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[note: I posted this to tumblr last night; this version is slightly cleaned up. and I added links to pictures!]

The
 national costume portion of the Miss Universe pageant is here, and this time there’s VIDEO.

I’ve never actually seen these costumes in motion before! They are even more bonkers this way and it’s GREAT.

I kind of want to liveblog this.

–fuck it, here we go from the start:

it was a LOT, guys. )

[and that's where I stopped for the night. there are still forty minutes left. watch this space!]


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 Does anyone else regularly dream about nonexistent (but super detailed) episodes of TV shows and movies? When I do, I also usually slip back and forth between watching the story and being a character in it, for extra weirdness. 

Last night I dreamed an episode of Steven Universe which introduced a gem called Iolite, who had two bodies like the Rutile twins. Except one had a French accent and the other had a Southern accent. And the voice actors were male. And I distinctly remember thinking, in the dream, that this was weird, but it was an early episode and they must not have worked out all the lore yet.

(Hello Dreamwidth! Been a while, huh? I'm going to do my best to crosspost all my non-reblog posts between here, tumblr, and Pillowfort for the foreseeable future.)


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 Actually not a terrible seat, either (I think because it was a singleton?) for March 29. It was that or worse seats for about the same money in May or June, or waiting til next fall for sub-$300 seats. My family gave me birthday money well in advance of my actual birthday for this specific purpose, which was very nice of them.

Apparently I ca't book Megabus tickets this far in advance, but I'm thinking I might go up the Saturday before, get a few days to do new York stuff, and head back on Wednesday (and probably enter the Ham4Ham lottery every chance I get, as well). WOO.
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  • got a signed copy of Nichelle Nichols’ autobiography
  • spent $600 on car repairs
  • joined the Sylvester McCoy Q&A conga line
  • cosplayed Ace McShane
  • shared a gin bucket with my sister
  • Learned that Jim Steranko dresses exactly like a Jim Steranko character, and has done so for decades without alteration
  • succumbed to my weakness for reasonably priced antique textiles
  • got sketches for the World’s Tiniest Sketchbook
  • saw Kermit the Frog IN PERSON OMG
  • photographed an engagement, which was kind of startling

Some things I did not do at Dragoncon:

  • Sleep, much
  • Buy as many prints as I wanted to
  • Get a good picture of myself pretending to beat up a Dalek
  • Heckle Larry Correia’s panels, despite great temptation (it would have been SO SATISFYING to lurk in the back row and yell “Your nominees are bad and you should feel bad!” but I was strong)

(oh and re: the engagement thing: I was waiting by the TARDIS in the Sheraton to take pictures with a Seven cosplayer, and a dude dressed as Nine came up to me and asked if I would take a picture of him and his girlfriend (dressed as Oswin, in the red dress and tool belt) posing with the TARDIS. I said yes. She got in the TARDIS and shut the door. He got down on one knee and pulled out a ring. I went HOLY SHIT WHAT and started taking as many pictures as I could, as fast as I could.
 
Hopefully, they turned out okay, and forty years from now their grandchildren will not have to ask “Grandma, why are your engagement photos so shitty?” and be told it was because Grandpa asked a total stranger to document their precious and irreproducible moment with no warning.)

(and if those engagement photos turn up anywhere on the Internet, can someone link me to them?)
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I bought a sewing machine from Craigslist for $35 last week; it works fine, but the carrying case has a broken latch and it's kind of basic.

I had emailed someone else about their (much nicer) $65 machine, but didn't hear back and so bought the cheaper one. But apparently they only just saw my email, do still have the machine, and may be willing to deliver it if I still want it.

Does anyone want a perfectly respectable vintage (all-metal!) sewing machine for $35? If I can rehome the first one I'd rather have the second.
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Today I:

–assembled and stuffed three Robin robin bodies (still need wings, capes, and beaks, but they’ve got legs!)

–made sixteen wire bases for flower crowns

–put flowers on four of those bases

–watched in dismay as a super dumb post from a year ago ate my Activity feed on tumblr

–bought black and blue fabric to make Nightwing birdies from my robin pattern, and extra fake flowers for crowns

–watched a slightly absurd number of Steven Universe episodes while crafting (I like it so far? It’s more linear than Adventure Time and the worldbuilding is interesting.)

–still have not decided who the other two witches should be for this postcard set. Argh.
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So, I got tickets to Antiques Roadshow.

