I was totally caught off guard by how many things there were to learn about designing clothes in SL. I’ve been slogging my way up the steep learning curve for the last two months. Now I feel I’ve definitely crested and am enjoying the ride (though I have no doubt there are many other hills in front of me.)

Designing in SL is mainly done off-world on my computer. I use both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements. Not because I recommend that but because that’s what I have. In fact, my Photoshop Elements is an old version and that’s probably why I need both. It’s working but I have to flip the images back and forth, so a new PS version will have to come my way at some point.

Most of the blouses, pants, regular skirt and jackets are drawn in a graphics program. For that reason, even though I’m spending a lot of time on this SL activity, I’m not logged into SL that much. I’ve learned an amazing amount about using the graphics programs in two months. Many of the formerly mysterious terms (alpha channels, for example) have now become tools of my trade. This has given me an almost daily need for the digital tablet I got last summer. I’m still in the process of learning the trompe l’oeil techniques that make the clothes look *real*—but I’ve come a long way.

There are two other ways of designing SL clothes. The first one is done in-world. In SL, residents build things—the houses they live in, the trees, roads, airplanes, pets—by using basic shapes called “prims” (short for primitives.)

Basic 3-D shapes such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones etc are manipulated and linked to other shapes and texturized to make up what you see in the world. Some clothes are made with prims.
The “flexi skirts” that move with your avatar and react to the physics of the world are constructed in-world. This was another learning curve.

Thirdly, there’s a type of construct that is a combination of a graphics program and in-world build and that’s the sculpted prim. In these, you design a three-dimensional object on your computer, upload it to SL, rez a prim, put the uploaded bit-map into the prim and *voila!* your design appears in SL. I’m still a real beginner at this but it’s good for making accessories to outfits such as belts, scarves, hats and so on. I had great fun making a martini and a top hat to go with a design I call Tuxedo FUNction.

Aplomb having her first martini; the chair she’s sitting in is one of my sculpted prims.

So those are the basics of fashion design in SL. So good-bye for now and I’ll leave you with Aplomb in one of her outfits—looking pretty darned sassy.

Then I disappeared (blog-wise) for over two months. From wading to immersion. Well…that’s how it goes, right?

From my initial apathy to the secondary intrigue to a subsequent and prolonged love-hate relationship, sometime in late March it all became addictive, all-consuming, and just fun. I recently met a newcomer to SL and asked her what she thought of it. She said, “It’s so silly and so profound all at the same time.” This sums up what I feel too. One day I heard or read the phrase, “What do you want to do with your Second Life?” and it hit me in the way that this virtual interface often does. You know it’s not *real* but the question is profound.

If I had a second life and this—silly virtual world that it is—was IT, what would I want to do?

I decided to start designing clothes. Though I’ve never had anything to do with commercial fashion in Real Life (RL), I loved it as a child, was always involved with fabrics because my mother sewed and made our clothes. Eventually, I learned how and made almost everything I wore during my teens through twenties. At that point I had kids (boys!) and we started wearing only jeans and knit shirts and sewing wasn’t fun anymore. So this is a return to an old love. A second childhood, perhaps. A second childhood to go with a second life seems just right.

More soon about my learning curve.

The photo is Aplomb at home in front of a painting done by SL friend, Luta Lussard (and RL friend, Sherry Ramsey). Her shop: A Space to Dream (link coming soon). Aplomb is wearing one of our newest designs from the Art Nouveau line. Once I get ready to *come out* I’ll do another blog/ catalogue for Aplomb’s designs. It and our shop will be called Dress with Aplomb…but I’m not ready yet.

In January, I did an article for The PCQ on Beth Felice who, as Annie Octavia, owns and operates a beautiful art gallery on Second Life called Gallerie Octaviana. In order to see for myself what it was about (she’s been kind enough to include some of my work in two of her shows), I made myself an alter-ego and made my first forays into this virtual world.

My name is Aplomb Pomilio. The name was chosen with tongue firmly in cheeque. I like the word, I like the concept and it’s something that I often do not have in abundance. I’m finding out that in learning how to navigate in a new world, aplomb is scarce. I find that I’m insecure about what to do, who to talk to, where to go. In fact, it’s like every experience I’ve ever had moving to a new place.

Odd, that.

