Vendor Updates

I've been working on updating and scripting older items like a few of my jewelry sets or masks like Le Fleur. I was sitting on them, tucking them away into my inventory so that I could unveil them grandly in my new store on my rebuilt sim, but I realized that wasn't a good enough reason to delay such convenience. I'm also replacing older vendor scripts with a newer update from Miriel which passes folders, and eliminates the need for boxes as well as other handy features.

I've been consolidating fatpacks and deleting old color versions in my inventory, and good grief! Such progress in lowering my count, I must have deleted thousands of versions of my various items. It's also been a great chance to walk down memory lane and review pieces that I still feel good about, or pieces I can't stand looking at and wish to remove from the grid entirely.

I'm trying very hard not to remove or retire anything well-loved that I haven't remade already, which is why everything is still out. I do plan on doing a "Spring Cleaning" sale, which is starting to become an annual thing!

Work on the sim is still going slow but steady, the whole hat spree thing with the top hats and fedoras etc kept me busy and distracted, but it was a welcome break. I'm back to working and fiddling with my model, figuring out the layout for the residential towers and tweaking my textures.

This is a picture looking up at what will be the store, and the entrance to the Arab market. If you want to swing by the SW of Carnivale to check it out, you're welcome to :)

Fedoras!

The People cry out for fedora-ness, and who am I to argue with you guys? It certainly was a slightly different endeavor, and I had no idea when I started just how much a tiny crimp in a brim could add or subtract so much character. I actually slaved over these, giving them the proper sweep, swagger, fit, character and distinction. My fiance can attest, he says he "now knows the meaning of a perfectionist" because of the way I treated these hats!

So here are the fruits of my labor.


Sinatra was famous for wearing a "stingy brim" straw fedora set slightly back on his head, but I took a bit of liberty because I love felt... and didn't want to do a whole new set of straw textures for this. An honest to goodness Panama hat and a porkpie still might be in the works, but don't hold your breath (or hold me to it...).

One of the most famous and classic images that make me instantly think of a fedora, is Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. I only saw the film once, I'm not a big fan of romantic dramas, but I certainly had the image of him smoking a cigarette in a trenchcoat and a swanky hat full of savoir faire. But the reason for the brain stickiness was mostly the swanky hat... I can't resist a good costume accessory! But even Humphrey Bogart is not as famous or notorious or as well known for fedora-wearing as...

Indiana Jones! Man, this one was a challenge. The problem with having a hat so well known and so iconic is having to get it exactly right. But I feel I finally eliminated just the right kinks and flaws to make it really his. In any other color though? It's a versatile hat for the rough and tumble type in a gritty bar or maybe the erudite fashionista in New York. Speaking of...

From my childhood, not sure I'd even call this a fedora, but I would certainly call it a floppy hat full of win. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? used to be one of my favorite shows as a kid. I would rush home to watch it and then yell at the kids who didn't know where Madagascar was. And I think the real reason everyone wanted to track her down was to ask her about fashion tips, 'cause that lady had style. I don't know how she could hide from people so thoroughly while wearing a bright red fabulous hat and trenchcoat, but I guess that's just how awesome she was. Obviously you're not limited to red, I just couldn't resist it for the picture!

Last but not least, I was running out of fedora icons and I wanted to have the more modern, trendy short brimmed fedora honored in my collection. "Timberlake" didn't seem like a very appetizing option, so after googling a bit I found that Vince Lombardi, the legendary American football coach was never seen without one just like this. Perfect! I hope I'm not tarnishing his memory by making it bright blue and wearing it with a purple mack.

All of these delicious and delightful pieces of millinery are available at my store now for 175L (due to their serious blows to my sanity through not behaving properly when I wanted them to just look done already)

Disaster Relief

I was able to get in touch with SLEMA (Second Life Emergency Management Agency), and although it took all day, we managed to restore the original sea level and evict the sea born "shoppers" from the store. Now, I need to clean up the kelp and seaweed from the floors and wring out the drapes and sweep up the drift wood. But I have to say I was starting to get really attached to our piscean visitors. But being around them for so long... I feel changed some how. Like I'll never be the same, even though things have gone back to normal. I wonder why that is?....

