What’s going on here? HP invited me to play along with the current season of Project Runway and sent me a TouchSmart computer to create my own designs. Along with creating designs I decided to write myself into the show. I am not doing well.

This week the challenge was to create a dramatic look to be worn while on stilts. Stilts! It was also a group challenge, so Scott and I worked together. In the fantasy Project Runway thing I have going on here he has immunity since winning last week, so I was feeling some real pressure. We came up with the look above, a dramatic suit. Or something. It was inspired by Mary Poppins:

(Image above from Disney.)

Instead of creating the orange suit you see above (which I was all for) we chose a warm gray with a touch of orange in the shirt. We were judged to be in the middle which was good enough for us. Our look was boring but well made. Our model could simply be a very, very tall girl heading to work anticipating a high pressure meeting.

We might or might not have had huge married couple screaming fights during this challenge but the audience will never know since the cameras were all over the Bert and Viktor pairing. Our model looked a little bit like Jack Skellington coming down the runway but luckily she didn’t get the pumpkin hair, whew!

Here, in pen and paper sketches, is how we actually came around to Mary Poppins:

This is my first idea. Like many of the contestants I took one look at the stilts and thought circus!

Scott had something out of China in mind. That cat earred squiggle thing? If this hadn’t been a group challenge that is probably what he would have put down the runway just to show off his immunity.

We tried to do a form fitting dress over pants thing work. Maybe without sleeves? Then we gave up and tried to figure out if we could make really, really long flare jeans work. Then we looked at our sketches again and Scott liked the fitted thing but wondered if we could make it more like Mary Poppins. And so we did. Or at least we tried.

And now the answer to what we all want to know. What are the doodles on Scott’s paper?

A cat and a sea serpent/unicorn? I think?

Previously: we took on episode one, the one with the bed sheets, and episode two, the one with the dog toys.

And another huge shoutout to HP for sending me the TouchSmart computer. Its big bright screen has seduced me. Today I found myself surfing sites with one hand (you can scroll a browser page just but drawing your finger up or down on the screen) while I scanned sketches with the other hand. It is surprising how quickly I took to abandoning the mouse for the touch controls.