While searching for a perfect pirate beverage for World Fantasy, I stumbled upon CocktailDB, which is a beautifully laid out website. Rob and I have lots and lots of liquers in our cabinet from when all the puppeteers left the country. Everyone cleaned out their cabinets and dropped the supplies off with us. So, tonight I plugged in three of the ingredients from our cabinet and the database recommended a Menlo Club Cocktail. It’s very citrusy and not one I think I’ll order again although I imagine that it would be lovely on a hot summer night. I’m sipping it very, very slowly because it’s also quite potent.

I started by finished stitching the gusset into the remaining arm and then inserted the boning. I pinned the arms on so I could check the range of movement with them both there. I’m pleased. My movement was absolutely unencumbered and the torso is very light. I’ve been entertaining the notion of swapping the ribs out in the chest, but after playing around today decided that my initial reasons for going with the lighterweight boning were sound. It gives the performer a little more range of movement in the arms. That meant I could do the finish work on the torso which I’ve been putting off.

To hold the boning in place, I drilled two small holes at each end of the bones and stitched it to the armseye bone. I also had to use a soldering iron to fuse the ends of the pettisham (ribbon) which is holding the bones in place. It was unraveling, but is fortunately a synthetic so I could melt the ends to seal them.

Once that was finished I repinned the arms to stitch them into place. To my surprise, this material is insanely difficult to sew through. I’d been having trouble on the sewing machine but blamed that on the tension. No. It is the material. I should have taken video of that so you could watch me try to get a needle through; comedy in action.

Alas, I did not start the pelvis today. In fact, I think I’m going to work on finishing the head tomorrow because I feel like I deserve a break from sewing after the insanity of today. But the arms are beautiful. Everything holds hits shape even when it’s just hanging without a person in it. I can’t wait to see this on the actor.

1. Can you spread your legs for me?
2. Who wants to stick it to the wall?
3. The director said, “Don’t stop! I can stick anything I want in your mouth.”
4. Nice! Great handjob.
5. Do you think it might be better if he killed his wife?
6. I’d give you a ride, but the car is full of bear.
7. Let me just slip inside and I’ll show you how to do him
8. I spent today boning the bear.
9. His head isn’t getting hard.
10. Next up, the pelvis.

What it all means.

1. I couldn’t see a monitor, and asked the puppeteer standing next to me to widen their stance so I could look through their legs to the monitor on the floor in front of them.
2. There was a prop that needed to be attached to the wall. Why does it sound so dirty?
3. A puppeteer flubbed a line in an otherwise perfect take and stopped. The director wanted the puppeteer to continue, and he would just fix it in ADR.
4. A puppeteer did a beautifully complicated pass, combined with acting. What else can you say?
5. Talking with another writer about a plot.
6. I’m building a giant polar bear. The parts were in my car.
7. I was demonstrating a body puppet
8. I was installing dressmaker’s steel boning into the underskeleton of a bear costume.
9. I was making a fiberglass head and misjudged the amount of hardener to put into the resin.
10. Said while discussing the to-do list on the polar bear I’m constructing.