Now playing: 10.17.2011

Reading: I decided to switch gears from China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (which, while having a lot of interesting aspects, has failed to keep my attention very well), so I started in on the second book in the A Song of Fire and Ice series. I imagine I'll probably switch back and forth between the two books as needed. I'm really not this bad at reading books (I have a infrequently used B.A. in English from an average Ohio university to back that up, thankyouverymuch), but lately I've been taking on some books that are outside of my normal genres of interest, and sometimes it's been a little bit of a struggle.

Eating: Last night I made a banana oatmeal walnut bread using a recipe from the internets that sadly I can no longer find. It turned out pretty tasty, although I wish I had used maybe one more banana (I like my banana bread to be extra banana-y).

Crafting / Watching: As I've mentioned, a large percentage of any type of free time that I have lately is going towards making things for Handmade Arcade. So here's a cute little deer that I just recently finished, along with The Wonder Years. Thanks, Netflix.

Doing: This past Saturday, the Steel City Derby Demons had their season-closer bout and I was asked to announce. I've announced at scrimmages in the past, but never in front of a ton of people, so it was a bit nerve-wracking. I rustled up an appropriate Moxie Crimefighter costume (a lot of it is my Batgirl costume from last Halloween) and did the best I could. If there were awards for this sort of thing, I would probably win "Most Awkward Announcer Ever" but apparently I pull off awkward well (or probably people are just nice), because I got some kind words from people after the bout. It was a super awesome time too, with double wins for the SCDD.

A visitor

Today someone came to hang out on our back porch...

... the biggest praying mantis I've ever seen in my entire life!

She was surprisingly relaxed with letting me get up close for some glamour shots.

In fact, she was actually very curious and kept leaning over the railing to wave her creepy saw hands at me.

And then we had a party!

(seriously - look how big!! eep!)

Sunday adventures

So today Eric and I had a rare day off together and it was a lovely day, so we went out to enjoy the city.

First we went to our local watering hole, Remedy, for some lunch and to watch some of the Steelers game.

Jagermeister has an awesome logo, it's too bad it's so gross.

By halftime it was pretty obvious the game was in the bag, so we took the bus down to the Strip District. My shoes have fake blood on them from a Halloween party I went to last night.

We decided to go to the Heinz History Center, because I had never been before.

There we learned all about the cultural importance of ketchup,

saw this amazing Terrible Towel made out of t-shirts and trading cards and iron on letters and all sorts of awesome stuff,

played some mini golf,

saw not one, but TWO clearly excellent cats,

blocked some goals, and..

... wait, who is this?

And then we walked over to The Beerhive where I enjoyed a very delicious Founder's Breakfast Stout. Hooray!

Pop-in

Hello hello! Sorry it has been all crickets n'at around here, lately if I am not at work I have been crafting my butt off. I have been spending a lot of my free time just trying to make stuff to sell at Handmade Arcade. Like this little diptych I made:

I found some images from a book about making shadow puppets, and I thought they would look great as an art piece.

The hand features a rarely-seen second stitch: satin stitch (pretty much everything I do is in backstitch). The shadow is an applique that I stitched around the outside. Also, how hard is that hand position? I tried to show it to my girls at work today and they were all, "What is that?" And then one of them made her shadow puppet monster mouth eat the poor bunny.

PS: Totally unrealted to my own crafting, but check out this amazing quilt I found at the thrift store the other day:

I love the bright pink on the white, it's so punchy and high contrast. Also, it features some really lovely hand quilting (click that picture and check it out really really big - it's a very neat design). It always bums me out a little bit to see something so awesome that was obviously handmade by someone with a great deal of love and care at the thrift store. Sadly, it was $100, so it was out of my budget.

Exciting news!

I was accepted into this year's Handmade Arcade! I applied last year and didn't get in and decided to try again this year because, you know, why not? And I'm in! Holy moly! This is my first really big big big craft fair, and I'm SUPER excited! 

Now I'm off to go craft! I'm going to be a busy bee until November!

And It's So Quiet

Recently when cleaning out the staff office at my job, I came across this book - And It's So Quiet, by Lynne Glasner and Marilyn Thypin. It's part of a "Vocational Readers" series, and tells an exciting story of a teenage boy with rock and roll dreams...

Until one day, his mom started totally harshing his mellow.

Dubious, Rick ponders how he will balance his dynamic rocker lifestyle with an average joe job.

