So amidst the covid19 novel coronavirus close down scare, we have mid March snow. 😟 Here in Portland we generally don’t get snow, much less in mid March. I decided to take a walk out in it and do some photogging. After going through the 150 pics I got, there are about 40ish I am going to post and edit. Despite being dang cold out there, it is pretty. My kitteh was meowing desperately to go outside. Here is an excerpt from my personal FB:

It is still coming down out there. Da kitteh was at the door meowing hard, then winding herself around my ankles and going back to the door. She thought she wanted to go outside. So I threw on some shoes and a sweater, picked her up and took her outside. Everytime snow landed ln her head she shook her ears. I let her put her front paws in the snow… More on the patio table. Her nose was twitching so hard. I then let her sniff the snow on the fence railing. She stopped struggling to get away and kind of snuggled in to me. When I brought her back inside, she ran away from the door, stopped, looked at it, then sauntered over to the sofa and curled up. She does not want to go outside any more. 🙂

I wish I got pics of her in the snow.

​Anyway, until I have the energy to edit them, here are 2 that are my favorite out of the bunch.

Hello again. I am back again with more resolve to post here more often. Life has been kicking my butt. However I have renewed motivation and plan to try to keep this thing going. In order for that to happen, I have made a plan. Bwuahahaha.
So...

Plan 1 - Post here 2x a week, no matter where I am at.
I am hoping by making myself stick to a pre planned schedule, things won’t fall through the cracks. I have several SCA events to get ready for this summer, as well as Norwescon in April (if it isn’t cancelled) and Rose City Comic Con in September. I also have some stop mo’s I want to complete. They are all written, I just have to construct the puppets, sets, props etc and film. Hwat I work on will be dependent on time, energy, joint flare ups and money for the pieces I need.

Plan 2 - Post a vlog on You Tube either once a week or every other week.
I set up a YouTube channel for bloggy things that are not actual stop mo things. I will embed the videos here. We shall see how that goes.

For now, let me get you caught up.

I have so many projects. I think I will just list them here and break them down into the different parts.

1. SCA
I am going to just concentrate on getting a set of camping event garbs to wear to events this summer. This is going to consist of
-Elizabethan peasant garb
-1 or 2 chemises
-2 or 3 kirtles
​-an apron
-2 or 3 coifs with forehead kercheifs
-a tie on collared partlet
- Possibly either a flat cap, straw hat or both

Elizabethan peasant garb seems fairly straight forward. I am basing my basic design on this:

Basically the blue one. I don’t want to mess with back lacing while camping alone. This is also slightly earlier than my period, but it is the basic jist of what I am going for. I also want to make fake padded braids to wear under the coif to make it fit right. Cause my hair is sparce at the moment.


2. Cosplays
I want to get Talleg done (yes, STILL), and I need to fix Aoifa. I am thinking of just leaving it at those. Because I don’t have a lot of spare money right now, and Norwescon is in a month, I am just going to concentrate and those two for now.

Aoifa
-Fix her corset. Either try to make it a real corset or figure out how to sew the cardboard together so it won’t pop
-Remake her horns
-Make a padded circlet to go under the wig, so the horns look like they are growing kut of her head. Seriously that circlet is a joke.
-Figure out how to incorporate the dragon eye from the current circlet
-Sew the fur collar to the cloak. It is currently hot glued, very badly
-Repaint the spider broaches so the black doesn’t chip off
-Figure out a better sleeve configuration. Or learn how to glue them to my skin so they stay
-Figure out how to install the ears, and how to makeup them

Not much. 😒

Talleg
-Finish breastplate
-leg armor and arm armor
-Gauntlets
-Finish +1 mace.....MAKE IT LIGHT UP

​I think I will break this down futher in my video. When I get that done.

I went to Blicks, a local art supply store, and got some air dry clay to play around with. I suck.....big time....but it is so fun and so zen. I may eventually get to a point where I have something useable. I have never actually done pottery before. I have watched many people do it. I have read books. Once I ordered this wheel I watch a bajillion YouTube videos of people doing it. Amazingly enough that is not the same as doing it. :P That is fine. I will continue to try. Eventually I will get it.

