Avant-Garde - The Winners and Losers on Project Runway

So, with the DRAMAH, and the superfans of Shopkins expressing their desires behind them, the designers were well on their way in their avant-garde challenge. There were some pretty amazing designs made this week, both good and bad. Here's the rundown on the positive and negative looks that walked down the Runway.

First, Kentaro and Kenya were each declared "safe" and left the Runway. That left six designers. Here are their outfits:

Amy specializes in sleek designs. She was influenced
by the snap-on, snap-off aspects of some Shopkins
accessories. Her goal was to emulate that on/off look
through fabric. 

The comments from the judges centered around the fact that they considered Amy's design to be too safe - not quite avant-garde enough. I'm not exactly sure how something that can't be measured can fall short, but I do admit that the sweeping collar hinted at more than the resulting coat-dress design that walked down the runway.

Ayana made this totally fabulous hoop dress full of frills
and bows for Liris. Her styling with the bow being carried
through into Liris' hairstyle was inspired. It was a
totally wining look, and one of my favorites. 

Her superfan's request for ruffles and bows was interpreted by Ayana in this marvelous dress. Using a framework of chicken wire, she attached ruffles, straps, and a giant, over-sized, stuffed satin bow. This was a great concept and Liris carried it down the Runway with pride and a sense of whimsy. Anaya wanted to be noticed, and she succeeded in pushing herself out of the "safe zone" with this wonderful design.

Batani had her problems this week, not least of which
was the fact that her skirt refused to stay down while
her model walked the Runway. That was coupled with
a poorly designed cut-out in the back and a blue hoodie
that was unnecessary.

Batani seemed lost this week. I'm not sure if it was because she had been "sent home", then told to stay when Claire was dismissed in disgrace, and now was designing something entirely off the cuff. That could mess with anyone's head, and I suspect it played a role in her inability to really pull together an outfit for her model.

Brandon had been against the wall, unable to
design something that he really liked for his model
His superfan had requested "chocolate, more
chocolate and even more chocolate", but he didn't
want to design a brown dress, feeling that much
chocolate would just look like a pile of poo on the runway. 

After several hours of workshop time, poor Brandon was looking at an underdress of the green with white piping on the front edge. He fussed and grumbled and was generally unhappy. His "bro", Kentaro, came to his rescue by suggesting an apron-styled dress. Brandon got a lot of positives for remaining true to his personal aesthetic in this design, and the cuffs at the sides of the gown, were a big hit with the judges. I have to admit that I really like Brandon as a designer. My secret hope (not so secret now, of course) is for Kentaro and Brandon to set up shop together. They work really well together, inspiring each other to new plateaus of design.

Margarita's superfan wanted Oscar-driven fashion
with sparkles. She used stuffing to create clouds of
folded and pleated fabrics and areas of sparkles. Heidi
loved the look, calling it "beyond stunning". 

Margarita decided she wanted volume and structure in her dress, accentuated by varying fabric tones and textures, pleating and gathers, and specific locations for some sparkling glittering glam. All of the judges loved the look and gave it positive reviews. Heidi liked it so much she likened the dress to a "...cloud that came down the runway".

Michael's superfan wanted disco - she even wrote an
illustrated note for her designer, showing a hanging disco
ball melting to cover the shape of a
smiling girl. Very cute. 

Tim expressed a serious concern in his critique. If Michael didn't sew his sparkling sequin fabric precisely, every error would be clearly evident to the judges. Michael first made a translucent fitted jumpsuit for his model, fitting it exactly to her before beginning work on the sparkles and spangles. Building in specific shaping to indicate a melting disco ball dripping the sparkling mirrors over his model, he sewed carefully, fitted perfectly, and made a fabulous garment.

So, there you have it - four winners and two losers. Can you guess who won and lost?

The winner - Michael was the winner with his incredible disco jumpsuit, My suspicion is that Ayana's multi-level bow and ruffles hoop skirt was a close second, followed by Margarita.

The loser - the first loser was Batani. Originally sent home in last week's episode, she was just in a bit of holding pattern before packing up and leaving again. In a surprise twist, the judges also eliminated a second designer, saying good-bye to Amy. Their critique was that her design was just too safe, that she hadn't really pushed herself as a designer.

Next week we're having a second unconventional materials challenge and we're down to seven designers. It's getting serious. There is no more immunity, the undercurrent of stress caused by the Terrible Twins is gone, and the designers remaining are serious contenders for a spot in the Project Runway Fashion Show for New York Fashion week. I know who I want in the finals. Do you?

