Oh hello. I kind of vanished there for a bit, didn't I? August was pure madness - new job, new game, two cons for which I did WAY TOO MUCH OF THE SEWING WORK FOR. Flakefriends are not getting free labor from me again after this year. I wasn't posting much because I think it would have just been like the work 'fuck' in h1 like three hundred times. It was rough going but the end result was pretty awesome.

Anime Evolution 2010
Kumoricon 2010

Kumoricon photos will be on my own gallery eventually - still trying to figure out a Gallery2 upload module for Linux that works, as the F-Spot one just....crashes F-Spot with no errors. AE was way too hot and I didn't do much con stuff, but I got in for free for helping with an event so it was fine anyway. Kumoricon was loads of fun, even if the drive was waaaay too long. But it was really awesome to meet some net people IRL.

Bought stuff at both the cons (of course) - two Bleach doujin and the Color Bleach English release at AE, and then at Kumoricon I bought a pile of Peacemaker Kurogane manga and....a sexy anime lady bodypillow. Mostly because it was the Major and she is awesome. Also she doesn't have the 'no means yes' face that most of those pillows have, though she does have Masamune Shirow's strange boob drawing habits.

Since getting home, I have mostly been getting caught up on gaming stuff and getting used to more hours at work, and trying to get the house cleaned up so it looks like humans live here. This involved a $180 ~IKEA adventure~ today, but I finally have space for all my books and don't have to store costumes in plastic bags on the floor. Still a long way to go, but it's a start!

Because the rest of my life can be summed up as Book-Off is awesome, and I have spent way too much time playing Pokemon Diamond this week. So, first off, stuff I want to do I forgot to mention in my last post -

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl - Dawn: Because she's adorable and sometimes my inner twelve-year-old girly-girl needs to get out sometimes. I am not sure if I'm cute enough for this, but damnit, I will try anyway. This may involve Jon doing like...Empoleon gijinka, because I love my giant death penguin.

Tales of the Abyss: Jade Curtiss for me, Dist for Jon, because he does the creepy smile really well and is all gangly. Sadly, there is no good way to tote around a giant armchair at a con, but it'd be fun to be snarky all day.

I have also wound up volunteering to help other people with cosplay, some of it in return for favors. So I've got Toboe pants and wig to make, in return for a cute Elena and Sougyo no Kotowari (yesssssss I have teeny adorable zanpakuto. ONLY ONE, but one is cute enough). I'm also helping Yana and Charlene with their Loveless cosplay - Ritsuka and Soubi - because I like helping my friends be awesome.

And entirely unrelated to cosplay, but totally nerdy anyway - I am going to make myself a Minazuki backpack. It will be the epitome of ugly-cute, and it will be very fuzzy. I'm still trying to decide if it should be messanger bag style, or like...one of those single-shoulder strap backpacks, with the wings as straps. I may have to do a muslin mock-up and decide. My one requirement is that it be big enough to hold my laptop.

I've edited like 90% of my Sakuracon photos, but the internet is being fussy again (and I think 'fussy' is the best word here, really) so they won't go up until this weekend. I also prep-weeded most of my garden today, hooray!

Near-Future Stuff
(Don't want to say 'AE stuff' because I have more plans than there are days of the con)
-Shinra spruce-up - no shoe-failure, Elena wig that does not look like Lady Gaga reject, bonus Papa Shinra and Scarlet outfits. May need emergency Seattle day trip planning to engage in Dark Nation rescue mission (as it appears he did not make it all the way home with me, cry)
-Summoner Yuna spruce-up - Some little things on various pieces, making a new head for the staff, boots that don't pinch my toes, trim the wig down
-Bleach - ZANPAKUTO, making peasant shoes that don't destroy feet (and can survive damp - I made the mistake of putting the damp waraji in a plastic bag to pack and then forgetting about them and I discovered today that they were fuzzy :<). Possibly include new people in our mad Bleach cosplay adventures, but that's up in the air.
-Wonder Chef and Dark Chef - All new! I have Wonder Chef fabric and may go ahead and cut out the pants and vest this weekend. I look forward to building six foot tall forks
-Advent Children Rufus - Needs suit fabric so I can actually make the suit, Jellova

Far-Future Stuff/Brainstorming
-Integra - have fabric! Have no desire to try to make it for AE though because I'm a little burnt out on suits
-Braska and Auron - have been tossing the idea around with Jon for a while, because he'd make a cute young!Auron. Really intricate, though, so I'm not sure when I'll have the time for it.
-Nanoha something or other - Maybeeee? I love the character designs - would probably go for Hayate or Signum myself, but again, intricate.

