First up, I got contacts!! Well, almost. Had my eye doctor appointment Saturday and asked if contacts were possible with my RX. He said yes, but — they couldn’t really do a lot for my up close reading, they’d have to prioritize my astigmatism over that, but it would be enough to give me a break from wearing the glasses, which is what I want. I get SO irritated with my glasses by the end of the night sometimes, and I refuse to wear them in costume or at disney. (My regular distance/long distance vision is still ok so it’s not like I’m going to be falling down without them on – without them on the biggest issue is not being able to read my phone quickly.)
Luna pic to break up the wall of text
So my doc got me some test contacts to try out. He said they’re fairly close to what my RX would be, and he wants me to practice with them for a week. They had me put them in there in office. I was prepared for that, Ash had warned me – but omg it was stressful. They were hovering around giving me tips, I’d already had my eyes dilated so my vision was extra blurry without my glasses on. I got so stressed out my nose started running, my eyes were watering from being touched and stretched open too much. It took me about 20 minutes but I got them in!
Then I had to go practice taking them out. I thought that would be easier, but it was also a struggle.
I thought that was that, but nope – after he looked at my eyes again, he said “Ok, go put them back on and wear them for around 4 hours today” OH GOD I have to do it again here in the office??
Thankfully I got them both in much faster this time. Wearing them around was odd, because my eyes were still dilated and I just felt like I had an eyelash stuck in my eye all day.
Surprise Skye pic to break up wall of text
That day was actually our anniversary, and we had planned a day of running around to various thrift stores and antique stores. It was a lot of fun. I’ll talk more about that after the contacts story.
So once we got home from our running around, I took them out. And I got the left one out really quickly. I’ve discovered that I can get the left one in and out pretty easily overall. It’s the right one. I finally had to just sit down on the floor with a kleenex to keep dabbing my watering eye while I struggled to get the right one out. I did finally – and then my eyes watered ALL NIGHT from being so over-touched I guess.
Sunday I put them on as soon as I got up. That day was the real test. Could I lay around on my phone in the morning and then sew with just the contacts in? And while it wasn’t as good as my glasses – the answer is YES! Hooray! I have to kinda hold my phone further away from me than I’m used to to read it, but I can read it better than I can without them. And I was able to go sit and hand-sew for a few hours with them on, threading needles and all! YAY!
I did take them out after about, 6-ish hours I think? Because I wanted to take a nap LOL. And again I struggled so hard with getting the right eye out. Left out came out right away, Right eye I again eventually just had to sit down and scrape around my eyeball for several minutes before I finally found it.
I haven’t put them in today yet, but I will, because I need to see how they do sitting at a computer all day. This weekend will be the big test – I’m doing two costume things this weekend, a con Saturday and trooping Sunday. Since that’s really what I want them for, I am excited to have them for this!
Then next week I go back in so he can see how it’s been working out for me, and at that point they’ll set up the RX so I can get the real deals in.
In other news, Wednesday was a puppy day. Skye and Walker came over to stay with me for the day while my parents had stuff going on. When mom brought them over, she let them out in the backyard without their leashes, and they IMMEDIATELY ran up into our wild upper elevation. It was all cute and funny til they came back down and both of them were COVERED in burrs.
So after mom left I spent the next hour combing these things out with my fingers. They did not like the dog brush I have, but they didn’t mind me combing with my fingers as much. Walker I think actually loved it LOL. She didn’t have as much on her. But Skye was COVERED in them and didn’t like have her fur tugged where they were matted in, so it took longer with her.
Everything I pulled out of them! Crazy.
But after that they mostly slept all day while I worked. Luna wasn’t happy and spent the day hiding in our bedroom LOL
So now let’s get to sewing news.
I’m calling Troi mostly done. I think the only thing I want to do on the dress now is fix that front seam on the skirt. I think it may have stretched a little when I sewed it, because it’s hanging funny right at the top of the slit. You can see that little buckle in it in the photo above, and looking back at earlier photos of the skirt it’s there also, even before I attached it to the waistband, so I do think it’s as simple as it stretched. Hopefully. It if involves taking the waistband off, I ain’t doing it.
I do still have the shoes to paint and thankfully Chase is taking the lead on that. He ordered some more supplies this past weekend.
