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Meet the Youth Best In Show winner from the 2013 DragonCon Masquerade contest: The Lady Doctor and her steampunk companion K-9!
Jo loves watching
Doctor Who, so she designed this Lady Doctor costume for herself. There's lots more about how she made it herself over at Wendi's
Shiny Happy World blog.
Jo was especially proud of the vest, which used all different brass buttons. The coat is pretty great too. You can just see the really spacey lining here, on the lapels. Her hair is dyed TARDIS blue.
I helped her with the rocket boots. She still did all the spray painting and the drilling and gluing but I was there as the technical advisor. One of her Monster High dolls has rocket-powered boots, and so Jo wanted a pair too. The silver rockets are actually upside-down plastic things you put on chair legs to keep them from sliding. We glued them on with Gorilla glue, which held surprisingly well. The boots were thrift-store finds, spray painted with a really super copper color Jo picked out.
The whole ensemble, before she went on stage in the Friday Night Costume Contest! This was a fun costume for Jo--and one she could walk around in afterward without too much trouble! She did trade the rocket boots in for a pair of red Converse high tops for roaming the hotels though...
Congrats, Jo! So proud of you!
For more pics of the steampunk K-9, and to see how I built it, check out
the next post.
Okay! By popular demand, pics of our Totoro and Satsuki costumes! I've been holding off because we don't have too many--I was inside the thing all night, after all!--but people have been asking, so here are a few pics to whet your appetite. First up, a picture of Jo and me (inside Totoro) with Grant Imahara, star of Mythbusters, and host of this year's DragonCon Masquerade! He was really cool--and really appreciated the scale of Totoro! We were too tall for the photographer's set and lighting here, which is why there's a big lamp above Totoro's head. Jo is holding our award for Best Animated Character--our second award in that category. (Our first was for
Samurai Jack and Aku.)
Here's a shot I yanked off someone's Tumblr. After the Masquerade, we set up Totoro on one of the floors in the Marriott, where a number of people got their picture made with him. He was so tall (over ten feet) that his head was hitting the ceiling (and a sprinkler!) in the first place we set him up. This place had a bit taller overhead.
Getting Totoro to the con was a bit of a challenge, as you might imagine. We had to rent a mini-van for the purpose, and stuff him in the back. We built him to be collapsible, but we were careful with his face. :-) I had hoped that people would see Totoro peering at them out the back of our van on the highway, but all the van's windows were tinted, so I don't think anyone actually saw him.
That's your teaser! More pics of the construction, and hopefully of Totoro around the con, to come!
(Click the pics to see them bigger and better.)
DragonCon 2012 was intense. Still recovering. More pics to come.
While Jo is off at summer camp for three weeks (!) Wendi and I write her a letter a day, alternating days between us. Wendi's tend to be crafty, while mine tend to be silly. Here's one I sent to Jo with a couple of Mad Libs books during her first week at camp. I was pretty pleased with it. :-)
By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/30/2011
Blog:
Gratz Industries
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We found her posing with the mannequins in the front window of--you guessed it--The Gap.
Have you seen the artwork of Jo Cheung? Do you just love the colors? Jo Cheung is a London based, freelance illustrator and designer who creates beautiful, delicate artwork and sells it on greeting cards, postcards, buttons, and as prints.
Jo was in a super silly mood yesterday when she helped me photograph these
Huggable Blockheads. I got silly pictures, pretend-sleeping pictures, lots (and lots) of pictures with her tongue sticking out, and a bunch of blurry shots because she was moving around so much. It took about ten times as long as it should have - and I loved every minute of it.
Jo finished her first quilt top yesterday. I'm putting the back on today for her. Proud finished pictures coming soon - but I couldn't resist sharing this one right away.
In honor of Jo's favorite new expression (and when I find the person who taught it to her, I'm not going to let him be her dad anymore!)
here's a funny as hell collection of prints where the only thing the people can really say is...WTF?
Our plans to install our wood stove this past weekend were derailed when we discovered (surprise surprise) that we didn't have all the parts we needed. Some are still on order at Lowe's, and others we'll have to buy in store, but that won't be until this coming Friday. In the meantime, we decided to get a woodshed built!
We bought a few pieces of pressure-treated wood for this project, but we tried to use up a lot of scrap from other projects on this one, particularly as it's hidden behind the house and doesn't need to look pretty.
A cord of wood, according to The Internet, is four feet by four feet by eight feet of wood, so those are the dimensions we used, kicking the front up an extra foot for accessibility--and to allow snow to slide off the roof in the winter.
