It's a new species!!

I call it the Platyhippo. Okay, so I was trying to make this:



Instead what I got was poor, sad little Piper the Platyhippo here:




I hope to one day not suck so badly at this.

The love you take is equal to the love you make

I think the other eggs seem a little taken aback; what do you think?

I'm glad I did this, but I am also glad it's done. Happy Thingaday all around.

Now get back to work.

all work and no play makes Homer something something

14 hour work day! Still came home and knitted most of an egg cozy. Guilt is powerful.

Will finish tomorrow.

Also, my life is pretty lonely these days, but I am happy to report that my cat still loves me. Just look at the way he cuddles!

An official message

Stupid fricking evil spam comments have been appearing here. I have been attempting to destroy them with my magic clicky trash can. If I miss one, let me know, because I hate them.

Also, I am officially opting out of today's thing because of the charity chocolate competition of doom that I am in tonight.... but if I can get any hilarious phone pictures worth posting, I totally will. (Basically it is an invite only people's choice comp for 6 catering companies in the area. We have to serve up 400 mini samples of this one dessert, and I am thinking that we have way not enough prep. We'll see. )

Taking responsibility

I spent the better part of this evening with a good friend crafting and chatting. We're thinking of setting up regular "lumpy crafting" evenings, which is something I find wonderful.

During conversation, one of the things that came up was our mutual frustration with people who do not do what they are going to do. Seriously, people, if you say you are going to do something, just do it. It is not so hard. If you are not going to do something, don't say you will do it. It's okay. I'd rather you made no promises than promises you can't keep.

Given that context, I am pleased to announce that I completed the scarf I was working on! Just as I had hoped, though barely inside of the month limitation. I've even sewn in the ends! So it's really, really finished! Score.

Excahuse me waitair...

... zis croissant, he is a bit petit, non?

I can't believe it took me this long to knit a croissant. Still trying to decide if I should have that guy I live with come up with a french face for it.

la la la la

Here are some Christmas Reindeer.

Picture from last night

This is the sourdough with whole wheat flour.
Still figuring this uploading thing, sorry.

I was hot, and I was hungry.

Actually, I was tired and feeling lazy, and there were some trying moments today that demanded chocolate, and this only took twenty minutes if you also count the time I spent consuming the resulting product.

However, I still think there is something vaguely revelatory about the knowledge that you can make s'mores in a toaster oven even though I don't particularly like s'mores.

I know, I know, strange but true--they're just too sweet for my tastes.

Despite that, tonight was a s'more night:


Man, how many pictures are there of oatmeal in my entries?

Maybe it is a found object thing

I really like making collages. Something about putting together other people's stuff in another way appeals to me. It started in the way back era of the mix tape, I would make a collage for a cassette cover. I still do, sometimes, with CDs I make . I have tried doing similar things with photoshop, but it just isn't the same. Maybe it's just an excuse to play with glue. I don't know.

Anyway, i saw this ugly box while my sister was around. It was a dollar. It needed buying, and fixing. So far, I've done about half. The grapefruit on top makes me happier than you can believe.The other thing I like about collaging? Sometimes you find pictures like this:
I just need to figure out what to do with it. Awesomeness.

Months have passed...

Months have passed with the baking on the increase...at least for me. Fortunately the holidays enabled me to do my requisite gift giving of baked goods and candies, to great acclaim. Photos of some of them will follow, per request of Adoxograph.

Now that my little girl is enjoying manipulating things with her hands, I'm trying to bake something at least once a week with her. This one, from a few months ago and recently repeated, Sourdough Italian, made with mostly wheat flour. Since we all like to eat it too, it's a win win.

Yes, duh, you should totally post the recipe

Also I think I'm getting hands like my mom's were. It's a knobbly knuckle or thin papery skin thing. It was almost weird, taking a picture like this. I am quite pleased, after the fact, to note that my finger nails are not really dirty. How lucky!

To make room for the tuna!

I made chocolate Guinness cupcakes! And cream cheese frosting!

With those two forces combined (that will happen in the morning before work) I figure that I can take over the world.

