to make sure that nothing got inadvertently forgotten in the mix. But things took a break over Christmas and getting back into the saddle is proving trickier than anticipated. I suppose it's true that it couldn't feel like a great big party all the time, but I thought I might maintain at least a consistent level of motivation.

So, in an attempt to at least get something done and re-find my enthusiasm for the project, I gathered together the bits for a project I've been pondering since we decided to have an autumn wedding.

One of the reasons we decided to get married in the autumn was because there are such wonderful rich colours around then. However, I have observed that wedding confetti almost exclusively seems to come in pastels, white and pink and so on. Pastels are nice, but they just aren't us.

On my initial browsing for 'Autumnal Weddings', I found some glorious pictures of people using actual leaves as confetti instead.

image by Bryan and Mae via The Natural Wedding Company

This seemed like a lovely idea until I thought about it a bit more and remembered what Autumn in the UK is usually like:

This was accompanied by a sudden vivid recollection from my childhood where I grabbed fistfuls of autumn leaves and found myself suddenly being much closer than anticipated or desired to a lot of unexpected multi-legged beings who I had just suddenly ripped from their cozy new home on the ground in an attempt to stuff them down the back of my little brother's jumper. I suddenly had visions of being pelted in the face with damp, muddy leaves and finding myself with earwigs down my cleavage on the day when perhaps, even more than any other day ever, I would not want earwigs down my cleavage. (For starters, as I discovered last year whilst moving house, it's not that hard to fish a giant fuck-off spider out of your bra at speed when the situation requires - picture of said spider next to my car keys for size reference, the key is about 3 inches - but when one is trussed into a dress that requires help to get in and out of, and with at least three different types of closure for holding it in place, the situation may become more complicated).

It occurred to me that it might be fun to get some autumnally-coloured tissue paper, some shaped hole punches, and to make my own bug-free leaves. Because why not.

I gathered my tools (and roped in the help of a visiting and agreeable friend)!

Four different colours of tissue paper, four different leaf shapes, and three different colours of organza bags for putting confetti in when it was done, that I bought when I got a bit overexcited the first time I went to Hobbycraft.

You know when you think something will look good, and it looks great in your head, but then when it comes to actually doing it you start panicking that actually it's going to look awful, but you do it anyway and then it turns out that it does look like you imagined it would? That's a great feeling.

Of course I will now be spending basically the whole rest of the year making this so I have enough, but it will keep me off the streets, mugging old ladies, so it's win-win really.



Pee Ess, Happy Valentine's Day y'all!

Personal Milestones

So, on Sunday 26th January, The W Word turned 1 year old. I put a celebratory picture up, but unless you are in a habit of checking the page daily or follow the comic on tumblr then you may not have seen it, so here it is:

Whilst the archive isn't huge - going from twice-a-week to once-a-week updates due to moving house and losing my buffer, along with changing the way I made the comics to a process that gave better results but took longer, means that it's quite easy to click through the entire comic in a matter of minutes.

But I've never stuck with something this long under my own steam, so I'm allowing myself to feel a bit proud of myself, and giving myself this post to be congratulatory.

Statistics
73 Comics drawn specifically for W Word, 1 older filler comic and 1 first birthday card.
30 followers on comicfury, 32 on Tumblr.
8140 unique visitors on comicfury, with 67,448 pages viewed, and average strip rating of 4.85/5.
Highest number of comicfury hits per day - 62, 3rd January 2014
Highest number of notes on tumblr - 80, on this strip.
1199 pageviews on the blog (yay!)

I know the numbers aren't massive in terms of just about anything else on the internet, but hell, I know that the majority of those are from people I don't know. Like, these aren't just family or friends who are reading out of politeness and a sense of obligation. These are people from elsewhere in the world who feel that I have something to say that is of interest to them. Who are willing to put up with my all-thumbs approach to practising my art and scripting, and (hopefully!) enjoy what they see.

These numbers are a great boost to my self-confidence, and have really helped with my self-discipline to stick with this project. I've committed to it, and now I feel like there are people who are at least somewhat invested in it, I've got to keep going and see it through, unlike previous attempts where I did like four comics and got bored.

