Silicone & Pantaloons

silicone drying

pantaloons

The silicone is still drying on the fluke.  Also, I still need to pour some silicone stuffs down the tubing.  Once it is sealed off and the rest of the silicone is dry I can remeasure the fluke.  Then I can perfect my pattern and finish cementing the fluke neoprene.  Once that's done, I can cement the entire thing.  Then, insert the monofin and put some velcro in the bottom and do a test swim.  It's getting much much closer.

Tomorrow is the opening of the Bay Area Renaissance Faire and the official beginning of my 62+ hour weeks.  It's a bit odd to be going back to work at the faires.  Also, I need to make a new pair of bloomers.  I bought the fabric today.

I made a pair of pantaloons today, they will be ribboned and fopped up.  I am seriously excited about that character's outfit!  The Marquis de FauxPas is by far my favourite.

Please fan the Pink Pom-Pom Project.... It's in support of breast cancer.

Mob Caps, Bloomers, Ears, Tails, and Quilts

Alright so not many photos will be uploaded to this post, I know they're way more fun than my ramblings.  I just spent my last two free days [until the end of April] with my Family in Orlando.  Bought the Hidden Mickeys book and hunted the parks.  Then we lazed about on Sunday and then went to the Pirate Dinner Theatre, surprisingly fun and good times.

The shield/sword side of the quilt.

The fire breathing dragon side.

Disney bound to have fun with family.

I got to make two mob caps on Friday.  Want one for me now.

That about sums everything up in photos, aside from tail stuff.  Not much done with the tail.  I added some silicone to help shape over the adhesive.  I need to add a little more.  Then I need to redo my pattern for the fluke and continue cementing neoprene together.  I need more free time.  Also, I'm incredibly lonely some days.  I'm somewhat glad faire begins on Saturday for the social aspect of it but I also am not looking that much forward to it, I need more free time.  I am excited about making bloomers for a bunch of characters in the show.  I also need to make myself a new pair or two, one of my pairs is being used in the show >_<

Alright, I'm off to potluck, bringing a tasty garlic cheddar pasta concoction.  I hope it and I are received well.

Dragons, Seahorses, and College Students

I have missed St. Petersburg, more than I had realised.  Saturday morning I went to the market, something I won't be able to do again until late April.  I went to get delicious pad thai for breakfast, which was no longer there, and to listen to The Empty Hats perform.  It was the first time I've ever seen them perform without Lynda/Lucy, a bit odd but Carl's son, Caleb, did a splendid job.  Great music and a wonderful atmosphere.  I also made friends with Carl's neighbour who does henna, Victory Henna.  She did a delightful seahorse on my left forearm, and invited me to 'family dinner nights' on Tuesdays.  I will have a social life outside of work!

Classes at the college have been making quilts for Project Linus, and a few of my Costume Shop seamstresses have been making slightly fancier ones.  I grumbled and griped about how I now needed to make a quilt for it as well.  One of my workers suggested I do one for a boy since so many of them are made for the girls.  I pulled out my graph paper and rifled through some designs and tossed a few things together.

The dragon will be breathing out fire and smoke yarn.  The other side is a shield and sword.  I have already begun construction, many of the students in the shop are impressed.  It's really very simple, and my first quilt of this style was done in...2000?  I was about 12 at the time.  Anyhow, construction is going well.

How about a tail update?  All four layers of weatherstripping adhesive are on the fluke.  I did a couple of ALEX/createx paint tests, they went well.  I also poured the lead shot into the fluke tubing.  an ALEX and water mixture was poured in as well but the weatherstripping did not have a watertight seal.  Some of it stayed in the lead.  The next two steps are to apply ALEX over the weatherstripping for aesthetics and to ensure that it is watertight, and to pour more ALEX and water down inside the tubing to hold the lead in place and add even more weight.  Hopefully I can add the ALEX onto the outside tonight, after I have dinner with an old friend.  As that dries I can pour more into the tubing.  I will also need to redo the fluke pattern a bit.

I'm a dork and I used up some excess test paint making the yellow snot silverish.

Alright, I'm off to work some more on the quilt and getting the costume shop ready for the play in April.  ciao biatches

A Leg?!

Well, today begins a new leg in my great adventure!  I am sitting in a Starbucks in St. Petersburg, about to grab lunch then have a business meeting at 13:30.  My meeting is to prepare me for being the Costume Shop Manager for the next three months.  Also, I just checked out the mother-in-law/studio apartment that I just signed a lease on!  This will be the very first time I've had a place with walls all to my onesies.  I'm terribly excited to move in sometime in the next few days!  Also, on the weekends, I will be working the Bay Area Renaissance Festival.  This will all mean 55+ hour weeks, but jobs that I love!  Enough on the near future, how about a tail update?

the main house [not what I'm renting]

my little place!

