middle earth Archives – DashKitten.com

Close-Up of Bee Photographed with an iPhone

12/02/2017 by Marjorie Dawson 12 Comments

Today’s selfie is un-BEE-lievable. We have a real busy bee and believe it or not this is an iPhone6 image.

Summer here in New Zealand has been a bit unsteady but threw me a good day this Saturday, and while we sat out on the deck with a cup of coffee, we spotted a magnificent bee on our heuchera plant!

On the heuchera, the leaves are low down and the flower stems are thin with very small flowers scattered at the top. I thought the flowers were far too small for a busy bee to collect from but check these pictures out.

The bee was having a great time collecting tiny bits of pollen, so I grabbed my iPhone hoping to grab a halfway decent shot of the lovely creature before it flew away.

This was ‘touch and go’ as getting close to a bee isn’t always a clever idea, and they are small so might not even come even come out in a smartphone picture!

I would not have believed the accuracy and clarity of these smartphone images and I am very impressed.

If you need to take pictures for social media, or a blog, your smartphone is the perfect and portable camera always in your pocket.

Kili Costume the Dwarf Costume Details

22/02/2016 by Marjorie Dawson 6 Comments

Check our pictures of the Kili Costume, one of the dwarves in The Hobbit. We hope you find them as impressive as we do.

While we don’t have pictures of Kili from the Hobbit we can show you the genuine costume worn in the movie. You will love the detail in the costumes for The Hobbit. Beautifully practical but decorative leather work and textiles. The Kili The Dwarf Costume shows a man prepared for the worst but with an eye for the good things. Join us for a look in at the handiwork that cosplay fans will love to see.

Kili The Dwarf Costume — The Hobbit Dwarf Belt Kili

Kili A Dwarf Prepared to Fight

As one of those closest to Thorin Oakenshield you might expect an elaborate costume with lots of trimmings to show his status. In fact, Kili’s costume, for most of The Hobbit, is full of detail but very practical. You can see a lot of the details for our costume pictures Kili’s figurine from the Weta models collection inspired by the movie.

This is a dwarf who is prepared for rough travel, but, there are some very nice creative touches. If you check out the montage below, you will see the finely worked leather cross belt, sleeve bracers and the embroidery on the front of the jacket.

There is also what look like some nice stamping or textured tooling work on the leather sleeves of Kili’s coat, and stamped and shaped metal studs on the belt and complimentary sleeve bracers.

Kili Costume Embroidered Jerkin

We must admit that this and Fili’s costumes are amongst the most difficult we tried to photograph on our Hobbit costume travels. The Kili costume and its miniature replica for his stand-in stood in the middle of Wellington Airport’s busy central arrivals/departures area with a lot of light, many shops and crowds of people on the move. Not a challenge for Weta Workshop and 3 Foot 7 maybe but for a lone camera person, well I did my best 🙂

In spite of this, I hope we captured enough details of Anne Maskrey and Bob Buck’s amazing work for 3 foot 7 Costume Department, on Kili’s costume for cosplayers and costume fans to enjoy.

In the well written Tolkien Gateway wiki you will find a biography of Fili and his part in The Hobbit. It is well worth a read.

For more reports on the costumes that were originally part of the Hobbit Costume Trail – check here

Harvey Button
Middle-Earth Correspondent
for Kili the Dwarf’s Costume

Bilbo Baggins Costume Detail Pictures

06/03/2015 by Marjorie Dawson 8 Comments

The Dash Kitten Crew present our Middle-Earth review of the Bilbo Baggins Costume from The Hobbit movie. Readers know that an integral part of our blog here at Dash Kitten is celebrating the culture of our adopted home country, New Zealand.

The Hobbit movie ‘live’ costume tour has finished, but we present for your enjoyment, the superb costume of sevral characters from the movi series. T

This post showcases Bilbo Baggins who goes adventuring in J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

Bilbo Baggins’ Costume Photo Notes

When we photographed it, the costume for Bilbo was situated at the building formerly known as Kirkauldie and Staines (now David Jones), Wellington.

As it was in the middle of the brightly lit ladies wear department, it proved a challenge to photograph, but we managed some good shots of the genuine costume worn by Martin Freeman in The Hobbit. You can even see the dirt on the hem of his robe!

Bilbo Baggins Mithral Vest — Highly details image of Bilbo’s Mithral vest, Green Line waistcoat and Blue velvet coat

Notes on the fabric and embellishment of Bilbo Baggins’ Costume:-

Bilbo’s outer coat is a blue velvet/velour lined in textured grey (linen?) with what appears to be a fringe of sheepskin around the collar. Also note the very impressive (genuine) dust, dirt and grime along the hem of the jacket! Full-length image at the bottom of this post.
The cuffs mirror the fringing around the collar.
The belt is leather and the surface decoration looks hand tooled.
The Mithril vest looks perfect. It sparkles and gleams. Check the chainmaille fabric and superb embellishment!

Bilbo Baggins Costume from The Hobbit — Close-Up of the Coat Front, Collar Detail, Linen Waistcoat and Mithril Vest

Under the Mithril is a simple collarless linen shirt in a pale oatmeal colour.
The plain green waistcoat looks like linen and it fastens with the genuine Weta Workshp Brass Buttons with an acorn motif.
The Hobbit trousers are a light tan corduroy, cropped even on (Martin Freemen. (Martin is not a tall actor.)
Note the leather ‘brace’ or loop (below) that keeps Sting from swinging dangerously.

We hope you love Bilbo Baggins costume as much as we do. Check out the rest of our series of Hobbit Costumes here.