I've also been making a point of going back and reading through the archives of popular comics on the internet and seeing how their art styles changed and matured with practice and experience, and I've been getting good at learning how that's fine. It was one of those things that I accepted easily in other people, but not in my own art. Maintaining this for a year has helped me to see the change in my art, and feel my skills change, and give me the confidence to start challenging myself slowly and developing.


So, in honour of my first birthday, I'd like to share with you some of the comics that have always inspired me to want to join the ranks of webcomic artists, and whose work I love and admire greatly.



Bad Machinery
I've been reading John Allison's work since I was in high school, at least a decade ago now, and I've seen his art and storytelling style change through three different, but wonderfully interlinked webcomics. Personally I'd recommend going right back to the start and reading everything from Bobbins onwards, but I'm biased. I own so much of his stuff too, like 6 t-shirts, a book and two or three mini-comics. His designs are amazing and his fictional teen girl characters dress better than I do.

Girls with Slingshots
Danielle Corsetto has a wonderful sense of humour and a delightful appreciation for the wonders of alcohol. Her ability to portray detail with comparatively simple lines is a thing of beauty, and her facial expressions are amazing. Recently I've also been really enjoying how she's been mixing up camera angles and panel composition, which has inspired me somewhat, although I'm not skilled enough yet to achieve it quite as well!

Stop Paying Attention
Lucy Knisley has a wonderful way of observing the world around her, and it was her work that made me realise that journal-comics could be a thing, although I've never had the skill or the patience to create the sort of thoughtful and insightful comics she draws. She also does some wonderful travelogues and yummy recipes.

Nimona
I actually only discovered Nimona fairly recently, but I fell totally in love with Noelle Stephenson's art style, and the doodles on her tumblr are just the best.



So go, read and enjoy these wonderful comics!  And thank you all for your support over this last year, I hope you'll stick around for the future!

Gestational Timekeeping

If you have read back through any of my previous posts, you may have come across the one where I reveal that I have been keeping track of my engagement length in terms of what animals could be born in that timespan. I can't explain why I do that, it's just something which amuses me, and doing so led me to the surprising discovery that Whales and Elephants have much shorter pregnancies than I thought, but Sharks and Giraffes have much longer ones.

also elephants are my favourites and baby elephants are the cutest.

Well, this month we will hit the gestational timespan of a human. That's right - only 9 months to go.

I'm struggling to get my head around this in a way I haven't with looking at other timescales, and the difference is that whilst on paper I have experienced the gestation periods of these other animals in the course of my life, I've never actually lived alongside one of these pregnancies. Whereas I've known pregnant women, so I've got experience of how unexpectedly quickly 9 months can go (as a casual observer of a pregnancy anyway, it might feel longer for the poor woman humping a person around inside her for the better part of a year).



But the thing is, with 9 months to go, now we have to start doing the Important and Tricky things, the difficult bits that we have been putting off because we don't want to have to think about them too deeply because it will be awkward and also kinda boring. So we have to start looking up how to register the marriage, planning the guest list, seating plans (ugh don't even), wording the invitations, working out name changes...

I mean yes, okay, these things should be fun because they're for the ~wedding~ but actually they're really complicated and not shiny and fun.


Fortunately we still have some fun bits left to do - and all the food-related stuff is still to come, which I am very much looking forward to. My priorities are very clear in this.

Nothing Suits Him like a Suit

Sorry for the radio silence over Christmas guys, but I'm back and getting crack-a-lacking on all my stuff!

The wedding is now just over 9 months away (holy crap that's not a long time at all), and Jon went off at the weekend to try and find himself a suit for this shindig. He had been planning and pondering this for months, and umming and ahhing over which suit direction he would head in from the very start. He was very thorough, because he likes to research, to the point that he even looked up the historical backgrounds of the different types of suits.

Whilst in the US I think it is fairly common for a man to wear a dinner jacket to get married, as I get the impression that the more formal weddings take place of an evening, in the UK the traditional dress for a wedding is a morning suit.

