Making wings with wire (or coat hangers) and pantyhose is really simple, pretty easy, and very cheap. I've run a couple of group wing-making activities with this method for both middle schoolers and college students. The following is a quick write-up of the method for someone who had seen wings made this way: You need a spool of wire about coat hanger-sized (not sure of the actual gauge), 2 or 3 pairs of colored knee-highs or pantyhose (or white ones and RIT dye), some fine wire or heavy string, and wire snips. Pliers can also be really helpful. Dye the hose, if desired. Cut the wire into lengths about a yard long. Bend it into the shapes you want. Leave a short length (3-4 in.) on both ends to twist together so the shapes will stay closed and so you have something to bind together at the end. When making shapes, convex curves are best, since hose tend not to like to cling right to concave ones. You can make two mirror-image pieces for simple pixie wings, or two pairs of mirror-image pieces for more butterfly-like wings, or whatever else you can imagine. If you're using pantyhose, cut the legs off and just use them. Stretch the hose to cover the wire frames, one leg per shape, with the toe at the outermost point of the wing and the opening at the twisted-together wire. Arrange all the pieces as you want them to go together, holding all the twisty bits together. Wrap back and forth around the center several times with fine wire or heavy string. Wrap any excess fabric from the wing-pieces around the center. Take the legs from the remaining pair of hose and tie both ends of each onto the center, making two loops that you'll put your arms through like a backpack. Embellish as desired. The process can be tricky, and it can take some trial and error to get everything to go together and hang right. An extra pair of hands can be helpful. I've developed this method through a lot of wrestling with nylon and wire and on-the-fly problem solving. If along the way you find some way to improve it, I'd love to hear about it Let me know if you have any questions. ~Bouche

Well I was out shopping last evening and spent some time looking through many options including simple strapless and a few long line designs. Based upon responses to-date a long line backless design that would allow me to wear pantyhose seems to one direction to take. The woman who was working last evening also showed me a sleek alternative to the more heavily boned corset that my seamstress had suggested. It was a smooth satin style from Godddess (style 710). Its not only strapless but also a "corset" style with detachable garters. They had a semi-annual foundation sale on so I splurged and picked this up on a whim! I also picked up some stockings as well. I'm wearing it today at work! My roomate was surprised this morning as I'm wearing one of my nicer spring outfits. Work is business casual and I usually wear pants or skirt sets. She was very surprised when I showed her I was wearing stocking and garters. So far I'm finding it surprisingly comfortable and the garters/clips haven't been a problem. The clips are plastic and don't seem to cut into me at all. Of course the full slip probably helps as well. BTW on the ankle bracelet, I realized that I had not mentioned in my previous post that the bracelet WAS a special gift from my fiance. I do think I won't wear it as it really would really detract from the ankle strap on my shoes. I go in for another fitting (my final fitting) at the beginning of May and need to come to a conclusion on what I'll wear under my gown before then. Lori

The necklace will be the most time-consuming. I'm basing it on this design. ...Except... I may put tiny wired spacer crystals between the links. What do you think? Overkill? I'm using either teardrop or briolette pendants (perhaps each topped with a 2mm round clear crystals?) instead of the opaque bi-cones, or I'll use round 4mm and 3mm stones. This photo is not a piece I've done; it's my "inspiration." I saw it and realized I have the same connector links in my stash. They're made by TierraCast in California. Lead free and a totally USA-made product! I'll be using a variety of Swarovski's "Siam" stones... Briolettes... Or rounds... or teardrops The girl has no idea she's getting this; her mother and I are "plotting." Her dress is dark red with a white underskirt in the back and silvery-white lace appliques running down the front. It's strapless, so there was a lot of "exposed flesh" to cover. She's wearing her hair in an up-do. The necklace will have a 4" back drop with a small crystal cluster at the end.

Yes, Woodnymph, I had a circle pin after I was married and got quite a few comments about it. I paid $1.00 for my old book, The Shepherd of the Hills by Harold Bell Wright with illustrations by F. Graham Cootes, at a family estate sale. It gives a copyright date of 1907 in the front and says "Published September, 1907." I thought I had made a clever buy but found that there are a zillion copies available. It is in very good condition, and the bookshop owner who looked at it for me said it might bring $10. In it, though, were two postcards with postmarks that I can't make out. They have 1 cent stamps on them and very pretty handwriting. One has a picture of a young couple rowing on a lake and the other of the Masonic Temple in Bloomington, Illinois. That one says the writer is not going to school that summer but is saving herself for San Francisco in 1915. I don't know who either of the senders was but did know the recipient who was the aunt of my aunt-by-marriage. When my daughter was young, we did manage to acquire a complete set of The Little Colonel series, some of them from a private owner who lived in Peewee Valley, the setting of the books. The books themselves are not all of the same set, but some of them are the oldest edition. They are not in good shape, but she is proud of them and keeps them carefully on her bookshelves. I feel like Methuselah on this forum. My mother was a primary school teacher in one-room schools at the beginning of her career. In them, classes ran Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4 every year with 5 and 7 offered one year and 6 and 8 offered in the alternate years. If you started at age 6, you went straight through, but if you started at 5 or 7, you either had to repeat, go ahead and drop back to pick up the year you missed, or skip it and go ahead. Since I was the oldest child, my mother taught me to read at 4 and took me with her to attend first grade at 5, meaning I had to either repeat 4th grade or go to 6th. I did go on and never had 5th grade, which may explain why math was always my poorest subject since that was the year that long division and common fractions were introduced. At any rate, that meant that since my birthday is in July, I graduated from high school at 15, starting college in the fall of 1952. We had the suite-type dorm mentioned above, and my roommate was my best friend from high school (and still is). We had the rules about signing in and out, curfews with later nights on weekends, no one smoked, boys couldn't step foot outside the living room of the dorm. We did our personal laundry in the bathroom sink, but there were ironing facilities in the basement. Housekeeping gave out one clean sheet every week, and you were to put your top sheet on the bottom and the clean sheet on the top each time, taking the other one back to be laundered. We wore stockings and hats and gloves to church and formals to the dances held in the gym. It was certainly another world to...