I have work at five, so I've got plenty of time to finish Chichi. The problem?

I dyed the purple dress thingy last night. It turned out okay, from a distance it doesn't look too bad. I'll go over the stupid white thread that didn't dye with the rest of the dress with a permanent marker for my own sanity. The sleeves are cut out and the sides at least are sewn up. I probably need to modify them to not be so big and drapey. I also has pants, I just need to dye them and the sleeves to the same color.

Problem is, I can't pour out the purple dye because Zip wants it for her super seeekrit TAOSU KEDDO II YO NE? costume. Nor will I be able to until Zip gets home from work and uses said dye. And we only have one dye bucket so...yeah. I can't finish Chichi until I dye the pants and sleeves because the sleeves have to, y'know, attach and have orange/yellow/whatever cuffs attached to them. And stuff.

Also I was up until 5am. And I wasn't watching Fullmetal. SURE IS TWO DAYS BEFORE A CON AROUND HERE. I keep telling myself that I can just sleep in the car ride up to Baltimore, it's like a 9000 hour drive and if I pass out in the back seat, I won't get carsick at least.

So five hours until work. Surely I can cut out and stitch together a kimono in that short amount of time. If I get it stitched together and hemmed and all that, I can just come straight home from work and throw it in the dye vat. Assuming I get to dye the pants and sleeves for Chichi before I go to work. Wow, these two last-minute Otakon costumes are like "Artik's Adventures in the Dye Vat". xD But yeah, if I can get it cut out and stitched together before work and dye it after work, I'll have tomorrow before work to paint on all the liiiiiines. ASFEASDFGABN. And also make the obi, which will consist of me painting really intricate designs on a piece of brown fabric, most likely cursing the name of Kintaros multiple times, and panicking because I don't have enough time to make the kimono and pack. Ahahahaha.

Why do I get this feeling that I'm never going to sleep? :|

So like...I think it finally just hit me that I'm going to a con in like...three days.

Ahahaha *shot*

Let's see. Commissions are both at 95% done. I have to attach something a little better to the commission for Roomie, and I need to curse and flail at the gloves I'm making. Hot glue may or may not be involved. I also need to get in touch with the guy that commissioned the gloves and go "zomg sorry for not letting you know about progress until like, last minute, but here are some pictures and by the way, I'm gonna be hand-delivering these now".

Gaaah, I have to call home tomorrow, too, to let them know that, no, I'm not dead, just working a lot.

Umm, yeah. Chichi is coming along fairly well. I have to do two hems, chuck the main dress in a vat of purple dye, buy white pants and chuck those and the sleeves in a vat of pink dye, make ghetto-assed boot covers, and then add orange or yellow trim to a lot of the costume, and that'll be finished. Shouldn't take me too long.

So since I apparently have oodles of free time before Ota (NOT), I've decided to temporarily throw, you know, sanity and common sense out the window and try to throw together another costume at last-minute to go with one of Zip's. I mean, it's not huuuge deal if I don't get it done. I'll just be a ghetto and closet version of Kinchan, is all.

Whether or not I attempt the endeavor of making Kinchan's kimono at, literally, last minute will depend on whether or not I find pants for Chichi tomorrow. If they're actually the right color or at least close to it, I might see if I can switch the pink dye I have for some bright freaking yellow dye and chuck this nice, light yellow fabric into a dye vat instead and pray it comes out "oh my god my eyes whyyyy" yellow. Then I just have to put black stripes on it and that's basically Kinchan. I won't bother trying to find brown sandals...who's gonna take a picture of my feet, anyway?

Also, here are costumes I might take to Ota, since almost all of them are older costumes:

-Chichi (Dragon Ball Z)
-Liz (Soul Eater)
-Maid!Liz  (Soul Eater) [all I have to do is rip off the big poofy sleeves from the Roberta outfit, to be honest]
-Tsubaki (Soul Eater)
-Cornelia (Code Geass R2) - only because her English voice actor will be there
-Kyonko (The Genderbending of Suzumiya Haruhi) - only because Crispin Freeman will be there
-Twilight Suzuka (Outlaw Star) - since I haven't worn this one in like, AGES and the hairstyle is practically Tsubaki's
-Kintaros (Kamen Rider Den-O): whether it'll be a ghetto closet version or the kimono version is up to question, however

Selling stuff again. This time it's for the ZOMG OTAKON YAY fund. Here's the drill:

• once again, I'm lazy and not posting pictures. If you want to see how something looks, just ask and I'll do my best to accommodate
• MAKE ME OFFERS for stuff, especially stuff that doesn't have a price. Don't ask how much *I* want, tell me how much you're willing to pay, PLEASE. I either under or over-charge and I know it.
• I take paypal only, sorry!
• Also, if you pay by a debit or credit card through paypal, it likes to eat a chunk of what you pay me, so beware of that
• I ship via USPS and I ship as soon as humanly possible.
• Any requests I get after Tuesday morning probably won't be shipped until next week.
• I make custom plushies and costume pieces and I TAKE COMMISSIONS.