Now, as I understand it, morning suits are basically THE MOST FORMAL SUIT a man can wear. This is what men wear when they are going to be knighted, or collect other honours from the Queen. These are the school uniform for schools like Eton. These are a BIG DEAL.

Traditionally, morning suits were worn in the day time for super-formal events, and then in the evening people would change over to white tie and tails, which is the evening equivalent of the morning suit. But nowadays, at weddings, most people don't bother with that because usually people hire their morning suits, and hiring two suits seems a bit much, and who would own white tie if they don't own a morning suit? (my high school maths teacher apparently, but moving on...) White tie is most often seen on the likes of Fred Astaire, as modelled ably below.

Jon for a brief while was taken with the idea of a morning suit, because he liked the traditional element of it, and also because they're usually worn with a top hat. It was really the top hat that did it for him. Unfortunately, he became less keen when he discovered that he wouldn't be able to get a silk top hat because they're not made any more. Apparently the last machine for making the silk for them was broken by the man who owned it in an argument with his brother. So. He'd either have to buy a very expensive vintage one, or put up with a felt one. He was keen on neither of those ideas.

You see, aside from the hats, morning suits have very little else going in their favour. The combination of a low-waisted, long-tailed jacket, and high-waisted, loose-fitting trousers means that, unless you are about 6' 5" and proportioned like Adonis, you will probably end up looking pretty short and dumpy.

So Jon wrote off the morning suit idea and decided it would make better economical sense to spend perhaps slightly more than the cost of hiring a suit to instead buy himself a really nice suit that he could keep. To splurge a little, using the wedding to justify the expense, and get himself a suit that he wouldn't be able to justify otherwise.


I am all kinds of down with this idea.

I really really like a man in a suit. Particularly in a well-cut, well-fitting suit. And since Jon is also a fan of suits, I knew that I could trust him to go out and pick something fabulous and that he would look fantastic in. And he did not fail me.


Guys. It is THE BEST suit. THE BEST.

The Bridal 'Look'

Last Wednesday I got a call from a number I didn't recognise. I nearly didn't answer it, because I was certain it might be one of those stupid automated calls telling me that I could claim back money on missold PPI, for that loan and credit card I don't have.

But I did answer it, and good job too. It was the lovely ladies over at Eternal Bride, telling me that my wedding dress had arrived. So last Saturday I got the chance to go and see it and try it on again.



Now, when I originally bought the dress, I looked in the mirror and saw myself looking tall, elegant and slim. This time, I felt I looked odd and frumpy, short and swallowed by lots of tulle. I think part of this is because the dress is now too big for me, as I've slimmed down.  Looking at the photographs, I've been trying to work out why I feel dissatisfied with them, and it clicked this afternoon.

Somehow, I think I expected that the minute I put the wedding dress on, I would transform into someone bridal. Instead, I just look like me, flaws and all, except in a wedding dress and veil. In my mind, wearing the wedding dress would mean that suddenly I would look exactly like the models, I wouldn't do my stupid gurny smile and that I'd know what to do with my arms for the first time ever. That out of nowhere I'd develop the grace and poise that I've previously never displayed, and would appear elegant and put together, instead of standing awkwardly, limbs at weird angles, a fixed grin and terror in my eyes.

Hanging around on wedding forums, I came across the concept of 'dress regret', but I find myself wondering how many people suffering from it are in fact instead suffering from the same misconception as I, that simply putting on a dress would make them look exactly like the models on the designer websites.

Important things I have realised:

- When we look at the model pictures, we're looking at someone who is not only in a fitted dress, but who has also had their hair and makeup done professionally, and then been professionally lit and photographed; as opposed to me, who did my own make-up in my typically ham-handed fashion, then walked uphill in a heavy coat in the freezing cold before going into a hot shop, to have my photo taken with my phone camera that has an unnecessarily powerful flash.

- They have possibly been also photoshopped a little too.

- Upon discussion with my consultant, I discovered that the models for the designers of my dress are approximately 6'3" tall, and probably like a size 2. I am 5'6", and a size 10-12. High heels can only do so much to address that issue.

