Otherworldly

I admit it, I have a thing for big swords. Well, any swords, really. It just looks so cool to be carrying one around and you always look great when posing with one. So when ContraptioN released the Mercenary’s Flambard for the Warehouse Sale, I went right over to grab it and insisted that Ran do the same. After all, while you can pose alone and look cool, a duel looks even cooler. Of course, we needed to dress right too. For Ran’s part that meant a trip to the Engine Room to pick up the amazing Bloodlust outfit from toksik whereas I received a review copy of the Aeon gacha from deviousMind, a very cool steam punk outfit that also is available at the Engine Room.

Poema is a skin brand that I been eyeing for a while. Their skins have always been quite varied and had a lot of character, but they have primarily been focused on skins for a more mature look. Nothing wrong with that, but it has not been quite what I have been looking for. For this year’s Skin Fair, poema has launched a brand within the brand called Rahra which will focus on younger looks, but still with plenty of character. There are three skins out at the Skin Fair and I have chosen to feature Bamby.

It has been a long while since I did a proper skin review, but with Skin Fair 2021 just having opened it seemed like a good time to revisit what used to be a staple of the blog. I’ve also fallen more into the habit of simply blogging as opposed to reviewing items, so I wanted to revisit that as well.

However, before I dive into looking closer at Logo’s Bella head and Bella skin, I have to say I am bothered by LeLutka’s addition of a new UV to their heads. With BoM you finally had a variety of skins to choose from for smaller head brands as well, at least from those creators who stayed true to the SL UV. Now it looks like we’re heading back down the path of brand-specific skins and I am not liking that prospect.

But, I digress! This is about the latest head from Logo and the skin released for it, both available at the Skin Fair on the North sim. And as this is a skin review, there is nudity below.

A bit of fashion, a bit of home & garden, all set against a beautiful sunset that represents a first for me—I bought this lovely sky setting and the matching water on the Marketplace. EEP has its issues, for sure, but sellable and tradeable presets are a great idea. This particular preset is Mesmer from DHS and if you want to try it out for yourself there is a demo.

The reason that I started looking at buying a ready-made sky was that I am still not as comfortable working with EEP as with Windlight and I wanted a really nice sunset for showing off the setup I made with the deck from EED Home & Garden from the Home & Garden Expo together with the boulders from Fanatik’s Land Shapes set. On the deck I have also got a few decor pieces from Headhunter’s Island, also for the Home & Garden Expo.

Froukje Hoorenbeek of Dutchie seems determined to keep everyone wet of late; last month’s hot tub has been followed-up by an outdoor shower at the March round of FaMESHed. Like the tub it comes in a PG and an Adult version, with three texture options for the wood and three for the shower itself, and it looks great togethr with both the tub and the sauna from Dutchie. I picked a reddish wood with copper and placed it a the back of the house of the Horse Ranch Homestead from RVi Design. The perfect, rustic setting for this kind of shower (it would also look fantastic on a beach) and great for getting clean after working with the horses on a hot day.

The PG shower has 20 solo and 10 couple animations and the Adult version adds 10 romantic, 25 foreplay and 25 sex couple animations. And, since this is the Adult version that I am showing off, you can get both clean and dirty at the same time. ;) NSFW pictures follow.

The Home & Garden Expo opens tomorrow, with nine sims full of fantastic creators and many, many vendors raising money for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society. The event, running from the 27th of February to 21st of March, will make it ever so easy to get your house or your whole sim looking fantastic you give support to a very important cause.

I got the chance to blog the event and to start my coverage I did a tour of my assigned sim, Hope 9. And since Hope 9 is sponsored by Teegle, I did it on horseback. Look below for a video, a sneak peek photo of one of the two new Teeglepets as well as credits for what I am wearing.

I had high hopes for the latest Enchantment round with the theme of “Viking Saga”, but I must admit that I found it a little slim on really interesting releases. Probably a good thing for my virtual wallet, all considered. ;) And there definitely were some things that inspired me, such as Roawenwood’s “Runecasters Table”. Decor items/props that also tell a story and can be used for role-play always draw my eye and this was no exception.

This is a most definitely NSFW look at Dutchie’s latest release, a wood-fire heated hot tub. It does come in a PG as well as an Adult version, but…well, you know me. ;)

This style of outdoor hot tub is quite popular in Sweden and sees use all year around. I knew I wanted to shoot this in a winter surrounding, contrasting the steaming hot water with chilly, snow-covered surroundings. Given some of the activities in the Adult version, it might have gotten a little cool at times; you would generally prefer to submerge as much of yourself as possible in the hot water. Then again, if things heat up in a different way, you might not notice the cold for a while!