Ah well, I guess we'll never know.



(the fins are texture change on touch, and available through the Masqueraderie group notices :)

An Inconvenient Truth

Oh god I can't believe it!

The Linden Sea rose twenty meters in the past couple of days, some sort of heat wave melted almost all of the glaciers on Cloudmont! The Snowland region is now the Mudland region! Mainland Warming is really happening, I didn't believe it for myself but...


Now it's too late!!

My sim is completely flooded, this is not just a spring melt, it's a whole flood. And I don't even have insurance out on it. The raise in the sea level brought with it a whole menagerie of animals to add to the damage, I don't have any idea where to start cleaning up.

I can't believe it... that crazy old notecard really might have been on to something.

The flipsing swish ones fly from below
to rise on the harlequin day
to answer the calls of those who came before
they will have their day in the halls of stone

The flipsing swish ones must be the new denizens of my store.

And the "harlequin day" must be a reference to today, April Fool's day. I bet the penguins from last year would love this place now, but they must be so sad that their arctic home is now a mudpit. It looks like they'll "have their day in the halls of stone" until the water level lowers or I can start draining the place. At least the good news is Gerald the local giant sea turtle is giving free rides at his leisure.

Aschen Memory gets an informal tour of the store

Does anyone know the phone number of FEMA?

Breach the Peace

On January 15th, 1797, a man named John Hetherington was arrested and brought before the court in London for disturbing the peace. He had constructed and designed something of devious intention, something that caused women to faint, dogs to yelp and a man to be trampled by an awe-struck mob.


This malevolent creation, which was "calculated to frighten timid people" was actually quite benign. And stylish!

This haberdasher had designed the first top hat. Why it caused such a ruckus? I can't imagine, I just blame the lack of TV and very tight corsetry. But, when he wore it out in public, it got him arrested! I have to wonder what they would think of drag queens. Thankfully we live in more jaded times, where the only crowd you're likely to draw wearing this will be folks wondering where you got it.

Although the first top hats were silk and lustrous, I have to say I love the warmth and character of a wool felt hat. It has a certain richness and the possibility for many colors, which is what I've happily obliged with. It has the same variety of hat bands and felt colors as the bowler, and flexibility to be quite modern or traditional depending on your outfit needs of the day.


These are all quite simple because I felt I wanted a variety of shapes, and then move on to more complex and creative millinery using these as a base. This one especially I'd love to make into an English riding hat, with a nice scarf or a veil. Speaking of having fun with the designs, I decided to do a really fun, more modern one...


Named after Lewis Carrol, I almost called this the Mad Hatter but I definitely have bigger and wilder plans for that hat. Besides, it wouldn't be for the Mad Hatter if he didn't have his price tag left on :)~

I have grand plans for these hats, now I just hope I get around to manifesting them!

These lovely scripted hats are now available at the store for 150L each!

I recently went back to the mainland and found that it was much warmer in the Snowland region of Sansara. Could it be possible that global warming is effecting the virtual world too? What am I saying, it's probably just spring! My island just thawed and I'm probably just feeling the contrast from the cold winter and all my snow covered pines, and the green sprouts of the spring weather.



But I do suggest avoiding going down to the garden walk, and wearing your waders if you plan to go fishing... it seems the bottom area has flooded. It's probably just all that melting snow.

Ceci N'est Pas Un Chapeau

Goodness, what's this, a release?

Haha yes, I can only keep up the work on my sim for so long before my attention needs to wander to other things. The St Patty's Paddy's Day freebie got me majorly going on a bunch of gentleman's hattage, and after I felt so clever with how I made the top hat, I decided to make a hat I've been asked to do for ages.

A bowler hat has a lot of flexibility. It can be stiff and stodgy or it can be evocative of gangsters and violin cases. Or it get be quirky and funky or whatever you need it to be.