- They are models, which aside from meaning that they are built like elegant human-giraffe hybrids, they also have been trained how to stand in front of a camera and manage to look like a normal human being. And, on the off chance that they forget how to do that, there is a professional photographer with a very large camera telling them exactly how to position themselves. I am utterly incapable of working out how to position myself, and when faced with a camera my expression becomes a rictus.



It's easy to forget, when surrounded by images of all these apparently perfect women, that to get to that final image there's a lot of work put in, and usually a large team behind it. I like to think that if you snapped a quick picture of any of these models on your phone camera, they'd also look shiny and a bit chinny.


However, there's very little that can be done about my inherent lack of grace and poise. So, to finish the post, have some illustrative gifs.


Models:

Me:

Models:

Me:

Models:

Me:

My wedding photographs will be interesting to say the least.

Wedding WTF-ery

As Christmas draws nearer and the New Year looms before us, I find myself at this time of year often thinking about what has gone on over the last 12 months. What I have done, what I have learned.

What has made me sit there and go "WTF?"

Planning a wedding naturally introduces you to all sorts of weird and wonderful things, so my WTF quotient has been more than met this year. I'd like to share with you some of the delightful things I've discovered that make me a little bit sad for the world.

2013's Countdown of Wedding WTF-ery

10) Butlers in the Buff

Apparently having your food and drinks served by semi-naked or entirely naked men is a must-have Hen Party thing now. In fact, there are several companies which offer such a delectable service. Oh, but they are not just there to be looked at, oh no!

If that doesn't look like a headline from a Carry On film, I don't know what does. 

My main concerns regarding naked men in a hospitality role are very much hygiene-based (do they have to wear hairnets?), but additionally I find myself wondering if they have to specify the types of food they won't serve. I can't imagine flaming Christmas pudding or Chinese Sizzling Beef going down particularly well.

9) Custom-written wedding songs

Are you worried that your first dance song isn't personal enough, because it's written by a stranger? Well, worry no more! Now you can get a completely personal unique-to-you first dance song, and whilst it's still written by a stranger, now you can pay them for it! And because you've paid them to do it, it's super personal and special to you, even though you haven't put any more thought or effort into it whatsoever than if you had just used the song you'd played in the first place, but it cost you more, and that's all that counts! Getting someone else to do things for you is the most personal thing ever.

Alternatively, you can provide them with some lyrical suggestions of your own, because of course the only reason you haven't become an award-winning lyricist yourself already is just because of lack of interest on your part, and not at all because every time you try to write lyrics they sound totally lame. Because if it were lame, no-one would be making a song out of it right? Even if you did pay them.

8) Gyms advertising at Wedding Shows

"Excuse me, miss, we can give you a discount today if you join us to get into shape for your wedding!"

Excuse you, are you trying to say I'm not in shape already? Are you trying to say I'm not thin enough to get married the way I am?

That said, it is fun watching them try to quickly backpedal when you put them on the spot like that.

But regardless, I'm in a room full of people trying to sell me stuff on the basis that I'm a beautiful princess and I deserve the best, and thus should immediately buy whatever it is they are selling, and you're going to be the one guy who stands there and tells me I need to work out? And you expect to not come across as a total jerk? And then you want me to give you money?

Good luck with that one.


7) Sweets, sweets and more sweets
When it comes to wedding favours, diabetes seems to be the token of choice, with options ranging from sweetie trees, personalised chocolate bars and even full on candy buffets for people to gorge themselves on. Well, insulin resistance is the gift that stays with you forever.

I love sweets as much as the next girl, but when I'm sober I have the self-control of a stoned gerbil if there are sweets in front of me. When drink is involved, naturally this control drops even lower, to the point where in the middle of the night I'm eating ready-made frosting out of the tub.

This just generally seems like a really bad idea. But perhaps because I'm assuming that everyone has such terrible discipline and low sugar tolerance as me, and thus will end up both drunk and utterly hopped up on sugar.

6) The Garter Toss
Now, obviously I'd heard of the garter toss. I knew it was like the male equivalent of the bouquet toss. And whilst all the images of a dude with his head right up his wife's dress in front of everyone they know made me uncomfortable, I was like, that's cool, if they wanna do that.

