aerinea_faerie

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I am on the Babycenter e-mail list, so I get weekly missives about parenting. They're generally fluff pieces and full of information I already know. Today included a poll called "What's the best thing about being a mom in today's world?" The answers in the poll were things like Men expected to share childcare responsibilities, Openness to different parenting philosophies, Gadgets and technology that make life easier, and More variety in family-oriented media. There were also things about shopping and online community.

They left out the actual answer.

The best thing about being a parent today is that outliving your children is rare. In the past, families could count on at least one child dying in infancy or early childhood. Disease, accident, and lack of medical technology were all contributors. I, personally, have never seen measles, mumps, pertussis, or polio. My daughter will likely never see chicken pox, a disease I have scars from. As a parent, I am free to spend most of my time worrying about her getting a suitable education (she started writing letters yesterday), good nutrition, and what video games in my collection I shouldn't play in front of her.

The best thing about being a parent today is being so far removed from a time where children died regularly that we can have petty flame wars about breast vs. bottle and other parenting decisions.

It's a shame that the wonders of scientific progress wasn't even mentioned, but it's pretty par for the course. Other people can go and vote saying that online shopping is the best thing about being a parent today. I will be grateful that, barring a freak accident, my daughter will reach adulthood with her mind and body intact.

I have a wonderful husband. It's been a while since he has done this, but he is taking our lovely daughter to visit her grandparents this weekend. I get to stay home, relax, work on neglected projects, and the like.

I think the first thing I'm going to do when he leaves is start working on doll clothes. I want to make some costume pieces for the dolls but I haven't had the time. I'll probably also work on the Wimshurst this weekend. As long as it doesn't require soldering, I can do it myself.

I know I'm a social person, but I am really looking forward to being alone.

I hate daylight-saving time. I hate having to switch the clocks, I hate how it messes with internal clocks, and I hate how it makes the sun not go down until after 9:00pm in high summer.

That is all.

Like my title says, things don't always go as planned. Tomorrow is the beginning of Wonder Con, and nothing that I was hoping would be put together by now is going to happen. Although I plan to dress up both Saturday and Sunday, I do not have anything new to wear to the convention. Plans for a day where I have Jaegers to command fell through. It looks like it will just be a regular convention. At least I have more tools to wear when I'm dressed as Agatha, and now I have a nice gold pocketwatch.

On the other hand, the Steampunk issue of Make arrived today, so I'll soon be gathering parts for my Whimshurst machine. I'll be able to have the buttons all the same on one of my outfits instead of the cheat I did to make it look good. And I already have tickets to see Abney Park in March. So there are good things.

Na ja, it balances I guess.

I am a doll collector. My dresser in my room is absolutely covered with 12" fashion dolls, mostly by the Bleeding Edge doll company. I have a few Barbies, almost all of them Silver Label. But my favourite dolls, my pride and joy, are displayed in the living room. They are a pair of those Asian ball-jointed dolls, 60cm height, sometimes people (erroneously) refer to the type of dolls they are as Dollfies. They aren't, although they are currently wearing clothes by the company that makes the Dollfie and Super Dollfie ball-jointed dolls. Mine are actually by a Korean company called Soom. They are a cute couple, and I like dressing them and posing them. I've been resisting the temptation to start photographing them, but I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to hold out.

I just got my boy doll recently; fewer than two weeks ago. The interesting thing is that once he arrived I began to lose interest in my smaller fashion dolls. I don't really play with my fashion dolls like I can with my couple, and they get kind of repetitive after a while. Granted, I can only play with my larger dolls when Evelyn is sleeping. She's developing quite the fascination with my dolls in general, and I just don't want her poking at my expensive dolls.

I'm starting to realise that not only do I have an urge to collect tings, what I always wanted for myself as a girl was something similar to my mother's dolls I played with while visiting my grandparents. She had only a few dolls, but they had so many clothes and had a storage trunk. You could still kind of do that with Barbies while I was growing up, but it was already beginning to turn into the crazy collecting frenzy and one doll/one outfit thing you see now with all the various fashion dolls out there. Yes, you can still buy clothes for them, but there just doesn't seem to be the variety that there was when my mother had them. I'm not even sure if the trunks even exist anymore. I will honestly admit that, given the choice, I would probably have been happy buying just one Bleeding Edge Goth doll, the first one I purchased, and then just bought the outfits all my other dolls are wearing. It's probably one of the things I found so compelling about the American Girl's collection when I was younger. You buy one doll, and then deck her out with ridiculous amounts of accessories, outfits, furniture: the works.

