Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in silver_seams' LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
10:19 pm	No, really. Go look over there. The image hits tell me I still get a moderate amount of traffic here. But I'm not here (I just use this account for comments). The blog is thriving at my local site (despite being Blogger-based with some stuff built on top). The whole shebang. Just the patterns (though you'll miss out on the chance to have input into what patterns show up). The teddy wolf pattern (from my icon) shows up there, among other interesting things... and you get to see me write a book of mythical-animal patterns. Whee. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 30th, 2006
1:44 pm	Moving! I'm moving. And since Silver Seams lives at my house, that means the company's moving too. I think the company has more stuff than I do. Volume-wise, at least, if not mass-wise - fur takes up a lot of space, unless you want to crease the pile. I've got a couple of months... wait, is January almost gone already? I've got... a few weeks to get rid of some of the stuff, so I'm auctioning and otherwise selling some fur yardage. Or more accurately, fur square footage. I've got a page of fursuit-oriented fur pieces on the SS site, and the first in a series of one-off auctions on Furbid - the (in)famous "lava fur," at the moment. Next week I'll probably put the purple version up (though I have *no* idea what to call it... around here it's the "K-State Fur," because *anything* purple is automatically associated with KSU. Er, that'd be Kansas, not Kentucky), or maybe the "wolfy" or "hyena" fur... depends on what I get a good snapshot of first, I suppose. More news on the official SS news blog as it happens; this is really just my to-reply LJ account, but of course I've ended up making entries. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
9:29 pm	Whew. Fair season and faire season, have eaten my time up lately, and I've fallen way behind on online things (I think, I hope, the Yerf coding project is proceeding without me. I'm afraid to go look, but I'll have to. Later this week. Yeah, that's it.) And some offline things, too. We didn't make it to the KC Renaissance Faire at all this year, despite initial plans to go opening weekend. Well, maybe the second weekend. Or maybe... and then it was the last weekend, and we were somewhat unexpectedly (six months earlier than expected) buying a car instead, and that was that. I'm mainly disappointed because I ran across a fabric I fell in love with (it happens a lot, I have to admit) and really wanted to make new garb^W costumes^W period clothing for my family. I sew lower- to middle-class stuff, because everybody and his he-goat wants to be nobility and you stand out, ironically enough, more with understated simple-folk garb. My son had outgrown the doublet that I'd made from scraps of his father's, and I had no more scraps so I decided they both needed new ones. So I started looking in the denim section, and ran across the stuff you see at the top of the entry. And had about the reaction that I put there. That's not a print, that's yarn-dyed jacquard. I'm not sure exactly how it qualifies as denim, but that's what it's classed as. 100% cotton, machine washable. That's important when you're wearing a style of clothing that came into fashion in more northern latitudes *and* during a mini-Ice-Age. So I snapped up the last of the bolt, all of two yards and some change. That was enough to cut out two doublets, one adult-sized, one five-year-old-sized, with sleeves. Spiffy doublets, too, with stand-up collars and epaulets and all, and ties down the top of the sleeves so we can just untie them when the Kansas sun gets too hot and have the sleeves hang down at our sides out of the way (which will reveal the lining, so I think I'll have to get some nicer lining fabric for them) without having to untie them from the doublet itself. The good news is, I found another bolt of it, and bought enough to make myself one (okay, having us all match may be a little *too* precious, but it's really neat fabric and I want one too. Maybe I'll finally have a booth in the spring fair and wear it when they're not around). The bad news is, I haven't had time to put a stitch in any of them. At this rate, it'll be after Christmas, which is okay because we really don't have an occasion to wear them for the rest of the fall, but I'd like to get them done just because they're neat... and I'm still really short of pictures for the catalog. (Business notes: tomorrow's shipment should be the last of my completed orders, except one. Martin, I'm getting your emails, but you're evidently not getting mine. If you don't see this (which is likely), I'll have to resort to postal mail, but if you do, drop a line confirming your postal address. I just don't want to ship this pretty lady overseas without being sure. And yes, I suppose I ought to get some pictures so you can see her first.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 15th, 2005
