Dark Refuge - Latex Fashion Week 2012

Dark Refuge is the oldest German fetish club in SL (five years in January, nothing short of astonishing for any club) and they’re holding a week long latex fashion week, featuring some of our favorite designers.

We’ll paste the schedule so it’s a little easier to read than on the poster ;)

Monday 12:00 PM SLT
Dress code: Heaven and Hell (Contest)
Designer: Rosal

Tuesday 12:00 PM SLT
Dress code: Fresh and Fruity (Contest)
Designer: Lava

Wednesday 12:00 PM SLT ( NOTE : UPDATED!! )
Dress code: Burlesque (Giveaway)
Designer: ~AtaMe~

Thursday 12:00 PM SLT
Dress code: Space/Cyber (Contest)
Designer: Graves

Friday 12:00 PM SLT
Dress code: Uniform (Giveaway)
Designer: KDC

Saturday 12:00 PM SLT
Dress code: Trans-Latex (Contest)
Designer: Catch it

Sunday 11:00 PM SLT
The grand finale of the latex fashion week is a big fashion show and a aftershow party

Kristina Simon will present the show and be the DJ for the afterparty

Contact: Cosma Ferina
The SLURL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dark%20Refuge/129/234/1981

KDC Lorelei Hoods and Saint Torley Day

What would I do without Inara?

While I’m trying on sexy boots and sticking lelo in bondage hoods, she keeps an eye on the world and points out the important stuff I would miss.

Seriously, subscribe to her blog. I have her last 451 posts in my Thunderbird (best RSS reader ever!) and I would be a poorer leather goddess without them.

So what does she have to tell us about today? Why, the fifth annual feast of Saint Torley! It’s just two days from now, this Sunday. See the press release for details.

Like most residents I’m sure, Torley’s cheerful “Friendly Greetings!” accompanied the videos that taught lelo and me how to get our bearings, do cool stuff, and celebrate our creativity in Second Life.

It says the event is not endorsed by LL or Torley. I’m betting he’ll be too busy blushing furiously to endorse anything ;)

---

We nearly let the KDC transparent hoods go with the quickie mention you saw last Friday, but Kyrah called, and asked if we wanted to feature them.

The trouble for me was, I was concerned they might be seen as just another color of the same thing. 

I mentioned mesh colorable items like the cool Elegance boots as a coming thing - residents may not be mad about buying colors of an outfit if too many one-click-to-infinite-color items came out.

Kyrah listened closely. It’s gratifying to talk to someone who’s actually interested and not just looking to refute an argument. She pointed out an important difference between a tinted item and an original-color texture: the white highlights get tinted.

This makes a muted, much less interesting colored item. It’s fine for a quickie, color-coordination thing, but a good quality colored item will always look better. Even though the untrained eye may not consciously realize the difference, there will be the feeling that it’s “nicer” somehow.

So I agree with Kyrah: the Lorelei hoods are a different item, one that required a lot of work, and is worth sharing with you.

But since we ran the Lycia hoods barely three weeks back and already gave you a peek at Lorelei’s face last week, let's just say, it's out, it's cool, and it's worth seeing.

Latex Station Revamp and Hunts

A few months back, Latex Station got a big revamp : walls removed, the whole thing simplified and streamlined... I was just trying to find a good time to tell you ;)

VvB shoes and boots now occupy the bottom floor, and there’s a mini mall with other designers - many of them friends we featured in the blog.

The cheapies table is still there, well-stocked as ever, gorgeous older LS outfits at 10L$ each.

There’s a Leather and Lace hunt with a stop at Latex Station, going on until September 20th: the start point is here and a Twisted hunt that starts tomorrow: http://twistedhunt.com for the details.

And the biggest SLFF URL giver in Second Life is still at Latex Station :)

1000th Blog Post Party At Rubber Room Was A Blast!

Wooo! What an awesome, head-spinning, gift-giving, friend-greeting party it was.

Lelo noted 53 people at one point on the sim.. and it’s a safe bet they weren’t down at the mall shopping :)

The Rubber Room dance floor was full, and I was so busy handing out gifts for the trivia game I never had a moment to snap a pic.

