broken_moons | Entries tagged with skyrim

Excuse the crappy selfies down below, but this weekend I adapted my Skryim outfit to work without the leather corset (for better comfort - both to wear and to put on!) and I was pretty chuffed with the results! ^_^ I added rings to the sides of the apron and laced them with ribbon, and wore my belt under the apron instead of over it. It works very well! For an extra layer of comfort I could also ditch the belt and bring a bag to carry my stuff, but then I'd be worrying about losing it.

Also, I used a hairpiece to create a long braid, braiding my own (short) hair into the start of it. Unfortuately it had sagged out almost completely by the time I arrived and taking it out tangled it so much I couldn't make a new braid. :( I did manage to reattach it, just kept the hair loose except for some smaller braids I had made to create more elements in the big braid.

The less than ideal method of attaching this has confirmed that I need a set of clip-in extensions for more elaborate hairstyles, so I ordered some today!

( Pics in here )

So... yay, a new year? Had a bit of a rocky start to mine, due to a bit of a freak-out over taxes when something which is stressful for me to start with did not go well at all. I had planned to do some sewing on Saturday as well, but because of the freak-out I didn't start until late in the afternoon.

And then, in the middle of shortening the first sleeve of the white Skyrim dress, I noticed this:

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The fabric of the neckline just frayed straight through the stitching :(. I can see two ways to fix it: the first, and probably best way, is to take off the facing, design and make a new neckline shape and embroidery, and sew the new facing on, this time with larger seam allowances. This will take long, though, and I'm scheduled to wear this again on the 24th, so I'll probably go with option 2: tuck in the raw edges, hand-sew it closed and add a blanket stitch along the inside of the neckline both to strengthen the existing seams and hide the fixed area. I can always decide to go for option 1 later, right?

However, after the day I'd had, discovering this meant I shoved my sewing aside and spent the rest of the day reading the latest Shousetsu BangBang issue.

And speaking of Shousetsu BangBang! They announced the schedule for 2015 the other day, and their April issue is going to be about language. Which means they'll accept foreign-language stories or bilingual stories, either with or without translations.

Remember when I wrote Change of Heart, based on a Dutch song about a guy with a wooden heart? I used some Dutch terms and names in it, but even when I wrote it I knew I wanted to do a story where Dutch played a bigger role than that, I just never had the inspiration or push to actually figure it out.

But now! Now I have a specific reason to do this, and a deadline and all. So I signed up, and have been brainstorming ever since. Not sure quite yet what kind of story it's going to be, but I'm having fun already :D

Right! Post-fair thoughts. ^__^

First off, I thought I'd share the post-event carnage that is my sewing room:
Post_Midwinter

I've noticed that as an event draws near I throw out whatever notions of tidyness I have and just grab whatever I need and leave it lying wherever. And when I come back I just pull off everything and dump it wherever. I could probably afford to be a little more organised about that. ^_^;

But onwards! The Midwinterfair was lots of fun. I arrived late because the fur on my hood wouldn't cooperate and it took me about two hours longer to finish that than I'd planned, but it was fine. All the good stuff was happening later in the day anyway, and I probably wouldn't have lasted until 9pm if I'd been there at noon instead of 2pm.

I didn't catch a lot of the storytelling (the story tent was always very full) but I caught most of the musical acts and though they kept starting late they were all great fun. In between I walked round browsing the stalls and chatting with people I know through the costuming community on Facebook. My aunt and uncle were there as well, and I ran into them a couple times.

The Skyrim outfit held up well, though I was very glad I'd made a cape at the last minute by the time evening rolled around. I didn't need it as much (or my gloves) during the day, because the weather was amazing (almost a full 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the week, sunny, not much wind), but as night fell the temp dropped considerably.

Even so, there are some alterations I want to do, mainly on the white underdress and the cape.

I had sewn loops into the seams of the white sleeves, so I could lace them tight. Unfortunately, the loops did not take the strain well:

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This is easily solved, though: I'll just get more of the metal D-rings I got to lace the sides of the purple dress and replace the loops! While I'm at it I'll also shorten the sleeves somewhat, since though the bunched-up look worked well enough, a lot of the bunching happened around my wrists. I think it was just too much fabric to be compressed well. It's a quite dense fabric, after all. So I'll be making some strategic extra seams in those sleeves to shorten them.

Also, I completely forgot to hem the thing. *headdesk* It's shorter than the overdress, so it was not noticeable, and it didn't even fray that much, but for the next time I should definitely hem it.

And wash it. The inside has this orange sheen all over it from all the dust and sand and whatever gunk I kicked up by walking around all day.

On the cape I will have to find a way to close it more securely - the closures I posted look really nice, but they're maybe not big enough, or maybe the distance they're placed is not optimal. Also, I think I need an extra hook to keep the base of the hood closed, it kept turning outward and exposing my throat. I had to hold it closed while heading back home.

aien_hime and I have made plans to visit Haarzuilens in January for a little winter shoot. I hope it will have snowed some by then, this outfit deserves some snow. ^__^ I'm really looking forward to that, but I should make sure I've finished all these fixes before then!

