now THAT's niche

Call for gay erotic steampunk fiction. Joy, are you paying attention?

(I guess I could rewrite some Trace/Boz stuff as slash.)

Bernina geekery II: the addiction

I just went to my friendly local Bernina dealer and spent over $350 on sewing machine feet.

That's the cost of one PVC Harley Quinn costume. And none of the stuff I bought, ironically, is to help with the construction of those costumes.

Bear with me for a minute, I'm still experiencing vertigo.

Okay. Better.

Y'all may remember last September, when I detailed all my recent sewing accessory acquisitions?

Now I have more.

• The one I originally went looking for was a "lap seam" foot, for making flat-felled seams. I'd been planning to do those on my upcoming Power Girl costume, to build some structure and visual interest into the front of the bodysuit (note the irony of anyone noticing how Power Girl's costume is constructed). I've been so pleased with the results of the narrow-hem foot, I figured this would be a good timesaver, too. Not too pricey: $28.99.
  
  
• Another thing I've wanted for a while: a sliding buttonhole foot. This has a little gauge on it so you can set it to the desired buttonhole length, and grippy rubbery stuff on the bottom of the sliders so the fabric can't slip. Of course, I don't have an automatic-buttonhole-making machine, so I can use all the fabric-guiding assistance I can get. I have a vague memory of using one of these on my grandmother's old machine and it was awesome. I didn't intend to buy this today, but the shop had one out of the box so the clerk sold it to me for about half price: $25.
  
  
• Something I ran across while doing research on the lap seam foot: The "wide ruffler" foot. Simple. Elegant. Efficient. Relatively cheap: $21.99.
  
  
• This is where it gets painful. Have you ever bound the edges of anything in bias tape? I have a bias-tape maker, one of those metal things you pull the fabric through and iron as you go, but that still means I have to cut, press, and stitch twice to bind an edge. This little doodad does the folding and stitching in a single pass. I don't remember what I was stitching, a couple weeks ago, but I distinctly remember thinking there must've been an easier way. And Lo and Behold, Bernina comes out with this new gadget for home sewers. And boy, are they proud of it: to the tune of $246.14. $264.13, if you count the foot number #94 that it must have to ride piggyback on. And I suppose I must count it, since I paid for it.

Still, I'm not complaining. I look at these little hunks of metal and I see time saved. Money for time: it's a fair trade. Plus, the girl in the sewing shop was really impressed with my business cards.

steampunk catwoman: or, other things I don't have time for

Yeah, so I've got the white-dress-monkey off my back, and now looking ahead to the four or five custom Harley Quinn costumes (two of which are PVC) in my immediate future. I actually hired my sister to come work part-time for me, at least to get the cutting knocked out. And now I am optimistically thinking I may be able to work in a few personal projects before the end of August. I'll tell you why in a minute.

So, remember my Catwoman costume? I still haven't had time to redo the gloves, hood or goggles on that. I have the vinyl and sunglasses, but no time. I also have the fabric for my Power Girl costume, but no time. Also, I have several pieces of fabric for various parts of Wonder Woman costumes and/or novelty items.... but no time.

My sister may be spending more time at my house than she realizes at this point.

What I have had time to do, alas, is spend money. I found an awesome pair of boots on sale at Zappos, which appealed not only to Catwoman but to several other people who live in my head.



So I bought 'em. Even wore them to work yesterday. They are extremely comfortable, and I like the way people look at me when I'm wearing them--like they can't quite figure me out. It's fun to elude categorization.

But I digress. This morning my enabler buddy Rick Stasi brings me a flyer for the Mo-Kan Comics Conspiracy convention that takes place in late August around these parts. And turns out Adam Hughes is the guest of honor this year. Now, I am the most nonchalant of fans, but I really admire the guy's work, and he's inspired so much of mine, the least I can do is shake his hand.

So I'm looking into going, maybe having a booth. With my sister's help, I can feasibly knock out some star-spangled panties, a couple of Harley Quinn vinyl hoods, and maybe some Wonder Woman accessories. I've also got an artist tapped (in Athens!!--sometimes the Internet still freaks me out) to do some pencils of a full-on Trace and Boz comic.

And of course, being the egomaniac that I am, the most pressing concern on my mind is, What am I going to wear?

Well, the vinyl Catwoman costume is mostly done, and is most compatible with the hair I currently have. But I really wanted to complete it and sell it. Same with Power Girl--I want to have it done to put on the mannequin, not so much to wear.

But I have these wonderful boots, and a pressing desire to do something steampunky with them...

So the obvious solution is to do a Steampunk Catwoman. Duh.

My fear, of course, is that somebody already beat me to it.

Well, sort of.

This is actually Batgirl, but still cute.

Nice craftsmanship, but not the look I'm after.

Closer. Kinda busy.

Cute! I like the jacket.

So, it seems there's plenty of room left to play in this particular, er, sandbox. I'm thinking knickerbockers, for sure. Maybe a double-breasted jacket or vest as shown in the last sketch. Definitely a leather harness/waist cincher with some buckles and utility D-rings. Leather helmet with ears. Gloves. I already have the goggles.

Mmm. Obession is such an ugly word.

it ain't done until the pompoms are on

So. Adam Hughes. Babes of DC Poster. All the women in white evening dresses.



Harley Quinn on the far right, there.



