Ellen

costume diary

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:59:15 GMT

Wow, it's been ages since I've written here. Ah well. I just finished the Katara sweater and am starting on my masquerave/halloween costume. I will be dressing as Agatha Heterodyne from the webcomic "Girl Genius." Firefox is telling me that "Heterodyne" is not a real word when, in fact, it is. I looked it up on wikipedia (which is a real word) and it refers to "the generation of new frequencies by mixing, or multiplying, two oscillating waveforms."

Anyway, I like the character and I like the costumes, but unfortunately (for this costume at least) I have dark brown hair. So I bought a wig. It is very spiffy and reasonably good quality -- someone asked me if I had dyed my hair (and grown it ten inches longer overnight?). I also bought a pair of costume glasses, which will work very nicely but appear to be made of teflon. See, I wanted to alter the shape a bit, move the crosspiece in the middle down some to match the look of the ones in the comic. So I cut them apart, got each piece in the shape I wanted, and tried to attach them back again. Solder won't stick, superglue won't stick, JB weld won't stick, not even hot glue will stick. So I bought a second pair and won't fiddle with them at all. Well, maybe with the length of the earpieces.

I'm working on the shirt. High Edwardian collar, here I come.

rant about shirts

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:10:58 GMT

Okay, so obviously it's horribly unattractive to fasten the top button of a shirt, but what about the one below that? Apparently the proper way to wear a blouse now is with the top two buttons undone, which isn't necessarily indecent but certainly could be. This is fine with me, people can dress however they want, I just wish manufacturers would still include a button there, so I can button my shirts higher up if I want. Clothing companies, listen up: it doesn't take that much effort to sew an extra button and buttonhole, and you'd probably sell more shirts if you did.

Also: why is there a top button, if there isn't one directly below it? That's just kind of weird.

Finished some things, but no pictures

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 07:32:50 GMT

The secret geeky knitting project was Jayne's hat from Firefly, but green because it was a Christmas present for Jeff. Since then I've also made a version of this hat but with my own design, but you'll (and I say "you" like someone is reading this) have to wait for pictures because it is being blocked even as we speak. It was a fun pattern to knit; I hope it turns out well after the blocking. My next project will possibly break my geeky knitting rule because it's just going to be a normal newsboy cap to go with my red coat. I suppose I could say it's a liberty cap from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" which proves that, even if my knitting isn't nerdy, I sure am.

Starting Over

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:09:29 GMT

So I decided to do the journal thing here, instead of on blogger, because livejournal has groups and stuff. So here's what I wrote there:

(hello and welcome, was the title of my post over there) ... to the ~~4th~~ 5th edition of "let's see if Ellen can successfully keep a blog and not forget about it entirely." I've decided to make this one project-based, because really making things is what I do, not form relevant opinions about the world at large or any of those other things that bloggers are supposedly supposed to do.

So ... what is Ellen up to now? Well, my most recently completed project is an argyle sweater vest, meant to go along with the Doctor Who scarf I made a few months ago. Argyle is popular enough and I could have just bought one, but eh. Knitting it was tricky since I was at some points using 15 balls of yarn at a time (this is intarsia, not fair isle) and I'm very happy with how it came out. Pictures forthcoming.

Current projects include a dress for orchestra concerts (not particularly nerdy), a dress for Emily (not geeky either, although somewhat historical), and something knitted that will be very geeky but is a secret.

Addendum to this post: the geeky knitted thing is finished but still secret.