I've been a bit quiet, haven't I? Most of my spare time has gone into sewing, and a little bit of writing. And sometimes I put on Skyrim or Fable 2, not like I haven't finished them already but it's relaxing.

Sewing-wise, I'm pretty much done with the Skyrim/viking outfit the white underdress I posted earlier is a part of. I still haven't hemmed that underdress but I should be able to get that done this week.

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Also, incase this outfit plus thermic underwear isn't warm enough, I'm making a cloak out of this blue fleece and these closures:

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I know exactly how I'm going to make it, it really isn't that hard. Plus, it's fleece so I don't really need to finish any seams or hem it or anything. It should, in theory, be possible to make it in one night...

In other news, I followed the Philae comet landing (partly through the official channels and partly through xkcd's day-long live comic) and have been getting all kinds of excited about it, and renewing my excitement about the Voyager probes.

We've been (re-)watching Star Trek: Voyager recently, and things like the Philae landing and the idea that Voyager 1 is not even in our solar system anymore really make me hope we can keep this up until we figure out ways to travel through space like in Star Trek. The universe is so humongous that you really do need a near-light-speed mode of travel to see even a fraction of it.

At the same time, we've sent something out of our solar system, how cool is that? And we calculated and directed a tiny little probe to land on a comet way out somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, and it hit its target and lived to tell us about it*. For some reason the half-hour communications delay seems almost too short for such a distance...

Anyway. Spaaaaaaace!

In other, other news, back when we moved to Houten from Utrecht, I passed on our old apartment to a colleague (A) who wanted to live in Utrecht. Recently another colleague (D) has been looking to move out of her student dorm, and as luck would have it, A is moving in with her boyfriend - so long story short, this apartment is turning into something like a company apartment. ^__^ I kind of want to keep it going now, and if D ever wants to move we should totally ask around if any of our colleagues are looking for a place in Utrecht :D

*For a day or two, at least. So sad it bounced and landed in a shadowy region. Let's hope the comet's orbit gets it to a place where the sun reaches Philae more directly!

Ermagherd, I drew something! I came across the sketch for this (abandoned because I couldn't figure out the legs) and suddenly felt inspired to finish it.

Aoife of Highrock by Broken-Moons on deviantART

This is the first of my Skyrim characters, Aoife of Highrock, a Breton mage with a stellar career at the College of Winterhold. She was sympathetic to the Stormcloaks' cause and fought for Ulfric in the war, only to come to regret it later when further adventures revealed certain things about the Thalmor's influence in the civil war... She made up for it by saving the world from Alduin, though.

My other Skyrim characters are Amara, a redguard warrior, rather too over-confident and stubborn for her own good (taking on Draugr Deathlords with sub-par armour and not enough healing potions? Tsk, tsk), and Amaryllis, a somewhat-lost woodelf who tried a few different trades and then discovered she was the Dragonborn and became obsessed with finding and learning all the Shouts she could.

I used a stock image from RobynRose on Deviantart for the pose, a bunch of hand pictures, and the Skyrim wiki as references.

So I looked up the fortify restoration glitch in Skyrim to be able to use unlimited Shouts* and then didn't realise the effect was still in play when I put my fortify smithing gauntlets back on again - until I found some steel ingots and decided to pimp my sword a little because I hadn't done that since sometime before I got 100 smithing. So I'm bound to improve it at least a little bit, right?

Right. All of a sudden, my sword does 289498941894 damage. I check my gear, and the gauntlets themselves still boast a modest 29% bonus to smithing, but my active effects stats give something with quite a lot more digits.

So I try it on my bow as well, and my armour, and yes, I am now effectively invincible. Also, one-hit sneak sniper shots on dragons are so much fun - they die instantly, but the game still makes them rear up from their perch as they would do normally, fly in a circle and then land in a great dissolving heap of dead dragon while I soak up their souls.

It makes the game a little more boring than I'd aimed for, but this is a for-the-hell-of-it playthrough anyway. Though because I'm limiting myself to no magic this time** since my serious playthrough was with a mage, I really like being able to use shouts a lot - on top of whacking dragons, giants and mammoths to death in one single blow, freezing them to ice cubes or blowing them to Kingdom Come is much fun. ^__^ I'm Dragonborn, dammit, I should be able to abuse this power to my heart's content. Arngeir would have a heart attack, I'm sure. >D

* And it is exactly as much fun as I thought it'd be. I'm Wuulding all over the place, who needs walking anyway? And yay, perpetual sunshine and pretty skies!
** Er, except Candlelight. I need to be able to see, damn it. And Become Ethereal ups the visibility, but doesn't last as long as Candlelight, and you can't fight while it's active. Or so they say. I'm pretty sure I offed some bandits one time while this shout was still going strong...