This isn’t “real” and yet, my self, my mind makes it feel very real even unto bringing along very real emotions as I try to find my way in a new *place* among strangers. And this “realness” goes farther. I could have made myself anything I wanted and yet I’m pretty normal looking though young and with a great figure (I’m not foolish enough to pass up a chance at those two things!)

I want to write about this more as I’m finding the experience puzzling, eye-opening and more than anything else revelatory. I’m just not sure yet what it’s revealing!

One thing is sure: I’m absolutely loving the opportunity to play dress-up! As a child, my sister and I played paper dolls. We loved exploring fashion styles and opportunities that we would never get to experience for real. Being in Second Life has taken me back to that childhood delight but with such HUGE differences that it can hardly be over-stated. I have a gorgeous *me* with a great figure. A me that moves, walks, flies (badly), sits (sometimes in the middle of walls and objects), talks and as such, I can dress me up in hundreds of combinations of clothes and accessories—at this point, all for free. I haven’t spent a dime and I’m having so much fun.

My favourite so far: a Purple and Silver outfit. The overskirt is animated, it swirls as I move. The knee-high boots are purple with white designs—FABULOUS!

These days instead of playing a morning computer game or other “getting ready” activity before I settle into real work, I go to Second Life and decide what I’m going to wear for the day. Today, for the first time, I tried out an edgy look (for me and Aplomb, that is).

I also have some normal jeans, sandals and t’s outfits but even those are a lot more fun than what’s in my real closet!

This morning as I was getting dressed for real, I took a little extra care because…well, because if I’m going to take such care in a world that’s not real, I should at least make a little effort where it is.

More soon on groups I’m joining and what that’s like.

Time for Sarcastic Mom’s Weekly Winners again. Where’d the week go? This we we had Valentine’s Day and very cold weather so the photos reflect those things (I barely went out of the house). Plus a portrait of one of the dogs.

Catching Flakes
focused on the snowflakes, not the trees!

Yellow Rose of Nova Scotia

Frosty Landscape

Wintree

Winter’s Edge

Summer in winter

Look for more great Weekly Winner photos from this week here.

Today I seem to be swimming freely in my life once again.

For a few weeks, I got stuck. I felt completely bogged down. Any kind of effort toward unsticking myself was a tiresome slog that left me only wanting to retreat back into my rutted state.

This wasn’t that noticeable to others because I still went about my daily life…I just wasn’t as productive. As I’ve written about before, I spent long hours mastering a certain computer game that shall remain unidentified lest someone else fall under it’s marblicious spell.

I continued doing what I could to get away from the rut that included only Me and The Game. Eventually, I began to tell people—my husband, my sons, my trusty girlfriends, and my mom—that I wasn’t really doing that well. I felt at the time that this ‘coming out’ was part of the process of recovery. That if I hadn’t been on the road to recovery, I wouldn’t have been able to admit it.

Today, I woke up feeling that my hated rut had been washed away by a good strong soaking. I can still sense the route that it wore through my brain, but it no longer has depth.

This has happened before of course. I think though that as I get older (pushin’ 60, girl) I have the mental calm, perspective and actual quiet in my life to be able to analyze what this feels like and what’s physically happening to me when I overtakes me. In earlier days, I was too busy with kids and had too many insecurities to look at it without fear clouding my view. Now I can imagine and actually feel (or feel that I’m feeling) a neurological rut—an overused, perhaps over-stimulated linkage of neurons; one that becomes prominent and doesn’t give up dominance easily.

It helps me understand—in an organic way—what people who have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder go through every day. And, it comes up very close to Depression—something I used to suffer from for months at a time. In Depression, certain thoughts or categories of thought (negativity! worthlessness! hopelessness!) become dominant. It’s changing those thought patterns that pull us up out of the mood (to be utterly overly-simplistic).

I don’t understand any of it well enough to predict its coming or its going, but I do have confidence these days that it won’t stick; that somehow I’ve accumulated enough coping strategies to be able to pull out of these neurological quagmires. But I have to be careful with that line of thinking. Maybe it’s never what I DO that pulls me out of it. Saying that implies that anyone can pull themselves out by sheer “coping strategies” and I don’t believe that. I know that if it were that simple, people wouldn’t suffer from it so painfully and so persistently. But on the other hand, that sense that I am doing things that help to get me over the distress is important to my feeling of control over my life. Always important.

This morning, I feel a fresh fluidity in my mind, I’m able to glide freely through the little pond that is my life, and for that I am supremely grateful.

