The Rose's Grove

1. ZipCar reservations (for the purpose of going to Ikea to get another bookshelf) are only good if the person who has the truck before you doesn't somehow blow out all the lights on the left rear part of the truck, causing ZipCar to call you up and tell you that you can only have the truck if you're willing to drive it to a particular mechanic-place that they use and buy the replacement parts (lightbulbs, they said, but from what the girl said, The Boy and I were convinced it was going to be the fuse) with our own money and then apply for reimbursement. Ha. No. What the hell? Granted, our reservation had been for all day, but what if (as we often do) we'd only reserved it for a few hours? That would have eaten our whole reservation! What the hell kind of system is that? And they didn't even know what was wrong with the stupid thing!

2. Turns out, PacSun actually has awesome t-shirts that actually fit me. Go figure. It's The Boy's favorite shop for clothes, but I didn't honestly think they'd have anything I'd like.

3. Thing that The Boy learned today: If, in the course of talking about conventions, he makes a joke about going to a hardware store, finding a door-knocker, and dressing up as Roger from the Hellboy / BPRD comics and having me dress up as Liz, I will in fact not only agree whole-heartedly to the idea, but immediately start to work on how I can make the costumes. After all, I (unlike him) like Liz, and... well, I wouldn't be the one going around the con in a unitard, a vest, and a door-knocker, would I? Plus, I could probably use it as an excuse to buy an awesome pair of tight black jeans and a long dark red wig. So, win-win situation for me, whereas he... would be walking around a con wearing a door-knocker on his crotch. I'm just saying. ;)

Spent all day cleaning the apartment with the help of the amazing narsilion, and then... pretty much crashed. And then after I crashed, I got just antsy enough about my recently-rediscovered plans to actually make that Nuala (Hellboy II) costume that I've been talking about for ages... that I actually tried to do the makeup application, just to see if it would work.

It was... a qualified success. Marginal, but entirely within the range of possibility, I'd say.

( Pictures of the process and final result under the cut! )

In summation, I want my own personal live-action airbrusher to follow me around everywhere. :P Failing that, if any of you have any advice on how I can get all this to look better (... the actual costume, I mean, not my photo-editing skills!), that'd be much appreciated!

...And now I'm going to pass out and wish tomorrow wasn't Monday. Why do weekends have to be so damned short? And apparently my layout doesn't like the full-size shots... I'll code them as thumbnails, hopefully that'll help.

I was looking over my schedule for the next week, and I might have to give up the idea of having the Nuala costume finished in time for Halloween. I've just got too much work to do cutting and sewing the actual costume costume bits, and too little time left to do it in without worrying about screwing something up due to my relative inexperience at sewing.

I can still plan to have the costume in good shape for NorWesCon in the spring, as I originally meant to do, and it probably would be more suitable for that in a lot of ways. But I'm still sad and annoyed at myself for not having been more proactive... I just didn't realize how busy this month was going to be for me. The real bugger of it is that I still feel like I might be able to fit it in... but I just don't know. If I'd been able to get the full day of the 31st off I would be fine, maybe (aside from potential panic re: sewing machine, since I have an amazing ability to cause sewing machines to do strange things, and no ability to coax them to work again after), but... with how busy we've been, I'll be lucky if I can even get off a few hours early that day. :P

All of this would have been so much easier if I'd just been able to find the pieces (skirt and dress/robe) already made. Sewing just makes me nervous. I can make the patterns, that's no problem, but when it comes to the actual sewing, I panic a little bit, especially with nice fabric involved.

Blargh.