Sunday, January 28, 2007

ChattaCon 2007

ChattaCon 2007 was this weekend. The husband and I had a blast. We made some new friends and ran into some old friends that we hadn't seen in years.


The guests of honor were Robert J. Sawyer, author of Mindscan, and Kevin J. Anderson, co-author of the Dune prequels and author of the Saga of the Seven Suns series. I sat in on several of their panels, and they were a lot of fun to talk to. They were both kind enough to autograph some books for me. Mr. Anderson gave me a copy of the first story in the Saga series, and I am looking forward to reading it.


We completed the Speedy costume just in time to wear on Saturday. I got a lot of compliments on it, and several people took my picture as well. The costume itself wore quite well. The quiver, however, needs to go back to the drawing board for some re-engineering. It fell apart as soon as I walked in the door and soon found itself going back to the car. I'll have to figure that one out before the next Con! I was very proud that I had a blue "phantom zone" arrow in there as well.


Here are some snapshots of the completed costume:




I do realize that I'm not wearing the yellow gaiters/shinguards that Speedy normally wears. I ran out of time to make them. However, I do think that the boots still look pretty cool. Lots of people asked me where I was able to find red suede boots. They are hard to find! I got these at Nordstrom's in Atlanta.



The arrow crest on the uniform is made of FunkyFoam that comes pre-coated with adhesive. It had amazing staying power; it didn't move all day. When I came home, I was able to remove it without damaging the spandex. Wonderful! This allows me to re-use the unitard for other superhero costumes later.





A side shot with the bow. I wasn't sure if the bow would jive with the 'projectile weapons policy' of the con, so it didn't go in with me. I haven't shot in a while, so I'm not even sure I'm holding the bow correctly.

The costume itself is very comfortable. I wish Speedy had a belt, as it would have helped the overall look of the costume for this poor short-waisted lady. But I think it turned out well. I will definitely wear this one to DragonCon, even if I don't get the quiver figured out. I should have gaiters by then.

The next con for me will be the local FantaSciCon in March. Its theme is post-apocalyptic films (like "Mad Max"). I have no idea what I'm going to wear to this one.






Wednesday, January 10, 2007

RoboHowler

My husband just created a blog to journal about his adventures with LEGOs. I bought the Mindstorm LEGO kit for him for Christmas, and he is having a blast playing with it. Basically, it is a set of robotic LEGOs. You can build small robots with them that contain a logic module that allows you to control them. If you like LEGO's, you might want to check it out. He also has links to other great LEGO sites:

RoboHowler

I'll also put him in my list of links to the right.