2012/08/27

Fake Prom: Enchantment Under the Sea

I went to Fake Prom on Friday (Fake Prom website). Fake Prom is an annual dress-up dance party in Toronto that I've gone to for the past couple of years. Each year it has a different theme and people dress up either according to theme or as if they were going to prom. This year the theme was "Enchantment Under the Sea"- the prom theme from Back to the Future.

Because of being away and then having to catch up on all the things I fell behind on because I was away, I was unable to find the time to make a new costume. I did, however, have something to wear. My grad collection from last year was a set of evening wear dresses inspired by some of the works of M. C. Escher, especially his "Three Worlds" lithograph (pictured below). Because of that, I've got a couple of dresses I made with fish appliqué. The one that fits me is partly inspired by salmon swimming upstream, jumping up waterfalls and such.

"Three Worlds" by M. C. Escher

The fish dresses from my grad collection.

2012/08/22

Post-vacation

I feel as if I've been everywhere in the past few weeks. We went to Montreal a couple of weeks ago for a wedding by car and before the end of the drive back I was already sick of riding, so of course we took an even longer trip the following weekend. We headed out on a 14-hour drive (including the pitstops) to nearly Thunder Bay to visit Logan's grandfather. This one seemed more bearable, but I think it was because we were better prepared with all sorts of books, sleep aids, and activities to keep us busy.

I was surprised to see how far along the drive we kept reception, but where we were staying and everywhere else we went within the week we spent up there had absolutely no mobile service and no 3G. It was a bit of a shock, since we are all accustomed to living with the internet at our fingertips and in our pockets, everywhere except while we ride the subway. However, I found slight relief in being unplugged for once. I got a decent amount of reading done and we spent some time enjoying the summer in the lake. I found it a little funny that the people who built the little town and live there decided to live so far from anywhere else, but still right on the highway so you can hear every transport truck that passes, but you can see so many stars up there, which was perfect because the Perseid meteor shower happened while we were up there.

Then it was another 14-hour drive before we were back in my hometown at our parents' houses for the night before departing for cottage country to attend my cousin's wedding on Saturday. Unfortunately, it was a little too cold to go to the beach while we were up there. We finally got back to our place in Toronto late Sunday night, and now I've got all sorts of email and Etsy and shipping to catch up on.

What we did do on Monday night was move all the furniture around in our apartment. Over the past several weeks I've been feeling increasingly like my studio area wasn't large enough. Our second "bedroom" has been our studio/office since we moved in and when I was working in there with my sewing machine, serger, laptop, and iron all going-- not to mention the table-space I needed for cutting things out-- it was quite a squeeze. Then add Logan at the desk with his computer set up, it was pretty uncomfortable. We decided to move the studio into our [bigger] bedroom and our bedroom into the studio, After all, we don't need much space to sleep!

Now I feel as if I'm trying to grasp as much of the end of the summer as I can.

2012/08/04

Famous on the Internet

In the past week, some of the things I made and put up on Etsy have been shared around the Internet. Chances are, if you are reading this and you don't know me, you've come directly or indirectly from one the following places. This is my obligatory "Places I have been featured" post.

The original tumblr post about my backpacks that was then reblogged thoughout geekdom:
http://pwnlove.com/post/28138974798/zelda-shield-backpack

Fashionably Geek feature on several of my items:
http://fashionablygeek.com/handmade/sleep-masks-sailor-moon-nintendo-dragonball-z-and-more/#more-52173

Craftzine.com features my slumber masks:
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2012/07/handmade_geeky_sleep_masks.html

A German website is even talking about my backpacks:
http://www.blugadgets.com/2012/07/30/zelda-ocarina-of-time-rucksacke/

Reddit post about my Vegeta slumber masks:
http://www.reddit.com/r/dbz/comments/ycq6q/vegeta_sleeping_eye_mask/

Post in a Mexican blog about my backpacks:
http://laguaridageek.blogspot.mx/2012/08/mochilas-de-las-escudos-de-link.html

So now everything I made has been featured so I need to make NEW things so they can be discovered because they are cool.