7:59 pm	I got the phone call. No, not the ACE awards, or any other bear awards that are going out around this time. Nope, just the State Fair, notifying me my Kansas Day bear won first prize. Yay me. It was pretty much a given, though... heck, I don't know if there were even any other entries in that category. Still, at least I got a blue ribbon; they don't necessarily give out a blue ribbon if there aren't enough entries, unless one warrants it. Last year Lobo (my avatar image) won a blue, and I don't think the other two entrants won ribbons at all. There were *supposed* to be other entrants, but they all wimped out on it. Hmph. (Granted, some of them *didn't* wimp out on making bears to *sell*, so they're ahead of me there). So now I'm a "multiple award-winning bear artist." I'll be sure to put that on my eBay auctions. If and when I get around to any. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 13th, 2005
2:55 pm	More on poodle fleece... Overhead: "That microfiber fleece is really neat, but it sheds like crazy, and you have to watch out or you straighten out the fibers if you pull on them." The former I already knew (it only sheds where it's cut, but that's still an amazing volume and the stuff sticks *everywhere* because it's so fine), but the latter is interesting. One wonders if brushing it has any effect... or if it's washable (I should have checked the bolt end while I was there) and what effect that might have on the curl. I'm going to guess much of it's too sparse for costuming if straightened, though... but I'm still curious. The colors are limited (so far) but it's lighter and has better drape (and stretch, in some) than most faux furs. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 7th, 2005
9:18 pm	Year of the rooster Well, actually, it isn't. Today was the last day to take entries up to the State Fair, and I only took the Sunflower Bear. The cashmere bear has had progress made, but wasn't nearly done... that fellow's actually for a fundraiser, and doesn't have to be done until September 31st. (Yeah, I'm not really sure when that is either.) Last year I entered a pig, and it was way too much fun having people double-take at that, so this year I thought I might enter a rooster (a modified Wacky Chicken, technically) but it just didn't happen. On the plus side, we had a photo shoot, so I'll have some pictures for the webpage again. Not nearly enough, but it's progress. On a completely unrelated note, I've gotten a second flyer from Hancock, with a second 40%-off coupon that is good for the duration of the flyer. That is to say, the same sort of thing JoAnn has done for some time now. Provided it doesn't reflect a general price increase, this makes me a very happy camper, other than I now want to go buy some of Hancock's super-nice furs, and there is absolutely no place to put them. Especially now that I just got a box of fur (mostly Monterey Mills fun furs) back from a (now ex-)contractor. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 28th, 2005
9:28 am	Punkinhaid Yesterday was the doll and bear show, in which I didn't actually have anything, but I went anyway since I had the guild's new business cards, mailing-list sign-up sheets, and so on. I took a bag of wool, polyfil and some felting needles, and in the morning sat around and needle-felted a bit. Pictures'll be behind the cut. I ended up with a pumpkin. Jack-o-lantern, actually. The other ladies really liked him, and I've been requested to make him a body, after which, I dunno, I guess they'll fight over him. Or else I'll have to make more, but you know how I am about making something twice. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005
1:26 pm	I'm gonna bail... I'm going to have to bail on the bear show this weekend, I think. I have two gifts and a commission to finish before I even start on finishing the bears. Now, there's not much *to* finishing any of the bears, but the finish work is always more time-consuming than it ought to be, so I'm just not gonna push it. I'm still going, since ravenx99 made business cards for the guild and I'll want to get a mailing-list (paper and/or electronic) started, and I'll probably go ahead and put the nose and mouth on the Hope bear (since I think that's all that's left on her), but I don't think I'll have enough to make even a piece of the booth fee worthwhile. Sigh. I'd really wanted to get a needle-felted doll done for it (since it's more a doll than a bear show; the guild is usually the only bearmaking booth there, though there again collectively it's pretty much all the bearmakers in the region). Oh well. (Oz-Some Teddy Bear Artists Guild Homepage) (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 19th, 2005
