It’s been three years since I’ve taught chainmail classes at GenCon. I’m nervous! Even though I’ve taught all of these classes multiple times, it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten in front of a classroom of students to teach them how to bend wire to make cool things.
Anyway, here’s a sampling of my classes:
Washer Barrel Chainmail Bracelet
Firebird Scalemail Bracelet
Dragon Sculpture
Ocean Waves Chainmail Bracelet
The past few months have been exhausting. My grandmother passed away after a long illness and my boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer and had major surgery. The year has been riddled with grief and stress. I knew I needed to do something to get back on track creatively, but I wasn’t sure what. On a whim, I decided to make a Dark Phoenix costume and go meet Stan Lee at C2E2.
I had the idea a couple years ago, but it wasn’t until last year’s Chestbridge cosplay fun that the idea of dressing up in costume seemed like a good idea. (In high school, I thought cosplay and Pokemon were dumb, and now here I am making costumes and addicted to Pokemon Go. Oh well.)
In the course of 14 hours over 2 days, I made a Dark Phoenix costume and little fire unicorn in honor of my favorite scene in the 90s X-Men cartoon. Thankfully Vogue Fabrics had the perfect metallic spandex fabric in both red and gold, as well as some felt for the little flame unicorn.
I also won Dark Phoenix cosplay bingo by taking photos with Jean Grey, Phoenix, and Wolverine on Sunday. As a bonus, my friend CJ was dressed up as Stan Lee, so I managed to snag a photo with him, too.
The real Stan Lee looked me in the eyes and said, “Well done,” in the brief few seconds I got to meet him. It was a nice reprieve from the stress of the past few months. The only problem is that now I just want to make costumes all the time… although there are much worse problems.
The benefit of knitting and crocheting all the time is that people give me yarn. Sometimes lots of yarn. I also have a mom who taught me to buy something I love when I see it, in case it gets discontinued and nearly impossible to find again. Needless to say, I have a lot of yarn.
I love having all the supplies around for whenever creativity strikes, but I don’t seem to be doing much with all this yarn. Something I didn’t realize when I started my business is that I would spend more time on the business side of things than actually creating. So I’m giving myself the same push to use yarn this month as I did back in November, when I turned the month into Sewvember, and sewed a new project every day. Knitting is a little more time-consuming process, so I won’t have the time to knit up a new sweater every day, but I do plan on showing my progress on pieces I’ve wanted to make for a while so I can get them done.
Today’s offering is a cropped wool sweater made from really beautiful yarn my aunt gave me for my birthday last year. It’s a altered version of this tunic by Red Heart yarns. I love the pattern on the chest/sleeves.
To celebrate the New Year, I finished up a project that had been sitting on my to-do list for years. I had made all the pieces for this crochet turtle, put them in my yarn projects bag, and then promptly forgot about it. For years. I decided to clear that energy by finishing the darn thing. It’s now my procrastination turtle. It sits on my desk staring at me as a reminder to finish what I start.
For extra accountability, I’m also putting a couple resolutions in Habitica. One: to blog regularly again (at least once a week), and two: to finish the revamp of my jewelry website. It’s time to make things happen.
If you want to gamify your to-do list and earn cool pets and armor sets, create your own account at Habitica.
Vickie Eisenstein interviewed me recently for her show, The Eisenstein Effect. I had a giggly fun time with her. Check out the interview to hear me talk about chainmail and life.
