Balticon (part 6), Evil Squirrels and Sewing Disasters

Above: One of my highlights from Balticon was hearing Rin Barton perform in open filk during the weekend. As I mentioned earlier, this talented young woman also won Best-in-Class Journeyman in the Masquerade for her Princess Koneko costume:



Rin says it was her first time performing in an open filk. Wow, what a voice...and such beautiful original songs! Rin also had her own webcomic for a while. Wish we had more time to talk.

Meanwhile, I've already raved about another new talent who emerged at Balticon this past weekend: our friend Connie; Jodi and I met Connie through Allison. Connie had never sung in open filk before. Here, Jodi and Allison rehearse one of Connie's songs:



Connie's Tolkien songs are gorgeous, as is her voice. I hope we'll see her in more open filks from now on! Maybe (rumour has it) even FilKONtario someday...



I'll be writing more about Balticon, but right now I'm interrupting my con report because I feel compelled to share more evidence that THE SQUIRRELS ARE TAKING OVER!



Yesterday morning, I was working in my basement office when the power suddenly shut off. In fact, it turned out our whole neighbourhood lost electricity, and the culprit was...you guessed it...a SQUIRREL. In yet another attempt to cut off communications and take over the world, the local squirrels managed to blow the local transformer.

We've lost our phone communication before because of squirrels when they chewed on the telephone lines. When that strategy failed, the furry little demons must have decided to try another plan.

The hydro guys told me they hate squirrels, and that squirrels are responsible for a lot of power outages. Ontario Hydro has started putting up "squirrel guards" around all the transformers; these give the squirrels a mild shock when they brush by the wires, hopefully resulting in them steering clear of the area.

Anyway, I was surprised to find out from the hydro guys that the squirrels sometimes ATTACK them when they're up in the trees doing repairs.



In fact, I watched as two squirrels ganged up on the hydro guy repairing our transformer and snapped the photo above. He had to use his repair pole to shoo them away.

My friend John (Happy Birthday, John, by the way!) writes: "Evil Squirrel Overlords send out their more aggressive young foot-soldiers on suicide missions like this to distract you from their ongoing plan to destabilize the global economy. When paper money won't buy you food, those who have been carefully hoarding food (like our squirrels, who keep their bagels in our mailbox) and have the teeth and claws (or thuggish raccoon henchmen) to defend it will rule supreme."

Spent time songwriting and sewing this past weekend, as well as (finally) finishing unpacking from Balticon. I had several sewing disasters. One resulted in my turning a dress into a skirt (I totally screwed up alterations to this dress so decided to salvage what I could). In another, I discovered that the very cheap fabric I had picked up on Queen St. was cheap in more than just price -- it MELTED when I tried ironing it! Eek.

And finally I gave up on this top; I've vowed to NOT buy any more of this slippery ultra-stretchy fabric until I have more experience. It's impossible to pick stitches out, which makes any mistake deadly. Ugh. I've been experimenting with extra fabric to see what I can do to transform the top into something I could actually wear.



Anyway, I comforted myself by cutting out a bunch of tank top shapes (I modified a store-bought pattern to fit my own body shape) and painting on them. I used acrylics mixed with Liquitex Fabric Medium. Fabric soaks up a lot more paint than canvas but it worked out pretty well.



After I finished each painting and let it dry, I turned it over and ironed it on Cotton setting to set the paint. Then I sewed the top; I serged a rolled hem around all the edges and seams instead of the usual folding, pressing and sewing. This saved a ton of time so I could spend more time on the painting part.

Susan suggested in Flickr that I add beads to the butterfly painting; I think I'll try that!



I was pretty happy with the result, and I plan to do more fabric painting. Tank tops are the easiest for now, but I also plan to paint some bags and purses, dresses, vests, and other pieces of clothing. Once I'm more confident, I'll probably try other sizes as well, and put some up for sale in my Etsy store.

I think it would be fun to create pieces of art that people could wear using paint, collage, beading, and quilting techniques. Meanwhile, though, I'm also continuing to learn more about sewing basics. My first Beyond Beginners sewing class is later this week!



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Balticon report (part 5): New friends

Above: Rob Balder performing with Geordie Keitt. I enjoyed hearing Rob perform at Balticon last weekend. Rob is the creator of the comic strip PartiallyClips and is also author of the webcomic Erfworld; the latter was listed in Time Magazine's 2007 Top Ten list of graphic novels (!).