2:21 pm	Back to the candy store The nifty gray Thai banana paper I picked up to line the gray wolf book covers didn't quite match (the fabric's a mix of blue and brown grays, so I figured a brown gray would be fine. It's not) so I stopped in to Bradley Paper again to pick up some black. I ended up with more of the banana paper, because it was one of the few non-embellished black papers they had (black embossed, black with metallic printing, black with... ) and also because it's a nice large piece of paper for a very reasonable price. (Drawback: It's too big to fit in the artist's portfolio I store my large papers in. My husband sighed and said "I suppose now you'll be wanting a storage system for oversized papers too...") More interestingly, while I was browsing I got to listen to Frank's wife (whose name I've embarrassingly forgotten) explain to another customer what all the papers were used for, so now I have a better idea of their target audience (I was wondering just how much demand for eccentric papers there were). Turns out they stock bookcloth to make cards with (!) rather than specifically for bookbinding. I still didn't ask for davey board, but I figure that answered my question anyway. Translucent papers are used to make lampshades, things like that. And Frank had asked if I was going to paint on the really nifty white Indian silk paper, so I suppose it's popular with artists - Hobby Lobby stocks the occasional interesting oversized paper (someday I'm going to try colored pencils on suede paper) but nothing like this stuff. (Hmm. Wonder how colored pencils work on the silk paper.) I had also wanted some plain ole white paper, since my indulgence purchase last visit was a piece of paper with holes in it and I decided the silk paper was too nice to waste underneath it where it couldn't be touched. Plain ole white paper is not to be had there. I waffled on white bookcloth, and ended up not getting any, and will probably just put some of the rice paper under it. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
8:13 pm	Halfway there. The test foxtaur plushie is done, or close enough that I know the changes in the pattern will work, so I'm finally ready to do the commissioned one. (I'm usually pretty confident about my patterns, but when the fabric hits $120/yard I like to be sure.) The commissioner has been remarkably patient, and I hope it's worth the wait. Once I get that out of the way, I need to do finish work on four or five teddy bears (well, one bear, and the rest other species) for the show on the 27th. Then I need to make a Wacky Chicken for the State Fair (last year I got to run around saying "Ah took mah pig t'the State Fair and won a ribbon, y'all"), plus finish another bear or two for that. Oh, and finish a dos-a-dos book, too. Well, and first *start* it. That needs to be finished, shipped, and delivered by next Tuesday, I believe... (Comment on this)
10:14 am	Candy store! I've been working full-time, as I may have mentioned here, on a contract programming job. In the weeks before school starts, I take my son to my mother's house, and drive down east 21st Street in the process. I happened to look over, on one of these drives, and see a shop called "Bradley Paper," subtitled "All things paper." Hmm. Poking around on the web nets me Bradley brand paper towel holders... and one itty bitty job ad, which in turn points to the company website (why Google didn't come up with it in the first place, I don't know): http://www.bradleypaper.com/ So since my mom had a doctor's appointment today and I took a long lunch (well, brunch) to watch my son while she went, I took the opportunity to go down there. Whee! The website has lots of good pictures, so I don't have to describe all the fun papers and whatnot they have. They don't, if memory serves, have many pictures of their work areas, but there are big tables of workspace, and they give classes in journal making, card making, and whatnot. Really nice, classy stuff, a step above the usual scrapbook-center sort of cards, chiefly because of the quality of materials. I picked up a few sheets of paper (full basis) and some PVA glue - their bookbinding-specific stuff is mostly on the order of pre-made kits and so forth, though they carry a dozen or more colors of bookcloth. Frank Clifford, the apparent owner, seems to be a really nice guy, and from the look of the samples around the place, I'd like to take a class or two out there. Now if they just stock davey board, so I don't have to drive to KC or mail-order it, I'll be a happy camper. (I suppose I should have actually asked...) (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 28th, 2005
2:49 pm	More fabrics In looking for mah jong fabric (more on that in a later entry), I found some more wolf fabric, and at risk of getting in a rut decided it would be neat to cover some books with it. I commented "Like I need to buy more fabric" to my husband, and he made the mistake of saying "Well, it doesn't take much, does it?" or words to that effect. And, well, calico takes next to no space at all, compared to faux furs. So I ordered the wolves, and a nifty dragon print (it's hard to find non-Eastern dragons other than cartoonish ones; these look a bit like an Eastern/Western hybrid, sadly wingless), and a Celtic print, and something else I can't quite remember. I don't have an email confirmation because the site choked on the "+" in my email address (a lot do, despite the RFC-2822 validity of it). Now I just have to finish the commissions I'm working on, so I can make the books without guilt. And finish setting up my new workroom, so I have a place other than the kitchen table to do it at. Sigh. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 14th, 2005
9:58 pm	Sigh. No spiffy new items to show off today. About the only thing I've gotten done is progress on a plushie commission, but I'm not posting in-progress pictures because it'd spoil things. Right now, helping my mother and sister move (that'd be two *separate* moves, though the resulting houses are next door to each other), and being slightly sick myself has pretty much eaten most of my time. I have a nearly-finished folio box, the allover fox print that I may have mentioned (and that's roughed in on my new "books" page: http://www.silverseams.com/books/ which I need to update with the letters book and the Whoppers book), but I'm just not finding the time and energy to squeeze it in in my so-called personal time. I need to get back to finishing some spec bears and dolls for a local show in August, too. Right after the plushie's finished. So it's slightly frustrating to have acquired a bunch of nice new materials for books, but not have the time to finish any. I have a whole bunch of 9x12 watercolor paper, white. Some full-basis sheets of Strathmore-400 drawing paper, for hand-torn pages. Some textured drawing paper, full basis and cream-colored, something like Mi Tientes but not watermarked, which is probably going in v2.0 of the wolf book. This one will be in a format better suited to drawing, I think, with perhaps a Coptic binding so it opens flat. I like the wraparound spine of v1.0, but I think in retrospect the ivory bond was a good choice, because it wraps open nicely without breaking at the hinge. And if I'd finish the projects that involve the cowskins, pigskins, and lambskin, all of them black, I'd probably be able to come up with some book covers out of the scrap, so that should be incentive to get those (personal projects, all, and thus subject to being bumped to the end of the queue indefinitely) done sometime. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 8th, 2005
5:30 pm	Letter book I had been debating the best way to make the pocket section of the bundle-of-letters book I was making for my husband when I chanced upon a pack of blank cards in the scrapbooking section of Office Depot. (Everyone has a scrapbooking section these days; Hancock Fabrics just started one too. I wish everyone had less premade stuff and more nifty blank paper stuff, though.) The envelopes were exactly the right size, and I'd seen something like this at Paper-Source (I need to make a Kansas City run soon), so I decided to use them. Amusingly, this results in the letters on the outside, and the envelopes on the inside. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
5:01 pm	Whoppers jotter Just because it was fun. Maybe I should make these to sell. "A great gift for the fisherman in your life!" or some such. It's made from a candy carton, and the hinge is the score line where the side met the top of the carton. The back's the same, from the opposite side of the carton, and the binding is plastic gimp lacing (which ought not be used for any serious bookbinding, because it stretches). A side view showing the pages is after the cut. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 2nd, 2005
4:07 pm	Birthday book Tomorrow being my birthday, my husband bought me Cover to Cover, by Shereen LaPlantz. This is one of the niftier bookbinding (etc.) books, with a pretty good balance of gallery and how-to. One of my other favorites is Handcrafted Journals, Albums, Scrapbooks & More, by Marie Browning - it's exclusively stab-binding (if I remember correctly) but has a really nice range of cover types and embellishments. I almost picked that one up at the bookstore today, which is why I ended up with my present early. Now I'm off to make a horse journal, with which to thank Ann Dupuis of Grey Ghost Games for donating a lot of new Fudge gamebooks to the Fudge Factor authors. (In costuming news, I'm working on a fox jawset, 3x lifesize or so, for the commissioned red fox full suit. And in plushie news, I'm waiting on the eyes to show up for a commissioned silver foxtaur. In teddy bear news, I'm supposed to be working on a whole bunch of projects, but right now the commissions are bumping them.) (Comment on this)
Friday, July 1st, 2005
1:29 pm	Rose book I finished another book today. (Making, not reading, that is.) Just a straightforward little guestbook for my sister's new house, which she closes on today. Fabric covered hardback, with Kangxi (koki toji) binding done with two ribbons (because I couldn't find a two-tone ribbon that matched). The inside covers are green paper, and the endpapers are pink vellum. The pages themselves are just a disassembled tablet of stationery from Ampad - my sister loves pink and roses, so I couldn't resist. That determined the dimensions: 6 1/2 x 8 1/2". I've set up a page on my website for books, though so far it only has these two (and I need to re-shoot the wolf, since I noticed when setting up the page that the pages look crooked. They're not, though the binding has some flex to it - the Japanese styles are more stable, but I didn't want to do that with the lacing because I'd've had to have drilled the holes larger.) (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 16th, 2005
