Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

My brother finished the cosplay photos we took on vacation. I’ve been especially looking forward to the Gankutsuou pics since we shot those outside a late 1800s mansion. ^_^ This one by the front door was one of my favorites. More to come after I get them resized and uploaded.

I got a couple of DVDs from Amazon yesterday, vol. 4 of Kaleido Star: New Wings and vol. 5 of Gankutsuou. An optimistic girl pursuing her dream of being a circus star and a bitter man bent on revenge… What a weird combination. LOL

There were 5 episodes on the Kaleido Star disc this time, which was nice. Sora seems to be bouncing back and we’re getting some hints about Leon’s past now. He certainly seems to have some obsessive issues, regarding a girl named Sophie. o_o;

Gankutsuou was kind of depressing, particularly the second episode on the disc. ;_; Not sure if it was just me but I found myself wondering what some of the characters were doing while certain events were going on because we don’t see them/their reactions.

I’ve been meaning to talk a bit about books since it’s been a while but I’ve been so busy with costume stuff lately. I finished rereading Dianne Day’s Fremont Jones series the other day. It’s 6 books long and mostly set in California during the early 1900s. The main character is Fremont, an independent-spirited girl from a wealthy Boston family who leaves home after her widowed father gets remarried to a woman she despises. She moves to San Francisco with the intention of making her own living by starting a typewriting business and soon finds herself involved in a mystery when one of her clients is murdered. The series follows the adventures she gets involved in through her typing business and later, the detective agency she starts with her lover Michael Archer.

It’s too bad the series didn’t go longer since I liked the characters; Fremont is probably one of my favorite mystery heroines ever. Like a lot of mystery series I liked that ended, I had assumed there would be more but a next book just never came. The author has only published one book since the series ended, a Civil War era mystery based on the life of Clara Barton, and I just wasn’t interested enough to finish reading it when I tried a few years back. :-/

Next, I’ll probably read “Death at Glamis Castle” by Robin Paige. Kate Ardleigh, the protagonist in this series, reminds me of Fremont since she was also an unconventional woman who wanted to earn her own living. In her case, it was by writing gothic fiction and the series is set in a slightly earlier time period than Dianne Day’s books, about a decade before. It’s a decent series but I don’t love it nearly as much as the Fremont Jones series.

And in costume news, 5 flowers left to go! I’m finally getting close to the light at the end of the tunnel! XD