I may not actually be done collecting dolls, but I think I'm going to be putting more effort towards the ones I have now. I think that will make me happier, and will take up less space.

Once, back when Hot Topic was still occasionally a good place to shop, I bought a wonderful light jacket there. It was short, fit well, had lacing on the side back seams and the sleeves, and was perfect for those San Francisco days where it's too warm for a real coat but too cold to go out in just a t-shirt. It was my favourite jacket, and I had it for years.

Well, like anything that is worn on a nearly daily basis for years, it began to wear out. This was about two years ago, around the same time I started thinking about doing Girl Genius cosplay. The decorative lacing had faded to brown, and some of the seams were starting to pop. The fabric was wearing thin in places. It had reached the end of its lifespan, more or less. So I decided to do something before it really fell apart.

I took a seam ripper to it.

That may not seem like it makes a lot of sense, but I was able to recreate the pattern for it by doing that. I learned how it had been constructed, and now could make as many as I wanted, and even vary the design. The first jacket I made with it was the green jacket I use for my green Agatha costume. I'm now working on a second jacket made from the pattern. This one will be brown with the side back lacing added. Eventually, I may make a black duplicate of the original, but the pattern is wonderfully versatile. Until then, I will just have fun making what I will.

Yes, I have been a quite one lately. I really can't think much of what I want to write.

Let's see...
mobenloft and I are talking about trying to make the Edwardian Ball at least when Abney Park are playing because they were so much fun at Steam Powered.

I am trying to collect the pattern pieces I need to make a natural-form era bustle dress. I plan to use the base patterns for a few variations, but not all of the planned ones may get made. One for a Christmassy one for winter Gaskells, one for a general use, and one that looks like the dress Agatha was sewn into in Sturmhalten before The Other was beamed into her head.

Evelyn is showing signs that she may be starting to read. Actually read, not just memorising her books.

Got a subscription to Make Magazine. Plan on doing some building soon. Muahaha!

I think that's it for now.

So, I'm off for the Thanksgiving holiday. We're spending it in Fresno, which, unfortunately, makes things more complicated than they need to be. I know I'll be helping my grandmother cook, so I'll be busy all of tomorrow.

The rest of the plan is up in the air, but I'm pretty sure we'll be trying to go home on Friday. I want to be home before Sunday so I can get the Advent stuff set up.

Just a quick Halloween post. This is one of the few days that dressing as oddly as I like to is thought of as completely normal. Evie will be having her second Trick-Or-Treating this year, done up in Benicia so that she can easily spend the night at her Great Aunt's. This means that we will be without the little one at the convention on Saturday.

Sunday will include the little one.

It's September. Fog season is more or less over, which means that the inland pressure that was keeping us cool here on the coast is gone now. This is the hottest it has been since June, but it's still cooler than Fresno. Fresno is still getting to the upper 90s/low 100s, while Oakland may hit 90 today. Berkeley, with temperatures usually closer to SF's, is closer to 80. To me, it feels excessively warm.

Although I don't want to make this mostly about sewing, I do have a lot of projects on the horizon. I need to decide if I'm buying or making Evelyn's Halloween costume this year. I'm going to make my first attempt at a Natural Form era bustle dress to wear to the Christmas Gaskells ball. I have some decorations to make for Christmas, and then I also want to make at least two more outfits that will work as Agatha costumes for Wonder Con. Plus costumes for Chris.

Ah, well. Better start that all in soon.

So, the party actually happened on Saturday, and I was working on costumes up until the very last minute. They still weren't done. We wore them anyways and made the birthday girl very happy. Once Chris updates his website, I'll be able to post pictures.

On a similar note, Chris has put up a section in his website's galleries for just costumes I've made.

I'm hoping that soon I'll feel relaxed enough to start writing up various ramblings and thoughts that go through my head instead of just talking sewing. Or not saying anything.

Only one bad thing happened at Comic Con; my wonderful, beautiful goggles began to fall apart!  By the end of Friday the magnifier was refusing to stay on, and my clockwork gear had fallen off.  Luckily, Thomas, who had the most intense Steampunk outfit at the whole convention and the apparent maker of just about everybody's goggles, was there.  He had taken the order for my goggles at Comic Con last year and has improved his techniques since then, probably because the man had been making Steampunk gear nonstop since.  Even the Foglios, who had been selling their own sets of goggles own sets by him.