Anyway, Rob talked a great deal about filk and the filk community in his performance with Sudden Death, and did a fantastic cover of Andy Eigel's Uplift as well as encouraging those who considered themselves filkers to vote for the song in the Pegasus Awards. Andy's song, by the way, has been nominated FIVE times before but hasn't yet won.

Below: Rob in the open filk circle with Abi, Roberta Rogow and Dave Clement.



Continuing with my other personal highlights from Balticon...

As I've mentioned before, I found everyone at Balticon to be super-friendly and welcoming, and very much enjoyed meeting new people like Linda Taggart:



Photo by Allison


Linda was Naomi Novik's guest liaison. Linda and I kept running into each other at the convention and we start greeting each other with hugs and "It's been so LONG!" Definitely a kindred spirit. :-D You can read her Balticon report here.

Linda decided to check out the open filk that night and I love her description of her first-time experience:

"I headed back to the room, but something really neat happened to sidetrack me. I heard singing and was reminded of the Open Filk and that Urban Tapestry would be there. I'd missed their concert, so I'd hoped to hear them sing. Little did I know that I wasn't walking into a simple meeting room in a hotel. I was walking into The Court of Miracles.

There was a quiet but sizeable group of people there. Their ages varied from young teenagers to people many years my senior. They held harps and guitars and mandolins. They took turns at sharing songs funny, sad, beautiful and joyful. It was magical. Someone would start a song and others would join in, playing or singing along after having heard only a few bars of the music, creating lovely harmonies.

I felt like I'd walked into something secret and magic and beautiful. These musicians (some of whom I've known for years like gorgeousgary, starmalachite and the_sheryl) blew me away with their talent and their sense of community.

I headed to bed after a while there, feeling like I'd stepped out of a fairy circle."

How cool is that?



Above, Urban Tapestry with John Jude Palencar. Even if you're not familiar with his name, you've undoubtedly seen his artwork (a few samples below). I found John very friendly and approachable, with a wry sense of humour. I met him at one of the Meet and Greets as well as on Monday, when we discovered that our Kaffeeklatsch was scheduled at the same time and in the same room as his. You can see more samples of John's artwork at Johnjudepalencar.com.






We let John use the Kaffeeklatsch room; no one had signed up for ours anyway, but we decided to hang out in the hallway for about ten minutes just in case anyone showed up. Glad we did, too, because we ran into author Jean Marie Ward, who said she hadn't realized she was supposed to sign up.

Photo by Allison

We headed down to the lobby area, where we ran into more people who wanted to attend our Kaffeeklatsch. Some had gone to our workshop room; our workshop had been rescheduled because of a conflict, but the sign hadn't been changed and the old time was still listed in the main program book. The others hadn't realized they were supposed to sign up.

To make a long story short, we ended up with far more people (and had far more fun) in our Kaffeeklatsch than we expected. I talked with hotel staff and they kindly let us use part of the bar/restaurant area that was supposed to be closed off. We found the hotel staff at the Marriott to be incredibly helpful and friendly, by the way. Including this fellow, who said he was going to try to drop by the open filk:


Photo by Allison.

Jean Marie, Debra Baker, Sue and others have convinced me to try looking up the TV series Highlander.

Also very much meeting Miranda Mason, who was Connie Willis's guest liaison. Sadly, I didn't get a photo of her. :-( While chatting with her at one of the con-arranged meals (the con organizers took the guests out for dinner -- didn't I say they treated us well? :-), I discovered that we have a surprising amount in common. I hope our paths cross again soon.

Dan Guy Fowlkes, Balticon 42 Coordinator, was someone else I enjoyed meeting:



Wish we had had more time to chat. Funny, smart, interesting guy -- super organized and very hard-working; it always seemed like he was everywhere at once, making sure things were running smoothly. He's also Neil Gaiman's Webmaster.

Dan gave us each a package of Berger Chocolate Cremes. Yummmm....



Allison, Jodi and I had fun doing a podcast with Paul Fischer:



Photo by Martha Holloway

Paul was a great podcast host. We were a bit nervous (or maybe I should be specific -- *I* was terrified! I'm terrible at public speaking!) but his humour and mellow demeanor helped calm us down. We did lots of talking and also sang "The Friendship Song" in the studio after a quick run-through.

