The Omnigraphic Blogopticon

Maybe Can't Blame This On The Cat

2011-08-28T09:36:00.007-04:00

Goodbye Irene. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

We got nearly eight hours of 35-45 mph sustained winds with gusts of 70 mph, something like six inches of rain, then it all abruptly stopped around 10:30pm and with the very occasional whoosh of rain and wind. Due to some magical meteorological anomaly, or perhaps The Vortex, we had stronger winds than Newport News did despite the eye passing right over them or near them or something. Somehow the power stayed on in my block so I have AC today and they say the water coming out of the faucets is OK to drink. Like it was ever OK to drink in the first place.

The winds sent a huge cloud of stink and haze up our way Friday morning from the Dismal Swamp fire. It's now completely out so I don't have to wonder if a sofa in my building is smoldering every morning when I leave for work. Probably had something to do with that foot of rain they got last night.

The worst was when the giant weatherman came along and slapped his hand right over Richmond. I hate when that happens.

Since my apartment windows face a church wall I had to go outside early this morning and wander around a bit to see what we had going on. The power is out everywhere so it's eerily quiet even for a Sunday morning. Except for the cicadas. How the hell did cicadas not get drowned in the storm? Do they have snorkels??? Did the rain wash new ones out of the ground during the night? Damn things are louder than my air conditioner.

There's a park a block or so east of my apartment and storms (or giant weathermen) usually knock a few trees down every year. There was a pack of homeless dudes on the other side of the park partying like hell so I didn't go any closer.

A casual walk a block or so west of my apartment shows more storm (or giant weatherman) damage and it's pretty minor compared to other parts of Richmond. I went out without coffee so I didn't go as far west as I had intended. I knew there was a huge tree snapped in two a few blocks further up but I kept having to walk out into the street to avoid tree branches and generators on the sidewalks, but then I'd have to get out of the street to avoid all the lookyloos in SUVs. See, I don't count as a lookyloo because it's my neighborhood.

The Spotted Thing was less than impressed by the whole thing. I guess if he couldn't bite it or knock it off the wall he couldn't be bothered with it.

Note added 12:26pm: Hurricane Irene has shifted The Vortex to another room!

Novel Hell

2011-08-27T10:46:00.004-04:00

Randomly, here's giant monster Grady checking out the pile of notes I've scribbled to myself at work, stuffed in my pocket, then can't decipher when I come home and sit down to write. He's no help whatsoever because he inevitably tramples his way across the keyboard and I have several of his paragraphs I have to delete. See, he's not terribly good with dialogue and his grammar is haphazard at best.

Oh, and tropical storm winds are beginning to roll garbage cans down the alley because some butthead forgot to put theirs away last night. The doors on my floor are rattling during wind gusts so I suspect there is a window open on one of the other floors but I can't be bothered to go down the stairwell to check.

And for any of you who were concerned about The Vortex (you know who you are), the earthquake did no harm to it whatsoever and brooms still balance. The Vortex also still plays hell with Ocicats' little pea brains and renders them immobile when they sit in that very spot. Eerie, no? No.

Bored With Hurricane Irene Already.

2011-08-27T09:02:00.005-04:00

Nine a.m. and not much tropical storm action yet, though the entire city descended upon the local supermarkets like lemmings and bought up all the bread and milk on Thursday. And creamer. I went in Friday morning on the way to work to get coffee for the weekend and saw that they'd wiped the bread section out completely and bought up all the good creamer. You know, the creamer they're discontinuing so I couldn't get the last couple jars and hoard them like a crazy person. Curses.

Don't know why people insist on buying milk when there's a storm coming because the power inevitably goes out. Might as well pour half that gallon jug down the drain first thing. What do I care? I just wanted my fake-ass vanilla caramel creamer, dagnabbit.

On the other hand, I still have cable so I get to watch weathermen getting blown around for a few hours. Instead of putting those little gale-force flags up they should just check the conditions by seeing how many weather guys get blown away. "It's a Two Al Roker storm out there!"

