Panda Bonzai!

Dragon Dice Bag (Chart)

2010-07-02T15:35:00.001-05:00

dragonchart
Originally uploaded by Persian Pen Name

Well folks, I was going through some old project files, and I came across this chart for a dice bag that I never did finish. I figure it's always nice to share, so I cleaned up the chart some and put it up on Flickr. Even though the original bag was crocheted, I think this works better as a knitting pattern. Enjoy!

I Seem To Have Skipped The Entire Month of May

2010-06-19T22:37:00.002-05:00

It's been over two months since my last blog post, and where am I today?

I'll tell you where: pretty much exactly where I was two months ago.

The first batch of chickens, the Magnificent Seven posted about in April, have moved outside. A few days after my last post, Ivy and I took a long drive into Austin and came home with a box of 8 tiny Silkie chicks. Three were yellow, four were black, and one was partridge. Of those, we lost one yellow chick who ate out of my hand without hesitation, and the one little black chick who was turning silver.

Right now we're eagerly awaiting the day when the silkies will be able to join their older siblings out at Sunshine's farm. The coop still isn't finished, but they're living in a wired-together conglomeration of old rabbit hutches and dog crates, and they have plenty of room.

The garden... has failed. Or rather, I failed it. I couldn't make it out there every week, much less the multiple times it would require to keep up with an 80 square foot plot, weeding and harvesting and reseeding. Eventually the community garden folks told me to put up or shut up (in so many words), and I had to admit that my plots would be better taken care of with someone else. It's making me seriously rethink my dream of Persian PenName: Hobby Farmer, and that might be for the best.

I do still want to live on a small acreage of land, with fruit trees and goats and chickens and perhaps a mini-cow, milking my own animals every morning, making my own preserves and living off the bounty of my own land, but I might have to start smaller than homesteading on my own with a terribly limited skill set. At least I know how to properly milk a goat now, and butcher and castrate them, and trim their hooves. Goats and chickens I'm feeling pretty secure on.

This past week has been pretty rough on me. Sunshine and I had to admit that we make better friends than partners, which was rough, but probably one of the most grown-up decisions I've made; Ye Olde Camry broke down, and according to the one mechanic in town I implicitly trust it's going to be somewhere between $250 and $400 to fix, and I'm considering trading it in for a used Smart Car or a moped or something; oh, and my bike was stolen.

That, and they announced that they're going to start laying people off in the library where I work. They're not using longevity or merit as part of their criteria, so there is literally nothing - not one single thing - that I can use to say "oh, well they won't cut me, because of this very valid reason". All things being equal, about one in every ten people are likely to be cut, and we won't even know in what departments until the end of next month, and no particular names until the end of August. I started job hunting, since that just seems like the smart thing to do in these circumstances, but my heart's not really in it. I'm also looking in other states, since... I've never really been in a position to move out of Texas before, you don't get much more ready than single and newly laid off.

I'd have to take my share of the chickens with me, of course, or sadly give them to Ivy until I got a yard. Banties are tough little guys, though, so I'm sure they wouldn't mind a climate change all too much.

I have family in Indiana and Tennessee, so it might be nice to move closer to them. My Aunt Nina is dying of an MRSA infection, and there's nothing I can do about it. She'd already gotten to the point of not recognizing anyone by the time I heard she was sick, so even if I spent the money to get up there and visit her, she wouldn't know. And as much as it hurts me to say it, I don't have the funds to take a trip she won't be lucid for. It's crazy, really, and it makes me cry if I think about it for too long, so I'm going to change the subject now.

I got my hair cut. It's pretty short now, and definitely falls somewhere on the "Oh, so I see you like the ladies" end of the spectrum, but I like it. For now, anyway.

Ivy got a cat. Her name is Lolita, and after a few days of tense hissing and angry growls, she and Ripley seem to be getting along well. She is a fluffy tortie, mostly black, and she is still a bit skittish around me. I can definitely see the difference in confidence level between her and my cats, and I have to wonder if it's because she's changed owners at least twice in the past year; Ripley's never had reason to think she would live with someone else, and I don't think Heed could even formulate the thought.

Ivy has been teaching me to cook. I can make steak now! And mashed potatoes, and veggies, and pies. Lots of pies. I make elaborate baked goods when I'm sad, these days, and after Sunshine and I had our talk I started right in on some pie crusts. I've already eaten half the chess pie I made, but I ran out of energy before I could finish the shaker lemon pie, so that's probably my project for tomorrow.

I started buying fabric last month, intending to make a quilt. I don't think that's going to happen anymore, but I do believe I'll have a number of nice skirts before the week is up. Probably all on the same pattern, a tiered peasant skirt, which will be odd not only because it will mean that I now own non-costume skirts voluntarily for the first time in my life, but because I've got enough fabric that I'll have more skirts than actual pairs of pants.

In other news, I made a tweed Godzilla plushie. Finishing up a denim one too, and they'll be given to Sunshine's kids.

Here, Chick Chick Chicks!

2010-04-11T22:16:00.001-05:00

17 days ago, Ivy (my temporary roommate) and I bought impulse chickens. Seven little bantams, though one died just about as soon as we got them home (fun fact: pick chicks that are lively and active, NOT chicks that are "all sleepy and adorable"). We divvied them up, and each named three.

There were two yellows, Hobbit and Soup. Two black and whites, Tweasel and Tiberius. One white, Pie, and one silver, Sparklesnatch (if you think the names are odd, go check out the Lazy, Stupid and Godless group on Ravelry. It's awesome).

On the first day, they were fluffy and adorable.

Hobbit

Soup

Tweasel

Tiberius

Pie

Sparklesnatch

By day 4, their wing feathers were coming in, and we'd started to see more of their personality. Sparklesnatch, despite being the smallest of the group, had established herself as Top Chicken. Pie was the sweetie, and had taken a particular shine to another friend of ours, Ella, so much so that by the end of the week we'd decided that Pie was going to live out her life as Ella's house chicken.

Hobbit

Soup

Tweasel

Tiberius

Pie

Sparklesnatch

On day 7, I went to the purina store to get more supplies, and a seventh baby bantam came home and was dubbed Dinner.

Dinner

We introduced the chicks to Heed. He sniffed briefly, then ran away like a scared little bitch.

Hobbit and Heed

By this point, everyone's wings were coming in well.

Sparklesnatch

Then, as it tends to do, a bunch of time passed at once. I spent a couple of days helping to bottle feed baby goats up at Girlface's farm (Dos was another girl, Tres and Quatro were boys), a couple of days working, a couple of days recovering. Next thing I knew, it was day 17, and I hadn't photographed the babies in over a week. Everyone's wing feathers are in, their tiny feathery feet are fluffier than ever, and their combs are coming in. We even had to clip their flight feathers, to keep them from launching themselves into the air whenever we took them out to play with.

Dinner

Still the smallest, of course, at 10 days old. She's not quite a snuggler, yet, but she's holding her own in the Grand Chicken Hierarchy.

Hobbit

Hobbit has the most impressive comb so far. You can see all the little ridges and everything.

Soup

Hobbit's turned brown! She was already the darker of the two yellow chicks, and her wing feathers are brown with white edges.

Tweasel

Tweasel and Tiberius are much easier to tell apart now - Tweasel is the one with the comb!

Tiberius

Tiberius is the next sweetest chicken, after Pie. I'm trying to feed him from my hand every day and snuggle on him, but he's not exactly thrilled about it.

Pie

Pie is sweet as can be around Ella, but is really a one-woman bird. She doesn't care much for me.

Sparklesnatch

You might notice that Sparklesnatch is a lot leaner than the rest of the babies, and that her tail is longer. Because of this, we're thinking that she might actually be a he... but we're still calling him Sparklesnatch.

Holy Baby Bantams, Batman!

2010-03-26T19:34:00.002-05:00

Guess who just got 6 adorable baby bantam chicks?

Hint: it's me!

I'll put up pictures and profiles in the morning :) Right now, I'm too busy watching them eat and sleep and poop.

Linkdump (or: I have discovered Mother Earth News)

2010-03-18T00:41:00.003-05:00

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1997-08-01/Make-a-Pine-Needle-Basket.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/2002-06-01/Milking-Stanchion.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1983-09-01/Make-a-Rabbit-Blanket.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1982-05-01/Make-a-Stove-From-Mud.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1981-05-01/The-Owner-Built-Adobe-House.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/2008-08-01/Recycleable-Solar-Dehydrator.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1982-05-01/Heavenly-Hammock.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1975-11-01/Sheepskin-Rugs.aspx

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1973-09-01/Cutting-Bottles-The-Easy-Way.aspx

Possible New Direction for the Blog

2010-03-12T08:32:00.002-06:00

It's been almost a month since my last blog post, and let me tell you, it's been a month filled with interesting happenings.

For example, I now have a goal for my adult life. I know! Who does crazy things like that, right? And it's not one I would have figured for myself, either, until my grown-up years.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Internets, I want to be a farmer.

Specifically, I want to live on a small, organic homestead of about 5 acres. I want bees, and chickens, and goats, and sheep, and miniature donkeys, and cows, and lots and lots of space for growing things. I want to grow and preserve my own fruits and vegetables. I want to raise and butcher my own meat. I want to milk my own dairy animals, and turn it into cheese and butter and awesome creamy soap. I want to suit up and steal from my own hives, honey and wax and pollen and royal jelly, and then figure out what to do with those last two.

Ideally, I'd even like to build my own house on those 5 acres, but since construction is not my strongest point I may pass on that one.

I'm not sure if these urges are a continuation of my love of spinning and knitting and making things in general, or if they all have some kind of ultimate root in wanting to live a simpler life, closer to nature, taking part in all the steps of production from start to finish, but I think it's all connected back to my early memories of my great-grandmother who lived up north.

I remember going up every winter to Granny's house in Indiana, and catching brief glimpses of The Basement, a magical place where little kids were not allowed to wander, a place full of shelves lined up like the stacks in the library where I work now, all of those shelves full to the brim with jars and jars of different things Granny had preserved. Apple butter, green beans, pickled cucumbers (the cucumbers were grown in an old claw-foot tub that lived in the back yard), and other things that I never found out what they were. I'd never had apple butter before, and no other recipe tastes as good to me as the one made by my Granny, and that I never thought to ask her for.

At Granny's house, I found crocheted turtles she'd made ages and ages ago, and tried to read the stitches and make her a new one (I couldn't figure out why mine turned out so much smaller - they had the same number of stitches!). At Granny's house, I had my first taste of horehound candy, which tasted sort of like cough syrup, but I loved it anyway. Granny's house was full of strangeness to me - homemade quilts; racks and racks of salt and pepper shakers that her daughter, my grandmother, had collected before she passed away; old-fashioned porcelain-faced dolls; strange almanacks and for some reason rooster-themed memorabilia all over the place - and I loved it. There was a park in easy walking distance from her house, with a lighthouse we used to sneak into, whose rickety stairs terrify me now that I'm older and wiser. There was a river with a bridge for the railroad tracks that my mom told me she and her brothers used to race across, while telling us in the next breath we were under no circumstances to ever do.

My Granny was born in 1902, and to the last she didn't take shit from anyone. When they made a law that you couldn't burn leaves and trash in your yard anymore, she still did it. When the cops came by to tell her it was illegal, she told them she was over 90 years old and had been doing it all her life - were they really going to take a lady her age to jail? She told me stories about growing up in that house, and while I could tell her memories were not all happy ones, I was glad to hear them anyway.

So when I think about farming, and having a home to call my own with its own shelves of apple butter and preserves, maybe its own claw-foot tub full of cucumbers if I can find one, it makes me feel happy inside. I've been making a lot of friends this past year, many of whom have chickens of their own (and let me tell you, trading leftovers for fresh eggs is a pretty sweet deal), and one in particular of whom has goats, sheep, and miniature donkeys. It's been making me realize that yes, this is really what I want to do, and I want to do it soon, and in this area.

To that end, I've decided to buy a goat. My friend (we'll call her Sunshine) has a bunch of pregnant mamas right now, and in the recent snowstorm three of them had their kids. Two of them froze to death in the night, but one of them made it, and I'm pretty sure I've fallen in love. Uno was intended to be a meat goat, but I think she's going to be the start of a milking herd for me.

She's even cute enough that I'm breaking one of the Cardinal Rules of the Blog, and posting my face for the first time. Enjoy it, folks. (p.s. the lady in the black shirt is not me, she's a friend who's crashing at my place until May, and wanted to come down and visit Uno. I'm the one in the glasses.)

I think it's a pretty good start.

Gardening Like Whoa!

2010-02-17T10:44:00.002-06:00

So, a bunch of LSGers were talking about getting ready for gardening season, and that got me thinking that you know, I sure would love to grow some things this year. Maybe even things that I could can, since after my last post I seem to have gone on a .... slight canning binge. Maybe. Just a little.

If by 'just a little' you mean a dozen pints of marmalade, 6 pints of jalapeno jelly, and a dozen half-pints of candied jalapenos, ALL of which have all found homes and a good portion of which have been devoured by yours truly in the past month. Then, yes, just a little bit of canning.

So, anyway, I have all these extra jars now (I may have gone and bought 4 dozen more half-pint jars and a dozen quart jars), and I am all out of produce, so hey, why not try growing some?

There's a community garden set up through the university, so I tracked down the email for that and called up a few friends to see if they'd be interested. And now? Now, I may have asked for a 4x20 foot plot, that we've already planned out the setup for, and are just waiting to get the seeds in. Yeah, this is going to be interesting :) The Library Overlord said he might help me get the actual land ready, but I think I'd really prefer to build the plot up instead of try to dig into the clay that is our local soil.

I'm excited, though. I'm actually going to be working with people who can touch plants without killing them, and all the ones we're planting are heirloom and organic. I can't fucking WAIT for spring!

I made motherfucking MARMALADE!

2010-01-16T19:58:00.000-06:00

Shit yeah, bitches, and it was EASY! Here is what you do:

Buy a bunch of canning jars (12 16oz jars for $8 at HEB)
Buy a bunch of oranges (18lb bag for $7 at my farmer’s market)
Buy a bunch of sugar (The Library Overlord went out and got me some kinda crazy 20lb bag of sugar, I really hope I use it all making jam because I don’t have anything I can store this in)
(optional) Buy a set of canning tongs ($10, The Walmarts)

Get a big cooking pot, like for making a bunch of soup.
Get an even BIGGER, GIANT stock pot, like for making chili for a very large party.

Peel some oranges. I find it’s easier to quarter them first, then peel the quarters, because then the peels are all the same size, instead of all kinds of crazy sizes. Cut the peels into little strips and put them in your pot. I did 8 oranges per batch.

Tear the orange-quarters into little bits, and put them in the pot. You can do this over the pot, so the inevitable juice drips go in with the rest of it. Toss out any seeds.

Pour in water, 1 cup at a time, until it barely covers your oranges. For my pot, 4 cups did it. Then, add as many cups of sugar as you did water. THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO ADD!

Bring that bitch up to a boil for like a minute, then take it down to a simmer. Simmer it until you can take some of it out, put it in a clean bowl, and it kinda starts to gel up when it cools. That’s when you know it’s done. The recipe I was using said that should take about an hour, but I had the heat on low at first so it took a lot longer than that. Just keep setting the timer for 20 minutes, after that first hour, and eventually it will be jam.

NOTE: MARMALADE HAS A BITTER BITE. If you don’t like that, don’t add the peel, and DO add pectin. I didn’t do that, so I don’t know how to tell you how to do it. Me, I like the little bit of bitterness, and the texture of the peel.

TO CAN: Get your big-ass stockpot, and put something on the bottom so the jars don’t rest directly on the bottom of the pot. I used a vegetable steamer thingy. Put your jars in, put your lid parts in, fill it with water, and boil that shit for at least a minute to sterilize. Then, USING YOUR TONGS BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS HOT, remove the jars and fill them with your nice, hot marmalade. Oh, yeah, baby, just like that. Fill me with your orange goodness. Put the lids on the jars, the screw-thingies around them, and screw them on tight. Do this to all the jars, or until you run out of marmalade.

Put the jars back in the boiling water, and boil them for another 15 minutes. Take them out, and let them cool down slowly. If you can still poke the top of the jar and make a clicking sound as the top comes up and down, then it hasn’t sealed yet. If it doesn’t seal by the time it’s room temperature, boil it again, and see if it goes that time.

It should probably wait overnight to cool down, and it’s supposed to take a couple days to really thicken up in the jar. But let’s be honest, you’re going to be eating it with a spoon by breakfast time, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with that.

FUN VARIANT: CHOCOLATE ORANGE MARMALADE!!!

When the marmalade is cooked, but you haven’t canned it yet, add in a bunch of chocolate chips. I didn’t really measure it at all, but maybe 1 part chocolate to 2 or 3 parts jam? Mix it up, and the heat of the jam will melt the chocolate. Can as per usual. It’s so good, your mouth will orgasm with delight.

Time for the Big Guns

2010-01-12T09:37:00.002-06:00

Last night, I hit 50 rows left to go on my Persian Star Shawl. I posited that if I knit 5 rows a day, I’d be done in a little over a week! Then I remembered that the rows? Are over 1000 stitches each at this point.

I did some math. I have knit 124,592 stitches on this shawl. There are 51,200 left to go, PLUS the edging that I haven’t figured out yet what it’s going to be.

Galveston was only 125,128 stitches. If I’d done another shawl with that size yarn, I’d be almost done right now, instead of having 29% left to knit.

