So... the fiscal year ends April 30 and guess who hasn't used up his vacation time again. I'll be darned if I lose any days this time, I don't get paid enough for that. Therefore, I'm taking every Thursday off up to and including May 1. And I still have to find five more days to take off in there somewhere. I shall, too.

Spinning the blend of wool with dog hair that I mentioned earlier. I think I like the horsehair better, but it's turning out quite nice looking just the same. The sheepdog (bearded collie, actually) is gray and white, and the sheep's wool is white. It's making a very nice heather effect and spinning down quite fine. I'll be plying it but expect to get just fingering weight yarn. Have to think about what to make with that.

For those of you who are attending Midwest Furfest and are fursuiters, they've just added a page to the website where you can request that your room reservation be assigned to the "fursuit floors" (3, 4, and 5.) See duncandahusky's LJ for details and link. I trundled over there and put myself on the request list. I've been thinking about all those floors and broken elevators with more than a little dread. Since all three of us in the room are fursuiters, we can legitimately ask to be put on the lower floors.

And now, to bed...

Tags: fursuits, spinning, work
Mood: tired

As promised back in November, here's a photo from the library's Family Reading Roundup presentation last November 15. Although dozens of photos were taken that night, most were portraits of children posing with me and I dare not post them without signed releases from parents. So here I am with Library director Harriet.

There are a few more photos here.

Tags: fursuits, work
Mood: accomplished

All week the Unabridged comic has been running a sequence that shows what each library staff member was doing on Christmas, tied together by phone calls to each from youth services librarian Dewey (who is home sick in bed with the flu on Christmas day.) In today's strip, Buddy the Book Beaver appears. He's the library mascot and has been the brunt of many fursuit jokes in the past. We've never seen him out of suit, and it's been suggested that he is sewn up in there and can't get out. Anyway, a classic furry scene here.

For once the weather forecast was very accurate. The snow today began at 8 am precisely, when they said it would. At midday it was accumulating at a rate of about an inch per hour, and visibility was as bad as during last week's fog. It stopped snowing just after 3 pm, again pretty much as predicted. We got a total of about six inches of very wet, heavy snow. Driving home was not nice, but there were no people in the library at all by 3:30 and Harriet decided to let us all go home before it got dark. Yay.

Looking at all the trees covered with huge piles of sticky snow made me think of Walt Disney's version of Peter and the Wolf so after supper we pulled it out and watched it, along with a number of other musical short subjects in the video release Make Mine Music.

Gary has a bad cold. I don't (yet) but probably will get it. Off to bed where it's warmer.

Tags: comics, fursuits, weather
Mood: amused

It's snowing again. They say another two to four inches tonight, but at least it won't be as cold as last night when we went down to -5°F/-20°C. Just a light dusting at the moment, but the radar looks like it will be getting heavier soon. All the usual stuff, snow advisory, hazardous weather outlook, etc. Tess was grumpy with me because I didn't take her out to the pasture this afternoon. I just couldn't get her to understand that all the grass is buried under six inches of white cold stuff right now.

Argos' bracelet arrived in today's mail. That was less than ten days from when it was sent from Hong Kong, which surprised me a bit. It wasn't charged anything in customs, which surprised me even more. Perhaps that's because the customs label was in Chinese and the only thing written on it in English was "gift". It was packed very nicely in a hollowed out space between two blocks of plastic foam. The bracelet itself was inside a pretty little silk brocade bag with drawstrings. Terrific gift presentation, indeed. It's a little lighter than I expected, but for the price I can't complain. The figures on either side of the stone are very Asian looking dragons. It does indeed bend easily to adjust the size, so should be no problem to wear over a fursuit. One little part of the costume is taken care of. :)

I've settled on which furs from the samples I want to get. Now I just have to decide how much of each to order. One is a long, almost 3 inch pile with a few black tipped hairs. That will be for a shoulder ruff and a narrow strip down the spine, as well as the upper surface of the tail. The other two are almost pure white, one longer than the other. The short one will go on the face, belly and underside of arms and paws, while the longer one will be used for back, legs, top of arms and paws, and top and back of the head I think. The long white is "white fox" while the shorter one is "white mink". I need to collect some photos of real white wolves and make some character sketches now.

