textileowl

Ummm...Happy New Year?

So it's been roughly three months here in the real world, and I've been busy enough to think about posting and never getting around to it.

Here's what happened in no sense of order or importance.

The holidays went relatively smoothly. Yay for little drama.

January was a blur. Jeff and I got sick from the passed around colds and such at Madrigal. Halfway through recovering, I went to DC for work for 12 days which was hell. We were understaffed and there for twelve days. But it meant I paid off my credit card! 

In the meantime, Jeff was so sick he was out of work for a week and had a CT scan. We now know the root cause of all his sinus issues: a deviated septum and a growth that mostly likely was caused by allergies. He goes to a ENT on Thursday so we will have more information shortly.

Erzuli's mass from September never really went away and was in fact growing, so back to the vet last week where we received confirmation of what we feared in the fall. It's a mast cell tumor which while surgery and chemo is recommended, the vets can only guess at about 18 months of extended life. It will be much easier on all of us to simply wait out the time we have. She doesn't appear to be in pain and continues to be her normal reclusive and  grumpy self, so until this changes, we continue life as usual.

Dentist appointment this week was just for cleaning and nothing else! Well, they put in for a nightguard but I've been told I have the molars of a 50 year old from all the grinding and having the headaches go away would be nice. We're just waiting to hear back from the insurance company.

Projects upcoming include:
        Finishing the 1780's gown - gather skirt, sleeves and edge finishes
        Mock-up of Jeff's pants
        Mock-up of my stripey zouave pants
        Designs for sister's wedding dress (our gift to her - wedding is in Jan)
        Design/Mock-up my dress for skylarks wedding - will be used to test out a back design for wedding dress
        Possibly pattern jumps and gown for Hidden Dirk - still waiting for measurements and confirmation
        Finish knitting fingerless gloves - would be awesome to at least finish one of the two by March...

We have too much stuff. And it's partly my fault. In the continued effort of organizing our apartment and trying to make a one bedroom flat store the same amount that the two bedroom townhouse with basement did, I concede that having the loveseat and the futon in the living room takes up too much space. The loveseat needs to go, it's a unitasker for all that it is comfortable and sits high. I complain that the futon is too low to move from, but mostly I'm lazy and need to be more flexible. We need the space that the futon currently lives in to have a place for the sewing machine, or at least for storage. Maybe move the desk that the TV is on over there and find something not as bulky for the tv and media equipment? Or is the desk too high to comfortably sew on? The serger could go on the typewriter shelf!! This bears more discussion with Jeff once he sees this.  Hmm, maybe the tv could go back on the little table and the treadle could become the side table ....or vice versa with the treadle as the tv stand....

We need to go through the fabric, cull and organize. Or at least ponder projects to use the fabric we have. I had the brief thought of using the box of samples in a quilt or something similar. ( This is your fault, skylark913 ! You and your invasive quilting habits!) It would knock out a bunch of them rather quickly. Boxes need to be aquired that fit the shelving and can hold quantities of fabric. The current underbed boxes we have don't fit well at all. And the cats will fur everything up if we don't box it up. All I can find on fabric storage is usually geared towards small quantities of fabric, quilters and the like or of unlimited space to store bulk fabric. We don't have the space for rolls of fabric, not and make it easily accessible. It'll take some playing and actual determination to do make things organized. It's been hard having the energy to work on it, but I'm going to try and change that.

In other organizing news, we got the bookshelves up in the living room, the kitchen shelves up and in there we also put up metal shelving, like what people usually put in their closets, in between the two cabinets we have. They overhang the sink and now our drying dishes can drip into the sink and not clutter up the countertop! It has been a delight to have that space back, although I don't know quite what to do with it yet.  The bookshelves still need some sorting, maybe a couple of shallower shelves for the paper backs.

It's looking like the budding relationship that was developing over the fall is a bust, at least for me. She's fallen hard for Jeff and out of interest with me. So much so, that she isn't even speaking to me. I'm apparently obnoxious and disliked, having been compared to a tv ( noisy, distracting and interfering) so much so that even trying to like me for Jeff's sake is not worth it. Talk about making a girl feel unloved. By the time I am willing to make any relationship work with her, she's given up and deemed it too hard. I guess we'll see how this works out eventually, Jeff still hopes something will work but he's also fallen pretty hard for her, even through the smoke and mirrors she puts up so that what we see of her is hid away so much even he is unsure of her feelings toward him.

