Eyes - Check!

Remember Me?

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)

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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?

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.