To all our friends who came: thank you, and sorry for not chatting more. It means a lot to me that you were there to celebrate with us and wish us well.

To our friends who couldn’t make it: it happens, we still love you, and we’ll see you at the next one.

One of the fun gifts we received was a custom-made catsuit for the event. Kat Fetisov took our url-giver original pics and made a theme catsuit for the evening. Thanks Kat!

It’s available for free at her store in Little Shop of Kink next to her other boxes. Hurry, it may not stay there for long.

We had tons and tons of gifts to hand out - I dare say this is the most generous fetish party that was ever held. We gave out gift cards, outfits, boots, and even “gift certificates” from stores that don’t have card systems.

Thank you to all our designer friends who sponsored us, I’m not naming names but you and our guests know who you are :)

Thank you Rikki Scarmon for running the trivia game and being an awesome party host, thank you Evergreen Engineer for the great job as a DJ. Rubber Room rocks!

Thank you Pet for offering your services as personal shopper as a gift - the party was a bit too chaotic to stop and explain, but it's still appreciated.

I’m going to be a little naughty and point you to the profile of Susannah McMinnar (but not link to it, that would be rude), as she took some great pictures of the party.

I snagged one of me and lelo (and friends!) - Susannah’s not on right now but I’ll make sure she doesn’t mind.

We’re hitting year 4 of the blog in a few weeks.. but we’ve already decided that the next party will be for our fifth anniversary.

See you at SLFF5B ;)

KaS Corset Update and Aug. 17th Party Reminder

For all you KaS corset lovers, there is a free update available at the KaS stores. 

Salid has gone Mesh with her corset so the new version now moves with your body. *woohoo*

There is a slight down side to the new Mesh version as the training bit has been taken out of the corset, you now have all 4 versions in your folder.

You can still train in the old one and do the silly walk while training and wear the new one when you are done and have gained a elegant walk.

So get over to KaS for this update and if you didn’t buy it in the first place..DUH..this is a must-have, girls. *winks*

Our 1000th Blog Post Party is coming up! Yes, you know that. But have you told two friends? So they can tell two friends? And so on, and so on? ;) Friday, August 17th, 2PM at Rubber Room That’s only two weeks from now! Just cause we’re awesome that way, here’s the slurl for RR: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pine%20Woods/26/194/601

And a bit of early news : The third Femdom Hunt is coming up! It's in October, but if you're a store and you want to get in on the action, see their site : http://femdomhunt.blogspot.com

Only Three Weeks Before 1000th Blog Post Party!

  Friday, August 17th, 2PM at Rubber Room

 

Deirdre:
Tattoo that date on your forehead, kitties, this is the party you don’t want to miss :)

For starters, we’ll have the most amazing, incredible, stunning.. eh, what’s that, lelo?

Keep it hush-hush? But I already... oh, you’re right, I suppose.

Surprises *are* more fun.

But surely I can mention the awesome... that our friend... will be... no?

Oh, all right. They’ll find out in three weeks ;)

lelo:
are you studying hard ?, did you count the amount of latex we posted on ?, which KK color catsuit didn’t we ever show you ?, what’s lelo’s favorite footwear ?, who did we have as guest models ?....

We could be asking all this and more, so study hard, our treasure chest of gifts is slowly filling up, and i got to tell you, i could live in it. *winks*

You got 20 day’s left better get to work and start making lists, reading posts and remembering names, time it ticking....

Ohh, party hats aren’t mandatory, only for lolcats, fetish wear is though, there might be even prizes of that.. oops

Our 1000th post is coming up - Party Invitation

In a little less than a month, we’ll be writing our 1000th blog post.

In exactly one month, we’ll be celebrating at Rubber Room, and you’re invited!

Aside from the excellent dancing and music, we’ll hold a trivia game - based on the blog! - with great prizes, so start studying!

August 17th at 2PM at the Rubber Room is the time and place. Don’t worry, we’ll be reminding you for a few weeks.

This might be a good time to mention that Rubber Room has moved, I suppose ;)

The new location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pine%20Woods/26/194/601

More as it develops - stay tuned, and have a great weekend.

SL9B ends soon - don’t wait!

