She came to me on Halloween :)



Unfortunately I don't yet have a modesty panel for her *(it's kind of a funny story) so for now I won't be wearing her out any time soon. But goodness, I just can't stop staring at her.

*Bethan forgot to put it in when she shipped the corset and then the Royal Mail appeared to have misplaced it when she did so now there's a second one on the way. Hopefully that one arrives. Haha

Need some money to fund a trip this weekend so I am slashing the prices on two of our corsets on Etsy.

22 Inch Underbust, steel boned, Vintage kimono fabric:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33838998
$110

24 Inch overbust, steel boned, hand-dyed red/white "blood splashed" mesh over cotton:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32096479
$135

I would just like you all to know that is now clear to me why I'm a switch.

I haven't examined myself enough.

If I spent more time examining my needs and wants and desires, I would become a dominant or submissive and finally be fully myself.


I'm so happy to have found this out.

Hello there!


I'm looking to purchase a Bibian Blue charlotte corset from fairygothmother  as something a bit more afordable, but of good quality] after my latest custom-made splurge. Does anyone have any experience with Bibian Blue corsets? Do they hold up well?  I'm particularly worried about the back lacing setup, as i'm used to the traditional grommets, and this corset has something different. Do these withstand consistant wearing and lacing for a 3-5" reduction each time? The picture of the back of the corset on fairygothmother seems to show that the boning in the back is bending.  

Any insight would be highly appreciated before I drop this kind of money haha.






http://www.fairygothmother.co.uk/bb-Charlotteblue.htm

Oh, and we have a squirrel or other similarly-sized animal that's somehow found entry into the third floor.

Planetary Society plans new 'solar sail'

Back when I had money, I had contributed to the launch of Cosmos 1, whose launch rocket failed.

( under the cut for length )
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Happy Veterans Day to everyone. I took this photo of Red Square in Moscow in May of 1993, several months after my service in the US Air Force ended.

I'm a Cold War and Desert Storm veteran. We used to joke about how our jobs would end- would we be nuked like "The Day After", or would the Iron Curtain rust out, peace break out, and we all get fired?

Ironically, it was the latter that happened-I was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1993. As most of you know, it took me nearly a decade to find my feet- having to move back in with my parents, and working piddly-ass jobs until I finally scratched my way to where I am now. I still have a ways to go, but I am better off than I was a decade ago.

Going to Moscow, visiting Red Square and the Kremlin (the place that President Reagan had memorably called "The Evil Empire") and all the places we'd only read about or heard about was a real treat for me. I got to stand in a place that just a few years before- I was prohibited from ever seeing. I got to speak to ordinary people, including fellow veterans (it was their Veterans day when I was there), and give (and take) toasts to peace, prosperity and possibilities. Our former enemy was now just another country, trying to get a leg up in the world.

On this day, combat veterans get most of the well-deserved attention. But let's not forget those of us who kept the lights on during the Cold War, and who saw 3AM far more times than we care to remember, worked the long and silent night shifts, flew back and forth to Berlin 3 times a day, and kept the lines of communication up and running, and standing fast. "The Day After" scared the crap out of us. And I am glad that never happened.

My latest commissioned corset is a fully reversible waist cincher, with red satin on one side and black satin on the other. The core is two layers of coutil, boned with 1/2" flats except for either side of the grommets, which is 1/4" flats. Piecing is seven panels per side, for greater stability despite the hourglass figure. When drafting, I try not to create panels that are more than 2.5" inches wider than the hip than waistline, because that creates too much bias and makes the pattern more prone to turning out larger at the hip than intended.

I have found satin to be unforgiving when added as a cover layer at the end, so I treated each cover panel and its corresponding core panel as a single layer when assembling the panels. The stitches are made with buttonhole thread from the red side, on the assumption that if the black side is not precisely lined up with the red side, any slight variations in stitch position relative to seam will be hidden by black-on-black.





( More Views of the Corset )

X-Posted

A week before the end of last month, I made what I refer to as The Abomination. It was supposed to be beans and rice. Idiotic me thought I could take a shortcut and cook the rice *and* beans in the same pot at the same time. Naturally, the rice got overcooked and the beans were undercooked. It might have been edible had I been a middle-ages peasant. But since I'm not...