Have a wonderful weekend. I'm looking forward to a Sunday of football with my hubby. Now I'm off to the pool and then to work. Enjoy your day and remember to "Make it work!"

The DRAMAH Continues - Project Runway, No Spoilers

I don't consider the resolution of last week's cliff hanger end to be a spoiler because it's really the fashion that we're all there for - the winners and the losers. Since last week was left unresolved because of Michael walking off the Runway when Claire won the "Woman on the Go" challenge, this week started with the continuation of that dramatic moment and the final decision of the judges. 

Don't want to know? Don't read any farther until tomorrow when I'll wrap up this episode with the winner, loser and top/bottom six designs. Now ... continuing ... 



Last week I speculated about the winner becoming the loser. It wasn't the fact that Claire copied a design, made an initial design that mimicked Margarita's winning dress from the previous week, or anything that any designer put onto the runway. It was a rule that had been broken. So, despite the fact that Claire had designed the winning print and a great outfit, her win was stripped from her and she was sent home because she broke two rules.  (1) She had a tape measure outside of the workroom, and (2) she drew and measured something she already owned and wrote down the measurements outside of the workroom. Claire admitted that she had measured and drawn a tank top and the crotch of a pair of pants in the apartment with a tape measure that she had there. That was explicitly against the rules that each contestant agrees to when accepted as a participant in the contest. So stupid! Project Runway has one of the more amazing payouts and prizes of any reality show and she blew her chances because of a tape measure and (my opinion only ...) some basic insecurities in her own skill levels. 

Breaking the rules has consequences. Claire Buitendorp became the second
contestant in the show's history to be sent home, the first being Keith
Michael in season 3. 

Claire was the equivalent of Britain's "Nine Day Queen". She won, and then lost, within the same challenge, probably within the same two hour period. No one was declared a winner, but Batani, who had been "sent home" was kept on instead. Who won the Dixie cup print challenge? Dixie was allowed to choose their own winner, and they chose Brandon's linear pink and black on white design. 

Then, after the remaining contestants expressed their remorse about Claire's situation and how it had been disclosed to the judges and staff, the next challenge began by linking the designers with a group of kids and lots of toys. Shopkins, the sponsor for the episode, brought in some superfans to give input to each designer, and describe their favorite character and what they would want in a design for a new character to add to the product line. Fortunately it was an avant-garde challenge, so some "way out there" stuff was mandated. 

The superfans averaged six to eight years old and their designs ideas ranged from "glitter, glitter, and more glitter," to "chocolate, more chocolate, and put on even more chocolate," to "disco". This challenge will live up to its name - the designs will run the gamut of structure, embellishments, shine and ruffles. But would the off-kilter designs work on the models and walk well down the Runway? The designs would be worn by the usual Project Runway models, but the design inspirations were by a six-year-old girls and were based on dolls. Anything goes! 

The workroom attitude was totally different - it was relaxed now, a give and take between the designers. There was banter. There was laughter. All of the interactions that usually are in the workroom but had been missing over the past few weeks now had arrived; and even though people were having a hard time with the challenge, the friendship was back. IMO, getting rid of the Terrible Twins in a one-two punch was the BEST thing to happen to the Project Runway workshop this season. 

Brandon, Amy and Batani weren't happy with their designs, Kenya, Kentaro, Margarita, Michael and Ayana were delighted with the boundaries they pushed to make something over the top that was influenced by their young clients and their favorite dolls. Everybody struggled somewhat to make something just that little bit over the edge. There were some really fun designs walking the Runway this week! 

Tomorrow I'll review the winners, losers and discuss who went home. Today I'll be hitting the pool and then running to the shop - lots of stuff to try and get done before I have to open the doors. I'm starting to really get somewhere with this year's holiday cards. Watch out - I'll be calling for addresses when we're a little closer to Halloween. 

Step By Step

Baby steps - that's how our parking lot has been coming. For many years we had been smelling gas out there, especially when it was raining or with the spring snow melt. Gary, our landlord, finally did some checking and discovered that we had an old fuel tank underneath the lot. Apparently, when it rained or snowed, water was getting into the pipe that had let from the tank into the building. He sunk in another pipe to mark the location (as well as to aerate the tank gases), and started investigating how he could dig up the parking lot and remove the tank.

