Fitted Mask with Pleat

This is really quick and please excuse the rough notes, but I created this pattern because I found the fitted masks were too short when talking.  I wore one that I had made that was supposed to be a fits most adults but it drove me crazy.  Now my nose is not the most petite thing in the world, so I thought maybe I had mis-sized the mask.  But then I saw people wearing more professionally produced versions and noticed that their masks crept down their noses as they spoke too.  Creeping means touching and we are not supposed to touch, so I thought of putting a pleat in the middle.

Here's the mask. And here is the pattern with directions. I tried it myself and I think it works pretty well.  Also, I use coffee bag ties for the nose piece.  Let me know if you like the results.

It's Been a Long Time

So I have been busy with school and soon I will be spending time volunteering for the Panam Games.  My goal for the summer is to get my Latin lup to speed enough to pass my level two exam.  In the spring I took a course in Latin composition which brought me into the possession of a 120 year old Bradley's Arnold Latin composition book.  At $12, it was quite a deal but is a little worse for wear.  The binding is quite loose and some of the pages have torn at the bottoms of the individual gatherings.  I did not want to make it my first try at rebinding a book so my poor sad volume of Katherine, by Anya Seton received the honour of becoming my book binding guinea pig.

Now the Katherine book had been through book hell.  A one time library book in a high school, I found it in a pile of discarded items refused reentry at the end of a neighbourhood yard sale.  Some of the pages had been retaped with cellophane and the back cover had been taped in place.  It was a great read more than once and my husband credits it with lauching my career as a medievalist, though in truth it just galvanized for me the truth that inside a pharmacist was a historian trying to escape.  Anyways, I didn't think that my poor Katherine book could possibly fare worse by being rebound by me, since badly together would be better than badly apart.  So I gathered my supplies and started.  When I pulled the book apart I found that the spine was merely glued.  I had to strip off as much of the paper support as possible and reglue the spine, putting in new blank pages as the beginning and end.  I also copied the fly leaves of the original to create the new fly leaves in order to retain the family trees of Katherine and John of Gaunt. 

The results are less than perfect, but a good first try I think.  I learned a couple of things that I think will be very helpful in creating a sturdy useable binding for the Bradley's.  Firstly, the covers need an extra 1/2 inch in height, ie. 1/4 at the top and at the bottom, while the width only needs an extra 1/4 inch on the opening side.  Secondly, the spine does not need to be larger than the actual spine of the book even when creating a curved one.  And one last detail, when covering a thick piece of board, you need to mitre your cut of the covering material farther from the corner than you might think.

All in all I am happy and no longer afraid of losing bits of my book.

Where the &^%$ did the last FOUR months go?

I have been up to my ears in gym, medieval Latin and medieval law.  Medieval Latin ended on Monday with a prepared text exam.  I studied for about 24 hours retranslating every text we had done in the second half of the term.  The previous Thursday it was a paper for medieval law.  All that while still dealing with the fallout of asking for a new mattress.

Yep, a new mattress which meant the 23 year old bed needed replacing, which meant all new bedroom furniture, heck, then you might as well paint, but I really like wallpaper, so let's do that, and hey we should finally do the hardwood floor that we had intended to do when 13 years ago we put in that cheap laminate.  Well then all the furniture had to go downstairs and well the girl's beds which included their desks were pretty done too and since my youngest decided that the decor needed up dating, well paint and wallpaper followed that too.  Fortunately, this part of the interior decorating cascade worked out well as the girls finally sent boxes of stuffed animals to goodwill.  Finally.

We had a few problems with the floors which meant a two day job turned into 1 month of almost no furniture upstairs.  All this while doing 20 hours or so of translating per week.  ACK!

We're still not all done.  The upstairs closet is still getting fixed up and the girl's room needs a few more things, but pretty close now.

Needless to say, there has been no crafting, no Christmas cards, very little knitting or weaving and not a scrapbook page to speak of.  And no blog posts till this one.  I have an exam in two weeks which should be O.K.  Next term will be way more sane.  One course, no Latin.  See you on the other side.