Pause in the writing to go over the storyline and make notes of discrepancies and inconsistencies, of which there are quite a few. No surprise given that it was written in NaNo style, pressing forward without looking back. There are some timeline issues and other things that must be fixed in the end, though I'm not going back to edit yet. I also have a story exchange to write, and two short story submission deadlines I hope to make this month. Don't worry, Argos will keep moving, just more slowly. I've outlined the sequence of events to the end now, and settled on pretty much the way it will fall together. There are several fun twists and surprises, I think. At least, I think they'll be surprises.

Gary's making supper, he came back from Chicago early rather than risk getting caught in the snowstorm. I'd better go help.

Tags: fursuits, weather, writing
Mood: tired

Survived the "early practice" session, fursuiting at the library's Family Reading Roundup night. I have to say, I didn't design my suit for dealing with little kids. Once they get in close, I can't see them any more. ;p I can sure feel them hanging onto me, though, which makes for a lot of very slooooow deliberate moves. Real horses have a lot of similar visual restrictions, of course, which makes it impressive that the big draft horses can be so patient and careful with human children.

The kids were shy at first, though when the opportunity to have their picture taken with me arose, a lot of them conquered the shyness at that point. The long black shag I have for feathers on my arms and legs is apparently quite "pettable" too. I hope it isn't all full of cookie crumbs now.

Slight changes to the suit this year: finally finished feathering. Added a rope halter and I kind of like the look though I'm still adjusting it. Note for after the con: time to make a new tail. The old one has three years of wear on it and is getting a bit too frizzy.

Sleep deprived already, I'm afraid. Heading to MFF in about 3 hours now, still gotta pack and feed all the critters here before then.

Tags: fursuits, mff
Mood: hopeful

Tomorrow I have to put in what amounts to a full day at the gallery, demonstrating and just watching. But then I'm done until the last day when we have to pick up our entries and help break down the show.

So far only two responses to my invitation for other fursuiters to join me at the library on November 15 (the eve of MFF) to help entertain at a family reading night party. Neither seems able to make it in time, alas. For anyone on my friends list who plans to arrive at the Hyatt on Thursday before 4pm or so, my boss is offering dinner to you if you are willing to make a fursuit appearance that evening from 6:30 to about 8 pm. I am willing to run shuttle from the Hyatt up to Harvard for the event, and then return you to Schaumburg after.

Hee. I've made it onto the top page of rankings for returns to the us_furries team on WCG/BOINC. Look out, cabcat, I'm creeping up on you from below. But... I'm probably slowing down. The Pentium III machines I've been running are just not reliable enough. For some reason, the BOINC software tends to stall on them. It doesn't lose results, but it can lose hours of time until I notice and restart them. I'm not interested in constantly riding herd on these machines, so the most troublesome ones are going to be dropped once they finish the result sets they currently hold. The most reliable pluggers are the two Alpha processors, which may be slower but they never quit or stall. They just keep chugging along like the tortoise in that famous race... The largest point counts come from the two Pentium 4 class machines, of course, but they require more fiddling as well to keep them going.

Tags: boinc, fursuits, geekery, spinning
Mood: recumbent

Lion Brand yarn



apparently now has a fursuit mascot



shown here at Mall of America with participants in a knitting workshop.

Tags: fursuits, knitting
Current Location: At work, alas
Mood: amused

Send for the exterminator now!
( From the Woodstock Independent )

Good grief, that's only nine miles away from here. And I thought I was the only furry in the county...

Tags: fursuits
Mood: shocked
Music: R. Vaughan Williams - Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus

( Photos under cut )

Tags: furrycons, fursuits
Mood: chipper

Tokyo's Ueno Zoo held a mock earthquake drill on Tuesday, including a staffer in a gorilla fursuit who pretended to be an escaped gorilla that needed to be recaptured. Story and photo here.

Tags: fursuits, news
Mood: giggly