So, either way, I think I'm going to try it. I'm going to try and knit at LEAST two rows a day, and stop if I hit five in one evening. If I work on it during my lunch break, that should help. If I work on it during D&D games, dinners with friends, anything I can think of, that should all help. I'm getting into the point now where more and more of it has patterning every row, instead of every other row, and that is not helping. But as bob is my witness, I will get this done before my arbitrary deadline of April Fool's Day!

State of the Union

2010-01-04T15:57:00.005-06:00

Well, it's a new year, I'm in a new home, with a new cat, and it's time to figure out my plan for the upcoming spring. So far this winter break, I've gotten the cat fixed, made kebab, henna'd a friend's hair, cleaned and scrubbed the entire bathroom and kitchen, baked a gross of cookies, weeded my bookshelves and sold the extras to HalfPrice (made a good amount, too!), gone through the last of the boxes from when I moved in, sorted my renfest stuff into keepable and unkeepable items (stuff that doesn't fit any more, mostly), had the dishwasher at Casa del PenName replaced, and gotten rid of a bunch of stuff I don't actually need. I even started making the bed every day! What's up with all that, right? It's almost like I'm living like a grownup.

I'd really like to cut down my possessions to the bare minimum this year, and it's time to admit to myself that this may have to involve a significant bit of destashing. Some of it I'll be putting up for sale, but some of it I may be posting here for free, so keep a lookout. Now that I have one completely-cleared-off bookshelf at my disposal, I find myself wanting to store my various non-fiber crafts there. Once there's actually ROOM for everything I own - or, rather, once I've cut down what I own to just what I have room for - I think I might even start decorating. I'd like to finally hang my creepy mask collection, and maybe do a little bit of painting to hang up. If things turn out well, I'll take pictures and show everyone :)

Things in my personal life are going well, too. I've gotten used to living alone, and I'm starting to really enjoy being single. It's fun to flirt, but it's even better to go home to my quiet house at the end of the night. I'm secure in my home and my finances, I've gotten confidence in my ability to take care of myself, and all in all I'm happy. I know part of that has to be the brain drugs, and I'm so thankful that I'm finally on them. My weight hasn't really gone down a whole lot (I waver between 190-195), but I feel good, so it's hard to care that much.

I have another spinning wheel that I got off Craigslist that I'm still in the process of fixing up, but the drive wheel itself is a bit of a mess. I need to figure out exactly which spoke goes into which of 12 spots, so that the come-apart rim will come back together AND fit on the too-loose-for-my-tastes center. Once I've got that figured out, I am gluing that bitch together like you would not believe.

And hey, if that doesn't work, I can replace the whole thing with a bicycle wheel.

Eyes - Check!

2009-12-16T11:04:00.002-06:00

Remember Me?

2009-12-15T13:07:00.002-06:00

Well, well, well. We meet again, old friend.

I am talking, of course, about the Cuddlefish, who decided to hop into my knitting bag this morning and insists that I get his eyes down and cease this silly procrastinating, and who am I to argue? He's got a razor-sharp beak, and he knows how to use it.

So tonight, I'm finally finishing up this old project, or at least getting to the part where it's all coasting from here.

Organization Times! (a.k.a. Settling In for Winter)

2009-12-01T11:28:00.002-06:00

I have decided that, since Casa del PenName is all mine, I'm going to pretty it up real nice. So far, this has consisted of hanging up some Sound and Fury posters, and pinning Galveston up over the window (something else will go there eventually, but this works for now).

I think I need to do something more for at least one of the walls in the living room. I don't know if it needs paint, or stencils, or art, or what, but something is definitely needed. It's just a big, blank, empty space, and something needs to be going on to open it up and give it some visual interest.

Maybe I'll post some photos, and scribble ideas on them.

Dear PSS Prime

2009-11-17T16:36:00.002-06:00

Every row on you takes forever and a day. I've been knitting on you for a hundred million years. Why aren't you done yet?

The Mad Soaper Rides Again!

2009-11-11T10:30:00.002-06:00

I'm going to make soap this week. It's been too long, and I miss the smell of saponifying oils and the fun of playing with dangerous chemicals in my kitchen.

Tonight, I'm going to try melting some dragon's blood resin in a carrier oil, and see if the scent holds true. If it does, tomorrow I'm making dragon's blood soap. If not, well, at least I'll know!

Jesus fucking christ, HOUSEFIRE!

2009-11-08T18:46:00.002-06:00

Today, I tried to make soup. Chicken and dumplings, to be exact, which I have made multiple times and always turns out delicious.

Today, it turned out ON FIRE.

I had the pot on the stove, as per usual, waiting for it to come to a boil. I was right next to it, making the dumplings. I noticed that the burner was smoking a little, but that happens sometimes so I didn’t worry about it (MISTAKE #1).

I figured I’d turn the fan on high, and walked over to the front door to open it, since it seemed like there was maybe a bit too much smoke (MISTAKE #2). By the time I’d opened the door and looked back, flames were coming up from the bottom of the pot.

I ran back over and turned off the burner. I remembered that I don’t own a fire extinguisher (MISTAKE #3), but since I wasn’t sure if this counted as an electrical fire figured I’d be better off not throwing water on it regardless.

MISTAKE #4 was forgetting that grease fires exist at all, luckily I still somehow did the right thing:

Baking soda to the rescue!

I always keep a big box in the kitchen for cleaning purposes, so I ripped open the top and started tossing it at the base of the fire (i.e. my stove). When the flames were small enough, I grabbed my potholders and moved the soup to the sink, so I could throw more handfuls of baking soda at the fire. It went out pretty quickly at that point, and things started to disperse, THEN the smoke alarm started going off (Yeah, thanks for the heads-up, smoke alarm, you did a bang-up job there).

Then, I decided to sit down quietly for a while, and order a pizza.

New Spinning Wheel!

2009-11-08T16:42:00.003-06:00

These pictures are, of course, of the new wheel that I got this past weekend. It cost me $50 (I can never turn up a wheel for less than $100, I just can't), and all of the things I needed to spiff it up I already had, leftover from when I refinished Balthazar.

For this renovation, I decided to just go with a good coat of paste finishing wax. I had a whole jar of it, it doesn't require a tarp and a driveway, and this wheel didn't look like it was varnished anyway.

I thought about oiling it up first, but then decided against it. The only thing I had in the house was olive oil, and for something as nice as a new wheel I knew that was a bad damn idea.

From what I can tell, this is a handmade wheel, probably from some kind of a small manufacturer. There's a roman numeral 13 carved into the underside of the body of the wheel, so I'm going to go ahead and assume she's the 13th one made.

I'm thinking of calling her Hestia, as the 13th Olympian, or Ganymede, because he's just so pretty.

Crafting Insomnia

2009-10-29T02:37:00.002-05:00

Well, it's currently 2:37 in the morning, and I am wide awake. So far, since midnight, I have:

- Cleaned the litter box
- Tried on various rennie clothes, trying to figure out my costume for this weekend
- Decided that none of my current choices are any good
- Looked up free patterns for how to make new rennie clothes
- Raided the fabric stash
- Found a pattern for an easy choli, and wondered if I can get away with burgundy and copper one, with lime green undershirt.

I may be going crazy.

Tired, Tireder, Tiredest

2009-10-25T00:31:00.002-05:00

Today, a friend and I went and got the last of the everything from Mr. Ex's place. Total stuff hauled: just over 2 truckloads, but the first truckload was two bookshelves and the cat tree, so it hardly counts.

Holy crap, I have a lot of stuff! Like, a shit-ton of stuff. A metric assload of stuff. More stuff than I can shake a stick at, and I even brought my shakin' stick!

So tonight when I got home, after I rested and recovered, I sat down and started working on organizing the house again. I've got something like a reading nook in one corner of my living room now, where all 3 of my bookshelves converge with the papasan in what I like to call a triad of excellence, and I think I figured out a way to set my TV up on a small stand I've got, which hopefully won't even fall over.

All in all, I got through about half the boxes, but they were admittedly the easy ones. I mean, when you've got 8 boxes of paperbacks and an empty bookshelf, that's not exactly rocket science right there. Tomorrow, I get to go through all the little trinkets and gee-gaws and shinies and this-might-come-in-handy-somedays, and figure out which ones I'm going to actually keep, and which ones are being donated to Goodwill. The Master Plan is to have only so much stuff that I can have everything in the house put away at the same time.

Yeah, I don't think it's likely either.

Savory Poptarts?

2009-10-21T10:49:00.003-05:00

There is a thing I have been wondering all day, and that is is it possible to make your own poptarts?

The Internet assures me that it is.

So then my question becomes, what else, aside from jam, can you use as a filling? Could you do savory poptarts, with spinach and feta? Like a little spanikopita in your toaster? What about cheddar and onion? Mmmmmm!

I'm not sure, but I want to find out. I have enough homemade jams and jellies (thanks, ChileRox! Jamology Jams are the best!) to create dozens upon dozens, and I'd love to have a poptart-making afternoon where all I did was bake and freeze stacks upon stacks of these... and now that I have a working camera again (finally replaced that damn cord - only took me a few years!), I could even take pictures!

So, yeah, that might be happening some time soon. I'll try and keep you posted.

Year 27 Starts Now!

2009-10-19T14:08:00.002-05:00

Happy birthday to me!

Tonight, a bunch of friends and I are going to meet up, watch Black Sheep, and have a good meal (pizza, cheesecake, and margaritas). I am happy, and I have been for a while now. I feel good about my life, and I like where I am. I have good friends, a loving family (dad called pretending he didn't know how old he was, and TwinSis and I have been texting back and forth all day), and my health. (Well, aside from a pesky wisdom tooth that needs to come out, but it hasn't even been bothering me as much today so it doesn't count)

Life? Is pretty awesome. And I'm glad to be here. I hope you are too.

It Has Begun

2009-10-06T23:51:00.003-05:00

Today, I got a ride from a friend to the county clerk's office, and filed my Petition to Divorce. Later on, Mr. Ex came by and picked up his copy of the petition, as well as the Waiver of Service form (which means that he trusts me to handle the final Divorce Decree and doesn't want to have to go to court for it). Sixty-one days from today, I will be legally divorced.

It's... an odd feeling. I'm sad, remembering all the good times me and Mr. Ex had over the years (and there have been a lot of good times), but at the same time I'm really happy to be finally getting this done and over with. In a few weeks, I'm going to be getting the last of my things from his house, which will make the final paperwork incredibly simple - all of the things at my house are mine, all of the things at his house are his - and then we can go back to just being regular friends again.

In other news, I've been taking iron supplements for a week now, and WOW. I'm sleeping better, waking up easier, and I'm not nearly as tired during the day. Turns out that whole being anemic thing really does take it out of you; it's amazing what you feel up to when your cells are getting enough oxygen.

Year 27

2009-10-05T15:00:00.002-05:00

In 14 days, I am turning 27. 27 has always been my lucky number (3x3x3), so I have decided that this is going to be the Year of PPN Improving Her Life. Basically, I've decided to take my life by the reigns and give it a swift kick in the ass. So, I've compiled the following list:

- Daily affirmations of my awesomeness. I hear this really works?
- Drop 40 lbs. Goal weight: 160!
- Pay off my credit card ($3500).
- Study for, take, and PASS my GRE.
- Apply for a promotion at work.
- Drink at least 1 cup of water every day.
- Exercise for 10 minutes, at least 3 times a day (aside from any other walking).
- Stay on the iron pills and brain drugs.
- Get rid of the clutter in my house.
- Learn to give myself orgasms.
- Complete NaNoWriMo.
- Do one nice thing for someone every day, even if it's small.
- Learn how to dress professionally, even if I can't afford to do it much.

I can do this. I WILL do this. I have to do this.

Projects Old & New

2009-10-05T08:44:00.004-05:00

Well, I finished something this past week. A scarf, more specifically, that I hadn't thought was even serious enough to list on the sidebar. A few stitches here, a few rows there. Next thing you know, it's done!

And since I now had those needles free, I may have cast on for a sweater.

I also started adding in rows of the darker yarn into PSS Prime, and so far so good. It's hard to tell which rows are which when I'm staring right at it, so I figure it'll work just fine once I'm actually done with it. Hooray for nearly-the-same colorways!

Taking Stock

2009-09-30T11:11:00.002-05:00

I am going to be 27 in a few weeks. That’s creeping up on 30, I live alone with two cats, am getting divorced, have a small mountain of debt, and work in a library.

I feel like this is the part of my life where I’m supposed to be figuring out what I want to DO WITH MY LIFE, and starting on that.

Only thing is, I ain’t got no damn clue what I want to do!

I like to knit, and paint, and draw, and build things. I’m good with numbers and graphs and money. I’m not so good at fashion, I don’t think I want kids, and I’m a staunchly pro-choice liberal feminist. I like people, but they annoy the shit out of me too. I’m pro-union. I like to cook, but I’m not very good at it. I’m not any good at being “professional”, and prefer to work in smaller businesses despite the fact that I currently work for a subset of the gub’mint.

I’ve thought about doing social work, but I don’t particularly want to devote my life to something that emotionally draining. I’d like to do something that helped women. I don’t want to change diapers. I want to be creating a positive change in the world, even if it’s a really really small one. I’d like to travel and make friends.

What should I do with my life?

Winter is Coming

2009-09-24T14:21:00.005-05:00

Well, after all of the Yarnharlot's talk about mittens, and the actually CHILLY weather that we've been having all week, I've decided that Texas just might go ahead and get cold again this year, so I should probably be prepared. I already have my handspun socks ready and waiting to warm my feet when I get home, and my frilly green Beetons that I made last winter (when it snowed! It actually snowed!), and Galveston does double duty as a lacy silk scarf, so I figure it's time to perhaps actually make myself a damn hat (I think we all know how that's likely to turn out - how is it that I've made so many hats and STILL don't own one?).

So tonight I'm going to pull out my DPNs, and some sock yarn, and start making a hat that will be TOO GOOD for me to give away. I'm thinking colorwork, and fingering weight yarn in squishy, lovely colors. I'm not sure what all else will be involved, but I know I want a damn hat already, so it's time to suit up and get to work.

In PSS news, I've decided to knit on, working in the slightly-differently-colored yarn as I go so that hopefully the color difference won't be too noticeable. If that fails, I think I'm going to have to hire someone to dye it.

Testing? Testing?

2009-09-16T19:45:00.002-05:00

So, it was brought to my attention that my archives did not work. And since Blogger had upgraded their template formats, it wasn't going to work. Ergo, I had to change my template. What do folks think? I'm not quite happy with it myself.

In other news, Ripley has been really, really affectionate today, and I'm worried that she's going into an early heat. She's just about four months old (counting her birthday as May 14th, 6 weeks before the day I took her home), so it's possible. She goes to the vet this weekend.

And speaking of this weekend, I had been going to go out of town and see Gamerboy, a friend of mine who has recently become something a little more than that, but my car, she is not well. I turned the ignition, it started, and when I looked in the rear view mirror to see if I was clear to back up, I saw that there was a bunch of white smoke coming from the back of the car. Of course, I turned it off right away, and when I went to investigate I couldn't tell if it was coming from beneath the ass-end of the car or from the exhaust or what, but it smelled like burning rubber.

Clearly, no long trips for me.

I'm going to have my friend Danny look at it, since he's quite good with cars, but this has me worried. I hope it can be fixed, and cheaply. I certainly can't afford a new car, or even to make payments on a new used one. If I was able to get a good amount for the car, maybe I could afford a small vespa-like scooter?

Warhammer 40k

2009-09-14T09:27:00.004-05:00

Well, folks, I did it. I bit the bullet. I started playing Warhammer 40k.

Over the years this blog has been the home to my knitting and life stories, and frankly, I don't want to mess with that. So, I've decided to keep my 40k stuff elsewhere, since I know that the Feminism/Knitting/Nerdy/Gaming/Wargaming crowds do not really overlap as much as I might hope.

So if you're interested in reading up about my Ork armies, go check out Memory's Orks.

Not Enough Yarn for PSS Prime!

2009-09-08T18:06:00.003-05:00

Well, I did the math today, and I definitely don't have enough yarn for my Persian Star Shawl, or at least not all in one skein. If you'll recall, I'm using a cone that's 2200 yards of cashmere from Colourmart UK, in an undyed fawn color. I do have another cone in a slightly darker fawn, but it is definitely a different color.

Right now, I'm just over 50% finished, at 90800 stitches, and there are 83968 stitches to go. I weighed my cone (3.4 oz), my shawl (4.0 oz), and the full cone (7.6 oz), and then checked the website to see how much of the cone weight was actual yarn (5.29).

That means I have a little over an ounce left, and need three more to finish. Obviously isn't going to happen, and I'm more than a little miffed at myself - in fact, it would be fair to say that I'm pretty fucking pissed at myself for not swatching more carefully, not getting a second cone, and blithely assuming that since Galveston (knit on 4s) used around 2200 yards, that of course I would be able to knit PSS with that same amount, on 2s.

I am clearly a moron.

So, I'm debating on what to do now. I'm coming up to an area where I could possibly do intarsia, big chunks of it. Does that work in lace? Is that a stupid damn idea? Should I really divvy up my remaining ounce into one-eighth balls, do the same with my darker fawn cone, and go to town that way? Or should I go dig out the cashmere yarn from that Old Navy sweater I recycled a couple of years back, whose color matches fairly exactly but which is an entirely different yarn? They seem really similar, enough that were they I given samples I couldn't tell them apart. I want to not have to do any extra weaving in, but I'm worried the intarsia option would be both insanely complicated (I'm not very good at intarsia - in fact, I suck), and the only way to get a consistent drape through the whole project.

This is going to take some major thought.

No More Naughty Curry?