About a week after this one showed up, a second wheel showed up. When I was ordering my wheel, the first one I ordered ended up coming from China, and listed the shipping as 2 months out. So I cancelled that one and got the other one. Then while I was playing with the other one, the first one I ordered showed up. Even though I canceled that order. THey already gave me my money back. So I guess I have 2 mini wheels now.

​Ok...so now pic dump of wheels and attempts.

That should be the epitaph of my life. :(

So.....

Everything was going OK. The mop didn't work. Mostly because the orange bit at the top started crumbling apart, and the more I tried to glue it the more it crumbled until it was more glue than orange bit. Looked really really bad.

I was like oh well. I will just deal with it. I got the rest of it done. I adjusted the gloves so the white stripes were less wrinkly.

Then this happened:

You see, I live with a family who has a 5 month old puppy. I very chewy, rambunctious puppy. She is a love, but she has had a predeliction towards my foam for a while now.

Up until now if I said no and put it up, she would leave it.

But this time...

She has grown enough that she can now just grab things off my desk. I love that puppy, but damn girl. She also chewed up the belt stuff. This made everything I have been working so hard on this week all moot. I no longer had a cosplay. The mop and the accessories is what makes it VCD Janitor, as opposed to a random construction worker or janitor. This happened the NIGHT BEFORE the con. :/

After I was done crying in the corner, I considered what I could do. Because I already paid for this con, I was damn well still going to go.

I still have my Aoifa stuff. Sort of. I have lost 45 pounds since I made her, so her bodice no longer works. You can read about that build by going to October 2017 in the archives. There are several posts about it. I was going to link one, but I can't decide which one as all of them apply. I think I also have them all tagged Cosplay as well.

Anyway...So Aoifa's breastplate is waaaay too big now. The fabric bits are all in tatters. All that works really is the front bit and the horned circlet.

So looking at it, I decided if I had something to cover the back like a cloak, I could just tie the breastplate on directly around the back. It now wraps several inches into the back when tied that way.

So I needed fabric or something. And I would need a skirt and shoes. So I talked to a friend, who generously drove with me to Goodwill. There I found a furry vest with a giant collar, a tweed curtain, huge ass earrings, and a couple of pairs of knee length boots.

Photo vomit:

I first cut the collar off the vest. I included part of the body so I had a foundation. Then I cut the curtain to length. It was already finished on all the edges and was the perfect width.

I....am not proud of the next step, but it was a desperate situation. I then hot glued the curtain to the foundation bit I left on the collar. It worked waaaay better than I thought it would. I like the cloak. I think eventually I will sew it firmly.

These were earrings. Huge ass earrings. I removed the earring part, which was just french hooks held on by a jump ring, and attached 2 safety pins with black chain maille rings.

Then I painted them with some oil based paint pens I had. Obviously they didn't work well, as most of it chipped off quickly. And the safety pins were shite. They were in a $5 sewing kit, and they kept bending and popping open. They did look good though. I think I will try to find some more permanent enamel paint for these and better broach clasps.

Boots!! So I have to wear footwear that supports my ankles. I have joint hypermobility syndrome, and my ankles and hips are the 2 most effected sets of joints. I found this out when I started randomly face planting and spraining shoulders and wrists over and over again. According to the rheumatologist, this is permanent. It is a consequence of this degenerative condition. No more going barefoot, me. :( That means I have to find footwear that 1. fits my short, wide feet and 2. will go around my disproportionatly shaped calves. Up till now the best I could do is ill fitting ankle length construction boots. But these.....ah these...HEAVEN! They are comfortable. They fit my odd shaped feet. They have enough support for my ankles. And they have the two stretch panels in the back so they fit my calves!! And they are SOOOOOO comfortable. And they take 2 seconds to get on and off. I long ago gave up the idea of the quick on/off process of the footware. I wore these all day around the con yesterday, and they were still so confortable I didn't want to take them off. No rubbing spots. No too tight spots. They supported my ankles enough I could still walk without faceplanting after hours of cement walking. If nothing else, this is the best possible outcome of this frustrating situation. I ended up with footwear I CAN WEAR. Sigh. And they were $5. And hardly worn. I AM SO HAPPY I COULD CRY.

Ahem...

So I had a long black skirt with slits up the sides, so I decided that would work with this outfit. And the horns were still serviceable. So VOILA!! New iteration of Aoifa!

