Mother's Day

This post is written for various family members, so there's some repeat information.  You've been warned.

How I spent my Mother's Day

To begin with, about a month ago we decided that we would try to get into the Exhibit/Vendor's hall for Anime Central (ACen), a twenty-four-thousand+ person convention, which is next weekend. To get a sense of scale, the biggest event we've done prior to this is 1000-1200 people.  ACen is a convention for fans of Japanese animation (anime) and culture.

So, we've been working somewhat frantically to bolster inventory, especially since we've convinced ourselves we're not going to lose our shirts, and moved on to worrying that we're going to run out of inventory.

Last night I decided the dogs, Pippin in particular, could benefit from spending a night in their crates, so they don't forget how to behave.

At about 5:00 this morning Pippin insisted that he really really needed out of his crate, so Ron got up and opened the door. On his way outside he detoured to pounce on me. He weighs 40+ pounds. 

For breakfast we had waffles. Robin started the batter last night, finished it this morning (yeast-raised batter, sits on the counter all night, we have a new waffle recipe), and Ron cooked. 

After breakfast I started sewing swivels onto tails (mostly fox, one coyote). Like this one (silver fox):

Yes, real tails. Why? Because customers buy them. They clip them onto their belt loop in back, or whatever, and have a tail. Who am I to argue with people wanting to pay me money for tails?

Ron decided to take me out to lunch, as I've been working on pouches. A lot of pouches. Here's a bin of, um, 36 that we've finished in the last few weeks:

Under that layer of soft ones in top is another layer.

We started out going to Lal Qila, an Indian/Afghan restaurant, but they were too busy, so we went to Siri Thai, which is, as you might guess, a Thai restaurant.

After lunch we hit the grocery store for dinner food. We're having frozen pizza. We need to try out our new convection oven, which we're doing by putting extra toppings on a frozen pizza. I was thinking of making chicken fricassee/chicken & dumplings, but we had a big lunch, so I'll make that tomorrow.

At the grocery store we also got a Rubbermaid container to hold our portable battery-operated receipt printer, spare paper rolls, spare battery and battery charger for the printer, wireless hot spot, and power cords. I was looking at fancier (Pelican) cases, but Ron confirmed that they were overkill. I'm not paying $200 for electricity at ACen, so the printer, hot spot, and uninterruptable power source/battery power supply need to come home every night to be re-charged, so having a square-ish container for the smaller stuff makes it easier to transport, and keep track of between events.

Then we stopped at Eurofresh, another grocery store with more interesting things than Jewel. Came home, and finished the tails. Yay! tails done! That's swivels sewn on 10 today, 2 yesterday, and a repair done to the one I posted the picture of above. 

I'm down to 4 pouches to finish before setup for ACen starts at noon on Thursday.  Here's the parts for one of them:

The part on the right is the hard, molded front. The part on the left is the back/flap piece. The dees are so that it can be worn as a sporran. The edge of the flap has already been laced. Part of the latch is hiding behind the front of the flap. To finish the pouch I'll lace the front onto the back.  

But not today. I'm done for today.