Axe Sheath pt 1

At the end of this month is a very important date. The Teacher’s wedding.  Because of certain circumstances I will be one of the groomsmen (which I’m quite happy about). The theme is sort of a fantasy/medieval styled thing and so many of the groomsmen will be wearing a sword or other weapon as well.

Personally, I don’t have any medieval style swords, but I do have a neat looking axe that I purchased at the Michigan Renaissance Festival.

(Forgive the poor quality picture, I’ll replace it later)

It’s beautiful and would be perfect! Except that it’s sharp and the frog I have places it uncomfortably close (and the bottom part (not pictured) scraped up my ankle pretty bad). So, Solution? Make a sheath of course! I grabbed some tools and some leather off of amazon and planned it out with my brother!

After the leather finally arrived I still wasn’t quite sure but now I’m in something of a time crunch so i need to get everything cut out so I can ship the axe down to The Teacher in time for the wedding!  My brother recently had his own wedding a few days ago so he won’t be able to help for this part of it however he did let me know I could use some of his old sewing supplies.  So I dug into that and gathered all the tools I figured I could use!

Here are all of the tools I’m planning to use, some mine some his. The ruler, pencil, awl, rotary cutter, stitching spacer, and needles are mine. Whereas the L-Square, big scissors, and soapstone are my bro’s. I haven’t used all of these tools yet, and I may add more but this is the list right now haha.

So I measured out the designs and started by cutting out a square that was around half an inch bigger than what I needed. Then I traced the shape of the blade onto the leather with the soapstone.  Once I had that I guestimated about an additional centimeter and drew freehanded the cutting lines. I checked it on the axe and started cutting!

Curves with the rotary cutter aren’t as easy as I’d hoped, but they’re a lot easier than using a box cutter like I did when I made my wallet. It didn’t seem to stretch out the leather at all and with a careful hand I ended up with my first piece ready!

As you can see, I also added an additional part for the axe to cut into so it won’t cut through my stitches later on!

I took this cut out, flipped it over and traced it to get the second piece! Which was a little tougher to cut out, and i’m pretty sure it’s nto completely even as of yet but it was starting to get dark so I wanted to get another rough part done before I tried to do any fine work. It’s much easier to see things under natural light than the kitchen light so after I finished the first part for the second bit of my axe I called it a night.

So next time I just have to fine tune some of the parts and make the final cutout for the second bit!  I still have some work to do with making a cover for the bottom weight but I feel pretty accomplished! After that I just have to figure out if I’m going to stitch it up with fake sinew, or waxed thread!

I’ve never used either so i’m not sure what to pick…

So if you’ve got any insights please comment below! Have you ever had a project to make something like this? Medieval styling or otherwise? Feel free to post any other questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!

So it’s been a while!

I guess what ends up happening is that i don’t do a lot bc of work or other stuff and so I don’t have a lot to document or mention. But I’m in socal nowadays so i’m going to try and change that.

Right now I only work on weekend nights so I have all week to work on stuff. In fact this month I’ve got a project with a deadline so hopefully I’ll be able to document that nicely and make a post about it!

Main updates being that I moved, (Drove cross-country with pops) towed all my shit in a small trailer lol. And right now I’m working on finding an apartment for next month so i can move in with The Translator and The Game Designer. But I may be staying with my bro for a bit longer not sure yet. Got some projects planned and yeah. Some big projects lol.

I’m excited to be back, I’ve updated my about page and added a new page so yall have some reference for the titles of folks i’ve been throwing around.

I’ve lost a bunch of weight also! (mostly from not being able to afford food but i’ve got a good job now so it’s no problem) So next up is working on being healthier and legitimately stronger. Hoping to start surfing in the next couple months and generally being more active. But first is wedding season, I’m in the wedding party in two weddings THIS MONTH! First of all is my brother. He asked me to be his best man and that happens Next week!!  Then later this month is The Teacher, she asked me to be a groomsmen (Her fiance is from europe and doesn’t have a ton of dude friends to fill out his side so she’s lending hers lol).

Then in June is moving month! I have to have a place ready and then I can move the girls into it. Then once they’ve got jobs squared away they can pitch in with everything. So this month I’m trying to get as much overtime as possible!

