Balticon, Swimming, Etsy and Kickstarter, and Stuffses

So this past week was a big one for William! Memorial Day weekend is our annual geek fest. Balticon is a local convention for all things geek. They've got lots of panels on costuming, the latest scientific developments, writing, readers discussions, movie screenings, and of course the masquerade. It was great to bust out my costume wardrobe though, and to actually fit into them again! And for the first time I didn't have to make a new costume in order to have enough outfits to fill the entire weekend

I bust out the plunderhosen again, and they got several admirers from the historical reenactment crowd. Best of all though, William didn't puke on them! haha.

Seth carried him around quite a bit of the time for the first couple of days. William really enjoys being in the bjorn. :)

We also took him swimming at the hotel. As you know, he loathes bathtime as much as the Wicked Witch of the West hates water. Pool time was quite so bad and while he didn't flip out, he wasn't quite sure about the whole getting wet thing. He was pretty happy when we took him out and he got to sit all bundled up in a towel instead. Unfortunately we only got the chance to take him swimming once during the weekend. The pool hours were pretty late in the morning and didn't stay open long enough in the evening to make going down worth it. Otherwise though, the hotel was super nice. The room even had a separate sitting room area that William slept in. His other achievement this weekend was flipping over! He rolled from his back to his front one morning, and did not like that at all either- probably because his arms were still bundled up snug as a bug. I have no idea how he managed to flip himself over all the way without using his arms though. And then this morning he discovered how to spin around! I put him back in his crib facing one direction after he had breakfast and when I came back for second breakfast a couple hours later he had spun in a circle around to be facing the other direction!

The masquerade was a blast this year. William and I competed in 18th century attire and our sound was from the Lion King. I riffed on the scene where Simba is being shown the kingdom to instead show William the stage and tell him he could grow up to be a master craftsman costumer too before ending with the whole raising him up for everyone to see. He was pretty darn cute and everyone loved him to pieces. We got some serious 'awww' factor going during the performance, though when the lights went out and people applauded then William got scared and freaked out a wee bit. Poor guy. He was a champ on stage though and had the judges eating it up. :) We wound up taking home the 'Best Historical' prize. Unfortunately, we didn't really get any good pictures of the costumes. I'm really going to have to get all dressed up again and get some photos taken so I can show off my work properly. I'm also starting to turn my talents towards monetary gain. I'm going to be starting an etsy store selling things like non-sized historical accessories and costume pieces. 18th century skirts, hip pads, pockets, etc. I'm also going to have things like purses and bags, and whatever else catches my fancy. We'll see how it goes. My goal is to make enough of a profit to afford an embroidery machine- which would be in the $4,000 range. The other thing I'm doing and that's going to take priority right now is starting research on the piemontaise dress. You know, the pale yellow silk with blue stripes one that I've been dying to do forever. Well, I got in touch with the Head Researcher and curator at the Danish National Museum asking for more information about the dress. He sent me some pretty cool bits that I didn't know as well as the title of a book that was written in the 70s and includes information about the dress (and others from the same collection) Unfortunately there aren't any copies for sale pretty much anywhere so using my google fu, I discovered that a trip to the National Archives is in order! I'm excited to get a look at it, even if the text is all in Danish. Google translate will hopefully not muck it up too badly. Step 2 in my research plan of attack is to start a Kickstarter campaign for funding. Kickstarter is a website that crowdsources projects. You put down a monetary goal ($2500 in this case) and the offer rewards at different donation levels. If people donate enough to meet your goal then your project gets funded. If you fail to meet the goal then you don't get anything at all. What I hope to be able to do with this is fund a trip to Denmark to see the dress (as well as some of the materials for the dress itself). My contact at the museum has already offered to let me see the dress up close if I'm able to go, but the exhibit is only up through October. Don't just think this is a waste of time and a stupid hobby though. (Ok, well you can think whatever you think, but don't voice it. shesh.) I've been eyeing a Historical Preservation Masters program at UoMaryland here. I don't have an impressive work resume and linguistics is hardly a logical lead up undergrad for it. But my historical sewing resume is rather impressive if I do say so myself, and if I can write a cool academic documentation to go with this dress then I think it could be a real attention grabber for an admissions board. Admittedly, getting my Masters is still wishful thinking at this point, but maybe in a year or so when William's a bit older then I could give it a go. If I can get in at all. Admissions are really competitive right now and I'm pretty sure my math skills are severely lacking when it comes to taking the GRE. Anyways, besides my plans for the future, we had a fundraiser for the Scouts and Girls Camp at church tonight! It was really cool actually, and one of the best ideas for a church fundraiser I've ever seen. They called on people in the stake to donate goods or services and then held an auction. I put up sewing lessons (Abbey gave me the idea, trying to find someone in her own ward to teach her :) ) and they went for $80! A couple photographers offered up a family portrait session, a lot of the young men offered manual labor or yard work, some people offered things like their bow flex machine that had been gathering dust, or an entertainment center. What we bid on though was a Friday-Monday weekend stay as a beach house vacation property. Recruiting our friends Jake, Earta, Shannon, and Dave, we pooled our resources and won it! Actually, we got outbid (twice). The highest bidder went to $775 but the owner surprised us by offering a second chance to the other high bidders. His generosity alone pulled in over $2000 for the scouts and young women. We're planning on taking our weekend around Halloween. We were going to do Thanksgiving together, but the Navy Band is going to be in the Macy's parade apparently so Dave'll be out of town. But Halloween'll be fun! We'll do a costume party and have an epic weekend of games and movies and yummy food. Good times.