As promised, here are finished apron pictures. I'm afraid they're not very good, but until I acquire a personal photographer or a tripod, they'll have to do. Yes, it is a ridiculously girly apron, and it's a little top-heavy, but I like it.


I meant to upload them sooner, but like I mentioned before, I've been kind of busy. My boyfriend and I spent Father's Day at his dad's house in West Virginia, where we had neither cell phone service nor high-speed internet. It was beautiful, though. We drove back to Virginia on Tuesday; he went straight to work and I spent about eight hours shopping and wandering around the area (which wasn't so bad because I spent most of my time looking at cooking stuff, and I can literally spend all day looking at cooking stuff).

Yesterday, I drove down to my mom's house because today is her birthday! I was going to give her a thing that I bought earlier in the summer, but I accidentally left it in my apartment, so I bought her a pineapple instead. :D (I learned earlier from my brother that she bought a pineapple slicer recently, so I figured a pineapple would be a good birthday gift.)

I've also been raiding her fabric collection because she doesn't really sew anymore, and I want to make some dresses with her fabric. Of my many great finds, these are the ones that interest me the most right now:



And what exactly am I going to make with so many small pieces of fabric? A patchwork dress is what I'm going to make. I was inspired by a combination of madras plaid and patchwork quilts in general. It will probably be a sleeveless sheath mini dress with a scoop neck and zipper in the front, and I want to add a heart-shaped cutout in the back to give it just a little bit of feminine sexiness. I kind of hope I can finish it before next Thursday because I'm going to the beach with family and I'd like to have a cute new dress to wear there.

I'm also back on track with my website, since I've finally gained access to most of the files I need to finish it. Hopefully it'll be done within the next few weeks. I'd like to get it done before Otakon.

Labels: apron, fabric, patchwork dress, website

I finished the apron today~ Here are some progress pictures.



Sorry for the bad lighting and quality; I still haven't quite mastered the art of taking decent indoor photos. I'll take some pictures of the finished apron later, when I have the opportunity to use natural light instead of the artificial light in my apartment. I don't know when it'll happen because I'll be kind of busy over the next few days, but I'll try to get around to it sometime soon. I also haven't forgotten that I still need to photograph my Full Moon costume, but I haven't really had the opportunity to talk my boyfriend or some other poor unsuspecting person into taking pictures of me in the costume yet.

Also, I thought I should mention that my friend just told me that Yoshiki and Sugizo will be performing at Otakon this year! I'm so excited~

Labels: apron, otakon

Jo-Ann didn't have the strawberry print that I had in mind, but as you can see, I found four other cute prints. I'm not sure if I could use any of them for a dress because they're all a little juvenile, but I think they'll be suitable for a cute apron or two. I'm planning to use the two citrus fabrics together, and the other two together.

I also almost completely finished that sweater today, but I'm holding out on pictures for the time being. Don't worry; I'll post them when you least expect it.

Anyway, I'd write more, but I already finished making patterns for the apron, so I'm going to start cutting fabric now. ;O

Labels: apron, fabric

I'm starting to think that it was a bad idea to get my cable fixed. The reasons? This, this, and this, among many other recipes that I really want to try, and I've had my cable back for less than a week. I've been watching far too much Food Network.

Though to be fair, even if I still didn't have cable, I'd probably just be sitting around and watching DVDs or something on the computer while I crochet this sweater. I really want to watch Nana again, even though I just watched it all for the second time less than a month ago. But even if I watched it again, it wouldn't be enough. It probably won't be enough until Ai Yazawa finishes the manga, so that there's at least some kind of ending to the story. I hate to sound like one of those hardcore anime nerds because I don't really consider myself to be one of them, but as I watched and read the series, I began to grow with the characters, and I went through a lot of my own experiences as I watched and read about their experiences. As long as the story remains unfinished, I feel like there's a part of me that will also continue to feel incomplete. But at the same time, that's probably just my imagination because an anime series should not have that kind of impact on my life.

Either way, hopefully I'll be able to distract myself from these unhealthy thoughts and habits once I've acquired some new fabric. I've gotten over the idea of making another costume for Otakon this year, and instead I've been toying with the idea of making an apron and then a cute summer day dress. Jo-Ann's has a sale going on this week and I have a couple of coupons, so I am planning to make at least one shopping trip this week. There's a cute strawberry printed fabric that I kind of want (forget the fact that it's a juvenile apparel fabric) on sale for only $1.99 per yard.

Anyway, back to the crochet. Hopefully I'll finish it tonight.

Labels: cooking, fabric, nana

As promised, here's a new blog layout. I'm pretty happy with it for the most part, except for that ugly black bar that is covering Hikari's hand, but I think I can live with that for now. I'm thinking about moving my blog at some point anyway because I miss the blog.seaofwishes URL. The new website layout will be similar, but not identical to this one.

I still haven't made much progress with the website since last time, but I've been keeping myself busy by cleaning house; crocheting a sweater for a friend; obsessing over the idea of possibly making either another (what?) costume for Otakon, an apron, or a dress; spending time with my lovely boyfriend; and watching the Food Network now that the cable in my apartment is working again.

In other news, I cooked fish for the first time on Sunday evening. It didn't go as perfectly as I hoped it would, but that was mostly due to my lack of experience in handling raw fish and because I underestimated how long it would take to pan-fry the snapper fillet. It was still really good, and I'm already looking forward to the next time I'll be able to afford to cook fish again.

But really, I should get back to crocheting this sleeve.

Labels: blog, cooking, design

I regret not updating more lately to write about what's going on in my life because I've been doing some interesting things, but unfortunately when you're busy doing interesting things, you sometimes get too busy to write about them in your blog.

So what have I been up to for the past two and a half weeks? I'm still working on my website, and for a while I was keeping a good balance of steadily working on both that and my cosplay for Otakon everyday, but then one day I made a major breakthrough in my cosplay, and from that point I pretty much completely neglected my website to work on my cosplay, which I finished recently. I'm still working on details and buying little things that I need for it, and I'm kind of depending on a friend to make the wig, but other than that, it's done. I'll take pictures of myself while wearing the costume eventually, but for now, here's a picture of the character I'll be dressed as:



And yes, that is the best reference picture there is of this costume. So I pretty much had to make up the entire back of the costume, as well as the center front panel of the bodice. Which is fine with me; I was glad to be able to add a little bit of my own touch to the costume. My wings will not be nearly that large because I don't want to have too much trouble fitting through doors and on elevators, escalators, and other small spaces, but unfortunately they'll still be big enough to make getting around difficult. My friend is also going to be Eternal Sailor Moon on one of the days, so I can imagine that it's going to be pretty amusing to see us trying to get around the convention together.

My website is still not anywhere near finished, and unfortunately I probably won't be able to completely finish it until later in the summer because some of the art that I want to put on it is saved either on CDs or my other computer at my mom's house, and I'm not planning to make the three-hour drive back there until later this month. I also have some drawings both here and there that still need to be documented, and I imagine that'll take some time as well. In fact, I should probably work on that sometime today, but I probably won't. I need a break. I might make a new layout for my blog sometime before the website is up, though.

Labels: cosplay, otakon, website