There's actually a slush fund for removing old oil and petroleum tanks from the ground. The City instituted this when many small gasoline stations quit business, but their fuel tanks still remained underground. New owners were reluctant to purchase the empty properties because removing the tanks and checking for any ground contamination by the petroleum, was extremely expensive. So the City put in a fund to cover the removal and soil testing for hazardous materials.

Remember this? In early August large equipment was digging out old
fuel oil tanks from my parking lot. By the end of the day, they had
uncovered a total of five tanks, and a one-day job had turned into a
two-day nightmare. 

Gary managed to get added to that list, and even though it took several years to get around to the actual extraction, it turned into something well worthwhile when instead of one used fuel oil tank, we actually had five! In early August, the tanks were removed, the soil was tested (fortunately we had no contamination) and several dump truck loads of dirt and rock were added to the parking lot to bring back the surface level.

Then we waited.

We all got used to parking without lines in a parking lot of dirt and sometimes mud. Then activity picked up again in late September when crews began to move the dirt around to grade it into preliminary levels. This week the concrete guys came in on Tuesday and poured and sculpted the concrete curbing. That took almost all of one day and they did a beautiful job. Yesterday, Wednesday, the asphalt team arrived.

In the background, you can see a clear line of demarcation where they had
already finished the multi-angled back row. Originally they thought they
would be finished by 6:00 pm, but because of those angles, it actually took
almost an hour longer. 

After regrading the lot to make put in highs for the cars and lows for water removal, the team got started dumping and applying asphalt. It took the team a while to get any real progress because the in and out angles of the back parking row were tricky. At mid-day, my staff sent me the photo above and the back lot was starting to look like we might have pavement once again.

Here's the final coat being put on in front of the back of the building. I'm really
looking forward to going to work today and being one of the first
to drive on the new asphalt, parking in my usual space, now nicely
outlined by concrete bunkers. We don't have painted striping yet, and
my signage still needs to be put in, but we're much closer
and it's such an improvement! 

At the end of the day, after the store was closed and the sun was almost down, they were compressing the final coat. My manager hung around outside to make sure that the vibration of the trucks wouldn't set off our security alarm as they were finishing up in front of the businesses.

There's no street parking today (fall street cleaning is scheduled), so I'm very grateful that they actually got this done yesterday. I'll be there fairly early today and have an opportunity to be one of the first cars to dirty up my new asphalt. I'm really looking forward to it - LOL.

Have a great Thursday. I got a LOT of work done on my holiday cards faceplate yesterday, so I'm quite happy today. Add in the new asphalt and I'm almost delirious - LOL.

We Have Cement!

Do you remember those fuel tanks that were removed from my store's parking lot in early August? The parking lot has been untouched since those huge holes were filled in and the rusty metal taken away. The trees that used to line the center of the lot were removed and two months of parking in the mud without any guidelines ensued. Fortunately most people using our lot were already familiar with the format - which driveway was the entrance, which the exit, and what angles were usually used for parking. 

One week ago our parking lot was blocked off and the promise of concrete curbs and asphalt was spoken of. But then it rained, so the parking lot was one again opened. We were hopeful that eventually something would happen, though, and two days ago returned to a blocked-off parking lot. Now we have cement! Take a look at all that happened yesterday. 

When I arrived in the morning, there were machines, trucks and
guys in bright neon all over the parking lot. My store's building
is beyond the trees, this corner is the far corner of the parking lot where
it is closest to the street. 

Directly in front of my door was this large green truck from the
"Bituminous Roadway" company. They had done all of the asphalt
in front of the store two years ago when our street was completely
eaten up by dinosaurs and restructured. They do very good work. 

By the time I left at 6:15 pm, I had concrete in front of my back door! I
had to take a rather fancy 90-degree turn from my door to the dirt
on the side, because the concrete wasn't 100% set, but it was
do-able without too much hassle. Chickie had a harder time getting out. 

If you look carefully at the previous photo near the door, you'll see one
solitary footprint. That's from Chickie as she attempted to make the jump
from the store (where I'm standing while taking the photo), to the
dirt on the right side. It's a distance of approximately a foot, but it's
straight sideways. I managed to do it without stepping on the new
cement, but Chickie "left her mark" in the lime. 

The concrete guys did a really nice job. This is the back of the parking lot, the
only place we now have trees left. They did curbs around the trees and angled
the spaces in the way we need it for traffic flow. Within the next day or so,
the asphalt guys should arrive and cover the dirt with new asphalt. Then
we should get new parking lines painted and our "Reserved for our customers"
signs replaced. I'm pretty happy right now! 

