Why, do you ask? Because I’m going to see SLAYER. MEGADETH. AND TESTAMENT.

Yes. Almost the big 4, but not quite.  Good enough for me — good riddance to Metallica anyway.  Dave Mustaine is where it’s at, as you can tell by my fabulous kitchen decor.

(a super old pic … but seriously. this guy is badass).

Anyway, I so can’t wait to see Megadeth and Slayer again … and I’m excited about Testament. I’m kind of disappointed that we’ve got nose-bleeds because last time I saw Megadeth I was close enough to touch Dave. On the railing. Man, you MN peeps are wimps. I got more beat up at the Jimmy Eat World show in Iowa than I did at Gigantour that year!

Wow. I’m rambling. Sorry — I get excited about these things then go into douchey metal dude speak.

Anyway, I’m going to have a great time and maybe get some decent photos. Regardless, I’m so going to H&M when I’m in Minnesota … seriously.

Gotta love how I’m going to a thrash show and all I can think about is shopping …

I’m going to leave you with one of my favorite Megadeth songs.  I say one of them because they’re all pretty much amazing. Enjoy!

Not to mention — this one is a gem from ‘91 — Dave Ellefson on bass … drool (not because I think he’s hot, but because he’s amazing!) … it’s almost a shame I don’t have the same hair as these guys anymore.

is

coming

to

Des MOINES!

October 1 — they’re supporting Black Label Society, who, I’m cool with seeing again, but more importantly:

ALEXI LAIHO is coming to Des Moines. AND it’s a small venue.  Which means.  I could be. Within. His. Reach.

Oh man.

By the way … for those of you who don’t know me, did I mention that I’m a huge metalhead? I think that needs to probably be in my sidebar bio somewhere.

It’s soooo cheesy, but Children of Bodom are my end-all-do-all favorite metal band (aside from the ‘deth of course, who I’m scheduled to see again in August). They really came into play when I had my leg injury from running the 2008 Des Moines Marathon … I started listening to their album, Are You Dead Yet? and the lyrics from the title track became my mantra: “Should I regret, or ask myself, are you dead yet?” I even did a metal craft swap last summer and received a very cool cross stitch with those lyrics.  It was their driving speed that turned me from a jog-paced distance runner into a competitive shorter distance runner (I killed the last half marathon I ran!).

And in case you forgot, I may or may not have a minor crush on their lead vocalist and guitarist … Alexi. Laiho.

Anyway, I’m sure noone that reads this is even close to half as excited as I am about this, but I’m about ready to pee my pants over here waiting for them to announce ticket sales at the 7 Flags Center here!

I’m missing TWO things which I need to photog and post yet.. I will explain all of this later!

Here’s the details taken from Satanimals’ website:

Once again, here comes another art show where the weird are most welcome. Quickly gaining an awesome customer base, these art shows reflect the talent of folks who you wouldn’t ordinarily see in a Gallery around town.

Butch Von Dreaux is making another trek all the way from Louisiana to be here and Spookshow Pinups has been added to the list of amazing artists as well!

D. Ryan Allen will be there again showing all of his amazing work from zombie sketches to kid’s coloring books for the macabre.

In addition to the fine arts folks, we will also have all kinds of goodies like hand-made leather wallets, re-structured clothing, creepy dolls, hand-bags, pillows and everything else in between.

SATANIMALS will also be unveiling a new line of horror inspired pillows.. the first being an amazing SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA pillow!

This is not just your average art show. Pretentious art snobs are discouraged from coming. Although, it is fun to see them stick their nose in the air and turn on their heels when they see Gregg Bensink’s table of amazing goodies.

Attendees can enter the raffle to win numerous prizes including: original artwork from each of the artists, gift certificates for tattoos up to $100 as well as gift certificates to some local businesses including: Best Place Ever, ZZZ Records, Cup O’ Kryptonite and The Beauty Parlor!

The Raffle is at 9PM and you MUST be present to win!!

————

In case you were wondering, I’m on the poster — credited as “toDIYfor” since I’m going to be selling my rock/punk/dark stuff.

I’m super excited for this show!  I’ll finally get to meet Sew Zinski and it sounds like there’s free beer all around. Sounds like a great craft show to me!

Anywho, I only used half of the 50 blocks I’d created for it and shoved the rest of them in my closet to be used at a later date. Well, today was that later date.

This quilt top isn’t as cool as the other one, however; I did find one of the blocks I’d started embroidering back when I was all “ooh I should embellish these all with embroidery!” Not so much. Would have been cool, but too time-consuming for the likes of me.

Here’s a closeup of the embroidery.

what I love about these two quilt tops is that any-which-way is up.

Yay!

Now I’m off to Hancock Fabrics to get some batting, some backing (I think I’ll use the backing to bind in this case), some contrasting thread, a walking foot, some artist’s tape and a bunch of safety pins. You guessed it. I’m going to use this guy as my practice quilt to actually QUILT.

Wish me luck!!

I’ve been listening to At the Gates all day today and got to googling the band and came across their logo. It’s kind of cool. Not exactly cheesetastic like the Slayer logo…or my personal favorite….the Lamb of God logo (eek! in all its papyrus glory).

