Ready to take over Midgard!

My Loki cosplay is done! At least, as done as it's gonna get for Halloween! (I might make a helmet at some point.

Wow this was crazy and actually kinda fun. Pretty much everything is Goodwill finds except for the boots and one of the belts.

Layers are as follows:

Under layer:

- Long-sleeved green shirt. Parts of the sleeves and the collar of a gold sweater are added on for the vambraces and the pectoral piece.

- Tights. Heavy-duty black tights with the silver plates painted on (which sadly you can't see in this shot). These were painted while I was wearing the tights to prevent stretching issues.

- Boots. Good insoles are a must.

Middle Layer:

- Tunic. This was where I took the most liberty- this is a black waistcoat-style vest with a textured black skirt sewn to the bottom. The fabric of the skirt actually looks a bit like Celtic or Nordic knotwork, which was why I grabbed it even though it's like two or three sizes too small. It originally had a front panel edged by two zippers- removing one of the zippers was easy enough to open up the skirt and give it that slit sort of thing. Another important reason for the heavy duty tights- since the skirt doesn't go all the way around, it's open clear up to my hip.

Top Layer:

- Coat. This was a weird long vest/robe thing I found. It was a bit big, so I took in the sides to make the lines flow better. Then I slit and lined a hole in the back for the cross-chest belt, then painted the lapels and gold detailing.

Armor:

- Vambraces: these were stitched right onto the sleeves of the shirt. I will probably do proper ones at some point, this will do for Halloween. 

- Chest and shoulder piece- I accidentally stumbled upon a gold pleather placemat at Goodwill. A bit of sewing and trimming later, and ta-da! Easy armor. These got slid right onto the belt that loops over my chest and shoulder. 

Scepter:

I used to make boffers when I was with the SCA. It's amazing what you can do with foam, pipe, and duct tape. The base of the scepter is actually a Grim Reaper scythe prop- again from Goodwill (and I had a hilarious time toting it all around downtown Seattle on my way home XD) with the blade taken off the pole and rotated 90 degrees to stick straight out rather than to the side and hot-glued in place. I used mat board (which I had lying around because I'm an artist) to block out the general silhouette of the blade and the shaft of the scepter, then layered on craft foam. Silver and gold duct tape hold the entire thing together. The Mind Stone is actually crumpled aluminum foil wadded up as tight as it will go and then burnished by rubbing it with a spoon, then painted with iridescent blue and white acrylic paint. Simple and effective!

Not seen:

-Belt purse: This costume had no pockets, so I made a simple envelope-folded belt purse from a black pleather placemat. I have more of these placemats that may get added to the armor on the coat.

Actually a lot of fun in spite of the swearing and only took a couple of weeks to put together once I had all my bits and pieces.

My roommates think we need to hang the scepter up on the wall like a trophy. I like this idea.

Some dark elves

Found a really cool post musing on the biology of Tolkein elves and what they would need to, say, identify hair color at a distance of five leagues. The poster suggested some cool ideas and I decided to run with them.

Svartelf with big shiny peregrine-falcon eyes and twitchy ears <3

And Alberich, half svartelf and half human, with a few fun details and studies. Twitchy ears for him too, and very large pupils.

Just some fun doodles.

Light me!

One of my classes this quarter is Materials and Lighting.  First assignment: three point lighting.

Pretty simple stuff, but I'm pleased with it. I'm back doing battle with my old enemy Maya for this class. So far, I'm winning.

Amethyst

I will fight for the world I was made in, the Earth is everything I've ever known!

Okay I really love Steven Universe. It's bright and colorful and clever and funny and will about murder you with feelings. You will get emotional about silly space rocks, I promise you. 

Here's Amethyst. She's loud and obnoxious and funny and self-doubting and enthusiastic and stubborn and kinda crazy and all around wonderful. Her preferred method of dealing with a threat is 'throw me at it!'.

She's is needlefelted, stands about four or five inches tall and made all out of wool except for a bit of glitter fiber on her gem. I finally got my needlefelting stuff again and this project has been itching at me for a few days.

She is a cutie patootie and I am not entirely sure one of my roommates won't try to steal her.