Wish me luck and hopefully I’ll have at least 1 more post for you before the month is out!!

Almost a Year of Updates!!

Holy shit you guys, so much has happened since I last wrote I’ll try to quickly update y’all here.

In April The Translator (my girlfriend) came up and visited me for a week so I took the week off of work. It was fantastic, we went all over the place and saw an exhibit on Samurai at the DIA. We also marathoned all of the avengers movies and Agents of Shield before seeing Winter Soldier in theaters The Projectionist (Brother #3) was able to get us in for free haha. Naturally I was sad when she left but we had a great time.

May I tried to do some pallet projects but holy shit I do not have the tools for that. All I had was a few hammers and a mini crowbar. It took me an hour to remove 2 planks. Yeah not gonna happen. So eventually those got tossed, maybe someday when I have better tools. (like a fullsized crowbar or better yet a pallet-pal )  yeah yeah ‘shoddy workman blames his tools’ but man this shit isn’t gonna fly lol I need a better way.

June was pretty uneventful as far as I remember, I’d wanted to go camping during the summer but suffice to say it just plain didn’t happen.  Pops kinda doesn’t know where his camping stuff is and well, life gets a little hectic haha.  I was looking for an apartment but the only one in the right price range that wasn’t a complete dump was full so :T

July I went out to california to visit my family! There were good parts (like my mom buying me men’s clothing!!!) and bad parts (like having to exit my sister’s car at a stoplight because she was yelling at me so much) but overall it was good I think.  I got to hang out with my friends, go to the pier and beach, play with my niece, and I even got to go see The Translator again. We met up at Little Tokyo and it was a great time.

August was busy busy! Early in August The Artist and I went to Detroit’s Pagan Pride! It was super cool, we both got Tarot Readings (She was fantastic) it was hilarious because she would say something so spot on and The Artist and I would just look at each other and try not to laugh. I also finally picked up a Thor’s Hammer pendant for regular wear and another set of runes ahaha. It’s a problem. In any case The Artist had a great time as well and is slowly getting more interested in these kinds of things.   Towards the end of the month I took some vacation time and went down to Georgia to visit one of my best friends The Teacher. We also met up with a bunch of internet friends from a forum we were both on, unfortunately the forum died shortly before the visit. We also were going to DragonCon but I got sick :T  by the time the Convention rolled around I was super sick and couldn’t go.  Friends brought me back some souvenirs though so honestly my wallet was more upset about it than my heart haha.  I also discovered that I am absolutely in LOVE with Georgia.  The Teacher had mentioned before that I should move down there (Honestly idk if she was mostly joking or not) but after that visit I decided fuckyeah.

Now, I’d been considering moving for at least a few weeks before this but I HAVE SO MANY OPTIONS.  California, Wisconsin, Georgia or Japan if I was going to move, OR staying in Michigan.  Well, that’s too many options for a flake such as myself so I consulted my good friend The Witch. She did a massive Tarot reading for me that basically said I’d be cool anywhere except Cali (which honestly isn’t surprising at all).  But she said that if this were a reading done for her. She would absolutely pick Georgia.  I was still a little bit of a flake though until The Translator also got a reading and hers sounded like anywhere would be kinda rough. Except Georgia!  And then after going and having such a great time (Despite getting a terrible cold) IT WAS DECIDED!

September I was back in Michigan and ready to go to the Renaissance Festival! I met up with The Artist and her Fiance (who is also an artist) for the last weekend of the Michigan RenFest! We introduced her Fiance to Korean BBQ (which everyone loved) and then I did my first long driving excursion out to the Ren Fest on saturday!  We got only a little lost but The Artist said that my driving is getting better haha.  We had a great time and spent entirely too much money hahaha. I bought a $200 Axe and frog to carry it with.  Actually I also bought a small frog call too though come to think of it I don’t know where that is at… In any case it was a lot of fun and I’ll have to put some pictures up of that here at some point.  Also the truck I had been driving had become officially mine!  Pops and step-mom gave it to me 8D although since i plan to drive down to Georgia I knew I’d need a new one that could handle the drive.

