I’m starting off this week’s post with maybe a heavy link: The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief. My aunt sent me this this morning and it put a word to the way I’ve been feeling. I hadn’t thought of it as grief. Sadness, disappointment, frustration, anxiety – but grief sums it up best.
So now that that is out of the way, let’s move on to happy things!
First up – SITE IS MOVED!! There’s still broken stuff I have to fix. No need to tell me at the moment, I’m still working my way through it in my free time. I’m so excited to be off my old server… I’d been with the same company since 1997!! The original company has been bought and sold a few times while I’ve been with them, and they’ve overall been fine. But their CS was occasionally lacking, the price was high, and I was supposedly “out of storage space” despite the fact I was supposed to have unlimited storage space. I haven’t been able to upload ANYTHING to my site in years through FTP because it would tell me it’s full. Funnily enough – if I uploaded through wordpress it was fine. That is, it was fine up until about a month ago when suddenly it was giving me an error when uploading through wordpress. That was kinda the kicker. I’ve moved everything over to Chase’s host so we have a shared account which will make life a LOT easier. And save us some money.
second – the BIG BIG NEWS!! Yesterday, stores reopened here in town and Chase and I went to pick up my new baby…
Strapping the baby in for the ride home!
Meet Baby Yoda! I decided she needed a Star Wars name since she came home May the 4th.
I’ve been shopping for an embroidery machine for a while. The store where I bought my refurbed serger back in 2004 had this refurbed Janome MemoryCraft 350E and Chase and I decided this would be the one. It came with 1 free service, $300 worth of lessons at the store, and a good warranty. I also picked up thread and stabilizer. I can’t wait to play with it, will probably start messing with it this weekend.
Ok so now funny story. I don’t use my serger a lot, because it didn’t come with a manual and after a while I forgot how to thread it. So a few years ago – prob like 2010 – 2011-ish? – I decided to take it over to the sewing machine store (let’s call it Store A), and see about getting them to show me how to thread it again, since they’d shown me when I bought it. I thought this was the store I’d bought it from, just that they’d moved since then. The folks in the store wanted an outrageous amount of money just to show me how to thread it so I said no thanks, and EVENTUALLY finally found a PDF of the manual online and saved it for future reference. So I was a little miffed at them, I knew it’d been a few years since I bought it but still!
So when we walked into the OTHER sewing machine store (we’ll call it Store B) yesterday to pick up the embroidery machine, I was instantly like…. oh. OH. Oooooooooooooooh. I bought the serger from Store B. As soon as I walked in I was like, yep there’s the lesson area where we sat and threaded my machine. So no wonder Store A had no interest in showing me how to thread the machine I’d bought at Store B. LMAO.
After we picked up the new machine, we ran down to midtown to drive by a friend’s house to honk “happy birthday!” and then picked up dinner from Molly’s to go. On the way home…
We passed under Vader and Luke dueling it out on one of the I40 bridges. Hilarious!! So glad I was able to get my camera out in time to take a pic.
We miss you too Molly’s!!!!
So to rewind a bit now. Let’s go back to the weekend.
Since we were SUPPOSED TO BE IN DISNEY WORLD THIS WEEK AND WE’RE NOT… we decided to take a field trip Saturday. But first we started the day off with some yardwork.
We took down the old wooden fence that bi-sected our backyard. We plan to plant some more clover on the side yard, as wel as putting down some pavers and making a little sitting area kinda where I’m standing to take the pic.
Chase also replaced the wooden fence around the AC units with some white latticework. Looks nice. Don’t have a pic of that.
Roses from the yard
Then we finished up and loaded up into the car and drove an hour east to Bolivar, TN. It was a nice drive. We stopped at a local restaurant and picked up lunch, ate it in the car.
Then on Bolivar’s site they have a little driving tour of the historic homes.
I’m not going to post all the pics but it was really interesting, and the area was really pretty. After we looked at the homes, we decided it was time to check out the whole reason for the trip – to drive by the abandoned mental hospital. Before we did that, we stopped at the grocery store in town so Chase could run in and see if they had paper towels. They did not, but he grabbed a few more things, came back out and… the car wouldn’t start.
Yep, battery was dead. Fun times. Chase called our insurance’s road side assistance, but the guy we were connected to was in Memphis and it was going to take him an hour and a half to get to us. So we called my parents, since they were only about an hour away, and they had to drive up and jump the car for us. SO frustrating. But we did at least get to drive by the mental hospital on our way back home. Didn’t get any pics though.
So that all took longer than expected so Saturday was pretty much a wash after that.
Sunday I recorded my May the 4th video.