The illustration was taken in Houston over the Christmas holidays at the home of The Newmans who graciously let us use their amazing house in exchange for looking after their greyhound. The koi pond was a practicing photographer’s dream.

Look for more great Weekly Winner photos from this week here.

I’m late getting them up and have a lot to catch up on, but it’s good to be posting photos again. Hi everyone!

Some of you would like my new(ish) ning network
Being Practically Creative. Please check it out!

Yes, I paid them money. No, you don’t have to, but yes, they make it seem like something you reallllly need to do. Hey. I was vulnerable. I needed something shiny.

Anyway, here’s one version of my first video. The photos are of my granddaughter, Cadi. She was playing in a fountain in the park. Nearby were anti-war protesters who have come out to the park in Bar Harbor, Maine each Sunday since the invasion of Iraq and stood in silent protest. I do not know the priest’s full name but his colleague told me he’s Father Jim and is retired. He couldn’t resist playing with Cadi and she, as you will see, took to him immediately. I’m so grateful I was there not only to see the spontaneous joy of their sharing but also to capture some of it with my camera.

Enjoy Acadia and the Priest, perfect strangers sharing a perfect moment.

Thanks to Beth Felice who first posted an animoto video on Being Practically Creative and to Suze Corte who showed me how to play with them!

I love this little blog. I started it in full expectation of NOT posting often enough and then I did pretty well with it.

I am not a consistent person. Moodiness is so much a part of my genetic make-up that I am always astounded to learn that some people aren’t controlled by their mood-of-the-day. I’m drawn off task by not only moods, but also by the newest shiniest activity that catches my interest. And yet, I almost always return to what I love. And this blog, I love.

It feels like me, she said, shyly.

Fertile, then fallow, quiet without being private or secretive, heart-felt and earnest but with tongue-in-cheek.

Inconsistent. Also ambiguous. Moody.

January was a real up and (mostly) downer. I started an overly ambitious writing project that didn’t last more than two days. That led to a slump which caused me to seek solace in mind-numbing computer games, an obsession from which I haven’t fully recovered. There were other things. Emotional snowfalls began piling on, adding layer after layer of weight. Because it wasn’t a blizzard but a steadily growing accumulation of tiny things, I was unaware of what was happening.

I’m on the mend. Writing this is part of my recovery. I love this blog. I must do it more often and then I will remember other things that I love doing and I will rediscover the path to feeling that. Then, I’m sure, I will also get excited about the next new shiny thing that catches my interest. I can do both when I’m occupying the busy part of my life.

The illustration is of winter taken through the old stained glass panels in the stairwell of our house. Part of it I can see through and part I can’t and that is Like Life.

Hugs all ’round.

The bottom line is that I didn’t end up with a cohesive novel. I spent time the last day, after reaching 50,000 words, just writing notes to myself about what seems good about the writing and what doesn’t. One of the things I did was to list all the subplots I had going on. No wonder it never gelled! There were about ten separate things, some of them introduced once and never revisited!

I also wrote what I thought the plot should be. After spending a month immersed in that world and those characters, of course I know better what directions I should gone. I think the notes helped and will help in the future. I have more of a overview of what I wrote rather than being left with the impression of the last few days of writing which was less than inspiring. I also feel that the notes will serve me well later when I want to go back to it. It will give me a way into the story.

So that’s a wrap on Nano 2007.

On the other writing front: I finished the first draft of the short story on Saturday.

Ahhh, such a simple sentence.

Finishing a short story was once close to impossible for me. I had a writing teacher early on who was in the habit of spending 6 months to a year on a short story. She was a very bad influence on me!!! I have since joined a writing group with some wonderful role models who are much more practical. They have been a very good influence on me!!!

This story was a personal challenge to see if I could come up with an idea, write it, edit it, polish it, and send it off to the Nova Scotia Writer’s Federation contest all within 3 weeks. Oh, one other thing: it had to come in under 3,000 words, a feat I’ve never managed before.

So you see… it’s a simple sentence with much import for me. Yesterday I edited and rewrote the ending. Last night I read it out loud and felt it was choppy so I worked on transitions today and did line editing. This afternoon I gave to two trusted readers. While handing it over is always nerve-wracking, I did feel proud that I’ve gotten it to this point with four days to go before it has to be postmarked. The verdict is in from one of my readers; it got a thumbs up!

Now, finally, I have time to clean the bathroom.
What a reward, eh?
Oh the glamourous life of a writer!