Fan Expo 2013

 Thursday, my younger daughter as Girl Han Solo.  She made the holster herself and I made the vest.  And yes Chewbacca is the backpack.  The vest was made from an old Danier leather skirt that I no longer fit into, but now has a new life.

On Friday, older daughter went as a vault dweller from the video game Fallout.  She did all the work on this herself.  The jumpsuit was a German army surplus item which she reworked completely.  I should have gotten a picture from the back as she did an awesome job appliqueing on some numbers.  I was completely impressed.

Saturday, Elesh Norn was introduced to her adoring fans, and adoring they were.  The photo requests were pretty non-stop.  She had her imperious pose down pat and tried not to smile.  We realized some pointy teeth would have been a good idea as her normal teeth had something of a doggy denture effect.  At one point Wolverine challenged her to a fight that ended in a blaze of flashbulbs.

 

And that left Sunday.  Here she is as almost the polar opposite of what she was on Saturday.  From thorny and bloody wrapped in a hard shell to soft and pink and girly to the extreme as the Lolita version of Princess Bubblegum.  This was a combined effort of both of us.

She's already talking about next year's Fan Expo and thinking about costumes.  I think I may have to do the same.

Detour

Sometimes you have to do projects that are not so much fun.

Quebec City Trip, Maybe

So for some reason I do not mix well with airplanes.  Apparently, I am unable to take a trip without there being some sort of delay.  Even our Mexico trip which for me was as smooth as they come, had a small delay on the return flight.  So, we arrive at the airport, the very civilized Billy Bishop Airport on the Toronto Islands and check in smoothly without problems.  I get myself a cappucinno and small bowl of almonds which are gratis and sit in a very comfortable chair in the lovely lounge and enjoy the two free newspapers.  Lalalala everything is wonderful on this my birthday/anniversary gift trip to Quebec, until...........

My husband looks up and heads to the departures screen.  One of the flights has had its status turn red!  It looks like the destination is Quebec.  Sure enough, our flight has been cancelled.  It appears that the flight had to stop in Montreal with mechanical difficulties and now the only option is to wait until 10 pm in the evening.  The husband says, "Let's get a refund and drive."  DRIVE??  I had about 10 minutes of sleep last night and have a headache already, I am in no shape to drive the 10 minutes it would take to get home from here, nevermind to Quebec City, which without pee stops is a good 8 hour drive.  And then we would have to drive home.

Well we tried going to New York, all full; Montreal, not a seat to spare; anywhere?  Well Quebec City at 10 pm it is then.  But first it's back home.  Well I did finish a project for a wedding we're going to next week, so it wasn't all bad.

I am typing this entry while sitting in the terminal building.  I hope I get to leave it via a gate this time.

Changing of the Guard at the Citadelle

The view from the veranda of the Governor General's residence.

 Yay! We made it!  We went to the Citadelle, toured the Governor General's residence and saw the changing of the guards.  This was the first time we visited and it was awesome.  We had been to Quebec City plenty of times before, but the Citadelle had never been included before.  I highly recommend it!

Me at the Montmorency Falls.

The Montmorency Falls was also a first time visit.  From the walkway to the top are 478 steps and me and my just shy of three months post ACL surgery knee did them all with no problems.  I did not however go back down them as my hamstring was pretty much done by the top. 

We rented a car on our last day and drove up the St. Lawrence coast to Charlevoix and in particular the Fairmont La Manoir in Malbaie.  The smoke from the forest fires, hundreds of miles away, was so thick it was like fog and you could smell the wood burning.  Wild. 

All in all another great trip!



 

First Steps to Fan Expo Done

I love it when a project challenges a wide range of abilities and requires a Macgyver-esque ability to create something from seemingly nothing.  When my daughter came to me with her ideas for three costumes for Fan Fest in August, one in particular caught my eye and made me say, "I so want to do this."

Firstly, the one I wanted to do immediately screamed, "Corset!"  The shape and the way things were going to have to appear to float over the body needed a firm support.  Secondly, I saw a use for my new loom.  Yes, I have been able to combine corsetry and weaving.  "What am I weaving?" you may ask.  Plastic bags of course!  The Macgyver inside is so happy!  I won't share the character we are creating just yet.  I doubt anyone will guess, but you never know.