-Bought X Infinity (finally) and the Bleach SOULs because I am weak and they took credit card. We'll see what damage I do tomorrow
-Reno + Rude and Ukitake + Kyouraku wandering the con together. Person: "Can I get a photo of you two?" Us: "Uhhh. Which two?"
-Informal survey says more people want hugs from Ukitake than from Rufus - but not by much
-Contrary to what canon tells us, Hitsugaya loves getting candy from Ukitake. It may have helped that I had both chocolate mini eggs and wintergreen Lifesavers.
-In keeping a little more with canon, Hitsugaya appears to enjoy wintergreen Lifesavers more than chocolate
-Early in the afternoon, I was hanging around outside talking about Aizen being a troll with some other Bleach cosplayers (and admiring Nanao's hollowed-out-book carrying case), when some random people came up behind me and startled me by tapping me on the shoulder. I thought this was just random con lulz, until cut to the Bleach photoshoot, and the same random people go over to the other good Ukitake cosplayer and startle her (she actually shrieked), and then say "We snuck up on someone we thought was you earlier, but it was like, an actual dude." I think this counts as a win?
-Other me gave me bubblegum! I'm almost tempted to just keep it forever as a memento
-OMG A KAIEN SHOWED UP. I WAS SO HAPPY. Other me was happy too (like all of our interactions were very BDR, where I enjoy playing with doubles)
-Bleach photoshoot was otherwise kind of fail, because organization, what organization.
-Awesome cosplay of the day: Queen of Blades, Artemisia, KATEN KYOKOTSU.
-Delicious Cheesecake Factory dinner :3
-At aforementioned dinner, there were two guys at the table next to us. When one went to the washroom, the other slid over to tell us that it was his friend's birthday, and that he really liked our cosplay, and would we do a little something for him? So we got a napkin, wrote 'Happy Birthday!' on it and signed it as the Turks and Rufus, and then, as the two of them left the restaurant, Reno ran out, slung an arm around his shoulder, said 'Yo!' and dropped the napkin in his hand. Apparently the look on his face was priceless.

Part of my brain is asking 'why is that I always want to just blog lots when I have tons of shit to do?', but I know the answer is that tons of shit to do = tons of shit to blog about. I have done ridiculous amounts of handsewing over the last few days, and somewhat amazingly actually have gotten most of it done. I think there's a few little bits on the suits, and I need to do the handsewing sections on the hakama, but that is all! I also ran out of suit-thread again. I think I may have passed the 1.5 km mark on 'amount of thread used', which means I have to not sleep in 'til five tomorrow like I did today (note for my purposes 'tomorrow' = 'the time after one REM sleep cycle from now') so I can go to Fabricland.

Jon and I also played more Tales of the Abyss, and while the game's hardcore railroading is getting old, I actually finally see why people like Luke. Hooray, character development. And Jade continues to be an amazing magnificent bastard :') I have a soft spot for that character type - although only when they're good guys. In out-and-out baddies it just annoys me (see: Aizen).

Only one progress photo for today - Kyouraku's pink monstrosity, which is very big, very pink, and I hope will look less like a bath robe when it's on top of kimono and the other haori.

Read More?

Media Center: I ended up having to ditch Mythbuntu because ATI is annoyingly lazy and decided to stop updating their legacy Linux drivers (the legacy Windows drivers? Updated last month), and this graphics card was awesome in 2005. So it's WinXP pro with XMBC, which I still have to configure to use an external player because the built-in XBMC runs all the decoding off the processor, and this processor was pretty good in 2005, which means MKV files are freezing after two minutes. I did get the TV-out configured, and set up file sharing within the network, at least. I have to talk the landlord unblocking router ports if I want remote file access, but I need to make the set-up way more secure first because this isn't Linux any more and Windows Firewall is a steaming pile of shit. Unfortunately the modem for the house network is possibly in the slow process of dying - it's started randomly not letting computers connect, regardless if it's a wired or wireless connection, so...lol :< The new tower and my roommate's laptop seem to be the worst victims.

