practicality

So I'm working on throwing together Mikazuki's battle outfit for Anime Central, which is in five weeks (oh god I don't want to think about that). Like a lot of the Touken Ranbu designs, there is kind of a lot going on, so I thought I would break down the components and make some notes of them for my own reference, and maybe that will be helpful for other people out there, too :) This post is going to be the big fabric bits, because they're sort of the foundation of the outfit.

Most of these pieces are actually pretty close to traditional Heian era garments - I'm using Reconstructing History's Heian men's clothing pattern as a base for most of it.

-Kosode: This is really only visible on the concept/reference art - on the in-game sprites, it only shows as the innermost white collar at his neckline. Important, though, because this is what actually covers your arms and sides! His is pretty much the same as historical versions, or a slight varation on a modern kimono - narrower body, no front tuck, ends about knee-length I'm using a white cotton sateen because I had a bunch already, and I'm a sweaty person so I need an under-layer that's machine washable. Mostly done already because I can sew kimono in my sleep, practically.

-Hitoe: The white layer that's mostly visible, right under the blue one. It's pretty close to Heian hitoe, with two exceptions, both in the sleeve area - one is that the sleeves look to be all one piece, instead of made up of two pieces (which is more an artifact of traditional Japanese fabric widths than anything), and then the sleeves are open on the bottom and wrist edge, as well as the body edge. So I'm going to take the traditional hitoe pattern, cut the sleeves as one block, and then line them because the edges are super-visible when they're open like that and I have enough hemming as it is. I think I'm going to buy some white polyester chirimen (chirimen is a type of tight crepe weave that is easily the most common fabric used for kimono). Normally I'd buy a bolt of vintage kimono silk from Ichiroya - you can get them for ~$50 plus shipping, and they're 15m or so - but 1) a lot of the whites tend to have discolored with age and 2) they're traditional width, which is about 15" and thus too narrow for me to do the sleeves in one piece for. Thankfully Tomato has 44" polyester chirimen for ~$14/m on their Rakuten store.

-Kariginu: The giant blue monstrosity. Like the hitoe, this mostly only differs from the traditional cut in having single-piece sleeves that are open all the way around. I'm lining the whole thing because there are a lot of visible edges/insides, and I have the feeling the fabric I'm using is going to be fray-tastic. It's a royal blue brocade with the sayagata pattern woven in - it's a little bigger, with slightly thicker lines than the patterning on Mikazuki's kariginu, but honestly, it's probably as close as you're going to get without actually weaving your own (don't do that, please). Okuyama sells it online, though I was lucky enough that a friend was willing to pick some up in person for me when she was in Tokyo last month, which saved me a bunch on shipping. My sewing project for today, I think!

-Hakama: The only part of this that isn't mostly-Heian in style. Hakama were part of Heian ensembles, but they had fewer pleats than modern styles, and were waaaay longer so they could be gathered up at the ankles and have a nice poof. The pleat arrangement and length on Mikazuki's place them pretty solidly in 'modern' (19th century to present) style. Round Earth's hakama pattern is my go-to for that, though I may leav off the backboard (which is solidly a 20th century martial arts addition). I'm airbrushing the gradient on a heavy matte polyester satin, which, uh, is an adventure. And probably a whole post to itself at some point.

Next time: armor, armor, and more armor!

Three guesses who's coming up soon on my cosplay list, and the first two don't count ;) #cosplay

Last-minute #ouji coord for lunch at Max Brenner - I went straight for dessert, haha. Blouse is #littledipper, cost is #atelierboz and everything else is off-brand.

I will post something of substance someday maybe, but for now, I will not so stealthily drop a link to my thread on the love meme. Because it's nice to have all those little things to look at when I need it.

Today wound down with this weird sense of calm anticipation. No major nervousness - though of course as soon as I say that, I start to think 'well, I should do this or that...'. Teslacon has come and gone - it was a ton of fun, despite the various injuries or illnesses we all went into the con with. J got some great photos, which I'll share once we retouch them. Thinking of making a fun little crew webpage, too.

I've also got most of my Christmas crafting done - mostly putting finishing touches on things, and I think it'll all be done this week. I'm actually going home for Christmas for the first time in a few years, which will be really nice.