October was pretty cool.  The weather started getting colder and since the truck was mine I felt more comfortable about using it all the time. The month itself was pretty uneventful but the weekend before halloween The Artist and her Fiance came up to my house and we were going to watch scary movies and go to a haunted house and everything.  So we went out on Saturday, introduced the Artist’s fiance to the BEST sushi. I mean, I lived in Southern California for like 3 years and this was THE BEST sushi I’ve ever eaten.  It’s this little hole in the wall sandwich place in downtown Mount Clemens, MI called Chantels Jailhouse Deli. Honestly I’ve only ever had their sushi but haha, it is delicious.  After that we walked around downtown there and there were the remnants of a little halloween festival going on. Kids were dressed up and trick or treating at the shops it was super cute.

Then we went to Gibraltar, for those who haven’t been it’s sort of like a giant fleamarket but all indoors.  Every so often they have special events such as gun and knife show, baseball cards, etc.  This weekend it happened to be the holistic Health Festival which was filled with stone vendors. It was a ton of fun and we even got Aura Chakra reports done which were really accurate and really interesting!  You put your hand on a thing where it takes your biometrics and the computer prints out a report and they talk to you about your aura and chakras and what it means and all that it was super cool.  One of the guys looks at it and comes up to me and is all “Looks like you’ve probably got a sore throat.”  and holy shit though haha I was complaining about it earlier that day.  So then we went out to go to the haunted house and… all three of us chickened out haha.  Since they were getting kinda worked up about it inside, I got kinda worked up about it too, and when The Artist and I turned to her fiance for  a final yes or no he was just kind of “Well, I’m not really feelin it.”  and it was kind of a big relief so we all went back to my house and watched the Conjuring instead lolol.

The next weekend for Halloween I got to drive down to The Artist’s house and stay there for the weekend! It was a LOT of fun and since she recently got kittens there was much cuddling haha. Actually it was because of the kittens that I went over there instead of having them come to my house for a 2nd weekend in a row, so they wouldn’t have to leave the kittens alone again. And also because I wanted to see them haha.  They had an extra bed they set up for me and we got to hang and talk a lot and drink a lot, it was a great time haha.

Unfortunately when I was driving back home it felt like the truck was really low compared to normal… and so on monday we took my truck in to the mechanic. All 4 springs/couplings were either cracked, broken, or gone!  That, paired with the muffler I needed to fix, and the transmission that was no good… well… it would have been a hefty bill.  I’m still looking for a car but it’s kind of rough. I only know some vague things that I’m looking for, and despite offering help once  my pops hasn’t really come through on that.  I don’t even know what budget I should aim for what kind of loan to get from the bank and ugh it’s a mess really.

So November has been full of that kind of stress. Thanksgiving wasn’t so bad as I got to see my grandmother and some relatives on my dad’s side.  Everyone liked my haircut that I was so nervous about haha.  I finally got a more masculine haircut so I was scared that they would make a big deal about it. But everyone just said it was cute on me so I’m really happy about that.  And that’s all that really happened last month.

And so we’ll see what happens in December!

I’ve got some other little projects in the works that I’ll hopefully get posts out about soon haha.

Is it spring yet?!

Well, judging by the good 2feet of snow on the grass and the large mountains taking up several spaces in just about every parking lot, decidedly not so. But that’s not keeping me from getting the springtime garden-jitters.  I’m planning to move out of my pop’s house into an apartment in the middle of summer pretty much so at that point I’ll be pretty sol when it comes to garden stuff, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help out the step-mom with her garden endeavors!

When we moved into this house, they cleared up a nice 2×5 space behind the garage for foodstuffs, which is what I’m interested in. (Step-mom does have a butterfly garden as well as plants along the front and side of the house.  And while I intend to help in the planting and such of those I’m more interested in the food :U)  Last year when I arrived in august they had tomatoes, green peppers, and strawberries.  I don’t know if there was anything else earlier or not. I heard at one point they did squash and they grew across the whole yard!