In the workplace, I'll have been working here for a year on Friday. Which is awesome, I'm relatively secure in my position here and as long as this year continue better than last, I hope to continue working here for a long time. My review is tomorrow, I'm kinda excited and yet scared to see what the bosses are going to say. It's routine enough that I can prepare for the catastrophes that happen every once in a while, but not too stressful or boring. We're still planning on moving the office by April, but we haven't found a place yet that really fits. March is gearing up to be pretty busy, there are a couple of large events that happen all in the third weekend which will make logistics hilariously scary to deal with. Half of our office will be away and the world is bound to explode that weekend.

I really need to get back in the habit of posting.

I can go back over the last couple of months in detail, but that would take the rest of my day.

In short, we are moved in to the correct apartment. A small chunk of stuff is still upstairs, mostly clothing and things that need to be trashed. Hopefully, this week will see all this moved too, once the drums find a more permanent place than in front of our dressers.

The holidays were stressful, but now they are over. Things are being forced back into routine, though we haven't yet managed to plan our meals. We have a close friend who may be more, once she figures herself out and, while I hate to say it - grows up a little bit more.

I have purchased almost everything I need (still need shoes!) for a new dress. 1950's party gown in pink and orange...it should be interesting since I have almost no skin color at the moment. The goal is to have it done for Marcon. I hope to make another post about it later this week.

My boss gave me a new harddrive this week for my computer and now I have access to previously blocked websites. It makes work so much more exciting! Well, until I exhaust my bookmarks and then have to get to being productive. But! Access! I have also been here for nearly a year! The last month was slow all around but next week is the DC Auto Show, which we are managing a very small part of, and it is essentially the kick-off of our busy season. So next week I'll be in DC, missing Madrigal for the first time ever.

And now I think I am mostly up to speed and can now update as it happens.

Booking Talent for Mascot work = Putting together a 300 piece puzzle with pieces arguing about where they're suppose to go.

In other words, I'm glad I work with the costumes.

So, I decided to stick to just one job for the moment. David's is great to work for but is stressful and would take up my time to get projects finished. Yes, I could use the money, but I'm not hurting for cash at the moment.

At 30 hours a week at Mascot, I have no problem paying rent and the bills, as well as putting some away for projects or trips. At 40 hours, things would be sorta cushy. Plus I get the opportunity to make extra money on weekends and things should I want to do so. 

When we move to the new apartment, rent will drop. His parents offered us the same deal as his sister but we don't like not paying some sort of rent.

So things are good here for the moment, I have to finish up a skirt and a pair of bloomers for Marigold which won't take too much time as long as I do it.

Honestly, it's all about having weekends and evenings. I spent all of college without either, dammit, and I want them back!

Pictures of my latest two commissions are up at my Flicker site. Here for demonqueen666 's medieval madrigal gown, and here for the modernized corset.

There were challenges with both, though relatively minor. The woman who commissioned the corset is very straight through the torso and hip, so I played with seam placement and fabric choice to give an illusion of curve. It worked as well as it could, though I think adding a gathered skirt would increase the illusion around the hips.

I'm currently working on two projects for myself. One is a tailored jacket in striped blue wool with a shibori dyed silk lining. I need to do a bit of research first but hopefully it will be done in time to go with me to UNC for my interview and portfolio review at the end of March. The other is new faire garb which will be revealed in due course.

I wrote about getting a new job last week, right? Ok, so it was a one line post. I've been working for a week at the new place and it's going well so far. I'm the costume and shipping manager for a local character staffing and logisitics agency. I keep track of all the costumes in our fleet for our clients, process and schedule costume requests,  and make sure the costumes get to where they need to be when the customer wants them to get there.

