We're safe back now from the Pride, Prejudice and Zombie event of the year. It was a veritable hoot and a perfect celebration of the union of two charming and... distinctive people.
I really do like driving (or even being a passenger while someone else is driving) across the prairies. I miss being able to see all of the sky. I don't know if the GPS display is visible in the picture, but it's basically a blank white rectangle (the landscape) bisected by a vertical purple line (the road). Between Calgary and Saskatoon it stays that way for about 500 km. As you can see, except for colour it's an exact representation:
We unfortunately didn't get to spend as much time in either Calgary or Saskatoon as we could have wished; we have too many other commitments coming up so it was rather a whirlwind tour and mostly taken up by The Wedding. But we did manage to see quite a few people we've been missing, and we really appreciate the friends who hosted us in both cities.
It was exciting to see so many wedding guests throw themselves into the the Regency theme, the zombie theme, or both. I am the World's Most Neglectful Photographer™ even with an iPhone, so I'm glad R:tAG got some good pictures.* You can apparently see more on this "Facebook" thingy.
Favourite quotes:
(Zombie dabbing at his eye) "I always lose flesh at weddings"
(Father of the groom beginning his toast to the couple) "Aoooohhh! Uhhh, aaaaooorrrooo uuunnnh!"
"I love Regency. If you insult someone all you have to do is nod afterwards, and it's OK"
(at the Tim Horton's in Kindersley, from a stranger) "That hand dryer in the washroom is so weak it's like having a mouse fart on you." (stay classy, Saskatchewan)
* Pattern sources: My dress, bodiced petticoat and reticule from La Mode Bagatelle. The dress is the View D bodice without the mock drop front bit, View C sleeves (the longer ones) and skirt. The pattern is spendy but you can make a complete customized Regency wardrobe from it. I'm wearing white ballet slippers. R:tAG's jacket and trousers are from Butterick B3648 and his vest is from Butterick B3721 (View B with an added stand-up collar). His shirt is from J. Peterman's because it was on sale for $25 and that's cheaper and easier than me sewing it. His neckcloth is just a triangle of cotton, 55" at the base, 11" high, and his shoes are split sole jazz shoes.
All planned Regency items complete.* I didn't finish the spencer, but that's probably OK 'cause you don't wear those indoors anyhow.
I like making bonnets. I regret that one cannot support oneself as a milliner these days, or at least I couldn't. Mind you, that bonnet did take me about 8 hours to make but a lot of that was trial and error and bad language because I seem to be incapable of following instructions as given.** But I was clever and made the permanent bits of the bonnet in a neutral dark beige. The blue ribbons and trimmings are detachable, so as I expand my Regency wardrobe I can re-trim the bonnet to match.
Sunday was odd; I woke up early full of jittery energy. My first thought was that I was dying. But I'm still alive, and I managed to get a lot done. Including buying art. Fantastic art. This kind of art that when you see it you think "I will regret forever not making this part of my environment."
It's from a series called "Millennium Birds" by a pair of artists whose names I forget and I don't have the info with me. It's fantastic. It's got so much detail, and all the found objects just mesh so nicely, and it just makes me so happy every time I see it. There are a couple of more pictures here.
It's my 10th anniversary present to us, and a celebration of Champions Online going live and doing pretty well, and just a commemoration of being happy.
* Aw, crap, I forgot I still have to hem R:tAG's neckcloth. OK, 99.9% complete.
** And have good ideas at the point when it's almost-but-not-quite too late to implement them. For example, the brim of the base hat I used was too wide; it stuck up like a satellite dish when the hat was on. So I ripped off the three outer rounds of straw braid, but I did that after I'd cut the hat up, so the force of the ripping also ripped apart several other seams that oughtn't to have been ripped (this was not a quality hat) so I had to fix them, which meant undoing other seams and gluings.
Also, I used organdy as a lining instead of nice drapy lace, because I had some lying around. But it's a lot poofier, so wrangling that into the hat took some doing. I ended up cutting it into a sort of shallow tombstone shape because it didn't want to gather without a fight. Organdy is the soccer hooligan of fabric.