I'm feeling sure that I must've stolen that line from some comedian a few years ago.

This is the extent of my earthquake damage. One old plastered-over 3 ft crack that re-cracked. With every aftershock it gets a couple inches longer. Not my problem because I don't own the building.

Oh, and don't make eye contact with the evil smirking Edwardian child in the painting. Whoops, too late!

Apparently I can sleep through an earthquake. I've claimed that for years but never had the chance to put it to use. Early Thursday morning there was a 4.5 aftershock that I completely ignored. I'm sure if I had woken up I would've blamed it on the cat and yelled at him because having something to blame stuff on is the main thing cats are good for. Broken bric-a-brac, weird smells, that inexplicable sound in the middle of the night, blame the cat. Unless there's a guy around.

Grady says, "What, me? I'm spotted and I'm cute!" Ha! He bites like crazy and hurls his 17-lb. bulk around like a drunken fratboy. Earthquake? Feh. Sometimes I think I have a wild animal loose in the house.

Crappity-Crap-Crap

2011-08-24T19:37:00.008-04:00

I still seem to be inexplicably slogging away at that soul-sucking hellbeast of a novel. *shakes fist feebly at computer screen* I'll defeat you!!!

Dammit, it's laughing at me! Make it stop laughing!!!

Each circle on this map represents craters left after that fleet of invading aliens used Virginia for target practice. Notice that they couldn't be bothered to blow more than one hole in Danville but they Swiss-cheesed the hell out of D.C. I'm guessing they tried to drive in D.C. traffic and just couldn't take it any more.

Oh, and thanks for leaving me here on this shithole planet, guys! Merci buckets.

Spent a few minutes yesterday doing what everybody else on the East Coast was doing--standing out on the sidewalk looking for the gas main explosion or the freight train derailing or any of the other things that happen way more often than earthquakes around here. I suppose we're lucky we didn't get beaned by any shoddily-fastened Victorian decorative doo-dads while we were out there because those are usually the first things that come down when the wind blows harder than 20 mph.

It was pretty helpful to have local newscasters tell everyone several hours later that we all should've stayed inside and crawled under a desk, like we were going to remember fifty years from now when the next one happens. Of course I was standing out front touching a rattling old plate-glass window. Why? Because it was awesome, that's why. Not like I don't get to handle huge sheets of glass every damn day at work but they're not usually shaking. Anyhow, we were way more concerned that a whole creaky old building would come down on top of us to worry about crap from the outside of the building yanking itself loose and amusingly jamming itself in the tops of our heads.

I don't have any photos of earthquake damage but I do, however, have a photo of what last night's 4.2 magnitude aftershock did to a 17-lb. ocicat. What did it do, you say? It knocked him right on his lardy ass, that's what it did.

Somewhere around here I have a map that shows how far north smoke from the Great Dismal Swamp fire has drifted up to but I can't be arsed to find it. Just pretend you care that smoke from a couple hundred miles away stinks up Richmond worse than usual every few days or so. Last week it had drifted as far as D.C. and damn if they didn't think they were special because of it. Of course our earthquake made them way extra-special, at least until the aliens shut them the hell up.

Hurricane Irene (Door #3 in this Unholy Trifecta of Crap we got going on) should put out the fire and sweep the smoke away Saturday but I don't have a map for that either. It'll also be another chance for hundreds of shoddily-fastened Victorian decorative doo-dads to rain down upon the populace. I'll probably be standing out in the rain watching.

Instead, I have this dandy map of future alien targets, stolen by me when I accidentally hacked into the mothership's main computer while trying to Google a recipe for Russian Haired Sausage. Yes, I am fully aware that "Russian Haired Sausage" sounds vaguely like porn, but everything on the internets sounds like porn.

