Ookings of d00m

So, for last Hallowe'en, I made myself a lab coat. Due to an unexpected work crisis, I ended up having 12 hours less to work on it the weekend of CHEESE than I had planned. I got rushed, and the coat made it through the night, but I took a lot of shortcuts and accepted a lot of shoddy work. Most notably, the sleeves (my first sort of drafted/tailored sleeves) were messed up, since I hadn't gotten the gather right and ended up with the notches cut into the pattern to help it bend sticking out through the seam.

For an upcoming party, I decided to take the excuse opportunity to fix the coat and get it to a more usable state. Part of this was pulling off the sleeves to reattach them. I got them taken off, and figured out the right setting on my sewing machine so that I can do the gather properly.

First problem; when I took the sleeves off, I didn't label them, so I don't know which is which.
Second problem; I figured I could just go to the website where I got the instructions on how to draft the sleeves. It has gone down and the google cache is useless without pics.

I'll figure it out eventually, but man - this stuff never works out to be simple.

A while ago, I asked about hole punches. The general impression I got is that I did in fact have the right tools. Despite that, I found if I did it by hand, it took me 15-20 minutes to cut a hole by hand through the heavy denim by twisting the punch, and hammering with a mallet made nice round circles in the wood on the other side, but didn't pierce the denim. Tough stuff.

Today I figured out how to fix it. I took the cutting tip from the manual hole punch and put it in my power drill. It's still not *easy* - after cutting eight holes, my arm is tired enough to need a break, and the piece of wood I'm using as backing is full of round holes. But it works! Work can resume on the utility belt of doom.

I have been making a frame to hold up a duct tape dressmaker's form. In the process, I learned that they no longer make adjustable mitre boxes, and that the one I bought is 5" and the lumber I bought was 6". I also learned that the saw that came with the mitre box is not very good.

My dad's old drill, which he got as a bday present when I was about one, finally gave up the ghost. I went out and got a new drill (with built in level! ooh!), and tried it out. It's uh, a bit more powerful that the old one. It ripped the 1" piece of wood in half. Lesson? Be careful with the new drill.

I finally have a stand for the form, now, so all I need to do now is fill it with expanding foam and a) not have it explode, and b) destroy the balcony.

Then all I have to do is make a lab coat from scratch, no pattern, in a month. No problem!

This post has nothing to do with pants.

Last night I cancelled my date due to exhaustion. Nautrally, sleep hated me and I ended up bouncing unsteadily off the walls until nearly 1am due to yesterday's caffination. Naturally, today requires more caffeine. *sigh*

In more positive news, my alienware machine arrived yesterday. It's very pretty, and alienware make well-designed machines. I'm seriously impressed by their attention to detail. The only downside (beyond a slightly emabrassing mistake *I* made) is that the pretty box is too big. It is too tall for the PC shelf in my desk, and with it under my desk, I can't get the chair as close to the desk as I would prefer. I'll figure something out eventually. Maybe even something that *doesn't* require power tools.

I has a plan for Hallowe'en. Naturally, it's changed in my head so that it requires sewing something I don't have a pattern for. However: SCIENCE!

Now that my pants that will never fit are pretty much done, I'm planning my next sewing projects. I'm thinking I'll go for club wear next. First up will be some arm warmers made of microfibre; I sweat when I dance, so I need something that will dry quickly. I'll need to find somewhere to buy microfibre stuff first, but I figure somewhere on Queen West will have it.

After that, I have an idea for a sash. It'd be about 3 inches wide, with a lot of pockets on the inside so I could hold ID, keys, and some cash in there. The plan is to use one piece of black fabric folded over, and on the other side, a piece of fluorescent green or yellow fabric sticking out the bottom (so it would be black with a day glo stripe at the bottom.) I think it'd go well with the wrap pants I bought last weekend. I'm trying to decide if I should try to be hardcore and do welt pockets, or just stitch pouches to the main part of the sash, and if I need to have some or all of the pockets button/snap/velcro shut to avoid stuff falling out.

Woke up a bit later than planned. Drank the remainder of yesterday's pot of tea - still good, though we're now out of cane sugar.

Spent time fighting with my laptop, but eventually got quite a bit of work done, pantless, on the balcony.

At lunch, I showered, ran to the bank where the cute teller flirted with me, then went to Hope St. for a grilled veggie salad and a tuna melt. And a diet coke.

Back home, worked more. Put my bike together, biked to the gym, lifted weights and did some cardio before biking back home.

Showered and changed into kilt and zombie bunny shirt, then off to dinner, where we had good food and lousy service.

Finally, Evil Dead: The Musical! It was hilarious and awesome. They overused the lines from the movies a touch IMHO, but the gore more than made up for it. If you go, make the people going with you let you sit in the splatter zone. We were just outside it. Some people who clearly don't wear much white were wearing white shirts so they could get them covered in gore.

After that, corwin77 and the two friends of his from work and I went off to Savage. Savage has gotten really sad. They turned the lights on and sent us home at 2. NB for out of town spooky folks; going to Savage will make you sad.

I was tempted to wander over to Neutral to see what a club with people in it looks like, but I am supposed to be at a sewing makeup session tomorrow morning at 10am. I did not get the amount of work planned done on my pants, so I really should get there on time. Of course, I am caffinated to the point of feeling ill, so I don't want to sleep. Grar!

We have Batmask.

It's not quite how I'd imagined attaching everything but it fits, and looks right.

Tomorrow night, the cape, and then I will be done!

Either I'm getting better at this or I picked an easy one for this year.

NB: my batman may bear a close resemblance to a cross between Adam West and a Mexican wrestler.

This weekend, we sewed.

Some, but not enough. I'm not too worried about my costume; after all, I have friday off, so thursday night and friday morning I can finish things up if need be.

I have some concerns about lizard's costume though. We got too lazy this weekend. Or too tired.

Some day, I will learn how to communicate the designs I get in my head. Making costumes with other peoples' involvement always seem to end up with both of us frustrated and annoyed because no one besides me knows what I am trying to do.

However. The costumes will be ready by friday night. we will be dressed up and ready to rock. It looks like everyone will show up, and wackyness will ensue.

Also, I noticed an odd thing yesterday; we will have an even number of male and female party-goers friday.

We didn't plan it that way, but I think it is a good thing.