Celtic Ball

Last Saturday, my sister and I were able to attend the Celtic Ball!

If you want a detailed write-up of our costumes you can see mine and hers. 

'A lady does not place her weapon on the table.'

There was even a bagpiper! (and he played the Star Wars theme) 

Until next time!

SG

Masquerade Ball

I don't know what's more fun: getting ready for a ball, partying at the ball, or going through pictures of the ball the next day. 

Jake was giving Jessica and me a by-the-minute-count-down til it was time to leave and commenting on how bad hair spray stinks. It's not fair that it takes him a grand total of 10 minutes to get ready when Jess can I had been preening ourselves for over an hour (only an hour?). ;) When we got there, Jake acted as the doorman, the musicians were setting up, tables were being set up for the seemingly endless supply of treats and goodies, and Jess and I got to work lighting many, many candles. It was such a gorgeous venue! and so many amazing masks and costumes! ^_^

'If Yoda went to Azgard [sic] wearing a light suit from Tron... This is what would result.' -DS

Robert, Laura and their daughter, Arianna. Our hosts for the evening.

Live music for the dances courtesy of The Whispering Roses

Take a guess at what we made Jessica's mask out of. 

Recognize the dress? Kinda sorta? I altered my rococo ball gown. I'll do a separate post about that.

Mandatory sibling picture for Mom. ;)

Then the personality shot. You give me bunny ears; I give you a feather beard. 

Pictures courtesy of yours truly, ECD Oregon and Daniel Sauble.

Farm Girl Got Geek: Bofur's Hat

I confess! I confess! 

I'm a fangirl. 

When it comes to anything Marvel or Tolkien, I will 'SQUEE!' very loudly.

You've been warned. 

And now I think I've taken my Hobbit fangirl-ing to a new level - I've created something from the movie. Bofur's hat is just too awesome. 

So I started shopping around. Unfortunately, the only ones on the market were either expensive or cheesy. I figured I could make one, I mean, really, how hard could it be to make a hat? Granted, I never recreated something from a movie before or made a hat before. This is going to be an adventure! 

With all the farming craziness of summer all finished, I now have more time to dedicate to geeky sewing experiments. ^_^

Looking at the hat, it looks like a bomber hat (I hope you didn't read that as Bombur...) with some serious dramatic dwarf flair to it.  But there's one problem: there aren't any bomber hat patterns. Anywhere. I did find a video tutorial on youtube, but still no pattern to work with. Drats. Being my stereotypical, crazy, crafting self, I jumped right in with making my own. Maybe one of these days, I'll get around to making a tutorial and printable pattern to share with y'all to fill that empty place in the cosplay universe.

 After making up the first draft for the pattern and then making the pre-mock-up mock-up out of some thread-bare, old sheets that I had stashed away for the sole purpose of being a mock-up, I felt comfortable moving on to the mock-up. (Wow, that was a run on sentence with a sad lack of vocabulary diversity. Ahem, anyway.) So I made the daring move to start working with the curly brown faux fur that I had  found at the fabric store. The final product certain had a Siberian hobo feel to it because of the fabrics I used. ;)

"Perfect chore hat," says I, "It'll be wonderfully warm for doing those winter tasks."

 And that's why they call it a mock-up. It's comfy and that's all that matters.

 It was finally time to move on to making Bofur's hat. I sewed up the leather exterior (it looked like a vintage football helmet), embroidered the crown seams, jimmy-rigged a frame/system to use to hold up the ear flaps. But I couldn't find the right kind of fur for the lining. Anywhere. Seeing a trend with this project? I checked the fabric stores in the area. Nada. Etsy? Zilch. Unless you wanted to pay an arm and a leg. Amazon? Same story there. :sigh: Then my brother played the Weird Al song, "eBay." Inspiration can come from anywhere I guess. So I checked the online auction house. Lo-and-behold, FUR! And I had choices too! And it was a 'purchase now' listing. Oh happiness! Guess where my perfect fur came from. South Korea. It was funny seeing my mom's face when she handed me the gray plastic package, 'Uh, what are you getting from South Korea?' 'Oh chill, Mom, it's North Korea that has nukes. It's my fur!' It takes a while to ship things across the great wide Pacific and to my front door step. I finished the rest of the hat that afternoon. 

Good luck trying to convince me to take it off. I LOVE it!

My dad was asking about my recent 'obsession' this bomber hats. I shrugged. Maybe I could turn it into a business of some sort. Hmm...

Picnic at Pemberly - a Pride and Prejudice Ball

The day finally arrived. Time slows to a crawl once you've finished your dress for the ball (but speeds up exponentially if you procrastinate until the day of). We met up at a friend's house to get ready (ribbons, curls, and bobby pins oh my!) and headed off to the ball. 

I interrupt this story to suggest that you turn on the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack by Dario Marianelli. Finding the whole playlist would be even better. Okay, you can keep reading now.  

But wait! We need to stop at the store to pick up the lemonade!

We get to go shopping in our Regency dresses! xD We ended up going to two stores and buying them  out of lemonade.  

Responses to our get-ups? 

Besides the second glances, stare-downs, compliments, questions about our unusual garb, and a gal helping us carry lemonade to the car, we also caught snippets of funny conversations about us

Little girl: Mommy, why do those people have so much lemonade?

Mommy: Honey, I think they just really like lemonade.

And...

Dude to his friend: Don't worry, you're in Portland now. You're going to see some pretty weird stuff.

And...

Some dude sitting in his car whistled at us. 

It's not every day that you see a gaggle of giggly girls dressed up in 'unusual' clothing pushing a cart full of lemonade

So. After our little shopping trip adventure, we were :really: on our way to the ball! It was for real this time. ;) My guesstimates puts the guest total to 200 (just in case you were wondering while looking at the pictures).

The littlest dancers

I loved the location

Someone ditched their shoes. The poor lost soles...

Mari's Wedding with a double circle

One of my favorite moments of the evening? 

Gentleman #1 asks me to a dance. Okay, nothing weird there. Part of the dance involved doing an 'orbit' around the set. Still nothing new there either. It's when Gent #1 was 'traded' with Gent #2 (who was nonchalantly walking by) during the orbit. Come in for a two-hand turn, and it's not the person I was dancing with before. Haha! Okay, got me! They then proceeded to trade off during each of the 'orbits' for the rest of the dance. We all had a good laugh afterwards. What I don't know is if it was pre-planned or not. Hmm...

Update: They had plotted the whole thing. They had looked at the dance list to see if it would work with any of the dances, and then they looked for someone who would be able to take the joke. 

Venue - Summerfield Farms in Salem, OR

Pictures are from ECD Oregon, Noah Holte, and yours truly