Okay, jeez:
cake stuff:
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
2 cups ap flour
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch fine salt
1 bottle stout
1 stick butter, melted
1 big glorp vanilla extract
3 eggs
3/4 cup sour cream or yogurt or whatever substitute you have on hand

frosting stuff:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup heavy cream
a pound or so of confectioners' sugar (I find the texture of this stuff unsettling)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Prep your muffin tins as per your preference. I usually do the little baking cups because I am lazy.

Mix everything in the cake list up to the salt together in one bowl. In a bigger bowl, mix the stout, melted butter, and vanilla, beat in the eggs, and mix in the sour cream. The liquid will look extremely unappetizing right up until the time you get the sour cream mixed in. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, don't overmix because, you know, it's cake, and we don't want it to be tough, because that's nasty.

Fill your muffin tins. I found that a 1/4 cup scoop did pretty well for this, but I wasn't real precise about it or anything. Bake for about 12 minutes, turn your pans around, bake another 12 minutes. The cake is pretty moist, so you'll want to let them cool in the pan so they don't go awry.

For the icing, beat the softened cream cheese until it goes all fluffy. Beat in the heavy cream until the combo cheese/cream mixture goes all fluffy. Beat in the sugar (you may want to add more or less, depending upon how you like it) until the cheese/cream/sugar combo is fluffy.

It's a pretty lightweight icing, so definitely wait until the cupcakes cool before frosting, because that stuff will totally melt. Although, for the record, it is still quite tasty melted.

I need a second opinion!

Is this length good, or should I give it a few more inches?
My first inclination is to go a little longer, but perhaps that's just because I am masochistic with my crafting.

p.s. dig the pjs, yo.

practicality on a Sunday night

I go through socks something fierce. It is to be expected, I figure, but it means I end up with a lot of holey heels. Mostly, these socks linger for an appalling amount of time in my sock drawer before finally getting thrown out. But every once in a while, I'll darn up a pair. I like doing it, there is something satisfying about the process of mending, but the end result is bittersweet.

I can never really wear these mended socks the way I wore the originals. The repairs make my sensitive feet more tender, rub in my clogs in weird ways. They are good enough for around the house, but they will never really be the same again. Strangely, this makes me want to decorate them more, to festoon them into something supremely unpractical. I'd probably stop short of lace around the cuffs, but I'd seriously consider just about anything else. An embroidered Taj Mahal on the instep? Well, that's a bit above my skill level, but not out of the question.

Just fixing the heels is enough for today, though.

I really need to put GIMP on this machine

These jpeg compression nasties are completely unacceptable.
So, naturally, today's thing (does it count as crafty if it just involved flipping bits? Here's hoping yes, as it did take a fair chunk of time to get it just so) has a story behind it.

Current social situation in my life? Complicated would be putting it nicely. But I am trying to figure out how to deal with that while minimizing collateral damage. So I was trying to figure out how best to communicate to people around me about the particular hazards associated with being around me at this moment in time. This was what I came up with. I think it works!

It's amateurish, but still a tempting idea as a t-shirt. Or, you know, a tattoo. On my tongue. So everyone knows precisely what they are in for when they talk to me.

(Perhaps I should add something about staying back by at least 100 feet.)

*sigh*

These awful photographs completely fail to communicate how awesome this is

OH HOLY SMOKES, PEOPLE, I MADE A DRESS!

Check it out now (the funk soul brother):

front,

and kinda the back, but mostly a chair in my apartment.

It turns out it is really hard to take pictures of your own back!

To make the straps, I took the extra material, marked off a strip 2.5 inches wide, and then folded that in half and sewed up the edge, then turned that inside out to make the seam. Pinned those in place using my bra straps as a guide (and can I just reiterate how difficult it is to pin yourself into something you are wearing, particularly if you are using your non-dominant hand?), and then sewed those in place, then trimmed off the excess.

I am doing such a ridiculous happy dance right now, it's silly.

Normally I would never do this...

I am not one for key accessories. I do not decorate my doorknobs, why should I ornament my key ring? This, however, had to be an exception...
It's surly and shrinky!

Apparently those self portraits got so frustrating that I have a new default thing.

ALMOST TWO LEGS LONG!!

You know what is great about making scarves? If you aren't being fancy, you don't even have to count anything. Just go until it's about as wide as you want, turn around go back the other way, over and over until it is done.

