December Project

Here we go, kids…

Fabric has been purchased for the Confessor dress. It’s a bit thin but that shouldn’t matter too much since it’s an overdress and is going to be worn inside the whole time (so will never be backlit.) I do have to figure out where I want to line it with satin; the canon dress appears to be lined everywhere but I don’t feel like doing that, I’m thinking the hood, and along the front where it needs to be reinforced for the lacing, will be the only mandatory parts.

So, pattern, dress fabric, skirt fabric — check. Just need to get satin for lining (tomorrow at the discount place), oil my sewing machine, and overcome my fear of cutting fabric and I can get started.

68 days until Dragon*Con!

…I have limited time management skills, and I think I’ll leave it at that. Not sitting in front of my computer constantly is a relief but it does make it hard to keep up with everything. I’ve been trying hard to read everyone but commenting has been sorely limited.

I have been busy though. The full-time job search is mostly moving at a lazy snail’s pace, but I’ve got quite a few projects which are moving along quite nicely. Namely, some vegetation:

Six tomato plants, one cucumber, one eggplant, four basil and some other miscellaneous herbs (not all pictured.) Though we have some yard space, everything is in pots to keep things mobile because we have deer issues. You can see a bit of the fencing in these pictures, but it’s all very haphazard. I’ve got some more fencing but lack a better support system. I also ordered some garlic clips which will hopefully work. One of the tomato plants already had it’s top eaten off, which is annoying but could’ve been worse. Everything needs a lot more sun though, which we’ve had about oh, three days of this month?

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School is finished, and I’m so relieved. I haven’t really had a chance to chill out yet (been at work, or just busy) — haven’t even had a chance to do my laundry! I did go to see Star Trek tonight — it was awesome, just for the record (even if my inner hardcore anti-AU Trekkie despaired a heck of a lot…)

Of course then I came home and found an e-mail from my webhost saying that my account had been compromised, and the hacker was sending out porn scripts amongst other things. Er, right. I had gotten a few notifications that my account was reaching its storage limit, but hadn’t thought much about it because I’m on a reseller account with a really low storage limit, and that happens sometimes when backups are being made and a few directories are duplicated for a while. Er, apparently not. I don’ t know if wordpress was affected or not — but apologies to anyone who might’ve seen… something, idk. Whatever happened. It’s fixed now.

Change your passwords often, and FireFox NoScript extension is your friend…

After a weekend during which temps hit the mid-70s, I’m a little cranky about it being all of 42 degrees out right now. Yes, I am a winter fan — never liked hot weather and I sunburn easily, but I’d really like to have some SPRING NAO, PLS. We turned off the heat a few days ago hoping not to turn it back on, but nope, I gave in. Of course our house has an open floor plan so it’s really hard to heat/cool and it was still cold for hours. So I was wearing my cabled legwarmers and fingerless gloves for a while there (hooray for using FOs). It’s warming up now of course but it’s supposed to be 60 degrees tomorrow or something like that.

The dark rainy weather isn’t helping my senioritis either. Especially since I had a tiring weekend, I just want to curl up somewhere. Can’t concentrate. My papers are moving along slooooowly and I find myself caring less and less if I actually manage to keep my 4.0 (thanks to Cataloging, it’s not exactly guaranteed… my current grade is an A, but we still have 50% of the tally to go.)

I would love for it to be May 5th now. I’ve been trying to decide what to do on May 6th, right now I’m considering watching all of the Star Wars prequels (I’ve really only seen them once or twice each — I know, I know, they’re horrible, but I’m comfortable with that), and a giant sushi dinner is definitely on the schedule.

What better to do when completely overloaded with papers and exams and holy-crap-3-weeks-until-I’m-finished-with-my-masters-and-I-don’t-have-a-full-time-job-yet? Think about costumes. Because there’s only 143 days until Dragon*Con.

And it seems that my friend Amy is on the same wavelength as I am, because she put the call out on Twitter yesterday for hi-res shots of Kahlan’s Confessor dress from “Legends of the Seeker.”

I’ve been collecting screencaps for a while now and it’s completely doable, especially if you consider the fact that all of the Confessor dresses seen in the series so far have been different (even if they’re all white… stretch from the books, yes, but I do like the show independently of that.) From the hi-res promo shots, it’s definitely made from a lightweight crushed velvet. The lacing up the front, while a pain in the ass, should be easy enough to implement as the loops appear to be made from the same satin cording that the lacing is, it would just need extra reinforcing on the seams (although I’d personally end the lacing closer to the waistline and not below the hips).

The undergarments seem fairly easy as well, as long as I’m not going canon. Her “corset” actually appears to be a dark green cincher with fabric for the bust, with silver trim at the bustline, held up by leather straps.

Personally, I’m going to see how the brocade bodice I bought at Hot Topic back in high school works out (I’ve since reinforced it with hanging folder file tabs, instead of real boning.) Or I could try making a cincher using vinyl or something (but really, I’m not going to invest in an actual corset.) And the underskirt seems to just be some sort of black satin, but I’m guessing cotton will do just fine.

Costumes are so much more interesting than term papers.