The podcast will be posted on The Balticon Podcast site at some point, I think.


Above: with Naomi Novik.

I also enjoyed meeting Badger and lordlnyc, who won the item we donated to the Reading Is Fundamental auction. One of the items was the Companion Cube we used in our concert; thanks to my husband Jeff for helping me put that prop together!



Other items in the bag (which I sewed!) included various types of yummy Canadian chocolate, a Canadian pen, one of my mini-paintings ("Alien Dude"), and a set of my Letterpress and writing-related cards. We weren't able to attend the auction but I've been told that several people were bidding on our item, yay!

More about Balticon soon....


Photo by Allison

Above: gorgeous roses, presented to us by our friends Tom and Sue after or concert last weekend.



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Balticon report (part 4): Sassafrass and songwriting

Balticon 42 report continued...



Photo by Korak. From L to R: Lauren, Ada, Irina, and Zara.

One of my highlights was meeting and hearing a subgroup of a larger musical entity known as Sassafrass. This women's a capella group originated at Bryn Mawr college in 1999 and its membership has varied over the years.

At Balticon, we got to hear four of the group members: Lauren Schiller, Ada Palmer, Irina Greenman, and Zara Yost. You can find out more about them at their new Sassafrass Web site, where you can also hear sound samples like this group improvisation of Ada's song, "Tumbling Away." Yes, that's what I said, IMPROVISATION. Whoa. Their soundclip pages also include their regular songs as well. If you're on Livejournal, you can also join their new Sassafrass community.



Cover of their 2001 CD, Solitary Dancer.
I bought a copy last weekend and am enjoying it tremendously.

Ada and Lauren attended our Arrangement/Performance workshop, and I was fascinated by their comments about their material. Apparently part of the reason they got together was because they were frustrated with the lack of good group material -- most group pieces seem to focus one lead singer and possibly one backup singer, with the others singing repetitive parts.

Ada (the primary composer) said that her aim was to make each singer feel like her part was the coolest part ever, and that EVERY part is important throughout each song to the harmony, melody and lyrics.


Photo by Korak

I would LOVE to sit down with Ada someday and talk about songwriting and arrangement; there was no time at Balticon, sadly, but hopefully at some other convention. Sassafrass will be attending Contata (June 20-22 in New Jersey) and performing in open filk, but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to be there. :-(

Ada, by the way, has a huge amount of music experience. She took Peabody music theory courses in childhood, and has studied violin, piano, guitar, and various medieval instruments; her compositions are primarily vocal. She's a graduate student in European Intellectual History, is a columnist for Tokyopop.com and runs TezukaInEnglish.com, the primary English language web source on the founder of modern manga, Osamu Tezuka.

To find out more about the other members of Sassafrass, be sure to check the Sassafrass bio page on their Web site.

Talking with Ada and the other Sassafrass members has inspired me to work harder at my own songwriting. I usually write for Allison and Jodi first, and then throw in my own harmonies as an afterthought...which is why my parts tend to jump around a lot, and are often outside my comfortable vocal range (which is narrowest of the group).



One of the few times I've actually written all three parts simultaneously and throughout was for The Friendship Song (which you can hear at our MySpace page, sheet music is above). It took more work, but the results were well worth it. Plus if any of us forgets our part we can always refer to the sheet music in addition to our recordings.

Our group differs from Sassafrass in that we don't mind sometimes having songs with one lead singer -- it works out because when planning a playlist, we always make sure that the leads are fairly evenly split between Allison and Jodi. I've never had a strong desire to sing lead; I have more fun doing harmonies and accompanying on various instruments instead.

Also, Allison and Jodi are songwriters themselves and are great at coming up with their own harmonies. When trying to fit in a third harmony, however, I do find it a challenge unless I write all three parts at the same time ... else I get stuck with the leftover notes and a line that's hard to sing and harder to remember. I've been looking on it as a way to push myself, but I'm realizing that I could be pushing myself AND having a line that's fun to sing at the same time.

Meeting Sassafrass has inspired me to work harder and coming up with more interesting lines when doing songwriting, plus put more effort into my own parts. I've always been a big fan of pushing one's own personal envelope, and I think I've been getting lazy in my songwriting; I should be using EVERY song as a learning experience and a chance to improve my craft, even in a small way.

Many thanks to Sassafrass for the inspiration and (again) to Balticon for providing a venue in which this sort of creative exchange is possible.