But then I discovered that there is a second part of the garter toss. In that the guy who catches the garter then has to put said garter onto the leg of the poor woman who caught the bouquet.

This seems to me to be a thing you do if you have only invited people you deeply deeply dislike to your wedding and want to make them feel as awkward and uncomfortable as possible, in front of everyone they know, and then never speak to them again ever.

5) When DIY-ing to save money costs more than just getting someone else to do it.
There was someone on a wedding website who was detailing how she made her own custom letterpress invitations. When you totted up the total price, it actually cost more than just getting a professional to do it. Now, fair enough if you are DIY-ing for the love, or to make things more personal, that is a legitimate reason for doing it, and mad props to you.

But when you're explicitly doing it yourself to keep it cheap, and still manage to go over your extremely generous budget, maybe you need to reconsider your options. Like one bride who was featured in a wedding magazine, who cheerfully told everyone that she "did a lot of DIY which kept costs down," followed by the revelation that she'd 'blown' her £25,000 budget. This must be some new and exciting definition of cost-cutting which I was previously unaware of.

 4) The phrase 'Say Yes to the Dress'.
Whilst a dazzling piece of marketing, in that it has permeated just about every online corner of wedding planning, but it is irritating as all hell. And there's something bizarrely smug about such an irritatingly simplistic little rhyme, possibly because in the show it's from, it's always said over some tense swelling music to try and build a sense of excitement.

But let's be real, it's a trite phrase from a show about women with waaaay too much money, filmed in a store that is so expensive that the consultants pull faces if the budget the bride gives is under $2000, and who seem to specialise in dresses by a designer who apparently almost exclusively makes dresses with see through bodices. The brides don't even get to pick their dresses out on that show. The consultants usher them into a little room and bring them dresses based on their budget and the results of some cryptic interview. And everyone just repeats it, like buying a dress doesn't count if you don't whip out that saying. Does everything have to have a catchphrase now?

That gif makes me go WHAT.


3)  There is a significant difference between 'ivory' and 'light ivory'.
I didn't even know 'light ivory' was a colour until July. But apparently it is, and apparently it is a significantly different from plain old 'ivory' that I can't borrow my cousin's veil because people will notice.

2) No free wine at the National Wedding Show.
I paid £15 to get into this shindig, and now you're trying to convince me to hire out a photobooth that also doubles as a teeth whitener, but you want me to do it sober? The free shows I've been to give out free wine, and free cake, or nibbles! How is it that this is the biggest and most expensive one to go to, but I get a grand total of nothing to eat or drink. That is BAD MARKETING.

Seriously though, if you are trying to convince me that what I really really need at my wedding is a masseuse in each toilet to leap out at unsuspecting guests when they go for a comfort break, you may find that I'm a little more open to suggestion if I am a little more drunk. I mean, no, I'm not going to buy it, but at least this way I'll pretend to be interested.

1) You can now hire people to plan your proposal for you.
That's right, in the theme which we began earlier, we know that you don't really need to put any thought into stuff if you can pay someone else to do it for you. Why take the time and effort into thinking of a really personal way to ask what will probably be the most important question of your life, when you can pay £500 to have a stranger arrange a picnic for you. Hell, even if you just decide that you don't want anything too public or fancy, they can just make a scrap book for you, using all your personal photographs.

Awww. How terribly thoughtful with conveniently minimal effort.

I wonder what new and exciting WTFery I will come across next year.

Too Cool for the Pool

When I was a kid, more than anything else, I wanted to be a mermaid.

The mermaid scene in Peter Pan was my favourite bit about it, and I loved the film Splash, although I recall myself being oddly ambivalent towards The Little Mermaid, I think that might have been to do with my desire not to see Ariel and Prince Eric kiss, because I loved the part at the beginning, under the sea, seeing all the different mermaids swimming in for the concert.

In fact, I think to a point I was convinced I was one. This lead to countless (countless!) family photos where I was attempting to sit like a mermaid sits. By which I mean, curling my legs behind me like a fin, propping my hands on the floor in front of me and, inexplicably, tilting my head coyly to one side because obviously no mermaid can sit with her head straight.

