The Journey Continues

It's been a spell since I last posted here, but life gets busy and our plates become full.

Thankfully, events with friends still occur on a somewhat regular basis. These days are made even better when we get to spend time together in costume!

A few weeks back, San Jose hosted Silicon Valley Comic Con. It was a perfect excuse to not only get into costumed shenanigans with friends, but to enjoy the entirety of the con and all its amazing guests, talent, personalities, cosplays, vendors, workshops and discussion panels.

Still, my favorite part was the fact that we'd gathered more friends for the shieldwall, including the awesomely talented BelleChere, who built their own unique Viking impressions/costumes based on the History Channel TV series, 'Vikings'.
We raided SVCC, we all looked fantastic, and we had a blast.
I had dyed my hair a visceral blood red shade about two months before, and it had finally (amazingly) worked its way out in time for SVCC.
I wore my blue Lagertha battledress and armor from season 2, along with one of the bronze hound barrettes she wears in the current season 4 of Vikings. I had bought a matching set (one for each side) of the hounds from the Crafty Celts booth, at this last Dragon Con before they were available online. This first set was actually taken from the same initial castings as those sent to the Vikings production for Katheryn Winnick.
At the time, they didn't have the accompanying bronze doe barrettes available, but they alerted me as soon as they were a few months later. I pined over them, not having the extra funds at that moment.

In exchange for some needed and skilled massage therapy on my battle-weary back, I built some leather armor with chainmaille, for my good friend and fellow Shieldmaiden, River. I also assisted her with modifying a found suede jacket into a tunic for underneath, and dyed a Scandinavian style shirt to be a little more rustic.

River and yours truly; from the talented eye and lens of Arian Hormozi.

I turned up the brightness of this image a bit, so you can see a little more of River's outfit.

Another great shot by Arian Hormozi.

Right to left: BelleChere, Mary Anne Butler, Me, Anders Hudson, River, Gwendolyn and Geoff.

A closeup in-progress shot of the waist cincher portion of the battle gear I made for River.

The woven parts are actually created from a woven leather belt found at a thrift store. I ended up weaving it to the cincher itself along the top edge and down the center, framing the tooled boar designs I did, and resembling Thor's hammer.

SVCC was also the weekend before my Birthday, and while my gift from Anders didn't arrive in time, it arrived that Monday after. It was a set of the bronze doe barrettes to join my hounds!!

Self portrait, barrettes by Crafty Celts.