So lately I’ve been thinking of what to grow this year, also thinking of what perhaps I could start in this house and take with me when I move, which of course means container gardening! I’ve already been looking into what foodstuffs can be grown in containers. I already have experience with greenbeans and cherry tomatoes from when I lived with my grandmother though I’ll be honest I’m not too fond of either of those. I’ll eat them (oh will I eat them) but they aren’t exactly my favorites P:  So I did a little research on what can be grown in containers vs what I like to eat and came up with the following list!

Basil
Beets
Bay
Chamomile
Feverfew
Garlic
Ginger
Lemon Balm
Mint
Oregano
Peas
Potatoes
Rosemary
Sage
Shallots
Spinach
Strawberries

I suppose you’ll notice the number of herbs kind of overwhelms the number of actual fruits or veggies but that’s because they take a little less room and are a little easier to grow indoors. At least, that’s what I’ve heard, I guess we’ll find out haha. Also I’ll admit I added a few of these because I love them in Tea (Lemonbalm especially) and for medicinal purposes (Feverfew helps headaches), and for general magic stuff (Rosemary and Sage for example).  Of course I don’t expect to be growing ALL of these, that’s 17 different pots and plants and I frankly just don’t think I’ll have the room or window space for all that.  Although I won’t know more until I have the apartment haha. But in the mean time I think I’ll just pick one and start there haha.

What about you? Do you garden? What are you planning to grow this year?

Getting (back) into Gunpla!

So recently my interest in Gundam Models (also called Gunpla) has been reignited!  I used to be sort of into it in high school. I made I think maybe 4-5 of them but I didn’t put an awful lot into it haha. I mostly just popped out the pieces by hand, cut tabs with an X-ACTO Knife and used a black 005 Micron Pen to draw in the panel lines. But man, was it fun.

This time around I’m getting some pointers from one of my big bros and am gonna be getting some additional proper tools. I’m also intending to try my hand at painting this time around, I’m less worried about messing up than I was in high school haha. I’ve been looking into it extensively as I figure out what tools and budget for it I’m really really excited!

Last saturday I went out and picked up some tools. (Well actually I went through my storage and found out I had most of the tools from when I took a jewelry-making class.The remaining items I picked up at michaels, coupons ftw.

The tools I have are as follows:

• A flush cutter (Something like the Xuron 170-II Micro-Shear Flush Cutter Which is what I planned to get until I found some at Michaels)
• Some Fine Point Tweezers
• Fine Sandpaper
• Some small/fine diamond files. This is much better than my set so I might upgrade someday haha. 12pc File Set 180-320 Grit
• An X-ACTO Pin Vise Set
• And lastly a Pentel GraphGear Automatic Drafting Pencil .3mm

All of which I can use for other projects as well :> The only one I don’t have is the .3mm pencil, which tbh I’m still waffling on. I hear they’re good to panel-line the hard-to-reach places but I don’t know if that’s going to be super necessary for me yet. I’ll probably pick one up when I need one haha.

So I ran around saturday trying to find tools most of which I did at least to the point where I’m ready to go! Now I just needed some gunpla kits! I looked at a couple places but they either didn’t have any models at all (ToysRus apparently stopped carrying them at some point ;o;), or had the realistic type models (Trains, Tanks, Planes, Ships, Cars, etc.  Cool stuff but not what I’m looking for haha.). The woman at ToysRus told me of 2 hobbyshops in the area and after being disappointed by the first one I didn’t look for the second (It had something about trains in the name so I figured it would be like the other one.) but I looked it up when I got home and they did have gundam models!  But by then it was already dark and really cold outside and I was comfortable so I put it off until sunday =u=;;

I’m also interested in painting them and kind of upping my game a lot from before so I called up one of my brothers because I found an old stash of model paints of his (He’s done gunpla and such but mostly repainted Action figures and things :> ). He moved out of state quite a while ago so I asked if I could use/have them and he said yes! Today I’m going to call up one of my other brothers and see if he still has any of his old airbrushing stuff. I know he was really into it a long-ass time ago but I don’t know if he kept up with it or not so I’m going to ask :>

As for the gunpla sets, on Sunday I had a short* list of what sets I wanted which there weren’t any on the website, but I was hoping they’d have more in store. They did but only a few. In the end I got OO Gundam Seven Sword SD and Gouf Custom! (I love the gouf design and when it came to the SD I just saw  it and couldn’t help myself)

