Derby Derby Derby...

Lots going on with derby right now. I think I will start with the most amusing little tidbit...

I had a "you know me so well" moment with Adam last Sunday. Because the weather was awesome, and league endurance was expected to be crowded- we had an outdoor skate. It was soooo much fun. Our coach, Speedbump, took us on an AWESOME trip through some of the bike paths in the Sellwood area of Portland. It was SO much fun. When I got back home, all scraped up, Adam was not surprised. "Did you try to jump over the train tracks?" he asked, before I had a chance to explain what happened. I HAD tried to jump the train tracks. How did he know?

I am bummed out because I can't skate much right now. Adams job is taking him out of town and so I am taking care of the baby Autumn during the week when I would otherwise be skating. It sucks. There was game last week and there is another tomorrow and i am a little burned out.

There IS one bout that I am REALLY ecited for this week... DUKE CITY DERBY is having THIER FIRST EVER bout at the Santa Ana Star Casino! If you did not know, we used to skate in Midnight Rodeo-pictured on the left- and it was really kind of a death trap. I mean, there were other problems, like that the demensions being wrong, and the stuff in the middle making it hard to see... but the really big problem was that it was very dangerous, and I am really surprised that there were not more injuries. It is a little sad. I mean, there is something really bad ass about playing rollerderby in a bar that is surrounded with obstacles that could possibly cause major damage, but it is nice that DCD will be playing in a legitimate venue, with regular track demensions. Plus as bad ass as it IS to play in a venue that seriously hardcore, no one really wants to get impailed on a death pole or see anyone else (even thier biggest rival) ripped open on a metal grate. It is also AWESOME because now DCD can invite other leagues to play them... or should I say us...?

Which brings us to my absolute favorite bit of derby news... At the end of next moth I am going to be back in burque and playing for DCD again!

Baby Autumn is ADORABLE

I have not put up any baby pics in a while so I thought I would share :)

Isn't she just adorable?

Custom Dress

I bid on a custom order on etsy and won. This is the dress I am making. It should be REALLY pretty. It is going to be made of Silk Dupioni with lace and ribbon findings. Pretty pretty pretty.

Gloves and Catsuits

Sooo... I have decided that I want to make a pair of kind of gothy vinyl gloves. I am not sure why... I just really wanna. I have a ton of vinyl fabric that a guy gave me. I have already made parts of Halloween costumes with it, and a sweet roller derby skirt for back when I was a doomsdame... you know, before I had a baby and got FAT. I would totally love another skirt, or some sweet vinyl pants but I will wait to make that sort of thing until I lose some more of this baby fat.

I want to make something like this white pair, only in black vinyl, with lace lining the ruffled top part. I would possibly also add a heart or something cute to the top of the hand. The pretty gloves pictured here are from The Victorian Trading Company. Adam and I actually get thier catologue and they have lots of fun stuff, suitable for the Polite Ladies Rollerderby Society, as well as some very cool steampunk accessories. http://www.victorian-gifts.com/index.html

I also think I want to use some of it to make victorian style bolero. Like this one, which is available-just by chance- on etsy. Of course again it would be black vinyl and have probably white lace lining. Mostly because I have a lot of white lace fabric. Though, if I had some red plaid I think that lining it in that would look pretty awesome. Oh, and that shrug is from this store: http://bonzie.etsy.com

Anyway, the bolero is no probley. Easy easy... But I am a bit intimidated by the gloves! I have never made gloves and I am very tempted to buy a comercial pattern... but I am enough of a design snob that I think I should be able to draft a pettern myself... but then there's the thumb. Fucking opposable thumbs. I have no idea how to draft a thumb. I know it will be kind of like drafting sleeve patterns, but I cant drape anything on to my thumb to make sure the fit is right... and how to I slope the curve??? Not only that, but there are surprisingly few resources out there that show you how to make gloves and glove patterns. I did find a pretty good resource. There is a dude that is a catsuit enthusiest. I don't mean that he likes hot women in catsuits, he likes making and wearing catsuits. I have not really figured out his facination. A few of his suits are for cycling, and one of them appears to be a superhero costume, but several of them are Zentai suits. That means they are suits that cover the entire body. I had never heard of Zentai before yesterday so I looked it up. It appears to be both a performance art movement and a strange fetish. I don't know which one the guy at stretchy.org uses his catsuits for, but I am seriously thankful for his efforts because between his youtube tutorial and his several versions of glove pattern drafting instructions I think I may have gained the confidence to try making my first pair of gloves.

