A Balrog of Morgoth

Some time ago I wrote a blog post called Tell Me, Where is Gandalf? This is a follow-up. A sad one, I’m afraid.

As I’m sure you are aware, Gandalf ran into some trouble with a Balrog. Well, I did too. My particular Balrog is called Depression, and it brought a friend, called Social Anxiety. They both do their best to make my life miserable, and to be honest I’m not really helping, either.

I’m not going to write a long post about my problems. I might, one day, but not today. I don’t think it’s interesting anyway. I know all too much about them, and you probably couldn’t care less. That’s fine. This is about my Grand Plan of dressing up as Gandalf for the premiere of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which is on the 11^th of December here. (That’s on Wednesday! OMG, YOU GUYS! WEDNESDAY!) To do that, I wanted to make a costume myself, both because that is a wonderful challenge for me, and because most costumes I can afford to buy look cheap and unrealistic.

I wrote the post in May. I did lots of research the following weeks and months, and thought a lot about how I would do it, where to buy what I needed, what I needed, when I had the house to myself so I could get some crafting peace. I even bought a book with tips and stuff about sewing. (Read a bit in it too, it’s very useful and interesting.) But the days flew by – not because I was busy doing lots of things, but because I was busy doing nothing. I didn’t notice the time, because every day is hellishly long, and my concept of time is on the level of a small child these days. Worse, perhaps. Yesterday, last month, last year, this morning – they all seem equally far away for me. All there is is NOW. Great, you’re living in the moment! you might say. But that’s the problem. I’m not living. I’m just waiting. My life seems like an eternal waiting room. I wait and I wait and I wait, and I can’t bring myself to do anything else.

Shoot, we started wandering into depression land, didn’t we? Let me get back on track. As I noticed the calendar showed a completely different month than I’d have guessed, I thought, well, I won’t have the time or energy to create the whole costume, but at the very least I can make the hat, right? That seems easy enough. I’d found a nice guide to it, as mentioned in the other post, all I needed was the ingredients, some time, and a head clear enough to understand the instructions, which are relatively simple. Of the three, I’ve only really had one: time. A clear head, clear enough to go shopping for anything that isn’t contact lenses or asthma medicines, clear enough to comprehend basic English (or Norwegian, or German, or any other language), is something I have not had access to for a couple of years now. I did go looking for the cloth I needed a couple of times, but my mind refused to cooperate.

So here I am, six and a half months after writing my last blog post, and I have no hat, no robe, no cloak, and my head is so useless I had to find a calendar and count the months since May, because I couldn’t figure it out without any visual help. And it’s just three short days until the premiere (I’m not counting Wednesday, since the movie starts about one minute after Tuesday ends). I think we can safely count this project as a big, definite failure.

No one is more sorry about it than I am. I really wanted it to happen, but it didn’t. I just have to accept that.

Back to the Balrog. (If you’re not familiar with the story of The Lord of the Rings, be warned, I’m being a bit spoilery now!) Just like Gandalf, I said to my Balrog: “You shall not PASS!” And it didn’t. But it fell. And it dragged me down with it, just like it did Gandalf. And right now I am at the bottom of the pit, fighting my Balrog and its friend, and I just can’t do it. They are overwhelming me.

But Gandalf came back, New and Improved. And I will, too. I’m getting help now. And, of course, there will be another Hobbit premiere. The big finale! There and Back Again. A year from now. A new deadline. And I will make it this time!

You just wait and see. I will post updates here. It will happen. I will rise again, New and Improved, stronger than ever before.

Tolkienizer the White.

Tell Me, Where is Gandalf?

So. I’ve had another one of my crazy ideas. I don’t think I’ve posted all that many of them here on the blog, but if you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen a couple of them. Anyway, this one’s not all that crazy, because it’s actually very doable and not really insane (though quite a lot of people would probably call it weird at the very least), if it weren’t for one tiny little thing: I can’t sew. Not with needle and thread, not with a sewing machine.

I mean, I know the basics. I know how you do it, I’m just not good at it. At all. Not even a little. So I need your help. Yes, I need YOU, but I’ll come back to that later. First, a little background and some explanation.

It all started at the midnight premiere for The Hobbit, in December 2012. I was really excited, and looking forward to the movie, the nostalgia (OMG IT HAS THE SHIRE IN IT!!!) and, also, the costumes I would probably see at the midnight showing.