Longish week, so no awesomely entertaining anecdotes or assorted coolness today, except a reminder that the birthday festivities are ending very soon: June 27th is this Wednesday - so that’s not a lot of time left if you haven’t started touring the sims and seeing the exhibits.

I imagine the crowds will be pretty heavy this weekend, but if you aim for off-peak hours you might get some low-ish lag time in.

Have fun, and see you Monday!

Nekos From Mars - Operative Series

Deirdre:

While we’re not changing careers from bloggers to secret agents, our recent wardrobe seems to hint that we should :)

We got a friendly hello from Mars Matova asking if we were interested in reviewing his new Operative line of full outfits. A quick peek on Marketplace showed that they looked good so we agreed.

I just had no idea. This is really impressive gear!

I’m wearing most of the Cell Operative outfit in our first pic, minus only the commando-ninja mask; it did nothing good for my hair ;)

The box for C.O. held 30 parts not counting extras, of which I’m wearing 15 - lelo was a little puzzled when I said I was a overwhelmed; the other outfits are somewhat less intricate.

There’s a lot to love here. The mesh corset and excellent booties would be worth the price of admission by themselves.

Cydonian Operative, my outfit on the second pic, is much more revealing and features two-toned mesh boots, red in front and black in rear; wow them when you arrive, sneak away undetected, perhaps.

Keep an eye on Nekos from Mars - we certainly will :)

lelo:
Nekos From Mars is a new shop in our list and it totally blew us over.

One of the great things with Mars's designs it that he writes a backstory for all his operatives and designs the outfit accordingly, a smart way of working i would say.

On Marketplace he tells the backstory of each design, giving you a feel of what’s involved with each operative.

Legion Operative is the outfit i wear in the first picture, according to Mars’s back story, this is the most basic and most common operative and with prices like that i can understand why.

You get the mesh corset in 8 sizes so there should be one for almost every one, the way the corset moves with your body is great.

You also get 3 different versions of the gloves, a modest version of the catsuit and the one i’m wearing here, both in underwear layer.

Finally there are a pair of great-looking booties, a prim collar and 6 alpha layers to let the corset work with different size boots and shoes.

In the second picture i’m wearing the Cyber Operative in red, there also is a blue version.

According to Mars this is a gynoid operative aka a fembot, that should bring in the dolls of SL.

This one comes with a amazing-looking circuited catsuit, the same texture is also used on the booties.

Most eye-catching is the helmet which totally works with gynoid theme.

The big prim collar and the arm blades bring the outfit further to life.

So check out what kind of operative you are and join the Nekos from Mars.

Name : Nekos From Mars
Owner : Mars Matova
The SLURL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bellobas/26/88/43

	Deirdre	lelo
Quality	9	9
Price	8	8
Service	8	7
Store	7	7

---

Cool quiet visit, saw much

I actually finished my first sim, and got half-way through my second one!

Most of the exhibits are really cool, a few are so puzzling as to be completely incomprehensible to me - I really wasn’t expecting that; but I’m reconciled with the idea not everyone thinks the same way I do, and it’s ok.

What I did see and love were two old friends : the Phoenix viewer exhibit, and New Citizens Inc.

Phoenix has several panels of good info, and a really stunning animated phoenix statue which catches your eye from a good distance :)

NCI.. those awesome, crazy guys built a little replica of NCI Kuula, the spot I send new residents for free classes and good information since we found them years ago.

I’m really enjoying this visit, and doing it with the idea of sharing my favorite finds with you definitely adds a little something. I never expected I’d enjoy blogging so much :)

Elixir - Hextile

Deirdre:

Hextile is a new line of clothing from Elixir for all you people who get shot and stabbed a lot in SL: “armor plating framed in durable rubber, grommetted and reinforced with carbon mesh”, it says here.

Now we’ve had the prototypes for a good while, but when someone tells me something under the rose, I respect that 100%.

So when Obscuria Cyannis told us last week that the Hextile line was out, I said, “awesome!”, and marked our calendar to feature it tonight.

We had a peek at the store for prices and for the sake of completeness - we’re good that way - and I saw that the men’s vest I’m wearing here got *big* improvements.

