Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

Started sewing on the new Ryuuren costume. Finished the yellow wrap thingy that goes around the waist and am working on the shirt now, which shouldn’t be too hard.

And I wrote a set of Saiunkoku drabbles based on the observation that Kouyuu wears red earrings like Reishin’s in some of the manga/artbook pictures. Considering how he dresses rather plainly compared to others around the Imperial Court, I think there has to be some reason behind the earrings. (Of course, it would be a cosplayer that thinks of such things. ^_^;;) I was a bit hesitant to include Yuri-Hime since she only appears in the novels and I only know what I’ve seen in fan translations but I thought, “Hmm… Why don’t I make this a set of linked drabbles with a piece from each family member’s point of view?” Originally, it was only going to be one drabble but the idea expanded a bit and each drabble is exactly 100 words. I guess this could be considered cute family fluff with a touch of angst.

( Saiunkoku drabble set: The Ruby Earrings )

Edit: I've put up a couple of offerings at the help_japan community for drabbles and earrings. Both are Buy It Now since they're just little things.

And less than two days left to bid on my crafty creations with 100% of the final sale to go to Red Cross. See my earlier post for more details or go directly to my auctions on eBay to bid. The pouch and the needlepoint kimono haven’t moved beyond the starting bids yet and the price for the box is still low considering the work that went into it. And the needlepoint kimono is really low since just the materials cost as much as the current bid. Auctions are over now.

Hmm… It’s been a while since I’ve posted and a bunch of things have happened since then.

Theatre
I made it to the final Wednesday matinee of “A Little Night Music” back on the 5th. It’s one of my favorite Sondheim scores so I enjoyed having a chance to see it onstage. It’s basically a romantic farce with lots of overlapping love triangles. They definitely played on the comedic material and it was hilarious; it’s kind of easy to forget that there’s also so much humor when just listening to all of the waltz music from the cast recording. The set was relatively simple but I liked how they managed to do so much with it. The walls along the edges of the stage could be lit in various patterns to give the impression of different rooms. Plus, they swiveled to form different arrangements and allow furniture to be brought on and off stage. I particularly liked when the trees were added for act 2. The costumes looked nice although some of the little details weren’t very visible from the audience (I bought a souvenir program afterwards so I was able to see some of the details I missed from the photos in there.) And I was curious how they managed to do some of the costume changes so quickly since they were period costumes. (Would be nice if I could manage to change costumes in a couple of minutes!)

My one complaint would be I couldn’t completely believe Bernadette Peters as the glamorous actress Desiree Armfeldt or Elaine Stritch as her former courtesan mother who once had kings among her lovers because of their accents. The show is set in early 20th Century Sweden and they just didn’t sound European at all. I’d never seen either perform live before but I had seen them in Sondheim things that were taped and released on DVD (Bernadette in “Into the Woods” and “Sunday in the Park with George” and Elaine in the Lincoln Center “Follies” concert). They pretty much sounded as they did in those performances and I felt their own personalities came through so I saw them as Bernadette Peters playing Desiree Armfeldt and Elaine Stritch playing Madame Armfeldt, rather than as Desiree Armfeldt and Madame Armfeldt. I enjoyed the show and they were hilarious, especially Bernadette during the “You Must Meet my Wife” scene, but I just couldn’t completely see them as the characters.

Cosplay
Then, my brother and I went to visit neoangelwink and loudnbothered on the 8th. Finally exchanged holiday presents with neoangelwink; had tea and cake; and talked a bit about plans for Katsucon and later this year.

Kaleido Star group for Costume Con has been cancelled. Neoangelwink and athena_chan hadn’t realized that Costume Con is the same weekend as Sakura Matsuri and they need to be at the festival to sell hats so they won’t be able to do the group with me. Other people who were interested in possibly doing it with me are also dealing with real life issues so this just seems to be bad timing for everyone and I don’t want people to stress out over costumes when they have more important things to worry about. I don’t feel like trying to rush through Layla’s ballgown by late April if I don’t have a group to present it with so the idea is postponed for now. Depending on whether people still want to try to do the group at some point, we could try for an anime con later on although I don’t know what would be good. The only ones I’m likely to be at this year after Costume Con are AnimeNext and NYCC/NYAF. Or maybe, just do a Kaleido Star group for fun and photos that isn’t limited to the Cinderella costumes.

And this leaves me uncertain about costume plans for this year. While I do have a bunch of things I still want to make someday, there’s nothing jumping out at me that I especially want to work on right now. I guess it doesn’t help that I’m still feeling unmotivated due to the cold. Plus, Chinese New Year is in a couple of weeks and that always means a lot of extra work around the house so it might not be the best time to start a new project anyway.

I’m not sure if I want to try to do something else as a solo entry for Costume Con. There aren’t that many things elaborate enough that I’d especially want to present them at Costume Con versus just getting them judged at an anime con. There’s the Future Fashion Folio which I still have to look over in more detail although I don’t know if I’d actually want to do one. It’s basically a collection of other people’s sketches for original designs so after the contest, it doesn’t seem like there would be many good opportunities to rewear it. Or I could try to come up with a Broadway costume to go with the Costume Con theme. I kind of want to since I love musicals but it’s very hard to come up with the combination of a show I love, a design I want to make, and a character that I like and could pull off. Plus, preferably, it wouldn’t be overly costly or time consuming to make since I doubt there would be a good chance to wear it again. :-/ Or just more anime stuff? I don’t know.