Anyway, it sat in the fridge until just a couple days ago, moldering over because of my self-annoyance and guilt at the wasted food. It was starting to get stinky when I finally threw it out directly into the big garbage thingy outside. Luckily, because the water was coming up out of it, it came out all in one blob. Eeew!

Tonight I tried again, cooking the beans first, setting them aside, then cooking the rice. And herp dee durp if it didn't work this time. I also added a can of black beans and some cooked hamburger. It's yummy! :-D A little bit of paprika gives it a little kick, too. (But not too much.)

The planning for my next short story is going pretty well; I have lots of cool ideas for it, including recycling not only Telrenni but part of the original failed story as well, turning it into a flashback or memory. It was too good at showing her toughness to just let it die!

At group therapy, someone commented (positively) about how intently I was writing, and I explained I was writing down ideas for my next short story, and why; I explained that I usually write down the basic plot of a story before I write it, but forgot to in the case of my first attempt at a story for the Mindeodean universe, and therefore had no idea where I was going with the story. Well, that's not the *only* reason that story died. The other reason was this Terran character I had there with Telrenni. Supposedly he was also a member of the Red Diamond Brigade, just a newbie, and I had him in there to act to ask questions the readers might ask, which is a plot device I'd read a lot about. But the Red Diamond Brigade is supposed to be the Mindeodean version of the Navy SEALs, but given the myriad enhancements even normal Mindeodeans have over Terrans, it didn't really fit that a Terran, no matter how strong he was for a Terran, would be in the Red Diamond Brigade. Furthermore, why would a newbie be on a very important mission with an obviously skilled and seasoned member? It made no sense, so I didn't try to revive the story.

On another note, I was looking at the info file for the Mindeodean stories, specifically looking at planet names because I've been using Mindeodean colony planets as names for my colonies in the Starfleet Commander game on Facebook (which helps me remember the names), and some of the names I had for colonized planets were... ugly. I had Barvik and Lintal as names of two colonized planets, and then I had these beautiful names, Candareth and Lybeth, for a pair of Venus-like worlds called "The Toxic Sisters." I didn't like that, so I switched them around. Now the Toxic Sisters are Barvik and Lintal, and the two colonized worlds are Candareth and Lybeth. :-)

Courtesy There, I Fixed It:

Wheelchair.

Karen Armstrong is a very interesting writer. She has written many books about religion and faith- particularly the Abrahamic faiths. I have "The Battle for God" (which is about fundementalism), and am going to pick up her latest book, "The Case for God".

Now why the heck would a zetectically oriented skeptic like me be interested in something defending 'A Case for God', when I've stated my position on the concept of "god/s/"? Because Armstrong digs down through the noise and gets to the signal- that of Mythos and Logos- which are not mutually exclusive, but which must have their own existences in order for society to function in a healthy manner. The modern religious mixture and distortion of both concepts has not been a healthy thing. It was Armstrong who clarified these things.

This Fresh Air with Terry Gross Fresh Air interview</a> was what initially pricked my interest. After all, Zetectics require the burden of proof to be upon the claimant, and I always listen to rational argument. Here it was.

Then, AlterNet posted an article from a Daily Kos writer about this latest book, too. Here is an excerpt:

[...]We've turned "myth" into another word for fantasy, or lie. In doing so:

We lost the art of interpreting the old tales of gods walking the earth, dead men striding out of tombs, or seas parting miraculously. We began to understand concepts such as faith, revelation, myth, mystery, and dogma in a way that would have been very surprising to our ancestors.

In particular, the concept of faith comes in for a close examination. We understand faith today as a kind of blind acceptance -- like Indiana Jones stepping off into space in his quest for the Holy Grail. Religious people cheer this kind of "faith" and many Christians tout this as the one and only qualification to be among Christ's chosen. But that's not what the word translated as "faith" meant in Biblical times. It's not even what it meant when the Bible was first translated into English.