Elise, of Harley's Haven and other Harley-oriented fan-sites, commissioned a copy from me.







Thank God that's over with.

More pics at Picasa.

wheat vs. rice

An ongoing question I have had about low-carb diets is why the traditional-eating Chinese don't seem to get fat off rice.

Whole Health Source has a post from a year ago that points to a study I hadn't heard about, and he draws some fascinating conclusions from it.

It's one of these epidemiological studies where they try to divide subjects into different categories of eating patterns and see how health problems associate with each one. They identified four patterns: the 'macho' diet high in meat and alcohol; the 'traditional' diet high in rice and vegetables; the 'sweet tooth' pattern high in cake, dairy and various drinks; and the 'vegetable rich' diet high in wheat, vegetables, fruit and tofu. The only pattern that associated with obesity was the vegetable-rich diet. The 25% of people eating closest to the vegetable-rich pattern were more than twice as likely to be obese as the 25% adhering the least.

[...]In other words, wheat flour had replaced rice as their single largest source of calories.

[...]Wheat seems to destroy the metabolism of cultures wherever it goes. [...] Only in a culture transitioning to a more Western diet can you find a robust association like this.

Go there for more details.

*Sigh.* There's no getting around it. I'm gonna have to start baking my own bread. I don't know what the hell I'm going to bread my fried chicken with, though.

steampunky goodness/lyric fail

I actually wrote some this weekend. Whee!!! I finally spliced & diced some story stuff that needed doing; Curious Weather has been considerably tightened and edited. Nice. There are still a couple of long scenes that I dislike, but I honestly don't trust my own judgement on that story anymore. I've been looking at it for three freakin' years.

Anybody want to read it and give me some feedback? Anybody? (It's not done, so don't whine at me.)

Anyway. In search of inspiration over the weekend, I got on YouTube and searched for "steampunk." That led me to "Carnival of Rust," by Poets of the Fall, a Finnish band.

The video is awesome. Weird, stylistic, and moving. Melodramatic fangirl goodness.

And yet... after I'd listened to it five or six times I realized I wasn't catching onto any patterns in the lyrics. Most pop songs I can hear twice and have them half-memorized. Inititally, I assumed the lyrical structure in this song must be more complex than most. So I looked up the lyrics. And it's not complexity that's the problem.

D' you breath the name of your saviour
in your hour of need,
And taste the blame if the flavor
should remind you of greed,
Of implication, insinuation and ill will,
till' you cannot lie still,
In all this turmoil, before red cape and foil
come closing in for a kill

Come feed the rain
Cos I'm thirsty for your love,
dancing underneath the skies of lust
Yeah feed the rain
Cos without your love my life
ain't nothing but this carnival of rust

It's all a game--avoiding failure,
when true colors will bleed.
All in the name of misbehavior,
and the things we don't need.
I lust for after no disaster can touch--
touch us anymore
And more than ever, I hope to never fall,
where enough is not the same it was before.

Don't quite make sense, do they? I've noticed this phenomenon in other European-based bands who try to write in English: Abba (although they're not as bad as critics claim they are), Ace of Base, a Swedish group called Kane I used to like. The words are familiar, but they don't quite string together right. Other songs by Poets of the Fall follow this same pattern--either slightly incomprehensible, or worse, falling into triteness. I tried to write a little poetry in French, back when I was a French major, and believe me, however hard it is to communicate in a second language, it is ten times more difficult to make art in that language. Culture doesn't translate--you have to have been there to get it.

Oh well, still gorgeous. And the dude can certainly sing. Just float around in the atmosphere and ignore the words.

twenty years

When I was fourteen or fifteen, a freshman in high school, there was a girl in my English class named Elisha. Pretty, in that easily-bruised way girls have when they grow up too fast. She wore a lot of black--acid washed jeans, suede fringe jacket, slouch ankle boots, oversized hobo bag of the type that is in style again. Lots of fake, flashy silver conchos. Feathered, frosted ash-blonde hair. For some reason I can see her face plain as day, when I've forgotten a lot of other people from that time. She and I were not close, but we got along well enough. We were on different tracks in life. I was a goody-two-shoes, headed for a Baptist college. She was a model, the rumor was. Maybe a groupie. I don't know. She started skipping class around the time that I'm thinking of. Being a goody-two-shoes, I was assigned to take roll for the class. She was gone a lot.

She died not long after that. At fifteen. Drug overdose, was the rumor. At a party, took too much. Stomach pumped. Too late.

Kids have an alarming tendency to kill themselves at that age, before they learn the limits of their own bodies.

I don't know why I think of her sometimes. We weren't really friends. I guess her death was the first proof I had that kids really did die--kids in my world, not just in movies or pop songs or public service announcements.

Twenty years ago. When I was fifteen I kind of unconsciously expected that time would just stop at 1992--the year I graduated high school. It didn't, of course. I'm still here.

Elisha is gone--or mostly. I find myself wondering how airtight modern caskets are; what kind of shape a body would be in after twenty years. For some reason the thought of her sweet, melancholy face rotting away in the ground makes me sad for her lost time. I think of what *she* might've done with twenty more years. I probably would have never seen her again after graduation, but still--it's as if one person being robbed of time leaves less for the rest of the world. I don't even know if that makes sense. I'm just sitting here writing ghost stories and having morbid thoughts about a dead girl I barely knew.