Coat: complete! I am happy that R:tAG is a perfect Butterick XL. I can follow any kind of correct instruction, but making diagnostic alterations* apart from a bigger or smaller hem is beyond me.
I was very happy with the pattern; Butterick 3648. It's not actually Regency, more early Victorian (note the waist seam, the square transition between the body of the coat and the tails, and the curved bottom of the tails) but the pattern was cheap, the right size**, clearly written, makes a well-designed piece of clothing, and was quickly and easily acquired. I should have made the collar facing velvet, really, but I couldn't find any in a matching green or brown and didn't have time to experiment with dye. So it's only the buttonholes/buttons to do on that. Yay!
I also made the muslin of the trousers (which, thank goodness, also require no alteration) and I think I've figured out a collar for the vest.
And I got the stuff to make a bonnet and reticule for me, so we'll see is there's time. August is just speeding by!
* i.e. saying "Oh, the horizontal wrinkles mean it's too tight here, so I need to change the seam/shape in this way..."
** Men's Regency costume patterns are not that easy to come by. The only other one I found has a reputation of running very small (and R:tAG is just barely within its upper size range), and also has reported other errors. As I said, I'm not that proficient a tailor to overcome these obstacles on a tight timeline.
I am falling behind in my sewing. The trouble with most costumes is that one needs the proper underpinnings to get the right look... the term "foundation garment" is completely accurate, in an architectural sense. So my Regency dress meant a bodiced petticoat* first. And then the dress fabric I chose (an embroidered cotton voile) was so sheer that I had to do handsewn buttonholes. And then there was the whole "inside out French seam" incident and the "drawstring casing on the outside" incident, of which I will not speak except to say that I think I have an inner ear disorder.
But at last, the dress is done!
It's hanging before its final hemming right now, and I have to see if it will fit on my tailor dummy. I really hope it does, because it makes hemming so much easier, but the "Regency silhouette" involves rearranging squishy bits which is impossible with my packing-tape dummy. The really hard-core costumers make different dummies while wearing different undergarments... one with an Elizabethan/Tudor corset, one Regency, one Victorian, etc.. I'm not that obsessed and/or blessed with storage space.
It has to be R:tAG's coat next, because in a pinch he can wear modern trousers and I can't make the vest until I see how the coat fits, because I'm altering his Victorian vest pattern to have a higher collar.** So then we'll see if I have time to make the cute spencer for myself. At least I don't have to have a hat, though a reticule would be nice. And shoes. I have to find shoes.
All this, and ten hour days at work! Whee!
* Which combines a chemise, corset and petticoat thus saving a few steps at least.
** I hope I'll just have to add a stand-up collar piece, but I also need to check the length to make sure it peeps out below the coat's waist in a stylish fashion.
The less one blogs, the harder it is to get started again. I will explain. No, it is too much. I will sum up.
I missed International Invent A Horrible Soup Day.
We went to Dia de los Muertos party that our Phoenix friends hosted, which was much fun but which reinforced my desire to not live in Phoenix. I know that technically it is very similar to living in Saskatchewan* but I don’t care for being uncomfortably hot, much less in November. That’s just wrong.
By the way, if you have babies to put into costumes (you know, before they’re old enough to fight back) you should peruse these ideas. These ones in particular. Please won’t somebody with a baby get one of those? For me? It’d be even better if it weren’t Halloween, but I’m not fussy.
The US election turned out well, I thought, though I was just glad it was over.** My only concern now is trusting anyone who would want to be President, given all the current crap. The federal election was also an opportunity for individual states to do the voting thing, and California really disappointed me with Proposition 8. Happily, there are court cases going forwards because putting minority rights up to a popular vote is not really the ideal American way of doing things. It’s made me think a lot about privilege in general, though. I like the idea I read somewhere the best; let’s treat same-sex marriage like carbon credits. For every two heterosexual divorces, we can let one homosexual couple get married. The exact number is open to negotiation, of course; even a ten-to-one ratio might make everyone happy.
I said a while ago that I should really get to Venice before it’s too late, since I didn’t learn that lesson in time for New Orleans. Well, hell.