Fanfic
After years of not using it, I decided to clean out my ff.net account the other weekend and start over since I’ve been doing fanfic a bit more the past couple of months and my stuff has been scattered across LJ communities rather than collected in any one place. I’ve posted all of my PSOH stuff but some of my Saiunkoku stuff is being revised so it’s not all up yet.

http://www.fanfiction.net/~ladyofthethread

Going through psohdrabble to collect all the bits I’ve posted there kind of made me want to write drabbles again (too bad that comm seems dead these days). Not all of them were amazing but I think I was pretty good at it. I could hit 100 words exactly most of the time and usually answer the prompts in a unique way, too. Some weeks, I even managed to also theme them to holidays that were happening in real life at the time, like Chinese New Year. (I think I’m overdue for a rereading of the original PSOH series, too; it’s been quite a while since the last time.)

And now that my stuff has been up at ff.net for about 10 days, I’m looking at the stats and wondering if my Saiunkoku stuff is that boring. I’ve put up a couple of long drabbles plus the beginning of the long AU fic I did for the exchange last month. None of them have even hit 20 visitors yet. Meanwhile, for PSOH stuff, I’ve had 101 visitors for a long drabble, 120 visitors (and over 900 hits) for my collection of 15 short drabbles, and 179 visitors for a pair of longer related drabbles. Figures that the one with the most visitors is the one that sounds somewhat naughty from the summary. >_>;;; I know they’re both small fandoms but I didn’t think it should be that much of a difference considering some of the Saiunkoku LJ communities are actually larger than comparable PSOH ones. Kind of disappointing when the Saiunkoku stuff takes me more time to write since they’ve been longer pieces. :-/

And a slight rant relating to something I was talking to insaneladybug about a while back... People seem really lazy about reviewing stuff these days because even with all those hits and a few favorites/alerts on all of the PSOH things, I’ve yet to get a single review on anything at all. It wasn’t too uncommon for me to get 4-5 comments (and even more once in a while) on 100 word drabbles when they were originally posted on LJ but there’s been nothing there. I know I’m a much better cosplayer than fanfic writer and wouldn’t expect people to individually review drabbles. But if new people are reading them there and like them, it would be nice if they left one comment. Because while fanfic is fun to play with once in a while as a change from cosplay, I don’t enjoy the writing process as much as sewing and tend to do it in hopes of putting together something that other people will also enjoy or get a laugh out of. I’m not too bothered since I did get nice comments on stuff when it was on LJ but at the same time, it doesn’t help encourage me to get my revisions done so I can finish putting stuff up.

Merry Christmas! ^_^ I hope everyone is having a nice holiday.

Woke up early this morning and baked a gingerbread cake from scratch since we had a jar of ground ginger and a bottle of molasses sitting around that weren’t likely to get used otherwise. I started from this recipe but since a bunch of the people who reviewed it said they doubled or even tripled the spices, I added an extra 1/2 teaspoon each of ginger and cinnamon. I also didn’t have ground cloves although there was a bottle of whole cloves left over from Thanksgiving so I just left it out entirely and added a teaspoon of nutmeg instead. I think the 1 hour baking time might have been a bit too long since the crust came out a bit hard and started to burn a little. The inside was good though and not too sweet, which is good since my mother usually doesn’t like Western cakes for being too sweet.

I finally finished writing for the saiunkoku_fic exchange yesterday. It turns out I severely underestimated how long my story would go and had to ask for an extension (original deadline was Dec. 20). ._.; The fics haven’t started going up yet but even if they were, I can’t really talk about mine for a couple more weeks since they do voting on the fics with a little prize for the most popular; we’re not allowed to say which story we wrote or post it elsewhere until afterwards.

Other than writing that fic, I ended up being lazy this year and not crafting any gifts like I usually do. So, I bought a few things instead and still need to figure out when I can go visit a few people and give them their gifts since I haven’t had time yet.

Went fabric shopping on Monday. Got buttons to finish my Elaine costume and some more stuff for Ryuuren. Also went to visit neoangelwink afterwards to exchange birthday gifts and hang out. She got me a nice tea sampler ^_^ and we watched some anime.

Elaine is now finished and here’s what I have gathered for Ryuuren so far. And I actually still need green fabric. ^_^; Beads, tassels, fringe, feathers… neoangelwink and I were joking that I’m making an Amano costume. This is going to be fun and ridiculous! :-D



Today’s the Mid-Autumn Festival although it seems we won’t get a chance to look at the moon with the thunderstorm going on outside. But we still have mooncakes for later. And after not writing anything in forever, I did a PSOH drabble for the occasion. Although it’s kind of depressing rather than festive. ._.;

My birthday is next week although I feel blah about it and am not planning anything. :-/ I figure it’s probably bad timing anyway since next weekend is the last weekend before NYCC/NYAF and I suspect people will be busy sewing. Then, the weekend after is the con itself and I have a wedding reception to go to on Sunday night after the con.

So, I just wrote a new PSOH drabble. The Petshop drabble community has a challenge each week and the latest prompt was “poisoned apple” which lead to this bit of silliness. Inside joke for those of you who remember Anime Boston. XD I feel a bit dumb for not thinking of the idea earlier when I first saw the prompt! G-rated.

( Saccharine )

Did some more sewing today and the new dress is starting to come together. I love how the fabrics and trim look together but it’s still going to be a while before it’s done. I hope things will work out as I planned since I messed with the pattern and it’s basically going to be a wrap style held together with frog closures on the right side. ^_^;

Checking the weather forecast, it seems like it’s going to be much nicer on Halloween itself than tomorrow which kind of annoys me since tomorrow is when I can do pictures. >_> Oh, well. At least, that should mean I’ll be able to wear whatever costume I feel like on Tuesday.

And I wrote a silly little Petshop of Horrors drabble after not attempting fanfic for years and never trying to write something that short before. ^_^; G rated.

( I’ve kind of wondered where Count D gets all his clothes… )