aerinea_faerie

Theophilus Carter, my tiny Mad hatter doll, got a cute little Steampunk outfit today. It's super cute.

( Pictures here )

So, I've been bad at updating about sewing projects lately. I recently finished a few things, mostly due to Oktoberfest and Halloween.

( Pictures ahead! )

I finished Pride & Prejudice& Zombies yesterday.  I was disappointed with it.  I may post a full review later, but I need the time to sit with my thoughts.

I'm listening to the YouTubes of the things in my dad's random 10 from his blog.  He got 9/10 YouTube linkups today, which means it was more of the mainstream-ish music he listens to.  I will say that live performances by real Punk bands are awesome, and he got both The Clash and The Undertones on this list.

I'm finally reading Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, so I'll be able to talk about that soon.

I've come to the conclusion that I can't go anywhere where there is both a dance group and participating dancing without the dance group trying to recruit me.  We went to Schroeder's again, this time with Evie being babysat elsewhere, and apparently there's now an attempt to recruit me into a Bavarian dance club starting.

I'm starting some new doll clothes projects, this time focusing on Eva.  She's the most difficult one to sew for because she has such an unusual body.

I have a Ren Faire this weekend, so anyone who wants to see me dance can try to make it Northward to Folsom and see it.

I'll probably just pull out some older outfits for Halloween Gaskells this year.  I don't really have the inspiration for anything particularly cool.

I think that's all for now.

I went to one of those doll meetups yesterday, and, as always, had a great time.  It's nice to get out and talk with people, and it's really nice to get together with other collectors and be able to have conversations about whatever while taking pictures of our dolls.

The meetup was at a nice, large park, so my husband and daughter came along.  Evie got to run all over and play while I got some much needed social time in.  She id come up and look at the dolls, and even cuddled little Theophilus (he's her favourite).  She really likes dolls.  I'm pretty sure she should have her own little doll, but I'm worried about the resin.  I was told about dolls that could work that still had the customizeability of the BJDs, but were made out of less brittle materials, but I don't remember what they were. :(

I do think it would be nice to have a dolly Stitch 'n Bitch, but I'm pretty sure that if I hosted one it would have to be small.  It would be a nice mini-meetup thing during the rainy season.

Today is a rest day, getting myself back together after the Pryankster's first year at the Ardenwood Shakespeare Festival.  I'm not entirely certain of this was the first year for this festival or not, but it was certainly interesting.  Right as we were arriving or our first dance set of the Faire on Saturday, it began to rain.  This was just after we had decided that the stage we were assigned to dance on was unsound.  So we danced under the trees by the picnic tables.  Once the rains were gone for the weekend, we continued to dance there and kicked up a lot of dust.

This Faire didn't get as horrifically hot as others, partially due to it being September, but the humidity made the warm temperatures rather awful.  Sunday was better, but still very humid.  I think I'm starting to really prefer the Steampunk thing.

I'm feeling lazy, so just follow the link to get to dolly pictures and story.  I don't want to go through to trouble of posting all of it here.

www.kourier.net/pictures.asp

Enjoy!

It's a silly photostory about one of my dolls, so you can skip it if you like.

( Dolly Pictures Here! )

What I need is one or two hours a day to myself. Just that little bit of time, preferably during daylight.

I need that time. Time to work on sewing projects like outfits for myself and my husband, or to make clothes for dolls. Or read. Just read a book. I miss books.

It is very difficult to do this when you're doing the stay-at-home-mom thing. Yes, when she was smaller she'd take naps during the day and I would get stuff done then. Now she's very demanding of my attention and doing things like reading, sewing, writing, or anything else gets pushed aside. She should be taking naps still, but doesn't.

We're trying to re-implement naps so I get my time, and I should start calling around about day cares so I can get some time back.

*sigh*

Just last weekend my husband and I went to a Michael's craft store to get a dowel so I could put a clothes rack into a Felicity's Clothes Press for hanging the rapidly growing collection of doll clothes I have up. While we were there we looked at the Halloween stuff they had up, and a little at the small, mostly unfinished crafts, Christmas section they had up. Chris said, "These things are nice, but isn't it a little early for Christmas stuff?"

I replied, "We're in a crafts store. It takes a lot longer to make something for a holiday than to just buy something. I want to get the fabric and trims for making our stockings no later than mid October." I feel strongly that craft stores and fabric stores can get away with selling seasonal items much earlier than other shops.

It's an interesting thing to realize. Fabric shops put out patterns for Halloween costumes in July and Christmas home decoration patterns in August or September, and that's okay. My mother once bought a tree skirt and Christmas ornament kit from one of these stores where everything had to be hand embroidered and beaded before finishing. Not having something like that available until after Thanksgiving could easily mean that it won't be ready until the following year's Christmas, even if you wait until the 4th Sunday of Advent to put up your tree.

On the other hand, I find the Spirit Stores opening up at the beginning of September to be both cool and sad, as well as most retailers pushing the Halloween stuff to put up Christmas decorations before the end of October to be disgraceful. What is the point? Michael's and JoAnn have the excuse that the things you buy (should) require effort on the part of the purchaser before use. (I also hope that if any doll companies plan on having Halloween dolls that they are put up for purchase soon so that they are more likely to arrive in time for the holiday.)

I don't like being oversaturated with holiday imagery well before the actual holiday, no matter how much I adore Halloween (I have some Halloween stuff I use all year, but that has more to do with Goth than anything else) or Christmas. I do hope that the recession helps retailers to push back their release dates for certain seasonal goods, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this year may be the worst as they try to squeeze every last drop out of consumers.