Anyone not familiar with Rene Magritte probably won't get this reference, or the title of this entry. But the whimsy of it all was irresistable to me. This vendor picture is a little homage to one of his most iconic paintings, The Son of Man. In fact, since the apple is merely a retextured version of Qarl's full perm apple, it's included with the bowler :)~

Both of these are scripted to change texture to thirty different hat bands and twelve different felt colors. There are three different band patterns to choose from (solids, checkers and vertical stripes), with nine colors for each of the patterns and twelve colors of solid bands. Hopefully that's enough for all you crazy individualists out there!

Sadly, there's an issue that I'm aware of with the pattern bands. Due to the way the texture has been made, with lots of vertical stripes making up the ribbon, Second Life has some trouble rendering those patterns properly without an option called "Anisotropic Filtering" enabled. I went through quite a few uploads and shaking my fists and ripping my hair out trying to figure out what was going wrong and ways to counter it, and I realized I couldn't fix it for everyone without sacrificing the look and the feel of it. I'm sorry if it turns out your computer can't handle it, but there are still twelve solid bands that look just fine to everyone and are just as snazzy, which is why I forgave myself for letting it go. Anisotropic filtering can be accessed through Preferences->Graphics->Hardware Settings.

These hats are just 115L each and available at the main store now :)

Ancient Prophecies?

I was cleaning out my inventory, like you do, and I was going way deeper than I normally do, into all those dark and scary folders full of stuff I haven't seen in years. My inventory is somewhere around 38k items, so cutting that number down has been a real long-term project (down from my high of 56k sometime last year).

I found this really weird notecard though, hidden in the depths of some of my old projects. It's scribbled in some arcane riddle thing and I can barely understand it. Here, maybe you guys can help me figure out what it says:

The flipsing swish ones fly from below
to rise on the harlequin day
to answer the calls of those who came before
they will have their day in the halls of stone

It seems so strange that I found this, it's almost like a prophecy. I was marked as the notecard's creator yet I don't ever remember writing this. My guess is I was probably sleep deprived and a little drunk whenever I wrote it, and it probably is nothing.

Still, I thought I'd share it with you.

Happy St Patty's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Or should I say, happy great green booze up day! I hope your neighbors come home quietly tonight, or at least that you're so soused they don't wake you up.



I always give a top hat on St. Patty's day, or at least I have for two years straight and I wanted to keep up the tradition. However, when I looked at what my options were for giving a freebie I realized that I could either do another version of a hat that is now almost two years old (ancient!) or I could make an entirely new top hat with which I can remake my other top hats and maybe even make new designs with (homg, actually making a new design rather than chasing my own tail 'round and 'round remakes? be still my beating heart). So rather than spending the usual hour or so on a freebie, I spent the whole day... 'cause I love you all just that much. Yes, that's the one and only reason.

I'm feeling very clever and full of myself, but in this picture I just look a bit drunk. Who am I to argue with a stereotype? But the reason for my feeling clever is that I solved some problems that had been like speed bumps (that were the reasons I had been happy with a normal prim hat selection for so long!) and happily bounced over them and didn't even drop a muffler.

But anyway, please enjoy, and make sure if you're not in Masqueraderie and you'd like a copy, to make sure you nab it out of the notices before the 14 days are up :)

I need to just post despite having no pictures or evidences of my activities. So what if some people on the fashion feed need to scroll down past this! I have people who care about my work to update!


Work on the sim is going slow and steady, I've started working on textures and going into some of the detail work. It's been scaled up too, so that a Tiny avatar can now rampage comfortably. To tell the truth, there hasn't been much else I've been working on aside from decorations and a few side projects. But, anything I make I'm going to save for the sim opening so there will be more silence and more boring and fruitless refreshes upon this humble blog. There might be a release or two but don't get your hopes up.

If you're looking for something to occupy yourself where you would normally be reading something or looking at pretty pictures, check out this short film. If you haven't seen it, it feels eerily like the future of SL.