Crafty Hell

2011-05-08T17:37:00.007-04:00

Uhhh, apparently I've been sucked away for the past six months to some other dimension by a crappy horror-comedy novel/shitfest I seem to think I'm writing. I've slapped together like 275 pages of pure dreck thus far, but considering the amount of total garbage I've been reading lately that's gotten published I probably shouldn't have any problems selling the fucking thing. I am quite possibly delusional at this point.

Whatever. More on the progress of the 275-page soul-sucking thing later.

Ladies just have way too much damn time on their hands in the South. No, I didn't make this, whatever the hell it is. It hangs on a bathroom door at my parents' house, possibly as a reminder that Southern crafters should maybe find other hobbies before they start making lace toilet brushes, false teeth cozies, and knitted doilies for hemorrhoid cream tubes. It's bad enough they like to crochet toilet paper dolls and fashion decorative fish out of bars of soap and tulle.

On the other hand, I did make this thing. Those googly eyes will follow you to your grave. It's actually a re-do of a pillow I made years ago. A friend had a vile little black and red velvet cat pillow she'd found at the thrift store and I just had to have one so I traced the cat on some newspaper. Unfortunately I only had some nasty brown fake fur and a blue print fabric to make mine.

It started coming un-stitched a couple years ago and the flowers and ribbon came off but I never got around to fixing it. A couple weeks ago I found a huge bag of fiber batting at the thrift store and hauled out some scraps of red corduroy and black velour (both from the thrift store), traced the horrible brown kitty and made another pillow. Everything from the pink ribbon and white flowers to the googly eyes came from random thrift store grab bags over the years. Except for the ladybugs. Those came off a robe or something my grandma made for me when I was like six.

The Spotted Thing is less than impressed and he's trying out a little cat stink-eye on me.

I keep intending to post new knit patterns, but I haven't really done any new things for the past few months. I did manage to finish the gray lace/cable knit stockings and I'll have the pattern up at the Knit-O-Rama in a bit, but I can't seem to get much further than one-and-a-half black lace stockings, mostly because I'm pissed off at the yarn. Cotton has no fucking memory whatsoever so it sucks as a stocking material unless it has some Spandex or elastic in it. Pfffttt. So I'll most likely just photograph the one for the pattern, then re-knit the pair in wool for my own deviant amusement.

I promise you they look way better worn than they do flopped out on the bed like that. Thee was no point in posting the black lace stocking photo I took because there's a way better one here.

I started back on that leaf purse last week. When I run out of plot or my characters won't dance, monkey, dance like they're supposed to I've been stringing beads. I'm almost 2/3 of the way through the chart and will be thrilled all to pieces when I'm done with it because I've got a couple little ones I want to make with roses and such. They'll probably be about half as wide as this one.

Beady crap, left to right. Amber bracelet from Bead & Button magazine June 2009, black and hematite leaf bracelet with purple berry clusters and magnetic clasp, amber/purple/black crocheted lariat necklace six feet long. These I made probably back in September or October before I got burned out by beads and that damn (snort) "novel" came along.

Meh. Back to it.

Bored and Feeling Random

2010-12-13T12:48:00.006-05:00

I found this whilst meandering around reading some online crap about Skylab for absolutely no logical reason that I can think of. I like the detail. It's as though it was a stamped out using a potato carved in a jr. high art class. I'm also impressed by the notice to "Look out below".

Annoyingly, neither I nor my mother seemed interested enough in Skylab's fiery death plunge (actual newspaper quote) to save any clippings. I've got a whole box of old clippings, most of which are moronic things like Danville getting in the Guinness Book for playing the longest softball game or photos from a flood that happened in the 1940s but the local paper felt the need to reprint it because there wasn't enough real news that day. But not a scrap on Skylab.

Pfffftttt.

On to the randomness. Ahhh, the wonders of randomness. The internets are just littered with randomness and I'm inexplicably feeling the need to add to it, plus I'm much too lazy to take new pictures of Santa Wino. I kinda have to rummage around through some boxes to find him.