So, Rick gets a job as a janitor, or a "porter," as it is called in this book. After several days of dutiful instruction under the watchful eye of Teddy, Rick is taught complex tasks such as using a duster...

and a mop! Well heck, maybe this is kind of fun!

They also perform other common custodial tasks, like emptying ashtrays. You know, the ones in the middle of an office. Like you have in your office, right? What do you mean I can't smoke at my desk?

They even encounter some bizarre, room-sized machine called a computer and speculate over its possible uses.

Sure, Teddy, keep tellling yourself that. 

After a seven page spread about how to use a floor waxer, Rick begins to thrive at his job, eventually earning the trust of Teddy enough to use this 400 pound vacuum cleaner unsupervised.

They discover some more confounding technology... Machines, who needs 'em!

And then Rick enjoys a ride home. As his band is not mentioned at all in the last half of the book, one can only assume that he has given up his dreams of rockstardom and has settled on being a janitor.

So there you go, kids. Now shut up and get a job.

Laugh it up, fuzzball.

This week has been weird emotionally because while it was awesome because Eric and I celebrated five fantastic years together, it also marks one year since our cat Chewbacca died.

We had Chewie since the day he was born under my living room couch. His wretched mother, TK-421, was a stray cat that we were attempting to put through a foster program. When we first entered her in, we expressed our concern that she might be pregnant. They said they'd do tests at her first vet appointment... she had the kittens under the couch the night before her appointment.

He was dubbed Chewbacca because 1) he wasn't white like his mother or siblings, and 2) Eric actually had to rescue him from his gross amniotic sack because, well, TK-421 was not a very good mother. So the orange kitten had a life debt to Eric. (In case you were curious, his siblings are named Tauntaun and Wampa.)

Last summer he very suddenly and rapidly got sick due to what we later suspected was FIP. After several incredibly stressful weeks of doing everything we could to try to get him better, it eventually became clear that there wasn't anything we could do.

The day we had him put to sleep was incredibly hard - I had never experienced anything like it before, such an incredible feeling of loss and helplessness in regards to something that I never expected to have such an emotional impact. After stumbling out of the vet's office, we numbly walked into a bar around the corner from our house for a drink to sit and sorrow over.

We belly up to the bar and order a beer and a shot of whiskey each. The bartender, one of the many Yinzer men who look exactly like my dad, looks at us - slouched, with red faces and puffy eyes  - and says, "Okay, I'll give you this one drink, but that's all."

Then we had to explain that, no, we were not in fact completely hammered in the middle of the day...

Godspeed, good buddy.

Anniversary haiku

Today marks five years

So we went on a picnic

Gosh, he is so cute.

A photo an hour

10:30 AM - What I wake up to every morning - AD staring at me like if I don't get out of bed and feed her she very well may die at any moment. Icebat is less impatient.

11:30 AM - Trying to figure out the fusebox. Why aren't I better at practical things?

12:30 PM - Lunch! Spinach salad with swiss, slivered almonds, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, and balsamic vinaigrette.

1:30 PM - Taking some pictures of kids clothing I've stitched on recently. Not having ready access to a child, I've had to be creative in my models. This is Radar, and I've had him since I was a baby. He's named after Big Bird's bear and was made for me by the same woman who made my wedding dress.

2:30 PM - I took Eric to work at 2, but then he realized he didn't have to be at work for an hour, so we went and had a beer at Brian & Cooper's, which is this super sketchy place in Friendship where you can buy six packs of beer (which is like finding a unicorn in this town). Also, it is apparently both a convenience store and a bar, and by bar, I mean you can stand in this area of weird laminate counters and drink the beers that you get there.

3:30 PM - I forgot to take a picture because I was too busy at Joann Fabrics being completely annoyed that none of the coupons I had been hoarding could be all that useful because everything I needed for Halloween costuming was already on sale but not as good of a sale as it would have been with coupons. Jerks!

4:30 PM - Holy crap, is that a Picasso? (At Goodwill)

5:30 PM - One of my favorite signs ever. Pittsburgh sammich laundromat? Sure, why not?

6:30 PM - Rain.

7:30 PM - Derby practice.

8:30 PM - I would have loved to take a picture of the corn and kale that I wanted to get at Giant Eagle, but since they were out of both, I instead took a picture of this creepy sex-toy-lookin' dude from Yo Gabba Gabba enjoying the giant wine vending machine.

9:30 PM - When I got home, I did nothing interesting except cook a rather uninteresting dinner (that did not involve kale or corn, sadly), and mopped the kitchen floor, so here's a picture of AD to bring everything full circle. Perhaps I should wake her up and demand food.