-Whenever I have internet again: patch WoW!
-Whenever I have internet again: accquire this week's Bleach filler crack
-????: Get caught up on tags :(

Cosplay:
Turks - Three suits are at over 95% done, which is to say they need undercollars, pants cuffs, belt loops, and a metric ton of ironing. Elena is lagging behind, but I'm bringing it in to work on during lecture tomorrow so it should be caught up by tomorrow night.

-Friday: Acquire cardstock for ID badges and business cards at Staples
-Friday: Dressew for extra buttons
-Friday: FINISH HANDSEWING OMG
-Saturday: Attempt to style Reno wig
-Sunday: Final fitting to make sure I didn't destroy anything
-????: Start Scarlet
-Whenever the other wigs come: Elena and Scarlet wig styling

Bleach - Haori are mostly done - still need to do the collar handsewing on the 8th division one. I did get the collars done on the white kimono, but not the black ones, and I still need to do the sleeve openings on both. I did however get my Ukitake wig cut and styled - first attempt at bangs was so-so, so I brushed them out and am letting the slightly more gravity defying ones dry right now.

-Thursday: Sew down black kimono collars. Maaaaybe haori too if I have time.
-Friday: Raid dollar store for something appropriate for hakama backboards. Also possibly rope.
-Friday: Dressew to get fabric for pink haori
-Friday: Hakama time /o/ One whole one, and then mine needs ties and finishing
-Saturday: Pink haori! Inbetween letting Reno's spikes dry, of course.
-????: Acquire tabi and hat somewhere. (Richmond?)
-????: Make waraji (I have a tutorial!)

School Stuff: Good marks on my two papers I got back, which only sort of makes up for how shit my participation marks are going to be. They did finally give me my minor, though. Other than that - school, don't talk to me about school :<

-Thursday: Study like made for midterm on Friday
-Friday: Ace midterm!
-Friday: Term topic and tentative bibilography for children's lit class (AAAAAH IDK WHAT TO DO), submit by 4pm
-Monday: Bioethics paper for Tuesday

Awesome things today:
-Getting sewing done
-Beautiful weather
-Wearing my XKCD shirt
-Sushi and teriyaki for lunch
-Oneshotting an entire motorcade of security goons with one spell

Also, apropos of my last post:

J: oh, y'know my idea for the Reno slap thing?
J: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p89mUV3JhFA
The Momijizukamori:XD
J: C'mon, it's a good idea
The Momijizukamori: It is XD
J: Start with clips of FF7 females, then other FF females, and spiral out from there till we put in the really ridiculous ones
The Momijizukamori: XD

Dear con-goers,
No matter how much you look like a given Turk naturally (see: Tseng-boyfriend), getting up and putting on some random navy suit you bought for like graduation or whatever does not constitute good cosplay. Ever. Seriously, I am sick of seeing shitty closet-cosplay Turks on the internet. My esteemed Turks (who will not be shitty because /I/ am in charge here) will probably have to keep me from throttling people at Sakuracon.

In gaming news, all I can say is holy shit guys, we're in the future. Isak and Varus, being mages, are of course poking and prodding at everything to see how it works and Isak is going 'Death is free again? Whoa'. This is going to be awesome.

Classes start tomorrow and I am still waitlisted for two of mine aaaaagh.

So, started the day kind of unhappy because Crazy Buckle Vest is still at an impasse, and I haven't recieved a shipping notice for the fingerless gloves I bought on Friday, and Canada Post has been hella slow lately, but I went out to Value Village in search of shoes for Uranus, and came back with many things!

-First and foremost, I did actually find the perfect pair of boots to cover for Uranus - pair of three-inch stiletto heel, just-short-of-midcalf brown leather boots. Really nice, I almost feel guilty about the fact that I'm going to be gluing blue satin all over them.

