Wherein I prove that I AM the fastest seamstress in the West

Whoo boy. The day kicked off with a phone call inviting me out to breakfast with Lee and George Martindale and Esther Friesner (aka the Queen of the Musketeers). The other reason for this breakfast was so that Esther and I could return to the room afterwards and she could try on her gown.

Un petit problem -- the gown wasn't finished. I begged off and asked her to come by afterwards, and proceeded to sit down, be-jammied and with my hair sticking up in spikes, and manually finished sewing the skirt's waistband (and if you've ever tried to do handsewing over gathered material, you will understand why the tip of my right middle is now red and swollen). Even the arrival of my loyal con bitch wasn't enough to force me up and into clothes -- I had a gown to finish, dammit!

However, I did get the band 90% attached by the time Esther arrived around 10:00 AM, escorted by the Musketeer quartermaster Bill Seney (he who brings semi-sweet chocolate to the Musketeers, bless his heart). We shooed Bill off and Esther climbed into the gown for the first time. Apart from a slight adjustment at the waistline it fit perfectly, so we made arrangements for me to finish it and drop it off at her room later that afternoon so that she could wear it to the First Night event.

I settled back into sewing like a madwoman until noon, when I had to run a rake through my hair and head over to the Hynes convention center escorted by Steve and man the SFWA table for an hour. Which was perfect, because Terry Pratchett (the Guest of Honor this year) ambled by wearing a t-shirt that will go down in fan history. It read, in decreasing font size:

Tolkien's dead.
J.K. Rowling said no.
Phillip Pullman couldn't make it.
Hi, I'm Terry Pratchett.

I do love that man.

The hour went by fairly quickly, and Rochelle (aka the Diva of the SFWA table) sprung me at 1:00 PM. I didn't even get to tour the dealer's room, just went straight back to my room and kept on sewing.

This turned out to be a good thing, since my room promptly turned into SFWA Musketeer Central -- the registration lines were literally snaking around the perimeter of the lobby, and incoming Musketeers who couldn't find their roommates and dump their luggage called me instead and asked if they could store it temporarily in my room. Others were trying to find people, and for an hour there I was jumping up every ten minutes or so to answer the phone and relay questions/instructions/room numbers for my fellow swordsfolk.

Finishing the dress took slightly longer than I expected as a result, which meant that I had to pack it all up and bring it WITH me to my first panel, Bubba SF. Yes, I sat there in a panel and frantically stitched on hooks and eyes. Luckily the rest of the panelists were more than happy to pick up the slack; apparently Steve was tempted to comment that I was the picture of the perfect Southern woman (sitting there quietly sewing and letting the men talk), but he didn't want to be bitchslapped afterwards. Smart man.

Panel over, I raced back to the room to pick up the skirt and called Esther's daughter Annie, who was kind enough to stay in the room and wait for me to get my ass over there with her mother's costume. As it turned out, Esther had a little surprise waiting for me -- a lovely copper cookie cutter in the shape of a fleur des lis and a mouse t-shirt for my computer mouse as a thanks for the gown. She's so cool.

Mission accomplished, I collared Lyndon and we headed off in search of food. The Cheesecake Factory was jammed, so we headed a little farther down and found Dick's Last Resort (which used to have a Dallas branch up until a couple of months ago). It was also relatively empty, so we grabbed an outside table and watched the locals (including a hilarious pair of kids who ambled past the restaurant exclaiming, "A soda costs five bucks in there. FIVE BUCKS! Can you believe it?").

After dinner, it was time to head back to the hotel and gear up for the First Night skit -- the Queen (Esther), out on the town incognito with her Musketeers, would run into the evil Cardinal and his bevy of leather-clad Henchwenches in the Mended Drum. There would be a kerfluffle, and we would be challanged to display our metier on Saturday at the demo.

Well, it didn't happen quite like that. As it turned out, nobody had told the act on stage that we were supposed to interrupt them (which took some hissed negotiating on the part of the Captain and the talent organizer) -- when that happened, we had to sing a round of "Five Constipated Men of the Bible" to get everyone's attention, and finally the Cardinal (played to an evil turn by the delectible James Hartley/Jay Caselberg/Evil Brother James) and his slinky Henchwenches made off with the Queen. And my hat. While I chased after Laura Anne for possession of my chapeau, Elizabeth herded everyone outside to the main stage and made her challenge/announcement about the demo on Saturday. There was much interest, and we swept off successfully, Elizabeth and Co to go inspect the fencing space and the rest of us to get out of our (now) hot and sweaty costumes. Well, for me it was a necessity -- I'm dressing up in Musketeer mufti four times this weekend (for tonight, the kid's fencing tomorrow, the demo on Saturday and an event on Sunday), and while I brought the spare pirate shirt I still don't want to sweat up the mandelion that badly.

Back at the room, I changed back into mundane gear and decided to make the room party rounds. I ran into Rene Walling (from Con*Cept in Montreal), and he escorted me to the Torcon party for ice cream with walnuts and real maple syrup. After that was the Australia party (with nummy gummy thingies) and the Worldcon in '07 bid parties, where I plunked down $20 and voted for Yokohama in '07, receiving a stylish scarf thingy in return.

I also met a somewhat panic-stricken Steve who'd left some of his gear in one of the rooms -- it turned out that he'd left it in the Torcon party, and as they're Canadians they're all scrupulously polite and honest, so nobody walked off with it. After muttering something about needing to change his underwear, he told me that he'd left said underwear in my room and could he come retrieve it?

Not wanting him to walk around commando style all weekend, I said yes, and we went up to the room where I handed over his plastic bag of unmentionables. He toddled off into the distance, and I decided that as I was 1) already in the room, 2) in desperate need of sleep before tomorrow's Musketeer breakfast, 3) in possession of a sore pair of tootsies and 4) required to blog all of this up at some point, I decided to call it a night. There would be time for intensive partying later on in the weekend.