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A few recent acquisitions have made my little otaku heart very happy, some cosplay related, others not quite so much (but so cool!) First up, general otaku stuff!

I didn't write about this at the time, but I received the coolest birthday present ever this year (awesome way to wrap up Sakura Con, btw): this fantastic Escaflowne statue I'd been drooling over in a local anime shop for the past three years or so.

Seriously, every time I walked into the shop I'd practically plaster my face to the glass and just salivate over the thing. Escaflowne's my all-time favorite series and it's so hard to find merchandise for it. The fact that I didn't have this ultra-awesome piece on my mantle bothered me for the longest time, and what do I get on my birthday?
Thanks cp. Oh, and any of you Gasukan kids who helped. I hear you had something to do with it, too.

More recently at Emerald City Comic Con, I got my hands on some old-school memorabilia:

What I really wanted was the drop-dead gorgeous Fujiko figure that's supposed to be part of the set, but she doesn't come out until later this year. She may be out by now, though. But I've got Lupin, who is definitely badass enough on his own. I'm sure he's awaiting my acquisition of Fujiko-chan just as eagerly as I am.

I love figures. They're my favorite kind of collectible junk, and one of the saddest things about my current living arrangement is that the majority of my collection is in storage right now. I've been gathering more while I'm living here, though ^^'. I've been working on getting together the entire One Piece crew (no Luffy yet, unfortunately), and I'm still hyper over the entire Cyborg 009 set I found at the Daiso for about $10. I picked up a large Inuyasha (Toyami) and a beautiful Miroku statue last week. Miroku's part of a set I want to eventually collect in its entirety--Kagome and Sango were wonderful. And the 'CLAMP in 3-D Land' sets are adorable...I still want Syaoran, he was the cutest thing.


Anyway, in more cosplay-related news, I finally have a good sewing machine! A Pfaff Smart 200c; while not a higher end model, it's definitely a big step above the $100 Singer hobby machines I've owned until now. I haven't played with it much yet, but with Anime Evolution just around the corner and me with several projects that need finishing, I'll definitely have the opportunity to do so in the next few weeks.

This is the first machine I've owned with computerized settings, or with an automatic needle threader. One of the small things about this model, relevent to recent/in-progress projects is it has a stitch function needed for Romeo's outfit...just a bit of trim on his sleeves that I wasn't sure how to pull off before. It can do letters and numbers too; not quite sure how I'll use them, but it's nice to have. And most importantly, it's got way more power than anything I've owned before. I can actually work with heavy-duty stuff now without worrying my machine's gonna die on me.

Apparently it also does buttonholes on its own, no 4-step process. Now I might actually make buttonholes. Awesome.

Tags: Playtime

If you're not up on the weather news for Western Washington, here's what's been happening lately:

It snowed on Friday.
We got six inches.
What the hell?

That's my house with the lamp in the window.

In case you're not from around here, this is not normal. Friday set the record for latest spring snowfall in the area, or so I keep hearing. Some places around here got up to a foot, so I guess we got off relatively easy (I'm about 40 minutes north of Seattle). On the plus side, I got some really cool shots: http://s177.photobucket.com/albums/w212/Midori_no_Kumiko/spring%20photography/ Everything through the dragons are from up to a month ago, the ducks were shot on Friday morning. The snow started falling around 2:00, and the rest of the album was taken about 6:30 that evening.

It snowed again this morning, though it didn't stick this time thankfully. It was gorgeous this afternoon. The weather's just been really wonky this spring.

Sakura Con weekend (three weeks ago): Snow flurries and extreme chill Thursday and Friday, alternately pleasant and rainy and cold Saturday and Sunday. I heard there was snow Saturday too.
Last weekend: 80. Ran to the storage unit to dig out my capris.
This weeked: Snow and thunder, with a little sunshine for giggles. o_O

Yesterday I had the strongest urge to make Sakura's bunny hood outfit she wears to capture The Snow, because there were perfect backgrounds everywhere in my neighborhood.

----------

I attended the Cherry Blossom Festival at Seattle Center today. No snow in the city, at least. It was cool, but it was a typical spring day in Seattle: partly cloudy, outbreaks of sun and blue skies, and a small rain shower to finish. There was a meetup for some of the folks from Sakura Con, with cosplay of course. I did my Taisho-inspired outfit, kimono, hakama, lace-up boots, and parasol. Didn't get any shots of it on my own camera, but I took quite a few of the others in our group. We also watched a group from Tohoku perform (they asked me and cp, dressed as Ichigo from Bleach, to join them for a few photos), did a little shopping, and explored an ikebana exhibit. It was a lot of fun. I'm eager to see the photos everyone else got. I know we have a few of me perched in a flowering apple tree, hakama and all.

Tags: Cherry Blossoms Snow And A Spring Festival

As shown in my gallery, my Akane-as-Juliet outfit is almost complete. I still have to finish the hat and style a new wig. The one I'm wearing in my pictures is my never-seen-con-light Sango wig, which was dark enough and similar enough in style to work.