He was very understanding of my predicament, told me not to worry and to bring him my goggles before I left on Sunday.  I did just that.  He took my information as though I was buying a pair fresh, told me that he'd be making me a brand new set of goggles, and not to be offended that he was going to put my old pair up for sale.  Which he did, and they sold before I had even left.  Wow.

Comic Con has always been a good meeting-people-I-admire convention, even more so than the Creation Entertainment (Star Trek and X-Files) conventions I used to go to as a teenager.  Unlike Creation cons, Comic Con has many professionals just wandering around or sitting at easily reached booths.  If the person you want to meet is a little on the obscure side, it's even easier.  This year was no exception.

I, of course, spent more than my fair share of time hanging around the Studio Foglio booth.  I did the same thing last year and was disappointed to find that Kaja did not remember me.  Apparently she was trying to hide the fact she was ill during Comic Con 2007.  But she did remember me from the photo Cheyenne took of my family at WonderCon.  She insisted on giving me a ribbon on Preview Night, even though I was only really wearing my goggles on my favourite hat.  Granted, the combination of Perkygoth, Victorian riding hat, and Steampunk goggles really does give the impression of Steampunk Finery, even when it isn't.

I got to meet Rebecca Guay, who is one of my favourite fantasy artists.  She is prolific in game artwork, but the first place I saw her work was in Cricket Magazine.  I was surprised to discover that Cricket was the first professional job she got, even before WotC hired her for Magic:The Gathering.  I even have a copy of the first issue she was published in.  January 1993.  Story: "The Spider and the Prince" by Mies Bouhuys.  I'm going to be looking out for her at future conventions and I'll bring that issue.  I've been planning on having her sign an issue of Cricket for a while, now I know which one.

I also got to meet Phil Plait, someone who doesn't really have anything to do with comics or gaming but is really cool anyways.  He's probably my favourite science and skepticism oriented blogger.  He's fun and funny.  He reminds me of some of my best teachers, al of whom were positively in love with the subject they taught.  It's obvious from his blog that he loves Astronomy.  I really thought that the only chance I was going to have to see him was right after the panel he was part of about Science in Science Fiction.  That was on Thursday.  But on Friday he was wandering around the convention taking pictures and came up to me and Gen, who was dressed as Kida that day.  I got to chat with him more, and probably lost Gen in the conversation.  On Sunday he came by the Studio Foglio booth while looking for books to get for his daughter.  He decided to hold off on buying any Girl Genius that day, but I really hope he looks at it and likes it.

Now, the crazy stuff that happened at the convention mostly centered around Studio Foglio.  The Webcomics area tends to be a lower traffic spot compared to the high-decible craziness that surrounds Hasbro, SciFi Network, Warner Bros, and a bunch of other loud media that only has a tangental, if any, connection to comic books.  The crowds can be really thick there, and I don't like excessive crowds.  Add to that the fact that I really, really love webcomics, and I'm more than happy to park myself around Studio Foglio for most of the day.  On Thursday I met Gen, who was dressed as Maxim.  I don't remember if she figured out that I was the Agatha with a baby or if I told her, but we began talking about costumes, Girl Genius, what day I had planned to wear my costume, and whether or not she was willing to dress as Maxim on Friday because I wasn't planning on dressing up more than once.

On Friday, we had so much fun posing for pictures together and talking that she was able to convince me to dress up again on Sunday.

On Saturday, Chris and I took Evelyn to the Wild Animal Park to avoid Saturday crowds at the convention and to spend some time with our daughter.  Up until then, we had been sending her to the daycare at the convention.

Sunday was great.  I didn't get to spend as much time exploring the convention as I had originally planned, but Gen and I did act out the scene where Agatha knocks Maxim's hat off in front of the Studio Foglio booth.  And posed for pictures.  And had a lot of fun.  And talked WonderCon.

I loved dressing up as Agatha and plan to do more costumes for the character, perhaps even having three days worth of them by February.  And maybe I'll have the Initiate's Costume that Zeetha makes her wear for next year's Comic Con.  Then I can spend a day vaguely comfortable.