2009-09-06T13:01:00.003-05:00

Today I found out that my very favorite cooking website, Naughty Curry, has finally lapsed into oblivion. They had stopped updating a while back, but as the archives (and more importantly, the recipe list!) was still up, I didn't think to copy the lovely, spicy morsels of information into my own recipe box.

Today I went to look up their recipe for Madras Shrimp, thinking to make the sauce and serve it over some chicken and rice for a houseguest I've got this weekend, and horror of horrors! The website was finally gone.

So after a little light flickr-stalking I hopped on over to the Wayback Machine, and lo and behold! The Madras Shrimp recipe was mine once more.

So after lunch today, with the continued aid of the Internet Archive, I will be spending my evening copying over every recipe of theirs I can into my personal recipe boxes, into Google Docs, and saving them as word files on my computer to boot. I urge you all to do the same. These recipes are too good to be allowed to float off mindlessly into the ether. So go, please, and cook up something spicy for someone you love.

Heed is Well

2009-09-03T00:27:00.003-05:00

It was the food change. He's got pills and liquid medicines to take for a week, and if that doesn't work then he goes back to the vet. My savings account is empty again (thank god I had even slightly filled it), and payday is at the end of next week. Bring on the ramen, and the half-price hot dogs! I'm living poor in style.

Poor Heed!

2009-09-01T14:50:00.002-05:00

So Heed threw up this morning. Normally this wouldn't worry me, as he has the occasional hairball, and I did just change his food yesterday, but last week I noticed some blood in his poop. It was bright red, and thin, and there wasn't a lot of it, but enough for me to notice (to be fair, I noticed because he actually shit on the *side* of the litterbox - my boy doesn't always realize when he squats down that his butt is sticking over the side).

Again, I've been changing the food fairly often lately, trying to find something that's good for him AND the kitten, that's fairly natural, and high quality. He loves the hell out of the Purina Naturals food, but I really like the Solid Gold brand stuff, their dog food made a huge difference with Maggie, even though she stank to high heaven for a few months when she first got on it. BUT, the food changes could cause constipation or puking, or any number of weird stomach-y things.

So, blood poop + vomit = vet visit. First thing in the morning. I'm super paranoid, even though it's entirely possible that nothing is wrong. I made the mistake of googling "cat rectal bleeding", which is like going on WebMD when you have a funny shaped freckle, because everything you read tells you it's cancer. I know it's likely nothing serious. But I'm freaking the fuck out.

Holy Fuckbunnies

2009-08-31T09:06:00.003-05:00

So, Mr. Ex and I work for the same company, on the same floor, and his new boss is my old boss. Boss-lady asked me, when Mr. Ex and I separated, if I would have a problem still working on the same floor as him, and of course I said no, because I don't.

Most mornings, he comes and says hi by my desk, which is going pretty out of his way, and he tells me about the things going on in his life and asks about the things going on in mine. Some things I tell him, some things I don't, but I thought we were working on the whole being friends thing. I haven't even been rushing on the divorce paperwork, because I've been waiting on him to close out the joint banking account that's got all his money in it - until that's closed, I can't file the papers, and I've been telling him since May to please close that account.

Today he came by and told me that he's resigning from his job. I had no idea he was going to do this, and he didn't talk to me about it beforehand. He doesn't have a new job lined up yet, though he says he has a number of prospects he's looking at. He says it makes him uncomfortable to work around me, and he's been having stress enough that he's puking blood again, and all sorts of other horrible things. His family is going to help support him until he finds a new job, and if he hasn't found one by the time his lease is up next May, he'll be moving back in with them.

I am freaking the fuck out.

Part of me is certain that folks around the office are going to blame me for his going. I never had a problem working with him, I never had a problem seeing him around or even hanging out with him socially.

Now I'm freaking out, I'm asking him to close the joint account TODAY, I'm getting myself off his lease TODAY, I'm filling out all of the paperwork TODAY, because I can't afford to let his decisions (whether I agree with them or not) fuck up my finances. I can't do it. I have two kitties to support, and Heed is not exactly a light eater.

So today, I get the ball rolling on actually divorcing Mr. Ex. I'm more than a little nervous, especially given how much of my stuff is still at his house, but I know I need to do this and I need to do it NOW. Wish me luck.

The Old Heave-Ho

2009-08-26T09:34:00.003-05:00

Today, I rant about cleaning my apartment. I need to clean my apartment, in general. Once I've got it all done, I'd like to make it more homey, and maybe post pictures.

I need to get some shelving for the living room, and put that up. I need to get my other bookshelves from Mr. Ex's place, and go through boxes there and fill those bookshelves. I need to sort the kitchen and get all the dishes put away at the same time, as many as I can fit, and find a new home for the ones that I don't have the space for. I need to clean out the fridge.

I think I want to paint, but I don't want the hassle, and I don't want to have to redo it later. Still, light green walls would make the place seem much more welcoming. Part of me wants to do a mural, but I would have to paint over it when I moved.

I need to re-organize the yarn cabinets, so that I can fit all of my stash, yarn AND fiber, into one place. Either that, or I need to put up shelves in the bedroom as well, for fiber.

I need to get a better system for feeding the cats in place. Their bowls worked well when it was just Heed, but now that Ripley is a growing girl, I think I need to get one of those larger bowls with the food reservoir, in case I don't notice right away that she's inhaled her body weight in kibble once again.

But life is good. I'm glad that I have these nesting urges, because it means that I'm liking where I am, and wanting to stay here for a good long while. And that's certainly true - I want to set up part of the living room as my spinning nook, and part of it as my reading nook, and maybe actually plug in the television that my dad was kind enough to give me.

So today, I think I shall invest in a hammer and some nails. Or drywall screws. You know, whatever works.

Holy Crap, Even More Spinning!

2009-08-21T14:56:00.003-05:00

Well, I spun up most of the Roger Caruso from FatCatKnits that I've had for a good long while, and as a reward I let myself buy 4oz of merino/tencel from Fiber Optic in the Black Coffee colorway (I figure if I only let myself buy fiber when I finish spinning something from the stash, I will eventually work my way through the whole thing, especially if I buy 4oz for every 8oz I spin). I also picked up a trio of new bobbins, since all my smaller ones are full of things that require another bobbin to ply on, and I still want to be able to have multiple projects going on at once.

So I got my Black Coffee roving in, and put on a leader, and started spinning on the Babe. Result: Fiber too fine. It wants to be spun cobweb-weight, with plenty of twist, and the Babe just isn't built for that.

Ergo, I turned to my old standard: make something. One small block of stamp rubber and a piece of wire coat hanger later, and I had a tiny takhli spindle just ready to go! This is going to be a crazy long-term project, but I figure if I keep it up at work and do it a little bit each day, I will eventually get it all done. I'm not going to stress about it, I have plenty of time to finish all the projects I want to do, and if I don't, then eventually I will be well-off enough to hire test-knitters and then I can just whip out patterns and watch the projects parade before me :)

Ha! Oh, sometimes I crack myself up.

They Grow Up So Fast!

2009-08-14T09:20:00.001-05:00

Spinning, Spinning, and More Spinning!

2009-08-08T22:37:00.003-05:00

After finishing up the sock yarn I talked about in my last post, I went hunting in the cabinet to see what I should work on next. I found some merino/bamboo (also by FatCatKnits, in the Roger Caruso colorway) that I'd started spinning up laceweight, so I popped that back on the wheel and got going. Today has been a lovely day of old Star Trek reruns, cat petting, and spinning. Life is good.

In other news, Ripley has decided to help me spin.

Spinning, Socks, and Socialization

2009-08-06T11:56:00.004-05:00

Lately I've been spinning more. I got in a 5oz piece of roving from Fat Cat Knits (75% SW merino, 25% nylon), and it's the first thing I've actually finished spinning in quite some time. It's refreshing to remember that hey, I really would have free bobbins, if I just finished spinning what's on them now. I spun this up as a sock yarn, chain plied it, and last night gave it a good soak and let it set the twist of the yarn. Today, I'm starting on the first sock, and I have no idea at this point what it's going to be like.

I'm also about halfway done with the Nudibranch that I owe Hastur from years and years back, which once I started actually working on has been going really fast. In between these two projects, I've been working on PSS Prime, but not nearly as much as I should be.

In other news, I have become completely hooked by Plants vs Zombies. If you have not tried this game, go try it. Right now. I got it from popcap games, and it's amazing. You'll thank me for this later - it's almost as addictive as knitting.

Boring, Boring Person

2009-07-19T13:19:00.003-05:00

I am the queen of all boring people, ever. This past week my little brother came to stay with me, and our days have been filled with Warcraft, petting kittens (still working on taming Ripley properly), and watching bad monster movies. I got some spinning done for Tour de Fleece, but honestly, I'm not even close to spinning every day, much less for a set time every day. The roving I'm spinning up is Monica by FatCatKnits, a one-off roving used to pick up the last of the colors from the dyepot. It's pale and colorful and interesting, and I'm hoping it'll spin up nicely into some sock yarn.

One thing I did do this past week, was find a spinning wheel for a friend of mine! I have my google reader set to let me know when anyone in Aggieland, Houston or Austin puts up a wheel for sale on Craigslist, and this week I found an Ashford Traditional for $200! I emailed the seller to see if it was still available (it was), and my friend Megan to see if she was still looking for a wheel (she was), and since she's out of the state right now, if she wanted me to drive up to Austin and pick it up for her (she did). So, long story short, she deposited the money into my paypal account, and I drove and got my friend a wheel :) It came with a lazy kate and 4 bobbins, so I'm pretty excited about it. She's a fairly new spinner, but she's definitely got the touch, her singles are already fine and even and lovely, and I'm so happy that she's going to have her first wheel.

So yeah, aside from that, my week has been pretty uneventful. Me and Ripley napped in the sunshine by the windows, with Heed sleeping on my knees as per usual, and it was nice. But for now, I think I'll get back to spinning, and see if I can't finish up that sock yarn!

Bring Out Your WIPs!

2009-07-12T19:23:00.003-05:00

So, the moving process has been an interesting one for me. Yes, yes, I know, I should already count as moved because I'm actually living here in the new Casa del PenName and have been for a while, but I am still bringing stuff over from Mr. Ex's house, so bear with me.

I have found so many works in progress, just by moving my stash over. The most recent, which I am working on right now, is a sock knit up in Cherry Tree Hill's overdyed Louet Gems yarn, with a picot hemmed cuff and what was a half-finished twined-knit heel, which I have since completed and turned.

So, yeah, other than those two small points, this is a completely plain, stockinette sock, which I don't think I've done often. No stripes, no holding yarns together, just a stockinette sock with pooling stripes, and an interesting heel that I'm hoping will hold together well. I went up a needle size (1 from 0) for the heel, to keep gauge, and I'm about to pick up the stitches for the gusset. I considered trying to go and dig out the second ball of this from within one of my big boxes o' stash, but eh. I'll work on this one in the traditional manner - get one done, get second sock syndrome, eventually find first sock again and think why didn't I ever finish these?

You know. The usual.

The Halfway Dance!

2009-07-08T08:01:00.004-05:00

Whohoo, I'm 50% finished with the Persian Star Shawl! It's an awesome feeling.

I didn't think, this past January, that PSS would take so long. I figured, yeah, I took the better part of a year on Galveston, but really, I slacked on it so much, surely I can knock out a completed shawl in four months or so.

Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahahaaha. Hahahahahahahaha.

*Wipes away tear* Yeah, that's a good one.

So I started this in January, January 20th to be exact, and that was almost 7 months ago. I'm not sure if that date was when I cast on the first stitches, or when I started sketching it out, but that's the date I put into Ravelry. So far, the PSS has been with me on the Rav February Meet-Up in Austin, has been with me while we planned our trip to Iran, and when that trip was canceled. It has been with me while Mr. Ex and I went our separate ways, and has been with me as I build my new life. The shawl has seen many changes, both in its design and in my life while I designed it.

May the next 50% be entirely less eventful.

Holy Crap, Christmas?

2009-07-06T11:53:00.004-05:00

Someone mentioned today on Ravelry that she's already working on her christmas presents for her family - now, while she has plenty of time, instead of later, when she'll be swamped with fall schoolwork, holiday preparations, and all sorts of dreary weather.

Damned if that doesn't sound like a good idea, right?

Last year I think I went a little overboard on the whole OMG I CAN MAKE THE SOAPS idea, and honestly there was a lot of trial and error involved, but folks did seem to like them.

So tonight I'm going to clean the apartment but good, and then Wednesday I think I'll go by Mr. Ex's place and pick up all my soapmaking supplies (yes, they are still over there, as are a lot of things). I think I'll focus more on one or two good recipes this year, fancy, luxe stuff, with stronger scents. The one comment I got a lot last year, was that none of my soaps had a really strong scent.

Keep On Keeping On

2009-07-03T23:01:00.004-05:00

Well, not a whole lot going on in Case del PenName. Ripley is adorable, she is putting on weight nicely and may almost be up to 2 pounds now, which means soon she'll be able to actually get her vaccines, and I found out that microchipping is $10 at the local shelter, so I'm definitely going to get that done as soon as she gets her rabies shot and county tags.

I'm in a new D&D game, it's 4th ed, which I had resisted for a long time. It's a very mini-centric system, to the point where it feels more like a minis combat game that had RP tacked on, rather than an RP game that worked out a system for combat. It doesn't feel like those old games I played in school, me and my friend and a hastily-drawn notebook of maps that were to be used only when I was figuring out a puzzle or getting lost in a maze. I still remember when my second character ever, an elven thief, died because she pushed a statue over that caused a chain-reaction of collapsing stonework. I was SO upset, because my friend told me that unfortunately, I could never use that character again, because now she was dead. It didn't matter that I had written up a lovely backstory. It didn't matter that she was the character I had wanted to play from the beginning, she had died, and that was that. (yeah, it was middle school, okay? Drama happens)

But this new game seems fun. I'm playing a rogue, again, though a halfling this time. She's not your typical merry agile trickster type thief, she's your slightly dim burly thug :) A halfling so butch, she's sometimes mistaken for a dwarf!

So, yeah. I'm having fun. I've been watching the original seasons of Star Trek, and it's really interesting to see how the gender dynamics play out. I'm pretty sure none of the ladies on the Enterprise could possibly be in Engineering, not because of lack of ability, but because honey, those uniforms were NOT built for bending over, much less climbing machinery. It really makes me want to start a Star Trek campaign, if only to play a Kaylee-esqe grease monkey... in space!

40% Mark!

2009-06-26T12:34:00.002-05:00

Whohooo! As of this afternoon, I have hit 40% on Persian Star Prime!

It's a good feeling.

Organizing

2009-06-20T23:48:00.003-05:00

I spent most of today organizing things in my new apartment - more specifically, the yarn stash. I took pictures, wound and re-wound balls, and updated my Ravelry stash as I filled the yarn cabinets from the boxes and bags that've been sitting in my bedroom for the past few weeks.

I found a bunch of unfinished projects, but I know I haven't found all of them. I put some aside to finish, and some aside to frog, and all in all I think I have less than a dozen projects left on the needles right now, mostly scarves. I don't know why I keep starting scarves, since they take forever and I never finish them, but I've got at least 6 scarves in my WIP pile, most less than a quarter done.

Irish Miss is no longer missing, which is nice, as it's also the project that's farthest along of all my works in progress. It's about half done, if I stop at 36", but I have enough yarn left that I could probably make it twice as long. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with the rest of the yarn for it, either continue and make a very long, very lovely cabled scarf, or use the rest for something lacier, perhaps another Anya or Emma or some totally different new design.

Persian Star Prime is about 37% done, which is pretty awesome. I'm 25 rows into the last chart, so I have 103 rows left (and, of course, the edging) to do, and then I'm done. I worry still about running out of yarn, but there's not much I can do for it at this point. I'm trying to make myself do at least two rows a day, at which rate I'll be done by the time September hits, which would be nice. 6 months isn't a horrible length of time for a shawl this size, from start to finish and writing up all the charts. It's half the time Galveston took, though of course I finished the second half of the knitting on Galveston Prime in the two months before my wedding.

Ah well. It's still the fastest shawl I've knit to date, out of all two of them, and that's not too bad. Once I get a television, I'll have something to occupy my brain while I knit, and that should make things go a lot faster.

Introducing: Ripley

2009-06-17T10:33:00.004-05:00

The kitten from the last post's name is Ripley. This was decided (after some debate - she was provisionally named Seek for a while, because Heed and Seek is hilarious) after she snuggled into my shirt, and then popped her head out chestburster-style multiple times over the same evening.

I got her via one of the shadier methods of kitten acquisition - a dude on the side of the road holding up a sign that said "Free Kittens". I had already been looking at kittens from local rescues, one in particular who was very sweet and reminded me a lot of Cricket, but I just didn't feel that instant connection with her, so I decided to wait. When I saw the free kittens dude, I pulled over, thought I'd go check it out (it never hurts to look, right?) and this was the last one left.

According to the Kitten Dude, she was the runt of the litter, as well as the one with the shortest hair (she will likely be a medium-hair), and is 8 weeks old. According to the vet (and yes, I took her to the vet right away, I am a responsible pet mom) she's closer to 6 weeks old, but since she's eating solid food and using the litter box, I don't have to worry about her being so young. She does not have any kind of Crazy Death Plague, which I will admit I worried about A LOT, and has been cleared to interact with Heed.

Heed, of course, loves her. He loves everyone, especially small things that he can bat at and groom. He swishes his tail for her to pounce on, sniffs the litter box when she's done using it, and makes sure everything is properly covered. He's a very paternal cat. He doesn't even chase her off the bed at night, though sometimes I do, because she's very active right around the time that I like to be sleeping. Hopefully that will settle down once she's older.