Poor Ranma. His outfit almost got done, but the appliques took a lot more time than I thought they would. We ended up doing our regular outfits for our scheduled shoot. We're going to set up a new photoshoot with Vince in a month or two, after I've completely finished everything.

I love the way the dress came out. I need to hem it one more time to keep the raw edges completely tucked away (velvet frays, I found) and I will do the appliques on the sleeves, hopefully before our shoot. This is probably the best work I've done so far costume wise.

I'm trying not to loose my momentum. I gave myself one week to recover from con, and now I'm going to jump straight into sewing for summer cosplays. I've got at least four that need to be finished by the end of August for Anime Evolution and Kumori Con: Rin and Yuta from Mermaid Saga, Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke, and Hitomi from Escaflowne. I've also got several outfits I'd like to do for summer shoots: Ryoga and Akane (Doll-Inn yukata version) and possibly a couple of new Ranma outfits (tropical island and vol. 34 cover), Sango, and a new version of Lum.

Rin and Yuta are highest priority because I've already got the fabric for them. I still have to study traditional Japanese armor and figure out her breastplate (I'm starting to get some ideas, though).

Ashitaka is second on the list. Today I finally went to Pacific Fabrics and picked up the fabric I've been coveting for his tunic for the last six months: heavy turquoise blue linen. It's expensive, more so than the velvet was, but it's absolutely perfect both in color and texture. Ashitaka's blue was suprisingly hard to find in a heavier weight woven.

Tags: Springtime For Cosplay

*Does a happy little nerd-dance ala Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels*

My red velvet has arrived!

I feel I'm in good company here. This is one of the few communities I know of where a large number of folks will understand the unbelievably squishy happy feeling I'm experiencing over the ten yards of high-quality velvet (varying colors) I have in my possession. I literally huggled my bag of fabric when I left the store. There's no other way to describe it.

Things are just going really well. I've got my velvet, I found fabric for Ranma's leggings, our photoshoot's all set up for March, and...well, another really good thing, better than the other stuff, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is right now. ^^


On a (sort of ) related (to cosplay) topic, I've finally got my benefits at work, which means I can afford to get my contacts prescription updated. Which means I may have brown contacts in time for Sakura Con. It's picky, but the fact that my eyes are pretty noticeably blue bothers me for characters like Akane. I'm getting green ones too eventually, for when I do Fuu and Sakura (CCS). Natural colored lenses aren't that expensive, about $30 or $40. The cost is about the same as clear, and I need new contacts anyway.

I don't mind going without my glasses for the sake of cosplay, but I really can't function for long, like walking around, without something to correct my vision. According to mom, I'm "nearly" legally blind, though I'm not sure I'd go that far. (Especially since she's only mentioned this recently, and I've been wearing glasses since I was seven. They've gotten worse, I know that, but that bad? What does that mean for me ten years down the road? Scary.) My eyes suck.


*blink* Not sure where I'm going with that. Anyway, yay velvet! So soft and silky and pretty...*pets*

Tags: Good Textiles Bring Happiness

My quest for affordable velvet has ended!

I'm so freaking thrilled this evening. Despite some issues with other cosplays, I was able to find the beautiful, high-quality velvet I've been searching for at an exceptionally reasonable price. Three yards of royal blue, five yards of wine red, and some smaller pieces of cherry and black, all 40% off (between $8 and $10 a yard at sale price, usually $13 to $18, and up to $25 a yard at one particular store).

Part of what has me so happy is that the store didn't have more than a yard and a half of the wine red for Akane's dress in stock. So what did the nice lady behind the counter do? She placed an order for me to get more of my fabric in, at current sale price, and she handed me a coupon for an additional 10% off my purchase. I won't get the dark red for a couple of weeks, but that's time that can be spent modding the pattern and working on Ranma's Romeo outfit.

I know for some people this is still really expensive for a costume, but considering the quality of the materials I'm using, it's a really great price. Texture and weight is so important to me, especially with these outfits. My impression of Hancocks has always been that they're higher quality but also more expensive than JoAnn, but I'm starting to reconsider. Their velvet and satin prices met or beat JoAnn (in the case of the nicest velvet, by a good $7 a yard), and the mid-range stuff at Hancock was far superior in texture. I think I'm going to start shopping there more often.

I did pick up a few other nice fabrics, some lovely, heavy-weight gold brocade (JoAnn) for Akane's cap and some dupioni silky (Pacific) for the puffs of her sleeves. I'm almost done collecting the fabric for the costumes. All that remains is to pick something for the white ruffle on Akane's neckline, find something for Ranma's leggings, and get dull light blue satin for the designs on his tunic. I'm gonna teach myself applique for this project, for the tunic and the black designs on Akane's sleeves.