I decided to wear it to show you the hextile pattern anyway, but don’t look for it at the store. Hey, prototypes are perks too ;)

So, Hextile: cool, sexy armor for your superhero / espionage / science-fiction roleplay. Complete it with the hardshell boots (not shown) for a more spacey look, and have fun in style :)

lelo:
I’m wearing the 1 piece suit from the Hextile series here, and it might be armor plated but you must be a pretty good shot to hit this body. *winks*

You get all the cloth layers for a bit of mixing, though with this texture it will be hard to match to it.

Still the texture really makes the Hextile series, i do love the look especially all the different grey tones, just shows you that there really is no need for all the black on black we get in SL.

As we said Hextile is a serie, the body i’m wearing it the skimpiest one in it, but there are also pants and a full suit in a male and female version.

So as per usual Elixir offers something out of the ordinary, so looking for something not everyone is wearing? get your butt over to Elixir.

Name : Elixir
Owner : Khorus Magne
The SLURL :
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nelson%20Bay/187/169/27

	Deirdre	lelo
Quality	8	8
Price	8	7
Service	9	8
Store	9	8

---

SL9B exhibitors are friendly!

I’m still trying to finish visiting an entire sim at the expo, but this morning progress was slowed by people who forcibly sat me down and talked my ear off... well, no, not really. ;)

People who know me know I’m pretty sociable and I do think SL is for conversation. So this morning I ran into Pamala Clift, the Roadside Philosopher and author of the “Virgin’s Handbook on Virtual Relationships”, an ebook carried on Amazon.

Pamala’s been in SL for a good while, and while I’m not sure that her thought that everyone will come to the metaverse is for anytime soon, she certainly has interesting ideas worth considering. A free chapter of her ebook is available at her booth in Celebrate.

I then had a pleasant chat with the folks at the Transgendered Lounge, Trinity Dejavu and Lilly Noodle. The Lounge is, to quote Trinity, “a low-key peer support group and hangout, we run a drop in place where people can just swing by, chat and hang out as well and regular meetings”.

They were awesomely friendly and interesting, and they’re readers of the blog already, so hi ladies! :)

The Time Tunnel is the attraction I want to mention in particular, because they had content uniquely related to us.

I’ll let the pictures speak.. we’ve come a long way, baby!

Anima Temptation - Eleganza Blackshine and Discordia Ballo

Deirdre:

Back to our regularly scheduled broadcast - but see the end of the post for my morning visit to SL9B!

I saw the cheapie version (violet!) of Eleganza advertised on Fetish Consolidated, and decided to go have a peek at the cool underground store at Pirandello Bay.

We were pleasantly surprised to see so many nice new designs, but as Adira said, it’s nearly a year since we last featured her. High time!

The shapes are gorgeous, and completely original. Bought sculpts don’t mean poor quality boots, but original gets higher marks from me.

Eleganza is the style of stiletto I love best, and could have been inspired by Fernando Berlin boots’  dagger heels and pointy toes.

The price is pretty awesome too : 240L$ instead of the regular 480L$. Pounce and tell Adira who sent you ;)

lelo:
Yes, we managed to find some more ballets and you thought we had done them all.

Adira seems to have reworked her old ballet shape and i think it’s a good improvement.

The boots come in black, red and pink i’m wearing here, you can change the color of the sole of the boots with a simple chat command.

With the boots menu you can control the sound level, the size, the ao and finally the locking options that all good ballets should have.

A final fun, if dangerous, option controlled by the menu are the spurs, first time i see that on ballets, i’m sure there is a reason for that. *winks*

There is also a thigh high version of these boots and an ankle version that doesn’t have the spurs.

Name : Anima Temptation
Owner : Adira Aeon
The SLURL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pirandello%20Bay/168/139/21

	Deirdre	lelo
Quality	9	8
Price	8	8
Service	8	8
Store	7	7

---

I visited the amazing Lake Stage this morning. Built by Kazuhiro Aridian, it’s the first mesh stage to be used at a SL birthday celebration.

It’s absolutely huge, and my first thought when I saw it was dinosaur bones :)

I was lucky enough to catch a live performance, arriving without any particular planning.

Caoilte Skytower, aka Connor Savage, entertained a modest but appreciative crowd (hey, it was early for many of us!) with Irish ballads and drinking songs.

