(Little) Big Dance 2015

Was looking for the last big dance post that I wrote and apparently I skipped two years?  Didn't write anything for 2013 or 2014...

Here's the last one: https://ddrkirbyisq.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/big-dance-2012/

For memory's sake:
2011 was Firefly
2012 was Star Wars
2013 was Last Airbender
2014 was Game of Thrones
and this year was Little Big Dance so it didn't have a theme.  Remember people, according to Richard's email, 2015 (this year) does NOT count as an all-nighter!  This is probably going to confuse a lot of people, so make sure you keep it straight.

Anyhow, Big Dance was certainly....different...this year.  We had it at the FNW place since Roble is down for renovation and we couldn't seem to find anywhere else that would let us host enough people, have the setup we needed, and (most importantly) let us be there and play music overnight.  So we compressed it into about 3.5 hours instead (8:00-8:30 was a kerry set lesson, then from there the dancing and performance started).

I was actually pretty darn glad it wasn't an all-nighter this year; I'm recovering from a cold and I was kind of low energy.  Though to be perfectly honest, Big Dance is never all =that= much dancing when you think about it, just because of all the random distractions happening.

Anyhoo, I'm not actually even sure what to write about it this year.  Well, we had two dance rooms for the first segment--one upstairs and one downstairs, which helped with the fact that the upstairs room was probably the most crowded dance floor I've ever navigated through.  Luckily I'm S++ rank now in terms of being able to navigate through crowds while doing variations--and modifying them on the fly in order to accommodate for space, so it was all a-ok.  Had a couple of fun WCS dances downstairs (yess!!) and even tried to follow rumba (wut?) with someone who I recognized from Stanford WCS.

I don't think I actually remember dancing with anyone new this year, which is kind of a shame.  It's always nice to dance with new people from time to time, although I guess by that I mostly mean follows since sometimes newbie leads are a little exhausting to dance with (others are fine).  Got to dance with someone from Deca though, that was fun!  Deca did alright btw, haha @ Sam having to take Deb's spot at the back for Go go with the hair waving...

Swingtime did awesome!!!  Omg, I was fangirling so much over JJ, I didn't know until then that she went back to swingtime to finish out the year after opening!  Ahhhhh~  Why are you so cool? >///<  That was actually one of my favorite swingtime performances ever, not sure exactly why but they just did really good I think.  (ok, maybe it was partly b/c I was fangirling...)

I had a super hard time remembering what year I was on when we sat down to commemorate all-nighters...the only thing I can really remember is that my triple crown shirt is the last airbender one.  But I've got it all straightened out now--I'm at 4 all-nighters now (remember, not counting this year!).

I didn't participate in a lot of the traditional events this year--I didn't do dawn mazurka (couldn't find a partner actually), no chicken dance, and I don't think richard played the lullaby gauntlet.  I dunno, somehow chicken dance only really makes sense when you really are kind of loopy after having stayed up the entire night. xP

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My body is in sort of scrappy shape at the moment...this cold or whatever it is is still here with me and is making me tired in addition to sometimes giving me a mild sore throat and/or sinus issues/stuffy nose or whatever.  The worse issue is that I got two finger infections (stupid hangnails)...they have pretty much been the bane of my existence this weekend; I want to say they are even worse than allergies and canker sores, which if you know me is saying a LOT.  Good lord...well, I was pretty worried about one of them and my doctor told me to just go to urgent care so I did...unexpectedly, they =didn't= end up cutting my finger open with a scalpel to drain everything out (as was the case many years ago, with the infamous incident that left me unable to conduct for that one show back when I was head DM).  Instead he told me he couldn't really see anything he could do with a scalpel so he just prescribed me antibiotics and soaking with epsom salt.  I'm just hoping that it will get better and not worse when I wake up in the morning tomorrow...any worse than this is really going to be bad bad news--I already got woken up from my nighttime nap tonight because of the throbbing pain and couldn't fall back to sleep because of it.  Yeah, kind of...just sucks a lot.  For now ibuprofen is one of my best friends (yay drugs!), though I am still pretty conservative on doses for it as I always am (only one tablet at a time).  At least I had a breakthrough (kind of literally?) which is slightly relieving but I dunno...argh.  So...anyways, I'm a pretty sad camper lately, being tired and feeling sick and also in pain.  Yah.

I guess I'm taking this opportunity to make an honest effort at kicking the nail-biting habit.  Trying to encourage P to do the same!  So far I've made it 1.5 days, let's see if I can do a week?  It shouldn't be that hard, honestly.  At the very least, this week should be easy just because the finger swelling is just annoying enough on its own...

Progress on the cosplay is much slower than I'd like, partly due to the above issues, but at least progress is progress.  I'm almost done sewing up all the dark red triangles to the bottom of the skirt portion, though I ran out of dark red thread (all 125 yds of it, crazy!), so I'm going to have to buy some more.  I did fancy blind hem stitching for 4 of those triangles but then quickly realized that it was just not gonna be worth it at all since there are 16 of them, so I've just been doing plain ol straight stitching for everything.  No sense in sweating the details like that.  I looked up satin stitching and I think for all the yellow shapes what I can do is just do applique technique where I can cut them out with fabric and then do a tight zigzag stitch around the edges to secure it and make sure it won't fray.  The other option is to just do the entire thing out of machine embroidery but I think that will be harder and won't look as nice since I'm already planning to use bias tape for the lines.

Fortunately for my first outing I'm going to just stick with the basic first-run red cloak embroidery pattern (I can add on with each con that I go to!  Or something...), so that part shouldn't actually be too hard.  So, TODO list is basically:

- Buy more dark red thread, finish sewing on the last of the dark red triangles.
- Hem the bottom by 2 inches, check length and re-hem more if necessary?
- Pick up interfacing, rip off the current temporary collar, remake another collar this time with interfacing.
- Cut the collar to the right shape, hand-sew frog closure and test it.
- Add one more frog closure (or possibly the last toggle button instead?) to the bottom, under the last toggle button.
- Bias tape the collar and the cloak opening all the way down (easy)
- Bias tape the raw sleeve edges (easy)
- Bias tape the bottom hem.  I might need double-width bias tape for this based on the design.
- Two more go-arounds of bias tape for the patterning, plus 64 little vertical stripes (omg, so many)
- Then start thinking about the scarf.....

I probably won't have time for a mask/hood at all, which is...okay since the mask would probably be uncomfortable and hot anyways.  One step at a time...one step at a time...sheesh.  I've only got one weekend left to do this though, which is crazy!  I need to really get a move-on.  *stress*

On the plus side, Y let me borrow her petticoat and I tried it on as a way to get the right shape and poof out the bottom as well as make it swirly when I spin.  It works fantastically!!!  I was originally going to weight down the hem on the bottom to make it spin more but with the petticoat (plus the fact that I left a lot of material for the hem) I don't actually think I need to at all.  Yay!

The poor sewing machine though...it's starting to lock up more and more; it's not a threading issue either, it's just the machine getting caught somewhere.  I've done my best to keep it in check with the silicone spray I have on hand--there's actually a particular spot where I think the metal is just grinding against each other and applying some lube there seems to (?) do the trick but only for a little while...sigh.  Life, you are being really tough right now >_<;  All is not lost though!  I still have hope that it will all work out xP