I kind of signed up on a whim? It's done by lottery, and I didn't think I'd actually win it. But apparently it is my lucky day, because now I have two tickets to the Charleston taping on August 8.

Which means I guess I need to figure out how to get to Charleston on August 8?

Does... anyone want to go to Charleston, the weekend of August 8?
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So, when I was signing up for an artist table at AwesomeCon, I noticed that they also had an open call for panel proposals. 'What the hell,' I figured, and suggested a panel on historical/vintage fashion for cosplayers, and a Galaxy Quest panel in which the panelists stay in character the entire time as fans of the nonexistent Galaxy Quest TV show. I was... mostly joking for the second one.

Yesterday, I got an email from the con organizers-- they want to put both panels on the schedule. Um. Okay. Great! 

Does... anyone want to be on a Galaxy Quest panel with me?

(I think I have a couple of people lined up for the cosplay panel, but if you'd like in on that one that'd be great too!)
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 A lifehack for when you have over-optimistically turned off the heat for the season and had an unexpectedly cold day, and are now wearing two sweaters and a pair of gloves indoors:

Run the hottest bath your plumbing can produce. Let stand, with the bathroom door open, til it has cooled off enough to actually bathe in.

Take hot bath.

Leave stlll-hot water in the tub, bathroom door open. Allow water to cool entirely before draining. Bemoan your 80-year-old house's reliance on heating oil, again.
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Two heaping plates of hamentaschen. 

And, of course, the recipe. (Which, for the record, is my great-grandmother's, and everyone who has ever tried them agrees they are the Best Possible Hamentaschen.)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar 
2 cups flour 
1 1/2 tsp baking powder 
1/4 tsp salt 
1/2 cup butter or margarine (Crisco if you want ’em pareve) 
1 egg 
2 T orange juice 
Filling of choice– poppyseed, prune, blueberry or cherry pie filling, various jams, chocolate, Nutella. My personal preference is for good-quality jam or preserves, the kind that use real sugar and not corn syrup. I have had especially good luck with peach, raspberry, and lemon curd.

Directions:

Mix sugar, flour, BP, salt in bowl; work in softened (NOT melted) butter 

separate bowl– mix egg and OJ, then add to rest of ingredients; mix until it’s dough.

Refrigerate 1 hour.

Roll out, cut into circles– use a cookie cutter or a large drinking glass for this. Place large spoonful of filling in center of each circle, and pinch dough into a triangle around it. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes.

Cookies will be crisp when they first come out of the oven, but seal them in Tupperware for the night and they will get soft and ridiculously delicious.

Enjoy!
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Good news: I designed myself some new business cards, and they are hella cute!

The front of a business card, with drawing of a woman wearing a stack of hats.   The back of a business card. Text reads: "Holli (lastname)" and lists email and social media.

Bad news: Every time I try to figure out the requisite paperwork for opening my own vintage shop (or even try to figure out what paperwork needs doing, and how to get the necessary information for it) I last about fifteen minutes before I get so anxious that I have to stop and do something else.

Which... is one of the reasons I decided to make new business cards. Ugh.

selkies!

Feb. 15th, 2015 01:32 pm
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 Anyone interested in seeing Song of the Sea at Union Market tomorrow? There's showings at 3:15, 5:15, and 7:15, and I will cheerfully drive everyone everywhere.
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  1. Listened to the new Sleater-Kinney album somewhere north of eight times.
  2. Seriously considered driving to Raleigh in April for the one show remotely near me that's not sold out yet. (Road trip, anyone?)
  3. Watched Pride twice.
  4. Listened to this cover of Bread and Roses about fifty times.
  5. Sighed with relief when New York was not frozen in ice for seventy years, because I have Megabus tickets for Saturday and I want to see the goddamn Victorian mourning fashion exhibit before it closes, for fuck's sake.
  6. Got most of the way to done with the book of vintage fashion paper dolls I've been working on.
  7. Learned how to make rag dolls.
  8. Made two rag dolls (third is in progress)
  9. Signed up to volunteer at Scrap DC.
  10. Napped probably more than I should have, idk
  11. Seriously considered sponsoring a mine-detecting giant rat as a birthday present for my sister. Got hung up on what to name it. (Diglett? Scabbers? Rizzo?)
  12. Decided to make sister a pom-pom chandelier in her sorority colors instead.
  13. Made a whole lot of pom-poms.
  14. Still thinking about that rat, though.
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 I wrote a Yuletide story! It is for the movie Belle, and it is called Fair Play, and it led me to spend several enjoyable hours looking at 18thc dolls on Pinterest.
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It is a new year, and the odds of any of this fic ever being finished properly are, if I am being honest, basically nil, so here! have some WIPs! Not included: the handful of stories I am even remotely likely to complete anytime soon.