*hahaha I’m lying it was like 20 sets long. I pretty much have all the sets I want to get written down in order of complexity so that I’ll hopefully be pretty good at it by the time I get to my more favored sets :>  After these I plan to get the uh Gunpla Starter Set of the RX-78-2 and Zaku II and maybe the old 1/144 Gundam X (as a practice one. I hear they’re pretty bad so this way I won’t feel bad if I fuck it up 8>) I really hope my skills will be where I want by the time I get to say, 1/144 Blaze Zaku Phantom (Dearka Elthman Custom)  or  1/144 Gundam Astray Red Frame(Flight Unit).

I’m really excited! And if you guys know of any good resources lemme know! I’ll definitely be making posts about them as I go, probably WIPs or just big ass build posts with lots of pictures :> It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to do a hobby that didn’t have some kind of background practical reasons behind it. Most of my hobbies grew from practicality stuff or wanting to be able to sell things and it gets tedious haha; so… yeah it’s nice to indulge :>  I’ve already started working on the SD, so I’ll be posting pictures up of that once I finish (don’t worry there will be plenty of in-progress pictures too!)

**Disclaimer: All links are through my AmazonAssociate account, you can probably find the gundam model kits much cheaper elsewhere, and probably the tools cheaper at like electronics and craft stores and so on. For the record the tools I did buy I got at Michaels and I’d much rather look at local stores before resorting to the interwebs or I’ll be using Amazon Giftcards gotten for free from Swagbucks (This is my referral link too haha;;; you don’t have to sign up but it’s pretty cool I might make a post about it later on.) to get stuff on amazon.

Road to Building a Tiny House!

Over the past couple months I’ve been feeling like it’s really time for me to move out. But… there’s several reasons that’s not gonna happen quite yet :T. Mostly I don’t get paid enough wages to make it living on my own yet. And I probably won’t have enough saved up for a year or two.

This is really disappointing. And then I suddenly remembered Tiny Houses! A few years ago or so I’d read about the Tiny House movement, found a layout I fell in love with and so on. Then as time went on I promptly forgot all about it, it wasn’t practical for me anymore as I had other plans! Well, time kept on keepin’ on and those plans fell through. And eventually I found myself sitting here in my small room, wishing I could afford my own place. And a new plan was hatched!

If I save my pennies through the winter, I might just have enough to get a properly-sized trailer and some lumber to start with, and i could very well build my own tiny trailer house throughout the summer!

Now, I’m under no illusions about finishing said tinyhouse during the summer, in fact I don’t know if I’ll even be able to afford things as I would like to. But that’s not keeping me from plotting and dreaming and mocking things up! In fact here’s what I’ve got so far:

I left a space for the door,  dotted lines are windows, dashes are counters/desk space.  the dotted dash is a storage chest/couch situation and the grey’d area is where the woodburning stove would go(The stove is 1’x2′ (with “accessories” that make it more 3’x2′) but the grey would be the heat-proof’d areas)  The small room in the upper left is the bathroom/shower, and that little corner hall would have the kitchen sink and counterspace and storage and so on.  The scale here is that one square is 1’sq  so the trailer would be 18ft long and 8ft wide!

So far so good yeah? I haven’t quite gotten everything figured out yet, and if necessary I can expand it to 20′ for extra utilities space.  In the next few weeks I plan to mock it out full size in the backyard in the snow (nobody’s been back there yet =u=)  and kind of go through and make sure there’s enough room. I made this purely on assumptions so it’s very possible I’m completely wrong haha.

I have low experience in building things but I have my older brother who knows a LOT and if he had the funds could probably build it in a summer haha. But he’s far away so it’s up to me! I assisted in leveling my sister’s cabinets,  rewiring her kitchen, demo-ing her bathroom, re-drywalling her bathroom, finishing bro’s gf’s room (molding and spackle) and things like that.  I’ve measured and cut lumber, spraypainted various items, and so on.

