Mind The Gap

Album with pictures.  Everything is now pretty much done except for Russ’ costume.

http://picasaweb.google.com/hmfullen/DragonCon08/

All that is left is to add the hardware to let me pull up the train so it doesn’t drag, which will be needed for the reception.

Still plenty more to go on other bits of the outfit, but now it’s time to change focus to the Dragon*Con costumes.  This skirt took longer than I had anticipated, and a lot of other stuff came up in between, so now I’m on a bit of a short timeline.  Eeek!

I got a new phone.

I’ve finished phase1 of the skirt for the wedding ensemble (a very full, circle-style mid-calf length  skirt with 6 panels of fabric, alternating between white and pale blue), and have yet to begin phase2 (an over skirt made from triangles of alternating blue and white, with the long point of the triangle pulled up and secured to the waistband to make a neat swag effect).

The overall look will be sort of a bizarre steam punk snow princess type of thing (Ryan will have a top hat, I’ll have you know).  I think it’ll be great fun and the photos should be worthwhile.

From there I still need to order some white victorian style boots, have an appropriate white leather corset made, and sew up the blouse (don’t feel like scanning the sketch now, but maybe later).

I also need to buy/build a white mini top hat and affix appropriate veil and decorations, and that’ll have my outfit pretty much done.  Will still need to work out Ryan’s, and do all the other logistical things.

Bleh.  Too busy.

Today was a glorious vacation day.  It started out eventfully, as I stopped lazing around at 10-ish, and checked my calendar, expecting to see very little, as I don’t take days off on days when there are important meetings going on.  To my surprise, I saw 2 meetings that looked important, and panicked.  (What if it wasn’t today, but actually next Monday, that I had scheduled to be off, and now I’m running late?!?!)

I loaded up the department’s leave calendar, hoping to quickly resolve this pressing question.  Foiled!  It isn’t working for some reason.  So, next rational step, call my boss, maybe he marked it on his calendar.  No dice, and he was in a meeting so it wasn’t like he could just ask the executive assistant that maintains the calendar.   (I always feel guilty when folks answer my calls while they are in a meeting, and my call wasn’t really all that important.)

Plan B, dial the main office, get the receptionist to forward me to the exec assistant.  Dammit, voicemail, and if I’m supposed to be at work today I’ll be noticeably late if I don’t leave in the next 15 minutes.   Back to the main office number, get the receptionist to forward me to the exec assistant’s boss, the department administrator fellow.  I explain that I know I had requested a Monday off, but I had picked a Monday with very few meetings, and when I checked the calendar I have several today, so I’m concerned I got my dates crossed and today is not actually my day off.  He informs me the exec assistant is on vacation, but is able to confirm that today is in fact my day off.  He notes that it’s a sad situation that I schedule my time off around meetings.  Hardy har har.

By the time I hang up the phone, text my boss, and shuffle back over to my email, the main meeting I was concerned about has already been updated to another day, so that’s handy.  I then move the other meeting (which I myself scheduled on Friday while I had forgotten I was going to take a much needed day off), and can resume my day off lounging.  The minor panic (and disappointment at possibly having to rush into the office, and then work late to make up for coming in late) left me with some excess adrenaline, so rather than returning to bed to nap, I worked on some projects.

So far I am at step 5 of a skirt project based on this tutorial: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Full-Belly-Dance-Skirt – I adapted the plan to make a 6 panel skirt with panels of alternating white and very pale blue.  If this works, it will be a portion of my bridal ensemble for the wedding.  Since the wedding date is set for New Year’s Eve, I’m planning to do my getup in white, pale blue, and maybe some pearl or silver tones, and decorate using those same colors, adding in evergreen foliage, a dusting of fake snow, and probably a few fake birds into the arrangements here and there.  I’m hoping to begin purchasing cheap Christmas decorating supplies starting in October, which I’ll break down to make the wedding decorations from.  Then I can send them home with guests to use for Christmas decorations in following years, and I won’t have to see them again!

After getting the sewing done and the skirt hanging, I surfed the web for a while, gave the dog a bath, and finally began wefting some awesome bright yellow hair using this tutorial: http://katiebair.com/wigtutorial_makingwefts.html and am about to run to the store while I wait for it to dry.  I feel very productive.

Ryan and I got invited to a surprise birthday for Jules. Since she’s a pretty cool artsy type chick, and she happens to be getting married soon, I thought that she might like her very own my little wedding pony. (I later found out that she still has a ton of old MLP’s stored in her closet, so I suppose my guess was correct in this regard.)

The pony is a generic one from the dollar general, maybe 6-8″ tall. I removed all the paint from it to start with, and braided the hair and let it set that way so it would be wavy. After that I painted on the emblems, strung the necklace and attached it, pinned on a couple of beads to make earrings, and trimmed and back combed the hair. (Cheap ponies don’t have a whole lot of hair, so an easy approach is just to make the hair bigger.)