Someone Needs a Name

2009-06-14T13:47:00.003-05:00

Total impulse kitten-getting. Driving down the road, saw a dude with a 'Free Kittens' sign, she was the last one left. Runt of the litter. Snuggled into my shirt, and I felt that jolt of yes, this is my kitten.

She's got a vet visit this afternoon, and will be fixed next time I'm in Austin.

Oh, That Maggie

2009-06-12T14:13:00.009-05:00

Okay, so Mr. Ex went out of town last night, and isn't going to be back until late Sunday, so I volunteered to take Maggie for the weekend (I do loves my Maggie). So yesterday I drive over to his place, calling in some pizza for dinner to pick up on the way home, and collect her and Heed.

Now, I hadn't intended to take Heed home quite yet, I wanted to give it another week just to be sure that he doesn't get exposed to what Loki had, but I had actually talked to his vet and he's been vaccinated against the virus I was worrying about. Still, to be sure I had wanted to wait.

But I got there, and he was crying for me, and I just couldn't leave him again. I've been Heedless for two months now. So I picked him up, sans carrier, sans litter box, sans any of the kitty-related accouterments you generally need, and took him home.

I put him and Maggie in the house, made sure Maggie's food and water were full (I had bought the same kind of food for Grue that Maggie eats, so that's handy), opened Heed up a can of wet food and put it where Maggie couldn't get to it, and headed out to go get me a litter box with the store credit I got for returning Grue's crate.

So. I get that, easy no problem. Decide that Heed's an older boy now, he needs the special Senior Cat Please Don't Die fancy cat food. Pick up pizza on the way home.

When I get home, I discover that Maggie has NOT touched her food at all, or thankfully, Heed's, but she HAS found the box of treats I was going to send home with Mr. Ex, and she has eaten the ENTIRE BOX. ALL OF THEM. OVER A POUND OF TREATS.

Little shit.

Anyway, so I get the litter box set up in my room, realize that I forgot to get the baby gate from Mr. Ex's house, so I put up some flattened cardboard boxes hoping it'll deter her at least a little. Seems to work okay, so I go to bed.

So in the middle of the night, I wake up to VERY loud thumpy music. I'm on the second floor, and it sounds like it's coming from downstairs. For some reason it feels like 5 a.m., so I figure hell, I'll just get up, go walk the dog, get ready for work.

It is in fact 2:30 in the morning. Oh HELL no.

So I go downstairs, and the music is coming from a car. Dude is packing up some things, I don't know if he's coming or going but I don't much care. I go downstairs and politely explain that I'm on some medication that makes it really hard for me to get to sleep, and would he mind not having his music up so loud between midnight and 7 in the morning? He apologizes profusely, and turns it down. I try to go back to sleep.

Then this morning, of course I overslept, but I walked Maggie before work, got Heed shut up in the bedroom so Maggie doesn't get into the litter box, and since I am late, drive instead of walk so I can get there on time. Everything is great.

Now let me tell you about lunchtime.

I walked back to the house during lunch, forgetting that I had the car, and not only would it be faster to drive it home, but I could leave it there and save money on the parking garage. I forget this entirely, until I am halfway there and it would no longer be faster to drive.

So I get home. I let Heed out of the bedroom since he's been cooped up all day, and I take Maggie out for a walk. It takes her a while, but she pees, so we head back upstairs, and discover that Heed's had a hairball on the kitchen floor.

I'm cleaning up the mess, when Maggie runs into the bedroom and eats the rest of Heed's wet food. Mind you, she's had her dry food available all day.

So I get her out of the bedroom, put Heed back up, wash my hands, and grab some cold pizza to eat on the way back to work. As I'm about to head out the door, I find another hairball.

So I put down the pizza, go clean up the hairball, and call and tell work that I'm probably going to be late getting back in. When I put down the phone, I see that Maggie has eaten my pizza. And I'm still late.

So I check the house for any other surprises, find none, and leave. It's usually a 20-30 minute walk for me, depending on how hot it is and how much energy I have, and I already know I'm going to be late and have to stay longer at work because of it, so I don't stress. I made it back, only 5 minutes late. All in all, pretty good time.

UPDATE: When I got home, Maggie was THRILLED to see me. You know that thing that dogs do when they're guilty about knocking over the entire trash can and eating most of its contents? Yeah, she doesn't do that. She just wants to give you kisses.

Weekend, and New Socks

2009-06-06T08:56:00.004-05:00

It is the weekend, hooray!

This has been a hell of a week, but I feel now like I'm finally settling down into my new life, and that's good. A friend of mine is coming up with her son (my godson!) for his fourth birthday party, and we're going to hang out all day and have fun.

The day I took Grue back to her foster mom, I came home after hours and hours in the car and needed to unwind. I picked up Persian Star Prime, but I just wasn't feeling lace right then - too much brain work. So I grabbed the square DPNs I got last time I was in Austin, and some sock yarn, of course, that I got to test out the new needles (Cascade Heritage Paints, in the Feathers colorway) and started making a toe. I haven't done socks in... months. Since the Bayerische socks, which remain half-finished in a box in my bedroom, waiting for me to rip the heels out yet again so I can reknit them in the right size. That was around christmas, wasn't it?

So I started on these socks. And I'm doing a garter stitch short row toe, because that's my usual fallback, and for some reason the garter ridges reminded me of this stitch pattern I'd seen on the bus one day, I'm thinking on someone's scarf? I wrote it down in my Idea Book (I love my idea book) thinking to make a hat of it, but you know, that would make a pretty sweet sock pattern too. So I did the math, and hey, what do you know, my usual 80-stitch sock just so happens to fit the pattern perfectly!

So I've been working on those, and I'll probably post the pattern up when I finish them. A simple, textured sock, for some near-mindless comfort knitting.

Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy!

2009-06-04T12:08:00.005-05:00

Okay, so remember how I told you that the prozac was giving me some side effects? Well, the worst ones are of course the depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts (none since Monday, yay me), but the most annoying are the very light sleeping, and the vertigo.

So, Tuesday I went and saw the doctor, and she told me to take two of my pills until my current supply is empty, then to get the doubled prescription filled so I can take one twice-as-large pill. So, okay, I took my second pill that day when I got home, and two each morning since then.

Now, yesterday I did drive Grue back to her foster mom. Hastur came by and helped me load Grue into her crate (two person job, I tell you) and by 10 a.m. I was on the road. I dropped the dog off, then had lunch with some friends who live in the area, hung out with them for a little while to recover from the massive drive, then made my way home again. I got home at 9 p.m., tired, eyesore from concentrating on the road, and certain in my bones that I should not make a huge trip like that in one go until I get this vertigo thing beat but good.

Today the feeling of vertigo is worse, much worse. Worse enough that I'm feeling it with my eyes open, sitting at my desk at work, and I'm swaying a bit in my chair. I am so, so glad that I did my driving yesterday, because I do not feel that I would be safe on the road today. It's like the feeling you get standing somewhere high up and looking down, where you lose your sense of balance and feel like you're falling even though you haven't moved. I have that, sitting down, wide awake (though tired, I slept only lightly again last night), with my eyes open and my feet planted firmly on the floor.

I do not think this prozac is great for me. Eventually, I will have to drive again, if only to get groceries or go to the laundromat or visit family during the holidays. I can't afford to sway like this on the road, it's like being drunk only without all the pleasant actual drunkness or tasty margarita flavor. I'm hoping these side effects go away soon, or at least get back to their previous levels. I'm going to keep a record of them, and if they persist until, say... the 15th? I'm going to call my doctor again. I know these things take time, and I want to give my brain that time to adjust, but this is not a good sensation.

In more happy news, since I don't feel up to working on Persian Star Prime while effectively high, I started some socks. I had picked up the yarn and needles (those nifty square DPNs) up at the Knitting Nest in Austin last weekend, and last night it occurred to me that the stitch pattern I'd jotted down in my idea book (was it from a scarf someone was wearing on the bus? I don't recall) would make a pretty nifty sock. So I cast on for a garter stitch short row toe, my perennial favorite, and this afternoon I hope to get into the actual patterned portion of the foot. It's ribbing based, but interesting, and I think it'll complement the dark blue colorway I got nicely.

Overwhelmed

2009-06-02T19:44:00.003-05:00

Well, I know my last blog post seemed very rosy, but I have decided that Grue is not the dog for me. I know, I know, it hasn't been very long since I got her. I know this.

When I said she was not socialized as well as I had expected, I was only beginning to see her personality. She is afraid of men, of bikes, of people with beards, of blondes, and of loud noises and fast movements. She is not laid back like I thought she would be - in fact, she's quite active, more active than I can handle. She isn't housebroken, she isn't actually used to being inside at all - I spoke with her foster mom some more, and as it turns out she is used to being kept outside in a kennel all day, every day.

People, I am many things, but incredibly active is not one of them. I do not have a yard at the new place - hell, it's a one bedroom apartment, and I work 8 hours a day. I do not have the energy that this dog will need, to be trained properly and become a good indoor dog.

Grue loves being outside. LOVES it. Wants to spend all day out there - and coincidentally, doesn't want to pee just because she happens to be outside. I'm not going to have enough time in my morning to get myself ready for work AND spend over an hour walking her, and hoping that at some point she pees.

Another thing, and this is hard for me to say, but I am just not as ready to have a dog again as I thought I was. When I caught her chewing on my spinning wheel, I called her Maggie without thinking, and cried for an hour. I cried most of yesterday, actually, but at least some of that is because of the prozac (which, by the way, I saw the doctor today and she decided to double my dose and see if that fixes the side effects I've been having; I have a follow up appointment next month), and I know now that getting a dog was me looking for love more than me being in a good place to take in another animal.

It's still not easy being in my brain, knowing that some of the things I'm thinking are the product of weird chemistry and not really me. I've been having more suicidal thoughts, but (don't fret!) not the kind that are in any way serious. I know this doesn't make much sense if you haven't experienced it, but these are the kinds of suicidal thoughts where once I realize what I'm thinking, my first reaction is That's not normal, I should mark that down on my calendar and talk to the doctor, not Hmm, gas or rope? like it was before I started the brain drugs.

So, tomorrow I drive out to return Grue to the rescue wherefrom I got her. She will be happy to see her foster mom again, and she will be with her sister and brother again, and she will get to be outside all day like she wants to be. Hopefully, someone with a yard and lots of time and energy will see her, and love her like she deserves, and give her a home that will be better for her. She is not a bad dog. She is a very sweet dog. But she is not the dog for me.

Grue!

2009-05-31T22:48:00.003-05:00

Today I went and got my new dog, Grue.

More specifically, on Friday I went out to Austin to see K-the-knitter and Mr. K, stayed with them until this morning, when I drove out to Seguin to meet up with Grue's foster mom. Seguin is roughly the midpoint between Aggieland and the city I adopted Grue from, and her foster mom was very kind to meet me there.

Well, the first thing I noticed is that she's a bit bigger than I was expecting - more like a 35 lb dog than a 20 lb dog, though honestly that's okay by me. She weighs around the same as Maggie, maybe a little lighter actually, but their personalities are very different.

Maggie is a very outgoing, friendly dog. If she sees you, she wants to go to you, and she wants you to pet her (quite a lot, please, and perhaps some belly rubs?). Her tail is always wagging, and she is always smiling.

Grue is (at least so far) a very anxious dog. Quite frankly, she's not as well socialized; though she's very sweet to people, her initial reaction to most things is fear and avoidance, then curiosity if it doesn't look like it's going to come after her. She's very quiet, I haven't heard her make a single sound yet (aside from one time, she burped), and all she really seems to want to do is lay down, not too far from people, preferably on the couch once she realized she was allowed to get up there. She does not like her crate (it's a bit small, have to get a bigger one, I was expecting a smaller dog), but she has eaten and drunk and, eventually, peed on the grass outside. Granted, it took me carrying her down the stairs and twenty minutes of her sniffing and cowering every time a bird called or a car passed before she would pee, and another ten minutes of me coaxing her back up the stairs and into my apartment, but she did have a successful 'walk'.

Grue's mom said that she isn't 'used to a leash'. This seems really weird to me - were they not walking their rescue dogs? Who does that? She was content to stick close to me, which is good, that will teach her to walk next to me when she gets more confident, but I do wish she'd been exposed to more things as a puppy.

All in all, I'm still very happy with her. She is a super sweet dog, and not loud or hyper like I feared. Hastur and the Library Overlord came by to see her, as well as Mr. Friend-Ex (I figure that name will work as well as anything else? We really are remaining friends) and a buddy of his, and we all hung out and had fun and pizza. Grue even got a pepperoni or two, because I am not above shameless bribery. I took a bunch of pictures with my phone, but I'm too tired right now to upload and post them, so you get to wait.

Me, I've got a puppy to snuggle with.

Home Sweet Home

2009-05-26T08:13:00.003-05:00

Well, I got the keys to my new apartment on Friday. The Library Overlord helped me move over my bed, and a bunch of my kitchen equipment, and then later on my mom came into town and bought me groceries. Oh, so many, many groceries. Mostly it's stuff that's either dry, canned, or frozen, since I know there's only so much fresh stuff I'm going to eat right away, but it's been interesting. I made pancakes and bacon at 11 p.m., and last night dinner was a glass of lactose-free milk (did you know they make lactose-free milk? It's awesome, I can drink all I want without horrible gut pain), a banana, and one of those personal-sized microwaved chocolate cakes, which as it turns out are actually pretty good. Tonight I plan to make some sausage and lima bean dill rice. I make a mean lima bean dill rice, if I do say so myself.

The first night alone was not an easy one. I couldn't sleep, the light from the window and the computer screen was different than I was used to and I was thinking way too much. In the end I called some folks to talk, and that helped, and the next couple of nights were easier because of pancakes and moving exhaustion.

A friend of mine is moving soon, to a fully furnished grad student apartment in California, and so she called me up and asked if I wanted any of her stuff. Basically, anything that hadn't already been claimed and that I could haul away myself was fair game, so I got two futons (hooray seating!), a bookshelf, a microwave, a small cabinet/table thing, a bunch of sheets and towels and a whole lot of dishes. One of the futons I was able to put together myself last night, the other I hope to get done when I get home this afternoon.

Internet won't be working at my house until tomorrow, but by tomorrow evening it should be up and running. Mr. Sweetie (what should I call him now? Mr. Ex? Mr. Friend?) offered to come and help me put it together, which is nice of him. I should offer him dinner.

The Fine Art of Pet Juggling

2009-05-20T16:11:00.003-05:00

Well, if you read HasturTorres's blog, you may know already what's been going on these past couple of days. Hastur and the Library Overlord got a cat on Saturday, after lots of time and money spent trying to find one that would work with the Overlord's allergies. The cat, Loki, was the sweetest thing ever, but he had trouble breathing, so Hastur took him to the vet to be checked out, and testing revealed that the little guy was very ill, and the vet recommended the cat be put down.

Because of the nature of his illnesses (and I think I'm going to let Hastur decide how much of what information to release to the public, so please excuse my vagueness), Hastur and the Overlord agreed that it was the only option. They had to weigh the health of their adorable dachshund, whom they've had for years, against one very sweet, very sick kitty, who was not going to get better, and who could make other cats, dogs, and people very sick. It was a hard decision to make, but this morning I drove with her and we said goodbye to Loki.

I spoke with the vet about my own current situation, how I'm living with them now and was exposed to the cat, how I'd like to bring Heed and Grue to my new home, and what she thought the best plan of action would be. As it turns out, the illness that is able to pass to dogs is the easiest to remove from the environment, once the host is gone. Boiling water on the things he pooped on or near, steam clean the carpets and upholstery, wash all the clothes and bedding in hot water, and it's gone. As long as all that's done (and it's getting done tonight, the bedroom is already the Clean Room and the dachshund is safely locked away in there), I could pick up Grue tomorrow.

The unfortunate part is that the respiratory issue with Loki was airborn, and she said I can't Heed home for another 4 weeks. Mr. Sweetie did come and visit Loki briefly, so I've asked him to please watch Heed for signs of respiratory issues (beyond his usual sneezing) and let me know if he sees anything.

I had really wanted to move Heed in to my new home first, and let him get settled in before I brought in a new animal. But I can't live completely alone, I'm just not built for it. I need to hear breathing at night that isn't mine, know there's another warm body in the house whether it walks on two legs or four. So I am going to try and get Grue right away, and when it's finally safe bring Heed over.

Two more days. Two more days until I have a home again.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

2009-05-17T16:06:00.003-05:00

Well, folks, this is going to be a bit of a long post today, but it should usher in an era of shorter and more frequent posts, for reasons that will soon become evident. I know I've been largely MIA for about a month now, and the reason for that is...

Mr. Sweetie and I are separating.

First, the barrage of answers to the usual first barrage of questions: The details of what happened are between me and Mr. Sweetie, it's not anybody else's business. Yes, I am holding up okay. We are trying to remain friends. I have found a new place to live, and I move in next Friday. I have been sleeping on a friend's couch for almost a month now. Yes, I am still taking the prozac, and I plan to keep doing so for at least the next year (doctor just approved my longer prescription).

Heed of course is going to come with me to my new place - but Maggie will be staying with Mr. Sweetie. She is first and foremost his dog. She needs a stable environment with a loving daddy and a grassy yard to play in, and he needs his little piglet. Since I will have lots of time on my hands, and no longer want to live in a dog-free home, I will be getting one of my own - a one-year-old corgi/basset hound mix that I shall name Grue. I hope that she will be spunky enough to run Heed around, but laid back enough to chill on the couch with me while I play Warcraft. Since nobody expects ~~the spanish inquisition~~ major life changes, money is a little tight with me right now, so I've asked the dog rescue to please hold Grue for me until mid-June, when I'll have saved up enough for another pet deposit and her adoption fees.

