I suppose I've kept you in suspense long enough

It's been a week since my last class so it might be hard for me to remember everything, but if I have a hard time, I did take notes... So my class has always been a source of hilarity to me. It's such an ecclectic group of people and it might be hard to explain in a typed fashion but I'll try.

This week (or I guess last week) we presented Men's Wear garments that we designed, drafted and sewed. It was a very interesting look into the lives of these women and what they seemed to like in a man. I'll try to keep it down to a couple best of the best so this post doesn't go on forever.

First off we have Bonita who has the most bizarre and hilarious voice I have ever heard. Her garment wasn't particularily hilarious. She made shorts for her husband but he wouldn't try them on because he was working night shifts and wanted to sleep. What made this one funny to me was that she added no shaping at all to the shorts because she said her husband was really fat and then she announced that she split her pants. This is not nearly as funny as it should be because you can't hear her voice.

Then we have Shona, a larger girl who sleeps through every class and snores. She got her boyfriend to come in and model the little cloak she made for him. The funny part of this was that they looked exactly the same. (man. this post is not doing justice to the hilarity. I need to show you the little face they both make which I can only describe as the chubby person frown but it's hard to describe things in a way that doesn't make me feel mean or worried that people will somehow find this on the internet...) Anyways he had a long black pony tail and looked pretty sweet in his cloak.

And then there's Aline who is the overacheiver of the group. Her homework is always perfectly neat and tidy and she has this funny little nasal voice. She's super anal about everything, she kind of reminds Christie and I of Angela from the american office but smilier. She started making jokes during the class while the teacher was talking about putting a piece of fabric behind the zipper in men's pants - a fly guard. She thought it was really funny imagining what types of things might get stuck in the zipper... Which was funny to us considering her character. For the presentation she made a men's flowy, billowy, peasant blouse. One of those ones that laces up at the top. She hand braided the cord for the lace up part and put in the gromets at 2 in the morning and smashed her thumb in the process. Her pattern was perfectly laid out and she had printed out pictures of stars wearing similar tops. I think one of the pictures was of Nick Lache. And... she told us that "her guy loves it and didn't want to take it off".

One of the girls also made what she dubbed 'the mullet shirt' which a lot of the ladies thought was a hilarious name. (older people still love mullet jokes). But the shirt was actually really funny. It was a dress shirt that had a mandarin collar and a panel in the front made out of stripey dress shirt material and the rest of it was this crazy hawaiian print. It looked insane. The girl said she made it for her fiance who does a lot of performing (we didn't ask what kind) and he wears a suit jacket while he's performing so when the jacket is on, the shirt looks like a regular dress shirt but when the jacket is off, it's a party shirt for the after party... ingenious...

And perhaps the most hilarious garment of the evening came from our very own Christie Martens who sometimes has a hard time with proportions in drafting. She made a zip up sweatshirt for a very oddly sized man. It was super long and kind of wide in the body... probably about mid to lower thigh and then the arms were ultra skinny (imagine that they're tight on Christie's little arms) and long. Plus to top it off, Christie didn't have time to go shopping for fabric so she had to make it out of scraps that she had at home. So... the main part of the sweater was made out of this horrible feeling bright purple scratchy polyester material and the design of the sweater included 4 panels in the front out of contrasting fabric. So for two of these panels she used a nice mint green valour, and 1 of them was mint green and white striped cotton and the last one was the purple again except she didn't have enough fabric so she had to cut it out of the back of her sweater and replace it with more mint and white stripes. Then the cuffs on the wrist were also stripey and wider than the rest of the sleeve. It really was something to behold. It was incredibly garish and hilariously shaped. She was rather embarassed to show it but the best part was that this one lady (Shona's mom) was like "ooh. I love the colours" and Shona (see earlier paragraph if you forget who she is) woke up and started taking pictures of it with her camera phone. Once Christie was done with her presentation she went up and asked her if she could take more and took close ups and from every angle on the mannequin.

I am disappointed at how poorly the most hilarious class translates in internet blog form. If you didn't find it funny, I can fill in details in person to accentuate the experience. I am also disappointed that I can't seem to think of another word for hilarious and it is thus overused in this post.

On another note, and to make this post as long as possible, last night was my last show. I am now a graduate of the Senior Professionaly program of the School of Contemporary Dancers. Even though I'll still be there next year, I have a certificate and a rose to prove it. Our last show was... memorable. There were some collisions and tripping and I did a somersaulty thing and popped the big hair clip that was holding my french roll in place and then had to dance very stiffly to try to avoid the inevitable avalanche. Close to the end of the piece the clip fell out altogether and I said to my partner 'oh no, my hair' and then she lifted me and when she put me down I very smoothly picked up the barette so no one would step on it and danced the rest of the piece with it in my hand. And then at the very end I keep having to grab hands with my partner and it was the one holding the clip and I lost it. My hair was everywhere and I couldn't stop laughing. I ended in a nice high release and I was visibly shaking with laughter. And that's how we closed our last show in the program.