The term used in most New Testament texts (the Greek word pistis) meant something closer to loyalty or commitment, than unreasoning belief. When Jesus chastised his followers for their lack of faith, or commended a non-Jew for having faith, he wasn't talking about some unspoken creed. He certainly wasn't praising them for seeing that he was divine. He was talking about follow-through, about living up to ideas of selflessness and humbleness. Even the word "belief" has changed from a Middle English sense of "prize" to our modern idea of "accept at face value." Imagine how different every Christian creed would sound today if we replace "believe in" with "value" and "have faith in" with "commit myself to."

That's the meat of the matter, wouldn't you say? And it is the number one fundamental reason why I cannot bear the blatherings of the lot of modern TrueBelievers™- because they have heavily degraded and undermined the actual meaning and understanding of the words 'faith' and 'belief'. And it is why I have adopted a very rigorously skeptical attitude about all things religious- to scrape that corruptive layer of modern blindness and willful ignorance off of a valuable concept.

I like the original kernel of the word 'belief'- it makes much more logical sense to me than the current degraded meaning. And it made me think about what I valued- my concept and theory of Small Gods, for instance. Yes, it is a relatively radical concept, but it holds its own, and without the noise and fear of conventional modern 'belief'.

I like learning about ancient religious concepts and how modern culture has changed things. It helps to get to the root of ideas and understand where things came from In that, Armstrong has not disappointed me yet. I slot her ideas into my mind- right in between the ravings of both the TrueBelievers™ and the TrueUnbelievers™.

This group is for the ones who are or were brave enogh to join any branch of the Milatary, and protect Us suvillians, thair familyies, and each other! Along with the people who support them. After all if they deserted us all hope, freedom, and lifes would be ruled by Tyrants. Of course this would never happen cause we of the U.S.A hould the red, white, and blue high in the air makeing us invencable.


Description from a forum that will remain linkless, called ARMIES (US MILATARY PRIDE).

And they give these people guns?


I should add that the same person who set up the group...used Mereens in a thread title.

*facepalm*

( under the cut for length )
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

It seems that the latest thing to be tossed around and twisted up in the kink community are some very empowering concepts that might just have, at one time, been beneficial and prevented people from being taken advantage of. Now, they seem to be sliding down into "Of course I'm an X...I'll keep you safe and teach you" with the underlying meaning of "I'm going to dig my claws in and get first shot at this new piece of meat."

This seems to be taking two roads: Mentoring and Collars of Protection.

If I could make just two statements to each and every new person that shows their face at an event it would be these:

1. You don't let anyone just slap a collar around your neck, I don't care *what* they call it or what they say it's for. You don't know what you're getting into and don't know what the members of that space think a collar means. Don't set yourself up (Ok, that's two sentences on this one. So sue me.)

2. No, your mentor should not be treating you like his submissive, and IMO, should not be fucking, sucking, beating, ordering you around, or expecting service from you, outside of giving you an example of what someone might be talking about if you bring it up as a question or concern. (I would exclude sex as a part of that as an absolute, I'm more flexible on the technique part, so long as it's as an example or to let the mentee feel what it might be like with someone else.)

If a mentorship turns into a relationship, then the mentor should find a different person to take over mentorship. I'm not stupid. Relationships and emotions happen where they will. However, I think that once the relationship changes, it's incumbent on the mentor, as their last act of mentorship, to find someone to take that place and step down for the new relationship evolving.

A mentor is someone that is there to be a source of information, someone to bounce ideas off of, to ask questions of (particularly when you encounter something that feels "off"), to help you navigate through the waters of the kink community until you can stand on your own two feet with more understanding of our communities and what is and is not acceptable behavior.

Someone showing you how to throw a whip isn't a mentor. Someone saying you have to perform sexually isn't a mentor. Someone telling you how to dress and who you can and cannot talk to isn't a mentor. If you have someone coming to you and offering to mentor you, detailing how they will train you to be X or Y or Z, please put on your Headgear of Thinking 18 and evaluate what you know of mentorships *outside* of the kink arena and then compare what is being offered to you within it.

Who is benefiting from the arrangement?
Is sexual activity a part of the exchange?
Are scenes/playing/training a part of the exchange?
Does it seem imbalanced in the favor of the other person?
Does it seem that the other person will be sitting back and benefiting and you doing all the work?