Logistically, almost everything has already been worked out. I signed the lease for my new place last week, the security deposit has already been paid, and there is enough in Mr. Sweetie's account to cover my half of the rent on the old place for the remainder of the lease. Mr. Sweetie has agreed to hold my things until I can move them out, and has even offered to help me move the larger furniture, which is very considerate. I'll be within walking distance to work, which will be handy, because that way I'll be able to go home and walk Grue during my lunch hour.

I've been knitting a LOT lately. Like, have-to-make-myself-stop, tingly-sore-arms amounts of knitting. I've knit up to about 30% of the Persian Star Shawl, and written out the pattern for the entire thing. It's going to be a bit before it's PDF-ready, of course, since my actually-mine computer is still with Mr. Sweetie, and it may take some time before I can get internet at the new Casa del PenName. I can still post plenty from campus, though, so no worries there. I plan to put it up for sale via Ravelry once it's completely ready, and then start on probably another large lace shawl pattern.

I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands.

It's going to be weird living alone, I'm not going to kid myself about that. I've never lived entirely by myself, but in the end I think it will be a learning experience. I plan to cook more, which will of course require ~~the number to poison control~~ courage and creativity, but I think I can do it. I expect to be blogging a lot more, and playing a lot more Warcraft, and of course posting tons and tons of pictures of Heed and the new dog. Unfortunately, I can't have any alcohol now because of the prozac, so I won't be drowning my sorrows in anything stronger than a case of Dr. Pepper, no matter how much I might want to. I picked up Crazy Aunt Purl's book, "Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair", and let me tell you, she is one awesome lady.

So, yeah. That's me as of right now. Take care of yourselves, everyone. I'll be taking care of me.

End of Hiatus

2009-04-27T12:45:00.003-05:00

Well, isn't it like me to announce my hiatus at the tail end of it? I am back. This are different in my life than they were a month ago, but all in all I think I'm on the upswing.

I started taking anti-depressant medication earlier this month, and I am feeling better now than I have in years. Seriously, just this one small thing has made a world of difference in me. I haven't had a depressive episode in over a week. I feel like I'm all here, and connected in a way that I can't really describe well. Before the meds, I felt like I "lived" in my eyes, and the rest of my body was a tool that I used to get around and do things. It wasn't even a tool that I really cared for much of the time. I knew the drugs were working when I looked at my hands one morning and thought me instead of mine. I wish I had done this a decade ago.

I've lost almost 10 lbs in the last few weeks, at first all in a rush, then I gained some back, then lost some again, but I think what I've lost now is healthy loss and not just being to crazy and stressed to eat. Hastur and the Library Overlord have been good friends to me, as shoulders to cry on and so much more, I know I can never repay their generosity but I'm determined to try.

This past weekend I went and saw Chilerox and 2MinutesToBelgium down in San Marcos, and Balthazar the spinning wheel (and my hand cards) found a new home. He is a lovely wheel, but my Babe and I have a history together that no other wheel can match. We went by Hill Country Weavers on Sunday, and I found some Habu cobweb-weight merino in a lovely rich hazelnut color, and some size 0 addi lace needles, which I've chosen to take as a sign. After Persian Star Prime is done, I may doodle around with some Orenburg lace.

In Persian Star Shawl news, as of today I'm four rows away from finishing Chart E, after which there is one more giant monster chart, and the edging. Don't let that optimistic sentence fool you, though, chugging through Chart E means I'm about 20% done with the entire shawl as a whole. If I finish it this week (and I should, but I also have a friendship bracelet to make for a swap, which has to come first) I will dry-block it and take a million pictures. It doesn't look anything like what I first imagined, but I do like how it is now. Funny how life can surprise you like that.

Hiatus

2009-04-17T17:39:00.002-05:00

I'm going on hiatus for a while.

Rrrrrrip!

2009-03-22T10:41:00.003-05:00

The other night, I ripped out 23 rows of the Persian Star Shawl. Almost 1500 stitches.

That's a dime I used for scale. I didn't have a quarter handy.

It damn near broke my heart to do it, but the chart as I had written it in that section just plain sucked. There was too much empty space, too strong of vertical elements (and I don't care for strong vertical elements in circular shawls - makes 'em look like wagon wheels), and the whole thing was repetitive and boring. I don't want my shawls to put people to sleep, and I know that Galveston suffers from enough of that. It had to go.

So that section, like all that have gone before it, has been re-sketched and re-charted. It's a wholly different beast than it was before, and now I am enamored of it. I start to worry, though, whether I should change the name of this shawl? Because honestly, it bears absolutely no resemblance now to that original ceiling tile. I mean, I definitely like the pattern as it's written so far, it's just a very different beast than it started out trying to be.

And yet, it will be star-shaped in the end. Or star-shaped inside a round shape, actually, but you get the idea. Either way, it's time for me to pick up my needles again. I want to see how this next section looks when it's finished.

Making an Honest-to-God Actual Website

2009-03-16T00:34:00.002-05:00

That's what I've been doing lately, setting up a real, paid-for, domain-registered website.

Not for me, of course - or rather, not just for me.

See, my friends and I, we're gamers. I know I must have mentioned this once or twice or a million times, we are huge nerds and this is what we do. We have a game that's been running for over two years now (I remember the excitement of showing off my engagement ring while we sat down and prepared for the superhero game), and a game that is very recently started. We meet two nights a week, as a rule, though of course school and work and life make their intrusions. We have a set of forums that we've used for a couple of years for things like arranging gatherings, sharing funny stories and interesting news items, and incidental interaction (incidental meaning nothing you need dice for) between characters. It's a good system, and one that we like, but in the years that we've had it, the hosting site has often crashed for weeks at a time, leaving us with little recourse.

So I bought a website. And a year of hosting. As a lump, it was a little painful on the wallet, but it came down to less than $10 per person per year, for registering the domain, getting things set up, and all the hosting, and that's a hard deal to beat. I'm wanting to say it was something like $5/month for hosting?

I used JustHost.com, which offers unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, and was very well reviewed. So far I haven't had it for terribly long, but I'm liking it. I set up new forums right off the bat, and Pitt Beau will be showing me how to move over all our previous posts in some kind of an easy manner, so that we don't lose our years and years of forum history. I set up subdomains and ftp accounts for everyone in the group, so that everyone has their own corner of the site to fuck with as they please, and nobody (danny) has to worry (danny) about anyone else (me) messing with their content (danny), even if only as a prank. Which, knowing our group, we would do in a heartbeat were it an option. I mean, hell, I would do it myself.

So now things are slowing down on that. I still need to make some html templates for me, and for folks who aren't terribly familiar with html, to use. I still need to set up some kind of a contact list that not-us people won't have access to, and perhaps a chat room, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

Perhaps at a later date I'll post a link to the site, but for now I think I'll leave it be. I want to see it grow into an awesome online encyclopedia of our games, because I am just arrogant enough to think that they're really something special, even in the wonderful world of gaming.

I mean, where else are you going to find an ex-government-experiment ward of the state superhero whose power is that she talks to rats, and can locate objects or people through her "cheese sense"? That level of awesome doesn't just grown on trees, you know.

100 Best Novels?

2009-03-09T09:31:00.003-05:00

So, random house put out a list of the 100 best novels of the past whatever period of time. They had a list compiled from libraries, and a list compiled by patrons (L. Ron Hubbard and Ayn Rand are all up in the top 10 of the reader's list, so clearly something fishy went on with the voting but whatever).

This got me thinking. I read a lot - I mean, I read a lot - but I don't really consider myself "well read", largely because I read mostly science fiction, fantasy and horror. If I wanted to live under a slightly smaller cultural rock, reading every book on this list would be a pretty good way to go about it, I figure. Reading every book on both lists might end with me clawing my eyes out, mostly because I've got no respect for Hubbard or Rand, but it might still be worth it only so that I could bitch more effectively.

So if you take out the duplicates and sort them alphabetically, this is the list you get:

1984 by George Orwell
A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O'Brien
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft
ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
BELOVED by Toni Morrison
BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
CATCH-22
CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY by Robert Heinlein
DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
DOUBLE STAR by Robert Heinlein
DUNE by Frank Herbert
ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card
FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
GUILTY PLEASURES by Laurell K. Hamilton
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
IRONWEED by William Kennedy
IT by Stephen King
KIM by Rudyard Kipling
LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
LOVING by Henry Green
MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
MOONHEART by Charles de Lint
MULENGRO by Charles de Lint
MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock
NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by Ken Kesey
ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane
PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
SHANE by Jack Schaefer
SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey
SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
SUTTREE by Cormac McCarthy
TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
THE CUNNING MAN by Robertson Davies
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
THE DOOR INTO SUMMER by Robert Heinlein
THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN by John Fowles
THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
THE LITTLE COUNTRY by Charles de Lint
THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington
THE MAGUS by John Fowles
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein
THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert Heinlein
THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie
THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
THE STAND by Stephen King
THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
THE WOOD WIFE by Terri Windling
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
TRADER by Charles de Lint
TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
ULYSSES by James Joyce
UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
V. by Thomas Pynchon
WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
WISE BLOOD by Flannery O'Connor
WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
YARROW by Charles de Lint
ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm

It's a lot. But I think I can do it. I might even shoot for doing it all in one or two years.

Pasta Pasta Pasta!

2009-03-08T16:49:00.001-05:00

So, a few days back I tried making some potato gnocchi - and let us politely say that it failed.

Like, hardcore fail.

So tonight, I'm going to try making ravioli instead. I have a shiny new pasta roller, and a kitchen full of ingredients. I'm going to try and make a spinach and feta set, a mushroom cheesy set, and depending on how much of the boiled crawfish I'm eating for lunch escape my belly, I might even try a delicious crawfish-based filling.

Persian Star Shawl 9% Done!

2009-03-03T22:47:00.002-06:00

And to clarify, this is my diagram. It is not a random bulls eye of doom.

Kebab 2.0 (now with pics!)

2009-03-01T20:51:00.003-06:00

The last time I made kebab, I followed my aunt's recipe and things were good. Not as good as hers, but certainly not bad, and we ate it and were content.

Tonight, I made kebab again, with a couple revisions to my aunt's recipe. I love it! It's a more Mediterranean version, again featuring mint, because we still can't get Sumac anywhere in town. Tomorrow I'm going to make a cucumber yogurt sauce to go with it, but that's another blog post.

I wanted to make a smaller batch as well as a leaner one, so I cut it down to 3 lbs of meat instead of 5, and one onion. Here's the recipe I used:

3lbs ground meat
1 large onion, pureed
2 tbs each turmeric, salt, spearmint
3 large bullion cubes (ran out of beef, used chicken instead, everything was fine)
3 eggs

For my meats, I used two pounds of 90/10 ground sirloin, and one pound of 73/27 ground beef. I wanted there to be SOME fat to stick it all together, which was good. 3 eggs and it was still much less stick-to-itself-y than the previous batch.

First I made a slurry with my spices and the eggs

Then I pureed my onion, and added it to my spices.

Then the meats! Mix your meats in good. The sirloin was much more tender than the ground beef, so it didn't need nearly as much mixing.

Then onto the foreman grill it went! I used big spoonfulls, about meatball sized.

Operation: Less Fat was a total success. Instead of having to empty the fat tray every go, I only had to empty it twice for the entire batch.

Kebab 2.0 was a total success!

PPN's Anal Adventures

2009-02-24T16:43:00.004-06:00

Horrible name for a blog post, right? Nothing good can come from a name like that. Well, yes and no.

I haven't mentioned it much here (if at all), but I'd been having some trouble with rectal bleeding off and on for the past... two years or so, and recently I actually got the balls to go see a doctor about it. No big thing, I figured. I'm not dead, so I must be fine.

The doctor felt a "nodule" when he did the Dreaded Finger Test (and let me tell you, I can now definitively say that anal sex is not for me), so he took some blood and suggested I see a specialist, which I did.

The specialist said that he wasn't too concerned about the rectal bleeding, since it was off-and-on and I wasn't dead, but the blood tests had shown that I'm anemic (yes, this was right before I got Balthazar), so I should get an upper-GI endoscopy, and a colonoscopy.

Yikes! I was terrified of this. I have never had a major medical procedure done, and never been under serious sedation. I don't even drink to excess.

Well folks, I went and had my double-team endoscopy and colonoscopy yesterday, and it sure was something. I was super-terrified of the whole concept, but my nurse was really nice, and the IV wasn’t terrible, and she let me knit until the doctor came in and it was Go Time.

At 3:35 she put the drugs in my IV (dopamine and something else), which made my head go all tingly, and asked me to roll on my side, and the other nurse had me bite down on this thing they put in my mouth (to keep it open). I closed my eyes…

…and Mr. Sweetie was petting my hair and asking me to wake up. The rest of this is a mix of what I remember doing, and what I’m told I did. Evidently I was astounded by the fact that I was wearing pants now - did the nurse put on my pants? Did the doctor put on my pants? Did Mr. Sweetie put on my pants (yes, he did). Apparently I asked him this a lot, as well as what time it was.

Then we were driving home, and I was hungry, and suggested we call two of our friends (Saint Pit Bull and Pit Beau) to come eat with us. I called them, got asked to hold for just a second, and hung up on them. Then Mr. Sweetie had a great suggestion - we should call our friends to come eat with us! I thought that was fabulous. And hey, since we were going out to eat, we should call our friends to come meet us! This went on the entire car trip, through the bank, to the restaurant, and up until the moment our friends stepped in the door. Then, hey! Our friends are here! You guys should come eat with us!

I ordered something to eat (evidently I ordered Tilapia because, and I quote, ‘catfish can kiss my ass’), and got up to go to the bathroom like 5 or 6 times before the food got there, then fell asleep at the table. Sometimes I would wake up and ask what time it was, or be amazed again that I was wearing pants. Mr. Sweetie boxed up my meal, and took me home, where my new drum carder was waiting in front of our door.

He put me to bed, where I slept until 6 this morning. I remember waking him up at like 4 to ask if my drum carder had ever come in, and he said yes, it had, and please stop waking him up to ask that…. so I must have done that a couple times.

I asked him this morning what the doc had said about my tests, and evidently he had answered this question like a dozen times already: I had a 3mm polyp, which they removed, yes that is the same size as the needles I’m using as the persian star shawl, yes he knows they let me knit with the IV in, yes he was the one who put my pants on me. I also had some hemorrhoids, which appear to have gone away, and I should eat a lot of fiber to make sure they don’t come back. The biopsy results have not come in yet, but the doctors will call when those are ready. Because of the polyp, I should get this done in another 5 years.

So that’s my story, bitches! I went in terrified, and it wasn’t horrible at all. I even finished the next section of the Persian Star Shawl, and I'm swatching the pomegranates on the way home.

Oh, and By the Way:

2009-02-21T10:46:00.002-06:00

Persian Star Shawl - Update

2009-02-20T08:19:00.002-06:00

Guys, the Persian Star Shawl is turning out great. So far I've got it charted up to row 128, and knit up to row 32. I'm really quite excited, but the question now is do I release the pattern before I finish knitting it, or do I sit on it while I finish the actual shawl? I know I'd hate to buy something without a good photo of it, so probably I will sit on it until Persian Star Prime is done.

The section I was calling swirls, I've had to replace with rays, for the good of the design. It's not as true to the ceiling tiles as I would have liked, but it's turning into a better actual pattern for knitting so I don't mind that so much.

And in other news, I'm getting a DRUM CARDER! How awesome is that, right? I'm really excited about it, because I've wanted one for years and wasn't in a good enough financial setup to get one. I started getting me and Mr. Sweetie's finances in order after the wedding, though, and right now we are doing great. The carder started on its way to me last Monday, so it should be in by Saturday. I am going to be a carding fool!

The Story of Balthazar

2009-02-08T13:40:00.000-06:00

A long, long time ago I set up my google reader to let me know whenever the search terms "spinning wheel" got a hit on the craigstlists for Houston, Austin, and here. I've seen a lot of $300 wheels posted, and a few $200, and those I just skip over. A new wheel is like dessert - you want it, but you don't really need it. So I set myself a $100-150 budget on the off-chance that a good-looking wheel would happen to pop up for sale.

So last weekend, after I get back from some doctor-stuff (turns out I'm anemic, not a huge deal, seems to run in the family) I checked my google reader and hey - spinning wheel, $50, Houston! I emailed the seller and got a couple pictures. She said that the treadle worked, the wheel turned, and all the pieces seemed to be there.

The seller had said that this was her grandparents' wheel, and probably an antique, but she didn't know how old it was or what manufacture. I posted the pictures she had given me on Ravelry, and soon found out that it is a Canadian Production Wheel, which were made from the late 1800s into the 1940s. I was very excited.

So I ran by the bank, drove to Houston, and got me a new wheel. She was right, all the parts do work, the only thing that was missing was a drive band. He is a beautiful, beautiful wheel - but what an UGLY finish!

Well, I knew what I had to do. If this had been the original finish, I would have cleaned him up and could then have sold him for about a grand. HOLY CRAP, right? But from what I could see, he had been painted over in some orange color, and then had varnish applied over THAT, and THEN gotten covered in grime. So of course my best option was to refinish him.

