Staring off into space blankly.

Not much really happening for me right now. Life's just kinda coasting along as I plan for upcoming events and whatnot. Seth's been working hard though, so I suppose I'll start there in a nice, safe, and vauge sort of way. Arbitrarily set deadlines have been keeping him busy lately. It's usually his day off today, but he had to go into work for a presentation for some of the bigwigs. The guys he's been doing a lot of this work for have been really impressed and grateful for his help too. Last week they called him down to their office and gave him a $500 on the spot award- which is the biggest award they can give without going and getting it pre-approved. :) With how much effort he's been putting in for them, he definately deserved it.



He also got to go down and visit the academy as well as their shooting range. Yes, he is indeed holding a tommy gun. How cool is that.



And here's his tommy gun target. Even cooler eh? The hole to the left was his first shot, and hole in the center his second. And third. Yes, look carefully. It really is. He's got a couple other targets he brought home with him, from spraying on full auto and some other guns he tried, but this one is by far the coolest.



They also had this really pretty 9/11 memorial there.

Today I went out and did a bit of shopping. Got the snaps to finish my dress for Jessie's wedding, and on the remant rack I found a half yard of some really lovely silk brocade. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. After all, it's only half a yard, but it could make a really lovely shrug or bodice. Maybe I'll get some silk charmeuse and chiffon and make an empire waisted dress or something.





The pictures really don't do it justice. It's a blue grey color, but the camera didn't pick up any of the blue very well.

Abbey's been sick this week, and I got to talk to her for a long time on Wednesday while I was bored at work. I'd brought my dress and sewing box to the store to work on finishing it off, but when I got there I realized that I'd forgotten to bring the black thread. Had every other color under the sun, but my black thread was still sitting on my ironing board from when I'd last used it. *sighs* Anyways. I got to talk to Abbey a lot, which was really nice. I don't talk to the kids nearly as much as I should or would like to since they're usually in school when I have the time to call. So there's something good about getting sick Abbey! Small blessings, right?

She's apparently had trouble finding modest dresses for Mil Ball (which doesn't surprise me) and told me that she'll let me make her her prom dress when she gets back from Japan. Yay! I love sewing formal dresses. They're so much fun and you can do a lot of cool embellishment that would just look silly on everyday clothing. I've got pages and pages of original ideas around here too somewhere, so it'll be awesome to be able to maybe get the chance to make some of them! After all, fabric's expensive and I can't really justify buying yards and yards of the good stuff for a formal dress that's just going to sit in my closet. No real call for formalwear on a regular basis for me, sadly enough. I need more balls and events to dress up to.

DC cherry blossoms

With the cherry blossoms on the mall in their peak right now, Seth and I really wanted to make sure we got to see them this year. Last year we got there a day too late after a storm went through and tore down all the blossoms. This year though, we got there on a perfect day. :)

Monday was our first attempt to go see them. It was foggy and drizzly, but I metroed into the city anyways and met Seth after work. I have an excellent sense of direction and usually have no problem getting where I want to go. However, I was... slightly mistaken... about where exactly the cherry trees were in relation to the L'enfant Plaza metro station. We ended up seeing them from across a highway and a couple of fences. Not exactly the ideal vantagepoint. We gave up and went home to get dry.

Tuesday was much better. Gorgeous weather, clear, bright, warm, and sunny. (For you in the UP still getting snow days from school: bwahahahaha) And we didn't get our directions mixed up. heh. I've got all the pictures up on Michael's website in our random pictures gallery, but here are a few that I really liked.

Shopping and Ballet

Not at the same time, thankfully.

I've never been a huge fan of clothes shopping. Odd, considering that I like clothes, and like to make clothes. I can spend hours in a fabric store. But rtw clothing stores just annoy the heck out of me. However, it's been (literally) a couple years since I've done any major shopping and I was down to two pairs of jeans with holes in the right knees, my black hippy pants from Belgium, the pair of Agent khakis Seth got me, and a pair of black pants I got to excersize in at BYU. Scary, isn't it. So today was the great and scary trip to the mall and after much suffering, trials, tribulations, and visiting every gosh dang store in the freaking mall, I managed to suppliment my wardrobe slightly and walked away with five pairs of pants and a really cute silvery grey poly charmeuse shirt.

I'm not kidding on visiting every store in the mall. Well, every women's clothing store at least. My complaints about ready-to-wear clothing are many, although you can't beat the convenience and cost. My number one complaint, however is sizing. At some point in history, the number used to identify a size actually meant something. Now it's an arbitrary number that the store clerks fully expect you to know how it relates to you.

I have a 29" waist, 38" hips, and a 34" inseam. These numbers have translated to everything from a size -2 (yes, size 0 was too big for me) to size 16. It's frigging rediculous! And then even if a store has a chart that translates real measurements into their sizing system, their sizes aren't always consistent within themselves! My prime example of the night, although by no means a rare case, was in the Levi Store. A big brand name like Levi should be consistent, right? And they were the only store that labelled women's pants by the inch. I thought I would find something - even if their pants do cost $70. Well I found a pair that was 29"x32" and tried them on. Too short, but the waist fit as it was supposed to. So Seth finds me a pair that's 29"x34", and while the length was right, it was a good 4" too skinny! Yes! FOUR inches too skinny when the waist was supposed to be the same! Who the heck is doing their math? It's a simple measurement of the waist! It can't be that hard to get and label correctly!

