Yak and Yeti

On a reccommendation from a friend I went to visit Yak and Yeti, a little mountain hut in Nepal http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hidden%20Beach%20Island/67/188/58

This store carries mainly traditional Nepalese clothing, jewelry and furniture, and everything is free.  There is more for women (as usual) but there’s still a pretty big selection for men too.

There’s a pack of jeans in various colours (really its just one pair with different tints) and some of the packs ofshirts also contain pants too. Most shirts come in several colours though I’ve displayed only one of each here.

1 – First is this traditional linen shirt, which comes in blue, black, brown and beige. The little prim wooden buttons are a nice touch. The black cargo pants come in the same pack.

2 – Orange and black “Om” ribbed shirt.

3 – Red “fish” shirt also in black. Also shown, one of 4 Tibetan mandala pendants.

4 – “Yak Yak Yak” shirt, in one of 4 colours. Jacket layer.

5 – Free Tibet shirt. Everyone should have one of these.

6 – “Freebie” Sports Jacket. Not quite sure if anyone really would wear a jacket with the word “Freebie” emblazoned across front and back, but it is rather amusing. And nicely retro too.

7 – Set of Tibetan bracelets, wear either seperately or all together.

8 – Set of Indian bangles, wear either seperately or all together. Three seperate packs in different colours.

Finally, meet this little fella. He’s a Himalayan Panda shoulder pet. There’s a raccoon too but I figured since I was in Nepal I’d pick up one of the locals. Also showing the “Buddhist Eyes” shirt, and another one of the Tibetan Mandala pendants.

All pics shown with hair “Aries” by Exile, which I picked up from the Hair Fair.

I also highly reccommend exploring the rest of the sim.  My friend Russ Matty has written a review of it in his blog, with pics.

Total cost: L$0

Hair Fair 2008

Having totally failed to get into the Hair Fair in the first week, because of the sims being full and lagged to hell, I have waited til now, and found that logging on in the morning (UK time, when most of the USA is sensibly asleep) I managed to eventually get round.

Most of the vendors have freebie or dollarbie gifts on offer, only a small proportion offer hairstyles for men, although some clever people have offered some unisex styles that are suitable for both.  I haven’t provided landmarks with this post because they will be redundant soon but there is a slurl list available here:

I’ll just go straight into posting the pics. As usual click the thumbnails for bigger images, and this time the vendor (and sometimes the name of the hair if they offered more than one) is included in the file name.

I picked up every gift box I could find and spent a total of L$25 on the dollarbies, although money could have been saved if I’d known in advance which ones did not contain any hair suitable for men. Unfortunately I forgot to record which vendors charged a dollar and which were free. There were also mens freebies from Calla and Sirena but they are exactly the same as ones I’ve reviewed in this blog already so I passed on picking them up, however if you missed out on them first time, here’s an opportunity to pick them up again.

Also some tips about the fair: It’s VERY laggy even when the sim is not overpopulated. This could be helped a little if everyone visited wearing NO ATTACHMENTS. That means take off everything that is made of prims, and everything that contains a script of any sort. Hair, shoes, bling, aos. Please.  The other contributor to lag sadly can’t be helped and that’s the massive use of sculpties and alpha textures in some of the vendor displays. Kudos to those vendors who did not decorate at all but only but up vendors.

Pick up all the freebies and demos you want, then go elsewhere, either home or a sandbox, to try them on. Things will rez a lot faster. Then when you’ve decided which products you like, you can return to the fair to purchase them.

If you can, please purchase a bandana or make a donation to the Locks of Love charity. There is more info about this charity here. http://locksoflove.org/

Total cost L$25

Nora’s to close

Not freebies this time, but still a definite bargain. I reported a little while ago about Nora’s Bodyskins – well, the owner has announced that she is closing shop and all her skins are now being sold at an amazlng L$100 each. For men there are two different styles (one Caucasian, one slightly more Asian). Each style comes in 5 skin tones, and 12 facial options including facial hair options, mature avs and eyeliner. AND every L$100 gets you TWO skins; one bald and one with buzzcut hair.  Be careful though, if you’re going for the eyeliner ones: a couple of them are still mistakenly set at the original price of L$1000 instead of L$100. (And that is not intentional as you can get the same ones as part of a 3-skin fatpack for L$300).

According to Sezmra’s blog, the store will close for good on August 18th so you only have a couple of days left to snag these bargains. And they are REALLY good skins.  My evil (and more wealthy) twin bought a few and models a couple of them here.