I’ve never made something entirely by myself before though. And I’ve never really like, built a wall or built anything substantial so… There’s a learning curve I’m sure but I’m mechanically minded so I’m sure I can do it! I am a little worried about the plumbing more than the electrical. Electrical I’ve been getting a good grasp on lately (also one of my friends went to school to be an electrician. She shifted and became The Teacher, but I’m sure she still knows a lot of it haha.) But Plumbing… I mean, I’m sure I can get it, I just have absolute zero experience with that. At least with electrical I helped re-wire my sister’s kitchen (and hearing my bro bitch about the other construction guys and… well… if I’ve only learned one thing it’s to do the electrical before putting up any drywall! xD)

Pops has the tools, and probably some skills as well. And Bro’s got the skills I don’t so I’m sure he can give me some guidance! Although if any of y’all have any relevant experiences or resources to share I would love to hear what you’ve got to say!

Making Charcloth

Some time ago I had planned my initial project for the weekend was to finish my wallet and maybe practice some watercolor painting. But as I was doing laundry I came across an old pair of pants that, to be frank, was ripped to shit.  But I had loved these pants dearly and decided to let them live on as rags for usage in other applications. (I’ll be needing rags whenever I get around to finishing a woodworking project after all.)   But as I was cutting it to bits, I realized that some swaths of cloth would be too small for usage as a proper rag, and then there were the tiny pockets and the folded hems and all that where there simply wasn’t enough undisturbed cloth to be a good rag.

I checked the tag to see just what material I was working with here and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was 100% Cotton, and it hit me that I could use these scraps to make charcloth!

For those who don’t know, Charcloth is a very good survival tinder. It catches a spark very easily and burns (from what I’ve read) pretty slowly. It doesn’t make a big flame on it’s own but forms a workable ember you can use in a tinder bundle to make a fire. Great for survival applications and I’ve been wanting to have a bit in my survival bag’s fire kit for a long time.

So! I took some smaller scraps of cloth I’d been cutting and cut them into smaller squares roughly 1-2″

Next I took an empty Altoids tin I had lying around and a nail and popped a little hole in the top of it.

This is after it went into the fire. But you can see the hole I poked right in the O

I piled in, very loosely mind you, the cloth strips and closed it up nicely. All of this was done that saturday. Now all I needed was a heat source! So back on the weekend when The Artist came over, friday evening we decided to have a fire! Perfect!  We enjoyed marshmallows and had a nice evening until the fire had burned down to embers, I checked that I’d have a method to remove the hot tin, which I had a pair of long tongs, and so then I took the tin, closed it up tight and put it into the hot embers. I don’t have any photos of this part since it was night and fire and well I was having too much fun to remember to take pictures…

But as for the tin, it somewhat unexpectedly caught completely on fire!

In other tutorials I’ve seen and read, they say that if the tin catches on fire, or fire comes out of the hole, too much air is getting in and you’re getting full on combustion not charring and that when you open the tin you’ll have nothing but ash.  So The Artist and I were a bit disappointed but we continued our conversation eventually all of the paint burned off the tin and there were just flames almost shooting out of the edges and the hole in the top.  After a few minutes though, the flames stopped, welp might as well get the failure out of the fire and give it a try again another time right? So I grabbed the tongs and pulled it out setting it on the driveway to cool down.

We went inside and completely forgot about it for a few hours. The Artist remembered it before I did and reminded me to bring it in, so I did and I popped it open over the sink ready to wash it all out when… LO AND BEHOLD! CHAR CLOTH!!!

The cloth bits shrunk substantially from the initial cloth, which I didn’t expect, but it worked! And they aren’t super fragile or anything so I now have a nice pack off charcloth in my fire kit and am one very happy survivalist :3

My firekit thus far. It has charcloth, a lighter, and the firestraws I made a while back 8D

Media Arcana, my shop!

So I probably should have posted about this much sooner, before the holiday probably would have been best haha;;  but on October 31st I opened up my new witchy shop Media Arcana!

You can click the image to go to the site! I’ll be selling all kinds of crafts and witchy or pagan things as I make them.