It took two days and three bottles of refinisher to get down to the wood on all the pieces. There were some gouges on the underside of the base and under the metal treadle that needed to be repaired with wood filler, and most of the metal parts had been painted over as well, including paint in the screw holes and paint in parts that were supposed to be movable. I had to damn near fully dismantle the wheel in order to remove it all, but by god, I cleaned that wheel up good.

It was all worth it in the end, though. Balthazar the Canadian Production Wheel is happily restored and sitting in my living room.

Balthazar is definitely more of a diva than the Babe - as a double drive band wheel that only came with one bobbin, he has a ration of 12.5:1 and more take-up than I was really expecting. He's also much heavier than the Babe (wood heavier than pvc, who'd have thought), AND single treadle, so I end up having to treadle faster than I'm used to just to keep him going. It's a bit of a challenge right now, but when it works, we make the nicest, smoothest, thinnest singles I could ask for. And he LOVES woolen spinning! Go figure!

So I've been carding up some black shetland from Copper Moose, and some hand-dyed silk that ended up more red-pink in person than it had appeared on my monitor, and spinning an awesome, funky yarn that I'm privately calling Bubblegum Goth. My carding skills are not so great, but with a wheel that does so well with rolags, it's time to buckle down and learn. And I couldn't be happier.

Garden Adventure: 2009

2009-02-04T09:20:00.003-06:00

So I want to grow things, now that I have a backyard. I thought about it long and hard, and these are the things that I would eat if I grew them.

- Onions
- Leeks
- Garlic (hell yes garlic)
- Sweet Potatoes
- Potatoes
- Spinach
- Ginger
- Fennel
- Zucchini
- Butternut squash
- Carrots
- Broccoli

I should read up and see if I can actually grow any of these things some time soon.

New Wheel!

2009-01-31T12:33:00.001-06:00

I got a new wheel on Craigslist - today I clean and finish him. Pictures soon :)

Think I'm Ready?

2009-01-22T13:47:00.003-06:00

Well guys, this past weekend the lace bug hit me HARD again. At first I thought I just wanted to knit some lace, so I cast on for a shawl or two, knit twenty rows or so, and realized that hey, this is not what I want to knit. It's like craving a favorite food, fixing yourself a plate, and realizing that that wasn't what you were craving at all.

I think I want to write another shawl.

I can already see it in my head, a little bit. I think I want to write up something that's either a pi shawl or a square shawl that has * radial lines instead of four. Not an octagonal shawl - I'm seeing either a round edge or large points. Maybe points done in-pattern and then filled in with a background mesh to make it round. Not sure yet.

I'm really digging on this awesome persian tile ceiling I found on Flickr, and if I can, I'm going to reproduce at least what I see as the most prominent design elements. I'm not sure if it's possible, but I've got to try, right?

So, yeah, this one is going to be a lot more work than Galveston, and I can tell that from the get-go. I know that I don't want visible lines of increase, like I used in Galveston and as have been used to great effect in many other shawls. I'm not sure if I should start going about things math-first or string-first, but I do have a couple of sketches down already.

The nice thing is, I'll only have to chart out one-eight of the actual shawl, right? And then get real friendly with some graph paper. I'm not usually very good at intuiting curves on a graph-like surface, so this will be interesting.

If it ends up well, I might put it up for actual sale. Galveston will always be free, but I've been thinking lately that I would like to get some sort of pattern portfolio going, and this would be a nice start. What do you guys think?

OMG I love kebab

2009-01-17T21:16:00.003-06:00

We made 5 lbs of kebab, as per FavAunt's instructions, though we did end up cooking it on a George Foreman grill instead of outside on the propane one, and we added 3 tbs of dried spearmint to the mixture (and it was excellent, added just the right flavor to complement the onion-y goodness). We all of us age kebab until we were stuffed, and there were still over 2lbs of leftovers.

There were a number of awesome moments - like when LibraryOverlord saw exactly how much onion was going into this giant mass of meat, and when Mr. Sweetie was talking about 'onion goggles' that keep folks from crying, and I laughed at the very concept... until I was mixing the onion in, crying hardcore. And of course we watched some Frisky Dingo, so that was good times.

And for those of you who want a more cleaned-up recipe, here you go:

5 lbs ground beef (75/25 worked, yours can be leaner if you want)($10?)
2 large onions, pureed ($1-2?)
2 tbs tumeric
2 tbs salt
3 cubes Knorr beef bullion (Knorr bullions are the giant soft rectangles, your amounts may be different with other types)($1)
3 eggs
3 tbs dried spearmint

First, add all your spices and the eggs into the bowl. Add the meat in 1 or 2 pound increments, mixing it all in very well as you go. It will be very, very cold at first, and make you go 'GAH!!!' and not want to mix it, but suck it up. When all your meat is mixed up well, start adding onion in increments of half-onions at a time. You will cry at this point.

When all your ingredients are in the pot, just keep mixing. It gets warmer with time, and easier, and you can form the giant meat-lump into fun shapes, like the MeatBoob, the MeatMountain, the Curiously Phallic MeatLog, and others. When the fat warms up it will spread out and kind of turn the meat lighter in shade - mine was also quite yellow, from the turmeric, but I was fairly certain this was the "turning white" phase my Aunt was talking about. Either way, it was delicious, so just bash the shit out of your meat until you really can't stand to do it any more.

We formed our kebab into 2 1/2" patties and grilled them for 8 minutes, flipping them halfway through to get those attractive grill lines. HOLY CRAP, we lost about a pound of fat off the patties when we grilled them, so you know, you can definitely go for a leaner cut if that's what you're wanting. Maybe toss another egg in there to bind it if you go really super lean?

But yeah, we have kebab aplenty, and I am no longer afraid of cooking with raw meat. This was one of the most fun dishes I've done, and when I make some cucumber sauce tomorrow to go with the leftovers, it's definitely going to hold us for a couple of days. And cheap! Maybe this whole cooking thing is going to work out after all.

Kebab Fest 2009

2009-01-16T12:29:00.003-06:00

Okay, bitches, this weekend we're starting a grand and noble tradition here at Casa del PenName: KebabFest!

Through my life, I have loved kebab as made by my family. Persian-style kebab, delicious lengths of ground meat and spices wrapped around flat swords and cooked on a flaming grill. It is quite possibly one of the best foods ever, and I will never get sick of it. It's good as cold leftovers, or heated in the microwave. You can make one large batch of kebab and eat on it for days and days.

But I have never made it myself. I'll admit it, up until I moved in with Mr. PenName a few years prior to our marriage, I wasn't really interested in cooking, so I didn't really pay attention to what was going on in the kitchens of my family members. But I emailed FavoriteAunt earlier this week, asking for a few recipes for kebab (I planned to make kebab meatballs in the oven) and various rice dishes, and this is what she sent back:

Kebab I know by heart, I'll have to look up the other rice and get back with you. Dill rice you just add dried dill and butter to white rice at the end, it's easy. I'll double check in my Persian cook book though. I make a lot of Kebab when I make and it is really not the same in the oven but close. Get really cheap hamburger (u like that part don't ya!), high fat content is necessary for good Kebobs. For 5lbs puree two whole onions, two table spoons of turmeric, about two or three table spoons of beef bouillon granules, 2 or 3 Table spoons of salt and a couple of eggs.

Two things are key 1. the onion has to be like a paste to really flavor all the meat and 2. You mix all that together and then you need to mash it and mash it alot until the meat changes consistency and tuns kinda white. I usually sit in the floor with the bowl between my legs and mash it with my fists for a long time, if you don't skimp on this part you will really be happy with the results. If you are cooking them in the oven cook for a little while and then broil to finish them make them in the shape of kebobs on a cookie sheet you might put a few dashes of liquid smoke in them since you are not grilling but if you do cut back on salt and do it in the mixing/mashing stage. If you don't want to cook that much at once freeze some raw after you have done all the work and just defrost and cook later.

There is a spice called sumac that goes on after but yo probably have to get that here in town. Same thing for the saffron that stuff cost more than crack!!LOL
Good luck!
FavAunt

And with that, an idea was born. LibraryOverlord makes great bread, and Hastur loves my hummus (which is mighty fine hummus if I do say so myself), and kebab tastes better on a grill. Mr. PenName is a lover of delicious food in all its forms, especially when accompanied by friends and good beer.

So Saturday, Saturday, Saturday! We are getting together with them and trying my Very First Recipe Including Actual Raw Meat. I am excited. I think I can do this.

PenNames on a Plane

2009-01-05T01:41:00.003-06:00

Holy crap. I saw my dad over the holidays, and he was all "Hey, we're all in financial pretty-goodness, we should totally go to Iran and see all the family and whatnots. You want to go, PPN? All you gotta buy is a ticket, and update your passport. Maybe get a visa."

Well, let me tell you something, The Internet. I have wanted to go to Iran for over 17 years now, ever since my dad went and took PrimaryBrother instead of me & TwinSister when we were all little kids. PrimaryBrother can't go this trip, of course, now that he's old enough to be drafted into the army, but the rest of us kids are either too young or too ovary-having to have to worry about that, so yay for us!

Mr. PenName was invited too, but he said he'd be more comfortable staying here and looking after the animals. It's cool, I can see why he'd be nervous about going, and honestly having one paycheck still coming in while we're gone will make things much easier.

All of this, of course, assumes that I can actually go. Because we're going to be gone for (I shit you not) a whole goddamn month, I won't have enough vacation time, so I have to ask work if I can take an UNPAID month off. This request has to go through university red tape, plus I have to assure my boss that I will be back in time for the fiscal end of year (dad wants to go right as the school year ends), so not only am I going to have to save up for that plane ticket, but I'm going to have to save up an entire month's worth of rent & bills for while I'm gone. Which, you know, will suck ass, and make it so that I won't be doing a whole lot of the buying of yarn for the next 5 months or so, but again, that should be okay. I've got enough in the way of stash and roving to keep me occupied, especially if I spin up impressive yarn to knit with while I'm there.

I'm also going to try and finally do two things I've been meaning to do for a while now: lose weight and learn farsi. I hope to combine them, by listening to language tapes while walking home from work - maybe also to work, if I start getting in really good-type shape so I can walk it faster.

But hot damn. I am so excited!

Giftmas

2008-12-27T12:49:00.003-06:00

Giftmas turned out pretty okay over all. A few days after the snow, a friend called to say that she had rescued a 4 week old kitten from outside her apartment, and since she was heading out of town over the holidays I of course offered to kitten-sit.

I mean, it's not like she is an adorable ball of fluff or anything, who requires constant cuddling and gratuitous amounts of photos taken of her.

I mean, that would be ridiculous. In other news, though, I'm really getting a lot of wear out of those Beetons I made!

I actually thought about making a third, since one of them seems to be occupied.

I also started some socks, Bayerische socks by Eunny Jang, made from Malabrigo Sock that I got when I was down in Houston last - I met up with some ladies from Ravelry, and it was good times.

And then of course there was giftmas. The soaps were a hit! I was really pleased with how they turned out, but what I think did it most was the presentation. I had some really bitchin' presentation.

So, you know, all in all? Good holiday.

Goodbye, About

2008-12-18T08:02:00.004-06:00

Out and About came into our lives on May 13th, 2007. On October 23rd, she showed signs of being ill, and we treated her for a middle ear infection. She seemed to have recovered, though she kept the head-tilt that had first tipped us off.

On December 18th, she passed away. She does not seem to have suffered, as she was happy and cuddly last night when we went to bed. She is in the freezer right now, and will be buried in the front yard under a rosemary bush, which she would have liked because it has a smell and is food-related. As far as we can tell she was born around April 20th, which would make her 1 year and 9 months old, and the average lifespan for a pet rat is 2 years. She had a good run. She will be missed.

Out seems to be doing fine. We have moved her to the smaller cage, and will probably be moving her into the living room so she can interact with us more through the day, which she will need now that she is by herself. We considered getting another little girl for her to bond with, and maybe naming her In or Down, but decided that with the dog and cat we have our hands plenty full.

Goodbye, my little girl. Mama loves you.

Remember that dusting of snow we had this morning?

2008-12-10T18:31:00.003-06:00

It has friends.

And I approve.

Guess What, bitches?

2008-12-10T08:05:00.002-06:00

Moar Soap Pics Plz

2008-12-09T18:09:00.001-06:00

The rose soap, in all it's glory! (see that nice log shape?)

The strawberry soap did not fare as well. It looks like it didn't gel right, or didn't trace right, or some other more different thing happened. I will try rebatching it tomorrow, see how that goes.

And for that classic feel, here's some (very small) pics of MANANA! soap:

>

Tiny kiwi-seaweed pics:

And because it makes everything better:

3 Batch Night

2008-12-08T23:58:00.003-06:00

Yup, tonight I made 3 whole batches of soap! I know, I'm still behind, but considering how nice the Manana and Lemon Poppyseed are right now, after only a few weeks' cure, I think I'll still be okay so long as I get the rest of them finished as fast as possible and give a generous water discount.

The kiwi-seaweed, not so much with the nice. That seaweed smell really overpowers the kiwi, and while it's at it it overpowers the manana that's drying across the room, and gives the cat a run for his money. It smells like Galveston, and not in a really great way. I may give it out at work. I would never be asked to make soap for anybody else.

So yes - soap! Made tonight! 3 batches!

I started setting up for the first batch and realized that hey - I had all my basic ingredients, but I was missing some of the things to differentiate the batches. I had cocoa, but no peppermint. I had coconut powder, but no milk. Instant coffee and beans to grind, no espresso. That sort of thing. So I got what I had and went to town.

The first one went perfectly, and I'm really glad it was this one that did. I used my basic Bastille recipe (80% olive, 10% coconut, 5% each avocado butter and castor, 7% superfat, 50% water discount), and as my liquid I used rosewater from the mini-mini-mini mart, which is the best place in town to get indian groceries, let me tell you. The rosewater you get from the international section of the big grocery stores just does not compete. For scent, I used a few drops of some Rose Absolute that Mr. Sweetie's sister gave me a few years back - the real shit, that comes in 1/2 dram bottles for like $50.

I do not use this stuff lightly.

I tried something new with the rose soap, the first of which was that I put a liner (read: plastic bag) in the crockpot first, and poured my oils into that. It worked out really well! The cleanup was crazy easy, and I wished that I remembered to do that with the other two batches, but I didn't, so when I'm done with this it's time to clean the kitchen again. But for the future, I'll bear it in mind.

The second thing I tried new was dissolving some silk into the lyewater right after mixing it up. It took longer to dissolve than I'd thought it would, and it looks like nothing so much as when you kill your hair trying to bleach it*, which I guess makes sense. That's basically what you're doing.

This batch traced really fast, but I still got it into the mold easy, same one as I used for the lemon-poppyseed bars, which I like because it gives a very nice classic shape. It's the closest I've got to a loaf mold right now, and I appreciate that about it. I think it's going to turn out great.

So the next batch, right?

I wanted to do another shaving soap, so I fiddled with my bastille base a little. 75% olive oil, 10% coconut, 10% castor, 5% avocado butter (man I love me that avocado butter, and you know I still have a bunch of it left!). I used the rosewater again, because I had already opened the bottle, but I forgot to put a liner in the crock pot before I poured the oils so oh well. There's that. I also did the silk again.

That batch traced FAST. Like, less than a minute fast. Starting to set up in the crockpot fast. You don't have time to dig out a mold and shouldn't you have done that earlier anyways fast. I managed to spoon it into some old coffee mugs, which I guess I'm now giving as gifts! Comes with 6.4oz of soap per mug, if I divided them evenly, which I don't think I did. I'm not sure if the bentonite clay I added actually mixed in at all, or if it's in chalky streaks in the soap somewhere - my money's on the latter. Luckily, there will be other parts to these gifts.

So on to the third batch, right? I'm really proud of this one. So proud, I'm calling it my Holy Trinity Soap. That's right, bitches - strawberry, balsamic vinegar, black pepper soap! Depending on how nice this turns out, I may keep it all for myself. Because I love it. And the family won't know.

I went back to my basic bastille, this time with a 5% superfat because I wanted an ever-so-slightly harder bar, and because vinegar is basic. I added a cup of pureed strawberries, vinegar, and black pepper for the entire two pound batch, and it again traced VERY fast. Did I mention I used the rosewater again for this one? It was in a handy new container, right next to my other supplies. I didn't use silk, and this batch didn't seize. I'm thinking the rosewater may be what's speeding my trace up so much. I got this one into my original molds, which I was not as pleased with but again I forgot to grab molds before I mixed the oils and lye, so I took what was near to hand. It was at a really heavy trace when I poured it, so I scored the top of the soaps like they were peanut butter cookies - crosshatching forkmarks. It was really cute.

And now those 6 lbs are insulated and in the soap closet, hopefully going through a happy little gen phase while I prepare for bed. And oh, I will be happy to be there.

* Okay, so was I the only kid who tried to use straight bleach to color their hair when they were too young to buy a proper dyeing kit? Jeez, I'm glad I tested a little strand separately, or I'd have been one bald-ass chemically burned child.

19 lbs of Cheesecake

2008-12-02T08:06:00.002-06:00

So I learned to make cheesecake this thanksgiving - boy did I ever! I used the recipe from Cooking for Engineers, which worked fine except for the actual cooking temperature/times. I'm still trying to find a guide to how long/how hot I should cook the cheesecakes so they end up toasty brown on top and creamy and DONE all through the middle. So far little luck.

We always go to FavoriteAunt's place for the holidays, and this year was only a little different - this year, being a newly married woman, I was invited to participate in the Midnight Drunken Baking that happens the night before. This is usually reserved for married ladies and single ladies (i.e. no unmarried ladies living in sin with their SOs, FavAunt wants none of this under her roof), with the one notable exception of FavCousin's now-fiance being invited when she was his then-girlfriend. Now-fiance lived nearby, and she didn't sleep over, so it was okay.