By the end of the day, tired cosplayer was tired. We did a photoshoot out in the sun. My chest is soooo sunburned right now. Fortunately I had on sunscreen, so it doesn't hurt. And it will go away soon and be blaringly pale again in no time. (I do not tan. And yes, I burn THROUGH sunscreen.)

So overall I am kind of impressed with how it turned out. For pulling it out of my ass last minute.

Sadly it is not the last iteration ever. The boob parts partially tore away from the base part. The grommets are pretty much toast. So I just need to reinforce the rest of the boob parts, attach them to a different breastplate, and figure out a better way of attaching it to my body.

So the new utility knife arrived, so I took another stab at cutting out my pieces. This time...beautiful. It is amazing the difference it makes. The first one...jagged edges, wavies, etc. Look how smooth and even the new cuts are. I am sooo happy. It is so beautiful.

It also took way less time to get the better results. This knife has an extra locking mechanism on it, so there is no possibility of retracting while I cut. Yes, I am in love with this knife.

So as predicted, the second run at this turned out way better. I then put it together with DAP contact cement. There were some gaps, but it also worked way better than hot glue, and way faster. Prettier.

So that part being done, I let it cure overnight. Well, a couple of nights. I had homework to do so I let it go a few days. The next thing is the paint job. I wanted to paint it grreen and brown, dapping so it is remeniscent of leaves. I ended up doing it a couple of times. It is really hard to see. I am unsure how to proceed from here. First I put down 3 layers of Plasti dip, to prime it for paint.

See? Unless it is in a certain light you can hardly tell it is there. I guess it might be fine. I don't know. Depends on how it ends up. Next is to attach the stretchy fabric to both sides, and create the boob parts. That won't happen until after the weekend, though. I have only 4 weeks left to finish a couple of classes, so this weekend is buckle down time. That'll give it time to cure completely, and for me to decide how I am going to finish execution.

Still working on getting to a place where I can animate. So nothing really to post yet, But I wanted to at least put something here so I don't completely forget to update this. Today is Feb 1st, which means a couple of things.

1. That FAWM (February Album Writing Month) is upon us. I didn't register yet, cause I wasn't sure I was going to try it. I think I will. I just need to get in there and register and get going on it. Now is a good time, because I am still waiting for a job. I can spend some of the waiting time writing music. I think I will try to post more about it this year. I vow to check in once a week at least for FAWM. Shall se see if that sticks? :P

2. Tomorrow is my birthday. I have no friends here yet. I turn 42. It kind of depresses me that I will turn an iconic number alone. I was going to try to go to an event going on where they are showing the movie Groundhog Day, with games and prizes, etc. Sounded nice and social for my birthday. However starting tonight there is a snow storm warning. Which means that once again, if it snows, the whole city will be at a standstill. I am living on a hill, which makes it even harder. I don't have a car, which also raises the difficulty level. The thought of looking for a place I don't know where it is, in a city I am still only vaguely familliar with, on a bus system I don't know yet, in weather that is possibly treacherous...Yeah, sadly, I will spend my birthday alone. I wanted to throw a party Douglas Adams would be proud of. But alas, moving too close to birthday and unemployment curtailed that idea months ago. Ah, well.

Life will settle in eventually, right? It will all fall into place and all work out, etc etc etc.

So this year I was able to attend Sasquan, this year's Worldcon. I and a few Eugenites did a concert. It was only 30 minutes, and it was on Thursday, so most people weren't even there yet....

Anyway, concert went well. Usually at cons you get a riser in a conferance room for a stage. There we had a REAL LIVE STAGE STAGE!!! That was probably one of the best things to happen to me in years. Let me explain...

My mother was a performer and music teacher and vocal coach, etc etc etc. I started getting up on stage when I was 3 years old, singing Practice Makes Perfect from the Christian kids song album Welcome To Agape Land, with a cardboard keyboard slung around my neck. And from then until I was 20, it never stopped. I played cello and piano, I was in choirs and musicals and talent shows. I never had stage fright ever. I used to love the stage. LOVE IT.

There is a certain high you get when you and the people on stage with you are in sync and rocking it, and the audience has caught that energy and amplified it and flung it back at you. It is the BEST high ever.