I love any excuse to wear my tool belt...
Our outer frame is finished! Now to add side panels, a roof, and a floor.
But first, we added side supports for the three stacks of wood that will fit inside. We used more scrap wood here, so the pieces are uneven and mismatched.
While Wendi and I covered the walls with old flooring pieces left over from the construction of our house, Jo was charged with shoveling sand from our leftover sand pile for the base. She ended up playing more than shoveling, but she helped out.
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We had a lovely Halloween here at Gratz Industries. Jo was torn between her Pokemon trainer costume and her Hogwarts Student costume. The weather decided for her and I think she looked terrific.
We decided to
follow Neil Gaiman's lead and celebrate All Hallows Read by giving a scary book as a Halloween gift.
We did it up right with gift wrap and everything.
We got Jo a copy of
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Brett Helquist. She DEVOURED it. That girl
loves ghost stories - as long as they're not too scary - and this collection was just right. Now she's asking for the next two volumes in the series.
Hope ya'll had a great Halloween! And - just for fun - how awesome was the Halloween design on the Krispy Kreme box? We enjoyed far too many of these boxes this month. :-) Scary!
Alan was at a conference this weekend and Jo and I opted for Caramel Apple Sticky Buns for Sunday breakfast instead of our usual pancakes. Oh. Wow. Basically - this is a bit of dough rolled around huge quantities of butter and sugar and then topped with even more butter and sugar and a few tiny bits of apple. Every time Jo took a bite she moaned, "Mommy - this is the best thing ever!" What else is there to say? Except, of course, that you can find the recipe
here.
No reviews. Little (if any) commentary. Just a round-up of what we're reading here at Gratz Industries.
Family Read-AloudHarry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix - still loving it and almost done
Jo17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore by Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter - I know many people hated this book but I loved it and it makes me happy every time Jo pulls it off the shelf
Case Closed #22 - Jo's running out of these and asking for more - and to get the next DVD from Netflix
Geronimo Stilton #41: Mighty Mount Kilimanjaro - Jo always loves Geronimo Stilton and she just got a new stack of them
Scatterbrain Sam by Ellen Jackson, art by Matt Faulkner
Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
Sheila Rae, the Brave by Kevin Henkes
Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor, art by Robin Preiss Glasser
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban CD - still her favorite bedtime listening
WendiThe Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - finally finished after an unplanned break
White Cat by Holly Black - recommended by so many people online I had to pick it up at
Malaprops last week. Excellent so far.
AlanPenny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder
Family Read-AloudHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - and loving every minute. It takes about 4 1/2 hours to get to Atlanta - Alan read aloud all the way there and all the way back. He is awesome.
JoOne Piece #14: Instinct One Piece #15: Straight Ahead!!! - Jo loves these super-weird Japanese pirate graphic novels
Totally Spies #3: Evil Jerry! Can you tell that she's been on a graphic novel kick lately?
The Books of Elsewhere #1: The Shadows by Jacqueline West - Jo and Alan are both reading this one. Alan reads a couple of chapters and night - Jo reads the same chapters the next morning and then they talk about them. Jo wishes they were going a lot faster.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire CDHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets CDWendiThrone of Jade by Naomi Novik - slower than the first Temeraire book but I'm still enjoying it. Alan promises that things pick up again with book #3.
AlanThe Books of Elsewhere #1: The Shadows - see above
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (#2) by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness (#3) - he's been enjoying these a lot - says they're unlike anything he's read before
For the Win by Cory Doctorow - Alan says he's finding this similar to a short story by Doctorow called Enda's Game - in a good way
One of the best things about Dragon*Con is that Alan spends a lot of late nights trying out new games for us to buy. This year we brought home a few that I'm really excited about and last night we tried out the first -
Ticket to Ride.
It. Is. Awesome.
Jo's a good gamer, but she starts to lose interest if the rules of the game are too crazy complicated, or if a single game lasts too long. Ticket to Ride has very simple rules, a nice blend of strategy and chance, and a game lasts about an hour. Perfect!
And the board is beautiful. We started with the basic US set. There are other sets and expansion sets you can get, but Jo and Alan already have plans to design two new boards of their own - one for Japan (to include all the places we went) and one for North Carolina. I can't wait.
On the way back from Dragon*Con we stopped in South Carolina for some local peaches and - holy cow they are good! That basket is a lot for eating fresh, though, so we're canning some of them. Yesterday we (mostly Jo) made some jam.