ANYWAY. Midnight drunken baking. I offered to make a cheesecake, and FavAunt contemplated making two. I was directed to make two crusts, and did so, thinking they were both for cheesecake and that a third crust would be made for FavAunt's sugar-free pumpkin cheesecake (made for FavUncle). She thought I was making one crust for me and one for her. I made two cheesecakes' worth of filling, filled the first pie tin (which was not so much a pie tin as a giant tall cake tin), and started filling the second.

She stopped me and asked what the crap I was doing. I explained, she explained, the misunderstanding was soon made clear. I poured the filling back into the bowl as best I could, and she filled it up with her pumping cheesecake filling. It was about half-full, as was the first pie tin, and I still had me a bowl full of uncooked cheesecake goodness.

So, of course, we topped off both. One only-cheesecake, one half-pumpkin cheesecake (in layers!). Good times, right? Who doesn't love more cheesecake?

Well, the baking directions said to cook one pie for 10 minutes at 500 degrees, then two hours at 200 degrees. FavAunt was dubious. I wanted to stick to the recipe. We compromised, first cooking both pies together at the times and temperatures directed, then when they were clearly not done like at all turning it up to 350 like FavAunt wanted and cooking them until they were actually done. We didn't get a clear time on how long that took, since we were also opening the oven every 20 minutes to put in other things to bake, like TwinSister's apple pies, coconut almond tartlets, and apple caramel tartles that we made from all the leftovers of the other desserts (which were delicious, btw).

So when they were finally done, we chilled them as we were able and for the hell of it, weighed them. They were each 7 lbs. Not a crumb remained by the end of the night, except the slice I saved to take home to some friends who had to work thanksgiving.

Later that weekend, we were scheduled to meet up at mom's house on sunday doing HER thanksgiving, so I decided to make another cheesecake. I only made one, and I cooked it as per the recipe (10 mins @ 500, 2 hours @ 200) before cranking it up to 350 for another half an hour. This one was only 5 lbs, but I figured that was okay. It was also a hit, but as mom's gathering are much less massive than FavAunt's (15 people vs. 40 people), by the time I had to leave to drive home there was still half a cheesecake left - and you best believe it went home with me.

So basically this is the recipe.

1 graham cracker crust (make your own or buy it, however you like)
1 really tall cake tin, or 9-10" springform pan.
2.5 lbs of cream cheese at room temperature
1/8 tsp salt
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract.
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 large egg yolks
6 eggs
(Optionally, 3 Tbs flour (I did not do this))

Mix of cream cheese at room temperature until smooth.
Mix in salt.
Mix in sugar, in thirds. Optionally, also mix in the flour.
Mix in lemon juice, and vanilla extract.
Mix in heavy cream.
Mix in egg yolks.
Min in 3 eggs, then 3 more when those first ones are all mixed in.

Pour it into the crust, and bake. Honest, at this point, I would just go right to 350 and cook it until the puffing has almost reached the center, maybe 30 minutes, then go down to 200 for like two hours. Cool very slowly once it's out of the oven - put a big bowl over it for a few hours until it's room temp, then stick it in the fridge for a few hours. The slow cooling is supposed to prevent it from cracking, but if it does crack (and mine did), it's still delicious cheesecake so who cares?

Possible Logo?

2008-11-23T00:18:00.002-06:00

I was just going to do text at first, then I did a little doodle that I thought was cute, and I might use it for my soaps. It would be fun to do. What do folks think?

I've got a bunch more ideas for soaps, just waiting on more lye now. I might take the opportunity to infuse some of my oils with herbs and such. I know I have rosemary, lavender, vanilla and dragon's blood running around somewhere, and it would be interesting to see how the infused oils work with the soaps.

Lemon Poppyseed Soap

2008-11-19T19:42:00.001-06:00

Today I finally succumbed to the cold Mr. Sweetie has been fighting for over a week now. I felt like ass warmed over, fevery stuffed up, headachey and tired, so I called in and went back to bed. Ended up sleeping 14 hours total last night, getting up at 2 p.m.

Once I was up my usual sick-mode kicked in, and I started to clean up around the house. I'm not entirely sure why my cleaning instincts kick in when I'm not feeling well, but I guess if I'm going to be staying home I might as well mop up the kitchen while I'm there.

Once it was clean, I did make a batch of soap, so the whole day wasn't wasted. I made a lemon-poppy seed soap, used both of the 1 dram bottles of lemon oil I picked up from Hobby Lobby. I was going to make more, but realized that I didn't have enough lye left over for another batch.

So, 2 lbs lye = 16 lbs soap. Good to know! I'm going to need another 4 lbs of lye before the end of the month, which is just where I thought I'd be anyway.

THREE BATCHES DOWN, BITCHES.

MANANA!

2008-11-18T00:07:00.002-06:00

Had to go to the store for more castor oil, to make this batch. Thought it would do better as a creamier soap, so used some lard instead of mostly olive oil. This one doesn't smell nearly as strong (it hardly has a scent at all - of course, I might just be so used to it I don't smell anything? Happened with the peppermint, and that was strong as hell), so next time I may try adding, I don't know. Do they make banana juice? Banana concentrate? Banana oil? Or maybe just scent it with something completely different.

MANANA! Soap

50% Lard (16 oz)
30% Olive oil (9.6 oz)
10% coconut oil (3.2 oz)
5% castor oil (1.6 oz)
5% avocado butter (1.6 oz)
8% lye discount (4.15 oz)
75% water discount (6 oz)
2 bananas, pureed
Enough clove powder to make it all speckly. Maybe a tsp? Didn't want to go overboard on the clove.

Mixed my cold oils in the cold crockpot - lard is a LOT tougher to mix this way than mostly liquid oils. Next time I should nuke the lard. Mixed my lyewater, added it to the oils - still bits of unmelted lard, oh noes! Stir stir stir. Hooray, no more lard lumps! Stickblend stickblend stickblend. Yay trace! Have some bananas! Stir stir. Still tracing? You bet your ass, this shit's almost pudding. Crap! I forgot to get the mold ready. Tape tape tape the opening shut. Oh wow, that sure is a strong trace. Spoon spoon spoon into the mold. Tap tap the air bubbles out. Spoon spoon spoon. Oh look! The 2" pvc pipe fits just exactly 2lbs of soap! That's awesome. Tape tape tape it shut. Stick in closet. Note that two taped-up pieces of pvc pipe look a hell of a lot like bombs or something. Get paranoid that now that I've typed that someone is going to beat down my door and try to detonate my soaps. Man, I wish they were hard enough right now for me to unmold and cut. I want to show them off at work tomorrow.

Kiwi-Seaweed Soap

2008-11-17T20:54:00.001-06:00

Whohoo! So, remember how I was saying that you can put fruit in soap? Well I did it, baby! I made the hell out of some fruity soap! This one I made off the same bastille recipe as the peppermint and chocolate soaps:

Kiwi-Seaweed Soap (RTCP)

80% Olive pomace oil (25.6 oz)
10% Coconut Oil (3.2 oz)
5% Castor Oil (1.6 oz)
5% Avocado Butter (1.6 oz)
3 kiwis, pureed
1 tbs powdered kelp
7% lye discount (4.15)

This time I tried Room Temperature Cold Process (RTCP) soapmaking. I mixed my room-temperature oils in the cold crockpot, then made my lye-water. After waiting a sec for the fumes to disperse, I added my lye-water to the oils and began to stickblend them. The temperature went to like 115, which is not bad at all! Trace was pretty quick, and that's when I added the kiwi and kelp. I was worried that it would mess with trace, but it still seemed plenty thick after I stirred it all in, so I figured it must be okay, and molded it.

The part of the molds will be played by the GIANT fucking tubes of PVC that I got at Lowes this weekend - I seriously need to get these cut down to size. There is no way I can fill these things, even if I do two separate batches of soap per mold (which I may do tonight, depending on how much lye I have).

Next I'm going to try the banana-clove soap. I am so excited by this, I don't even have the words. Well, okay, I have one word: MANANA!

Down to the Wire

2008-11-17T12:40:00.005-06:00

Well folks, today is November 17th, and it's time to face the facts: If I want to get the soap ready by Christmas, the time to make it is NOW. My bastille soaps are still falling to bits and they're what, two weeks old now? At least? So I'm going to switch up my recipe a little, and instead of 80% olive oil, I'm doing 30% olive oil and 50% lard (which sounds gross, I know, but makes good soap).

I picked up some PVC pipe to use as molds, as well as all the cardboard boxes I had been using, so now I can make round soaps as well as blocks. All that's left to do now is figure out which 12 or so kinds of soap I want to do, and then do it. I picked up some olive pomace oil and much-cheaper-than-krogers coconut oil up at the Farm Patch this past saturday, so I should have enough to last me at least until the paycheck arrives.

I've heard that you can add fresh fruit to soap and have that turn out okay (LUSH, I'm looking at you), so I'm going to try that tonight. I think a banana/clove soap would work pretty well, and I could call it something silly, like MANANA. One down, right? I should make a list.

1. MANANA. Fresh banana and powdered clove. Some kinda milk?

2. COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE. Espresso, coffee grounds, instant cappuccino.

3. LEMON POPPYSEED. Lemon EO, poppy seeds. Pretty straightforward.

4. HOLY CRAP COCONUT. Creamed coconut, vanilla bean, orange EO.

5. THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW ITS FANCY. Rose buds, rose absolute, rose water.

6. LIQUID BREAD. Guinness extra stout, oatmeal, some kinda milk.

7. GOOD FOR YOUR FACE. Tomato juice, carrot juice, yogurt. Honey?

8. AUNT SKELETOR. FavoriteAunt's fancy soap <3 Yogurt, frankincense/chocolate/bergamot/other thing (why can I not remember the last thing?) FO, silk protein.

9. SHAVING SOAP. Extra castor oil, bentonite clay, dad's fancy scent (silver buttonwood/teak/other thing FO in sweet almond oil). Second batch in peppermint?

10. RED DIRT REVIVAL. Red clay. Something else is probably needed. Pomegranate?

11. EAT YOUR FACE. Cocoa powder, peppermint EO.

12. MINTY MINTY MINT. LOTS of Peppermint EO, poppy or vanilla seed scrubbies

13. HOPE THIS WORKS. The elusive 13th soap, which will be strawberries, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper. I have no idea if this one will work at all, but I've got to try.

Finally Success!

2008-11-10T13:01:00.002-06:00

So when I left off yesterday I had two batches of soap made, both adequate but nothing to write home about. Certainly nothing good enough to give the family for christmas! So I decided to bite the bullet, and try CP soap. And moreover, to do it right.

This is the recipe that I used:

80% olive oil
10% coconut oil
4.5% castor oil (I had meant to do 10, but I ran out)
5.5% avocado butter (subbed this for the rest of the castor)
8% lye discount
8oz water for a 2lb batch of soap

I set up a 2lb vat of oils, in my crockpot that was turned OFF. I mixed my lye-water, then left it alone while it cooled. I played warcraft. I knit. I read a little. Eventually, it was 110 degrees, and I mixed it. I decided to try scenting it, with peppermint like I'd done the first batch, and then thought about adding some cocoa powder to it as well - andes mint soap! Mr Sweetie was kind enough to head out to the store while I stirred. He even got more castor oil <3

Only thing was, the soap did not want to wait for him to get home with the cocoa powder. It hit trace FAST, and did not play around. I had to go ahead and add the peppermint oil without the cocoa powder, so to cheer myself up from not making andes mint soap, I added color! I was trying to recreate the coloring of this awesome Plum Blossom soap I saw on Etsy, layered pink and undyed soap, but I forgot to add the layer of... whatever that is in the middle. Probably really-darkly-dyed soap.

So instead I got this!

Something that amused me when I unmolded: I used plastic grocery bags to line my molds. And by molds, I mean cigar boxes! Yay recycling. As it turns out hot soap is like silly putty, and can pick up print.

Please imagine that my entire house is not as yellow as this picture makes it seem. I mean, yes, our walls ARE yellow on that side, but not THAT yellow. The soap is yellow-white and pink, and got hard very quickly! It's been curing for about a week now, and I had trouble breaking one of the bars in half so I could wash the dog with it (mmm, peppermint dog).

So then Mr Sweetie got home with the cocoa powder and the castor oil, and I had already made the soap. What else was there to do, but make another batch, with the same recipe? I even remembered to add a layer of cocoa powder in the middle.

For this batch, I used 12floz of water, since I was impatient (again) and trying to cool down the lye. 4oz of ice cubes does not make a huge dent in those kinds of temperatures, as it turns out. I can REALLY tell the difference in the finished soap, though - the chocolate mint soap is still very pliable, and tears more than cracks when I break it (btw, guess what I've been using in the shower? I smell fabulous). When I do another batch with this recipe, I'm going to try mixing the lye with only 4oz of water, and either subbing out some milk or yogurt for the missing liquid, or just seeing how it does with a 50% water discount. If it makes it cure faster, then I am ALL FOR IT, because it is halfway through november and Go Time for presents is NOW.

And I don't feel at all prepared. I have too much family, and too little soap.

Freaking Out About Christmas (and other updates)

2008-11-09T20:50:00.001-06:00

First off: Mask was a success! Hooray! I do have pictures of me in it, but as folks should have guessed by now, I don't do self-portraits. The pictures that I do have of him are not with him entirely completed - imagine the horns are dark grey, drybrushed with black. And someone is wearing it. That's all you're missing.

(the second one has accurate colors)

Now, on to other news. Soap! It exists, and it is fabulous. I finally figured out that Cold Process soap is a million times easier than Hot Process soap, and that CP soap works best when you actually pay attention to the temperature of your ingredients.

The first batch, which I posted about last month, was eventually saved. Turns out that the little crock pot I got from goodwill to make soap with has 3 settings - off (duh), low, and high. And by "low", they mean "not hot enough for HP soap". So when I was cooking my first batch, it was not getting hot enough for the gel phase to complete. Easy fix though! One 30-minute jaunt through the high setting, and it turned into real, honest to goodness soap.

Now, at that point you might think that I would do more research on this whole soapmaking thing, maybe fill the crockpot with water and see exactly what temperatures the different settings give (holy crap why did I not think of that until just now I totally need to do that), and not just assume that since the high setting worked on the rebatch, it would work on the initial batch. You might think that I would have forethought!

Clearly, you would be reading a different blog. I think I've established by now that I like to live dangerously, craft first and ask questions later! Even when those questions concern things like how do you dispose of 2 lbs of very-lye-active monstrosity. But I get ahead of myself.

Well, not terribly far ahead. Let us tell this story.

So the first batch had turned into real, honest-to-goodness soap. It didn't burn my tongue, it lathered, and it felt really nice to shave with (which was, you may recall, my goal. Mr Sweetie loves it). I was riding the high that comes with learning something new, doing it yourself, and it turning out well enough that you can show it off to your friends (and show off I did!). I decided to make another batch that weekend, and since the shaving soap was just a touch drying (33% coconut oil, 10% castor oil, and bentonite clay will evidently do that to you), I wanted to make sure this next one would be nice and rich. Shea butter! Honey! 9% lye discount! The world was my oyster.

Now, experienced soapmakers will have raised their eyebrows right when I said honey. They know, as I thought I knew, that honey raises the temperature of soap, and so you have to be careful when you add it. You want to make sure that your lye-water and your oils are nice and cool, so that it doesn't overheat.

You especially want to not add your honey TO your water, before you add your lye. This makes your lye-water turn a lovely shade of burnt orange that would be GREAT for your brother who goes to UT, except that it also means your lye-water is CRAZY HOT. Well over the usual 200 degrees that you normally get when this reaction takes place.

Smart people would wait until this cooled down to 110 degrees. Smart people would make sure the oil in the crockpot was also around this temperature, and that the crockpot was not set to high. Smart people would definitely not google just enough shady websites to convince themselves that 150-degree orange lye-water and oils that are probably in the area of 200 degrees themselves could make soap - and you're fucking Mensa smart if you didn't mix your oils and lye, AND THEN ADD MORE HONEY. You know. Because that's totally going to save that giant vat of burning caustic oil.

Fun fact: burnt soap? Smells like roux. This is A Sign.

So, yeah, that batch didn't turn out like at all. It did solidify, but was nothing you'd want to rub all over your body, much less pets or children. It was wrapped in a plastic bag and thrown out. Mr. Sweetie came home and I denied that it had ever happened.

So the new "batch 2"! Same recipe as before, only I didn't add the honey to the lye-water, and I let it cool down to 120 before impatience demanded I mix it to my (set on low) oils. It looked great! I achieved a very clear trace, and if I was a more rational person I would have molded it then and there.

Instead, I added honey. Yup. And two cups of almond meal, to make it scrubby, but I think that the almond meal I bought is more like almond flour than almond ground up bits that can remove dead skin, so it's only very mildly scrubby.

This one also heated up too much, but didn't burn like the first Batch 2 did. Hooray, it's soap! I didn't scent it, and it ended up smelling like what I think must be a combination of unrefined shea nuts and cooked almond flour. It's not necessarily bad, but it IS strange. This is what we're using at home now, because I'm not putting 'toasted almond and shea nut' soap in my christmas gift baskets.

Although that's not a bad name, now that I think about it.

This batch was also made using the silicone ice cube trays that Hastur and the Library Overlord gave me for my birthday, which was very sweet. They also gave me a candy thermometer and an egg timer, and for that I am grateful beyond words.