The hot tub is available at the current round of FaMESHed and you can read the details of the functionality and included animations on Dutchie’s site.

It is Friday, after all, so how about a bit of spicy romance? Heart-shaped seats and pillows, rose petals on the floor and a hint of dominance & submission. The heart-shaped ottoman and the heart-shaped pillows are recent releases from Roawenwood, whereas the rose petals are from a previous Roawenwood set. There are several texture options for the top of the ottoman and the pillow with the animations and then there are additional decor-only pillows with preset textures. The ottoman has some single poses but is mainly for couple poses, the pillow has only single poses.

Both Ran and I are wearing the latest hair from Wasabi, Asia. It is unrigged and works very well for both male and female avatars. Not shown here is the windblown option of the style.

A dashing nobleman visits his mistress and gifts her with a magnificent set of jewellery. She sits down at her vanity to admire how the stunning necklace and earrings looks on her, adding a dash of perfume while she is at it. Her lover looks on admiringly.

I love how this came together, the beautiful vanity from Dictatorshop serving as the focal point for the rendezvous. The store is very generously offering group members an L$1000 gift card for L$1 to cheer everyone up. There are plenty of decor-only items in the store for under 1000 and even quite a few with PG animations or a more limited selection of Adult animations. If you want the really fancy versions, with all of the adult options, they cost more but they also include a very large selection of animations so they are well worth it. There are several different furniture series available, to cater to a wide range of tastes.

If you’d like to spice up your Second Life a bit, there’s one Black Friday sale you do not want to miss out on this year, namely Dutchie’s 20% off on all Adult items. There’s so much to choose from, for just about every taste. I decided to bring out one of my favourites for this setup, the Pet Pillow, to also show off my new tattoo from Nefekalum (they make fantastic use of materials!) that I got at their 50% off Black Friday sale and a new chain harness from Voluptas Virtualis for the Black Fair. The tents and the fire pit come from Paper Moon, and they too are having a fantastic 50% off sale.

It is only November, but I am starting to crave snow—especially instead of rain, rain and more rain! Right now, I have to settle for the virtual kind, however, so when Del-ka Aedilis sent out a blogger package with a wintry theme, I changed over one of my sky landscapes to match. Fortunately, Studio Skye recently released a 4 Season Bolt-On for the Woodland Path, which came in handy for this scene. The gown from Senzafine may not quite be warm enough on its own, but I rather like it in combination with this cape, an older release from Stitched.

Mythril has released some fantastic animation sets for the Teeglpets for The Horse Show (open until the 24th of November) and the best way to take a look at those was of course with another video. This one is pretty talky, so I think it says everything you need to know. Oh, except that the issue I had with triggering the bottlefeeding animaton was because I had HUDs turned off for a cleaner interface, so I missed the riding HUD being attached. I should also add that the beautiful sari is of course from Zaara. You’ll have to excuse the mix of Indian and Arabic elements, Teegle hasn’t released any Marwari horses yet. ;)

I’ve also included a couple of stills and the credits are at the end of the post as usual.

It has been a bit of a crazy day, in more than one way. Fortunately, it also involved a visit to the stables in RL, which always works to distract and calm me down. I don’t knit (not since school, anyway), but I can imagine it would be pretty soothing to sit and work like this, with the comforting sounds of the horses in the background. The classic wooden rocking chair is one of two rocking chairs from Dutchie (the other is a mid-century style that goes well with Dutchie’s other furniture sets) released for the November round of FaMESHed. The rocking chairs have 10 female and 10 male solo animations each, including knitting and needlepoint. The props are auto-attaching with the AV-sitter experience and the animations are of course Bento-enabled. The wooden rocking chair includes several wood choices and paint options and the mid-century style offers different fabric options.

As I promised, I have a lot of things to show you from The Horse Show. This time, I thought I would focus on four new releases from Teegle that enhance your interactions with your Teeglepets, as well as some accessories for prettying up your horses. I am also featuring a new set of riding boots from Eudora 3D.

Now, before you dive into this video, I want to point out a couple of things about the hitching post and the grooming add-on. I attempted to use both of them at the same time but was unsuccessful in doing so. I thought it was because the horse needs to have the hitching post set as an animation partner to use that one and for the grooming to work I needed to be set as the animation partner. However, I was told in chat that it should be possible for a horse to be partnered to two things, so I am not sure if a) these add-ons were not setup to allow that or b) I was doing something wrong. I will update accordingly when I know more.