The first one is Hunter Cinnamon with stubble, and the second is Hunter Champagne with Van Dyck beard.

Of course there are plenty of choices for the girls too.

Total cost (for skins shown) L$200

And finally, a plea for help.  I’m running out of ideas/paces to find freebies. All the ones I know about, I’ve blogged already (or someone else has done so) and I can’t find any more. If this blog is to continue I need YOUR help. Find any good freebies in a store anywhere, PLEASE let me know.

D & A Menswear

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Isabella/238/45/123

D & A Menswear has a freebie gift bag on offer which contains a pair of logo jeans, a logo shirt, a plain blue buttondown shirt, a pair of plaid boxers, a flexi woolly scarf and a pair of amethyst-coloured eyes.  There’s a lucky chair here too, offering gifts selected from their main range.

The scarf is, annoyingly, no-mod which isn’t much use for a prim wearable, but it did fit me okay. It wouldn’t fit guys with really thick necks though.  And that second outfit makes me look like I’m ready for going to bed.

And here’s a little tip – if you’re trying to take a snapshot and your feet sink into the floor, rez a prim to stand on and make it transparent (there is a default transparent texture in the Library). That way your feet will stay above the ground.

Total cost: L$0

Going Goth at Wilted Rose

Wilted Rose has a “freebie” room, which is actually a dollarble room because everything costs L$1, containing a mix of their own stuff along with a few regular freebies that can be found at most other freebie places. Here I’m reviewing some of their own stuff, which isn’t generally available elsewhere.

Wilted Rose have three male goth skins of which I picked up two (the one I skipped is the same except with the addition of bloody tears running down one cheek). I teamed these with the “Shane” hair that I picked up from MIA Body Basics a while back.

On to the clothes. The tanktops come in a pack of two, red or black, and they’re displayed with the womens’ wear, which goes to prove that it’s always worth checking. The ripped jeans are in black and blue.  In the second pic this is the “Metal club” outfit worn with a pair of claws that came from Wilted Rose’s free gift raffle ball that I won while I was hanging about there. I also won a flower for my hair but I dropped that in the trash.  The suit in the third pic is called “A Little Gothic” and the top in pic 4 is again from the womens section and is one of a pair of printed long-sleeved black tops.

Incidentally WR has a Lucky Tree in the room, so if you’re less than 30 days old you might just be able to finance your shopping here by picking from the tree.

Total cost: L$7

Furry avatars at Vienna

Okay I said I wasn’t going to post about anything got from freebie places, because I don’t generally trust them, but this one I have checked out and it is apparently genuine.  Now I know that furry avatars aren’t strictly “fashion”, neither was the Iron Man one, but some people just aren’t happy being human, and part of their definition of “looking good” involves a non-human avatar, and if you’re on a tight budget that isn’t easy.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wien/216/10/29

Aside from the usual poor-quality free furry avatars, Vienna Freebies has a set of decent ones created by Wingless Emoto. There’s a wolf, a fox, a hyena and a horse.  Each one comes in many colours, and each box contains a number of different variations including male or female shape, digitigrade or plantigrade legs, different hairstyles, forepaws or hands, flexi or non-flexi tails, some with different skin patterns also. All but the hyena come with control and/or customisation HUDs, they are also customisable by chat command. And as with most furry avs, they’re also copy/mod/no-trans, so you can duplicate parts and modify away to your heart’s content (which is what I did with my original non-free Extrovirtual horse)

Of course I had to try out all the blue ones, especially the horse, but really these pictures don’t do justice to the amazing variation of avatars here. I can’t quite decide if the hyena or the wolf is my favourite.  I can also highly recommend Luskwood as a cool and friendly place to hang out for new furries.

The shorts are previous freebies from Valiant.

Also while I was hanging out there, Frontier Linden (a black and white cat in a top-hat) came by and hung out there. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a Linden just hanging out in a normal place (aside from official Linden-run meetings and events).

Total cost: L$0

Free Skin at Nora’s

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Glenn/148/37/28

There is a very nice free skin available for men (and one for women as well) at Nora’s. This one is distributed by the creator itself, so is one of the rare few genuinely free and not actually stolen free skins.  It has a semi-transparent texture and is modifiable, so it’s actually possible to alter the skin tone quite a bit with the sliders and still look good

The store next door, Little Bird, also does skins and they have free ones too but those are for residents under 30 days only. As I’m far too old for that I wasn’t able to pick one up to show you.  But this one is the one from Nora.

Total cost: L$0