And now it’s almost Christmas, it still hasn’t really rained here (since, um, March maybe? And last year was also very dry) so next spring it might be us that gets the big wildfires instead of LA. Boy, looking forward to that.***
We’re going to the Dickens Fair sometime soon. I spent all Thanksgiving weekend making a dress for it (what, everyone doesn’t spend their long weekends making costumes?) but then I found out there’s a special Steampunk day. Sigh. Decisions, decisions.
And that’s all I can think of.
Edited to Add: Finally remembered to take a picture of the dress. It still needs hemming, and I'm showing it without the knitted lace collar and the white undersleeves.
It's actually taffeta from the Interior Decorating section of Joann's because I really liked the colour... so yes, it's a Civil War(ish) dress made out of curtains. Just call me Scarlett.
And I didn't mention that we got new bookcases, did I? We got new bookcases. From Ikea, the "Billi" style. I like the glass doors. They keep the dust off, unify the look, and discourage me from putting random stuff down on the shelves "temporarily" instead of putting away properly.
* For about half of the year, going outside is very unpleasant and you stick to climate-controlled areas. For most of the rest of the year, it’s all right with a few perfect days.
** An educational perspective is here, though.
*** Sarcasm hand sign here
We're back from GenCon 2008, and I'm glad to be home in dry, cool(ish) weather.* We met up with Cenobyte, and QKv2.0, and Suz + Cheruby, and the Too Tall Guy, and Thunderhowl and Ferlak.** Here's a picture of most of them all together, too. R:tAG had to work through most of the con, but their game has gotten a lot of interest so yay!***
It was very fun. I bought some very pretty stuff, like a Shoggoth necklace complete with running victim:
And a Cthulhu necklace with a lovely piece of mother-of-pearl:
Pictures do not do them justice, especially with a cell-phone camera, but our real digital camera is on the fritz. They are handmade in silver by an artist from Quebec, and they're really lovely.
And we dressed up. Here is a photojournal of the Victorian Zombie experience:
BRAAAAAINS!
DRAAAAIIINS!
GRAAAAAINS!!!
LAAAAANES!
REFRAAAAAINS!
STAAAAAAINS!
TRAAAAAIIINS!
And probably my favouritest pic of them all:
The little girl in the stroller would not stop laughing and smiling at us. Even when we told her we would eat her brains, her smile got wider and wider, and as her parents wheeled her off we heard a high-pitched little "om nom nom!" receding into the distance. Epic zombie fail!
More GenCon pictures here, more zombie pictures here. Good times. I didn't take enough pictures at the Steampunk Ball, though. Phoo. And a small child vomited on my luggage on the airplane home. But apart from that, good times!
* Though Indianapolis was actually pretty dry and cool for the time of year. Not like last year, when walking outside was like being slapped with a hot sweaty sock.
** My one intentional pic of Thunderhowl turned out terrible, and I have none of The Mysterious Ferlak at all.
*** And yes, he is going up to Toronto in two days for another convention. No, I don't know how he does it.
The Unification Day Shindig was a lot of fun; the pictures that I took are here and here's one of me that R:tAG took at home afterward when I realized I didn't have any of me. I made the shirt; I found a Fruity Oaty Bar image on the Web and used that cool iron-on inkjet paper and an old tanktop. Everything else is just scavenged from army surplus and/or my regular wardrobe (these are my everyday goggles, not my fancy Steampunk goggles). I was considering a more elaborate costume, like a Reaver or something, but the venue was a hot 1.5 hour car ride away and elaborate makeup would have slid right off me.
The iPhone camera is not the best quality in low light (should have brought the real camera) but it gives you an idea of some of the costumes. I missed a bunch, because it wasn’t until it was suboptimally dark that I remembered that I really ought to be taking pictures. Dur. I won a prize for my Firefly trivia knowledge so go, me! The location was interesting too; a really out-of-the-way place that I don’t think I’d have ever visited on my own. But the GPS worked really well and kept us from getting lost out in the black.
So having an iPhone is a bit like having a pet; you end up getting all these little accessories for it, not to mention having to feed it more often than you expected. The best app I’ve seen for it so far is Shazam, where you basically hold your iPhone up so it can listen to the music and it tells you what the song is, who it’s by, and gives you an iTunes link to purchase it. Bloody amazing. It worked in a crowded, noisy restaurant, too.