So far I've dealt with mix-ups concerning dates of events,  requests that were verbal and therefore I had no record of the request - when the costume should have been there yesterday, and the inner workings of a company that only a few months ago had a fairly substantial turnover in its employees.

Right now I'm working about 30 hours a week, which is plenty of time to deal with paperwork, phone calls and things like laundry. But there is the good possibility that I'll get bumped up to full-time in a couple of months. Also, I get the opportunity to make even more money by helping out at events where our talent is needed! I'm doing one this Saturday at a local high school from 9 - 1, just enough time to make it worth it and still be able to work on other projects. 

<edit> OOh! It's apparently Pancake Day at the high school! Yum!

Pyr and I have been trying to be more social lately, a year off was plenty. So far we've been out and seen Coraline with a friend and to last night's Gaelic Storm concert at the Newport. Both were fabulous. Coraline was just on the edge of creepy kid's movie, the design was fabulous but the plot was on the level of an eight year old, very obvious and easy to follow. I'll need to read the book and see if it is as childish as the movie. I find it hard to believe it would be, having been written by Neil Gaiman. The Gaelic Storm concert was fantastic, they have such a great stage presence and I'm really glad they mix instrumentals in with the lyrical songs. They really show off the entire band's talent with the multitude of instruments they play. I wish they had opened up thebalcony so there was more seating, it would have made my back and legs less tired as well as being able to see a little better. For some reason, tall and stocky guys feel the need to stand in front of people who they could clearly see over.

Umm, let see what else is new? My application with SCAD is currently in review, I am working on my portfolio for UNC - it's harder because the format is completely different and I actually have to present it to a group so it needs to be very cohesive and easy for a bad presenter like me to show off. I'm also more nervous about UNC. From what I've seen of the program I think it will be a much better fit than Savannah, so I have to try that much harder to be accepted.

Ugh,  I don't want to go into work today, but since I'm down to one job that pays crap....gotta make money. I'm working quite a bit but it doesn't quite make things meet.

I do have two commissions in the works though, which should help. My step-mom wants a corset for photo shoots, so she came over yesterday and I ductaped her and have figured out a nice shape for her.  A guildian wants me to make her Madrigal and Faire garb, we've talked a bit but nothing too finalized. It's close to the end of the quarter so she is busy, I don't really expect a whole lot of action there until after finals.

My pink wool and leather coat now is pretty much finished....well I  have the lining together and the outside together. I  still need buttons, to make the buttonholes ( welted leather buttonholes!!), recuct the collar and finish that, add some padding to fill out the sleeves and back (leather is heavy !!),  add the "belt" to hid the wonky waist seam and a few more things....  Okay so it's not quite finished. At some point it may be.

I  have a portfolio session next Saturday.... I've scanned some things  but other than that not a whole lot has been done for that. I  have a week, right?

Let's see, what has happened this week?

Ah, yes.

I've a sewing test with the Alterations Manager for Davids on Monday at 3:00
I meet with the Director for the Historic Costume Collection on Tuesday at 4:00 to discuss internship options.

I'm still failing Accounting though I've been told that the cure can make all the difference.

Still waiting for permissions for the two classes. Need to drop the one off at Drake Monday morning.

I have a fairly concrete idea for what I want to do for my garb. I need to order the 'old gold' wool and get started on patterning my effigy style corset. Yay for green and gold with blue and copper accents. I need to decide that if I'm doing sleeves, what color combination they would be as I want to stripe them. Gold and blue, if people are paying attention, might get me in trouble on campus but the combination would be so pretty. The jacket will have paned and puffed sleeves, green and gold with embroidery made of lucet cording in the copper and blue. Front hook and eye closing green kirtle with gold guards.

I want to use reeds in the corset, if only to keep it light and airy, which research has shown to be the best quality of reeds. The others being that they retain their sturdiness and don't warp as easily as plastic. I will probably have to add a couple of steel bones along the main lines to give a bit of flexibility but it seems that most of the flexibility of an effigy corset comes from how low you make the front point and how you attach the shoulder straps. I may not be doing a lot of bending, but I need to be able to move my arms for fighting, it just might mean I don't do a whole lot of rolling around on the ground...bah.

Further updates as I can stand them