When I was married, the bastard filled my head with soundtracks like "what makes you think people want to hear that" and "if you have to practice then you aren't very good, are you". 8 years of that, and for some reason stage fright started creeping in. I wasn't able to get that high, because I wasn't able to relax and enjoy being on stage any more. I was petrified that everyone in the audience was thinking what my ex voiced on a regular basis. Every mistep on my part petrified me then, and instead of continuing on like it didn't happen, I would break down in tears and not able to do anything. Sometimes I couldn't even leave the stage. But I worked on it, and worked on it, and slowly I have been getting back to where I was. Up till now, I haven't been able to completely get back to that comfort on stage I used to have.

At this con, I did. Being on a real stage, with a mic and lights and amphitheater style seating....it was like a switch was flipped, and none of the last 20 years happened. I relaxed. I enjoyed myself. I had FUN! I felt the change in the audience when I sang Big Blue Box. And it was EXHILERATING!!!! I NEED more. The stage has turned into a Siren, and I am unable to resist her song. I get excited just thinking back on that performance. I know it wasn't perfect. But it was transformative.

It also helped that when we were doing mic check, after I sang Rose, Rose, someone if the first row said "Oh...she's a singer." That made me feel good. Cause I AM a singer. My voice is not opera level, but it is not a bad singing voice, when I can breathe and don't think too much about what I am doing wrong. When I was on that stage, I felt everything relax, and my voice sounded the best it has in years. And it just corroborated what I have felt all along....my brain gets in my way.

I wish I had a video fo that performance. It would have been nice to see it from the audience point of view.

But....maybe not. Maybe it is best that I remember this performance as it is. If I watched video of it, I would start tearing it apart and anylizing it. What could I have done better? What should I do differently next time? And that would maybe erase all the feel goods I have about it.

I just....I can't help feeling that if I can just hold onto that feeling until my next performance, I will be OK. That maybe be magical thinking, but I really, really, really just want to hold on to that. Hard and tightly. And carry it on stage with me everytime I perform, no matter what kind of stage it is.

So...been a while, time for the ol update.

I have been busy. I watched a video by Doctor Puppet on You tube about how she made her Doctor Who stop motion show Doctor Puppet. I have been very jealous of her, cause 1. she got a Doctor Who stop mo in before I did and 2. She is REALLY really good at it. Much better than me. Of course, she is a professional, has has formal training, and knows what she is doing, but hey, that is where I want to be SO badly.

Anyway, she posted a video on how she constructed the Doctor puppet. I have watched many, many armature construction videos, but hers made the most sense to me. So I decided to give it a whirl. I really want some more videos done before I attend and do panels at Orycon. As my iPad camera does not do macro well, I need bigger puppets if I am going to use it as my camera until I can afford a new one. So I guess the worse that can happen is I fail miserably. And I didn't. Kind of.

Her construction technique involved epoxy putty, wire, square brass tubing of 2 sizes that nest into each other, extra firm Sculpy, and foam.

So she made her head out of an aluminum foil ball covered in Sculpy, with a piece of the larger square brass tubing in the bottom to allow for the neck to be placed in it. This is my version here. She did not put any "bones" on her armature, but I know my limitations. I think I need them to help keep the joints bending at a natural place. I made them out of Sculpy too.
While those were baking I made the chest and torso. She made those out of epoxy putty with pieces of the larger square brass tubing for the neck, arms, waist and legs. I ran out of epoxy putty after the torso, so I used the extra firm Sculpy. Probably not a good idea, but I plan on getting more for the next one, so I will do it all out of epoxy putty then. I just couldn't find more within walking distance, and didn't feel up to traipsing around town on the bus for it.

Next I painted the head. I did not realize I got enamel paint. It is a bit shiny. But it looked good after I was done. I got some matte acrylic paint to use for the next one. If I really want to try animating with this one I can use face powder to cut down on the shine.

Next step was to glue hair on the head. I went down to the local Hirons and bought a $5 fake mullet wig. Very cheesy, not easy to work with. I couldn't find rubber cement like she suggested, so I decided to use contact cement. For the record, these are not the same thing. For one thing, contact cement melts enamel paint. It melts it fast and almost back to a liquid state. This was a problem when gluing on the hair. A big one.