We saw the new Batman movie, and it was really good, though it felt like ten pounds of movie in a five pound bag and (my mind being the burden that it is) I could not get past some of the more egregious violations of physics*, but I thought the acting was excellent. We also saw Tideland which was just as good a movie as The Dark Knight in its own way but really really disturbing. But not for the obvious reasons. Well, OK, a little for the obvious reasons.** Well, OK, a lot for the obvious reasons.*** But also because it really does succeed in presenting these things innocently and sort of beautifully, and then you realize what you’re watching. It was actually filmed in Saskatchewan, near Katepwa, but I don’t imagine it played well there.
* Glass is transparent to light, not sound.
** As soon as the neglected, precocious eight-year old heroine met the Faulknerian man-child, I started the anticipatory cringing.
*** Not to spoil things too much, but Faulkner really is in the same genre as this movie.
OK, first of all, HAH! I told you it was evil and disgusting!
Second, I don’t understand why this is funny. I’d watch it.
Thirdly, why was I not told about The DM of the Rings?
Fourthly… ah, the hell with the numbering thing. Here are some more cool links.
The Reader’s Manifesto - Cenobyte, read this.
And on a related note (sort of) the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Contest results
Goth dance instructions
The pinnacle of Lolcats (it gets no better)
Eyeball Pincushions - I’m going to make a batch of these. Who wants one?
Laid-Back Labour - Hobbies and economics. Actually interesting.
Oh, and we had an anti-Labour Day weekend because R:tAG had to work for most of it. On the plus side, I finished off three items in my knitting queue, made progress on another, and started two new ones, and since I was alone in the house, was able to commandeer most of the living room floor to block the Mystery Stole.* I keep forgetting how much lace grows when it’s blocked (no pictures of it being worn; I’ve tried and tried to get decent pictures in the only full length mirror in the house but the light is just not right.)
* My room is taken up right now with the construction of a polonaise. It is fiddly but straightforward. I even remembered to use my corseted measurements, which meant that I could use a fabric width of 36" instead of the recommended 45" (barely!), which meant that I didn't feel quite as stupid for accidentally buying 36" fabric (the lesson here is if the price seems really low for a fabric, CHECK ITS WIDTH!).
I’ve been busy at work and sort of down-ish… I think English needs to borrow a few words to describe moods. Weltschmerz? Anomie? Hulihudu? Dukkha?
Then, of course, Cat and Girl came to my rescue and cheered me right up. There’s some really deep truth there, I think.
I’ve been meaning to take pictures of stuff, but I’ve been getting home after dark, and last weekend R:tAG took the camera to PAX* . I especially wanted to take pictures for Ravelry, which is a social networking site for knitters that might divert knitting content from this blog. Probably not, though.
I’m pretty antisocial, as it turns out,** so Ravelry for me is more of an on-line project diary and occasional resource to answer the question “What does Garment X look like on a real person under real circumstances?” instead of a way to meet people and/or talk on forums.
I finished the Mystery Stole a while ago, by the way, but wanted to take pre- and post-blocking pictures. I am also wibbling over whether or not to add this to my large line-up of projects-to-make. I love it a lot, but I have a ridiculous number of things in the queue.
At next year’s GenCon, I hope, R:tAG will be releasing his game. So I’m planning my costume already (he might get one too). I just got my pattern in the mail, and coincidentally got a 40% off coupon from Joann’s,*** and also found additional incentive to finish really early by finding out about a Victorian cemetery walking tour coming up soon. Since we didn’t end up going to the Revolutionary Picnic, I’m going to try for this one. R:tAG might end up in something rented, though.
I’m not sure that the dress that I’m picturing, being more on the mourning/undead end of the spectrum, will be suitable for the Christmas Dickens Fair. Perhaps I could do something in dark red or purple or gray or green, which would be more versatile than the black that was in my head. Hmm. Maybe not dark red, though, as all the pictures from the long red steampunk coat show what that does to my colouring. Mind you, I was pretty warm.