This is not a mentorship. Being a mentor means giving more than you receive, helping someone else without thought of payment, aggrandizement, popularity, or being able to brag about how they "made you what you are". Providing time and energy to a person so that they can grow safely and securely in their own confidence and abilities, not protecting them from the Big Bad out there.

And...it's at this point that we come to Collars of Protection.

While I'm sure there are well meaning people out there who surely *are* trying to look after the interests of those who are new to kink and are the proverbial bright eyed, innocent, vapid, totally incompetent at taking care of themselves newbies...are there *really* so many of those people walking through our doors on a daily or hourly basis?

If they're that unable to watch out for themselves, how do they cross the street and not get hit by a car?

Really. It's time that we actually expect people to use their brains, not claim "I'm a helpless sub, someone save me" while they click off their brains and wave a red flag at every predator in the room.

Because, imo, it's those very same predators who are offering these damnable collars. "Oh, my dear, sweet, little thing. Please let me take care of you since you're so new and vulnerable. Here. Let me put this little collar on your neck. No...no...it's just something that will tell everyone else to keep their hands off while you get your feet under you. You will need to behave appropriately, though, while wearing it. Please make sure that you're at my feet and naked, allow me to touch you any way I please, and beat the crap out of you without complaint. By the way. What's your name again?"

Does this *really* sound like a good idea to anyone?

I understand the desire to make our play spaces safe for the newer members that come to us. And no, it's not reasonable for someone who's new to know all the ins and outs of a particular space or the people there. I believe it *is* reasonable, however, to expect them to use the common sense that God (pick one, I don't care which) gave a turnip when it comes to being a little wary about some stranger approaching us with a lollipop near a van.

We teach our *children* to show more common sense with strangers than we expect out of our new members. We encourage our children to scream and shout and run away when strangers touch them...but we encourage our bottom-type-orientations to not use their brains? Does this make sense?

If something seems "off" to you...go to another person and ask. Most events will have clearly labeled People In Charge that I'm sure will have no problem with a question like "Hey, I'm hearing that I have to kneel to all dominants at this place. Is that true?" If something makes you uncomfortable...don't do it. Ask. Open your mouth and find out *WHY* it's being suggested. Don't just accept something as truth because you're new.

*Especially* because you're new.

New doesn't mean stupid. Don't let someone force that on you.

Just because people sometimes get confused, newbies and experienced alike, I offer a quick guide to the difference between corsets, corselets and bustiers. Corsets and corselets are traditionally foundation pieces and give support and reduction. Corselets generally give less reduction than corsets. Bustiers are not designed as support pieces and unless you've already got a fantastic body, they aren't going to do much in the lift-and-tuck department.


corset - From Mirriam-Webster
n.
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, diminutive of cors
Date: 13th century
1 : a usually close-fitting and often laced medieval jacket
2 : a woman's close-fitting boned supporting undergarment that is often hooked and laced and that extends from above or beneath the bust or from the waist to below the hips and has garters attached


corselet [ˈkɔːslɪt] - From Collins English Dictionary
n.
1. (Military / Arms & Armour (excluding Firearms)) Also spelt corslet a piece of armour for the top part of the body
2. (Clothing & Fashion) a one-piece foundation garment, usually combining a brassiere and a corset

[from Old French, from cors bodice of a garment, from Latin corpus body]


bustier - From The American Heritage Dictionary
n.
A formfitting sleeveless and usually strapless woman's top, worn as lingerie and often as evening attire.

[French, from buste, bust; see bust1.]



And, in case you weren't confused but want to be, a bodice can refer to a blouse, vest, above-the-waist part of a dress OR a corset.

EDIT: Because I was asked to include stays, here it is. Stays can either refer to the boning or stiffening of fabric used in clothing, meaning anything from corsets to collars, OR it can refer to the corset itself. (It's also a nautical term for the bracing ropes or cables that hold masts upright.) Generally speaking, when corsets are refered to as stays, we're talking about seventeenth century corsets. By the time Queen Vicky rolled around, corset was already the more common expression.