The headband is finished. It’s not perfect, my circle guides stretched when I pulled the fabric over the base so they’re all kind oval, oh well. It’s going to be mostly hidden in my hair anyway, so it’s good enough. I still need to style the wig, but that shouldn’t take long. (Knock on wood)
I did decide NOT to wear this to the convention we’re going to Saturday. It’s an outdoor thing and I just don’t want to put a brand new costume through that kind of ringer, especially with painted shoes. I think I’m just going to wear my TOS uniform.
So with Troi mostly out of the way, I did move on to Costume #2. I need to give this one a name to call it for now, because I do want to keep it a surprise for the time being, so let’s just call it Dark Lady. I pulled the pattern that I wanted to use as a base, which looked to be pretty close. Bodice and skirt were great, and the collar should’ve worked too – except the collar pattern piece was missing. UGH! I do this too often, I hate patterning collars (because I literally have no concept of the size of my own neck. I always get it way way wrong. Too tall, too big, too short) so I grab something close out of another pattern, and then it doesn’t get put back. I thought back to other costumes I would’ve used this style collar for and pulled those out, but couldn’t find it. Looked through my homeless pattern bags and no luck there either. I had to pull ANOTHER pattern with a similar collar and poach the one from that! I traced it and cut out a copy so I could put it back in its original bag instead of continuing the cycle!
But anyway, I got the basic pattern pieces out, figured out my alterations, and also created a new sleeve pattern. So I’ve got all that ready to go, I just decided before I cut my fabric, I did want to do a mockup. So I ordered some black lining material to pull double duty as mockup/lining. (I was originally going to try not to line it just to keep it cooler, but I think I need to for structure.)
SO while I waited on that fabric to arrive, I went back to the Padme disneybound.
I got my little belt piece out and started getting the roses sewn on. I do want to get some pink and green satin ribbons to add hanging from it. Got the ends hemmed over and added a snap for closure. Once it’s finished I am going to tack it onto the dress to make sure it stays in the right place in the front.
I got some cheap snoods in on Saturday – they’re not perfect but they get the job done for a disneybound. I stuffed some hairnets with some loose hair wefts and then put those into the hairnets. I sewed them onto a basic headband so I can easily take this off and on if I want to. Though I probably will have to pin the buns on the sides when I wear it to keep them from standing out too far away from my head.
I took my green ribbon and sewed it into a tube to make the headband, and added some roses here too. Then sewed that onto the headband.
Here’s everything so far.
I do kinda think I want to do the capelet? Here’s the curtain wrapped around it. I’m going to dye the curtain this week and think about it. I’m not sure if I really want to spend a ton of time hemming this right as I’m trying to ramp up into dragoncon season.
Completely randomly last week I decided to re-upload my “Choose your Character” Donna Noble video from 2020. The original video looked awful and fuzzy, so I found the original clips and reassembled it, looked much better. (Wish I still had the original clips of the matching Leia and Padme ones, but alas I do not.) It actually did really well and:
omg cool!
So anyway back to Saturday’s shopping. We went to some thrift and antique stores we never had before. At the first one they had an incredible linens section and $1 patterns!
Picked up these mostly 80s patterns. The blouse one is 1970. Awesome!
Also got some $3 sheets to use for mockups. And at another store, found some curtains that might work for one of Chase’s costumes.
For our anniversary that night we cooked a steak, potatoes and finished up the 3rd Andor ep.
Sunday we had planned to stay home all day but at the last minute we decided to go see Revenge of the Sith. The row in front of us was a bunch of 15 year old broccoli-hair boys who wouldn’t shut up, stay off their phones or stay in the seats. 20 minutes in Chase finally said something to them, and they did quiet down, but they were still restless, on their phones. They’d get up and leave and come back. Get up and leave and come back. Finally 4 out of 5 of them left for probably an hour of the movie. One of them came back for the last few minutes. No clue. Why did they spend the money to be here? LOL
Also, absence does make the heart grow fonder. I did enjoy watching it again, it was fun, but boy had I forgotten how rough some of it is.
Anyway, this week’s goals:
-dye that curtain and decide if I want to spend time cutting and hemming it
-mock-up top of Dark Lady
-work on custom fabric design for Dark Lady
-sew sew sew once I have the mockup and all good