I think I mentioned last week we’d been having internet issues? I can’t remember. Was having issues UPLOADING mostly, downloading was fine but — for instance on friday? It took TWO HOURS to upload a tiktok video. Geez. We’d have occasional internet blips too, wi-fi would stop working for a few seconds, maybe a minute, and then come back.
We called our provider last week and they had a tech scheduled to come out and look this Tuesday.
Well then Saturday if fully took a nose dive. Wi-fi cut out – it’d come back for a minute or two, then out again, over and over. Same all day Sunday. Another call to our provider and they were able to move up someone to come out today. Now this morning it’s fully out – not working at all. I’m having to use my work phone as a personal hot spot for my work computer to get work done, and thankfully that’s working OK, if slow.
And cellular data/network on my phone off wi-fi is PAINFULLY slow. Like why bother slow. It’s like it’s 1997 again with terrible internet. So you’d think I would’ve gotten a lot done this weekend with basically no internet, right? Wrong LOL
I did finish reassembling the dining room. I spent a good chunk of every evening last week doing ANOTHER coat on all the trim.
And it’s still not 100% done, need to take a much smaller brush to get some areas. But it was enough done I could put the room back together.
I did have one spo tthat did this when I took the tape off.
lovely.
I need to figure out what I want to hang in here, because now with the pale walls it feels pretty barren. I have a large mirror I got from Ash’s grandparents a couple of years ago that I’d been saving for whenever we re-do our hall bath, it’s just been sitting on the floor. I may put it up in here? Or I may go through our posters/art and see if there’s anything we’d want to hang there. I’ve got that big Ceremonial Leia print that’s a possibility?
I also made a decision about the china cabinet. My china is my great-grandmother’s and I love it, i think it’s very pretty. It’s a big set, a tea service, salt and pepper shakers, etc. I was so excited to have this china cabinet to finally display it all. And I’ve had it “sort of” out since we moved in. I never got any of the plate holder/stands to properly set them up. So they’ve just been kinda sitting in there with Funko Pops standing on top of them LOL.
I’ve been looking at a lot of houses lately that fall into the spectrum of the style we’re going for – craftsman/prairie era houses. And I’ve seen several that had built-in book shelves or cabinets, and the owners had filled them with books. I really liked that… and I felt like it represented me and Chase more than the china. So I moved the china down to the bottom closed door portion of the china cabinet and filled the top with things that are “us.”
Bonus is that this freed up A LOT of space from the upstairs book shelves. More room for storage up here now.
Eventually I do also want to repaint the interior – don’t love that purple but, I can live with it for now. And the black panels on the lower cabinets. I’d love to replace that one day, but that’s all way down the road.
Friday night I recorded some tiktoks. While I had Padme on I took some quick iphone photos to stick in the gallery until I get better pics – since I didn’t take any solo pics of me in this at dragoncon without a mask on.
Having it on again reminded me of a couple of things I need to do — put another loop in the back of the headpiece, to stabilize it – it wants to lean left or right instead of sitting up straight. Also need to add some hook and eyes further down on the surcoat, and one of my cuff snaps came undone while I was putting it on, that’s a quick fix.
cute
Also want to clean up the wig a bit, after 2 wearings I pulled some hair out of the updo. Planning on doing a white backdrop shoot Thanksgiving so aiming for that.
Speaking of, I’m kinda thinking about leaving the white backdrop up all December and trying to shoot a couple of older things every weekend. I made a list of everything I still need white backdrop photos of and it’s a mile long. if I can shoot like 4 or 5 new things thanksgiving weekend and then do like 2 every weekend thru dec, maybe even into jan, I could knock out a lot of the “can shoot now/no repairs needed/nothing new to buy” list.
For some reason I’m really hellbent on shooting Urd sometime soon in the future. I DO need to buy something for that – a wig, the whole reason i haven’t worn it since 2003 is the wig got used in my Hild wig so I haven’t had another wig to wear with it. It’s just like, one of my earliest “big” costumes and I have no decent photos of my own of it. They’re all hall photos at cons taken by other photographers and like 500px tall.
Anyway sorry for the ramble.
Last monday was a good mail day.
The Padme shirt seen above arrived that day – thanks @kessho! – and another bday gift from Chase, this super cute Amidala pin.
What else… Saturday we ran around a bit, first went and checked out Lost Cantina Toy Store.
Look at all these Star Wars toys. I’m trying to pare DOWN the collection not add to it LOL The most difficult thing? They had the Padme Unleashed figure that I’ve wanted since it came out. So tempted. But anyway the store was super cool.
After that we picked up some food for dinner and happened to drive past this so we had to stop and get a pic LOL
Sunday I DID chip away a little bit at the current sewing project – Frankie’s halloween costume.
I got my pattern pieces cut to start modifying, and messed around with some scrap fabric trying to understand the sleeves. After I felt like I was pretty close with this, I went back and looked at the reference photos and realized I completely misunderstood the sleeves. It’s not 2 layers, it’s 1 tucked up. So that simplifies things – I’m going to use my Arwen blood red sleeves as a basis, just editing the shape a bit.
but I really love those sleeves I patterned out above. I’m going to be saving them to hopefully use them as a pattern for something in the future. I still have my half-finished original elvish dress that doesn’t have sleeves yet…. maybe I can use it for that?
Going to try to get more done on the dress tonight thru the rest of the week, at least get the pattern tweaked so it’s ready to go to start cutting real fabric next weekend.
BTW – Utena is still in the books! Starting fabric hunt. Nothing at Joann worked. Planning to focus on her in November.
Oh I leave you with this stupid snapchat of my Padme costume.