Brain seems to greatly appreciate the associated opportunity to think about something else.

Yes, rachel, I got your present. Squee!

Shrinky dinks for the win, and the return of the thingaday! They work very well in my toaster oven. I am particularly pleased with face on the bacon with the eggs and toast, sadly too small for the camera to capture. Political Opus for my raucus caucus sweetie. Can you believe he never shrunky dunk?

Breaking in the new couch

Oh Em Gee is it totally way more comfortable to crochet on the new couch than it was on the futon!

Even the cat endorses it!

I cooked dinner!

Since you guys declared it is not cheating and it is the first meal I have cooked in , wow, I guess a week now, I am noting for the record that I made dinner! Chicken and green things with pasta in ugly sauce, to be sure, but at least I am mobile. Maybe tomorrow I will see if the fever burned the knit purl from my brain or if not-muscle memory makes my fingers still work.

no, I am not sharing my recipe for ugly sauce.

Some people have dreams of flying.

I have three recurring dream themes that are kind of pseudo-nightmarish. They are, in order of most to least frequently experienced: zombies, my mother, and unexpected discovery of neglected/dying pets. I had the latter last night--in my dream I went into the basement (which itself was sort of a hybrid of the basement in Nashville and the basement in Brookfield) and there were these goldfish in a mason jar with barely any water left, clearly gasping, sickly, and when I tried to fill the jar with fresh water, it overflowed before I could stop it and the fish slipped out of the container, swimming along a narrow, water-filled crack in the cement floor, clearly doomed.

Still, that was much better than the dream I had with the half-starved puppies, or the rabbits that were so hungry they started eating each other.

I have to say, though, on balance, I wish I had dreams of flying or falling or going to school naked.

...and it was with those thoughts in mind that I drew this picture.


It's not half bad in terms of proportion and general shape considering that I was just making it up as I went along. Plus, you know, crayons.

Tired. Default. Thing.

Grarrrgh. Sleep. In under wire. 11 more days.

I'm not dead yet...

... I feel fine. I don't want to go on the cart. I feel Happy, I feel Happy!

also I am completely bored with everything within arms reach of my couch. But, writing this, now all I want to do next is nap.

I even BOUGHT soup.

current mood = right stroppy cow. Good thing I am weak and defenseless.

Time limits are for suckers.

As I was working on today's craft thing, I realized that, by way of a general approach to life, I am not totally awesome at paying attention to arbitrary recommendations about how much time I ought to be spending on things. Take, for example, thingaday. Now, I have spent way more than 20 minutes on stuff basically every day. Today was especially awesome, with my efforts clocking in at about 3.5 hours worth of crafting. Likewise with exercise--recommendations from doctors usually end up in the 30-60 minutes per day neighborhood. I train for marathons, which means hours and hours of running at a stretch, plus I lift weights three times a week. I work well over my allotted 40 hours per week. I don't come even close to getting 8 hours of sleep a night.

But here's the thing: I feel great. I make my deadlines, I don't feel unusually stressed out or tired, and I like it that I have intuitively grasped the concept that the rules people make up for how we should all comport ourselves need not prevent me from enjoying myself.

Anyway!

Today I took a $2 XXL t-shirt and turned it into a little dress by following this tutorial. I haven't yet put on the straps because, after 3.5 hours, I was done working on it for the day.


Interesting things to note:

• sewing stretchy cotton fabric is not nearly as difficult as I was led to believe
• there is a lot of thread in the seam that attaches the sleeve of a t-shirt to the torso of that t-shirt
• it is really hard to pin up something for yourself while wearing it when you have no help

Here's what I am thinking: the combination of this turn-t-shirt-into-dress technology and the bleach stencil technology could easily be combined into some kind of super hyper awesomeness.

I will totally finish this darn scarf before the end of the month.

Continuing on the crochet adventure, the scarf is now officially one leg long. See:


The good news is that now I know what I am going to do with it when it is done.

continuing the series of bad self-portraits

Maybe I would do better at this if I worked from a picture rather than looking in a mirror.


Actually, though, I think this one is on the good side of average for this effort.

V-day

All right, so Valentine's Day is generally not my favorite thing. Here are a few reasons why: it sort of justifies not being romantic on a day to day basis by creating a single day when romance is expected; there are no clear metrics for success; it seems to inspire these strange flurries of last minute (and yet expensive) thoughtlessness; just...no.

