Stoning my own figure skating dress, Part 2

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costumes

Oh wow, I’ve had this draft saved in my blog for over a year, and all this time I’d thought it was posted already! I only recently realized it wasn’t, so here it is, better late than never.

Last year I competed in Sectionals for the first time, and I had a new program for my bronze freeskate and for bronze dramatic, and I needed new dresses. Because I had two programs, I was wary of spending too much money on costumes, so I decided to do what I’d done before in buying a plain, unstoned dress and add crystals myself. Having done it once before, I felt pretty confident I could turn a plain black dress into something interesting, with the help of thousands of crystals and hours and houuuuurs of free time.

Here’s the dress, bought unstoned from Brad Griffies:

Stoning my own figure skating dress

Tags

competition, costumes

So. Stoning.

When I first heard about stoning your own figure skating dresses, I was completely at a loss. I’ve never been a crafty person, I can barely sew a button, and I don’t know the least thing about sequins or glitter or crystals. But it seemed like ALL figure skaters knew about this mysterious world of sparkle, and that it was understood that you would naturally stone your dresses to get it.

But I had no clue where to start. The internet is great, but all the references I found were written by people who… knew stuff. Who assumed you knew stuff. Who talked about hot fix vs. flat back, gross, Swarovski vs. Czech, 5mm vs. 20SS, and basically was way over my head from Step 1. I knew that I didn’t have $600 bucks to order a custom-stoned dress, but once I saw the difference that crystals can make, I wanted the bling. And I decided I would have it.

So I set about taking the dress pictured above and turning it into the one below:

My first adult figure skating performance

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Coach A, costumes, figure skating, freestyle skating, programs, shows

Oy, an overdue post, I know. So my first performance EVAR was over a week ago, but I didn’t have time to sit down and process it since I went out of town Christmas week. Now I’m finally back to normal life (though not yet back to skating). Phew!

So, the show. I don’t have video because the rink wants us to buy from the professional company that taped it. So hopefully video will become available at a future date. It’s too bad the dress rehearsal didn’t quite work out as planned, because I’d wanted to get video then. But those public crowds just weren’t going to allow that.

I had a number of apprehensions going into the ice show, partly because it was my first skating performance, but also partly because I tend to get way inside my head analyzing everything to bits before The Thing happens, all in the name of preparation but really just freaking myself out. First off, I found out that the holiday show was HUGE. I was hoping for a nice dinky little rink show with a handful of skaters and two handfuls of their parents. But no, the organizer emails told us that there were EIGHTY skaters in all, most of them doing solos, making the show approximately three hours long. I KNOW.

Dress rehearsal

Tags

costumes, figure skating, performing, programs

So I’ve been pretty nervous about this upcoming holiday ice show, and while I wouldn’t say I was quite stressed about it, I would say preoccupied is apt. This show has taken over my life in the past week, and compounded with friends coming to visit from out of town (the week after the show), the holidays, and work projects nearing deadlines, all in all I’ve felt frazzled and overextended.

I’ve been telling myself that perspective is good, to remember that skating is just a fun hobby in my life — there are no real consequences to being bad at it! I do have a competitive nature so it’s hard to accept being poor at something I try so hard at, but let’s look at this glass-half-full and figure I’m building character. With skating you just can’t rush progress, so you really do have to accept where you are with skills and limitations, or… quit skating? Otherwise you’ll just be miserable.

Anyway. I’ve been doing program runthroughs in all my practice sessions, most of the time while listening to the music on my tiny clip-on mp3 player that I got for working out. I made a playlist that’s exclusively my program music, in three cuts: a full cut, a cut that starts a third of the way through, and another that only plays the last half. I find it easier than trying to fast-forward or just waiting for cues. It’s been really helpful to listen to it as I skate (usually with one earbud in), because when I would visualize my program without the music, it was difficult to gauge tempo and speed. With the song playing, even if I wasn’t doing the routine, it got me in the mindset of the right rhythm.

But by the time this week rolled around, I was kinda bored of it all, actually. Not sick of the music or the program itself — it’s still fun and there’s lots to work on — but bored with my practices. I was doing the same thing over and over, working on the same problems and trouble spots. I was tweaking, but not learning.

On Thursday we were supposed to have a full dress rehearsal to mimic everything about the day of the show: In my costume, I’d skate at my Usual Rink to warm up, then let my muscles grow cold as I drove over to Show Rink, where I would warm up for ten minutes only using the end zone (where the curtain would be up during the show). Then I’d start my lesson with a runthrough.

But last-minute things cropped up and we ended up going to Usual Rink for the lesson. Only, a huge group of schoolkids was there and the ice was terrible and there were so many of them (60 to 80?). They were teenagers, too, who are so much harder to skate with/around than younger children — they get wilder and louder and more reckless. Thankfully the group left as we were starting the lesson, but the surface was so choppy that I could literally not see any ice — there was a layer of snow over everything. They were supposed do an ice cut, but I think the zamboni was on the fritz. Sadface. I could do most of my elements, but spins just weren’t working — I couldn’t hit a camel to save my life and my regular upright spin was hit or miss. Coach A said that if I could do my program on this ice, I could do it for the show, easy. Problem is, my spins are really finicky these days and I had to adjust in order to spin on that ice, and I don’t think it’s ideal to change technique on a fussy element a few days before performance day. Eek.

It was a good experience in the sense that I had to deal with the unexpected and roll with less-than-ideal conditions, plus I had to go out wearing my costume amongst a sea of regular folks in jeans and hoodies and just get over it. I think with embarrassment at a certain point you choose whether you feel it or not. I had to choose not to be embarrassed about being a 33-year-old grown woman in a sparkly ice skating dress doing a program in front of bystanders with my limited skills. (More on the costume in a future post.) And it was strange, but after I chose not to care about it, I sorta didn’t care about it.

It reminds you that so much about ice skating is about mental strength, not pure skill. And hey, if you can’t quite find the mental fortitude to make it through a performance without being hit by nerves, perhaps you’ll find the mental fortitude to shove that memory out of your mind.

Buying an adult figure skating costume (gulp)

Tags

costumes, programs

With the holiday show on the schedule, I’ve been looking to acquire my first figure skating costume. Eek! I don’t know about you, but skating dresses always bring to mind fluffy skirts, poofy sleeves, sparkles, and glitter. I find a lot of the elite skater costumes really gorgeous, but for the rest of us down here on planet earth it seems the options are a lot more humble. Sequins, gaudy color combinations, dubious cutouts, and velour — those seem more our lot.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of younger skaters manage to look cute in them. Maybe because their small size or generally stick-like shapes look fine in little pink dresses that barely cover their rears. Or maybe because their ability to throw themselves into the air and spin uncannily fast brings enough admiration that you’re distracted from the costuming. They can definitely get away with getups in a way that a 33-year-old woman really just can’t. As with other things in life, actually.