Keanu Daily

My new jewelry-making supplies arrived yesterday, so today I put together another attempt at a BTS bag charm for movie freebies:



I'm still not totally happy with it. The main problem is that the head and eye pins I ordered on Amazon were shorter than advertised (supposed to be 3 inches, but actually only 2-3/4 inches) and also very flimsy, so I couldn't make the strings as long as I'd intended. There was no room for the purple heart bead at the end of the member bead string, which wasn't too bad, but the string that was supposed to be the letters "ARIRANG" with a red bead and spacer at each end was too long no matter how small the end beads I used were, so I ended up just using alternating red and white beads instead, with small silver spacers, and a whale charm at the end. I think I prefer that anyway but I'll probably have to get more red and white beads. I dug these out of a tube of mixed beads and I doubt there will be enough to make 100 charms.

The other problem is that the orchid beads I ordered weren't the same color as they looked online, so I can't use them. I did have some lavender beads in another set that I can use, but I only have maybe 30 of those so I will need more. I found some other light purple beads online and ordered those, along with an assorted set of stainless steel jewelry wire spools in different gauges. Should be better quality than the flimsy aluminum pins I ordered and I can cut lengths to size.

I do like the whale charms, but I only bought one pack of 24, so will need to order more. I also have some music note/microphone charms.I'm thinking I'll do one set of freebies with the whales and one with the music charms, so the freebies for each showing will be a little bit different.

Can't do any more until I get the new wire, so I will think about this one for a while and see if any other ideas occur to me.

Okay, so I knew that there would likely be livestreams of BTS concerts, both online and streamed to cinemas, but they are really going all out!

First of all, they will be doing a free concert on March 21, the day after their new album release, that will be livestreamed worldwide on Netflix.

Then, their first three concerts in Korea will be streamed online.

And the second of their Korean concerts and the second of their Japan concerts one week later will be streamed to movie theaters, April 11 and April 18.

And of course I will be watching and going to the theater.

Then I realized -- if I'm going to be watching BTS at the movie theater, I'm going to need more freebies to give away. Here I was thinking that I wouldn't need any more until August 2, when I go see them live in concert, but if I'm going to the theater in April, I will need more then. And, since the theater that shows the BTS movies is small and the same people tend to go, I try to make something different each time. So far, I've done two different types of bracelets, one made of flat clay heishi beads and one made of round glass beads, so I thought maybe this time I'd try making bag charms.

I made this mock-up with things I have on hand, just to settle on a design and figure out what supplies I'd need:



So, the clip and loop are just junk I found lying around, I'll get nice jewelry-grade ones for the actual charms. And I didn't have any eye pins or head pins so I used paper clips for the wires, which weren't very bendy, so ignore the messy wires. I don't know if I'll have enough letter beads to spell out "ARIRANG" (the title of the forthcoming album and tour) on all the freebies, but if I run out, I'll just use "BTS" surrounded by alternating red and white beads, since that's the ARIRANG logo color. (I have boxes of 500 each of the letters B, T, and S, so I won't run out of those!) The beads on the other pin will be in the colors of the members' versions of the album: Silver, Pink, Clear, Cream, Burgundy, Velvet Red, and Orchid. These beads were the closest I could get to those colors with the beads I have on hand, I'm sending for beads to match the colors better. The dolphin charm is just a placeholder, I'm getting purple hearts and whales and musical notes and microphones to put on the actual charms. Anyway, I think the design is pretty and they will turn out nicely once I've got the proper supplies. I've ordered everything today and it should all arrive early next week.

Then, ack, I've got less than a month to make around 100 bag charms! That might be way more than I need -- the theater I go to usually has 10 - 20 people per showing. But this is going to be a live concert of the whole band on their first tour in what, five years? I suspect there will be a bigger crowd. I'll have a better idea of how many people might show up once the tickets go on sale and I can see the size of the theater, but I'm thinking I should try to make 50 per showing. If I end up with extras, I can always take them to the actual concert in August. (With a sold-out stadium of 85,000, I'm obviously not going to be able to make freebies for everyone, but I'm going to take as many as I can stuff into my stadium bag.)

I'm going to be busy for the next month!