I am also excited about possibly designing an Empire of Bone-themed knit lace shawl. There’re patterns out there for lace skulls, and bats, and generally gothic patterns so it should work. OK, dress first, shawl second.
* I didn’t go, but I probably should have. I can take or leave PAX itself, but the hotel at which R:tAG was staying was right next to Pike Place Market, and I could happily have spent a weekend there. Ah well, probably better for the budget that I didn’t go. R:tAG did bring me back about half a pound of smoked salmon. Yum!
** I know y’all are gasping in amazement, but it’s true!
*** Not the nicest fabric store (they have no woolen fabrics, for example, and are heavy on the quilting cottons and sparkly novelty stuff) but for my first attempt I think I want something fairly cheap and plain anyway.
I know I’ve used this song’s lyrics already. Twice. But damn, it’s so true.
So R:tAG’s brother and fambly were here, and we had a great time. Though trying to hit the highlights of the Bay Area in only five and a half days, while still eating and sleeping sufficiently to sustain life, was a challenge.
Most notable bits:
- The look on our 13-year-old nephew’s face after spinning a dentist’s “Wheel of Fortune” display at a local community fair, and instead of winning a toothpaste squeezer like everyone else (and which he’d actually been hoping for), winning the Grand Prize of a $500 tooth-whitening procedure.*
- Getting seriously sunburned on the right half of my body watching a lacrosse game in San Francisco when the tricksy tricksy fog decided to part. In about 15 minutes I looked like a Cheron variant.**
- My sinister in-laws dragging – yes, dragging! – us to an outlet mall and forcing us to spend lots of money on kitchen gadgets and discount clothes! We were helpless!
- Finding out that it’s not just me that gets really weirded out by the steepness of San Francisco’s hills. Seriously, you almost get dizzy after a while because of the discrepancy between the ground plane and the direction of gravity.
The steampunk costumes turned out well, I thought, and later that night, when Cenobyte and I were trying to go see a movie,*** a gentleman with gold teeth offered her $1,000 for her goggles. He produced an impressive bankroll lest we think he wasn’t serious, but Cenobyte declined (much to his confusion, I think).
We entered the costume contest, but didn’t win.**** I can’t argue; the winner (of our category and overall) did a replica of Queen Amidala’s outfit that was movie-quality. The closer you were, the more impressive it got. And the second place winner was pretty impressive also. *****
There were lots of goodies to be had on the dealers’ floor, and of course thousands of great games that I didn’t manage to play, and a few I did, and the usual stench of Indianapolis in the summer****** and a magnificent thunderstorm on Sunday night that made us very very happy. We miss thunderstorms.
And Stardust is really, really good. Go see it.
Oh, and it was R:tAG's and my eighth anniversary yesterday, so yay for us (does it seem like eight years to you?) So, a good couple of weeks. How ‘bout you?
* He gave it to me, bless his heart, since they weren’t staying long enough to use it. Tooth whitening? I am on my way to becoming completely assimilated by California. I suppose breast implants and hair extensions are next. Though a woman in our office just had extensions put in, with real hair, and now all I can think of when I look at her is “EEEEEE YOU’RE WEARING SOMEONE ELSE’S HAIR!”
** Hoo boy, the geek doesn’t even scrub off, does it?
*** We ended up going to the White Wolf party instead, at a rather cool industrial club that made me sort of nostalgic for PPM and where I told a punk with a 12” mohawk that he wasn’t a real libertarian. He was a great guy, and apparently quite involved in the punk scene (he’s the vocalist).
**** Thing I liked the most about the costume contest… there was Dr. Girlfriend, one of the Monarch’s henchmen, and Rusty Venture himself, and they all had come separately! Here’s a better picture of the last two.
***** And looking for pictures of us, I realized how much I didn’t see. This is a collection of links to collections of pictures that gives you some idea of the size of GenCon.
****** A bouquet of decomposing corpses, feces, and mildew, with a top note of urine. Downtown Indy is steam heated, which apparently means all the runoff of all the gutters gets blended, simmered, vaporized, and sent back to the surface via steaming manhole covers and gratings. There is a theory that GenCon moved to Indy because after walking downtown, entering a hall full of close-packed gamers is actually a nasal relief.
