Convention preparations

Finally my cold has almost gone, and I actually feel like my brain is back on-line again. I did struggle through three days of work, but it’s lucky it was quiet, because I was definitely not at my most productive.

I have managed to be reasonably productive with convention stuff though. I’d volunteered to help Sherlockfan out with a few bits and pieces, and it’s finally beginning to dawn on me just how quickly the convention is approaching, so I thought I’d better get started on some of them.

First mission was to come up with a convention logo. I’d only taken over responsibility for this recently (someone else had volunteered to do it but they didn’t come through) otherwise I would have done it long ago – having a logo early on is really useful. I’d talked to Sherlockfan about what she wanted on it, and she suggested either Ballycumber balancing the Beehive on his head (which was the idea the original logo designer had come up with but hadn’t executed), or to have a stylised New Zealand running towards Ballycumber.

I had a play round with these ideas, and eventually came up with these two logos:

[album 128913 bcnz07_1a.jpg thumblink] [album 128913 bcnz07_2.jpg thumblink]

And then, just because I was having fun playing around in the graphics program, I did another silly design, taking the beehive thing literally (for the edification of overseas readers, our parliament building is nicknamed “The Beehive”, because that’s what it looks like (and, some say, because of the meaningless drone that emerges from it)):

[album 128913 bcnz07_4.jpg thumblink]

I emailed them to Sherlockfan for her to choose one or make further suggestions, and guess which one she chose? Yep, the Ballycumber-bees one! So my silly idea is now the official logo of the 2007 NZBC convention 🙂

The other two big tasks I volunteered to take on are organising the quiz night and making the goody bags. Both are now well under way – I spent some time the other day coming up with suitable questions for the quiz (there’s still a couple of rounds I need to finish off, and I want to do a bit more research to double-check some of the answers, but otherwise it’s mostly finished), and yesterday MrPloppy and I went into town and while he visited second-hand record shops I was at Spotlight trying to buy vast quantities of unbleached calico (I’d worked out we’d need about 18m for the number of bags we’re making). Of course, Spotlight is one of the worst-organised shops I’ve ever come across, and after wandering around the fabric section for about half an hour without finding calico, I started looking at alternatives. I found something that might be ok, but I didn’t want to commit to buying such a lot of fabric without getting a second opinion, so I sent a text message to lytteltonwitch asking what she thought. Her response was a text saying give her 10 minutes and she’d come and have a look for herself.

While I was waiting for her, I wandered around the rest of the shop, and, of course, about 30 seconds before she walked in the door I found the calico. A huge display of it. I’ve got no idea how I missed it the first time – my only defence is that it was hidden among the thermal-lined curtain material, which is not the most obvious place to look! Anyway (after profuse apologies to the witch for dragging her out for no reason) we bought a 20m roll of calico (it was cheaper to buy a whole roll than an 18m piece), and then went to find MrPloppy and have some lunch (I invited lytteltonwitch to join us so she wouldn’t have had an entirely wasted trip into town).

Next weekend lytteltonwitch and TheLetterB will be coming over for a sewing bee to get the bags made up, so my task in the meantime will be to cut out all the pieces we need (luckily all nice simple rectangles, so shouldn’t take me too long – I’m hoping to be able to get most of it done this afternoon).

I’ve had a couple of catches from our Timaru trip already: Age of the Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl (which we heard getting caught in the maze) and The Scarlet Bikini by Glynn Croudace, which I left by the lighthouse. Both finders have joined Bookcrossing too!

Currently reading: A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy
Currently listening to: The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (yes, still – I took the bus to work last week instead of walking because I wasn’t well, so I haven’t had as much listening time as normal)