He pronounced my name correctly so I’m now a lifelong fan ;)

If you want to avoid trusting luck as I did, here's the event schedule :

SL9B - Opening ceremony and tips

I was going to run the SL9B stuff as bottom-of-post addendums this week, but after attending yesterday’s tour and today’s inauguration, well, I’m too enthusiastic to just let it go with a paragraph or two. Plus I have pics ;)

Fetish fashion assorted goodness resumes tomorrow!

First, I can’t praise the team enough. Working under incredible pressure, they were uniformly gracious and helpful, and pulled a stunning rabbit out of a tiny, last-minute hat. (metaphors were mangled for this post, sorry!)

Using my press priviledges, I went in this morning at 7 my local time, and visited one of the sims. I wanted to have an idea of the time it might take to visit the whole thing - I always want to see everything; it’s incurable, I’m told.

Well, I was able to see 18 exhibits, half a sim, in an hour, at breakneck pace with nobody else on the sim. It’s not hard to extrapolate from there : short of spending several hours a day (every day until the end) visiting SL9B, you won’t see it all. I know, aaaaaauuugh!

I’m reminded of the Barnum and Bailey famous Three-Ring Circus : with so much going on at the same time, you may not see it all but you walk away with a sense of wonder; I think that’s what will happen to us here.

There are gifts, greeters, a hunt, dragons, tinies, tons of good live music.. if you’re not keeping an eye on the official blog already, here’s the address, and the best tip post I’ve ever read for reducing lag :

http://sl9b.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/lag-at-sl9b-how-to-deal-with-it/

Get the SL9B Community HUD to teleport around the sims easily. The Hub is the center pointing to other SL9B events around Second Life, an admirable outreach gesture that shows true community spirit, in my opinion.

The awesome sponsors who pitched in and offered the sims for the event deserve our thanks and admiration, and they’re listed here (except for the anonymous donor who loaned six sims - you know who you are, thank you!) 

The keynote speech, read amid not-unexpected first-day chaos by the unflappable Saffia Widdershins, is copied here.

The Riverdance performance by 20 tinies and Saffia after the speech, sadly, isn’t ;)

Hello everyone – and welcome to SL9B!

Welcome to over three hundred exhibits created by the denizens of Second Life and spread across twenty sims.  Welcome to a week of music and performance by the finest in Second Life.

Welcome to a week of beauty, a week of interactivity, a week of games, a week of music and dance ... welcome, in fact, to a week of everything that a birthday party should be.

There’s presents – yes, it’s just like those parties you had when you were very young – at least you do in the UK – when you leave with a swag bag of goodies.

There’s cake. There’s beer – please remember, though, to take your litter home with you.

And there will, unfortunately, be lag.  And possibly, like a rainstorm on the barbecue, there will be sim crashes.  But, you know, we live in Second Life.  We’ll keep calm and carry on.

But we nearly didn’t carry on at all.  Back in April, on April 16th, just over two months ago, there was an announcement by the grid operators, Linden Lab, that they would not be donating any sims for the community birthday party this year.  They suggested that we took the theme of community ... and celebrated in our own communities.

I think I can safely say that that decision disappointed a great many people.  There were those people who had already started their builds, in anticipation of the opportunity to exhibit on the largest communal platform that Second Life annually offers.  There were scores – no, hundreds of people who were preparing to donate their time and energy to the celebrations – the musicians, the educators, the greeters, the estate managers and assistants …

What would we have lost, if we had accepted what Linden Lab had said, and partied in our own communities?

I think the clear answer is that we would have lost our sense of a greater community. Many of us belong to strong communities – lifestyle communities, national communities, role play communities, study or work-based communities, communities of interest. And we have parties there – fantastic, wonderful parties.  We could have done that for the Birthday.

But …

We would have lost the sense of being part of the greater community.

We would have lost our sense of awe and wonder at what we can achieve individually – as new exhibits continue to astound us and delight us. We would have lost the crazy serendipity of seeing wonderful things rubbing shoulders with each other. We would have lost the chance to salute people who make our virtual lives – and our real lives – a better place.

But that didn’t happen.

