Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

I’ve been meaning to post pictures from the Saiunkoku group at AnimeNext for a few weeks but I’ve been lazy and I’m only getting around to it now. ^_^; neoangelwink was Shuurei again and kitsunesqueak joined us as Eigetsu. athena_chan was busy in artist’s alley but dressed one of her friends in her Ryuuki costume so we could have the whole group.



( more pics and lots of silliness under the cut )

Katsucon photos went up at risingsun.net the other day so I guess I’ll make my photo post now since I have most pics other than a few my brother is still working on.

First, Saiunkoku with neoangelwink as Shuurei and athena_chan as Ryuuki.



( More Saiunkoku pics )

( Count D and Kyoya pics )

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.

Yay, I have Ryuuren photos from thedreamerworld! We did these back in October when the botanic garden was doing their Halloween event. And this reminds me I still need to remake my headdress and fix this up for the group at Katsucon. ^_^; Yay, I'll have Shuurei, Eigetsu, and Ryuuki to torture with terrible flute music!



( more pics under the cut )

Also Saiunkoku related, I got my present from the saiunkoku_fic exchange. I had trouble thinking of anything canon I especially wanted to see so I requested a Victorian AU. It was a pretty random prompt but I like period settings and had never seen that one done before. ^_^;; The results were wonderful though and I loved it. ^_^ Link if anyone else wants to read:
http://community.livejournal.com/saiunkoku_fic/98151.html


And yikes, that was quite a blizzard yesterday. o_o; My brother said even a two foot ruler wasn’t enough to measure all that we got! And our street hasn’t been plowed yet. We had to cancel plans to go out to dinner last night for my mother’s birthday. And the store couldn’t open today so my father got a three day weekend.

Not happy about all the snow since it’s going to delay any plans I had for going out. I still need to visit friends with late Christmas gifts. Plus, I want to see “A Little Night Music" before it closes in a couple of weeks; I never did get to it after the failed attempt in June.

Hmm… It’s been a while since I’ve updated. Relatives from Canada are flying in on Sunday morning so I’ve been doing some cleaning and the living room doesn’t look like as much of a disaster as when I’m in the middle of a costume. >_>; Still looks cluttered though since I have so many bags of fabric either leftover from costumes or for stuff I’m planning to do.

Tuesday afternoon was fun. ^_^ I picked up some little cakes from one of the nearby bakeries and went to visit neoangelwink and athena_chan for a little tea party. vampricyoda made a surprise appearance and I got to say hi to loudnbothered before I left. Talked a bit about cosplay plans for next year since it looks like we’ll be doing a couple of groups (more about that next time). Also joked about how everything in Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar gets thrown and bounces when you put it down… Chickens, cats, dogs, eggs, bottles of wine… XD; (It is kind of funny but I sort of wish I could put the animals down normally like in the older games; all that throwing looks pretty rough!)

I’ve been enjoying the break from sewing and playing Harvest Moon instead. Into fall of year 3 now and have most of the farm upgrades but haven’t grown all of the different crops and trees yet; there are a few I still haven’t seen seeds for anywhere. And not even close to hitting the limit on animals since you can have a ridiculous number in this game. 20 chickens; 20 cows and sheep; 10 cats and dogs; and a horse. I’m running out of corny names for my animals so I’m considering being silly and doing a Saiunkoku themed game with Shuurei as the farmer since there are dozens of characters. >_>; I did a Fruits Basket themed game once in an older Harvest Moon with Tohru as the farmer and the Sohmas as the animals. Never did a PSOH one though; I guess since I haven’t played one for so long and most of D’s pets wouldn’t easily correspond to farm animals.

Also have been playing a bit with fanfic. Just some short little pieces because I don’t really have the patience to write longer stuff when I could be working on other hobbies. I think this one came out best: Birds of a Blue Feather. Short, cute, and fluffy Saiunkoku fic with Ryuuren, Eigetsu, and Kourin.

It’s turning out to be a rough week here. First, my father twisted his arm at work on Tuesday. Yesterday, I went to the dentist to get a cavity filled and ended up getting my last wisdom tooth extracted, too. The dentist didn’t think it would be so hard to get out but it was stubborn and took over an hour with sawing and taking it out in pieces. X_X Then, after we got home, my mother fell in the back yard while getting the laundry and is now hobbling around with a cane and a swollen knee.


My brother posted a few more NYCC/NYAF preview shots, including neo2469, neoangelwink, sakuralenayuy, and usa_ko: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotofong/

Here’s one from the Monkey Island photoshoot with neoangelwink as Guybrush and myself as Elaine.

Did I really agree to marry this idiot?



And a Saiunkoku pic. My hair is a complete mess since the wind blew my fake bangs all over and I had to bobby pin them off to the side to keep them out of my face. ^_^;; (Plus, they weren’t that great in the first place since I made them the night before. >_>) I did have some of my hair tied up in a loop but since it was towards the back of my head, it started drooping after a while and doesn’t show in the pic. But it does show most of the detail on the brocade shirt; that was the most complicated piece to make because of all the trim. I thought a dragon brocade would be fitting since Ryuuren is from the Ran clan and their crest includes a pair of dragons. And you can see the flute. It was a bamboo one that I painted with nail polish to give it a glossy look. It was never mentioned in the anime but I found out it was supposed to be metal in the novels; I guess that explains why he was able to knock people out with it!