My fingers are starting to hurt from stitching

So I'll post for a while instead, give them a break before I wear a hole in them!

I forgot to mention the other day - god-sister-creature has asked me to make her a gothic-y medieval dress for a party she's going to. Ever wanting to be helpful (and also because I couldn't resist the chance to make said dress) I said yes. Well, I then had to convince her to come with me to buy a pattern and fabric, because I don't like the idea of making something that the other person doesn't like, and we got a beautiful wine red damask for the dress itself, which is a wide A-line (I think) with fitted sleeves that flare out into bells at 3/4 length, and a black satin ribbon for the trim. Very pretty. It promptly got cut out, and has been taking over our living room floor for the past few days, except for when I had to pack it up for the football yesterday when we had people over. There was 3.6m of fabric! It's nuts. Beautiful though.

I have the front done, panels sewn together and trim added, along with the loops to thread lacing through, but no neck facings yet as I'll add them when the front and back are sewn together at the shoulders. I sewed the back sections together into pairs, but then in the morning I realised I'd sewn the pieces together wrong - the right side and the wrong side on the one side, argh. So, much unpicking had to happen, and I haven't fixed it yet! Tomorrow. It's coming together well though, I think.

I misread the instructions for how to finish the sleeve edges too, but I like how it turned out so I'm keeping it. Much neater, in my opinion.

I dragged myself out of bed this morning when I wasn't feeling at all well, dragged an even more unwilling Troy out, and took my never-experienced-Orthodoxy friend Hannah (who got called Anna and Anne, much to her confusion, by everyone) to church, as Jeremy had to take his godmother.

Was worth it. Oh yes, it was worth it. We got asked to do the readings at the beginning, which was confusing as we stumbled our way through, but Jeremy came and rescued us and we settled into it and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it clicked for Troy today! He read the Liturgy with me during the arabic, and listened and prayed during the english. He's been struggling with the liturgical side of things for a while, and he's always had issues focussing in church services in general. But...the joy as it all clicked in and the two of us joined in the Liturgy was just wonderful. We're home, just settling in before we can be called residents :)

Hannah enjoyed it too, almost more for aesthetics than anything else but I don't mind. I like that she didn't hate it, and she wants to visit St Nectarios' in a couple weeks, so if I can borrow a lift off a parent this weekend (Jeremy might be going to the UK, lucky) then in a fortnight maybe we can go there with her. She'll love Father Silouan, I think.

So I'm very pleased. It's been a good day - I've been working on the Historic Countries sampler again, I've finished the rice stitch block, and one of the two four-sided stitch sections, and my stag now has everything from his neck down done. This one is going much faster than the last one!

So now I've settled in to watch the news, and it's Aus Idol tonight too so I'll spend the night stitching I hope.