For what was an agonising month, there seemed to be hope ... but finally, on May 9th, just over a month ago, it became clear that there would be no communal sims from the Lab.  And with that final “No” – it all seemed hopeless.  How could the huge birthday party – the biggest annual celebration in Second Life - be gathered together, organised, built and launched in what amounted to ... five weeks?

And that was when we found our fantastic sponsors.

Let’s salute Zeebster Colasanti and his team from DreamSeeker Estates, who donated ten sims, and his lead here at SL9B, Samantha Ohrberg. Let’s salute Callie Cline of KittyCatS and Equinox Pinion and Dennis Lagan of Fruit Islands, who donated two sims each.  Let’s salute our anonymous donor, who gave a further six sims. Thank you – for having faith in the Birthday, for having trust in the community that we would make the birthday happen. Thank you for your belief in the Second Life community.

As we started pulling things together, I heard one question more and more ... “Why are you celebrating Second Life’s birthday, when Linden Lab can’t be bothered to? Why are all you people putting in time, and money and so much work when Linden Lab can’t even drop twenty sims on the grid for a month and say, “Here you are. Get on with it.”

And, you know, I have an answer for that.

It’s not Linden Lab’s birthday. It’s ours.

Yes, Linden Lab have created the framework. They have given us the grid, the land on which to build our dreams – and sometimes our nightmares.  They hold the data that drives our Second Lives. They’ve given us the power and the ability to shape our imaginations in virtual forms. Amazing, wonderful virtual forms.

But ... it’s not their birthday. It’s ours.

I hope that on June 23rd they’ll be opening the champagne in the Lab – maybe some of it non-alcoholic, and much of it organic – they are, after all, in California.  I hope that they’ll be exchanging a few stories, a few laughs, a few guilty chuckles over where the bodies are buried.  I hope that one or two will raise some bright shiny ideas –“Hey, wouldn’t this be cool to do?” And I hope that they then don’t spring that shiny coolness on us without consultation and rigorous testing!

And I hope they raise a glass – a rueful, bewildered, maybe slightly apprehensive, maybe slightly awed glass of champagne ... and drink to the denizens of Second Life – that awesome, troublesome, mulish, mutinous, sarcastic, angry, loving, fabulously creative group of real life people who make Second Life what it is.

Because it’s not Linden Lab’s birthday.  It’s ours.

We built it. Everything you see here – and everything you will see across the grid was built by the denizens of Second Life.  But none of this celebration  would have happened without the efforts of a small, dedicated and totally awesome group of people who took those twenty sims and bashed them into shape.  Who hoped that people would want to come – and wondered, to begin with, if we needed more than four sims. Or ten. And who were then deluged by people wanting to join us and be part of the Best Birthday Ever.

Doctor Gascoigne. KT Syakumi. Diana Renoir. Honour Macmillan. Marianne McCann. Rails Bailey. Crap Mariner.

Thank you. Without you, this wouldn’t have happened. Without your hard work, your perseverance, your unparalleled ability to stay patient and smiling in the face of everything that the grid and its denizens can throw at you has been just mindblowing.

So – thank you.

Thank you to Mikati Slade, who built this amazing four sim Birthday Cake stage. Thank you to Kaz, Kazuhiro Aridian who built the Lake stage. Thank you to Donpatchy Dagostino, who built the Lotus stage and the wonderful train ... Thank you again to KT Syakumi who created the breathtaking Egyptian stage … and the breath-holding underwater stage!

Thank you to Artistide (Artee) Despres, who made the Community Hub that links this event to the other SL9B events that are happening across the entire grid. Thank you to Bo Tiger – whose lovely HUD is going to have us all bouncing happily from A to J and back over to Q ... Thank you to Yavanna Llanfair who has made the pod tours that provide the most amazing way of seeing the sims.

And thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who have come together to make sure this happens.  The Sim Co-Ordinators. The Exhibitor Assistants who have been on hand 24/7 to make sure that everyone who needed help and support would have it – pretty damn near instantly.  The stage managers who will be making sure the stages stay stable – and that the streams work and all the artists appearing are happy.  Do you guys ever sleep?  Thank you for every last one of those bleary-eyed hours. You have made it happen.

