|
|
About three weeks before the event, I places an order with Scarred Rubber for a new pair of boots — 27.5" thigh-high boots. (I don’t do a lot of fly fishing and the like. A definite fetish item.) I had expected them to arrive right promptly, so when they didn’t after a week, I e-mail the company to find out why. Turns out the boots are sold through them, manufactured elsewhere, and so they had to come to the LaCrosse Rainfair factory, then to Scarred, and then to me. Scarred kept in good e-mail contact with me for the following couple weeks and let me know when the boots were actually shipped to me. The finally arrived on Wednesday, the day before I was to leave for Seattle and Vancouver. Hurrah!
The other project I was dealing with in preparation for the trip was rubberizing a shirt. I had first encountered the idea — using Liquid Latex to paint a shirt and turning it into a form of latex clothing — from Bruce Chambers, one of the other contestants at Mr. International Rubber in November 1999. While he had used a uniform, I have a more cowboy bent, so I decided to tackle one of my Western shirts. (Moreover, this was one which had red fabric right next to white and had had a problem with the dye running, making the shirt no longer one that I wanted to wear for dancing, and thus perfect for experimenting on.)
Some of the things I learned while doing the project:
- Finger painting is the best way to cover large areas (Bruce had told me this), but it’s a crappy way to do detail work. Get yourself a Poly-Brush from the local art store (a handle with a plastic strip in the end, covered by a shaped piece of foam; small ones are less than 50 cents each).
- Poly-Brushes are good for one session of painting; get a bunch of them.
- Liquid Latex will soak through the fabric and try to adhere to the surface below. Work on a mostly non-porous surface. Don’t cover the surface with newspaper, as the Liquid Latex will bond the fabric to the paper; instead, just peel the fabric off the work surface and rub off the latex residue, just like with rubber cement.
- Doing the sleeves was a bitch. I tired to put waxed paper inside, but the Liquid Latex bonded to it. Eventually, I just ended up pulling apart the partially bonded sleeve sides (carefully!); don’t wait for the paint to fully set before doing that, though.
- Painting straight lines is hard, especially if you are painting up against another fabric. Use masking tape (duh!) to protect the other fabric and ensure the straight lines. (Wish I had thought of doing that first!)
- They don’t seem to make white Liquid Latex (or Mr. S didn’t have any, anyway), so I resorted to silver for the white areas of the shirt. But then I couldn’t get good silver Liquid Latex — all the jars they had at Mr. S were semi-congealed — so I had to use copper. (But that’s okay; I like copper.) I don’t know if it’s just the particular jar, the copper, or all metallics (the latter, I suspect), but the copper dried much faster than the red.
- Liquid Latex is ammonia-based. Smells like really strong piss. Work in a well ventilated area, even outside.
- I ended up running out of time, so I only did the red and most of the white/copper areas of the shirt, leaving the white collar and the black tails normal. I kind of like this mixture, so I may save the black paint for another project
- I ended up using about 1/2 of the red and 2/3 of the copper to do the shirt. I’ll probably end up using the rest of the copper and another 1/4 of the red to do another layer and generally smooth out the inconsistencies in the paint job.
- You can apparently also add a special glitter to the paint for an added sparkle effect. I’ve got another shirt with dyes that bled — forest green into white — so maybe I’ll give it a try.
Thursday at work passed with little event, and then I had to hop on 101, cross the San Mateo Bridge, and head up 880, all during the early parts of rush hour. I ended up leaving even a little earlier than I had originally planned, but made it just fine. (Which is good, since if that bridge is jammed, it can take forever.)
I flew Alaska Airlines (yes, despite the crash of Flight 261 a while back), without incident. In Seattle, I upgraded my car to a mid-sized Altima (via Avis) for an extra $6 per day, in order to get a CD player. (A recent order of CDs had arrived in Thursday’s mail, and since I would be driving to Vancouver, I wanted to listen to them. And I usually visit a used CD store or two while I’m in town and pick up a couple more, anyway.) From there, it was short jaunt to the bed and breakfast I usually stay at, the Bacon Mansion (aka the Broadway Guesthouse), where I was in the teeny Cabin Room all the way at the top (which is fine with me; it’s a cozy little room just right for one person for one night).
(In the picture, the Cabin Room is the little window just under the peak of the roof. On Sunday night, I would be in the Clipper Room, which is on the second floor, with two windows looking out on the patio with the umbrella seen in the picture.)
I then planned to go out to the Timberline Tavern, Seattle’s great gay country-western bar. Unfortunately, they were closed; they are apparently now only open Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday, (plus a Sunday disco dance). So I got done up in the rubberized Western shirt and headed out to The Cuff. Special hello to Mike and Sean, whom I met there on Thursday night.
Bacon Mansion B&B
The Cabin Room
Bruce Chambers and Tom Kelley at MIR 2000
The Starting Shirt
Bleed-Through onto a Table
Do the Insides of the Cuffs and Anywhere That White Will Show
Just the Button Stripe and a Little Bit Else to Go, Plus Some Edge Touchups
The Final Shirt
[ Go to Previous Part ] |
[ Go to Next Part ] |
[ Back to Trip Report Index ] |
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)