It is really, really easy to develop an America-centric worldview, even when you are involved in hobbies like mine. Granted, mucking around on websites where the language choices are Korean, Japanese, and Engrish helps, but I wasn't looking at dolls when I was reminded that America isn't the center of the universe. I was looking at patterns.

I was looking at modern dress patterns on the various big-name pattern websites, trying to find something that I might actually want to use. I wasn't going through the companies in any kind of order, and I had decided to look at Burda. In the back of my mind, I am sure that I was thinking, "I've had such bad luck looking at American companies, let's look at the big European one for a bit," but it wasn't quite registering.

So, I'm looking at dress patterns. Ordinary, modern dress patterns. Suddenly, I'm seeing something I didn't expect. Two patterns for making a Dirndl. I find myself thinking, did I get into costumes by mistake? I don't remember there being dirndls in the costumes here before. I only remember seeing them on Folkwear, not any of the major sites. Hell, the closes thing I've seen to one of these on the major sites has been in the Halloween section for making sexy shepherdess costumes.

That's when I remember that Burda is a German pattern company, and some women, mostly in the tourist industry, still wear the dirndl. I felt stupid and told myself that it made perfect sense that a German pattern company would have more than one pattern for a traditional German outfit, and might even think of it as a normal thing to wear, as opposed to a costume.

Interestingly, it looks kinda comfortable. I might have to get one to play with.

We finally got our Comic-Con pictures up! Between the two of us, we got over 300 photos, most of them having been taken by my husband.

http://www.mobenloft.com/pictures.asp?pictureID=107

Steampunk Gallery:
http://www.mobenloft.com/subpictures.asp?subPictureID=160

My doll pictures are here:
http://www.mobenloft.com/subpictures.asp?subPictureID=158

And I'm really tired. I still have Con Fatigue, and I've been home since Monday night. I need more sleep. Ugh. So, in no particular order on the days, here is a short report.

Comic-Con was awesome, as always. Even on days I dressed in more casual Steampunk-light, I had my picture taken, but costumed days were the best. On Sunday, I wore my green Agatha costume and had minions. I liked having several people dressed as Jägermonsters running around, as well as a Zeetha. I also was interviewed by a guy dressed as Torgo from Manos, the Hands of Fate, who even had the theme music playing around him. I think that may have been one of the more awesome parts of the convention for me.

Saturday was the day of the big Steampunk meetup and panel. The room was too small and I felt lucky to get into the panel at all. The big photo shoot we did after was also a lot of fun. I want to go to another Steampunk convention.

Thursday was a good day for starting to pick stuff up, and I found a set of Re-Ment miniatures at a booth that had some parts that would work for little Theophilus and his tea party table. I bought four boxes and got three of the sets that work for me, but I still need some other things. I also ended up giving my husband a lot of permission to buy Transformers that he wanted.

Friday was a Cosplay day for me, and I was in my Agatha Paper Doll costume. We got the ticket needed to stand in line at the Hasbro Toy Shop that morning and Chris stood in the line, not only to by the toys we wanted for ourselves, but also to pick up things for David Willis, who draws "Shortpacked" and other comics. For ourselves, we bought two of the exclusive My Little Ponys (one for me, one for Evie), and the Soundwave exclusive they had.

Sunday was not only the day I had minions, it was also the day of the doll meet. I was originally planning to bring all four of my dolls to the meet, but by Sunday morning, I was so tired and didn't want to have to keep track of a rolling suitcase all day, so I only brought Theophilus because he is tiny. I ran into some friends I never get to see at the meetup and was happy to ask how they did at the Masquerade the night before. They had won yet another award this year.

I'll have pictures up later, hopefully.

Well, it's time to get ready for Comic-Con. I need to finish packing. I didn't get any new costumes made because all my money vanished into dolls! Maybe next time.

I look forward to seeing people there. I will be bringing dolls, but I won't be carrying all of them with me each day.

Back in February I said that I was done with buying dolls for the time being and that I would instead work on getting things for the dolls I have. That didn't last long.

( More with Pictures )

So I go a little crazy when I'm waiting for packages to arrive. There are several things that will probably arrive this week. First, there is a resin kit coming for my husband. Second, one of my dolls has shipped. I'm hoping she arrives in the next few days. I'm also expecting an outfit by Dollheart, and it shipped yesterday from a store in Canada. Then, there's a handmade bound mini copy of Alice in Wonderland that should have been sent out this morning.

So now I'm spending every day all anxious waiting for the Mail Carrier to come by. I think I'll be happiest once everything is here.

My dad gave me a copy of "Entertainment" by Gang of Four for my birthday. It is awesome. For an album as old as I am, it sounds extremely innovative and fresh.

He also gave me a collection of soul music and a bunch of music I listened to when I was young. He picked a lot of amazing stuff. It has a band called Bram Tchaikovsky on it, which is perfect power pop.

I will admit that my dad is probably the biggest influence on my taste in music, and I don't mind this at all.

Take the Quiz here!

Don't know where that comes from.

These pictures were actually taken after getting home from my first Doll Meetup.
( Pictures Below )

My daughter was at her great-aunt's on Saturday, allowing Chris and I to work on the Wimshurst machine. Chris was going to be boring out some holes in the cut-down staircase balusters so the fiberglass axles would have somewhere to sit. There was only one problem; his drill bit set didn't have a bit of the right diameter to make the holes. We needed to go out to get a new bit.

( More below )