8:57 pm	Bookmaking Okay, okay, bookbinding. No betting involved. I lead a once-a-month scrapbooking/crafts class. I don't scrapbook, myself, but I love paper arts almost as much as fiber arts, so I teach all sorts of peripheral skills and give artist advice on scrapbooking layout, for all those folks who've forgotten their elementary-school art classes. Who knew color wheels, balance, and all that would come in so handy later in life? At any rate, last month's class was cancelled, and this month only the diehard croppers (apparently "scrapbookers" is deemed too awkward) will be there, so I probably won't get to teach the stab-binding lesson tomorrow either. I am, however, going to take my show-and-tell: ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 12th, 2005
10:43 pm	How disappointing I've had my eye on a bolt-end of nutmeg Monterey Mills at a local JoAnn, but had blown my 40%-off coupon earlier on Heat-N-Bond (which project I should finish up and take pictures of), so I had to wait until today. (Yes, I know we *carry* the stuff in the catalog, but JoAnn+40% off is below our cost, even if we buy it by the bolt. The fabric-sales part of the catalog is not really all that profitable, even at our admittedly-higher-than-elsewhere prices, it's just that we have the stuff anyway, and we get requests since other suppliers don't take Paypal and/or don't ship internationally.) At any rate, I got my coupon and zoomed over there... and the nutmeg's gone. It was right on top of the flatfold table; I should have buried it under the berber and upholstery velvet, I guess. I know we've got some nutmeg in inventory, but it's out at a contractor's and for all I know is going to come back scrap-only, since I know I've had her do nutmeg fox tails out of it, and I can't remember how much was used already when I gave it to her. So I greatly doubt there's enough to do a Mexican wolf, even though that'd involve a lot of white and black in addition to the red-brown (and a lot of palomino for the red-brown as well). Sigh. There's *no* nutmeg in local stock, so I guess my red fox demo ears will have to be auburn. Or perhaps that oddment of not-quite-nutmeg, not-quite-ginger that's been in there for years that... oh, brainstorm. I'll have to pull it out and see how well it blends with palomino, and if it's enough for a 5'3" Mexican Wolf. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 11th, 2005
9:58 pm	Taxidermy bits Since I'm finally doing a wolf head, and that's one of the few critters for whom taxidermy teeth are roughly the right size, I decided to order a set. And while I was at it, some eyes and earliners. I went cheap, since it was mostly to satisfy my own curiosity. Van Dyke's, and the total was under $30 with shipping and all. I'm now on a bunch of weird mailing lists, I don't doubt. The web page noted something to the effect that "you'll want to custom paint these jawsets," which I correctly took to mean "because they're awful otherwise." It's ivory, with a sort of casual dark shading well into the gumline, far from the teeth, for a nice anemic-wolf effect. That's the difference between an under-$15 jawset and the $40+ ones. Well, one of the differences. As I recall, this is supposed to be cast from an actual wolf, but if so I'm guessing somewhere along the line the casting got warped. Either that, or it was a wolf in need of braces. The fangs more-or-less line up, though not well enough for the jaws to fully close, and the teeth behind them don't even come close. The molars do, though they're rather muddy... perhaps it was an old wolf with worn teeth, perhaps the wolf was too many mold generations ago, perhaps both. In any case, this is probably quite adequate for taxidermy use - the critter's going to have his mouth permanently open (if you're doing a closed-mouth mount, you don't need a jawset) so the teeth don't have to align perfectly. For a moving-jaw fursuit, at least to Silver Seams standards, that's inadequate. It came with a rubber tongue (semi-snarling), which is a fairly nice one, though with that in place the back of the jaws don't line up at all. There again, a mount is going to have the jaws parted (and the jaw hinge is NOT right at the back of the teeth, a mistake too many newbie maskmakers make), so that's fine. The eyes seem a bit small to me... the jawset's about half again as large as the real teeth of my (oh so patient during comparisons) sixty-pound descendent-of-wolves, but the eyes are about two-thirds the diameter. I know wolf eyes look a little smaller in proportion, but that seems like too much. Otherwise, they look quite nice; I haven't decided if I'll be painting mesh eyes or going with these yet. The earliners are awful. They probably work fine for taxidermy use (where they're just replacing enough cartilage to hold the real ear upright), but they're very simplistic and I'll probably stick with the usual Silver Seams earblanks. I'm working, right now, on a red fox jawset. When I finish it, I'll put up pictures of the two side-by-side. And then I'll dump the jawset and ear blanks, and perhaps the eyes too, on FurEAuction, having satisfied my curiosity. And yes, it's going to be a Mexican Gray Wolf, just like Lobo the plushie (technically, an "artist bear friend") over there in the avatar. Los lobos have become a recurring theme here somehow. (Comment on this)