Yay for catsuits.

Derby LOVE

I love this cute pendant in polyfusia's store! Click on the picture to go directly to her listing, and you can check out her entire store here:

http://pollyfusia.etsy.com

The Vag(ina) Assist Mastered

VAG ASSIST!
Current mood:Totally at Peace

SO ... you have to watch carefully, and it is near the end but this breeders music video TOTALLY HAS AN EFFECTIVE VAG. ASSIST! The music vid's ok too.

http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/player/27559721

I am sure it is not the first, just the first that I have SEEN that didn't result in a short girls face colliding with a tall girls ass. Back with DCD we tried these all the time.

SO, all is right with the world today.

In other news I am intent on making a pair of admittedly hideous vinyl fitted gloves. Kind of goth-y burlesque-y. I don't even know why. I don't really think I will ever wear them, I just really WANT to make them... anyway, if anyone has any glove sewing tips that they want to share, lemme know.

♥XoXo ♥
Sultry Confinement

Acrylic and Steel PREVIEW

I have several Items that have not made it on to our etsy page yet because I have not edited the pictures or uploaded the items, SO here is a preview:



This is a brooch. It actually is not finished yet, I have not decided what to back it to. I will probably be sending this one to my mom for her birthday, but i am afraid that she won't wear it, and since I LOVE IT I may just decide to keep it for myself. Either way I intend to make more of them to put up in our store.







Here is one of four pairs of AMAZING and adorable arm warmers I have made recently. Interestingly enough, these are my least favorite of them all. Again, I am going to keep at least one pair of them. I have not decided which ones I want, but I knew these ones would be going up on etsy so I took this picture.


This is not the last thing planned for the near future, but I'll save the rest for another day. What is this??? This is an ACEO or artists trading card. I am working on a series of roller girl ACEO's. So far I have four of them and they are not modeled after any specific skaters, though I would LOVE to do a series specifically of skaters I know, admire, etc. I just am afraid to ask. I don't know why I am such a dweeb sometimes. Most skaters would probably be flatterd that I want to make a trading card of them.



So keep checking out our store www.acrylicandsteel.etsy.com

Thoughts.

I have a lot to do for etsy. I have a lot that I want to do in general, and here I am , not doing it . Sitting on my butt in front of my computer not doing any of it, except of course, writing a blog. That was on my list of things to do.

I am not sure if I am lazy or depressed. I can’t usually tell the difference, I must admit. Maybe not REALLY depressed, just glum. I know now that I am one of those people that just NEEDS sunshine. If I had not moved here I never would have known. The sun came out briefly today, but now it is gray and cold again.

Adam left town today. He is working somewhere doing something for some biz. He is a wildlife biologist and during the spring that usually means MIA. Admittedly I feel lucky this year. So far this is his first trip out of town. It is going to cause problems for my Derby schedule, but I am abstaining from the draft so it is not that big of a deal if my attendance suffers. The only real problem with that is that I love skating, it makes me happy.

Ahhh, and derby. I miss PLAYING roller derby, but am SO thankful to be involved at the level that I am. So why am I abstaining from the draft? Well, at this time, it looks like moving away from Portland is becoming more and more likely. The draft is intense and there are lots of girls that deserve to be drafted. If I decided to participate and happened to be one of the lucky few who got drafted, I would feel much guiltier about moving. I don’t want a team to waste their time with me, and then move away. I also don’t want to take a highly coveted draft slot from anyone else who will be here for a long time. I am not going to drop off the fresh meat team because I love getting to skate as much as I do and on the chance that we decide not to move I don’t want to lose the postpartum derby progress that I have made. Besides, if we stick around I don’t want to lose my slot on the fresh meat team.

SO, Tonight is fresh meat tryouts. I am thinking about going to watch. I want to, but it seems silly to drive out there just to watch, plus, they may not appreciate having Autumn on the sidelines. I also have all these things I want to do, but that is not an excuse because so far today I have not done them. Either way I will be rooting for Frisky Sour, Knotty La Rue, and hot mamma Stormy Monday.

Oh, and my new derby name is Sultry Confinement, Thanks to permission from Sally Terry Confinement in Colorado.

