I hate my butt

Seriously, right now I hate it so much it's not even funny. Maybe I should extend it to hating my hips in general. *snort* I've been trying to get the corset wraps finished up and kept running into problems. I got the iron and starch out and put the horizontal pleats into it to mimic the look of an actual wrap. Took a while, felt really proud of myself when I finished. They looked so pretty. ^-^

Then I sat down and started working on getting things bunched right to pull it all on and have the wraps stay in place. Got all the stuff pinned in place, pulled it on. . .and realized that it was so not going to work because my rear is so much larger than my waist. *sigh* The difference in fabric lengths was causing it to bunch horribly. I always make these sort of simple mistakes. *chuckle* So it was back to the drawing board with Pere to try to figure out how I could fix it. After going for a walk, I approached it from a new angle that seems to be working. I've currently got all the pleats cut into individual strips which we've been pinning in place while I wear the "corset" base. Though I did realize just how badly I need to lose weight. That's the only time I've ever gotten light headed and sick from wearing a corset for that little amount of time. >_< So we've got one final strand to finish up because I had to pull it off before I dropped, but once we get that strip pinned into place it's tedious sewing time as I need to stitch the ends down to the other half of the corset, stitch them together to make the part with the hook and eyes that will close the wrap over the zipper, and do some light stitching at the top and bottom to keep those wraps in place with minimal adjustment every time I pull it on and off.

Also working on figuring out a solution for my helmet visor. The clear polycarbonate that Pere had lying around ended up messing up (once again, my own fault. . .it was a bit too hot when I put it in the helmet to form it and it apparently melted some of the plastic from the nubs of the old visor onto it). *sigh* So, trying to figure that whole mess out with my limited budget before D*con.

On a slightly unrelated note, I sort of forgot that it was coming up on my birthday. :( And it looks like all my birthday money plus probably some of what I make weeding the yard here will be going towards my new hair cut and getting it dyed before D*con. Yeah, the dye isn't necessary, but a hair cut is, and it's sort of my habit to have it dyed red before conventions and with this hair cut I'm looking at I think the color will be better than my natural color. Fingers crossed that works out for me. (Also, fingers crossed a possible job comes about . . .I'll hopefully know after Tuesday.)

Wow. Go me for failing lol

So it's been over a week since I remembered to post. 0_0 Oops. My bad. Been sort of scatter brained lately, partially worrying about money, partially focusing on finishing stuff, and partially really trying not to get my hopes up about a very nice possible job opportunity. So fingers crossed for me on that at least?

Fourth of July was fun. I got a pretty bad sun burn though since, silly me, I didn't think to put any sunblock on my face. I'm used to spending my Fourths in a park with trees and shade, not standing for a good thirty minutes or so in the middle of the sun to watch the parade. XD But it's mostly healed up by now, and I don't feel so incredibly sick anymore. It was pretty cool watching the fireworks from across the sound at Fay Bainbridge park. We could see fireworks going off all up and down the coast which is a pretty impressive thing to see. Haven't really had a whole lot of stuff besides that going on in real life though we went over to Seattle on a whim a couple of days ago since I had a bit of spare money, so walking around there is always fun. Plus, exercise. That is always good. *chuckle*

But on to the costume stuff, which I expect most people are here for anyway.

Pretty much all of the armor work on the FemProtector is finished. I've still got to assemble and paint the knees, but I'm waiting on Pere to get the forming blocks finished so we can properly form the Fett style knees (I admit I'm impatient enough that I'm almost tempted to see how well I can form knees off of my own knees but I don't want to waste any of the sintra lol). Helmet still needs the visor installed, but I'm being lazy and haven't yet. So, behold all the armor minus the knees:

 

