Your Lie in April - Finale Event

From the "I'm going to watch this til I get sick of it" files, the blu-ray came for the "Your Lie in April Finale Event". The program consists of live readings interspersed with musical performances, both classical and original music from the show.

There's also a 60 page book with bits about the musicians and actors, including Ayane Sakura, who you will remember as Miho, the girl in the "Cross Road" video. (Yeah, and Nao from "Charlotte".) She does a cute performance of "For You" that's as if it's being sung by Tsubaki herself (of course).

"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"

One of the highlights is near the end of the main program and starts with a live reading of the scene where Kousei reads Kaori's letter and flower petals fall to the stage. This is immediately followed by a performance of "Kirameki", accompanied by piano and violin, and more flower petals. This one I've watched about 50 times this week!

Following some clapping and closing remarks, the curtain goes back up and those crazy kids from Goose House do "Hikaru Nara". But they do it twice, after they make everyone get up and sing along with the second playing.

There's some great performances on this blu-ray and I would compliment it by comparing it favorably with "Crow Song" from the Visual Arts 20th Anniversary blu-ray, which has to date been my #1 live performance video.

That's Right, More Pillowcases

Twenty eight more pillowcases done!

And now, the ironing board and gravity feed iron come down to make space for this! Time to pick up the sword once more!

While You Wait

First, there's some sewing to finish then we will rebuild it.

Your Name (Almost) Here.

The trailer for the new Makoto Shinkai movie is out! And the movie website is here!

You don't see kumihimo in movies every day!

1st Beat

It's going to take a minute to get pictures of all the stuff that comes with, but after like a year and a half of waiting, it's finally here!

ひらがな カタカナ キーボード

Still working on getting all the kinds of type to work how I want, when I want, but my wireless mechanical keyboard is here! I could never quite go for a mechanical keyboard given that there was almost nothing available in wireless. That just wouldn't go on my desk. Occasionally I would search to see if anyone had come to their senses and put one out, and one day I found the new Filco Majestouch Convertible 2.

With brown switches

I had previously set up an account on Tenso.com in anticipation of needing to use them to get the Angel Beats! 1st Beat game shipped to the US so I placed an order for this keyboard on Amazon.co.jp as a test run. There is a US layout version, but Amazon only seemed to have the JP layout themselves and I figured might as well go for that on the theory that I might get some use out of that feature.

Another nice feature is the fact that you can program it to link via Bluetooth to four different computers. I have another computer that is primarily for HTPC use, and operated with a FLIRC and a Harmony remote, but when I need a keyboard, this will be easier than pulling a Unifying receiver off something else that I always then need to use a keyboard with at the same time...

Tenso forwarded my order on to me within a day of my seeing it was available with them and selecting/paying for my choice of shipping method. I went with EMS International Courier Post since it wasn't that much more than the other options, but supposed to be faster. They shipped on Thursday, it came in to NY on Friday, where I thought it would get stuck in Customs for the weekend, but the post office came by with it on Saturday. Too bad I wasn't expecting it, because I wasn't home to sign for it, but at least I know the fast shipping method is as fast as the DHL Express Amazon uses on things they do ship to the US.

Crossroad, and Other Mail From Japan

Somehow I managed to miss the announcement that there was a novelization of Crossroad, the commercial from Z-Kai and Shinkai, but I now have one copy in "The Archives" and one on my pile of books to read to see how many of these kanji are sticking to my brain.

No pictures in this one so not much to show here, but the cover and band.

Oh, and the US, English language version of The Garden of Words manga is coming out in a couple weeks, October 28th!

Also in the box with Crossroad was the new "compact edition" blu-ray set of Kanon. (Air came earlier). After watching Angel Beats, I went back and watched the other series, Air, Kanon and Clannad/After Story. Given the way they recycle story elements, I guess you have at least three possible reactions, 1. watch them all, liked them all, 2. watched them all, hated them  all, or 3. watched them all, liked things the first time they used them in a story. I went with Option 1. Angel Beats and Clannad have US blu-ray releases, so I had those, but then I saw the "compact editions" of Air and Kanon on Amazon.jp.