With Greg Wright, Balticon 42 Chair.

Above: Despite having the whole convention to run, Greg found time to check in with us regularly through the weekend to see how we were doing, if needed anything, etc. Super-nice guy. :-)

More about Balticon soon....

Speaking of songwriting, I feel inspired by Balticon weekend and am going to sit down and do some songwriting today.



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Balticon report (part 3): webcomics, dancing and Neverwear

Photo by Allison. We ran into this fellow
in the lobby and chatted with him a bit. He ended up coming to
the open filk that night and performing (and he was good, too!).
He made the Vulcan lyre himself.


Balticon report continued...

One of the things I especially enjoyed about Balticon was checking out non-filk programming. I don't often get to general sf conventions anymore, and I was reminded of how much a con like Balticon has to offer.

One of the challenges, of course, is trying to decide what to attend. I'll have to come back someday as a regular attendee; there were so many panels I would have liked to see, but I had commitments as a guest that (of course) had to come first. I never was able to make it to any of the panels or presentations by Connie Willis, one of my favourite authors.



Thanks to the "Meet and Greet" gatherings, however, I was able to chat briefly with her. Urban Tapestry had guested with Connie some years ago at Ad Astra, though I doubt Connie would have remembered that. You can see a photo of me and Connie in my Ad Astra report.

I'm such a fangirl that my language skills totally fled me during the few words I exchanged with her. Instead of impressing her with my witty repartee and keen observations about her writing, I babbled about loving her work and being a fan and got completely tongue-tied. AUGH, how embarrassing!

I'll content myself in singing songs about her books instead. :-) Allison, Jodi and I performed In A Gown Too Blue in our main concert, a gorgeous and chilling song by Brenda Sutton of Three Weird Sisters. Thanks so much to Brenda for letting us cover her song.


Photo by Korak

I had a ton of fun at the Medieval Dance workshop, led by our patient instructor, Patches, and ably accompanied by a group of musicians including Gary Ehrlich and Maugorn. Many thanks to Walter and others for letting me tread on their toes.

Walter, by the way, hadn't warned us that he was coming to Balticon...his appearance during our Filk 101 panel on Friday night was a complete surprise!


Walter likes bacon.

I participated in the Writing For Webcomics I panel on Sunday afternoon with webcomic types like Rosscott, Bryan Prindiville, Marty Day, Barb Fischer, Darren Gendron, and James Hatton, among others -- I should have been writing down everyone's names and comic URLs, sorry.

I was a bit nervous since I suspected that everyone would already know each other and no one would know me, but the others made me feel welcome right away. Interesting panel, and I wish there had been more time to get to know some of the others better (especially Bryan Prindiville). Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for more webcomic programming because of conflicts; as it was, the one webcomic panel I participated on was scheduled at the same time as Connie Willis's Guest of Honor Presentation...figures. :-)



And to give you more of an idea of the depth and expanse of Balticon's programming, panels also scheduled in that same time slot included "Infectious Diseases", "Trek - Back to the Future", "End of a Podcasting Era", "Costuming from the Written Word", a reading by Emily Rudegair, "Sock Puppets" (children's programming, I think), "Space Western in Anime", "Linguistics for Artificial Languages", "Live! Lancelot Biggs Pod Play", as well as the Connie Willis GoH presentation. Plus the 24-hour movie room, gaming, and other on-going activities.

And that was only from the Sunday 4-5 pm time slot.




It was great fun participating in the children's programming with Gary, Dave, Sue and Tom. And there actually were CHILDREN there! We never know what kind of audience we're going to get at children's concerts. Some of our kids' concerts have had packed audiences of adults only. Sometimes we get teens, other times babies and toddlers.

This time, we had a great mix of all ages, and they even got up and danced.



Photo by Kathryn Cramer


Another thing I loved about Balticon: all the costumes. Some (like Rin Barton, pictured below in her Princess Koneko outfit at the Neverwear booth; her costume ended up winning Best-in-Class Journeyman) wore the costumes they planned to showcase in the Masquerade while others just wore them for the heck of it.



Speaking of Neverwear...Balticon sure does treat its guests well! Not only did we each get a daily stipend for expenses but we also each received a cool black messenger bag with a Baltimore Science Fiction Society logo, filled with goodies:



Photo by Allison


One of the goodies was a coupon for ANY item at the Neverwear booth! I chose a "Scary Trousers" t-shirt and also bought some NeverWear sparkly hairpins as well as a sparkly soft belt made by Kitty.