Pretty much the one thing that feels lacking is the employment situation - I'm still sending my resume out, doing what networking I can, but no bites. I feel like, I dunno, that I'm missing something. Some big 'How To Get A Job' secret that the rest of the world knows and I don't. I know the reality of it is the economy, and the fact that I'm here on a visa, but it's still super-frustrating.

I've just started taking a course online on design via Coursera, and our first week challenge (due by Sunday... yep I kind of left that one off, go me) is to find 'gaps' - some place in our lives that there is a problem that can be solved by design (using design in a very loose sense - the course is a general principles/process type thing, so it's not necessarily an aesthetic-design thing). One of these is going to be the basis for the term project, and we have to have access to five other people who share the same 'gap' - the prof would prefer in-person access but I do not have five people I interact with on even a weekly basis in-person so YEP NO. So! This is a brainstorming post, mostly, and I would love people to chime in with a 'yes I'd like that too' if, well, they would.

-Marginalia (working title for the eReader quote db project, see previous post)
-Pantry tracker (what do I have? When did I buy it? Seemed popular idea-wise in #dw)
-FUCKING WIZARD LAYERS (I will probably not tackle this but it drives me up the wall)
-FUCKING LAYER EDITOR (...see above, though Fey has given me a possible solution)
-Something to introduce recipe variety on a basic level (I love whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com in principle but most of the recipes include things I don't have, and I hate shopping)
-work-out reminder/incentives?
-semi-flexible scheduler for practicing artsy stuff (there was a discussion on learning and routines in reddit, and about how it's far better to do something EVERY DAY than a few days a week or something)
-something organization something something (my house is a constant disaster. I don't even know where to start)
-a script/extension for me to annotate my buglist on Bugzilla (because I hate going 'okay, I think I have patches in for these four for review, and this one depends on another bug, and...' because it's not easily visualized)
-highlight reddit posts by subreddit they appear in (can you tell I like visual cues?)

So I've been kind of down lately care of unemployment - it's the sort of situation that's bad enough normally, but I have the extra joy hanging over my head of knowing my current visa expires next summer and as it stands, I'm not in a position to get another one, because, you guessed it, lack of job experience.

I've spent the last two weeks or so contemplating doing freelance web design - started making a portfolio site, doing lots of reading on freelancing, etc. And I came to the conclusion tonight that I don't think I can. I'm a pretty good web designer. Over the broad category of anyone who's made a webpage, I think I can safely put myself in 'above average'. But I lack the talent for creativity and innovation necessary to be pro, to make enough to make a living off it. I don't know if that's something I could improve over time, or if it's just some quirk of luck that makes some people innovative and others not. But I don't really have the time to practice and find out.

And then I sat back and thought - you know what? I have a skill set already that I'm pretty damn good at by most measurements I've seen, which is hands-on betnchwork in molecular biology. I am a pro at this. Except, of course, for the part where nobody will pay me to do what I'm good at. And I know that some of this is the economy, and some of this is the deeply messed up way academia works these days, and some of this is just not knowing enough people (and having no idea how to meet more - seriously, where do biologists hang out?). But I think tomorrow I'm going to call a place or two to ask about volunteer work, and maybe I'll actually do that Masters program application.

So a friend (hi Yana) reminded me that oh, I need to post more. Which is true, I've mostly been microblogging because 1) I keep my microblog locked, 2) nobody here cares about RP shenanigans, and 3) also nobody cares about my spammy, spammy thoughts on fandom (I make running-commentary plurks when reading stuff). So in news people might actually care about:

-Frustrating job laid me off, which effectively resolved my dilemma if I should quit and search harder for something that wasn't pure physical labor at insane overtime.
-I have been swimming in a sea of CSS, mostly working on things for Dreamwidth instead of, oh, any of my own sites. But it's like slacking off productively!
-I have failed utterly at working on learning any other coding language (aside from a bit of S2 and that doesn't count)
-I have pretty much managed to keep to my cleaning goal.
-I'm considering trying to save up for a new car because 1) the crazy lady next door keeps threatening to have mine towed and 2) some jackass smashed one of my windows in and 3) the car is sixteen years old and showing it's age.
-Started reading Marvel comics. If I disappear, I've fallen too deep into the abyss. Don't follow me.