And the cat got a new scratcher, but from Target

The international shipping Amazon.jp uses got me the Kanon set on the release date. Actually, Amazon.jp has been beating Amazon Prime lately... The shipping isn't free from JP, but if you're ordering several things, it's not too bad considering that I'll get a shipping notice overnight (given the time zone difference) which I will normally see in the morning and that evening get a text from DHL that the package will be delivered tomorrow. It's crazy, but crazy good.

As it turns out, one of the compact things about the compact edition is that there are no subtitles at all. I'm under the impression that the previous Kanon box set had English subtitles, but this set looks to be a good four hundred dollars less, so I guess that's an acceptable tradeoff. If you ask me, I'll say the picture quality is a worthwhile upgrade from the DVDs, but if you ask me to prove it with pictures, I'll have to point out the picture above was the best I could do without showing more of my phone in the reflection on the packaging than the boxes themselves.

I'm Going to Need More Fabric

Time again to set up the pillowcase factory so I loaded up on a new bunch of fabrics.

Then my mother sent the new batch of labels for them.

Uh... I didn't bother to try to count them, but I'm pretty sure I only have fabric for 25 pillowcases or so. Well, we're still a ways out from Black Friday, let alone Christmas, so I'm sure Joann's will have enough sales to get all of these used up.

Deeds, Not Words

The movie review you've been waiting for, coming soon!

While I was putting in an order from Amazon JP, I found that this was about the same price as buying the US DVD. The special effects are really going to be special in 1080p!

GenCon was so much fun, I don't know why my pictures are so boring. We had to try this food truck, and it was pretty good. Not as good as Grandma used to make, but I'll support a business that probably knows the difference between a Slovak and a Slovene.

Just to show how far I'm willing to go for a friend, I spent one morning painting My Little Pony for a birthday present. Here she is under construction.

 

My brother got in on the inaugural playing of The Cones of Dunshire but I could hardly get close enough to the tent to take a picture so I went to Anime Science Theater for "Fist of the North Star". That turned out to be the right call, since I would have had to stand in the heat for like two and a half hours getting clobbered by inconsiderate backpacks, just to not see it anyway.

Despite there being a pre-season Colts game in town too, we were still able to get right into Steak and Shake and is there anything better than this? The Royale, bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg. I am so jealous of this picture, and this one was mine!

Auroras

Auroras, the test film by Niles Heckman, was posted last week. I've been waiting for this one since I saw the Kickstarter announced, name dropping Makoto Shinkai, which obviously is going to work on me... I thought the quote at the beginning and the expression at the end gave it a more positive emotion than I was expecting. With a Shinkai influence, you might be expecting "the feel good hit of the summer" (he said, sarcastically) but really Shinkai's movies have happy endings even if the audience has more trouble accepting it than the characters themselves in the films.
 

Auroras from Niles Heckman on Vimeo.

Press On!

The last fifteen pillowcases have had thread tails tucked and trimmed and been turned and pressed. The labels are all used up so the serger has been put away until more show up in the mail some day.

Rotate Every 1,000 Yards

I ended up with some more fabric so instead of my original plan, I decided to finish off the remaining 15 bands and labels. I have 11 of 15 pillowcases done and should be ready to mail these by Saturday. Looking at the serger, I was reminded that the four threads aren't used up at the same rate.

After these last few are complete, I'll pull out the needles and thread and clean and lubricate everything, then put the cones back in the reverse order. It takes a lot of pillowcases to use up these 5,000 yard cones, but you can see some progress now.

Mother's Day

Is it too early to claim these pillowcases are a Mother's Day present? Fourteen more this week, and a dozen last week, and that's it until the next good coupon comes up. Somehow I managed to make a lot more band pieces and could do 12-15 more if I hadn't used up all the "body" pieces. In the meantime, I'll sew the tags on all these extra bands.

Now that I'm caught up on pillowcases and the house projects I'd been waiting for winter to end to do, I need to get back on one of my "couture" projects this weekend. Last thing I remember, I was screwing up on the Yui dress, so I guess first thing on the list is to cut out some new muslin pieces.

The Garden of Words - Coming Soon

The Garden of Words novelization is out this weekend and I'm hoping to see it next week. Normally, I would have ordered it from Yesasia, but they didn't list it til just recently. So I made my first order on Amazon.jp since I didn't want to risk missing it, like I did when I was trying to get the individual chapters in DaVinci. Amazon.jp seems to have updated their website so you can see a lot more in English, plus I could read more of it than I used to be able to.

