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Today is the day I scream about social media start-ups on tumblr, apparently. Linking rather than crossposting, because I'm pretty sure my auto-crossposter would pull in the whole reblog chain and that's obnoxious.

My response to WritScrib, the newest attempt at a tumblr alternative (tl;dr - DW has 90% of the features already, would not implement 5% of them because they're bad ideas, and it would be far, far easier to add the extra 5% than reinventing the fucking wheel).

My additions to a conversation about fandom culture and history on social media and why you should use DW.

Basically I just want to shake people and scream 'DREAMWIDTH IS RIGHT FUCKING THERE OKAY'

(and now I'm going to try to calm down and go back to watching Nirvana in Fire and sewing)

I have like three half-written entries that I started and then got distracted and did not finish, which I am... going to try to finish this week maybe? Two are about cosplay things and one is about Python. Work is work - customers are frequently frustrating, coworkers continue to be cool, on the whole things are pretty good aside from the long commute and some obnoxious health insurance stuff from our new corporate overlords (one of those 'we'll give you a discount if you submit blood test results, but because it's not mandatory we're not violating anything' deals). I had a four-day weekend, which I spent generally Getting Things Done, including a bunch of cosplay stuff and actually doing some work on Dreamwidth API 2.0. More on that later, maybe?

I am also super-behind on my reading list right now, though I may spend a little time tonight catching up.

The most belated #internationallolitaday photo, because I'm old and bad at Instagram. I had a lovely time though! JSK, blouse, and hat are handmade, and the socks are from the lovely people at @screams #lolitafashion #ild

- Put together a bookcase frame (which I cut out on the Shopbot last night)
- Mounted one of my two drawers for comics - the second one needed a side glued on after I sanded down the edge so it'd fit, and that is drying now. Hopefully I can hang it tomorrow
- Threw together the first half of a blouse for an ILD meet next weekend.
- Spent an hour and a half trying to work out hacks to run Python web apps on a shared host
- Gave up and signed up for the cheapest unmanaged VPS service I could find, on which I am now learning to Apache all by myself.

Links and photos of all these things at some point, hopefully. And then maybe I'll have time to work on some Dreamwidth stuff before the DragonCon cosplay chaos begins?

Ready to go hit the floor at #acen2017 #cosplay #toukenranbu

Doing this will never not feel like a magic trick #cosplay #toukenranbu #mikazukimunechika

One set of armor plates almost done... #toukenranbu #cosplay

Got four of the six armor plates I need for Mikazuki cut out (along with two screw-ups). Having access to a CNC machine helps so much. #cosplay #toukenranbu

So I'm working on throwing together Mikazuki's battle outfit for Anime Central, which is in five weeks (oh god I don't want to think about that). Like a lot of the Touken Ranbu designs, there is kind of a lot going on, so I thought I would break down the components and make some notes of them for my own reference, and maybe that will be helpful for other people out there, too :) This post is going to be the big fabric bits, because they're sort of the foundation of the outfit.

Most of these pieces are actually pretty close to traditional Heian era garments - I'm using Reconstructing History's Heian men's clothing pattern as a base for most of it.

-Kosode: This is really only visible on the concept/reference art - on the in-game sprites, it only shows as the innermost white collar at his neckline. Important, though, because this is what actually covers your arms and sides! His is pretty much the same as historical versions, or a slight varation on a modern kimono - narrower body, no front tuck, ends about knee-length I'm using a white cotton sateen because I had a bunch already, and I'm a sweaty person so I need an under-layer that's machine washable. Mostly done already because I can sew kimono in my sleep, practically.

-Hitoe: The white layer that's mostly visible, right under the blue one. It's pretty close to Heian hitoe, with two exceptions, both in the sleeve area - one is that the sleeves look to be all one piece, instead of made up of two pieces (which is more an artifact of traditional Japanese fabric widths than anything), and then the sleeves are open on the bottom and wrist edge, as well as the body edge. So I'm going to take the traditional hitoe pattern, cut the sleeves as one block, and then line them because the edges are super-visible when they're open like that and I have enough hemming as it is. I think I'm going to buy some white polyester chirimen (chirimen is a type of tight crepe weave that is easily the most common fabric used for kimono). Normally I'd buy a bolt of vintage kimono silk from Ichiroya - you can get them for ~$50 plus shipping, and they're 15m or so - but 1) a lot of the whites tend to have discolored with age and 2) they're traditional width, which is about 15" and thus too narrow for me to do the sleeves in one piece for. Thankfully Tomato has 44" polyester chirimen for ~$14/m on their Rakuten store.

-Kariginu: The giant blue monstrosity. Like the hitoe, this mostly only differs from the traditional cut in having single-piece sleeves that are open all the way around. I'm lining the whole thing because there are a lot of visible edges/insides, and I have the feeling the fabric I'm using is going to be fray-tastic. It's a royal blue brocade with the sayagata pattern woven in - it's a little bigger, with slightly thicker lines than the patterning on Mikazuki's kariginu, but honestly, it's probably as close as you're going to get without actually weaving your own (don't do that, please). Okuyama sells it online, though I was lucky enough that a friend was willing to pick some up in person for me when she was in Tokyo last month, which saved me a bunch on shipping. My sewing project for today, I think!

-Hakama: The only part of this that isn't mostly-Heian in style. Hakama were part of Heian ensembles, but they had fewer pleats than modern styles, and were waaaay longer so they could be gathered up at the ankles and have a nice poof. The pleat arrangement and length on Mikazuki's place them pretty solidly in 'modern' (19th century to present) style. Round Earth's hakama pattern is my go-to for that, though I may leav off the backboard (which is solidly a 20th century martial arts addition). I'm airbrushing the gradient on a heavy matte polyester satin, which, uh, is an adventure. And probably a whole post to itself at some point.

Next time: armor, armor, and more armor!

Three guesses who's coming up soon on my cosplay list, and the first two don't count ;) #cosplay