I'm always slightly horrified at how much sugar goes into jam.
Jo loved ladling it into the jars.
We actually used a little too much fruit so this is a pretty soft set. I think we'll call this batch ice cream sauce and make another batch of more proper jam.
So pretty! And it will be so tasty poured over vanilla ice cream and sprinkled with chopped almonds. nom. . . nom. . . nom. . .
Jo entered the DragonCon Friday Night Costume Contest this year with an entry of her own construction! That's right--Jo sewed and crocheted that costume all by herself. (Okay, Wendi helped her with the shirt, as the material Jo chose proved
impossible to work with.) She is Mistumi, a Pokemon trainer from the recent Pokemon Diamond and Pearl manga books.
Jo entered the costume contest last year in a Raven costume Wendi made, and we learned a lot. For one thing, the costume contest (as opposed to the Masquerade on Sunday night) puts the emphasis on construction and results, not performance. Jo's costume was great last year, but she didn't make it herself. Further, we had no reference photos for the judges to see what we were trying to match. People who knew what they were doing brought notebooks full of pictures, with reference photos as well as pictures taken during the construction of the costume.
We learned our lesson, and this time we took copious pictures of Jo creating her costume, and included as many images of the costume as we could from scans of Pokemon comics. We put them together in a book for the judges to look at, and then they asked Jo questions about her character and the construction of her costume. They were very impressed, and told Jo she had a future in professional costume design! They especially appreciated the boots, which are always one of the hardest things to make for a costume.
After Jo's interview was over, it was time to have her picture taken by the DragonCon photographer. I snatched a pic or two while she was up against the solid background.
All the costume contest contestants have to hang out in the same room while the judging and photography is being done, which makes for an interesting crowd... Here are the folks who would eventually win Best in Show: an apocalyptic Wizard of Oz collection.
Jo came to work with me a lot this spring and summer. I work in a great old building with a nice porch for reading and a terrific backyard - so that's no hardship. She spent a solid week completely absorbed in building/improving/expanding on the most awesome fairy house ever.
I love this little ladder. Where does it lead?
To this breezy little platform - a piece of bark, wedged between two trunks and covered with soft moss. I love the pretty "curtain" of upside-down flowers tied to an overhanging branch. See?
And here's my favorite part. Around the corner of the building is a little tree fort that the kids love to play in. The centers of some of the oldest support posts are rotting out. Jo built a little shed over one.
Take a look at what's inside!
Half a scallop shell filled with water! Jo told me it's an onsen (a Japanese-style hot tub). You have no idea how much I wish this was sized for me - the perfect quiet, mossy, woodsy getaway.
Today is Jo's eighth birthday. Woohoo! And here she is wearing her birthday present from us: fencing gear. It comes with fencing lessons at the New Studio of Dance in Asheville, beginning the week after Labor Day.
Jo has been asking to take fencing lessons for two years, but the only class we could find won't let you join until you're eight. She's been counting the months...
En garde, and happy birthday, Jo! Our lives are far better for having you in it.
Dragon*Con is at the end of this month and we're just now getting down to making our costumes. Lots of costumes - I'm not even going to tell you how many. . .
. . . but maybe this pile o' fabric waiting to be pre-washed will give you a hint.
For a change this year - I decided to start off with one of my costumes. All these squares are various shades and textures of black, waiting to be pieced together into a fabulous patchwork cape.
Labor intensive? Oh yes - but that's how we roll here at Gratz Industries.
Jo's getting in on the sewing action too this year. She wants to enter the costume contest as a maker - so she's doing all the sewing herself. I'm just helping with pattern drafting and technical advice. She's decided to go as
Mitsumi, a Pokemon trainer from the
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl graphic novel series - her current favorite book series. Here's Mitsumi. . .
Jo's working on the skirt up there at her machine. She decided to make it just a smidge longer than the skirt in the picture because she "wanted to be able to sit down without showing her underpants." Good thinking. . .
On the outskirts of Kyoto lies
Fushimi Inari Taisha, an incredible shrine with thousands of torii (Shinto gates, like those above) that was one of the highlights of our trip to Japan.
The closest station was a 20 minute ride outside downtown Kyoto, and was trimmed with orange, no doubt in honor of the orange torii we were about to see.
The entrance gate. This torii is said to have been placed here by
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the 16th century successor to the first Japanese Shogun,
Oda Nobunaga. The shrine itself was originally built southwest of here in 711, but was moved to its present location in 816.