Here it is.  I think I’ve got a t-shirt of Kasey’s in my closet with this logo on it as well. 

I like how it still has that “metal” look to it while keeping in mind how the letters go together and how they go with the gates in the background. It’s really kind of hard to read though, which is probably the biggest downfall.  All in all though, much prettier and more well-thought out than the band’s contemporaries’ logos.

Here we goooo!

OMG Alexi Laiho is soooooo dreamy! I’m kind of in love with him. Seriously — like, he is way totally hotter than Ashton or the Jonas Brothers (who by the way are probably like 12 and I have no idea what they look like)!!

Alexi Laiho is the lead singer and guitarist for the Finnish metal band Children of Bodom. Not only does he totally rock on guitar, he’s also extremely hot when he does it! He is definitely the hottest guy in melodic death metal these days!

Here are some gratuitous pictures for you to admire and print out and tape all over your 8th grade English notebooks!

Okay guys, for reals – I do kind of have an über metal crush on him. The cute Finnish accent doesn’t help (listen to She is Beautiful or Bed of Nails covers for reference). Not to mention, there’s really not that many cute guys in my musical genres…. 

I mean…here are my other choices:

George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher (Cannibal Corpse) 

Johann Hegg of Amon Amarth 

Kerry King of  Slayer

And of course… MY HERO… Dave Mustaine (not that attractive, but a very cool guy)

Also, I may have picked this photo on purpose because he’s making an awesome guitar face.

I cut the bottom off the shirt, added a blue jersey knit panel to the bottom of it and sewed it to the top. I did a contrasting blue zigzag stitch for the entire shirt and added a zipper on the side since I had a matching zipper lying around.

(bad lighting…bad hair day.. pretty much no makeup… did I mention I’m not a photographer?)

Here’s the front (I cut my head off because it was just sad)

Back — I had thought about doing the blue all the way around, but I liked the way it looked with a plain black back better.

Side (zipper detal) GOOD LORD I’m pasty!

Here’s the original shirt.  I wore this the day I met Kasey for the first time! (I’m pretty sure this was the same day).  I tried out for Assault Company that day and I dressed “hardcore” for the occasion. Clearly, hardcore=pigtails and a sequin cuff.

I’m planning to post this baby on Etsy soon.  I’m planning a photoshoot sometime in July with my friend (aka ex-boyfriend) Matthew, even though Kasey’s not fond of the idea (Kasey doesn’t dislike Matthew because he’s my ex-bf…Kasey just thinks he’s a huge tool).  However… Matthew has some pretty awesome fashion photogs and some pretty cool portraits…. so in the end, that wins out over pissing off Kasey. Plus, I’ve always wanted to model, but my height and hip size have kept me out of the running… I do have the chest for it though! haha. AND he’ll do it for free aside from developing film (if he uses a film camera), which is kind of awesome.  So… win win situation for me and him both (as long as I look decent in the pictures!).

Well, I did. I didn’t take *good* photos of it, but it’s a step up from the cell phone pix that I had!

I have a huge collection of crappy band shirts that are of the hardcore/numetal/radio rock genre.  I’ve been hoarding them thinking I could make some cute tops out of them but realized I’d be embarrassed to wear some of these bands around (Limp Bizkit?! haha).  

So, they were perfect for my deconstructed t-shirt quilt top experiment. I had about 25 black and grey shirts and I made 50 blocks out of the shirts that I’d cut up into smaller pieces and re-pieced together. I embroidered some of the pieces and did some fabric painting on some plain black squares to give it a more destroyed/deconstructed look.

Anyway, here’s my first attempt at piecework. 

yeah. lotsa slipknot. to slip, or not to slip? slipkNOT.

Some of you may not recall that how I met my boyfriend was because I was in the band for a while as the lead singer.  I did two shows (in one day) and that was the end of my career. I broke up the band the next fall and Kasey (the bassist at the time) and I decided to start our own band — The Duct Tape Pirates.  It took a month or so to decide on the name…but we never really did anything. Basically I didn’t learn bass fast enough and I really just wanted to sing. So that project went down the crapper.

Anyway, I had won a free flickr pro account from my friend Niki’s Design-o-blog’s Ugly Website Contest.  I finally got the account up and running yesterday and was going through my photos today to upload…and found this gem:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1KdNTXkH5c]

This was at the SpringFest battle of the bands (the year VEISHEA was cancelled). Probably the worst song for my vocals. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I wish somebody had taped a song that I was growly in.. that would rock. I can’t do that anymore, and I had some pretty scary vox.

Either way. Enjoy. Somehow I thought that the dress code for “metal” included a pink flamingo skirt. Also, the crazy bass player on the left of the screen is definitely Kasey with short hair. He hit his bass so hard that day he split his finger open and bled all over it…and didn’t clean the blood off the bass until after he sold it (in preparation to ship off of course). This is how I fell in love with him…ha.

EDIT: Okay, I can’t blog about the Assault Company without including this awesome promo that Kasey put together for their 2nd to last EP:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb-y-_oWbTY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f]

Um and I also can’t blog about the boyfriend without including the AWESOME birthday song that he did for me last fall:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX9PusqM-Yo&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f]