Media Arcana has been a dream of mine for well over a year, initially it was going to be a partnership between myself and another witch known most for her Tarot work. And so we made the name basically as a bit of wordplay. In Tarot there’s the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana.   Well, from there we found the word befitting ‘middle’ being Media and thus Media Arcana was born.  But, the shop wasn’t strictly tarot, and thankfully the phrase can have more than one meaning. Media of course being the plural form of medium which can also refer to various objects and techniques (such as when applied to art) and so on. And Arcana of course referring to mysteries and secrets, and y’know, magical stuff.

And that’s basically what I’ll be selling on Media Arcana,  magical stuff.

Now, right now you’ll notice there’s only a few items and services. I’ll expand the readings as I grow in confidence with more spreads and I’ll expand the charms once they’ve been a little bit more tested. All bindrunes that I sell will be tested and at the very least have worked for me in the past.

For example the favorable-exam bindrune [First one Here]. I used this to help me pass my driver’s test on my 4th time around. That’s when I passed haha.  I also used it when I felt unprepared for a test in a speech course I was in.  I got a 59/50 on that test. Suffice to say I feel confident in this charm and so that’s why I offer it for sale. The other charm, Increased Productivity, has a favorable review from The Artist (in fact she’s requested a permanent one) so I also feel confident enough to offer it for sale.

So anyways, I hope to be making/testing/selling more items soon and if you follow this blog you’ll probably see a lot more in-progress pictures and things than you will at the official Media Arcana tumblr but there and twitter is where you’ll hear about new in-stock items first!

Results of Coming Out

So for those of you who’ve read my About page know, I am a trans man. As in transgender, as in I am currently in process of transitioning from female to male.

As I said on the about page I haven’t started to use T (Testosterone/hormones) and I haven’t had any corrective surgeries. To be honest I don’t know if T or surgery will even be an option for me because I have other health issues that affect my hormones and such. I barely saw my Endocrinologist (for my normal health issues I need a specialist) for the first time on the 6th. I decided to give my doctors some time to catch up on the main life-threatening issues before throwing this curveball at them. I don’t have a therapist yet but since mental health will be covered under the plan I got from the ACA I’ll be able to get one after the first of the year :3

So anyways I recently came out to my best friends and my parents.  My parents had mixed reactions but I wasn’t outright rejected so overall good I’d say.

My dad is kind of an open guy and knows a lot so I asked him if he knew what it was and he said that he knew of it. So then I just told him that that’s what I was. He kind of got quiet and didn’t really know what to say I guess. He did say it scared him, medically  speaking. I did tell him that I was already aware that I might not be able to medically transition. Then it just got quiet again. And we haven’t really talked about it since. Although I mentioned I was excited about cutting my hair (Which I have to wait until we get Christmas pics or something because SOMEONE(Pop’s gf) had to go and tell my gma I was gonna cut my hair.) he was concerned about me cutting it ‘really short’.  Which I guess by the expression on my face he guessed is what I was planning and he afterwards took back his remark with a chuckle saying “It’s your life” which still kinda hurt :T

My mother has been moderately okay with it. Better than she was when she found out I like women at the very least.  She still has her ways of keeping it ‘not real’ to herself though, saying things like since I can’t do it medically (She’s jumping to can’t when I haven’t even discussed it with my doctors yet.) and since I have a very round shape/figure that I won’t ever really look like a man and so she’s not going to treat me like one. Unless/until I look like one I guess. But she’s buying me more masculine looking clothes, even if she won’t explicitly shop from the men’s section yet. But when I told her I had to kind of really spell it out for her which made me very anxious and nervous. She didn’t know what Trans or Transgender meant so she really didn’t get it until I said “I want to transition to being male.” and her immediate and unapologetic response was “So… you want a dick?” and I died.

Overall it seems they took it pretty well though. Although it also seems they won’t refer to me with any sort of male terms until I look more male/masculine I guess. Which is fine, whatever. More motivation for me to get there sooner.

Haven’t told my siblings because they really won’t get it. I talked to my bro about gender stuff previously and he didn’t understand so I don’t expect him to now, as for my sister… well one day my bro’s gf and I were talking about trans stuff (before I realized but I’d made friends with some and I don’t know how we got on the subject. But she knows a lot and is a really cool person so anyways)then my brother comes by like freaking out a little and shushes us and tells us not to talk about that kind of thing with my sister nearby… So yeah. Not gonna tell her until I hafta :T.

