FACT 178 - kimono wo tsukurimasho~
so, it's come to this, has it. i am now so over the edge about japanese goods that i have made my own kimono.
yes! yes it has come to this! and isn't it AWESOME!?
i'll maybe be putting up some more details on how i made it, but that'll have to be later. i'm making another one, this one electric blue. you should see my super anal-retentive diagrams and instructions and stuff i wrote out for myself. (^_^)
i used an amalgam of a couple of sets of instructions i found on the web. the Immortal Geisha forums were helpful for detail stuff. it's not especially historically accurate/traditional, but i'm not really into making 50 thousand little kise for my seams, for a garment i'm not actually going to be wearing to Obon festivals...
also, because the fabric, i bought came in two (almost but not really) equal-length panels, my collar attaching in the front didn't go quite as planned, and so, as you can see, there's so wrinkling/gathering that shouldn't be there, on the front, right above the obi.
as for the obi. hot damn, i love that thing! (^_^) if you're not especially attached to having your obi be all one piece, it turns out you can buy a yard of whatever you'd like, and (assuming 45 inch fabric) but it into 6ths, and piece them together for an obi of 540 cm. plenty long! I lined this one with some muslin i had laying around, but if you want to self line it, just buy 2 yards and in to town. this one isn't stiffened in any way, and i think i'll definitely be stiffening my next one, but for a casual kimono, this is okay.
overall, i'm super pleased with my first effort. this next one i'm ongoing to be making with panels all of the same size (zomg!) so the neck portion should sit down more normally. hopefully less wrinkly, at the very least.
guess we're going to find out in pretty short order. i'm planning to do he thing this week, so i can year it for Easter service. we'll see if my desire to stay out of the spotlight overrules my desire to wear cool things in public...
FACT 176 - #amwriting
well, i think three and a half months is quite long enough to recover from NaNo. (^_^) actually, i was fairly well recovered in January, but then a long drawn out Saga Happened, the course of which i may or may not relate to you at a later date, when i can manage to talk about it without flying into a screaming rage, and so writing did not. (T_T) But i have recovered enough (read: i realized a Deadline was Looming) to entice myself back to the writing desk. After each of the previous NaNos, some lovely company has swooped down to shower the winners with free copies of their manuscripts. This year, Amazon has done the honors, and they have profered not one, but FIVE free copies of our manuscripts to lure us into their little (read: not so little) self-publishing game. (^_^) i still have not looked at The Revolution, my 2011 NaNo effort, and i am not willing to do so, not even for five free copies of the thing, but i AM willing to read, perhaps even to revise, my 2009 NaNo effort, The Machine. to that end, i have placed the prologue of such an effort online for all to see. it is quite short, a mere two paragraphs, and i promise the entire novel is not project briefing excerpts, but you may wish to read it nonetheless. it doesn't suck.The Machine (working title) | prologue
(read: not that much)
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The Machine (working title) | prologue
Excerpt from ACC PROJECT BRIEFINGMARCH 14, 15926
The lack of organized response to the crisis indicates not only that the Project's failure was wholly unplanned for, but that even once Project leadership realized that such a failure was imminent, they were able to prevent any information concerning it and its implications from reaching either the media or other government agencies.
The sole indication of civilian knowledge about the project is the discovery of an unknown male found among the dead at the California facility. Evidence suggests he was copying data from a Project computer when he was discovered by a security guard, who apparently shot and killed him, but due to the lapse of time between the incident and recovery efforts, as well as the general lack of genetic records endemic to the early 21st century, no further information is available on this unknown male.