Fresh Out of Armageddon...

Neil Gaiman asked the people following him on Twitter to tweet pics of ourselves with tea and armageddon, but all I've got is a stockpot full of tea:



Hopefully, someone has some leftover armageddon they'll be willing to share in exchange for the recipe:

2 cinnamon sticks, broken into pieces
1 heaping tablespoon of loose black tea
1 heaping tablespoon of whole cardamom pods
1/2 tablespoon whole cloves

Toss everything into a stockpot, fill with water, and bring to the boil. Keep it boiling for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat, strain and serve with milk and sugar. I like to keep the pot on the stove all day, just ladling it out straight through the strainer into the cups and adding more water to the pot as needed to keep the tea level up. The leftovers are also good cold.

----------------
Now playing: Depeche Mode - Martyr
via FoxyTunes

Look on my scarf, ye Mighty, and despair... (part 4)

Well, the time may have come to start the scarf over. Turns out that what with having used up a fair amount of the cheap acrylic on other projects, there's probably not going to quite be enough for an entire second scarf. I suppose I could just make it narrower, but I'll be damned if I'm buying any more of this particular yarn (the best comparison I can think of is that it's the Coors Light of yarn). I do have most of the colors I need in Lamb's Pride, though. I did the math today, and realized that it would only take about $20 worth of yarn to make up the missing colors. Technically, the goal *was* to use up the stash acrylic so I could justify buying the yarn to make myself a nice version....

I suppose I could just use the acrylic to whip up some little plushies for Etsy, or hold it back for a stash-clearing swap...I was really hoping that this would be a fairly cheap project, though.

----------------
Now playing: Depeche Mode - Miles Away / The Truth Is
via FoxyTunes

Apparently, I do not know how to use spray paint.....

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Note that there is little, if any, paint on the finger actually used to trigger the can. Was my hand in the way somehow, like an accidental photograph of a thumb? Was I using some odd technique that others would want pictures of to illustrate the 'don't' section of an informative "Spray Paint Dos and Don'ts" pamphlet? Was it a faulty nozzle that was leaking? (I lean towards this explanation, as the paint was dripping everywhere as well) Was the can itself leaking?

I do not think I will buying this brand of paint again, regardless of its dirt-cheapness. Whatever the price difference was, I think I used up enough soap and nail polish remover to make the pricier paint worth my while if it sprays better.

----------------
Now playing: DeVotchKa - The Clockwise Witness
via FoxyTunes

Look on my scarf, ye Mighty, and despair... (part 3)

The soldering class this morning went fantastic, but I started to lose my voice about halfway through. I thought at the time it was just because I'd only brought a cup of tea that lasted barely a half hour into the 3-hour class, and I was talking pretty much the entire three hours straight, but it really didn't improve even after I got a soda. Then I went and got some more painting done, and the cool breeze picking up really didn't help. I'm thinking I may have caught a touch of the sore throat one of my co-workers had a week or so ago.

Regardless, feeling a bit out of it has slowed progress on the scarf a bit. I'm only up to 20 inches, though I think I can get it to a full 2 feet before bed. I was really hoping to be further in by now. At least this time I'm remembering to go through and sew in the ends as I change colors. Last scarf, I'm pretty sure it took me longer to sew all the ends in afterwards than it did to actually knit the thing.



I should get all my yarns together and print out another copy of the pattern so I can bring it along to work on during the traditional post-holiday dinner couch coma. I wonder what the record time for knitting a Dr. Who scarf is?

----------------
Now playing: Alice Cooper - Clowns Will Eat Me
via FoxyTunes

Look on my scarf, ye Mighty, and despair... (part 2)

Huh...was scrounging around for the next color in the sequence for the Scarf, and discovered that apparantly I'd started another scarf some time ago. Long enough ago that I didn't remember having started it...or these two single socks...or this other scarf...or that hideous sweater out of Lion Brand Homespun...

It seems I need to keep a better eye on my stash/projects. This is where Ravelry comes in handy, I would've forgotten about half the projects I have going at the moment without it.

I've just reached the one foot mark...I think 20 feet finished length may have been underestimating a bit...

(no FoxyTunes sig today - iheartmusic.com has a preview of Sounds of the Universe up!)

Look on my scarf, ye Mighty, and despair... (part 1)

Well, I was browsing the yarn stash, trying to think of some way to clear some of it out, and I came across the leftover yarn from my Dr. Who scarf. And I looked at it, and I thought to myself 'huh - I probably have enough here for another one'. And so I am...

Not sure if I'll keep this one, or if it'll end up being another present. I suppose it really just depends on when it gets finished.

4 inches down, 19 feet, 8 inches to go.....

----------------
Now playing: Jonathan Coulton (Portal) - Still Alive
via FoxyTunes

More random lists...

The five words that clear out most of my spam:

Replica
Oprah
Diet
Acai
Facebook

I'll take "Things That Can Go F*** Themselves" for $500, Alex.

Because I didn't have enough projects...

I realized recently that the 'play count' on iTunes isn't quite as useful as I'd like it to be in determining how much I actually like a song - a song that I've had on my playlist since January and have listed to 20 times isn't necessarily as popular as one that's been on there for three days and has 15 plays. What I need is an average plays/day count. Ideally, there would be something I could just plug into iTunes to accomplish this. I've found lots of iTunes add-ons, but none of them seem to do quite what I want (though the one to categorize your music by assigning colors to each song was interesting - a little synaesthetic, but interesting.). Thus, I go forth to fix up something in Excel to import my iTunes data into. In a perfect world, I'd have the time to write an actual plug-in (correction: in a perfect world, someone would have already written such a thing for me). And then I want to make some shiny little charts, and sift out little strange bits of data to play with. Because I'm just weird like that.

Also, we're now three days into Script Frenzy, and as you can see, I am busily coming up with anything and everything possible to distract me from actually writing something...

----------------
Now playing: Marilyn Manson - Personal Jesus
via FoxyTunes

More teeny tiny painted things

Or more accurately, more paint on the teeny tiny things.

Fronts:


Backs:
Next time I buy a figure, I'm going to set something up so I can do time-lapse pictures of me painting it. Now if I could just get my hands on a Witchalok mini...

----------------
Now playing: The Clash - London Calling
via FoxyTunes