So, there's all that. ^-^ I've also slowly begun the process of working on my soft goods. The vest is unfortunately going to have to wait for Pere to sit down and draft the pattern for me. I'm a horrible tailor and couldn't tune something to fit me remotely as well as he can. So he gets to do all that fun work. XD Probably also going to have him do the pattern for my kama since, while I could manage the main body of it, there's a wibbly bit that I need to curve back then forward again. And I don't think I could manage to have it come out right without him doing up the pattern for it. I have, however, started work on my stomach wraps. Perhaps faux wraps is really a better term but whatever. Found a cheapo quasi-corset shirt/top/bustier thing at Goodwill that I've modified to work as the base for the wraps. I've gotten one side of the blue wrap fabric sewn on, and I even had the top stitched down. . . until I realized I'd made a stupid mistake and needed to iron the pleats for the wrap look in first as I'm having to gather the blue fabric to accommodate the corset base stretching when it's put on (damn you stretchy fabrics!) and the fabric just would not lay in the correct pleats that way. *sigh* So I had to seam rip about an hours worth of sewing. It's not seam ripping that I hate; it's having to sew everything back afterward. Hoping in another couple days I'll be able to set the ironing board back up and get that mess sorted though so I can finish up the stomach wrap.

Random stuff + costume progress

I'll get the costume progress stuff out of the way first since I've honestly know idea how many people who read this blog actually care that much about the non-costume stuff. ('Course I don't really know how many care about even that sooo *chuckle*.) No pics of my progress this week, in large part because I just wasn't thinking and haven't taken any yet. Helmet has the first two coats of the green on it, though I'm going to need to put on at least two, maybe three more. Boob plates and chest diamond are finished. Need to get yet another can of green paint so I can finish up the helmet and paint the collar plates. The gauntlets have the base silver coat on them; I decided to go ahead and paint them the same blue as the visor trim, in large part because I'm going to need all of the next green can I get to finish up the helmet and collar plates. Pere's getting the knee forming block put together so we can make the Fett knees, which are the only hard parts left for the kit that I need to make. Pere's been focusing on his hard parts so we haven't made any headway on soft goods currently, although I'm hoping we start those soon.

Now then, for the random stuff. Not really nerd related, per say, just stuff I felt like talking about because, well, it's my life and it's not common that I get to do fun things lately so there :P ;)

Saturday was the annual rummage sale here on the island. We ended up parking a little over 1/4 a mile away and just walking there since I HATE parallel parking with a passion (and, truthfully, even if I had parallel parked somewhere, it probably would not have been that much closer lol). On the bright side, yay exercise plus we found a yellow raspberry bush on the walk over. ^-^ The sale itself was/is huge. They use one of the elementary schools here to hold it in. Furniture and some camping/sporting things are all out in one of the parking lots; cars (yes, cars) and hardware/automotive is in the other. I'm pretty sure it was the gym that held the books/toys/office supplies, and the bulk clothes/accessories were all outside under a shelter built off of the gym portion (yeah, that's a crappy description but I really can't think of any other way to describe it). Found one of the Dresden File books I needed and tossed that in with Pere's bags of books. Also found a pretty copper pendant of some sort ($2), a blue wool and mohair scarf ($1), a new mouse for my laptop ($5), and a pretty little purse made in Ecuador ($1). I was quite happy with my things, though I seriously wish we'd had more time to dig through all the clothes (we got there about 11:40 and didn't make it to the clothes section until about 1:30. . .the sale ends pretty much exactly at 2).

Afterward we were going to head out to Silverdale to run some errands, but we were hungry so we decided on trying a pizza place up in Suquamish. For the record, Bella Luna is awesome. Really. We got the Full Moon pizza, which is chicken, ricotta, and mushrooms on a roasted garlic base. <3 It's one of those places that reminds me why I love it out here so much. And even if my ass becomes even more broke, creditors start hunting for me, and all that jazz. . .I still don't think I could move. It was so incredibly nice to be able to sit somewhere, nom some delicious pizza and watch sailboats and cruise ships out in the Puget Sound. It was a really clear day, too, so we could see the Cascades in the distance in one direction and Mt. Rainier in the distance in the other. After lunch we walked on the beach area there for a bit. I found a couple more shells, some granite pebbles, and Pere found two pieces of beach glass for me. I don't have pics of the stuff I found yet (one of those things I need to remember to do), but it was fun. Fourth of July "fair" is tomorrow, so looking forward to that. ^-^ In the mean time, enjoy the pictures from Suquamish.