If you had told me as a kid what could be achieved as an adult with a lot of spare cash and a monofin, I'd have dedicated my savings right away to follow in the footsteps of Mermaid Melissa. I trained myself to be able to swim 50 meters underwater in one go, I bet given enough time and incentive I could have learned to do it wearing a tail.

This obsession has sort of quieted as I've got older, but there's still a certain fascination there. For a while I thought maybe I'd get a fishtail wedding dress, but that experiment ended rather tragically when my thighs met the fitted skirts and did not mesh as well as I had hoped.


However, whilst being a mermaid could not shape my fashion choices, it has meant that my exercise regime of choice is swimming. I've done lots of swimming over the years, including a brief stint learning synchronized swimming.

The problem with swimming as a form of exercise is that you are, more so than any other exercise I can think of, at the mercy of the way other people behave for how your exercise will progress. And the more often I go swimming, the more I want to start dishing out impromptu swimming lessons to people because honestly I don't know what they think they're doing, but most of them time it's not any stroke I recognise.

So, after plenty of frustration, I've decided to vent my spleen and present to you Claire's List of Swimming Pool Dos and Don'ts (mainly don'ts).

1) Unless the pool is totally empty, don't do Butterfly.
Because no matter how well you think you can do it, you can't do it. What happens instead is that you flail around madly, splashing everyone in the vicinity and causing the pool to resemble the sea in a storm. And yes, maybe you have been able, by some flukish turn of momentum, to get from one end of the pool to the other doing what you think is Butterfly. But that doesn't mean you're doing the stroke successfully. Or even at all.
 
2) Follow the swimming direction signs.
They put those signs up at the end of the lanes for a reason. So that we don't swim into each other, and there's still room to overtake. Don't be a douchebag and swim really slowly right down the middle. There's no reason for it, and trust me, when I swim past you, I'm going to try and get a sneaky kick in.

3)  Just because you are splashing more, it doesn't mean you are swimming faster.
Hey you, doing the super splashy front crawl there. Yes, you. Do you want to know why you have to stop for a break at the end of every length? It's because you're expending unnecessary energy trying to have half the pool water in the air at any give time during your swim. If you are splashing it means your stroke is not under the water. This means you aren't getting as much force from your strokes as you'd like, because most of the energy is being used flinging water everywhere like a panicked whale. You will go faster if you don't splash, so try bringing your legs under the surface of the water. Yes, there is a lot of splashing when people swim in the Olympics, but they are swimming MUCH faster than you. At your speed, just splashing around the place isn't going to convince anyone that you're an athlete.


4) There is no need to do a racing turn in the slow lane.
Because really. You're not fooling anyone. You look like an idiot and I just nearly got your foot in my face because you're not very good at them.

5) There are steps for getting into the pool. Use them.
Save the jumping in and splashing everyone for parties, holidays and when the pool is full of kids. When it is adult, laned swimming time, you just look like a jerk when you leap into the pool.

 6) Don't spit in the pool.
 Don't spit in the pool! Why would you even think that was okay? Jeez.

7) Don't get in the pool with all your friends, then stand at the end of the lane talking and clogging it up instead of swimming.
I get it, everyone needs a break. But to need a break, it would make sense if you did some exercise first. Oh, you don't want to swim? Then go a sit in the lane that is specifically roped off for people who aren't there to exercise instead of entirely clogging up one end of the exercise lane.

8) Don't stand up and walk halfway down the length.
 Unless you have a cramp that is crippling, or have otherwise injured yourself, don't stop abruptly halfway down the side of the pool and stand up, looking gormless. I am going to swim into you if you do that.

9) If you have stood up, don't then try to turn around and go back the way you came, get out of the way.
Otherwise, see above, I will swim into you.


10) Because it bears reiterating: Don't spit in the pool.
I mean seriously, what is wrong with you?





However, if you decide that you would rather not follow these rules to make swimming happy and pleasant for everyone,  I will accept a donation in the shape of my own private swimming pool. Kthnxbye.