I need to go to the mailbox today. I was notified that a t-shirt I'd ordered a while ago from Weverse had been delivered on Saturday (nearly everything on Weverse is preorder, I'd ordered this a while ago with no idea when it would actually arrive) (and speaking of Weverse, remind me to tell you of the absolute havoc last night trying to preorder the new BTS lightstick), but it was snowing again and temps were in the negative numbers and I decided the t-shirt would just have to wait.

But today the temperature is supposed to reach a high of 21 degrees! (It's currently 17.) And I want to get my t-shirt before it freezes solid or gets stolen or something, so I'm going to suit up later and head out to the mailbox.

Still trying to decide whether to dig out the truck and drive to the mailbox, or attempt to walk the quarter-mile through the snow and ice. Either way, I'll have to shovel the sidewalk and make a path through the snow to the road or the truck. And I generally scrape the snow off the truck whenever I go out to clear snow, just so it won't pile up too much. And I probably should start up the truck to give it some exercise while I'm at it. And I suppose I should drive into Windsor to pick up my brother's mail at the post office and maybe get a few things at the little grocery store there.... Aghhh, I seem to have convinced myself that I should get the truck out and drive (that means also shoveling the snow behind the truck next to the road). I don't get much exercise in the winter, but it won't be helpful if I try to walk to the mailbox and end up slipping on the ice and falling and breaking more of my fragile old bones. (Did I ever mention that I'd been diagnosed with osteoporosis last year? I don't think I did.) I suppose shoveling snow is exercise enough.

Moving back to California is looking better and better to me all the time. Not to the mountains this time. Maybe Long Beach. I can't afford Long Beach. Anyplace in California I'd actually want to live would be way out of reach financially. Unless I live in my van.

Oh yeah, the lightstick. Weverse is releasing a new BTS Lightstick 4, which will have a new concert connection system so the old lightsticks will no longer work at any concert after the Vegas shows in May. So anyone who wants to use an ARMY bomb at any concert after that will have to buy a new one. Plus, of course, the new ones are really pretty and fancy and of course a lot of people who already have the older versions will want new ones anyway. Obviously they must have expected that there would be huge demand for the new lightsticks. They went on sale for preorders last night at 9 PM EST (times were simultaneous worldwide). I clicked on the Shop button precisely at 9 PM. Got a blank screen and then a connection error. This went on for 5 minutes. I had to laugh -- we crashed Weverse again. It wasn't even this bad for the album preorders. I finally got a shop screen after about 10 minutes. Repeated errors and timeouts and I finally got the four items -- lightstick, stand, and two accessories -- into my cart. Then crashed out twice trying to pay. By the time my payment finally went through, half an hour after the sale started, the stand had sold out and I was only able to buy the lightstick and accessories.

But I mean, come on, Weverse, get your shit together. Would it kill you to beef up your servers to handle the traffic you knew perfectly well was coming?

I'm not too fussed about missing out on the stand. I'm sure they'll have a second round of preorders soon, I'll catch it then. And I'm not even sure I'd use it anyway, I'll probably just keep the lightstick in its box. The lightstick itself is the main thing! Must have it by August for the concert, but there's plenty of time.

I'm glad I got to use my Map of the Soul SE lightstick at least once, at Jin's concert. I bought it on Amazon mainly as a souvenir, not thinking I'd ever actually go to a concert, so I wasn't too fussed about making sure it was authentic, and I'm still not 100% sure it's not counterfeit, even though it passed every test I could give it and it worked just fine at Jin's concert. But Jin's concert didn't have seat pairing (where you tell the concert system where you're sitting, so the ARMY bombs can be used to spell out words and make patterns), and I read that some counterfeits were so good they could hook up at concerts that didn't use seat pairing. So I wasn't sure until I got to Jin's concert that my ARMY bomb would actually connect, and I was thrilled when it did.



I was kind of planning on buying a new one anyway for the BTS concert, just to make absolutely 100% sure it was authentic, so I was happy enough to see a new one. I figured they'd sell out fast on the first preorder sale, but I didn't anticipate spending half an hour fighting website errors to get the sale through.

(All the while I was trying to watch the Superbowl, yay Seahawks! They were my hometown team all through college, and the only team I ever made a sports bet on -- remind me to tell you that story sometime. I don't get to see them much since I moved across country and mostly get shown East Coast teams. May have to sign up for NFL streaming or something, but anyway, it was great to see them again, winning and everything. Also loved the halftime show -- go Bad Bunny! and tuning into the preshow just in time to see Green Day perform "American Idiot"! Fun times.)