Antique shop crawl and costuming idea revisited

[matrixrefugee]

After Mass this afternoon, my dad decided to pop into a small block of antique shops that's a few doors down from the church we've been going to. And when I mean "antique shop" I mean the sort of combination thrift store/jumble store/shop that sells things which actually are antiques which are part of the landscape of many towns in New England. You might find anything from Chippendale chairs to Maxfield Parrish prints in tastefully distressed frames to a Regency-era armoire to a shelf full of paperbacks from 1990. On said shelf full of paperbacks from 1990, I found a three-volumes-in-one collection of Storm Constantine's "Wraethu", which has been tweaking my interest for some time. I'm hoping this trilogy doesn't run out of steam in the third volume the way her Grigori trilogy unfortunately did (not to say that the writing wasn't interesting, since I like her lush way of describing things, it's just that the plot of the third Grigori novel kind of lost its way).

Still looking for an anime/sci-fi convention to attend. I almost went to Arisia this weekend, but I found out about it a bit too late to afford it, plus I need to pay myself back for some Christmas shopping. There's always next year. I still don't think I'll be attending AnimeBoston this year since it's smack dab on the weekend of Easter and I have too much to do that weekend. But I think I've hit upon a very doable costume idea and it came to me as I was putting the final edits on the fic I posted last night: I might very well costume as Tatsumi. I've got the right hair color and the fringe over my eyes is parted about the same way, plus it shouldn't be too hard to hunt up a brown suit from one of the local thrift shops. I've even located a place in Portland, Oregon which sells sleeve garters, and I've been meaning to buy a pair for work anyway. The most costly part of the costume might be getting half-rimmed eyeglasses, but I really need to buy new glasses anyway, since my current metal-rimmed pair are falling apart and the finish has come off them. I was hunting for rimless glasses, but I discovered to my annoyance that they're rather pricey even if they've only got half the amount of metal in them as my current pair. I remember joking, "You have to be as rich as a certain crooked energy vampire to afford these damn things." One thing I won't be doing is the sapphire-blue contact lenses, but that's because I have this bad problem with not being able to get my hand close enough to my eyes to put them in without my eyes all but sealing themselves shut. I think it's because I had sooo many eye doctor appointments and sooo many drops put in my eyes during the first twelve years of my life that my eyes have decided "Okay, enough of that, nothing is coming near us ever again!"

Comments

[veilofveronica.livejournal.com]

Those antique shops sound very cool. I'm glad you had a nice weekend.♥

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

I remember one summer a few years ago, we were driving back from a day trip somewhere and we had to stop and let the engine cool down; the gas station where we'd stopped was next door to an old motel that had been converted into a whole little shopping mall of antique stores, so my dad decided to go over and take a look. The array of items for sale was dizzying, from antique chairs and tables and highboys and armoires in various states of preservation from well-preserved to shockingly battered, to bookcases overflowing with books from as far back as the late 1700s, to one place that was wall-to-wall with the chinoiserie and japonisme kitsch that was popular in the early 20th century, including a glass case full of brass Chinese Luck God figures which were mislabeled as Buddha figures, which had me facepalming.