Thank you too to all those people who have committed time and energy to being greeters and volunteers.  You make SL9B run smoothly – your efforts, your patience and your enthusiasm are phenomenal.

And thank you to those of you who responded to our call. Thank you to the exhibitors, the musicians, the speakers at the events, the trainers – who have come into these open spaces and created such an incredible event.

And while all that was going on, we had to make sure that people knew – so they would know to come and visit. So from the beginning, there was a team of bloggers and media people dedicated to making sure that the word got out to as many people as possible. Daniel Voyager, Inara Pey, Ginette Pinazzo and …

This was the year of the “last minute”.

This was the year of the sponsors galloping to the rescue, of the “will people want to build here?” and oh boy they did.

This was the year of clawing every last parcel out of the flat green plains – thank you KT for finding square metres where none existed, for clawing back prims to give us those extra parcels.
This was the year of discovering that more and more people wanted to join us, to help, to perform – so this was the year of the last minute fifth stage and the frantic re-arranging of schedules.

This was the year of the hasty training classes, the year of the flying by the seat of our pants, the panics and the crazy improvisations and the last minute ideas so shiny that they just had to be acted on – and thank you to all those people donating gifts to the Egyptian expedition and to David Abbot for writing the fun tale you’re all about to read!

This was the year of the last minute birthday party and – I hope you’ll all agree – we pulled it off.
But – thank heavens – it doesn’t have to be like this.

Next year is the Big One.  The Tenth Birthday. And, believe me, we’ll be prepared.

Because it will be Huge.  There will be more sims, more exhibits, more art, more music, more of everything than ever before.  We’ll be entering double figures – and we’ll be shouting to the world that Second Life is bigger and better than it ever was – a place where we have claimed our world for our imagination.

And we’ll be holding our first planning meeting  ... well, maybe in a month or so.  Because today – and for the rest of this week ... we’re going to PARTY!

So unleash the Dragons!

Bring on the dancing tinies!

We’re NINE and we’re going to PARTY!

SL9B Press Tour

Blogging is a pretty demanding hobby. We don’t get paid, we work hard (ish), and we have pressure and deadlines.

They’re self imposed, but still; barring force majeure, we haven't missed a day in ages.

So we’re not opposed to the occasional perk. I admire movers and shakers, you know that by now; so meeting designers who create our Second Life is the basic perk for me.

This year, I decided to take more of an interest in the SL9B celebration. I blame Inara for me being generally better informed ;)

So, perk time : press pass! We’re going to be visiting the sims a bit ahead of the crowds on a guided tour, and we’ll slip in reports during the week.. you know, between the leather pants reviews.

Have a great weekend.

Short post : Latex Station Hunt Reminder

Hello faithful readers, a short post tonight - we both got in late, lelo lost Internet access, and I haven’t even had my cup of coffee yet ;)

We ran into a fan at Latex Station while looking for the three new free outfits in the hunt so a big hello and thank you to Renethe Braelyn, you did all the hard work!

The hints get a lot tougher towards the end, I sure wouldn’t have found the third outfit short of combing the whole Latex Station.

I’ll just help you by saying the third hint refers to women’s, not men’s.

The SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Latex%20Station/208/128/24

Catch It Fashion Show and SL9B

We got a note from Pad Cioc of Catch It announcing a fetish fashion show tomorrow (that’s Saturday June 2, 12PM SL time) at Forest of Samhain,  and we went to have a peek at the venue - we’re naughty that way ;)

The place looks great, and the show promises quite a bit of variety : the store teaming up with Catch It is Leather Induztry, exclusive leather for men.

We also took a moment to visit Darkadia’s fetish art show. The show is in the castle proper, so two tips : be patient, and make use of the teleporters. It’s ending soon, so don’t wait too long before dropping by.

SL9B is coming - Inara’s awesome “Living in a Modem World” blog is my source for serious info about viewers, Second Life, the universe and everything.

She faithfully reports the cool preparations going on, and linked to the official SL9B blog. The Angel of Death is a hoot, go visit just for the videos :)

The Key Dates page is worth keeping an eye on: “SL9B Opening & Keynote - 18th June 11AM, SLT” is probably the *key* key date ;)

Towel Day

The universe got bigger when Second Life was added in - yeah yeah, it’s not mathematical but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it ;)

So it makes perfect sense to observe Towel Day in Second Life... or as much sense as anything makes.

The Wikipedia entry is terse and to the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_day

The post on Geeks are Sexy is a lot more entertaining: http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2012/05/25/interstellar-hitchhikers-rejoice-its-towelday/

We found our neat prim towels (surprisingly uncommon) on Marketplace, from a cool store called Indi Designs : https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/INDI-Designs-Beachwear-Towel-white/433439

So wear your towel proudly, whether you’re (like us!) lying on on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours, or any of the interesting places a cool frood like you is likely to visit - you sass?

Store Closing - DV8

Aria Warden tipped us off to this bit of news : DV8, the cool and friendly goth-fetish-etc store is closing soon.

First, the notices :

Vasha Martinek:

We were going to write an awesome notecard, buuuut someone beat us to the announcement. =P
It's been a fantastic ride, and we <3 the deviants — it's just time to move on to other things.

But hey - CLEARANCE SALE. =D

Everything in the store is marked down to 50L, so make sure to grab whatever you want before it's gone. :) We'll be here for 3-4 weeks still.

Thanks SO much for supporting us and being awesome for so long. You made SL rock. :)

---

DV8 Robonaught:

Just in case you haven't heard...
+DV8+ is closing!

We've marked everything in the store down to just 50L, and we've even put out a few former gachas (10L & 50L) by Deviant request — so if there's something you want, get it soon!

We've so enjoyed doing this with you guys, and we <3 the Deviants. Alas, all good things must come to an end. :)
MUAH!

---

They had fun, they’re moving on. Sane, sensible attitude to have, and while we’re always sad to see a store close, we wish them all the best in their future.

Here are a few snaps of the outside (with the gorgeous huge animated signs) and inside of the store.

It was already busy as we visited, and the notices are just out, so the fans were clearly loyal.

Good luck Vasha, good luck DV8, thanks for the awesome designs :)

The SLURL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lasombra/67/158/51

Latex Station Hunt

Cindy of Latex Station has been in Second Life for five years. To celebrate her rezday, she is launching a hunt.

Latex Station is one of those stores that has enough different outfits to do a hunt by themselves, so unlike other hunts, you’ll find Latex Station items at all the various locations; mostly sponsors and associates of LS.

But wait, as they say in the biz, there’s more! ;) When you start at the station itself and find the big (big!) white cap, note that the friends’ stores in the station’s lower floor also have gifts, so have a look around before launching off.

The hunt will go for a month : May 13th to June 13th. As a bonus, there will be 3 extra outfits in the main store from June 6th to June 13th, so be sure and go back for those.

The white cap is the item you’ll be hunting for at the various locations.

Note that some sims are pretty busy, and will take a while to rez; wait a bit to start searching or you’ll drive yourself crazy for nothing.

Each will contain a Latex Station outfit, a landmark to the next location, and a hint for the next location.

Happy hunting and Happy Birthday Cindy, many returns, we do love a good hunt and free latex even more.

To begin the hunt go to the mainstore at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Latex%20Station/208/128/24

Pietas Obscurum Reopening and Darkadia Art Show

We received a party invitation in a shoebox ;)

Pietas Obscurum is having a relaunch, in an interesting new store at Wolf’s Cove.

As you see on the invitation, any purchase at the main store for the next 24 hours enters you in a raffle, drawing to be held at the party.

If that’s not enough, everything in the store is 25% off, so if you were holding back on Mesharah boots, now’s your chance.

See Rup’s blog here : http://www.pietasobscurum.com

The new SLURL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wolfs%20Cove/152/181/27

The Darkadia art show is finally here! The opening ball is Sunday May 13th at noon, SL time. The note I have here says it’s a haute fetiche event - “dress to impress!”. It’s more of a reception than an actual dance; a chance to meet the artists. DeNovo Broome is organizing the event. She sent me a neat art book of the show (cover shown here) full of treats : “gift boxes, notecards, and enough art to decorate a small dungeon”, as she put it. Don’t miss it! The SLURL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Darkadia/179/136/91