Although I do enjoy the part where I get to give cheesy paper valentines to my coworkers. Good times all around.

However, I had the great fortune to have the opportunity to cook a nice dinner for MilkKissed, and rather than buying into the ridiculous, we sat and ate at a table and had a lovely conversation about everything that has been going on since we last saw each other. Frankly, it was one of the best V-days I
have ever had.

That being said, today's thingaday is the dinner that I made:


chicken pounded flat, then formed into a roulade containing fresh sage leaves and a nice smoked fontina, which was cooked with a spicy tomato sauce and served over angel hair pasta. Surprisingly quick to make, very delicious, and overall a rousing success.

Credit where credit is due.

I think the adoxograph has been mildly frustrated with me this month so far because I have had better luck about making and posting about something basically every day so far. Here is the thing: having just returned (triumphant, I might add!) from a visit during which I was given the most excellent opportunity to be her little worker robot, I must say: the adoxograph is more full of making stuff than an entire hive of bees.

I mean, just look at this beautiful tiramisu that she made:


All I did was carry it on my lap and wash some dishes!

And then there are the adorable chocolate mousse cups with the little chocolate hearts:


My photographs quite literally do not do them justice.

In contrast, I just made a grouchy dude from perler beads:


I like him because he looks shifty. He says, "this is not my beautiful house."

does phlegm count as something I made?

OK, i am declaring myself sickly. But I made something today. I'll take a picture of it when I can think straighter.

blurry photographs brought to you by pictures in the dark

I am happy to report that I made more progress on that crocheted scarf thing that I posted a picture of yesterday:



Still not finished, but hey, at least it is floofy and majestic. Actually, I think I am going to need to incorporate a second skein of the obnoxious gold accent yarn that I am using, because I seem to be close to using up the current skein. Good thing I bought so many of them when they were $1 a skein at my local Michael's.

I also drew a heart on my belly in a fit of pique. Don't know whether this counts toward thingaday, except it was sort of art-motivated; I was thinking about how to deal with a tattoo that I have that needs covering, and then thinking about the concept of the beauty mark, and thinking about the philosophy of beauty, and after a while in my head discovered that I had absentmindedly obtained a pen and started doodling on myself:

I suppose I am just lucky that it is in ballpoint and not sharpie.

Channeling my inner fourth grader

All right, so there was no post yesterday (although that does not reflect a dearth of craft; I crocheted for an hour in the airport:

and then made 350 desserts with the adoxograph [no photos of that, sorry]. It just turns out that Kathy's job is hard work, and getting up at 5AM on a Sunday to go to the airport is hard work, and in the absence of the scarf being done and photographic evidence of the desserts, it was kinda hard to get motivated to write something).

However!

Today is a new day, and so I drew/colored a hand turkey. Hand turkeys were a great favorite of mine in my youth, and, I must admit, it was nice, from a nostalgia perspective, to revisit that particular form of self-expression. (Hopefully it will be nice from a punctuation perspective to use fewer commas in the rest of the sentences in this post. Yeesh.)

Here's Tom:

The fat cat looks displeased.

I can't remember whether I was a color inside the lines person as a child now that I am old, but if my current performance is any indication, I may have been a get distracted by other things person. Seriously, can I not even color for twenty minutes without stopping to watch a TED talk?

Now I just need some spinach.

I made cheese!

Specifically, paneer.

Here's the associated anecdote. I think it was Wednesday, I was talking to my friend, and he said:

"Yeah, I got way too much milk, and I was thinking of giving you some of it."
"Um?"
"Yeah, I have a whole unopened gallon of low-fat milk. Do you want it?"
"...sure? When does it expire?"
"February 12th."
"Um...yeah, okay. I guess I could make cheese out of it."

And so here we find ourselves with a pint of freshly made paneer. It's actually quite tasty, if I do say so myself, and I am looking forward to attempting to make one of my favorite Indian dishes, saag paneer, upon my return from Atlanta. Hopefully the stuff will keep.