So I've been pondering these costumes for a few months now (since Anime Evolution, really), but with Sakura Con coming up I'm starting to think about them seriously: Satoshi Morinozuka and Yasuchika Haninozuka. Mori and Hunny's younger brothers. I'm doing Satoshi. He's kind of the polar opposite of Mori, personality-wise; he's also kind of a moron, which is why I'm so strongly tempted to cosplay him. Also, Mori's my favorite Ouran character; Satoshi idolizes his big bro, and at least one of my friends is a really good Mori cosplayer who I can hang out with. (The shinai might have something to do with it, too. And the fact that I'd get to bully my Chika.)

The boys wear the middle school uniform, warm weather version. (Sweater vests and short-sleeved shirts with constrast trim--coloration is cream and gray, based on the illustration on the back of volume 7 of the manga. I don't watch the anime, so this may be wrong according to flashbacks, I don't know.) I've wondered how to pull them off for a while, and I've recently come to the conclusion that I either (a) have to find cream-colored sweater vests and hand stitch the contrast coloring on or (b) knit the vests myself. Practically, I should just go for a, or even go the easier route and make them out of pre-existing fabric, but I'm leaning towards b. Yes, I'm nuts. But I'm almost finished with the cropped sweater for my Nami cosplay. I need a new project. And really, they shouldn't be too hard to make, just a little time-consuming. If I knit in the round up to the arm openings, it should go by pretty quickly.

Don't know that I could pull it off in the time I have, with all the other projects I have going, but it would be nice to have something to work on when I need a break from sewing. And knitting's a good portable project. I can do it on my lunch break at work.

Tags: Ouran Knitting

I've promised myself to finish three big costumes this year. One, Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke, is probably on hold until after Sakura Con. I'm going all out on him, all his weapons (sword, bow and arrows, and jeweled knife), full outfit, leather boots, rain gear, riding chaps, everything. Plus, I have to figure out how to do the end-of-movie version, when he's shirtless save for those arm-covers. I already know exactly what fabrics I'm using, but I'm giving myself until September to finish everything.

Right now I'm focused on projects one and two. One would be Rin from Mermaid Saga (Village of the Fighting Fish arc, if you're familiar). She's the young leader of a band of pirates--the good kind!--which means traditional Japanese armor! Or at least a breastplate, which is super-awesome. The kimono itself is really short, and sleeveless. If you've watched Inuyasha and seen what a lot of the village men and boys wear (those not wearing hakama), you'll get the idea. I'm incorporating bike or cheer shorts under the costume so I don't have to worry.

I'm really excited about Rin because Mermaid Saga (often known as Mermaid Forest) is my favorite manga of all time, hands down. It's a really good story, probably one of Takahashi's most creative works, but it doesn't get anywhere near the attention Inuyasha or Ranma or even Maison Ikkoku does. I'm guessing this is due to the fact that it's a lot darker than almost anything else she's done, unless you look at some of her one-shots. Cosplaying Rin means maybe I'll get to introduce the series to a few new people. That, and she's just a cool character.

Second, Juliet!Akane. I've mentioned it before, and as you might be able to tell from my wallpaper, I absolutely adore this outfit. I'm not that big a fan of the play (both Romeo and Juliet are idiots, in my opinion), but I love the treatment it gets in Ranma. And their costumes are adorable. Ranma's is a kick (it's so him!), and Akane's is gorgeous. I'm determined to do them both justice--I'm making Ranma's as well--and a big part of that is fabric choice. I'm driven to do most of Akane's dress in velvet, the real stuff. None of that thin crushed crap. The problem is the only wine-colored velvet I can find is $25 a yard. Same for the dark blue for Ranma. It's really beautiful stuff, but I need probably four or five yards of the red, or more. The brighter shade I found for $13, which is manageable, but it doesn't comprise the majority of the outfit (dammit). If it comes down to it I may do the darker portions in matte casa satin...maybe. I just want to do the outfit in velvet. It's the right weight, the right texture, everything. Look at the way her sleeves crumple...that's a velvet weight! Yes, I'm a fabric snob. I don't want to settle for the cheaper option, not when I've been dreaming of this dress for so long.

If I can pull them off...I think I'll have achieved my first major milestone as a cosplayer and a seamstress. True intermediate class, finally.

Tags: Rin And Akane

In case I didn't get it to you...

Tags: Chestnuts

So the Gasukaners* had their first Christmas party. It was awesome. We went ice skating and hit the mall for Blue C Sushi and shopping, then went bowling and did a White Elephant gift exchange. I mostly did behind-the-scenes stuff, which was cool. I like playing hostess/mommy. Made a lot of cookies and candy; the peppermint bark went over really well.

And people liked my dress! I did a sort of last minute Christmas OAV Akane outfit, the light blue one with the pink blouse. The blouse was a spot-on perfect Value Village find. I used polarfleece for the dress. Overall the outfit cost me less than $10 and it turned out super. I'll post pics once I have some where I'm wearing makeup and am not in a dark bowling alley.

I have to use polarfleece for more costumes. It's like wearing a blanket. And people want to pet you.

*Seattle-area photoshoot group. Ask me about it, yo!

Tags: Gasukan Party Akane Christmas Outfit

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