Dance a little every day.

Consistancy reaps big benefits. Figure out how to squeeze at least 10 minutes of yoga, dancing, stretching, etc into each and every day. Your muscles and mind and spirit will really appreciate it.

Cowry Hair Falls

It took me all day but I did it.

Pirate Belly Dance

As soon as I get the hang of these hair falls, I'm going to make some to go with my pirate garb. Seashells belong on pirate costumes. And so do some of these neat carved bone items I've been accumulating. I have a pirate belly dance tribe over on tribe net. It will be nice to have something new to add to it.

http://piratebellydance.tribe.net

Cowrie hair falls for tribal belly dancing

Today I sat myself down and decided to teach myself to make cowry hair falls for belly dancing. First I took inventory of things I already had in my bead box and in my jewelry box. At first I was going to make a matching pair but I scrapped that idea because I don't have enough cowry shells. With any luck I'll be able to make 2 solos instead of one pair.

I started with a 9 yard strand of black yarn and a 9 yard strand of fuzzy variegated white and blue yarn. I laid them together, evened up the ends, folded them in half and tied a 2" loop in the center. That gave me four working strands. I looped it over a nail so I could keep tension on it while doing the knotwork. Now I'm in the process of stringing and knotting various items. I'm hoping to make a fall 3 feet long. Right now I'm about 1 foot into it. But hope springs eternal. Some of the cowry shells have holes that are too small so I'll have to make the holes bigger...either with my needlenose pliers or the dremel or something. I'll keep you posted.

Update: I ended up using cowry shells, brass bells, pre-made tassels, bone beads, and a bone charm, and a cross section of seashell.
A bead reamer came in very handy for making the pre-drilled cowrie shell holes bigger. I made a needle threader out of wire and used it to pull the yarn through the holes. If you need to know anything else just ask. See the photos in the later post. Basically I used macrame' knots between everything. I didn't use any braiding because I'm working with four strands, not three and I didn't want to relearn four strand braiding when macrame' works perfectly well.

Belly Dance Videos at your fingertips

Yesterday I set up a pageflake to host a number of belly dancing videos. It self-refreshes as new videos from Youtube or Metacafe are added. Check it out here: http://www.pageflakes.com/iffymail
That way every day I can see some dancing to inspire me.

Technorati

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Getting more Readers

For some reason, of all the blogs I write, blogger gets the least hits. So to remedy the situation, I've added Technorati to some of my blogs.

Technorati Profile

Work on your Stamina

On days when you can't dance, make sure you get some sort of cardiovascular exercise in. For me, it's a daily walk. Maybe for you it's swimming, bike riding, stair climbing or a treadmill.

Belly dancing in the news today.

The local news (KCAL channel 9) covered an International belly dancing competition in Egypt. Evidently it’s open only to foreigners. When asked why, one of the Egyptian dancers said, “It’s our dance and if we entered we would win”. They did show one woman who was larger than average, but not without sticking in the blurb that the dance is for all sizes. They never say that when a skinny woman dances. At any rate, they showed blips of 7 or 8 dancers. The interviewer said that costumes cost from $100 to $1000. I’m wondering just what a $100 costume would look like. I haven’t seen a $100 costume worth buying in about 20 years. I didn’t quite catch the name of the winner, but they said she was from the USA. It sounded like Hakura. Maybe I can Google it up. There were over 1200 dancers entered. P.S. Nothing on Google yet. Did anyone catch who the winner was?

A rare back view of me. 

I have to stop worrying about what the neighbors think. When you need to practice, you need to practice. 

My favorite half-circle veil. Taken with the automatic timer on my digital camera. 

Coming soon.

The Cairo Carnivale is in Glendale this year (same location as last year).

Cairo Carnivale is coming soon!

Coming soon

Cairo Carnivale is in June!

Sewing Tip: Lining Bra Cups

Take the fabric you plan on lining the bra cups with and rub it against your skin. If it is scratchy or stiff, pick something else. Some dancers like corduroy, saying it doesn't slide around and feels comfortable. Whatever you use should absorb sweat, and be washable. I like to use flannel. You may want to avoid slippery things like silk or satin, because you don't want the contents of your bra shifting around too much. I recommend something that is at least 50% cotton.

Sewing Tip: testing fabric washability

When you get your new fabric, before you do anything else, cut off a 8"x8" square and wash it and dry it in whatever way you are planning to wash and dry your costume. Check for shrinkage. Some rayons will disintegrate in the wash. One foil lame' print I tried washed just fine, but when I dried it, all the foil disappeared leaving an ugly blotchy gray on the black fabric. Unfortunately I didn't test it first; the skirt I made out of it was ruined.

Test for color fastness: Take a cup of hot water, dip the scrap ,trim, or beads into it, lay on white paper, and see if it bleeds color. Remember, most cottons from India are not color-fast. When you sweat, the dye can get on your skin and leave patches of color. My dance teacher once made a gorgeous costume of pink beads her mom had given her. She started to sweat and had long rivulets of pink running down her body and skirts. All those hours of work wasted too.

Cairo Carnivale Belly Dance Festival in June

If you are in S. California, here's your big chance to see great dancers, shop in luscious costume displays, and eat, drink and be merry. All the details are at http://www.mecda.org. They also have some activities for children. Read the details carefully...the workshops and evening shows require seperate purchases.

My favorite veil. 

Pilates

Yesterday I picked up a hot little book on Pilates for a meer $3.00 from Michael's craft store. After thumbing through the photos, I once again confirmed that in all my years of modern and jazz dance, all the stretches I learned were either Pilates or Yoga. And now that I have the handy little book I can show my students just how to do the moves. For every 2 hour college level dance class, the first 45 minutes were Pilates. I can't believe I used to do 90 minutes of Pilates every single day! My boyfriend asked what was wrong with me that I couldn't do that now, and I said "Um, I'm 47 now, not 22." He didn't think that was a good reason, and that kind of goaded me to make a bigger effort. We'll see. The age factor isn't everything but you can't just ignore it either.

Valentine's Day

VALENTINE'S DAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER!