Mind The Gap

Today we got up very early, and moved the chair into the new office. Also brought in a table from home, and hung a couple pictures. Progress so far:

I needed a chair for the corner of my office. I’m also kind of a cheapskate, and I like any excuse for a weird craft project.

$6.00 chair from goodwill. Stained and ratty.

Picked up $12.00 worth of upholstery dye from the auto store.

Recovered the torn up seat cushion with some flannel fabric that has old school sailing ships on it.

Also made some little covers for the (worn and stained) arms of the chair, and stapled on a bit of trim to cover up the poorly finished front of the chair.

**Update**

K, I decided I couldn’t deal with the ruffle trim. So, I yanked it off, pulled out the staples, and then tried to clean up the way the lower front is finished as much as I could (this consisted mainly of spraying on a bit more upholstery dye and stapling the liner up more tightly).

I also didn’t like the way the rust colored pillow I had looked with it, so I stole all its stuffing and used some leftover fabric to make this pillow. The brown is canvas left over from making some gun holsters for last year’s halloween costume.

Crappy phone pictures of the office that I started moving into on Friday:

My desk, and flag.

I can has window?

The ceiling is rather a long ways up there. That UFO is the ceiling fan.

After a hectic week, and with very little planning, Ryan made a hotel reservation, arranged some last minute puppy sitting and we headed off to Tampa. The plan was simple: Drive a bunch, eat some good food, drink some good booze, take in the sights of the strip in Ybor, show off the new wig I made, and generally get our party on. It’s not often that we do nightlife, but every once in a while it seems like a good idea.

We left a bit late, but figured that was ok since it isn’t cool to show up at a club prior to midnight anyway. Here we are in the car, driving driving.

After driving for quite a while, we hopped off the road in the middle of some insane construction, and stopped at a place called Remington’s Steakhouse.

It was the kind of place with peanut shells on the floor, and there was a ~30 minute wait to get a table. When we got a table, our waitress had also picked up an 11-top at the same time. She was very friendly and helpful though, so that made up for it. Her name was Heather as well.

Here we are waiting for our dinner, patiently.

Then the food finally arrived. (The place was packed, so it took a while, but was pretty well worth it, particularly when one considers the alternative (I think there was a Bennigan’s, and maybe a McDonald’s).)

Ryan enjoyed his:

Mine was pretty good too:

The food was, in fact, so good, that I took a time lapse video of it, for your viewing enjoyment.

Then we finished the trek to the hotel. I did not take any pictures of our approach or arrival because it was a bit scary. Instead we focused as a team on parking as close to the building as possible, and scurrying inside. Fortunately we had a styrofoam head with my valentine’s wig attached to it to protect us from harm.

Once inside we watched some anime on tv and started getting ready to go out. Here are far too many pictures of my pink eyeshadow.

Check out the size of my nose! If I didn’t feel so comfortable with you, dear reader, I would crop that. Ok, actually I’m just lazy, but lets not split hairs.

Then we started the trip to the Ybor area. We got there to find things far more insane than they usually would be. Parking at the Burger King a mile away from the strip was $20, for a start, and the traffic was absolutely unacceptable. We spread a few blocks out from this mayhem to try to find a place to get cash so we could get some overpriced parking. One place was so dimly lit and crowded with folks that looked generally unhappy that we opted not to even get out of the car. The next place was reasonably well lit, but at this time of night (midnight-ish) in that neighborhood they locked the door and you could only do business through a little teller window thing, so no ATM for us. We gave up on this and got back on the interstate, went over and exit or two, and found a well lit gas station with lots of people from various walks of life all seeming to coexist peacefully. We got cash, and then headed back downtown. I did not photograph this part of the trip.

While on the strip we learned the cause of all the craziness. The adult-oriented Gasparilla Night Parade, related to the Gasparilla Pirate Festival. It would be just our luck wouldn’t it. People were EVERYWHERE. The main street was blocked off, and filled with staggering drunkards, some ornery. As we walked to a little bar we liked to start off the night, my hair met various reactions. One guy stopped me to very enthusiastically tell me he loved it (“that hair is bomb, I really like that”) bless his soul. Others would not make eye contact with me, but would loudly say things that I suppose they hoped would spur some reaction (“them ain’t no dreads”). Really? Was it the pink color that gave it away? It’s a wig, on purpose. It’s fun. Don’t hate. To be technical they are dreads, if one considers the method of construction. They are most definitely not natural dreads, nor were they trying to be. But who keeps score anyway?

Once we made it through the crowds of people, we got to the Reservoir Bar. I like this place. We hung out there for a while, and took this picture. We were not drunk at this point. We never really got to what I would call drunk, due to the claustrophobic crowding and the need to drive back to the hotel. However, the people watching was seriously excellent.

After our feet mostly stopped hurting from the initial walk, we planned out where to go next. With my hair and outfit as they were, I thought we needed something where the music is electronic and people might have glow sticks. So, we checked out the Castle.

This place was a lot of fun. On the way there two girls stopped their car to say that they loved my hair. One police officer on a horse also complimented it. My ego was gradually recovering from the initial walk through the sometimes jeering crowd earlier. Having been a gothy kid in school, I thought this Castle place might be pretty accepting. The downstairs area seemed a little tricky while the path to the stairs was totally clear, so we headed on upstairs. The older guy in the red g-string at the top of the stairs after we got in answered that one for me. Very accepting atmosphere. I was glad this was a place he could hang out at, next to that lady in the school girl outfit and the guy with no shirt and the full-length PVC trench coat. Rock on.

Saturday night upstairs at this place is called Communion After Dark, and features “the latest and best electro, industrial, futurepop, powernoise, darkwave, synthpop, coldwave, EBM, IDM & gothic music out today” – and yes, yes it certainly did seem to be just that. On the big video screens we had the latest Harry Potter movie. (On a side note, that was a pretty dark movie.)

I noticed a guy in a batman suit on the other side of the dance floor area. There were also pretty girls (patrons, not employees, it appeared) in gothy/piratey/fetishy costumes dancing on stages around the place. That was pretty neato. Everyone we encountered was polite, and some downright friendly. A major contrast to the indifference and belligerence of the street we were on earlier. I liked it there. Next time we go to Ybor we are considering just hanging out at that place the whole night and not bothering with the main drag.

Walking back to the car, we saw this and found it funny. Someone has contributed some of their “hey show us your tits” beads to a statue of what is obviously a very important man.

We both stopped and gave up, taking off our dress shoes while sitting on a bench, and then resumed the walk back to the car. Then we high-tailed it back to the hotel. Early the next morning we started the trek back.

All in all it was a pretty fun time. Next time we’ll make sure it’s not the night of the parade, and maybe will plan a little more so we have more time to enjoy the scenery. We’ll definitely get some better shoes to wear.

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!

So, lately I like to design and implement wigs. This involves buying a cheapo wig, lots of hair, and then putting them together. When working on the wig for my dragon*con costume, I used some pretty pink and white loose hair, and thought how fun a pink, white and red wig would be. As valentine’s day drew near I decided to do it. Here are some pictures.

This is the wig I started with, after dreading and sealing the back of it.

Here are all the pink and white dreads stretched across a piece of glass and clipped down, all ready to be heat-sealed.

Here’s the giant pot I boiled the water in to seal them.

I sealed the dreads by setting up the glass and pots apparatus in the bathtub and then dumping the boiling water over it. Flipping it halfway to pour water over the hair on the other side of the glass as well. Once those dried (2 years) I snipped off the scraggly ends, applied rubber bands as needed to keep the ends neat, and started attaching them to the mesh wig base with zip ties.

Front:

Top:

Side:

Back:

After all that was done, I found some cool pastel colored glow in the dark beads and threaded them on here and there. See the post regarding our valentine’s day mini-trip to see a picture of the wig as worn.

Aahh yeah.

Looking over my calendar, I was again awestruck by how much I meet lately.

Today it seems like
Each day I spend in meetings
Makes my brain softer

Some photos from the renaissance fair.

Some photos from taco night for Mom2′s birthday.

New hairdo: