December Roundup.

What movies, television shows, plays, etc. did I watch this month?
Movies: Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them
TV: Royal Pains, NCIS, Star Trek Voyager, The Innocents


Where did I eat out this month?
Ordered from a Vietnamese place, but I don't remember its name. 
Panda Express, Domino's, Costa Vida, Zupas Cafe

What fun things did I do with my family and/or friends?
Christmas was cool

What gifts did I give and/or receive?
Gifts from me:
Birthday gifts: Pokemon walkie talkies for Fox, and dinosaur skeleton building kits for Deirdre.
Christmas gifts: For Parry (to share with me), a set of laser tag guns. Plane toys for Deirdre. Large baskets for Kristan & Jake. Toy bunny for Reyna. Stocking gifts: for sisters were jewelry and hair clips, light-up toy cars for Fox, unicorn keychain for Deirdre, little stamp set for Reyna, Magic: The Gathering cards for Jake and Ben, socks for my mom, a usb charging hub for my dad. 

Gifts to me: uh geez, I should have written this down on Christmas. I got a lot of foodstuffs, a variety of candies and specialty ingredients. Some kitchen stuff: Handpie/empanada dough press, ice cube tray, dish drying mat, kitchen towel, a couple recipe books, reusable snack bag. Parry did a whole slew of upgrading my computers, buying a new phone, and helping buy a car. I got a cool heated salt bowl/lamp with salt balls for massage. Body stuff: Vintage style lipstick, nail polish, bath salts, hot/ice pack. Toys and treats for the furballs.

What special or unusual purchases did I make?
I bought a car! And this one doesn't suck.

What were my accomplishments this month?
I bought a car!

Firsts: First large snowfall of the season. Sent me into a bad depression for the day. I was already feeling empty, but then the snow added the pressure of being cold and wet, bad driving conditions, and having to shovel it. It just tipped me over the edge. Fortunately, the depression from that snowstorm only lasted a day.
First time getting a loan, turned out manageable.

What I made:

Sock bunny made for Reyna

A simple, but happy project. Wood plates I got about 10 years ago, they were very rough and the finish was chipping and flaking. Probably polyurethane plus a dark stain. I sanded all that off and did a nice coating of oil/beeswax conditioner. These plates are so nice now, smooth, pretty and foodsafe.

November Roundup

What movies, series, plays, etc. did I watch this month?
Series: Royal Pains, Star Trek: Voyager

Where did I eat out this month?
Cafe Rio, Domino's, Habit Burger Grill, Cafe Zupas

What fun things did I do with my family and/or friends?
Spooky fairy feast

Cherry pie from me.

A crust of masa harina, colored with tomato powder, encasing a filling of sausage, cream cheese, and vegetables, molded to look like intestines, from me.

The table. I didn't get close-ups of the ribs (provided by Douglas & Raine) or dragon cake (from Glenna).

Steamed buns from Raine.

Swamp fudge with chocolate mushrooms from Glenna.

Pumpkin-shaped mochi from Glenna.

What gifts did I give and/or receive?
Gifts from me: Bracelets for Laura & Kristan

What special purchases did I make?

Depression gift to myself. Shirt designed by this writer/artist/chef/Twitter personality I like, Dread Singles (Jordan Shively). Shirt can be purchased here.

What I made:
I made the bracelets, but didn't get photos before giving them.

October Roundup.

What movies, series, and theater did I watch this month? Series: Critical Role, Royal Pains, Money for Nothing, Sherlock, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager

Where did I eat out this month?
Cafe Rio, Jamba Juice, Firehouse Subs, Costa Vida, Shoots, Chuck-a-Rama, Dominos

What fun things did I do with my family or friends?
Walking dogs at Wheeler farm

Firsts: first wedding anniversary

What I made:

Plywood chest I finished and lined

Paper beads

More paper beads

Worked on a film about a boxer called Papercutter

What I'm Making.

Paper beads, a simple project that I can do while hanging with Parry (rolling the beads doesn't smell, make noise, or cloister me in the craft room).

I cut the paper into very narrow triangular strips. Using white glue diluted with water, I pinch the flat end between two toothpicks and roll the paper around. Pull out one of the toothpicks, use the other to open up the hole, and squish the bead a little to make the hole round, then pull out the toothpick. Let dry.  The remainder I do in my craft room because the polyurethane smells. I string a bunch of beads together, paint polyurethane onto them, and hang to dry. When they are mostly dry, I move the beads around on the string so they don't get glued in place. Can do more than one coat of polyurethane.

Maybe I'll be able to sell these. I can try. If it doesn't pan out, I've been looking up beaded jewelry designs, so maybe I can sell jewelry from them.

The set up for drying after glazing. Not that you can see the beads very well, but this is with two coats of satin polyurethane.

Scrapbook paper and coloring book page. The thick scrapbook paper is very easy to work with. One coat of satin polyurethane. Pencil for scale.

Origami boxes to keep them tidy while rolling them.

Pages from an old book. (Don't worry, it wasn't valuable). This works best if I glue 2 sheets together before cutting the strips. Beads are not glazed yet.

Coloring book pages. This paper was difficult to work with. It stuck too much to the toothpicks and bit of paper would stick to my fingers and peel off the bead. Beads are not glazed yet.

Another coloring book page, the same paper as above. Also not glazed yet.

Notes.

Leftovers from my latest notebook.

Camping Cooking.

I've been thinking about my theoretical role in St. Dunstan's as the cook. And cooking when camping. I like cooking. I think I could have a fun time as the camp cook. I've even thought about different ways to deal with the various food intolerances of the group.

There are a few problems I have, though. (Of course! Why else would I blog about something)

Let me break this down.
1. Figuring out how much food is needed.
 a. how many people need to be fed
 b. how many meals need to be provided
 c. how much food gets eaten per meal

2. Planning meals.
 a. choosing recipes
  -they have to be medieval
 b. accounting for people's food intolerances
  -providing alternates in each meal
  -having meals of separately cooked ingredients where they can put it together themselves
 c. putting recipes together into meals
  -morning meals need to be fast & easy
 d. figuring out overlap of ingredients, so there's enough variety of food, but not a million ingredients to bring
 e. creating the timeline of meals, so the more perishable foods get used first

3. Creating a budget.
 a. how much of each ingredient is needed
 b. how much each ingredient will cost, and a total of all the food
 c. revise recipes if necessary for expense
 d. people in the household can contribute money or ingredients

4. Storing and transporting the food.
 a. how long will each food item last
 b. how to store food safely

 c. what needs to be in a cooler and what doesn't
 d. how many coolers/bins do we need to store it all
 e. where are the coolers/bins coming from (eg, household members contributing)
 f. how to maximize packing of food
  -what's cold gets put together
  -meal ingredients are close to each other
  -accessibility of food organized according to the meal timeline

5. Figuring out cookware needs.
 a. everyone should have their own dishes & stuff
 b. cookware kept to a minimum for ease of transport, but covers the needs of the recipes
  -dutch ovens
  -tandoor skewers
  -iron griddles
  -utensils
  -mixing bowls
  -cutting boards
  -tables
  -dish washing bins
  -devices for supporting dishes over the fire
c. where are the cookware pieces coming from (eg, household members contributing)

6. Learning how to cook over fire/coals.
 a. research how to translate stove/oven recipes to cooking over fire

Should probably do a test run of just one meal with my friends. Where I do all these steps. Even to the point of packing coolers and taking things to a camp spot.

Fortunately I don't have any impending events or immediate demands for this sort of thing.

Dandelions.

I took a look at my backyard yesterday and saw how extreme of a jungle it had become. Dandelions everywhere. Probably more surface area is taken by dandelions than grass.

Since spring and summer always make me want to do experimental cooking, especially in the medieval/Redwall area, I decided to harvest those dandelions and try to make some drinks. I couldn't do it yesterday, though, and when I went out today, half of them had suddenly gone to seed. -_- Nevertheless, I crouched about the yard snipping the petals off the plants, and got 4.6 ounces of dandelion petals.

Pippin smells the outdoors!

I've got a fair amount of dandelion drinks listed in my Redwall list. Some more complicated than others. I'll start simple with the ingredients I already have. Any good results will be published on my Redwall food blog.

More Writing.

Welp, I wrote this post on my lunch break and then my stupid app didn't post it, so now I'm trying again and hopefully I remember everything.

More on the steampunk Cinderella idea. I want to name her Ann because her father loved his anvil. He was a blacksmith until his second wife convinced him to go for gold. Later he died in a mining accident. I want an old west type of setting. Ann learned smithing from her father, mostly as a hobby but she makes some money off it. She sells her stuff through a male blacksmith/whitesmith in town, because after her father quit smithing, she discovered that no one wanted to buy stuff from a female half-Mexican smith. (Half-Mexican because I figure the stepmother wouldn't have married a Mexican man.) The new smith came to town and they work together because she is better at blacksmithing than he is, but he is a good whitesmith, and this way she can sell her work without anyone knowing. Which is agreeable enough for her stepmother, who thinks that smithing is an embarrassingly low-brow job, and inappropriate for a woman. The stepmother, to support her family after the father's death, does need to work, so she goes for something that she considers respectable enough and requires no hard labor--managing a hotel is what I'm thinking. (Not a brothel-hotel.)

Definitely want a snarky comment about how the stepmother thought gold was more important than iron and that's how they got to this point in their lives.

Something about having to rappel off a mesa.

Government guys post in newspaper "FOUND: small shoe, covered in goldwork. To obtain, prove ownership by producing mate. Red Plains Police Office." Stepmother finds the second shoe somewhere, gets all gold-greedy, takes the shoe in, and gets arrested. Ann is gone by then.

I like the old west setting because it's apropos for steampunk without being the usual Victorian England type. I also like the fact that it is a playground of a lot of different cultures coming together in a new, different, hostile place, for different reasons. I haven't done a ton of research so excuse me if I'm mistaken, but off the top of my head: Plenty of Europeans and eastern Americans coming for gold mining, cheap land, hunting, trapping, exploring, lumberjacking, searching for isolation to create their own communities. Chinese (and Irish?) immigrants coming to work on the railroad. Black people hiding after escaping slavery, or later on, having been freed from slavery, trying to make a new life in a place away from Southern culture. And of course, the Native Americans and Mexicans who were already there.