Dressy-ish slacks were the easiest to find, but jeans were a real pain. We'd almost given up for the night, but there was one store left so we decided to try it. Delia's. Bless store clerks that don't assume you know their arbitrary numbering system and who actually do their job of helping a customer. She found the right shape of pants for my figure and then pulled a couple sizes for me to try. Then because I got the last pair in the long size on the shelf, she went out hunting in the back until she found a second. Yay! They were even having a buy one, get one half off sale. ^^ So $60 for two. Go me. I ended up spending $175 total, but since I hadn't been shopping in two years, I kinda needed to.

Ok, Ballet. I'm really excited about this. This summer I'm going to start taking it from a company here in Alexandria that holds lessons at Landmark mall across the street from me. I would have liked to take ballroom lessons from the same place, but standard ballroom is a bit intimate and I wouldn't want to dance with anyone but Seth now that I'm married. ^^ Was half hoping Seth would be up for it after catching the celebrity ballroom show on the other night, but he didn't seem too enthusiastic about the idea. heh.

So ballet! It's an adult class, which is nice. I won't be there standing next to little six year olds, and it'll get me out moving and trying something new. I've been watching my weight lately, after I noticed I'd gone from a 30" waist to 32," and started eating better and stuff. Being down to 29" makes me happy. Anyways, I like dancing, and ballet is something that will be fun I think.

And it reminds me of the anime "Princess Tutu" that I watched about a year ago that was really cute. It was based off the Swan Lake ballet as well as other assorted fairy tales. Heck, maybe if I ever get good enough, I'll do a Princess Tutu costume and dance for the presentation half of a costume competition.

Progress!

Got the sleeves on today! Now "all" that's left to do is sew the lining and exterior together, and hem the dang thing! And add buttons or hooks up the back of the top sleevish part. Normally I'd just put one at the very top and let it gape open a bit, but it gapes open just a couple inches too low. Should of thought of that a bit sooner. Was so worried about the front that I forgot the back. *sighs* Maybe I'll make bead loop buttons. We'll see. That's one of the last things I need to do anyways. I also apparently need kidnap someone to help me fit my fitting dummy. It's vaguely close to my shape right now, but still just a bit too big... The dress fits on me, even if it doesn't fit on it quite right.

Just for you AnnaMarie

It's now pink, in hopes that It'll inspire me to make some time soon to change the background. But I added a list of what I'm reading just to the side there.

Beading 360

Well work was certainly productive yesterday. I spent the entire morning and afternoon sitting in the store finishing beading the dress. It was nice. Not many people came in (as usual), though one guy that did invited Seth (and me too) to join his group of friends that gets together every week to play 40K. Seth was really happy about that. He hasn't gotten to play regularly since the Warhammar fantasy tournament started at the store on Saturdays. So we'll see how it turns out. The guy -Dave- was nice, does blacksmithing of all things, and interestingly enough is pagan and most of his friends in the group are Jewish. Yep, it should make for interesting religious discussions if nothing else.

Sheer Inspiration

I usually visit the cosplay.com site every day. It's a forum where you can post up pictures of what costumes you're working on, talk about different issues in cosplay with the community, discuss technique, photography, posing so you don't look rediculous while still 'in character.' You need to know something about cosplay or costuming in general? With (literally) thousands of enthusiasts on the boards, you'll likely have an answer to your question within the hour.

One of the other reasons I like going there is to drool over pictures of costumes that I would otherwise never get to see. It's inspiring to see people who have the skills to take on projects that would make me hesitate. And I'm hesitating less and less these days.

So here's a costume AnnaMarie and Dad will at least recognize. Ursala from the little mermaid. I mean how cool is that? I was really impressed by several things with this one- it must have been a technical beast to get just right. The tentacles, first off, both how they attach to the dress and how they're held up with 30lb fishing line and epoxy. It's really quite creative and turned out great. The wig is similarly impressive. It's not easy to get hair - even fake hair - to do something like that and I can only imagine the hours and who knows what materials she must have put into it. I've looked into what it takes to make wigs, and I'll be making one for my costume-con '09 project, but I'm not particularly looking forward to the work it'll take. Body paint is another area of costuming I've kinda stayed away from. It can be messy sometimes if you don't get the really really good (read expensive) stuff and it doesn't always photograph well either. Especially not after a full day of wearing it. But here, she only used it on her hands and face, and somehow managed to match the color of a body suit. (which I will be using in the near future)

The original page is here

One of the best anime I've seen over the past year was Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, and I'm really looking forward to it coming out here in the US. Definately a series that I want to pick up. It's in the genre of alternate history/fantasy, so probably not anyone else's in the family's cup of tea, but it was really well done! The animation was excellent, the plot tight (although I'm still waiting for season 2. grr.), and they got CLAMP to do the character design which I thought was a good move. I like CLAMP's style even if it's a bit more stylistic than realistic. Or maybe because it is. Anyways. Here's the art vs. the costume.





The original page is here





The last one there, is with another cosplayer of the same character, just wearing the school uniform rather than the full cloak and helmet costume. ^^ I really admire this particular costume because (a) good looking uniforms are dang difficult to pull off - as hard as suits in some regards, and (b) that prop helmet can't have been easy to make... and I'm jealous of it. Well, jealous of the skill that it took to make it. I can sew, but I haven't the skill to really make amazingly awesome props like that. And(c) the picture with the cloak flying up behind him is awesome. I don't think he wired it (well, below the massive collar that sticks up at any rate), which means that the kudos probably go to the photographer, but I can't really tell for sure. Which means that if he did wire it, he did it perfectly.