As with many religious sites in Japan, there is a healthy commercial aspect. Down this side road, through another torii, are shops selling souvenirs of the place, as well as tokens and charms touting a variety of benefits.
The main structure here at the base of the mountain was built in 1499.
The shrine is dedicated to the kami
Inari, who also lends his name to the mountain. Inari is the Shinto god or spirit of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry, and worldly success. This odd mixture means that fox statues abound, often with sheaves of rice in their mouths, and that rice offerings like sake and rice cakes are left at many altars up and down the mountain.
Jo is off at Granny Camp this week. Her first day with the grandparents: the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, TN. No word yet on whether the boat sank this time or not.
The third night we were in Kyoto we went up to the eighth floor of a building at the heart of the city's commercial district in a quest to discover the meaning of "
Sweets Paradise," which we had seen advertised before in Harajuku in Tokyo but never investigated.
Anything that promised to be a paradise for sweets meant paradise for Jo, so we went in to have a look.
What we expected was a traditional sweets shop, where you buy pastries and things from glass display cases.
What we found instead was a sweets
buffet. For roughly fifteen dollars (about eight for kids), you could purchase a ticket that allowed you to eat anything and everything you could for eighty minutes. You read that right: eighty minutes to stuff yourself full of as many sweets as you could handle. A place like this would go bankrupt in America.
In addition to the main sweets buffet with all kinds of cakes and pastries, Sweets Paradise also featured a chocolate fountain...
...a gelatin buffet...
...a sno-cone machine, soft serve ice cream machine, even a popcorn station. They had actual dinner-type food, just in case you wanted to eat something real before you had your dessert.
A couple of days ago Jo and I came home to find feathers in our yard. A lot of feathers. I hoped that our hens were molting, but I had a bad feeling as Jo called in the chickens. Sure enough - only five showed up. Wooster - our handsome, gentle, protective, not-
too-loud rooster was gone. We thought a hawk took him, but today we chased a coyote away from the remaining hens. Maybe he was coming back for seconds? I hate to do it, because they love free-ranging, but we're keeping the hens cooped up until we can come up with a safer situation for them.
Their coop is big and has a run so it's not like they're in boxes, but I loved hearing them scratch around in the woods.
As for Wooster, Jo keeps saying things like, "I think he was a happy rooster. He had a good life." I think so too - and now is as good a time as any to share how he got his name. I thought we had shared this long ago, but a quick search of the archives says no. What an oversight!
So - shortly after we got the chickens Jo struggled to come up with names for them all. One day, as Alan and I were building the coop, she came out and announced that she had the perfect name. "Pecker! Because he pecks at me more than the others do." Jo does
not like to be laughed at, so we struggled to keep straight faces while we explained that she needed to keep thinking. Her next option? "Cock! Because when he gets older he'll crow cock-a-doodle-doooooo!" Now, what are the odds that the first two names she'd come up with would both be so wildly inappropriate? We told her to keep thinking, and finally she came up with Wooster. "Because we like Jeeves & Wooster and Wooster rhymes with rooster." Good enough for me - Wooster it was.
RIP Wooster the Rooster.
Tara over at
Scoutie Girl has been declared April to be
Stash-Busting Month - and she's been linking to some great tutorials. We've been doing our own stash-busting here at Gratz Industries - making a bunch of new clothes for me and Jo without buying anything (except some elastic). I already showed off
Jo's new butterfly skirt (made with a sheet I bought at Goodwill several months ago) - this weekend I went sew crazy and churned out everything you see in that pile above.
I started off with some jammie pants. This is what I wear all the time and every pair I own is threadbare and sad. I used the pattern in
Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing book and tweaked it to fit me a little better - now I have new comfy pants and a perfectly-fitted pattern to make a bunch more.
I got together with a few friends last week to spend a day sewing skirts. I ended up making a bunch for Jo - but this weekend I drafted a new pattern for myself and got cracking. This is such great fabric that I simply sewed it up with no embellishment. The fabric has been in my stash for YEARS.
This one is made from a pretty lavender sheet. I embroidered a couple of Queen Anne's Lace blooms (one of my favorite flowers) and I got a start on doing a little scalloped crochet on the hem. I've never done that before - I'm eager to see how it turns out.
This is the biggie. More fabric I've had in my stash for years - I don't even remember what I bought this for. I'm appliqueing a bird on it and I have some very elaborate embroidery planned. I may be finishing this on the flight to Japan - we'll see.
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