What else? I am excited to be doing a custom order on etsy. I will be making a dress. I need to get some exercise today. I am sick so I skipped Sunday practice, that and it was Easter. That means it has been two days since I have done anything seriously active and my body can feel it. I also started playing with youtube. I wish I knew how to edit video, but I have put up a few awesome baby Autumn videos.

I could go on, but I know that most people have probably already lost interest, and I should have really broken this into multiple entries. Cheers to everyone who made it to the end of this blog! You are surly less ADD than I am.

You Hit Like A Girl (roller derby theme)



Lets Get Hammered (hand forged theme)

A Doom by Any Other Name Would Smell as Rank

I have never liked my skate name. I liked it enough when I registered it, and I thought it was kind of cute, but I have always felt kind of silly and stupid repeating it out loud to anyone who asks what my skate name is. Since I transferred to Rose City this year after Autumn was born it seems like a good chance to reinvent my skate persona with a new name. I get to register a new name sometime this month, so I thought I would share all of my stupid names, and how I ended up with one I hate.

In October of 2005 I saw my first roller derby bout. It was Duke City’s Big House Brawlers v/s Dead Mans Curves. Never heard of them? That is because those teams only played two games. I found out about it after finding an old friend on myspace. She had a weird but hilarious name as her display name, Dahmernatrix, which I learned was a cool Roller Derby alias. I am pretty sure there are a lot of fun things I would have never known about if it weren’t for her, including roller derby. That first bout would seem very archaic by today’s standards. There were tons of egregious fouls, and I think there were three play fights. I was never an athletic person, but when I saw bad ass girls in cute outfits on skates beating each other up, I was in LOVE. It was bold and sexy, and just what I needed at that point in my life. I started the very next day.

I was ready to be drafted by the second Big House Brawlers V/S Dead Mans Curves game and had come up with a name that I really loved for the Big House Brawlers, which is still my favorite skate name and is the one I plan to try to register. I was advised not to publish the name all over the internet until I can try to register it because someone else might snatch it up. I will say that about three months before I started with RCR someone registered a name that is similar enough that I may have to ask permission to have the one that I want. I ended up being drafted to Dead Mans Curves, so I went with Whip Lass instead.

At that time it was not uncommon for people to have a different name for every team they were on. When Duke City’s Munecas Muertas played their first travel game against Sin City’s Neanderdolls I got to join them, and went with Cannon Eyes (that open and close) as my Munecas name for that first inter-league bout, and kept it through our first Dust Devil Tourny. That name was stupid. There isn’t much else to say about that name. I thought it was clever then, but I don’t know why. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If the name alone was not bad enough, I also spelled it Canon Eyes, changing the meaning entirely and making me look like a complete tard.

When our first real season started (the two BHB v/s DMC games were an exhibition season) we had more skaters and more time, so we restructured our teams. I became a DoomsDame. Not that it really needs to be said, but I fucking LOVED my team. They were amazing. My team mates were dedicated, hard working, and they totally minimized the drama. The Hobots were another team, which I think was Dahmer and R2 BeatU’s brain child. Awesome, right? Right. The third team was the Derby Intelligence Agency, who ended up with an amazingly large percentage of the prettiest girls on the league. To go with my teams post apocalyptic theme I went with Agent Orange Crush, but didn’t check the roster before trying to register it and it was rejected. I didn’t have much time to pick a new name and at the time I thought Doom Dee Doom was cute, and it was ok with my teams theme, so I went by that for my remaining time with Duke City. It never really grew on me, and I think I am one of the few roller girls who introduce myself as my regular name almost always.

Here are a few of my favorite names that skaters have already taken:

Sara Problem (Seattle)

Aja Consent (Tucson, she had another Saddle Tramps name… Hoot’n Annie?) This name actually appears to be available?

Molotov Cocktease (duke city’s founder)

Suzy Homewrecker (AZ renegades)

Sparkle Ninja (Minnesota?)

Of course those are just a few.

If I were skating for the emerging Salem, Or league, it wouldn’t be a problem. I read yesterday that they have decided to forgo the “often raunchy” roller derby handles. What a shame!

I can’t wait until I get to submit the name I should have registered in the first place, of course this time I have a list of (top secret) alternates if it is rejected. If all else fails I can always skate as Jenny Tullwarts. Changing my name won’t change much, having a baby already changed enough. It won’t change that I hit hard, or that I skate as much as I possibly can and love trying new and creative drills and techniques (bring on the vag. assists)- and it is VERY UNLIKELY that it will change that I don’t wash my pads.