People, it seems, don't like being told that POC existed significantly in European and American culture. Even though they did. People cling desperately to their whitewashed history. I'd like to believe that people are more willing to accept racial/cultural diversity in a fantastical setting, that is clearly not supposed to co-exist with real history, and therefore doesn't need to be "historically accurate," but... well, diversity in media and its reception is a whole other huge topic. Let's just say I'm sick of everyone being white all the time.

Writing Ideas.

Even though I don't make time for writing. Even though I'm in the middle of a script (and have been for a freaking long time). Raine gave me this first writing idea (developed a bit since then). Others at random.

1. Steampunk Cinderella. Her name won't be Cinderella or Ella or Cinders or Ash or anything like that. Let's not be obvious. I don't want the fairy tale to be explicit. Coaldust I think would be a good title. I want her to be Latina because I'm sick of protagonists being white all the time when there's no reason for them not to be. And Latin American people don't get much love in film.

Her father left her some info, hidden in the fireplace, about some secret society he was in and how she needs to finish his job if he dies before a specific time (when the story takes place). That's why she has to stay in that house with her step-family, so the agents can find her. An agent comes and gives her a mission and equipment, to gain information at a festival (pirates' ball). It is [probably some letters that reveal a government conspiracy, that the pirates are being paid by the government to keep hidden. So she goes to the ball to do some spying. (If my dreams were to be fulfilled, Steam Powered Giraffe would be playing at the ball. But with elevated uncanny valley levels for extra robotness.) She has these cute little Rococo-style shoes for being fancy at the ball, but she takes them off and puts them in her pockets (little shoes, big skirt) for ease of sneaking and running. At the end of the festival she has to jump from the ship (airship) to the dock (cliff) to escape, and one of her shoes falls out of her pocket. So that's what the government guys use to find her. But instead of finding her, she leaves the shoe at her house for them to find, and sets up some way for her step-family to be incriminated. No romance in the story. I like it better this way.

•It could be something not shoes. Like fancy gloves, or a goggle lens.
•Midnight has to be important somehow.

2. Something medieval. Mostly I want something with real medieval fashion instead of glamorous Hollywood medieval fashion. And the soundtrack is medieval music. And the main character is a black woman, or maybe Middle Eastern. (Like I said, freaking sick of always white characters.) She's a spy or something. I don't really have a story for this.

3. D&D musical. The more I think about this, the less interesting it seems. But basically a new guy in town makes friends with a co-worker and gets invited to "game night". He's thinking poker or some boring stuff, but actually they are playing D&D (or whatever ttrpg; could just fabricate one for the script). So he gets indoctrinated. There's only one girl in the group, and she's not very friendly, which makes them assume she's gay. She probably leaves the game because the guys are dicks to her. (too autobiographical?) The songs take place in real life (except if a character is a bard?) but the game has its own scenes and stories that mirror the player's life problems. I haven't thought up anything really interesting for this. I've written some very rough lyrics which will have to be posted later. Songs to include: "Crit Hit Song," "Crit Fail Song," "Give Him A Saving Throw," "Why Are There So Many Damn Numbers & Rules," "Girls Play This Too," "It's Game Night"

Tentttttt

I didn't get any good photos of my tent when we went to Goblin Valley at the end of May, but it was in perfectly fine working order.

It's that green one in the middle.

And then about a month later I'm using it again, and the thing is basically falling apart.

You can see here how sadly saggy the canvas is. The loops that hold the canvas to the top bar are becoming unsewn from gravity. The whole thing was so loose that I had to keep pulling the canvas to the ends of the poles to try to keep it in the right shape. It was very sad.

Now, I could fix the thing... again... but I think I have learned everything I need from this one, so it's time for me to make a new one.

The changes:

♠ Light color for heat control, but not pure white to reduce brightness. Yes, people told me that the dark canvas would be too hot inside, but it wasn't until Goblin Valley that it did get toooooo hot.
♠ Same size, except door flaps bigger for more overlap.
♠ Trim with tabs on top to hold top bar (as shown above), but trim goes all the way down the sides to distribute the weight, and reinforced like crazy at the top to reduce unsewing.
♠ Loops at the center edges to loop over the cross bars to keep it stretched out.
♠ Ties on sides of poles to ties to upright poles to further help with the stretching in shape.
♠ Ties along the top inside for hanging things like lanterns, clothes that need to dry, etc.
♠ Ties along bottom side to keep the floor tarp in place.
♠ Makes bags for stakes and pins.
♠ Make the upright canopy poles stakeable at the bottoms.

I've already drafted a pattern for the new canvas that uses 12 yards of 72" wide fabric instead of 15 yards of 60" fabric. The two fabrics cost about the same, so this will be a little cheaper than last time. And I don't have to remake the poles.

This is the fabric I'm using. Same fabric as the green, but different color and size. This fabric, while heavy, has not any any problems with being weatherproof. It does smell like crayons, even 7 years later, so that will probably never go away, but it airs out well while in use. Really no problems with the fabric, only with my construction.