That's okay. I know Amethyst isn't any of their favorite Gems. (Mine is Pearl, incidentally). And I have a lot more wool. 

Posting on a Wednesday

Forgot to take pics of the drawings I did in class today before I went to Dad's so I could pick up clay and stuff. Will do that tomorrow.

In the meantime, how about something completely different?

Half of my roommates are cosplayers. And incidentally, Halloween is coming up. I've assembled most of the bits I need for a Loki costume. Still need to figure out horns and maybe a scepter/spear. Not entirely sure about that latter part, but I feel like I'll want a prop when I wear this.

Costume consists of the following:

- Long-sleeved green shirt

- Black leggings

- Black waistcoat

- Black skirt with cool knotwork design woven in and double-zippered panel on front (one zipper removed)

- Black boots

- Black robe

- Gold sweater (which is hard to see on the beige carpet, sorry.)

All of these were Goodwill finds except the boots (Target, not bought for this cosplay but the cosplay was conceived as a result of it) and the overcoat (TJ Maxx). 

The skirt has had one of the zippers removed, as I said. It's actually too small for me by like three inches, but it works fine since the skirt of Loki's tunic is open/sort of wraparound anyway. It's going to be stitched to the bottom of the waistcoat to make a sort of... overdress kinda thing? that I can button up the front for easy donning and removal. The points of the waistcoat are going to be turned up as well so it's a straight seam all the way around.

If I have time, I'll get one of the roommates to help me take in the sides of the robe so it isn't so huge and shapeless. Paint will be applied for detail work.

The gold sweater is going to be cut up for details as well- the horizontally-ribbed neckline is going to become that weird pectoral thing on the tunic, and the sleeves will be converted to bracers.

The whole thing is hopefully going to be fairly soft and comfortable and not so hot I will be unable to wear it. 

Black Widow Socks

Finished the gusset and the first bit of the ankles.

Was gonna start the leg chart today but turns out I had to redesign it. The hourglass motif was too big and I had to redo all the math.

I am really glad I design socks in modules so it was reasonably easy to rework... 

Finishing: Counters a Multitude of Knitterly Flaws

Finished the kitty paw poncho! 

It's a bit late in the evening and I'm tired, but you can't post photos of knitwear without showing it on a person, so have a selfie!

Man, I was really worried with this one. I only had three balls of yarn for it, one of the variegated and two of the denim, and I got these ages ago so yeah, not gonna be able to match the dye lots. I was holding my breath there towards the end, I gotta say. Second-guessing whether I had enough yarn to do the second repeat of the bottom edging, whether I would have enough for a bind-off...

And naturally, when I bound off and tried it on, it WASN'T BIG ENOUGH. Too short, too narrow through the blue part, neckline all huge and wonky...

So I dumped it in the tub for a soak and prayed to the gods of wool that the magic of blocking would salvage it. If it wouldn't, I planned to find a smaller person to gift it too. 

Thankfully, blocking turned out to be a really good idea and the poncho grew probably a size or so as a result, as well as looking a lot tidier once the stitches settled into place.

Always block your wool, kiddos.

The neckline was still a problem, but I did have a bit of yarn left over. Six strands and a half hour of muttering darkly under my breath later, and I had a nice braided drawstring that I wove through the base of the ribbed neckline. This turned out to be another really good idea because as a result  the neckline was no longer sliding off my shoulders. And the rest of the shoulder shaping turned out really nice after being cinched up!

Moral of the story: Always block your wool, and attention to finishing details can salvage an otherwise flawed project.

Can, not always. But don't write off a project until it's actually done unless it's obviously a trainwreck.

Here's a nice look at the lace details:

And here's a better look at the colors:

I'm gonna need to tweak the pattern a little when I find my notes. The edging at the bottom was a bit of improv (repeats of K1, YO, S1K2TogPSSO, YO, more or less what I used on the shoulder seams after I finished the increases) that I'm quite pleased with. It looks pretty and decorative and doesn't seem to be curling too badly, which is nice.  I would have liked just a bit more yarn so I could do another repeat of it, but this works. I used a very stretchy bind off, which has the benefit of actually looking a little decorative too!

8/10 would knit again after pattern modifications.