So basically as far as family is concerned,  what I’m getting is that they aren’t going to assist in that portient of my life at all. But that’s what friends are for!

I also told my two best friends (The Artist and The Teacher) and both of them were pretty much unsurprised. The Teacher even went so far to tell me that she suspected for a long time but was waiting for me to bring it up. She kinda said the same thing when I came out about liking women. How does she keep knowing these things before I do dammit xD. So anyways they’re both very cool with it although it’s new and something I know they kinda gotta get used to.  But The Artist has agreed to go with me whenever I get my hair cut, and I already picked out what cut I want (She thoroughly approved as well haha) but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.  I’ll try to remember to take before & after pics for yall.

But overall I feel a lot better than I did before I told anyone. I was so nervous about it but things went pretty well after all. :3

Midwest Witches Bazaar

So last weekend was super busy and just a ton of fun. Friday one of my best friends (hereby dubbed “The Artist”) came over for the weekend since we were planning to head up to the Midwest Witches Bazaar. When I first heard about this back in August I was really interested in going to the Ball too and since the theme was Steampunk I thought it’d be really awesome to finally get a steampunk getup together.  But then I took a look at things realistically and realized that, although the ticket price wouldn’t have been a problem, steampunk is a somewhat expensive pursuit. Supplies are costly and I just didn’t have the money (or time to be perfectly honest) to put together a kickass getup in time. So we opted to just go to the free/open to the public bazaar portion.

It was so cool.

A few of the folks were already in their steampunk attire but most were in just everyday clothes sitting around tables filled with a wide array of goods.  Some specialized in things like candles, clothes, tarot decks, runes, bone and horn, etc.  Whilst others had tables just filled with all kinds of varying objects, stones, oil diffusers, incense, books, jewelry, all manner of ‘witchy’ things. I won’t point out any favorites (to be frank I spent more than I should have and STILL didn’t get all the cool stuff I wanted!) but there is a list of vendors on the website most of which have websites of their own you can check out (Although I think we all know how witchy websites are so it’s really a much better experience in person).

I spent entirely too much money over the course of the weekend much of which was spent at the bazaar on items I’d been looking for but not yet found anywhere except online with exorbitant shipping costs. I have to say, nothing ticks me off more than when the shipping cost of an item is more than the cost of the item itself.

What did I buy? WELL HAHA LET ME TELL YOU!

4 chime candlesBlank Ceramic Chime Candle Holder*
Crystal Quartz Heart*
Spiral wire ‘cage’ *
Tea Ball*
The Steampunk Tarot
Runecaster’s Handbook, the well of wyrd*
Mortar and Pestle*

This list is much shorter than I realized… but still worth every penny haha. I also picked up some stuff for other peoples.  Asterisked items are the ones that I had specifically been needing/searching for so, ID SAY THATS PRETTY GOOD YEAH!? The steampunk tarot was kind of on a whim, but I’ve been wanting to dig into tarot for a while and well, I quite like the steampunk aesthetic (most of the time, The Artist and I were singing  Just Glue Some Gears on It along a necessary ATM run xDD)  There were readers and other services too. The Artist found and got a henna tattoo which the lady doing that was really cool and we all chatted whilst the henna was being drawn. She was really cool and we all seemed to get along pretty well. One regret is that we didn’t get her name or a business card (SO COOL HENNA LADY IF YOU SOMEHOW FIND AND READ THIS, WE’D LIKE TO BEFRIEND YOU =D )

That kinda leads me to the other semi-regret I had, I kind of wanted to strike up some hardcore conversation with folks about the witchy stuff but seeing as we were only there for the vending portion I would’ve felt bad for taking time from customers, especially if they didn’t have something for me to buy (For example the rune guy, I would’ve loved to stay and talk heathenism and runes with him but I didn’t see anything I needed/wanted to buy from his table as I have two sets of runes right now and am also in process of carving my own.) So hopefully next year I’ll be able to attend the ball portion and chill with these cool folks.

But overall it was very fun (10/10 would totes recommend) and I’m most definitely looking forward to attending next year!