Once that was done, I made her little veil (some lace gathered with the ends attached to make a circle, and a circle of netting fabric from the wedding favors section of the craft store, combined with a little silk rosebud, and a zip tie to attach it to the pony’s forelock. The decoration on the tail was made pretty similarly. Two circles of the mesh fabric, and a bunch more of the silk rosebuds. Once those were soundly attached I added some ribbon to cover up the wires from the flowers and help fill out the tail, and put a ribbon bow around the whole thing. Awww.

And here she is!

Wedding ring emblem on the hoof (aka “cutie mark” per the MLP lingo).

Wedding bells on the hip:

Butt bouquet:

Veil:

Shot of the eye paint job and jewelry:

Shot of the whole thing all at once:

Yay pony!

I made the ears tonight and attached them!  Also added some ribbon to give it that extra cutesy oomph.

School starts up pretty soon so I’ll be busy again, but the next piece will be either the tail, or the pink and purple striped boot covers.

Finished the pink and purple wig!  Still have to make the cat ears, looking forward to that.

Yay!

Finished the wig I started last week.  Like it a lot.

Shots of the wig on the little stand thingy:

Action shots:

   
Yay!

Also, I started the wig for another costume.  Here is the wig i started with (leftover from a past Halloween).

Here’s a couple shots with the original hair sectioned and back combed (not yet twisted or sealed).

 
This afternoon I added several more dreads to it, and got maybe half of it all twisted and sealed, with the rest waiting to be sealed.

Here’s all the hair that I added, back combed, and twisted tonight.  Picture taken after I attached the sections.  All the hair that was already ‘done’ at that point was just pulled to the front to be out of the way.

Shot of one of the pink and purples swirls.  These were a pain, twisting the pink hair in with the wig’s own purple hair was not as successful as I would have liked.  These guys are wrapped with thread every 4-5 inches in hopes that’ll help them hold together.

Shot of one of the pink and white swirls.  Both the pink and white are added on hair, and they came out fine.  (We’ll see how they hold up with actual use, but they seem ok so far.)

The wig’s original hair is a blend of a fuschia-purple sort of color, with black hair blended into it, with the result that the hair looks dark purple for most of it’s length, and fuschia-purple for the bottom few inches.  it was fairly tough to back comb and seal, but comes out with a fairly neat transitional look.  Doesn’t seem to show up in pictures too well, but I did try:

From here I have a ton more sealing to do.  I need to fix the goggles that go with the natural colored wig.  I picked up some awesome pink and purple furry fabric to use to make cat ears to go with the purple wig.  Playing with fake hair is a lot of fun.

Tonight I steamed the dreads on my wig to seal them up.  The next step will be to begin attaching extra dreads to fill out the empty spots and make the hair big (big hair = good).

As you can see, the front of the wig looks pretty alright as it is (well, it could be bigger, naturally).  This is because the front and top part of wigs tend to have a lot more hair on them.

Here are a couple shots of the back and one side.  As you can see these are pretty mangy looking.  Wigs (especially cheaper ones like this one) tend to have less hair on the wide open areas of the back and sides, because the concentration of hair at the top tends to cover them up.  So, wig styling from a cheap store bought wig often involves adding more hair.  Such is life.

 
Well, back to dismantling those falls from Halloween!

A while back, Ryan and I were looking for a place downtown, in order to hang out at the places we like downtown more conveniently. (This kind of flopped because everything we looked at was stupid expensive, crappy, or run by shady/disorganized people.) During this time, Ryan’s brother Ross made a joke about the two of us hanging out at Maude’s, wearing matching handmade tams, and feeding our dog organic biscuits.

When I recently decided to take up crochet (again) this joke resurfaced. So, today I bought some fancy-schmancy hand dyed merino wool yarn from the new yarn and fiber store in town, and made a tam. I am so amused with myself, and can’t wait for either Ryan (or I, if it turns out this accessory is too girly for him) to show up somewhere in Ross’ presence wearing said tam. Hehehehe.

Pictures:

Construction Notes:

• The basic pattern is a free one I found on the internet [link]
• The site makes you register for a user name., btw
• Used Colinette ‘Cadenza’ easy care merino wool yarn in copper beach instead of the yarn specified by the pattern [link]
• Used N15 (10mm?) hook instead of the N13 specified
• I used the instructions for rounds 4-6 to do 3 extra rounds (so there are 6 rows in that portion instead of 3, to make the tam a bit floppier
• For round 13, instead of following the pattern for a decorative-type edge, I switched to a 6.5mm hook and did a double crochet in each stitch to finish the band.

** Update **

Pictures of Ryan wearing the tam: