A visit to New Orleans

I lived in New Orleans, Louisiana for almost 9 years.  I moved down there for college, having received a scholarship to the University of New Orleans, and life just happened. It was a great decade.  I was young, and it is a town for the young.  I worked in and around the French Quarter for the majority of that time, three and a half of it at a boutique one block off of Bourbon Street (no longer there, we discovered on this trip - sadness).  I attended my first conventions and started costuming while I lived there, as well as met my husband (We were both members of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy book club.  Punch my geek card, thank you very much!)

We spent a long week there last week, and it has been determined that I've become a huge wimp when it comes to to the heat and humidity of a southern summer.  I was never all that happy about it when I lived there, and I've acclimated nicely to the temperate Puget Sound region in the last 15 years.

We did lots of sight-seeing, both of nostalgic places to us (like our first apartment and the first bead store I ever bought supplies at) and touristy places like the Aquarium, St. Louis Cemetary, and Blain Kern's Mardi Gras world.  I've hardly begun editing the pictures yet, but here's a few teasers.


Mask by *dbvictoria on deviantART


Jester by *dbvictoria on deviantART


A row of crosses by *dbvictoria on deviantART

I've got about 500 shots to go through, and some costuming stuff to do beforehand.  Well, and housecleaning, but we won't talk about that. 



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Pride and a wedding

I'm in the enviable and unheard-of position of having my costuming for Steamcon V finished three months early!  (I still have to sew something for the munchkin and the husband, but hey - three months early!)

Each of the outfits was made for a previous event, but I've now got enough in the "new" department to satisfy that little voice in the back of my head that says "but I've got nothing to wear!!!"

The first came about after I was gifted some fabric, a lovely chartreuse stretch piece and some lightweight satin in a pattern of peacock colors.  The outfit's first use was for Pride, as there was pretty much every color of the rainbow but red in the fabric, and I covered that with my hair.  Also, there's a fine  tradition at cons here, of what's called the "hangover detection outfit."  These are worn on Sunday mornings at cons, and are meant to tweak the folks who may have overindulged a wee bit on Saturday night.  Achievement "Eye Burning Brightness" unlocked!

Here's the outfit, and I borrowed one of my parasols from the shop for the day:





In past years I've marched with the Seattle Goths for the parade, but this year Steamcon represented, so we joined them.  Luckily I got a few pictures, as we were all the way at the end so not many surfaced after the parade.



This year's theme was Marriage Equality, so I made us all sashes especial:



And here's the whole group of us:



The second outfit I'm including here was made for friends' fancy dress-up wedding.  It started, as so many outfits do, with a pair of drapes I found at a thrift store.  This is how I accidentally wandered into Steampunk, by the way!




The drapes consisted of two kinds of brocades in matching colors, bronze and black.  One was a Victorian wallpaper pattern, and the other was 1/4" stripes.  The wallpaper fabric became the skirt and the stripes the drape and bustle.

Someday I'll do a tutorial on this, I promise.

The edges of the drapes were finished with tasseled trim, but there wasn't enough to finish the drape so I used some beaded fringe there:





I finished up the parasol an hour before the wedding:





I was taking pictures during the reception and accidentally shot myself.  But it's cool.



And here's the other outfits that will round out my Steamcon costuming this year:









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More pictures

Fell off the posting wagon again. It's so easy to do.  So today you get a post that includes photos from my third photowander that I took when I took a "just because" week off in June plus costuming I did for two events.

First, pictures from when I took my camera for a visit to the Northwest Railway Museum and Snoqualmie Falls.  The trail was closed at the falls because they are renovating the station at the base, so I hung out at the observation station to take these.


Lonely train by *dbvictoria on deviantART


Waterfall by *dbvictoria on deviantART


Gone to Seed by *dbvictoria on deviantART











The full set of pictures can be seen here.

I was going to continue, but it appears there is a character limit to posts and with including costuming here I hit it.  So guess what?  You get two posts today.  Huzzah!

2nd photo post

Happy 4th, all!

During my week off my second stop with my camera was the Woodland Park Zoo.

I got there just after opening, and was treated first off to frisky zebras:


Frisky Zebras by *dbvictoria on deviantART

One of the Arctic foxes came right up to the barrier and gave me sad eyes:


Arctic Fox by *dbvictoria on deviantART

The bears were out for a prowl, back and forth back and forth:


Brown Bears by *dbvictoria on deviantART

I made two trips by the hippo enclosure.  The first time they were both huddled in a corner with only their eyes and ears showing, but on my way back they were out and about:


Blowing Bubbles by *dbvictoria on deviantART

The wolves were taking a mid-morning nap:


White Wolf Napping by *dbvictoria on deviantART

This trip resulted in the most pictures for the week.  The full set is here.

A few more:











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First of 3 photo posts

Look at me - what a bad blogger!  Almost 2 months since my last post.

I've been doing things.  I've even been making things.  I've just not been blogging about them.  So let's fix that.  I'll catch up over the next few days, or next week or two, with what I've been up to.

Starting out, it's been a tradition for me for the last few years to take a week's vacation in June and just be lazy and spend quality time with myself.  I've been in a bit of a blah mood lately, partly because business has been slow and that's always depressing, partly because we had a bit of a grey moody spring and I wasn't as good as taking my supplements as I should be.  It's amazing what going without a Vitamin D capsule for a few days does to my headspace, living in the semi-perpetually-overcast Pacific Northwest.

So I didn't do that much on my week off this time around, but I did take the camera out for a few strolls.  Here's some images from my first expedition, to the Calvary Cemetary.  We used to live not too far from here before we bought our house, and it remains one of my favorites in the area.  Some of the earliest graves are from the 1800s.  There's even a few that are so weather worn that there isn't any information left on the stones.

My two favorite images from this visit:


Cemetary flowers by *dbvictoria on deviantART


Cemetary Rose by *dbvictoria on deviantART

A, d the full set of shots are here.

I did irritate a couple of crows.  It wasn't from getting too close to a nest, I don't think, as they started following me when I was nowhere any trees, but they kept me company for a good 20 minutes, and kept track of my movements for the rest of the time I was wandering around:



Next up will be some zoo pictures.



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