( On to the stuff! )

So I was gonna use this entry to rant about my third and fourth days at the fabric store, which have been extremely tiring but a lot of fun. But yeah. That'll come later.


GUESS WHO GETS TO GO TO OTAKON.

You get two guesses, and if they're both not me, you fail.

Unfortunately I'll only have like one new costume for Otakon. Incidentally that costume is part of the reason I get to come in the first place. But since I all but gave up on getting to come to this convention, I haven't been working on new costumes like I should have, so I'll have to drag costumes from AZ with me to Otakon. OH WELL, IT'S F*CKING OTAKON.

Also I have to finish two commissions and an entiiiire costume before Thursday. That's the bad news. But the commissions are both so close to being finished it's not even funny. And I have the fabric and the pattern and the hair for the costume, so it's all a matter of NIKE-ING THAT BITCH AND JUST DOING IT.

Oh yeah, days three and four of work at the fabric store.  STUFF HAPPENED. It was funny. I've been scouting out fabric for the fourty billion costumes I've got planned for AWA/Katsu/Momo/Nashi/AZ/etc. I got a twitchy old lady who had terminal bobblehead-itis and dropped every other syllable in her speech. A woman from the NC renaissance faire came in and bought a bunch of fleece for a shawl.

So I'm going to have a busy next few days. Today I'm staying up most likely until 5am or so to watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood because it's FINALLY THE EPISODE WHERE LING SHOWS UP ♥♥♥♥♥  I hope to finish up both commissions while I'm waiting, since I've got nothing else I should be doing, anyway.

Tomorrow I work from 1:30 to 6:30, and I'll hopefully be switching my Thursday shift for Monday or Wednesday with someone so I can leave with Roomie to go to Otakon on Wednesday night.

I don't work on Monday (whether or not that's going to change is up to chance), so if it stays that way that will be EPIC LAST MINUTE COSPLAY DAY. Tuesday I work at night. Once again not on the schedule for Wednesday but we'll see. Wednesday night is when Roomie's planning on leaving, so that will be the beginning of epic Otakon tiems.

BRB assaulting someone to ask if I can borrow their camera.

Okay back. I'm going to stop typing this journal entry RIGHT NAO and get to work.

...right after this spazflail.

OMG OTAKONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN YAAAAAAAYYYYY *sparkles*

PS: Selling post and most probably FMA flailing post to follow. SORRY F-LIST.

Well. I didn't even know I was supposed to work today. I got a call at a little past 3 from my manager. And she was all like "Are you caught in traffic? You're a little late to work," in a nice, pleasant voice. And I was all like "Oh, sorry, I thought I was supposed to come in to work at 5, my mistake, I'll be there as soon as I can". Yeeeah, that was totally a lie, but oh well.

So I rushed off to work, and the manager wasn't mad or anything, which was awesome. They put me up on register and I'll admit I was a taaaad bit afraid to get back on the register after what happened at Party City. But I did it anyway, and it's muuuuch easier than Party City was. That and I wasn't like, contractually required to stay at the register for HOURS. I could wander around, pet the fabric, and didn't feel like I was chained to the register. I managed to learn the proceedure for almost everything on the first day.

When I wasn't doing register stuff, I pretty much spent the entire time at work re-stocking the thread. It was kind of boring, because it was thread, but I still managed to keep it interesting for myself. I kept trying to figure out which costumes/hair colors/etc each reminded me of. I had to put away over 9000 spools of this one thread called 'dark magenta' or something like that, and I spent about ten minutes just staring at it going "where have I seen this color recently?" Then it hit me.

Decade pink. The thread was Kamen Rider Decade Pink. I loled and even thought about buying it just so I could have thread that's Decade Pink. xD I also thought about buying this thread that made my eyes bleed because of how bright and shiny it was. It was reeeealy bright blue and metallic and I think I'm attracted to shiny things because I wanted to buy it. ^^

So I've said this like a bunch of times now, but Hancock Fabrics is like the most laid-back retail place I've ever worked at, and I love it. Though I keep getting a billion ideas for what to use fabrics for.