We last left it with curvature tests and bending the tubing for the fluke.  I had decided to use gorilla glue because I've worked intimately with it in the past.  However, this was a mistake.  It held the tubing onto the monofin, but....  Firstly, gorilla glue dries stiff and inflexible.  Secondly, it does not seem to appreciate chlorinated water.

glued with gorilla glue

So, the tubing came right off when I took the fluke into the pool for some buoyancy tests.  Pretty sucky.  However, the buoyancy tests were a blast!  I took three ziploc bags of lead shot into the pool with me.  The most successful place to put them as I swam was in the dip of my lower back.  I was able to achieve near perfect neutral buoyancy!  IT WAS SO COOL!  Sorry, I was seriously excited about it!  I could swim up and down at will, and corkscrew, and swim sideways, etc!  Anyhow, I needed to find a new adhesive.  A mechanic friend suggested I try weatherstripping adhesive.  Nasty yellow snot stuff, that you really need gloves to work with.  So, the edges of the monofin were sanded [not quite as much as they should have been], and the tubing was glued back on.  I have two layers of the adhesive on currently and I did a chlorine test yesterday.  It seems to be holding up.  The plan is to add two more layers, then a layer of ALEX PLUS to make sure the ends are sealed off and for smoothing out bumps.  In the meantime, I have traced the fluke and will be perfecting the pattern and I can begin cementing the neoprene together.  It will be slow going with work and lots of things planned but I'm hopeful.

Look for a recipe for Orange Jiljush to appear in the next week....

nomtastic stuffs!

Cuttings and Curvature

Have made even more swimming improvements with the monofin.  No video this time though.  Mostly an update on construction.

I spent a decent amount of time today working on the tail.  My front and back pieces are cut out from the ankle up!

back piece

front piece

I'm majorly curvy it would seem, also they look uneven due to patchiness.  You may be wondering, depending if you care or not, how I plan on attaching the two pieces together.  It's not a flat seam with curves that fit together perfectly.  I did some curvature tests, to ensure it would work well.

The curvature tests all came out splendidly.  So, I cannot put the pieces together until I have the entire thing, including the fluke, ready to go together.  Therefore I needs must work on the fluke.  My main issue with my fluke is the plastic tubing I will use for the general shape of the fluke below the monofin.  My friend and I used an old hair drier to take the heavy curve out of the tubing.  We did this in a very ghetto fashion.

Now that those two pieces are shaped better I have to attach them to the monofin.  There will then be a swim test with the tubing glued to the monofin.  Earlier I had decided to try and make the monofin removable from the tail but I'm just saying, screw it.  Also a buoyancy swim test must be conducted.  That will probably consist of me strapping everything to the monofin and trying to swim.  It will be highly amusing.  Inside the tubing I should be able to close off the ends and fill it with lead shot.  This should give me three to four pounds which would help immensely.  Not just the neoprene is positively buoyant, the monofin is as well.  After all of that I can then draft a pattern for the fluke, cement the pieces together, and cut it out.  Then after all of that construction is done I can begin to paint.

Other photos and updates coming soon, such as the medieval faire from this past weekend.
<3 a very tired scrumpy/jill

Poison & Improvement

My grandparents like to watch FOX, I can feel poison dripping into my ears some days, like just now.  Anyhow, I'm too lazy to post anything more right now.  I just wanted to share my newest monofin practise video.  Made lots of small but significant improvements.

Five Hours of Fumes

So, I made lots of progress recently on my tail!  More on that in a second.  First, a general update on life.

My job at Target is over next Thursday, thankfully!  It earned me a goodly sum of money, which was nice, but I was miserable for a while there.  Next weekend I attend Kangeiko with USA Martials Arts Florida, an amazing dojo and a group of people I consider my 'dojo family'.  I'm thrilled to be attending as it has always overlapped the Riverdale Kiwanis Medieval Faire and I missed it last year.  Well this year I skip the first weekend and advertise for The Pirate Ship Pieces of Eight on the second weekend.  I'm a bit saddened that Traveler's Hold will not be working at the Faire this year.  Then I have one more weekend in Fort Myers to celebrate a certain sailor's birthday.  She and her crewmate are working on the schooner Appledore V until about April.  If you're in the area you should charter them, it's a grand time and very historic!  Then I'm off to St. Petersburg and Tampa for about two and a half months!

Alright, back to my tail...and fumes.  I finally gained access to a heated pool, after a tad of drama.  It's a Jr. Olympic sized pool so you can imagine it's rather large and spacious.  For some of the time I had to avoid the lane swimmers and children but a couple hours later it was practically empty.  I tested out my monofin in a much nicer environment without buoyancy issues, and I was able to test out my gloves for the first time!  Both worked wonderfully and I was delighted to naturally take to the full body undulation needed to swim successfully in a monofin.  Since hardly anyone ever reads these I feel no need to stop babbling on extensively.  My friend took video with my new Android X [which I love].  I edited the clips and pieced them together to upload to youtube.  [Also, those socks work very nicely and help with the crappy straps and any possible chafing.]

 

That was on Tuesday the 4th of January 2011 [Happy New Year].  Yesterday on Thursday the 6th I spent about six hours working on tail construction.  I finished the top half of my pattern and I began cementing scraps of neoprene together, thus the fumes.  Sadly there was no high Scrumpy, only a mild headache for a bit, as the breeze outside was not constant.  I got large pieces done.  My only concern just now is having enough neoprene to finish construction.  I have enough if you count the 2mm I have but I can't but 2mm to 3mm and I don't want different thicknesses.  I may have to thrift store bounce to find some more 3mm.  Anyhow, I just need to do some more construction and acquire more neoprene.  It's just a matter of time now that I have everything.

Finishing the pattern

about to finish that seam up top, front side of tail

very obviously the back piece

Keep an eye out for more updates!  <3