It's been quite the haul to get this far, but I'm hoping that we enter the winter with a new, smooth parking lot with definite curbs. It'll help with the water drainage too. I've been in this location since the early 1990's and this project is LONG overdue. I can hardly wait for the next step. 

I hope you have a terrific Wednesday. My day is PACKED with stuff that I need to do, repairs to make, and I'm continuing work on my holiday cards. I'll be collecting names and addresses from all of you soon, so keep your eyes open or message me if you want one of my cards for this year. Enjoy your day and spread kindness wherever you go. 

Water, Cold and Movies

One of the questions I was asked regarding yesterday's photos of my yard was how far down the creek is from my bank and how high the water runs when it's really pushing through there. I'm making an estimate that it's about twelve feet down from my bank to the creek below in the photo, and I know I've seen the water fill and rush so that it's only 1-2 feet from where I was standing when I took the photo. Fortunately, we don't get a lot of horrific thunderstorms or rains on top of icy and snow packed ground, but the water levels are frightening when we do. Taking control of the water and pushing it away from our house and into the creek is one of the major reasons we are working on the backyard. 

My little creek isn't quite as wide or rushing as this, but it does carry a
lot of water when we have a serious thunderstorm. I've gained a great deal
of respect for the power of water by watching it flow by my house on
those stormy days. 

It's getting cold. I notice they're already getting snow in Colorado - I'm quite sure all of the skiers and snowboarders are jumping up and down for joy. It's the start of the season and soon the slopes will be open. We were supposed to get our first hard freeze overnight. It did drop into the 30's, but not as low as originally predicted. So I'll be adding my leather coat to my sweatshirt for the drive to the pool this morning, but I won't have to worry about a true freeze for a while longer. That makes me quite happy, since I'm of the opinion that it can hold off until November. 




Here's the latest extended trailer for Justice League. Yeah!!! 

I watched trailers for "Justice League", "Thor Ragnarok", and of course "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" last night. I have to say, I'll probably want to see all of them. JL and Thor looked absolutely amazing! As for Star Wars, well, it looked predictable. But I'll still want to see it - once. It was quite odd to see Carrie Fisher in the clips, rather like looking at a ghost. Still, the Star Wars franchise wouldn't be the same without Princess Leia. 




And here's the extended trailer for Thor Ragnarok. Oh yeah, it'll be a wonderful end of the year movie fest! 

So I'm wrapping this meandering blog up now. I'm going to try some experiments and see if I can improve my text size, and I'm still wrangling with the grey that seems to come with my posts now. Dropping into the HTML has been somewhat helpful, but the problem still isn't resolved. Have a wonderful Tuesday and I'll return tomorrow - Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel. 

On The Threshold of Fall

It's Columbus Day today, and normally we would be at peak for our fall leaf watching. But we haven't had a hard frost yet (there's one due overnight tonight), so we're running about a week behind for full color. That's not to say there's nothing to look at. Far from it! I spent yesterday afternoon helping DH in the yard, getting the general shed layout and setting up exactly where on the pad we want the shed placed. Then we started work on leveling. It's not bad, but the more level it is, the less we will have to rely on shims that will eventually rot out. The foundation of the shed is galvanized steel, but any minor adjustments will be shims. 

I had a chance to look around and took a few photos to share with you. A small slice of fall heaven in my own backyard. 

A glimpse of the sky through maple leaves as we relaxed in our little
alcove with a drink while getting up the energy to start making dinner. 

Nearby, on the ground, a few red leaves from another maple, along with
miscellaneous detritus and pine needles. 

The shed will be going here. You can see the basic outline by our 2x4's on
the ground. It's quite large - 8x14 feet. At the back end is the drop off
to our creek. 

Our creek was looking particularly lovely with the reflections of
the sky and the gentle ripples. In a storm, however, the creek runs
high and fast, almost rising all the way up to our yard's height. 

Back to our more settled section, here's a lovely look at an array of
mushrooms growing on stumps from some of the many trees we've pulled
down over the past two years. 

Here's a detail shot of the one stump, for all of my friends who also adore
looking at mushrooms. 

It's lovely details like this - the trees and their leaves, the creek and the variety of plant and animal life in my little corner of suburbia that makes me want to continue living here for as long as we can. We're due for our first hard frost overnight, so the leaves should start changing quite quickly now. I hope you have a great Monday and an excellent start to your week.