Costuming meme (ganked from several at this point).

1. What is your dirty little secret when it comes to costume construction?
My buttonholes are for crap. This isn't really a secret.

The fake back seam. Since most of my Japanese clothing is made using fabric on bolts ranging from 44" to 60" wide as opposed to 14" to 16" wide Japanese bolts, I will cut a double width body  piece out of my fabric, slit it up the center front from hem to collar line (i.e., halfway), then sew a false center back seam from nape to back hem. That seam needs to be there for the line of the garment to drape correctly, but this shortcut means I can accomplish it with a line of running stitch that does not require a felling treatment. I've also used this on things like hitatare or kariginu sleeves.

2. What are you the most proud of when it comes to your costume construction?
With the exception of one cotton kosode, every single thing I've made for myself since 2000 is 100% hand sewn, crap buttonholes included. As a result I'm FAST. See Regency In A Week.

3. Which of your costumes do you think you look the best in?
I can't decide. It's a toss up between this and this.

4. What style of costume would you never be caught dead in?
Norse.
Elizabethan.
16th century German.
16th century Italian.
Anything 19th century after about 1815.

5. What was your all-time favorite Halloween costume?
Tossup between Indiana Jones. Aussie cowboy hat, khakis, bomber jacket, boots, a good dozen rubber spiders and a very large rubber snake wound artistically around my pant leg. And the very 80's yuppie witch (spiked hair, white face, black business suit, black Reeboks, briefcase with fake cobwebs flowing out of the top).

6. If time/money/skill was no object, what would you be for Halloween this year?
I don't really do Halloween these days.

7. Which is more important to you in a costume - style, or comfort?
I don't consider it "costume." I make clothing. It needs to be functional or it's not clothing! Even in 70+ yards of karaginu mo, it fit, it was made of natural fibers and it told me exactly how it needed to be worn.

8. What comfort do you refuse to give up when wearing a costume?
Undergarment layers must be breatheable, washable natural fibers. Period.

9. Where is the strangest place you've ever worn a costume?
I'm in the SCA. There is no longer anything strange about picking up groceries or stopping to eat in medieval clothing.

10. If you see a non-costuming friend or coworker while you are in costume, would you go say "Hi!" or run and hide?
I would say Hi.

Weekend.

Someone hit someone else and we will have a new king and queen in about a month. No, I didn't really watch the tournament. I was hip deep in small children much of the weekend as I ended up camping with Gwenhwyfar, Edward and Johanna and their respective kids. Page school was directly next door.

Johanna and her family live out in the boonies of Mariposa County near Yosemite and she home schools their kids. The last time I saw Lily and Michael they were painfully shy, but they were much better this weekend. Last year Aidan fought for Lily in one of the children's tourneys, so they're thick as thieves and she ended up roaming around in a kid-pack with him and Tristan. Michael stayed with his mom a bit more, but he was actually talking back to me when I spoke to him and by Sunday morning was trying to sell me  some of his Easter candy.

I only got interrupted twice while playing the hurdy gurdy. Not bad. I need to look at the chanter string though. It's sounding a bit scratchy and I may need to get some fresh cotton on it.

I met acanthusleaf's wacky doggie Bubbles, and Rolf and Aurora's gorgeous German Shepherd pup Chance, who reminds me so much of the dog I grew up with I could cry. He's five months old and already weighs 60 pounds. And SWEET!

mamapduck gave me a stuffed gorilla who needed a home. I let Johanna's baby play with him until he yanked out an eye. She also returned my copy of Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I was very happy to pass on to Edward to try out on his kids. I let Johanna's baby, Toby, play with the gorilla. He yanked one of its' eyes out. Methinks this primate is going to end up in an eyepatch.

Crashed out for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon not long after finals with a bad headache, but the nap helped. As did dinner. Chicken, rice and "green soup." Edward's chard soup looks like algae bloom, but I had two bowls of it and sopped up the dregs with bread. Deep fried mice for dessert - batter dipped slices of fruit with powdered sugar - they tend to come out of the oil with drippy batter "tails", hence the name. I did try one. I'd've preferred my apple un-fried though. Vincenzo, Etain and Khalid came over and we ended up hanging around and chatting around the fire all evening.

Whoever decided that underneath our firepit was a good place to put an Easter Egg for the children's hunt needs to have a dutch oven full of burned blueberry muffins dropped on her foot. (It was NOT someone in our camp.) The ratio of donated Easter candy to children onsite was skewed such that even the really little kids made out like bandits. Our herd were pretty good about only eating what their 'rents said they could have.

I helped trouble shoot the staff sling Edward was working on. He'd never made one. One look and I said, "There's your problem, the sling is too long." We shortened the strings by almost half, tried it again and it worked perfectly. They are SUCH fun to play with.

Despite several people saying, "Oh, yes, I want to come sing," Sunday morning's festivities consisted of me sitting with Johanna and the baby at the appointed spot and me making up lyrics to things with Toby's name in it while he rode "horsie" on his mom's knee. Orazio Vecchi's "So Ben Mi Cha Buon Tempo" became "I know a boy named Toby" quite easily.

When I stopped to say hello to leohtulf this morning, Susan of Bellatrix waylaid me and plied me with a slice of decadently good Mexican chocolate cake. Got yet another baby fix when Brian and Marguerite's little guy Noah came back to have lunch. Noah has words now. Sentences cannot be far behind.

Tore down. Came home. Ready to crash. But first, "John Adams."