B-Wing Pilot: Wearable!

I was able to get my B-Wing Pilot costume together for Balticon 44 this past weekend. I entered it in the Masquerade competition, and won a Workmanship award for Best Attention to Detail, plus the award for Best Re-Creation. Here are a few photos:

Because some folks asked for it, here's a close-up of the front of the belt:

Wearable, but not complete

Here's the current state of my B-Wing Pilot helmet, as I wore it (with my X-Wing Pilot flightsuit) at Arisia this past weekend. There are still bits to be added, I want to re-work the cloth cap, and of course I need to work on the rest of the outfit real soon now.

Loss, love, and holidays.

PZ Myers has some good thoughts over at his blog, Pharyngula.

I'm reminded, as I often am, of "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber:

"So I asked myself then," he said, "what's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold and loneliness? The human race is done. The Earth is done. Why not give up, I asked myself—and all of a sudden I got the answer."
...
"Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold," Pa was saying. "The earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers—you've seen pictures of those, but I can't describe how they feel—or the fire's glow. It makes everything else worth while. And that's as true for the last man as the first."
....
"So right then and there," Pa went on... "right then and there I told myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity ahead of us. I'd have children and teach them all I could. I'd get them to read books. I'd plan for the future, try to enlarge and seal the Nest. I'd do what I could to keep everything beautiful and growing. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars."

The complete text of the story may be found here.

I'm all about the B-Wing helmet lately...

It's been a busy month; the Renaissance Festival is over, the GCFCG Halloween Haunted House was a great success, and Star Wars In Concert came to Baltimore, where I took this picture, among others. This is a Y-Wing Pilot's helmet from Return of the Jedi, and its relevance to the B-Wing helmet is the leather trim around the bottom of the face opening.

The B-Wing helmet has similar trim around the sides of its face opening. I had some imitation leather material, but wasn't sure it would be quite right for this project. After seeing the Y-Wing helmet in person, I decided to use what I had. I stitched a length of it into piping -- a tube with a seam. In this case, a 5/8th-inch diameter tube with a 5/8th-inch seam. Here it is on my sewing machine. It's already all sewn up in this photo, it's just on the machine to show its size, and the zipper foot used to stitch right next to the padded tube part.

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But that's as far as I've got -- the piping isn't attached to the helmet yet. But I am proud of the paint job so far, so here's a photo of the helmet:

Some folks may recognize the flame logo.

Something different: helmet progress

The thought occurs that I haven't posted any progress pictures in a while. I'm to the point where I'm decorating the thing, even though I probably could have done just a little more smoothing and sanding. I'm quite proud of how this is turning out, and at the same time I want to make another, better one.

I'm done, here, with re-creating anything used in a movie. The paint job is my own unique art. Folks who know me may recognize the significance of the design in the right side of the blue stripe.

The subconscious is amazing

Last week, I drew a shape that I wanted to make with pentominoes. It was the right size -- 60 square units in area -- but I didn't know if the 12 pentomino shapes could really be arranged to fill it. I stayed up late one night trying to solve the puzzle (and late for me is pretty late indeed), but had no success. When I decided it was time for a nap, I reminded myself that my subconscious mind would keep working on the problem.

Last night, I pulled out the drawing again, and my little set of pentominoes. I picked the pieces up and laid them on the outline, one by one, and suddenly, there was the completed figure in front of me. It didn't take as long as it's taken me to write about it. I threw my head back and laughed, because I was so surprised. I wish someone had been there to see, but they wouldn't have believed that I didn't have the solution memorized in advance. Which, in a way, I suppose I did -- I'm convinced that some part of my brain really had been working it out all week.

But did I make a conscious decision to sit down and try the puzzle again -- or did that part of my brain decide that it was ready, with my conscious mind just along for the ride?

I have a costume piece in mind for this pentomino arrangement. You'll see it again, if all goes well.

You saw it here first!

Here's my brand-new, never-worn Tangram tabard that I've been planning for a couple of years:

I'm planning to wear it to the Renaissance Festival next weekend. This weekend is pirate-themed, and this tabard isn't all that piratey, really.