1. Pick up Where You Left Off: MCU, Peggy/Steve time travel shenanigans. Written before Cap 2 hit theaters and way too throughly Jossed. Missing the chunk in the middle where the story goes, but I did figure out how it ended.

Peggy walks into Howard’s lab carrying a stack of files, but the room is empty. )

2. probably meant to be steve/bucky/nat, written pre-cap 2 and thus abandoned, but there were some lines I liked and should salvage for something else. hm.

Steve’s reckless. Always had been. )

3. Steve/Bucky in a Canadian shack. As you do.

It’s quiet here. )

4. Sam/Nat, possibly the one where they flirt with each other to embarrass Steve but then end up meaning it on accident? Not sure.

It’s for emergencies. Sam knows this. )

5. This was going to be a thing about Steve working behind the scenes so Bucky could safely come in from the cold.

Red Carpet Inn, Baltimore, MD )

6.The 2015 Howling Commando Family Reunion, which was definitely gonna get gate-crashed by supersoldiers who don't know how to talk about their feelings.

When Bethy pulled in to the parking lot at the campground, Friday morning, Jill was already waiting with a clipboard and a harried expression. )

7. Relatedly, a thing about times the Howling Commandos met up after the war.

None of the neighbors knew how they managed it, but the Moritas got their farm back after the war. )

8. MCU daemon AU, mostly Cap & Bucky. I got as far as figuring out what happened to Bucky's daemon (thankfully, nothing permanent) and figuring out most of the characters' daemons, and having done that sort of failed to write the actual story. Whoops?

fic bit & list of daemons )

There is also a Pushing Daisies thing I am saving for later because it's the only not-MCU WIP of any substance, and also because I still think I might figure out how to write a sex scene in the Jim Dale narrator voice eventually.
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I wrote a thing!

Sentimental Value


GotG, gen. Saturday dawned clear and bright, hot but not humid enough to be sticky: perfect yard sale weather.
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Ah, Yuletide. This year I got two (count 'em, TWO!) seriously delightful Pushing Daisies stories: break the spell of trying, and In Praise of Half-Eaten Things. Both are GREAT, and you should all read them (and then write even more Ned/Chuck!)

Meanwhile, having finished my own Yuletide story, I've been trying to clear out some other WIPs. Anyone willing to beta 4k of GotG fic in which the Quill family has a sad yard sale?

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 The December talking meme was not going to happen, because Yuletide and also various Life Reasons. But I wanted to do it, so I am time-shifting it to January so as to jump-start the new year with regular posting. So: ask a question, claim a day!
 
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Speaking of Yuletide: Plan A is currently set aside in favor of a Plan B I actually know how to write, which will at least meet the minimum. Anyone know how to semi-competently construct a mystery plot who is willing to offer advice on Plan A?
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 So, for reasons that don't need explaining at this juncture, I just googled the names of three girls who bullied me in junior high.

One of them does roller derby in Arizona and appears to have turned out to be an okay-ish human, and at least now she has an appropriate outlet for her excess aggression.

One is an event planner who takes a lot of duckface selfies, which is not even a tiny bit surprising.

And the third? The third is, apparently, currently suing the makers of the naked dating reality show she appeared on for not blurring out her ladyparts. Based on everything she's quoted as saying in various articles on the subject, she has not acquired one single ounce of self-awareness since we were fourteen.

Holy SHIT, you guys. I can't even gloat. This is too weird to gloat about.
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 There's a blogger in Nashville who's made me so intensely jealous about her estate-sale finds that I finally checked the driving distance from DC, and it's only about 10 hours, and now I want to go on a buying trip. The family I nanny for will be out of town from Christmas until January 5; I can rearrange my days at the vintage shop if needed. It would be awfully fun to spend a few days driving, stopping whenever something looks interesting, and a few days exploring, and another day or two driving back. Not sure I'd want to do it by myself-- it's a lot of driving-- but it would be awfully fun.

Anyone off work for any of that time, and interested in road-tripping?
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