...okay that title is just silly and illogical. And the result of Zip mishearing me say "Parking space gank" in Engrish because I'm a tard.

ANYWAY.

Why is it that it takes over 9000 hours for Elmer's glue to dry? For serious. I finally feel like working on one of my commissions and I come to a screeching halt because I have to wait for the glue to dry. =\

The commission is looking really spiffy, though. And Zip's surprise plushie for Otakon is at like 95% done, I just have to add buttons and cuffs and that'll take like...fifteen minutes. When I'm not being LAZY. xD

Finally got around to watching more episodes of Great Teacher Onizuka the live today while I was painting stuff for the commission. It's a really great series. It SO does not look like it was filmed in 1998. Also the single most adorable one of Onizuka's students is played by Shun Oguri. As in one of the main three characters from Hana-Kimi. And WOW that kid aged well. FOR SERIOUSLY.

( Cut for ranting about D&D and Azure Dreams )

And wow. My only complaint was that I forgot to eat something before I went, like a retard, and almost passed out from hunger and exhaustion. Whoo! But aside from that, it was a good first day. And soooo different from Party City.

The atmosphere was about a million times better than Party City. Party City was all RUSH RUSH RUSH GET THOSE CUSTOMERS THROUGH THE LINE NAOW DON'T LET THE PHONE RING MORE THAN TWICE GARRRR". Hancock Fabrics is all like "Take your time cutting the fabric, sweetie, and answer the phone if you can. By the way, you actually get breaks!"

Also, I'd rather spend my time at work staring at fabric rather than staring at all the crap at Party City. Just saying. And the discount is better. And they don't have fifty gajillion rules that if broken will get you fired. I mean, honestly.

Anyway, I got there and had to fill out paperwork but it wasn't too bad. Definitely not the fifty zillion pages that Party City handed me. I took my time filling them out and had to laugh at myself when I couldn't remember the first three digits of my social security number. xD

Then I got a nifty apron and my own pair of scissors and the cool little pad thingy you use when you cut fabric. And I got to cut fabric! I was ridiculously excited. I mean, it isn't as if I've never cut fabric before, I worked in a costume shop. But anyway, I cut fabric, it was cool. I meandered around the store doing little tasks and trying to memorize where everything is. I found out we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fabric. TWO different types of it. And I eyeballed the fleece and tried to photo-imprint the colors into my brain. 

So to sum it up: <3

Completely unrelated, but I started watching Kamen Rider Decade. Unfortunately I only have knowledge of Kamen Rider Den-O and wikipedia for the other eight Heisei Kamen Rider series. (saying that, though, I might start watching Kabuto or Ryuki) Fortunately I was watching it with a literal fountain of Kamen Rider knowledge giving commentary. Which was a taaad bit annoying but more helpful than not.

( Decade rant-ness )

I've been writing a lot lately, so to keep from spamming my f-list with all of my random fics and drabbles, I finally just decided to make a writing journal. So I took one of my RP accounts and just converted it into my new writing journal. I didn't really find an RP that I reaaaally wanted to play Eruka in, anyway. xD

So if by some strange chance you WANT to read my writings (eventually it won't just be smut fanfics, I'm planning on posting original stuff, too), the new account is gekkokujou . Friend if you want or don't want - I automatically put anything over an R rating in a friends-locked post to begin with.


Completely unrelated, but I really can't believe it's already July. I'm actually glad in a really weird way that I'm not going to Otakon barring a miracle happening. That's less stress I have to worry about with new costumes. I've got enough on my plate for AWA anyway. Fortunately I'm now officially an employee of Hancock Fabrics - I start working next Tuesday! And, a bit ironically, I've already got more hours of work in my first week on the job there than I got for three weeks straight at Party City. And the discount is far more relevant to my interests.

More ranting about JDramas:

( Hana-Kimi and Mei-chan no Shitsuji )

And also, because Iike being organized about these things and I've got a LOT of stuff I'm trying to watch this summer, I'm going to make a LIST OF DOOM.

Anime:

FMA: Brotherhood: watching current with Japan
Haruhi no Yuutsu: 3/?? of new episodes
Sengoku Basara: 10/12
D.Gray-man: 31/103
Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho To: 1/26
King of Bandits Jing: 1/17
Monster Princess: 1/26

Live Action:

Princess Princess D: 6/12
Rookies: 1/11
Hana-Kimi: 1/12
Mei-chan no Shitsuji: 1/10
Mr. BRAIN: 1/?? (I think this is still broadcasting)
Great Teacher Onizuka: 0/12 (gonna start watching this soon)