This was my favorite part of the process:


I was trying to imagine how I would explain the situation to a police officer.
"Okay young lady, what have you got here?"
"Oh, that's a pair of pantyhose. Full of cheese."
"...?"
"Well, I couldn't find any cheesecloth. and they were on sale!"

Yeah, my life is funny.

tasting menu

A trio of cakes - raspberry, carrot and lemon. The carrot cake, our newest cake, is garnished with a decorative carrot just like it has always been. Also, it has one giant eye because carrots are good for your eyes.

Sorry no thing from yesterday, mr carrotface took two days.

Unstructured

Today I had a long conversation with my favorite co-conspirator at work about the concept of a comprehensive list of human skills, and how such a thing could be used as the basis for a tool that would help you identify the right person to do a job you had--and it could be any job, from debugging code for a meteorological simulation, to figuring out what that noise your car is making means, to roofing your house, to separating your stuck Lego bricks. If you could completely characterize someone's skill set and the skills necessary (both in terms of technical know-how and social capabilities), then in theory you could find someone who perfectly matched your stuff-doing needs.

Unsurprisingly, this got me thinking about what my own personal skill list would look like (knitting, crocheting, neuroscience, note-taking, reading for comprehension, understanding people's underlying motivations, flirting, and swing dancing would all be on there in various places), which got me thinking about the nature of intelligence, which got me thinking about IQ tests. Which brings us to today's thingaday.

You know those questions on IQ tests where they show you a flat diagram, and then ask, "if this was folded at the indicated creases, which of the following three-dimensional shapes would the folding produce?"

I decided to do that with fabric.



I took those pieces (well, except for three of the really square ones, because it was already taking longer than I expected and I decided to leave those out) and sewed them together along their edges until I ended up with just a small hole left, then turned it inside out, stuffed it, and sewed off that last hole. It turned out that if you folded up those bits of fabric along the seams, the resultant three-dimensional shape would be this:


I think I am going to call him George.

Don't judge George.

It's not his fault.

Incidentally, using one hand to run the foot pedal while the other hand guides the fabric is a pretty suboptimal sewing machine usage arrangement. Surprisingly, though, it is not so suboptimal that I am motivated to acquire a desk.

I suppose it was inevitable

Yes, I know, newsprint + origami = high potential for fail.

I was at this for 30 minutes before I gave up because I have a bajillion more things to take care of before bed.


I figure that it's sort of positive in a way--sets the bar lower for tomorrow.

I stole this

if you look three six entries down you'll see the same thing. the hook with this entry, my face.

i'm a stupid obey Shepard Fairey fan.


i made this stencil about a year ago.


i have headphones on.


bleach, spray bottle, stencil, easy peasy.

I like you so much...

... that I can totally just hang here until you're ready. Just gonna cross my arms and wait. Take your time.

Is nostalgia always for simpler times?

As I was thinking about what to write today, I found myself reminiscing about the January/February a few years back when I sent the love of my life a postcard every single day over the course of the month leading up to Valentine's Day. Don't get me wrong, it's not a holiday that I am a big fan of, but I was (and remain) a hopeless romantic. There's no helping it. So I find myself wondering--is it the sheer force of Februaryness that makes me willing to commit to doing something every day?

And then, even more than that, contemplating the general concept of commitment. What do you have to have in your heart to be willing to make a promise that you intend to keep. And, perhaps even more noteworthy, what do you have to have in your guts in order to do the work to keep it?

Then, of course, there is the concept of overcommitment--it's all well and good to promise something and mean it, but at some point you may find that you have made so many promises that it is impossible to keep them all, and the best you can hope for involves everyone feeling shorted in one way or another.

Regardless of that philosophical tangent, it was another self-portrait day, wedged between meetings and errands. I'd hoped to make cupcakes (the coworkers love cupcakes), and if I can't sleep tonight, perhaps I still will, but in the meantime there is this:


Strangely enough, I am actually kind of proud of this one, more for this picture than for the drawing itself.

As you can see, I gave myself an out by not including my entire head.

An exercise in frustration

More self portraits today. This first was just an effort to capture general body position, and I feel okay about it, especially the knee in the foreground:


The second one was a genuine face drawing effort. Again, it kinda sucks:


However, I do feel like I did a better job on the nose. For comparison:

Okay, yeah, I am really weird looking.

Now? BED.