Well, the movie was good. Nostalgia and good memories of Lord of the Rings marathons and such came back to me. But I was really disappointed, because there were almost no costumes at all. I’m pretty sure I looked at every single person there, and I saw only one group of people with costumes. I think they were three or four (persons, not years old), and they were wearing cloaks. Yeah, sure, nice enough and kudos and awesomepoints to them, but why weren’t there more people with costumes? That made me really sad. I know my town isn’t the largest, but it’s largeish, and should, statistically, have more than four awesome people in it.

(You might have figured out where I’m going with this by now.)

So I’ve decided I have to fix that for the next premiere, this December. And, you know, when something needs doing, it’s best to do it yourself. That way, you can be sure it gets done, and, of course, that it gets done well. (Uhm, the last part, in this case, we’ll have to see about, as I’m not very good at this.)

I have decided I will be Gandalf. My sister has also said that she wants to join my project, but she’s not sure who she wants to be. Maybe her own Elf in the game Lord of the Rings Online, maybe someone else. (I want her to her to be Bilbo, because I’m slightly taller than her, so that would be appropriate.) She’s also talked about getting some of her geeky friends to join us, I don’t know if she’s asked them yet. But I will be Gandalf, that has been decided.

I’m not very good at making actual, physical things, because I am a writer. I’ve made lots of things in my life, but all the best ones are made of words. Obviously, I can’t make a costume out of words. (Well, I can, actually, but it wouldn’t help me much in this case, so it’s not good enough.) I’ll need cloth and thread and needles and probably a sewing machine. My mum has needles and a sewing machine, and while I haven’t asked her yet, I can’t imagine a world in which she won’t let me borrow them. Cloth and thread can be bought, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

But, since I am awful at this, I’ll need patterns as well. Recipes. Whatever they’re called. (I’ll go with patterns, I think.) And that is where my problems begin.

Of course, I could probably go on the Internet and find a cheap costume somewhere, but I don’t want a cheap costume, because they usually look like what they are – cheap. I want a proper costume, one that looks realistic. If I were to buy that, all finished and ready for use, I’d have to use a lot of money. I don’t have a lot of money. At the moment, I barely have enough money for contact lenses and gas each month. Soon I’ll hopefully be able to afford a little bit more, because I seem to have found myself a job. (Yay!) I won’t be a millionaire any time soon, but I’ll be able to buy what I need for this.

Oh. Yes. Back to the point. Patterns. I’ve been looking all over the Internet for clues on how I’m going to make my Gandalf costume. It’s awfully difficult, and I googled and clicked links for hours, and I found some things, but with my limited sewing jargon (especially in English, which is not my mother tongue) it was hard to understand much. I couldn’t even determine if it would be useful if I knew all the terms.

There was one exception. I found a pattern for Gandalf’s hat, which I think I’ll manage to get right: http://www.sallypointer.com/gandalfhat.htm But I still need a cloak, and a robe or tunic or whatever. I want my costume to look as similar to Ian McKellen’s costume as possible, because I think it screams Gandalf and anyone who’s read the books but not seen the movies would recognise him anyway.

And that’s where you come in. I need help finding patterns for the cloak and the robe.  Also, I have an idea for how to make the beard, but if you know something great about beard-making (keep in mind that I can’t grow one!), let me know. I think every single person reading this can help me in one way or another. Are you good at this, perhaps so good that you can help me make a pattern? Do you know of any good patterns for a Gandalf costume? Or a pattern that with small modifications can become Gandalf’s clothes? Perhaps you can give me some tips on how to sew? (I have a pretty amazing grandmother, and I can probably ask her for tips as well, but all advice is welcome.) Maybe, if you by coincidence (or not, I’d be willing to overlook that in this case) live nearby – or have lots of spare time and lots of money so you can travel here – you can help me with the sewing itself? Maybe you have advice on which kind of cloth I should choose.

“But I can’t do any of this!” you might be thinking. Well, you can still help. I know you can. Perhaps you know something I haven’t already mentioned, that you think might be useful. Or maybe you know someone else who might be able and willing to help me.

“But I can’t do any of that either!” you say. Well, that’s fine. I couldn’t help me either, so I don’t expect everyone else will be able to either, but you can help me spread the word. I will be ever so grateful to every single person willing to help me by telling other people about my little project. Not because I want publicity, but because I want this to happen so badly. And it won’t, without help from strangers. Perhaps your tweet is the one thing that makes the right person see my plea for help?

If you have anything that might help me here, please don’t hesitate to contact me through Twitter, comment on this post or send me an e-mail (morning_star dot 93 at hotmail dot com). I moderate the comments on this blog, so if you don’t want your comment to go public, just let me know.

Thank you for reading! (I know, it’s long. I don’t know how to write short posts, sorry.) Thank you so much if you share this post, or send me ideas, tips or anything that might be of help. I love you.