Not that it matters, since I'm NOT going this year, but still, it snuck up pretty fast. (Yes, I did mention it a couple of posts down, but I didn't realize it was coming up so quickly...)

This will be the first AnimeIowa I've missed since 2002 (and I'm pretty disappointed since it's the closest thing I get to a vacation. Isn't THAT sad? ) Unfortunately for yours truly, I've had a raw summer, thanks to a rather nasty run of bad luck which delayed many of my projects. (And NO, someone out there whose name I will not mention, the delays were NOT caused by my sitting on my ass working on my costuming book and tutorials all day.) I have been trying to make SOME progress with the book and with revamping my automail tutorial--because I think those things are important. Not just for me but for everyone who's ever e-mailed me a question about cosplay (and there are a LOT of people who do so. I don't mind it, but I would LIKE to be able to give people an answer better than "I'm sorry. I can't help you. I suck when it comes to explaining things without the help of pictures.") Well, I've got about 10 GIGS worth of pictures that I can stick into my book series now, if ever I get the time to tuck in and work on it. I think it will be a great resource for people --although I'm not going to drop everything and work on just that and nothing else. (I'm not THAT stupid...)

So... where was I? Oh yeah. AnimeIowa. Wish I could go, but I have no money. (And as I mentioned before, after the debacle that was AnimeDetour, I'm in no hurry to get back to the convention scene. Not that AnimeDetour was bad to me mind you, it's just that NOTHING is fun when you've got a fever of 102. Add to that a 20 pound costume that you can't sit down in and a pair of heavy wings on your back, and you've got yourself an agony that you'll have to invent new words just to describe,-- because there are no existing words that can really do it any justice.

This weekend, if you're in (or running) the Masquerade, good luck to you! Have fun!

And...you know... don't worry about me....I'll just be sitting here...trying to figure out a way to make plexiglass all glowy and stuff...sigh....maybe I'll remember to step outside and breathe in some fresh air every once in a while....

Remember that black rounded shoulder armor I made a few entires earlier? Well, apparently, the customer doesn't think it's round enough and in spite of all my experiments, I can't seem to get it to look right. (I mean, look how round the shoulder pauldrons are on these guy's armor. How the FUCK did the costumer do that? ) Gah!

I wish there was some kind of software that could generate flat patterns for constructing spheres, much like Cone Layout does for cones... It might make my job a little easier... sigh...


(BTW, Cone Layout is very useful for generating certain armor patterns. You can even generate patterns for faceted cones. I talk about how to use Cone Layout software in one of my books coming up (which I wanted to work on but couldn't since this pauldron project is devouring my spare time like some kind of unholy transdimensional Time-Sucking Vampire....)

Fuck. It;s 3:30 am already? I hate having to piss away all my time tearing projects apart and putting them back together two times only to find out that they STILL don't work. (Yes, I know it's a necessary part of my job, but I never budget the kind of time I need for this sort of thing. Hence the reason I can't seem to get to bed these days without the sun first popping over the horizon. Just once I'd like to make something as originally planned and have it come together smoothly without having to spend 32,000 hours experimenting on the damn thing.)

Sorry, I'm just very frustrated right now...