-Movies! Because I realized it's actually cheaper to buy the $2 VHS tapes there than to rent a DVD. Grabbed Galaxy Quest, To Wong Foo, Terminator (which I have never seen!), the Star Trek 25th anniversery special (it looks to be cheesy, but hopefully awesomely so), and The Secret of Nimh (my childhoooood)

-Books! Which I can get for free from the library, but they had a few I actually wanted to own - Abhorsen, Angel of Darkness, and then a copy of the Moosewood Cookbook from the mid-90s and a bartending guide from 2004

-And, last but not least, a shot glass chess set. Bought it for the sheer WTF factor because it was only $8 - not sure it will ever actually used to play chess, as, to quote Jon, "After I lost about four pawns I think I'd just give up and drink the king," but it's still pretty awesome.

I had a long epic post I composed in my head during work today, but then I got home and was too tired to actually type it up, so instead, brief cosplay ranting - Rufus's Crazy Buckle Vest may in fact drive me crazy. First the straps were too narrow (I failed to account for the super heavy satin eating like a good quarter inch of width along the seam), and then I made new ones and now these are too wide for the buckles I have. It makes me want to scream and throw things in frustration, though I think the saner plan is to just put the thing down and go to bed.

Posted mostly for the edification of Mara-cookie, who understands how I feel about these things, but also because eeee fancy fabric. So. Fabric I've bought so far for AC!Rufus (yes, I am going to make the absurd pants):

- 2 yards of black cotton/linen blend
- 2 yards of white pure linen
- 5 5/8 yards of ivory tricotine wool
- 1 yard of heavy black satin
- 1 yard of heavy black polyester lining

It turns out AC!Rufus's suit jacket has a subtle white-on-white pinstripe - so subtle that you can only see it in a five second shot in the high-def version of AC. I decided that there wasn't any real way of capturing that in the real world (if the pinstripe is there it's going to be really obvious), not to mention that finding a fabric like that would basically be impossible, so I am skipping out on it, though it makes my accuracy-minded soul burn. I also think I'm going to do a very narrow zipper like the Turk suits have in the interests of preserving my own sanity (the jacket appears to have no fasteners at all in the few clear shots of it)

First week back at work = madness. The department manager is on vacation, so of course that's the cue for everything to go wrong - suppliers screwing up orders, people pulling no-shows for shifts, etc. Four days a week with two eight am shifts (meaning six am wake-ups) is hard to get used to, too, but I keep reminding myself of all the awesome stuff I will finally have the money for.

On the cosplay front, the bodysuit for Uranus is basically done - just need to hem the neckline and add snaps to attach the collar with, and then decide if I want to attach the bows permanently or make them removable as well. Then it is accessory time \o/

Also, my washing machine picked tonight to flood over (well, more accurately, the drain for the washing machine flooded, not the machine itself). GG, life.

Stuff for AE, mostly, as that is next in line.

Super Sailor Uranus (which I have been working on all week)
-Back bow, collar and choker are all done
-Skirt is lined and ironed but not pleated and attached
-Front bow needs little heart charm, otherwise done
-Have (hideously expensive) leotard fabric, must find a store that actually carries Green Pepper or Kwik Sew patterns
- Boots and gloves - not started. Couldn't find any good base shoes for less than $30 at Payless, so it's thrift store time

Rufus
-Must solve wrinkly fabric issue QQ
-Black glove still MIA (if I have to buy a third pair of those I will be angry - first pair fell victim to mold in sketchy basement suite)
-Must acquire stuffed black panther to transform into Dark Nation (Jon finally solved the 'cat or dog?' Dark Nation debate - the answer is 'displacer beast')
-Shotgun - discover who has power tools I can borrow >___>
-Order blue contacts now that I know precisely how blind I am
-Low Priority - buy a real black turtleneck (while Rufus wearing TB!Subaru's shirt amuses me, it means I can't do any jacketless photos without looking silly), sew matching vest (Three-piece suit yeaaaaah)

Leon
-Buy a new leg holster buckle
-See: gloves for Rufus
-Belt pouches? Probably too poor for this summer, though
-chest strap and and knife sheath for the shoulder holster
-fake guns that don't look like crap (again, probably too poor XD)

Also, I am totally wearing Rufus to this because Rufus is awesome and classy and would totally go to fancy concerts with his bodyguard.