I'm also starting to realize I need to upgrade my personal blog - it's still running Moveable Type 4.1 which is... years old. And uses tables for layout, and now that I look, has no wide content handler. And the layout is a little embarassingly old-school in light of my DW stuff. Options are most likely either upgrading MT which has the pro of a templating language I know and the con of being owned by Six Apart who I'm not fond off after how they handled LJ, or switching to Wordpress. I don't know if the Wordpress templating system has gotten less complex since I first looked at in like 2005, but I've become a better coder, and it does seem to be the blogging software these days. Thoughts, anyone?

So I am actually doing a bingo challenge! cottoncandy_bingo because I love me some fluff. This may all end up being Shatterstar/Rictor because they are my new favorite adorable of the moment >_>

( Posting my card here so I don't lose it. )

This kind of started with unfuckyourhabitat and discussions of how adding one small new habit to your routine makes it easier to add others, but it kind of solidified talking to pjf at YAPC, who is a deeply fascinating individual - the discussion we had can kind of be summed up in his wonderful OSCON keynote, which is on youtube here. Basically, my life is kind of a mess. There are things I should do but don't want to do, and things I want to do that I don't end up doing, and basically my life-system is Not Working. This is for a number of reasons:

1) I'm a very poor self-motivator. This is probably at least partially because of depression, though I think a lot of people have problems self-motivating. Basically I obey Newton's First Law of physics, and this is why I didn't got to over half my classes in my last semester of university.

2) Related to (1) - I'm poor at commitment. And occasionally afraid of it, because I have a very high fear of failure (again, see depression plus anxiety), and if you don't commit, you can't fail. But I'm also fantastic at abandoning projects midway through because motivation dried up.

3) I have an awful case of what synecdochic calls 'goldfish brain' (this is one of several reasons the terrified goldfish is my spirit animal). Basically it's an exciting combination of distractability and short-term memory failure that leads me to do things like almost put the butter away in the cutlery drawer, lose everything I don't keep consistently in the same spot, and forget important things I need to do unless I do them right now.

So! It seemed best to make a list of what I want to do before I figure out ways in which to overcome 1-3 and actually do it.

Long-Term
-Get a job in my field
-Get PR status in Canada
-Own a house

Day-to-Day
-Keep the house clean
-Keep up with my RP commitments
-Cook a greater variety of lunches for work
-Not lose things all the time

Crafting
-Assorted planned knitting projects
-Assorted planned sewing projects
-Deal with the backlog of half-finished and abandoned projects
-Become reliable and skilled enough to make some extra income off my skills

CompSci
-Learn Perl
-Learn Python
-Get my cosplay website out of alpha

Languages
-Learn pronunciation for French, Mandarin, and Cantonese (No interest in the language, but I don't like sounding like an idiot in front of my friends)
-Brush up on my Spanish (I blame comic books)
-Learn Japanese
-Learn Welsh or Irish

This, then, leads to the 'how to do this' portion. The long-term goals are somewhat nebulous, and I need to refine the steps necessary to reach them before I can set that up on any sort of tracker. I've been using Astrid as a possible to-do manager, as it syncs web and my phone, and has a random reminders, which is good for someone who forgets things that need doing. I am, however, open to to-do list managers, as Astrid doesn't have an open API, so no hooking it into other things. So far, that's mostly been for day-to-day stuff/one-off tasks - I can add when I think of it, and come back to it later. The CS stuff - I think for Perl, working on DW bugs may be a good start. For my website, it's honestly just buckling down and writing the damned content. Languages - I have access to some online learning systems through the library, and Anki seems like a good way of reviewing.

The next problem - the big problem - is keeping to the commitments to do things, instead of 'eh, later'. Like the recycling in my trunk I've meant to take to the depot all week. 'I'll do it tomorrow.'. For that, I'm tentatively considering Beeminder. Putting money up for stake is kind of scary (see fear of commitment) but at the same time, money is one of the few things that is sufficiently motivating. Why I skipped classes but I don't skip work.

This, of course, is all very rough-draft right now, and input on what's worked for others is more than welcome.