Ms Cleaver goes to Washington 2012

If you follow me on twitter (@ms_cleaver) you'll know I spent the majority of last week at a work conference in Washington D.C. While I didn't have as much free time as I did on my last D.C. visit, I did manage to find a few times to sneak out and see some sights.

I was traveling light, so here's the trip in iphone/Instagram shots:

The photos above include:

• The National Cathedral
• The National Zoo
• The Art of the Video Game at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art / National Portrait Gallery
• some doodles

And don't worry, I got plenty of work/networking done too!

POW! The Comic Book Dress

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here before, but I'm a bit of a comic book geek. My comic love was rooted in the90's X-Men cartoon, but really got it's start in college, when I would drive my friend James to new comic book day every week. In return for transport, I could read all the comics he brought back, and from then on I was hooked.

So when I saw this LaFrock dress on Pinterest, I quickly decided that I MUST make one of my own. As in I found appropriate fabric and ordered it the next day.

I actually found the fabric used in the dress above (Alexander Henry's "Sewing is Easy Print"), but I wanted to kick up the nerdiness a notch and picked this "Girl Power" print from Camelot Cottons, which features Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and my personal favorite, Batgirl.

The dress is cobbled together from two patterns, the waistband and bodice are from Colette Patterns Parfait, and the skirt and pockets from McCalls 4826. Despite some issues with the front bodice facing, I really liked the way the bodice came together and I have some lengths of linen I'm eyeballing to become a straight up Parfait this summer.

The dress is super comfy and is maybe one of my favorite things ever.

I spent a solid day putting the whole dress together, because I had a deadline to meet...

Free Comic Book Day!

A lovely event that happened this past Saturday (and the first Saturday in March every year, in case your planning your 2013 calendar). And where else to wear your comic book dress than to hang out with cosplayers and get a dozen free comic books??

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do.

20/20 in my Dreams

I started wearing glasses in the 4th grade. I don't recall any big "I can see clearly now!" moment. It just was the way it was. Glasses seemed to suit my personality (nerd!) and I was fine with wearing them.

Oh school photos, I'd be embarrassed about putting this on the internet,

but I know everybody's got a terrible one stashed somewhere 

Then towards the end of my junior year of high school, when I still wanted to be an actor I decided I should get contacts so I didn't have to worry about wearing my glasses and/or squinting a lot onstage- only to be asked to wear my glasses in the first show I did after getting contacts. Ah well. 

When I got those contacts I was honestly excited by the idea that I'd be wearing my contacts all the time, then one day I'd wear my glasses for one reason or another and someone would say "Hey! I didn't know you wore glasses!" It would be proof that I'd moved on from being the dork with glasses or more likely that I just wanted to be surprising to someone in someway. 

Yesterday a co-worker asked about my glasses. I think I surprised her with my excitement about her question. She didn't know that I'd been waiting eight years. Of course even after all this time, I still have a preference for purple frames.