If you're behind the curve and haven't watched it yet, here's the link.
However, until you're able to travel to a destination that offers a wide selection, it may not be easy to find one that you like. To help you out, here are directions for a no-sew, make-it-yourself pareo:
Go to a store that sells fabric and buy 2 yards (or 2 meters) of a color or print that you like if you're in the One-Size-Fits-Most crowd. If you're thin, you may get away with buying less while a super-sized woman will likely need more.
A pareo should go around you at least one and a half times, so to be sure of ample coverage, a thin or super-sized woman should measure herself around her largest point and multiply that number by 1.75. Then, divide by 36 to convert the inches to yards. (If you're on the metric system, I apologize for making you do the conversion. My math isn't good enough for me to risk messing you up.) Deal with any awkward fraction of the result by rounding up to the nearest quarter-yard. If you find your pareo is too long after using it for a while, you can always cut the excess and re-fringe the end.
Short women may need only 36-inch wide material. Women of average height or taller should stick to material that's 44-45 inches wide. The goal is to have material wide enough to cover you from the armpits to below the calf or ankle-length. Full sized pareos are folded to get dresses or skirts of shorter lengths. The pareos I've bought measure 60-65 inches long (plus the fringe) x 44-45 inches wide.
As for the type of material, I recommend rayon, washable silk, or lightweight woven cotton because they feel good against the skin and air-dry quickly. Be wary of employee recommendations because in one fabric store, a too-stiff brocade was suggested to me. What you need is washable, drip-dry material that's soft and fluid enough to drape like a shawl, scarf, or bandanna.
Inspect the inside of the folded material, the wrong side, to ensure that the dye goes through because you don't want the wrong side to be obvious when it shows as it will in some cases depending on how the pareo is tied. If the dye goes through, it won't be easy to tell the wrong side from the right.
Once you have the material home, make a fringe on one of the short, cut ends, a 44-45 inch wide side (for the short woman, it will be the 36-inch wide side), by picking out the cross threads until there's 3 to 3.5 inches of fringe. A pin, needle, or seam ripper will make the task easier.
Use an overhand knot to tie the hanging threads together in small groups approximately 1 inch apart from each other and up against the unfrayed material to stop it from unraveling further.
Repeat on the opposite end. Then, wash to remove any excess dye and dry.
That's it!
You don't have to do anything to the long, uncut, edges because the selvages keep them from unraveling.
All that's left is for you to use your favorite search engine to get ideas on how to tie and wear your new pareo and practice while imagining yourself on your next trip.
The BBC Wildlife Magazine and London's Natural History Museum own the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition:
The winning photographs for 2009.
Caution! This may make you die from laughing:
You don't need blue skies to make good pictures:
Fifty Beautiful Photographs of a Cloudy Day.
Nice, strange, beautiful, fun, bizarre:
Oddee.com is a blog on the oddities of this world.
Do you think you've got a hard life? You can't make this stuff up (although a few do sound like it):
FML.com - Your everyday life stories.
Finally, some beautiful music (I love the rain drops and thunder sound effects they make.):
Perpetuum Jazzile performs Toto's "Africa".
Several months ago, I had the hankering to buy a few children's watercoloring books to revisit my childhood. Back then, I was never able to color inside the lines and painting was about the same but more enjoyable. I enjoyed swishing the brush around in a glass of water and swirling it in the pan of paint. That was the main activity. I don't recall how my pictures turned out or if any were ever completed. None of them ever made it to the front of the refrigerator.
In my second childhood, I'm learning that paper wrinkles up from too much water and that the depth of color varies by how it's applied as well as how much is on the brush. During a visit to Hobby Lobby to buy a dip pen to try with a new fountain pen ink I have, I saw that artist's supplies were on sale 25-50% off. Thinking that this is an activity I might continue, I bought a couple of instruction books, a set of watercolor paints in tubes, a small palette that folds in half and latches closed, a watercolor pencil kit with instructions for beginners, and a set of brushes.
Most of my time since has been spent reading the books and painting a couple of pictures from the children's books using a couple of techniques I learned from the instructional books. I don't expect to become a great artist, but hopefully, I'll be able to put a motif on my pearl white Crane's stationery to personalize it such as a small sailboat or a tornado or a cactus. Dabbing color in the impressionist style would serve nicely, I think, as a cactus flower. Anyway, it's a goal.
The truth of the matter is that I like to play with water.