While I was paying the shipping anyway, I also added a reading copy of Place Promised and another copy of Voices of a Distant Star. I've been (trying) to read Voices of a Distant Star and only had the small version, so I got the larger one to save my eyesight.

Even though I selected the "as few shipments as possible" option, and the new book is coming out in a week, they shipped these two books already. I got a shipment notice late Sunday night and they were delivered today (Tuesday). Hopefully that's not just a lucky case and The Garden of Words will show up that fast too!

Compared to Yesasia, I paid more in shipping (Yesasia having free shipping at $40) but the books were cheaper so overall it was close enough to get me to try it. Looking at some other things I might order, price+shipping works out better for Amazon in some cases and for Yesasia in others. Other considerations between the two would be that Amazon won't ship some items to the US (eg- some soundtrack CDs) while Yesasia sometimes doesn't have or has some items for only a limited time (eg - She and Her Cat novel), so I guess I'll keep an eye on both. It must be time for news on Shinkai's next movie, and I'm enjoying all these books more now that I have some idea what they say.

100 Pillowcases

Since no one makes Angel Beats fabrics that I know of, I tried Spoonflower finally for the first time for a special request pillowcase. I took a guess on which cotton fabric to pick from their options and went with the poplin, I think because of the higher thread count. Not having seen the other ones in person, I don't know if that was the right choice but I ordered it as much to see how the printing would come out as much as the specific fabric.

I took the CUTE! picture of Shiina and used the mirror layout to make something that could be folded in half and show the same front and back. For the band, I used some pima cotton print I had already. The case turned out well enough, though the picture makes the colors look a little washed out (and wrinkly) but the printing is fine in person.

Not Dead Yet Bloggerfront

"Less snow than expected" sounds great, unless you get more ice than expected first... Maybe now I can get back to work on something a little more fun. The weekend's trip got called off, but I gave the serger a once-over and started back trying to catch up on this pile of pillowcase parts. Somehow I got cabin fever spending all my time outside shoveling snow and now I want to spend all my time indoors sewing. It makes sense to me anyway.

Oops

This post is supposed to be about my test of the Yui pattern, but whatever I thought I was doing, I was not basting the pieces together right. I decided to quit while I was behind and will cut some new pieces out later.

In the meantime, it's time to start prepping a new batch of fabric for pillowcases. We're supposed to visit the Shriner's hospital next month, and I don't want to show up empty handed. Joann's has the 20% off your total purchase coupon this weekend, so it was a good time to buy a whole pile. This coupon works on regular and sale items. Their regular 40-50-60% off coupons normally specify "one regularly priced item" which means you can't use it on sale items (and get less of a discount) and you only get one cut of fabric. This way, between the sale prices and the coupon, I was able to get the 50% off ten or twelve kinds of fabric at once.

Fictional Garments

The latest round of vouchers expire at the end of the month, so I have to get back to work and plan what to get with them. I have a general idea what I want to do, but am still sketching and thinking. First pass, it looks like it will have some cross-over with both the Akari dress and the (Not) Chanel Misato jacket. How much that holds up though, I wouldn't want to bet on.

A new line, sort of

A new center front

Something in this direction, but not exactly

Unfortunately a mostly whole bolt of 44" muslin was lost last night when I went to tighten a light bulb and it exploded, throwing glass everywhere. The muslin was standing upright next to the lamp and as I was cleaning a million pieces of glass, I decided to skip not finding all them in the folds of the fabric until... Oh no, only 10 bolts left! Well, Joann's has a 60% off one fabric coupon at the end of the month if I can hold out that long.

From A to N

Pardon my pencilmanship.

Now I have the katakana down too and can read the title of this "magazine" I've been buying!

Thread Tails

That's about it for this round of pillowcases! I ended up with 27, instead of 30 as I expected. I could swear I lost some bands since I remember having an equal number of bands and body pieces. But I wouldn't trust my memory on that.

One was lost to a seam gone "slightly" off line, and one was lost to the dreaded hitting a pin with the serger knife. No damage to the knives though, thank goodness. Now I have about 100 thread tails to tuck in and then turn them out for a final pressing before sending them off.

With the holiday coming up, I'm hoping to get back to the Akari project. I've also just started working on the katakana, but if they go as fast as the hiragana, I'll need to start finding my next textbook.