Oh, you say, that's all grand, but what about the successful recipe? Where is THAT in your cornucopia of despair? Haha. Soon to follow, that's where. Soon to follow.

Making a Mask!

2008-10-29T23:11:00.002-05:00

And it's fun, fun, fun. I saw the stuff on Goblin Art and thought, hot damn, that's pretty and really out of my price range. So the Library Overlord and I got together with some plaster strips, and made base masks of each others faces. It was good times.

A little fun foam, duct tape, and paper mache later, I have this handsome fellow:

I'm letting him dry one last time overnight, then tomorrow we enter the fabulous world of acrylic paints. I may spreay him with a primer first, especially on the horns, which are awesomely ridged via wrapped elasti-cord:

It's going to be a good year.

About OK

2008-10-25T11:25:00.000-05:00

Thursday night Mr. Sweetie called me and told me that one of our rats, About (of the infamous Out and About) was acting funny. Her left eye was droopy, and she had no balance. He thought she might have had a stroke.

We talked to Hastur, who has more experience with rats than us, and she recommended a good vet. We weren't able to get time off on Friday to drop her off, but we called the vet that evening and she said to go ahead and drop them both off - she'd see them the same night!

So it turns out that what happened is that About got a middle ear infection somehow. She's got antibiotics to take, and in about a week should be fine.

Score!

2008-10-17T14:35:00.006-05:00

I learned how to move pictures from my phone to my email! It's good to know I am not entirely without hope in technological matters. Here is the first batch, which will of course be pictures of Maggie, since I know yall have been dying to see them.

As you can see, she is a beautiful, smiley-as-hell dog. Who gets into trouble, and also into Rudder Fountain.

This is the tree that fell on Mr. Sweetie's parents' house, after some handy chainsaw work. The stumps are not all of the slices - the stumps are all of the slices that were of a given size (large enough to be sat on, small enough that the chainsaw blade could slice all the way through the tree), and ALSO level enough to be chairs, which is what they're going to be. They're drying them out, and then they'll lacquer them and have 'Furniture courtesy of Hurricane Ike' burnt into them. I love my in-laws. Also, that tree? Farther away than it looks, as I was standing WELL OUTSIDE the garage when I took that picture.

Ok, this was just awesome. We were driving PrimaryBrother back to Austin, and stopped by a pecan store on the way (if you have made this drive, you know the one I mean - it has a sign you can see for miles) so I could go to the bathroom. In case people drop by (giant! sign!) after hours, there is a vending machine, WITH A GODDAMN PIE IN IT. It's a pie machine!

This is Dr. Icthys, who lives up at work and keeps me company. He is a grumpy, grumpy fish, which people tend not to believe until they meet him, and watch him try to beat the shit out of stationary objects like my inboxes, the wall, and his food container. And speaking of the walls!

Them's my walls. Covered in art, my favorite pieces drawn by friends. I am very proud of my walls, and the effort that goes into finding work-appropriate stuff that's still actually funny.

My sister's tattoo, that she got not knowing it was a logo for something or another, and would like for me to figure out a way to change into something different. Specifically, a peacock, that "looks persian", and doesn't suck. I haven't drawn in years. No pressure or anything!

This is where we're going for my birthday this weekend. It is a happy, happy place, where I can get this:

Maggie OK

2008-10-13T18:05:00.002-05:00

It's been just about 24 hours since her seizure/faint/whatever on Sunday, and she has been her normal self the whole time. She got into trouble while I was in the shower, chased rabbits while snoring on the couch, cuddled up next to me and then farted, and tried to knock over my soda and claim it for herself. All is well.

Holy Crap, Maggie Had a Seizure?

2008-10-12T22:46:00.002-05:00

Today Maggie and I walked to the dog park for the first time (she’s been before, but I thought the walk would do both of us good). We hung out for a while, I brought a book, she jumped in mud puddles and loved on people with her muddy self.

Then after a while I saw her walking up to me, but she kept falling forward, like her front paws wouldn’t support her. I thought maybe she had burrs on them, and went to go see, and when I got to her she fell over and was twitching - almost vibrating - and her heart was beating really fast, and she wasn’t able to focus her eyes, and seemed disoriented. My first thought was Holy crap, seizure!

A very nice lady from a local vet clinic came and helped me hold her while Mr. Sweetie was on his way (and dude, we have found a new vet, let me tell you), and by the time he got there (maybe 4-5 mins?) she had stopped trembling and was starting to recover, and by the time we got her to the car she was normal again. We took her to the A&M Small Animal Clinic (only place in town open after 6 on sunday), and got her checked out.

The doc said that from the symptoms she had, it was probably either a seizure, like I had thought, or a hardcore fainting spell from a sudden drop in blood pressure. They did an ECG for her heart, and tested her for heartworms just in case, and everything came up fine. Mr. Sweetie is sleeping on the couch with her tonight, and I’m staying home with her tomorrow, in case anything else happens, but she will probably be just fine. We just got home, and gave her a bath (she was still really muddy), and hopefully won’t have to worry about anything more tonight.

Everything is probably fine. Worst case scenario she has some form of epilepsy, and having had that myself it doesn’t freak me out too bad. She’ll eat anything softer than her teeth if we let her, so I don’t see a problem giving her pills if that’s what she ends up needing.

So how was your sunday?

It's Been A While Since Massive Failsauce

2008-10-02T21:58:00.001-05:00

So I made my first batch tonight, which may or may not be a failure.

I ran my recipe through a lye calculator, with an 8% superfat, melted my oils in the pot and added my lye water (and HOO BOY they do not joke about the fumes - had the fan on & front door open, would’ve opened the back but didn’t want the dog running around). It didn’t start getting creamy, but it did start getting bits of opaqueness floating in the clear, with a texture like applesauce. Then, all of a sudden - BAM! - it’s like pudding. I did my happy trace dance, and added in the clay I wanted as an additive, put on the lid and turned it to low to cook.

15 minutes later I came to check on it, and instead of a hard solid mass, it looked like vaseline. I wasn’t sure if this meant it had gelled or not, so I decided that it must not’ve, and added about a cup more water (2lb batch).

15 minutes after that, it still looks like vaseline, only more… fluffy? By this time I’m running around panicking, so I added a 14 floz can of coconut milk and a dram of peppermint EO, because I am an idiot. Some of it mixed in with the soap, some did not, so I don’t even know what’s going on now.

Another half hour after that, it’s mostly still vaseline, a little creamier, and with a good bit of excess liquid in the pot. I panicked again, because I have somewhere to be tonight, so I just prayed the liquid stuff is liquid soap and not just slightly brown coconut milk, and molded the lot of it. I figure it’s either going to be funky soap, soap that I need to rebatch, or I will know that I need to watch it like a hawk next time and get a better scale and a thermometer.

It feels waxy when I touch it, but it still zaps my tongue, and now I don’t know if it’s the peppermint or the lye doing that. I feel like I missed a vital memo somewhere in my research, but I don’t know what.

Making soap RIGHT NOW!!!

2008-10-02T20:11:00.000-05:00

And OMG I has Trace!

Hooray, Dangerous Chemicals!

2008-09-27T13:04:00.002-05:00

I like to make my family their gifts for christmas, but let's face it, there's only so much knitting I can do, and there's only so much appreciation for that knitting that my family has, and aside from TwinSister and LittlerBrother, I'm about tapped out. So I started thinking about it, and hey - SOAP! People like soap. And you make it in fairly big batches, so it's not like they're getting a tiny gift or anything, and you can personalize it! So I decide to make my family some soap.

Thing is, though, that I have no experience making soap, like at all. So I get to be completely self-taught, hooray! Well, self- and internet-taught, but you get the idea. I ordered some lye on the internet, and spent entirely too much on additives (hello, powdered seaweed and fancy clay!)

The lye came in today, and now I really, really, REALLY want to make a test batch. I should probably wait, since I don't have stuff like a pot to cook it in, gloves, goggles, and all the other stuff that I'll need, but the desire is there, and that's good. I think I should spend today working up recipes, and getting supply lists together, and getting my house in order so that I actually could start working with dangerous chemicals like lye, without worrying. I still need to work out where I'm going to keep the soap while it cures, and dig out my food scale, and maybe figure out what I'm going to do for a mold. But it's exciting, and I hope to be able to share this with the blog soon.

Changed Over my Accounts

2008-09-25T14:20:00.003-05:00

FYI: Changed my blogger account so that it's the same as my gmail account. Same bat time, same bat channel, different bat email address.

Goodbye, My Purse

2008-09-18T19:52:00.003-05:00

Grargle grargle grargle.

So I did not succeed in Ramadan this year. I started getting dizzy, weird scaly spots showing up on my skin, and I was just not able to eat enough during the evening to keep me going through the next day. Then I stopped and thought about, you know, why I was doing it. And I realized my primary reason was weight loss - and there are healthier ways to do that. So I stopped.

So THEN, I went out to lunch, and took with me my purse from Schrodinger and my Henry scarf that I've been knitting out of white angora. It was 4 rows past 50% done, and I was feeling really psyched about it. Honestly, it was the first project since Galveston that I've felt really good about, and I was excited to be so close to being done.

So I go back to work, and I forget it, because I was reading Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show (which, by the way, was a very engrossing read, but disturbing in parts). I leave my lovely little Schrodinger bag and my knitting in the cafeteria, and go back to work.

When I was getting ready to go home, I noticed that it was missing, and realized what must've happened. I checked in at the cafeteria, and it's not there. I check the circulation desk and the lost and found, and it's not there either. It was only later on, as I was riding the bus home, that I remembered that my ipod and my f*$#ing engagement ring were also in my purse. The ipod was free, and I still have my old one, so that doesn't upset me as much, and the ring is (thankfully) insured, so it will be replaced. The only thing that I can't get back is the month of time and love I put into that scarf. Well, that and the actual scarf. And my addi lace needles. And my goddamn purse.

Last Weekend

2008-09-04T15:49:00.004-05:00

Mr. Sweetie and I went into Houston last weekend, searching for a spinning wheel. I currently have the Babe DT Production wheel, but I had diligently trolled Craigslist in hopes of finding a cheap-ass used wheel to add to the collection.

I found a handful of folks who had wheels they'd sell for $100, but either they didn't have pictures, or they couldn't guarantee they were in working order, or they were in Dallas, so no luck there. Then, I started talking to a guy who said he had one that he'd sell for $15. Sweet! He even lived near my dad's part of town - double sweet! We'd drop by while we were in the neighborhood. Good times. He didn't have any pictures either, and couldn't guarantee it worked, but for $15 I was willing to check it out anyways. I brought more, on the off-chance that there were other spinning goodies available.

So we head out, and like usual we dropped by Half Priced Books and picked up an audiobook for the ride, and as sometimes happened we picked a dud. Seriously. It was like bad teenage poetry-style writing, very floury, with long sentences that went nowhere. We talked instead.

We make it in to Houston, and poor Mr. Sweetie has all the navigational sense of a lemming, so I'm directing him with my handy map. We get to the house, meet the seller dude (who had awesome dogs!), and get our first look at the wheel:

To call it a spinning wheel is a technicality. It is wheel-shaped, in that it is a hub with spokes. It does rotate. But it is not a spinning wheel. The guy reveals that it is from his mom's estate sale. We buy it anyway, and don't mention that it's not what we expected.

At this point, we decide it's a good time to go visit my dad. Aaaand he's not home! Good times. We talk with him on the phone for a bit, then prepare to head back out. And backing out, we hit a car parked in the street, right across from dad's driveway. Son of a bitch. Track down the owner, exchange information. Apologize profusely. No damage to our car, but her door doesn't open so good now. Call dad again, he laughs, because he has almost hit that car like a million times.

So we head home, and while we're about to get to Navasota I ask if we can stop by the yarn shop there, since the spinning wheel wasn't what I had expected. We track down W. C. Mercantile, a very nice little shop with lots of spinning fiber, dyes, Malabrigo and Lorna's Laces. I pick up 4oz each of tussah silk and red camel, some red Malabrigo, and some green Malabrigo laceweight, with which I plan to make another lace scarf. On the way home, Mr. Sweetie and I stop by a little diner in Wellborn, and enjoy late-afternoon-omelettes.

By this time, we have spent most of the money I brought. We go by the bank to put money into the joint account, and take out what we need for rent. Surprise! We are overdrawn. It's not the $300+ in fees that made me quit using checks (thought I had $30 in the bank, wrote a check for a gallon of milk, another for dinner, another for gas, etc etc, each one with a $30 overdraft fee), but it's enough that we're in troubles. We pay rent just fine, have a few hundred left, but not enough for the power bill and student loans that are both due before the next paycheck. I start putting yarn up for sale on Ravelry, Mr. Sweetie talks about selling plasma. We buy peanut butter, bread, ramen and totinos pizzas to eat for cheap on. We cash the money order that we took out for Maggie (which btw, still no word from the foster mom).

Eventually, we call parents, and Mr. Sweetie's agree to help us out. God I love them. It must be awesome to grow up with parents like that. I want to make his mom something awesome for christmas, but nothing I can make is something she's into, so I'll have to buy something instead. It's weird to think of it, but this year I'm probably going to go with store-bought presents, and actually be able to afford to do so. This minor hiccup aside, our budget is working, though I'm tweaking it now so that we put more in per paycheck, to get a savings built up, but it's essentially good. Even after all the crazy, I really like where my life is going right now.

*Edited to add: The rotating wheel we bought? Turns out to have been a Spinner's Weasel, or Clock Reel. Bitchin!

Yarn and Ramadan

2008-09-04T15:48:00.000-05:00

So, it's Ramadan again. I kinda forgot to look up the date until yesterday, and it started on Monday, so I'll be making up some days (again). I was totally unprepared for not-having-lunch and not-snacking-at-my-desk, so I had to call on Mr. Sweetie to smuggle away all of my usual munchies and then hand him all the cash in my pockets ($3!) so I wouldn't have a moment of weakness walking by the soda machine. The sacrifices he has to make, I swear.

We had some financial troubles this month, which sucked, and we had to ask the in-laws for help. We asked my parents too, but they weren't able to spare what we needed. It happens. PrimaryBrother is evidently getting a lot of speeding tickets that Dad ends up paying. I know I for one would not have been able to get away with THAT shit. I've had two tickets in my life, once for speeding (paid myself), and once for being in a wreck (now I wear glasses!). Long story short, bills draft out of the joint account. We had the money, just in the seperate accounts, so got hit with massive overage fees, which means that after we put the money IN the joint, we're short the overage amount, and need help paying bills and buying food. Have I mentioned that I love my in-laws?

So I'm taking some advice (thanks, Library Overlord!) and re-working our budget. We're going to be putting in more a month, so that we can get a buffer of savings for emergencies and stuff, and then pouring damn near everything that's not already a bill or food into Mr. Sweetie's credit card. He's been paying off the same balance for the 4 years that I've known him, and that principal has never gotten any smaller. I may consolidate my student loans, and use the difference in my monthly payments to get that credit card gone. In two years, I want my (admittedly, MUCH larger) student loan to be the only debt we have, and I want us to have at least three months' worth of rent/bills in savings. This may or may not be possible, but I'm going to try.

So in that theme, I'm going to be putting myself on Yarnadan, as well. No new roving, no new yarn, for three months. I did it all through May, but I bought patterns then. No more of that. If I want to make something, I can damn well write the pattern myself, or get something equivalent through the library. The only thing I will allow myself is needles, and only when I don't have them. No getting 4 sets of size 4 circs so I can do 4 hats at once - I can learn to finish projects like a normal person. Do you realize that I have finished like nothing this year, despite having started a million things?

And speaking of starting things, I sketched out a new shawl. It's one that started as a doodle for a lap blanket, then got embellished, then got simplified, then embellished again, etc, etc, until now it's something that I don't think looks like total ass. Provided I can get it to work, anyways; there's really only one part I'm having trouble with, so I'm going to have a lot more swatching to do this weekend. Ah, the weekend. I will make another post, to tell you about this past one. It really deserves to stand alone.

My day so far is probably pretty spot-on to what the rest of the month is going to be like, though I hope it's going to get easier as my gut gets used to the new schedule.

6:30 Wake up, not hungry
6:30 - 8:00 Get ready for work, not hungry
8:00 - 10:00 Work, not hungry. Could use a coke though. Drink water instead.*
10:00 - 11:30 Work. Hungry, but tolerably so. Drink more water.
11:30 - 1:00 Work. Hungry. Trick lizard-brain by telling myself I'm just waiting for lunchtime.
1:00 - 2:00 Lunchtime. Watch Mr. Sweetie eat a sandwich. Read a book. Knit. Walk. HUNGRY.
2:00 - 4:00 Work. Trick successfull - stomach not used to being hungry after lunchtime. Write blog post.
4:00 - 5:00 (projected) Work. Get hungry again. Chew face off co-workers.
5:00 - 8:00 Go the fuck home! Play Warcraft and/or Oblivion, perhaps take a nap. Walk the dog.
8:08 Nom like there's no tomorrow, prepare breakfast for morning.

* I'm giving myself an allowance, for unflavored water. This is because (a) bitch gets thirsty, (b) I am not muslim, nya nya nya, and (c) I am giving up buying yarn and roving until DECEMBER. It evens out.

The Omnivore's Hundred

2008-08-17T12:25:00.005-05:00

Here is a meme from Very Good Taste, called the Omnivore's Hundred.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

Bold I've had, Italics I would not consider.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (I am smarter than this)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear (there are actually some growing not too far from the house, I should go pick some today)
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (I do not like burgers)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (like I have that kind of money!)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake