Faerie Fever

This week, Dawn and I bought our passes for FaerieCon East, to be held in Baltimore MD in early November. Fun thing about this is, though we've known each other for about as long as we've had kids, we never really hung out together much until she asked me if I'd like to go to FaerieCon in 2008. It was the first time the FaerieWorlds crew tried hosting a Con, and they had one of Dawn's favorite bands, Omnia, playing at their Bad Faerie Ball. So we decided to go.

It was quite the adventure - we spent months putting together clothes and wings and hairstyles and makeup techniques, making test runs for garb and makeup at Ren Faires and Dagorhir events, and then finally our first major road trip together to Philadelphia for the Con.

Turns out, Omnia never made it there. It was to be their first gig in the US, but they got paranoid at the last minute and chickened out. Which REALLY bummed us out. And to top it off, Brian Froud wasn't there because his retina detached a couple days before, and Alan Lee didn't come due to a death in the family. ALL the people we were excited to see weren't there.

Despite all that, we still had a total blast. First of all, it was Toby Froud and his goblin Ignatz who broke the no-Omnia news to us. That DEFINITELY helped to dull the sting a bit....mostly because they're both so damn cute. And we still got to meet all sorts of artists and craftspeople, and some of the event organizers, which then led to us making it to other FaerieWorlds and FaerieCon events.

So now, we're finally going back. Much has changed for us in the last five years.....and I definitely need a serious overhaul in the faerie department, as my last trip to the Ren Faire pointed out so painfully! I honestly need new everything - shoes have holes, corset doesn't fit anymore, tops and skirts no longer cover what needs covering, makeup essentials are missing....and my wings are absolutely MANGLED.

My last trip to the Faire *did* find me a new friend, though. His name is Cedric. He's a cicada. He is also dead....but don't sat that too loud around him, because he doesn't know it yet, and we don't want him to feel awkward. Cedric and his beautiful shiny wings was my constant companion at the Faire, and by the time I got home, I had pretty much decided that I needed a serious Cicada overhaul.

So that was my project this weekend, after buying FaerieCon passes, ball tickets, and making hotel reservations. I got to work on my cicada wings.


I started with this picture that Tom found for me. It was perfect! Using my light box, I traced the wing outlines, and the approximate relative distance between the right and left sides.


I knew I wasn't going to have the patience to do all the veining in the wings, especially since I was planning to construct the frame primarily out of 14g and 16g steel wire, held together with 24g wire wrapping. So I just made up a pretty vein pattern, keeping in mind that the pieces would need to be wire-wrapped together.
Once I got the design drawn out, I needed to enlarge it. I used my omnigrid ruler to figure out how big of a wingspan I wanted, then drew a grid over my drawing, 13 squares across so my final wing pattern would be 13" wide. Then I drew a 1" grid on pattern paper and transferred the design by following the grid.


I used an old sheet of plywood and some nails I had in the basement to build a bending jig, and some of my grandma's old pattern transfer paper to transfer the design to the plywood.
The tricky part was remembering that the wire always has to be bent around the outside of the curve. So if you're bending even a slightly sinuous curve, the nails you place will switch from being placed inside the line to outside the line at some point.


I did learn a few things in the process.
1. Only place nails for bending the main frame outlines on the main area for your jig. Trying to bend accessory pieces (and place the nails for bending them around) inside the main outline is a HUGE pain, and there's really no need.
2. Make a separate bending jig for each accessory piece on a different spot on your plywood.
3. Once your pieces are bent around the jig, you have to take them off, true up the wire by hand, and then finish the bending-to-shape by hand as well, using your drawn pattern as a template. The jig won't do the job - all it does is put the main corners and curves where you need them.
4. Use little strips of duct tape to hold joints in place while you do the wire wrap joins. And then epoxy glue the joints into place, because those stupid wire wrappings like to slide around!! I still have to do that part.


They turned out pretty well, I think! I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with them from this point, though. Leave them as just a wire frame? Prime and enamel them? Try covering them with cellophane or tissue paper and glue? I don't know! What do you think?

- Stell

Dolls Are Making Me Crabby

So I have these dolls. I've been making them for years, slowly perfecting my construction methods, making sure that they go together smoothly, look decently proportional, heads don't pop off, etc. I started with smaller ones, then worked my way up to larger, dollhouse-adult sizes, expanded their clothing pattern options. And if I do say so my self, I think they're pretty great.

So, my brilliant idea is to write a book on how to make these pretty great dollhouse dolls. I kept putting off working on it, by allowing myself to get distracted by food, or dagorhir projects, or errands, or Candy Crush, or, well, anything other than sitting down to get a book outline and master patterns hammered out.

Now I know why I'm avoiding it.

Those Darned Socks!

I wear wool socks. That's pretty much all I have. If you have wool socks, you know as well as I do that they tend to wear out on the pressure points - the ball of the foot, and the back of the heel - pretty quickly.

With the price of good wool socks, though, it's not very cost-effective to just toss them once they get thin or get holes worn in them. That's why it's a good idea to learn the age-old practice of sock darning!

Scrapbook Cookbooks

A few years ago, when my brother got married, my mom got together with all the women in our family and put together a cookbook for his wife. We put each recipe on its own page in a small scrapbook, and took some time on each one to make it interesting and pretty.

Well.....it turned out so well, we all got jealous. Fortunately, Mom had the foresight to scan each page into her computer before wrapping the book up, so that next Christmas, all us girls got identical cookbooks as gifts!

They see a lot of use. Each one of us has added to them, altered them, expanded them...and when a wedding approaches, we get out the scrapbooking supplies, buy a new scrapbook, and get busy!

This fall, I decided that, as a way to keep the recipes that my family REALLY likes all in one place, a new cookbook was in order. I'm not really a scrapbook-y kind of person....but I love the paper, and making a cookbook is an excellent way for me to get to use it in a practical way!




So, I gathered my supplies.

Hey you! Wanna learn to knit?

Ok, I've been working on some little projects lately, and invariably, whenever I post pictures, someone always says "I want to learn how to do that" and asks me where to start. So I will tell you.

BE WARNED! This will require acquiring stuff. I suggest asking other knitters, your grandma (who probably didn't knit but her mother did and her stuff should be around here somewhere...), thrift shops, freecycle or Craigslist. DO NOT GO INTO A FULLY STOCKED YARN STORE UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO!!! I'm serious, guys. Yarn stores are like crack dealers. This is why you can get so much stuff from other/former knitters.

Ok, the stuff list: