For better or for worse, it's con time! See everyone at NDK!

Kiyomori.... isn't really ready. Wearable, yes. Done to my standards? No way.

Done today on thursday:
-purple layer
-obi
-channels for wires/balls

Not done or non-functional:
-wings (the attachments are screwed up and the robe isn't stiff enough to hold them up...)
-shoes/boots ... I know how I want to do them, but the time and the frustration were getting to me so I did everything else first
-bags/purses of any kind... one of those things I wanted to do once I got Kiyomori done... which never happened.

Didn't keep my phone on me, so missed out on about half of truck. :3 Looks much more managable than I was afraid of though. Also got my first friend on Cosplay Atrchive. The site is still incredibly difficult to use, but I did find the search photo feature that actually works!

The photo collections are mostly memberz only, but they're worth it. Like 'Zomi, Saku, Chibi-Hakuryu and seven of eight Hachiyou. Not the highest quality costumes, but still an awesome group. :D
Also, I may start stalking (or try to friend) their Saku. I just need to compose a message that doesn't sound wierd and update my profile to look less lame. After NDK. >.<

Progess since this morning
-washed some laundry!
-sleeves attached to Kiyomori's yellow robe
-made frogs/closures for Kiyomori's robe (need a color consult before attaching)

Now back off to work. Then two whole days to pull this nonsense together before con. o.o;;

Progress:
-Pants cut and sewn, just need elastic, ankle ties and bottom hems.
-White sleeves lined and finished. Need a body and neckband to attach to.
-Purple layer still in yardage
-Need white satin for boot covers and to fit them to some size 9 flipflops.
-found perfect wire for floating balls. need to set channels for wires into yellow lining.


Not /my/ progress, but the wings and crown are looking /gorgeous/. If we had psychic powers to levetate them, they would be almost done. XD

I love Project Runway.

Predictably, I picked up a shift on Tuesday (when I should already be on costume crunch PTO). Anyway. Very very tired now. Hopefully the motivation will come back tomorrow.

Yes those are three bicycles in the drive through at Taco Bell. Which could actually be kinda cool, until they took off before the window and left the poor girl making three drinks for no one. I'm hoping the one on the left was going for irony when he chose his shirt; the back reads "Service Integrity Excellence".
If you could read it, I might actually try to put it on failblog or something.


Pretty good progress today. Screen printing was working great, but I may actually have discovered the limits of repeated printing with a single screen. The wings are deffinitely wings though and it's very exciting. ^_^

- Carpets cleaned (Jess was right, it took us two hours to clear the floor last nigh and them 10 minutes to clean it.
- imported recently-played lists into last.fm and got it to suck less!
- Too much sleep-apartment somewhat reassembled from carpet cleaning

- checked fan for Tomomori after painting last night... It's not perfect, but it's a start and it will pass if need be
- finished printing on body pieces and am now working on sleeves for the Noshi/Kariginu/thing
- have assigned other geniuses to figuring out wings
- chose BGM for walk on (first 50 seconds of the Haruka 4 opening is almost exactly the right length (45 secs) and has a proper tone and such. Also, sneaky former-Myu-boy pimping. :D
-started choosing potential songs for karaoke (probably not competition)

(Also, today I learned that slash fandom is older than me but not by very much. Granted, I wasn't into slash as soon as I was born, but still... it's always wierd to realize after the fact that you were actually there in the kindof early days of something. Lurking. And not contributing at all. Ah, my life.

Multiple cuts is so much work....

Day 6 complete and now I get a whole day off!
( Work Today )

Since several people have asked, things are much better at my store. And will be even more better soon. I did talk with my boss a bit, and we appear to have settled things. With Inventory and the RVP visit over with for now, we're all hoping things will settle for a while, though it is August, so the roughest quarter of the year is still ahead of us.

I'm at a pretty much total standstill on Kiyomori... mostly because I broke the rhythm I had going and am a bit nervous to start back up. I /did/ however, get a couple yards of a /beautiful/ white brocade at the ARC last week and think it will work much better than what I had for his white layer. Additionally, we got in some new houndstooth suitings at work, so I have a new possibility for P4 costumes. Though I'm tempted to try to just throw together their casual outfits and buy wigs instead.

That pretty much covers my life updates. More tomorrow since I won't have work to distract me. :D

On an unrelated note, Corina and I figured out that the Heike memorial site thing I linked to before is most likely actually way way south at 赤間神宮, near the site of the Dan-no-Ura battle. Too far for her to see.

Also also, ( Random Mainichi Shinbun Rant )

I'm updating again? Woah.

Some random things:
-Kiyomori: I PRINTED ON THE FABRIC. IT DOES NOT ENTIRELY SUCK. THIS IS PROGRESS. (Pic)
-starlit_dragon is in Japan, so 2/3 of the people I see most often outside of work are now there. I hung out with by Brother on monday night to make up for this. :D
-AX: MoriMori's hair, woah! I still always expect him to be blonde. (Photo was from double_dear. Yell at me if it's a problem to post it here.)
-NDK: It's that time of year in my store.... and it makes me panicy ever time a cosplayer talks to me. I'm like 'Aaaah, costumes aren't done!'.... even though two of mine totally are.

Thanks to the people who gave me feedback on the work-related letter I posted the other day. (Not everyone saw it, so ignore this if you didn't) Work has been better this week so far... and hopfully we'll get back into the nice balance that we've had historically really soon.

First: Yudu Screenprinting Machine
( And why I will be buying one )

( More Cosplayer Reviews - Kiyomori and Kagetoki )

( [Edit: Then I found Tomomori too...] )

[Edit Edit: Sorry for badly borked html. All better now, except for a couple of pictures that I haven't uploaded yet.]

My job was too easy today.
Truck was done by 8 and fabric was almost entirely done by 2 pm. Seriously?
The district is made of crazy though. And Friday will be lame no matter what DTL does.

I spent the day thinking about Masaomi. I even made it out to the Mill and picked up some lining material for the bolero.
At home, ladyofthegate had decided to make herself crazy by thinking about Tomomori's armor again. We have some new thoughts and will be trying different techniques than expected. Of course, having been out by the Mill, I brought nonny_chan back with me and in a stroke of divine (or not so) inspiration, we decided that she would be a fabulous Kiyomori. So, after a lot of plotting and book examination, we went off to kinko's to make some additional reference copies and get a reference folder started for Kiyomori.
Even if he's not done for this year NDK, there's always the year that we have full armor for Tomomori and Masaomi. I think I can handle all three though. Especially is I succeed in my goal of getting Masaomi done by the end of February.
I could proceed to do some babbling about 夢浮橋 Special and Shigehira (I bought the PERFECT color and texture for his pants before there even /was/ a canon reference picture!) and Kiyomori and all the various things that my head is full of. But I'm really rather tired and still need to pack a bentou for tomorrow. So. Away from the internets I go.

Today's survival brought to you by "Higher and Higher, "Type wa D" and "Hip Pop Boogie".