28 April 2014

Diary of a Costume Hobbyist (days 1-7)

Overview

In the past I have used this blog-space mostly to share my thoughts and insights on my faith and faith community.  Recently I’ve been using my personal Facebook account to document the transformation of our kitchen as we remodeled it over the past 4 months.  That project is nearly complete and I have both enjoyed documenting the work we have done and found that sharing the work encouraged me to do the work (even the boring bits).

So, in the spirit of trying something new, I am going to try to keep a costuming diary for the next year as the lead up to Norwescon in April 2015.  I am going to start with Day 1 being the first day after Norwescon because that is really the day that i start preparing for the next Norwescon by cleaning, mending and putting away old costumes, and getting started designing at least one new costume for the next year.

Norwescon is our local Pacfic Northwest Science Fiction convention.  It happens every year on Easter Weekend.  My housemate, who I will hear after refer to as my Costuming Partner in Crime (CPiC), and I go every year and we like to have a different costume to wear for each of the 4 days of the convention. 

Our other main costuming event is our household Halloween Party every October.  Between those two events we wind up with two major deadlines to get things done for. 

My hope with this dairy is to keep a daily log of what I have worked on (if anything) and to write about some of what I learn as I work on various projects.

Unfortunately, my first week’s worth of costume log isn't very exciting, as I fell ill the day we got home from the convention.  

Hopefully I will have more to show as the year moves along. To liven things up a bit, here is a photo of one my favorite pieces I have ever made— an Egyptian style wide collar for my Bastet costume from 2010:





Daily Log:

Days 1-6 
Monday April 21- Saturday April 27, 2014
I came down sick with my costuming partner in crime’s cold.  Not surprising since we live together and we shared a hotel room for four days. No progress to report.

Day 7
Sunday, April 27th, 2014
I’m still sick but some energy is returning to me.  I took advantage of that energy to finish my laundry from Norwescon 2014.  I need to hand wash my corsets and a few other pieces, primarily from my Mrs Salmalin costume and my Flower Fairy costume.  By the end of the evening those pieces were all dry and ready to be either put away for the year, or put in the mending queue.



CPiC (Costuming Partner in Crime) and I both have some major projects on our plate and hope to clear the decks and get working. I made a list of what I hope to work on in the following year.  Next step: make a plan of attack.