As for the dealers' room, WHOA. The photo below only shows part of the dealer's area, which spilled out into the main hallway as well:



I was SO tempted by a colourful and jangly bellydancer's belt-skirt but managed to resist. While browsing the Wrap Pants booth out in the hall, I was mesmerized by this woman's performance:



SO much to see and do at Balticon. So much more to talk about, too, but I have to get back to work. More in upcoming posts!

Babylon Five Virgin update

SPOILER WARNING: The blog below focuses on my reports while watching Babylon Five for the first time. An LJ feed is also available. If you haven't seen B5 yet and don't want spoilers, please DO NOT click below.

Season 4, Episode 69: The Summoning
Season 4, Episode 70: Falling Towards Apotheosis
Season 4, Episode 71: The Long Night





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Balticon report (part 2): Stone Dragons

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. But back to my Balticon con report. Do check Allison's Livejournal, by the way, for a more detailed con report from Urban Tapestry's perspective.

Balticon had so many highlights, but my personal highlight was attending the very first concert of Stone Dragon, a duo made up of the newly married Sue Posteraro and Tom Jeffers.



For me, the event and the people encapsulated so much of what I love about filk and the filk community. Kudos to Balticon for supporting filk by providing a filk track and a venue, and to Gary Ehrlich for scheduling this concert into the programming.

I met Tom Jeffers through Dave Clement. Originally seen mainly as Dave's music partner, Tom has gained his own following in the filk community with and without Dave. Tom and I have become closer friends over the years, and I was so happy for him when he found the love of his life: Sue, another filker. I can't wait for the new Dandelion Wine CD, and I'm also looking forward to Stone Dragon's first CD.

And that brings us back to Stone Dragon. Sue used to be SO quiet in filk circles, mainly a listener. I remember the first time she sang something in the open filk; I was surprised and delighted by the beauty of her voice. I've so enjoyed watching Sue blossom in the filk community, cheered when she and Tom got together and now she's doing PUBLIC CONCERTS!!!

I've seen this happen so many times in the filk community (heck, it happened to ME; I used to be terrified of performing in public). Part of what I love about this community is its encouragement and nurturing of shyer types.

But not only was Tom's and Sue's concert wonderful for that reason, but it was also GOOD. Very polished, with a great variety of material, and I love watching the two of them perform. As Allison pointed out during the weekend, Sue radiates joy when she sings. And I loved the interaction between these two as they performed. Walter gave them a Stonehenge compass watch in honour of their first concert together.

I sure hope they get invited to do more concerts at other conventions.

But I digress...

Balticon also provided a great opportunity for getting together with people I don't normally have a chance to chat with much at conventions, like Gary McGath:



I had to miss Maugorn's concert and most of Gary's concert because Jodi and I were at the Balticon Meet & Greet The Guests (as Allison pointed out in her LJ entry, having a trio was handy at the convention where we were supposed to attend more than one event scheduled at the same time :-), but Gary and I made some time to chat in the sunny courtyard during one break.



It was also great to see Maya again. Allison, Jodi and I had all been thinking of Maya a great deal since she lost her husband Greg earlier this year. Maya thanked us for the care packages we sent her, and gave us each lovely "tea cards" along with tea, beautiful earrings, and a small bottle of Godiva liqueur.

More about Balticon in my next entry.



The local squirrels have declared war! I've been gradually transplanting my seedlings outside, and the squirrels have gradually been DIGGING THEM UP! Cayenne pepper helps, but they seem to focus on low-cayenne spots.

Above: an exposed nasturtium seedling beside a newly dug squirrel hole. To add insult to injury, the squirrels don't seem to have a reason for digging the holes but have been throwing in EMPTY SUNFLOWER SEED SHELLS just to taunt me, I'm sure.

Grrr.



In my planters so far: chives, nasturtium, mint, sweet basil, thai basil, Morning Glory, baby carrots, lettuce, dill, forget-me-nots, summer savory, lemon thyme, regular thyme, sage, marjoram (though these seedlings may not survive because of SQUIRREL VANDALISM), kochia, lavender, others I can't remember at this moment and I'm too lazy to go upstairs and check.

Balticon report to continue in my next entry...



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