Originally I had wanted to put EVERYTHING on, full hair and makeup… and I realized, that’s going to take all freaking day if I do that. Plus some aren’t wearable. So I decided instead I’d do Leia buns and makeup and put on some of them and have it sort of be like I’m trying to decide what to wear, this isn’t right, that isn’t right, oh this is the one! Ending with senatorial Leia. It still took a while to film, and as of Tuesday I still haven’t finished cleaning up from it. But I was really happy with how it turned out.
A few noteS:
1. I also decorated the whole shelf to my left. It has all my jewelry, weapons, a few helmets, Amidala and Leia dolls… and then it wasn’t visible in the shot. I did put my parade Amidala parasol and a helmet on top of the wardrobe in the back, and you can see them throughout.
2. I left out the mando. It was a decision I made at the beginning, but then as I went on and included shots of everything else I also wasn’t originally going to show… I forgot about it. Boo.
3. I thought it would be weird to put the funeral gown on when dressed as Leia, so I only held that one up.
4. As you can see didn’t do full costume on everything – no parasol on parade, no bodysuit on snowbunny – again just for ease. Also mostly skipped shoes unless they were visible.
5. Leia buns with my imperial officer is my new aesthetic
6. I was AMAZED Mara was still wearable. Since so many of my old pleather costumes from the same era have totally disintegrated! I pulled it out and it was still intact!! It’s not in great shape (the zipper is pulling away in the back) and I forgot how it feels like totally being encased in plastic… but I was glad to be able to put it on to include. ALSO I SPUN THE WRONG WAY IN MARA AND DIDN’T REALIZE TIL 10PM SUNDAY NIGHT. will haunt me forever.
7. First time I’ve had (almost) all of the Poe Dameron comic Leia on. Only thing I didn’t include was the tiara – I would’ve had to put it on before the buns.
8. Wish I’d shown a little more of Boushh. I was going to put it on but just didn’t have the energy to wear it AGAIN. I’ve put it on a lot lately for tiktok videos. I mean, “a lot” in comparison to normal. I think I’ve worn it more the last 2-3 months than I did for all of 2007-2019.
9. Endor has the wrong boots but I didn’t feel like going downstairs to get them.
10. I was going to wear comic Leia but forgot the belt is broken 🙁 Got halfway into it before I realized.
11. Ceremonial Leia FITS SO BAD. Main reason I want to remake it. The seam that should be sitting under the bust sits about halfway down my bust LOL.
12. I wanted to include animated Leia but the boots are the snowbunny boots that I threw away last week.
13. Doll Poncho Leia was a last minute put on. As I was reviewing my footage after getting done, I realized I had an uneven number of “spins” to match up, so I ran back up and threw that one on. You can tell the lighting is different because it was so much later in the day.
The end. Sorry that got way longer than I expected it to.
So now – onto sewing!
I have gotten the layers of my new Marasiah bodice put together – lining layer assembled, and outer layer assembled. But haven’t sewn them together yet because I think doing the heat transfer vinyl would be easier if it were done beforehand? Without the boning creating lumps?
Did a test of the gold transfer vinyl:
Worked well on both fabrics. Tried both because I wasn’t sure which I was going to make my skirt piece out of. Gotta decide.
I did get the swirl motif drawn over the weekend and printed out the first panel last night. Got it weeded, so tonight I’m going to assemble the skirt piece and try out the first panel.
I started getting in swatches for my purple velvet for Liberty Dies Padme. My first swatch came on Monday and I was very happy with it, good price, so I went ahead and ordered the next day and…
Um…
Not even. That’s the backing of the yardage and the swatch and it’s super obvious they’re not the same.
Emailed the company immediately and they got back to me right away as well – the swatch was from old stock. They apologized and offered me either a full return/refund, or keep it for half off. I opted to keep it for half off, because it’s very pretty. I was happy with that outcome but disappointed I still don’t have my Padme velvet. I maaaaaaaay try to dye a swatch and see if I can get it close? But I think that’s more effort than it’s worth. I’ll probably just keep this in the stash.
This is probably the best photo of the colour. It’s VERY vibrant. Glancing through my costume reference folder I didn’t see anything off the bat I could use it for. But I’m sure something will come along.
So let’s end this week’s post with Animal Crossing stuff.
Flurry being STINKIN ADORABLE sitting at the garden table in one of my flower gardens.
Sunday night it was raining in my town and I CAUGHT A COELACANTH!! And then… another! And then another!! And a few oarfish in there as well. I invited Chase over to try and he caught one too! He caught one and I caught five all together. Crazy! I kept one in my house.
The lonliest cowboy