The hair came with some pieces serged on the ends. I decided to work with it and use the serged parts as the glue points. I also thought about how doll's hair is attached. It is usually attached in circles. I thought I would just glue a larger outer circle, then another inner smaller circle, then a smaller one until it filled the space. Along with fighting the melting enamel paint to get the hair to stay, I also had to fight the direction of the hair. It is fakey fake nylon threads. It does not want to move in a direction other than straight. I planned on gluing the stitching on inwards, then flip the hair back over it to cover it. Might have worked better if it were real hair.

Here it is completed. As you can see, there are lumps in the hair cause it didn't want to bend. In my haste to fix the melting glue I also missed some coverage. But I found if I put it back in a pony tail and fiddled with it I could cover the bare spots believably. I did end up cutting about an inch off the length of the hair. I figured it would make it less heavy....pull less on those possibly weak glue points.

So next was to make hands and feet. I decided I wanted to stick with magnets for my anchor method. She uses bolts, which are fine but leave holes in the set that I haven't figured out how to get rid of. Also, I only have a flat table. It isn't practical to try to drill through the whole table. I have a couple pieces of sheet metal I intend to use for the base of my set. So when I was making the feet, I molded them out of the extra firm Scuply and made a notch in the bottom to fit the magnets. I also added a bit of brass tubing to attach it to the leg.

The hands were more difficult. I think I will try another method for the hands. It was clumsy and hard to do, and looks pretty bad. There is a tutorial on the intertubes for making stop motion puppet hands out of florist wire and liquid latex. I am going to try that next. Cause look here....this is just bad....

Also...something creepy happened while I was baking the chest part. See that red thing? It looks like a heart. I did not put that there. That side was up when I baked it. It kind of showed up there. I suppose it is fine, but weird. When you burn Sculpy it turns red. But that part wasn't any higher then the rest of it. I don't know why it did it.
So next step is to find some foam and make a chest and tummy, then sew some clothes for her. I plan on cutting felt mouths that will stick on with handitak. I learned a lot from making this puppet. I will make a few more then experiment with animating them.

I plan on going to get more epoxy putty and seeing if that makes a difference. I also plan on getting real hair hair extensions to use for the hair on the next one, see if it helps.

And last but not least, this is my new toy. It is a cabasa. For our Orycon concert we are doing a filk to In the Summertime, a Mungo Jerry song. I was having issues getting a good rhythm with the skull shakers for that one, so when I found this online for cheap I snatched it up. We have a rehearsal tomorrow. I will see how well it works then.
:)

Okey dokey, that was my little experiment. Still working on it. Feel free to throw suggestions my way for how to make this puppet work better. I think I am well on my way finally to doing real stop mo.

Now I just need a camera....

Ok...so the last couple of days I have been working on my iPad frame. I got a hold of a Dremmel tool and was able to cut the slit in the middle. I learned a bit about cutting PVC. Of course I followed all the safety procedures. I wore a mask and safety glasses. I opened all the windows and turned on a fan. I wore protective clothing. That was a big deal as I hate wearing extraneous clothing while building things. I like a close fitting tank top and a pair of comfy but not too roomy shorts when I work. That way I am comfortable abd don't risk getting pieces of clothing in the way.....ie in glue, under my cutting tool, knocking over things in my set, etc. Though Dremmels work very well, the one I used overheated quickly and I had to stop every few minutes or I couldn't handle it. The Dremmel would also stop if I hit a harder spot. I realize this is probably a safety feature, but it is damned annoying. The best way to cut PVC with a Dremmel, in case you were wondering, is to make several medium speed passes at it. It is better to go from right to left, as the other way when you hit the end of what you are cutting the Dremmel goes flying off to the right. As I am pretty sure that could end badly, moving the other direction seems wiser. Also...PVC doesn't just knock out when you get close to the end. You have to cut it the whole way through before it'll move. Not like wood at ALL.

So now that I know, I probably will never work with PVC again. But it is mostly finished now.

I am finding it difficult to get the foam insulation to stay on the inside edges. I have yet to decide if that means i need to glue it in with better glue or if I need to find a better padding medium. I also need to glue down the nut that is currently holding the screw from the tripod in place. I plan to sand down the corners and paint it with black spray paint. The kind made for covering plastic furniture. So that project is almost done. Action shot:

I also think I need to figure out how to make the iPad sit higher in the frame. I was relying on the insulation to do that. Maybe it still will.

I feel a bit more accomplished now. I love working with ny hands. The Dremmel is a blast. Now I am going to have to find other projects to use it for.