When you wash your ocicat, remember to use plenty of fabric softener and put the dryer on the "low" setting, otherwise the damn things shrink, and nobody wants a shrunken ocicat. Shrunken ocicats are of no use whatsoever.

Dunno. Maybe a shrunken ocicat might make a better ring-toss target.

What's this? A newly discovered Jackson Pollock?

Nope, just a poop-covered car I spotted on the way to the bus one morning. See, robins either migrate here from up north and stay for the winter or they stop by for a quick poop-fest before they head further south. It's funny because it's not my car.

Welcome to Zombietown

2010-09-05T11:17:00.006-04:00

I finally got my Sims loaded again, mainly because the books I've been reading lately have sucked an incredible amount of ass. Bored? You bet your bippy.

Note to self: Do another installment of Sev's Book Club, but with really shitty vampire novels.

When we last visited the Sims, the evil Dr. Ebenezer Schult had brought the desperately randy Edward Wharton up to this century from whatever generic Victorian era they have in Sim City. Edward, having already plowed through all the ladies in his own time, went at it full-steam in this really random 20th century I've managed to cobble together. After some strange Sims "woo-hoo" with creepy Cassandra Goth, who then left him for a life of stalking, groping, and ultimately terrifying every male celebrity in Sim City, he settled with diner waitress Maggie and their dorky child Eddie, Jr.

Edward is bored to tears and Ebenezer can now go on to other things, like Evil Plans.

But first, he has to get his own house in order. Back in the 18-whatevers, while he was busy beating the snot out of Edward, his lovely wife Abigail would happily practice her violin. Or at least until her crinolines caught fire and the Grim Reaper paid a house call.

Once he got Edward out of his way, desperately lonely Ebenezer then built himself a cast-iron female companion. Meet Acme Princess 1883, named after the coal stove he scavenged some of her parts from. She clanks a bit and tends to rust in the rain, but they're both pretty happy. Domestic bliss ensues.

Now that everything is all hunky-dory, Ebenezer can now concentrate on his Evil Plans, like cleaving this world into twain or whatever it is Victorian mad scientists tend to do. I think it must be a union thing because when they're not cranking out poisonous gasses they're trying to split the planet like a melon.

Evil Plans usually mean loud explosions, spare human parts, lightning, and much Evil Laughter. But what does one do with all the great vats of poisonous liquids produced as a by-product of Evil Plans? You could try storing them in metal drums, but those tend to pile up after a while, plus the blasted things have a tendency to leak.

"Hmmmm," he thinks. "No one is using that abandoned cemetery. I could toss all those drums in there and no one would be the wiser!" Right.

Cue the 45 Grave song "Party Time" and you get the picture.

See, this cemetery hasn't been in use since 18-whenever-the-hell-it-was, and sometimes a frustrated Edward visits to see which long-dead friends he remembers. He was quite fond of Lady Parkhurst, as you can see in the flashback. Not so much now that she and her reanimated husband Lord Parkhurst have crawled out of their graves. Awwww, he's all grumpy and has turned his back on her. You really shouldn't be so damned picky, Edward. Ladies can't always keep their youthful good looks.

And now zombies are rampaging through Sim City! Uhhh, buying drinks and ordering dinner and stuff.

Technology In Action, 1983

2010-08-23T11:00:00.014-04:00

I like how this ad from my local newspaper (March 1983) shows its Vision of the Future by using some crap font from the mid-1970s.

And the illustration of the dot-matrix printer paper is pretty slammin', too. See how it shows some rad futuristic action by having the stack of paper thrust and curl itself at you? That stuff prints all by itself! Because that's what's supposed to happen in the future--paper prints stuff all by itself, robots clean the house after you teleport to work, and children are grown hydroponically.

Sit back and enjoy this brief glimpse of The Future from my 1983 high school yearbook. In The Future you fly to school using jetpacks and absorb knowledge by rubbing Rubik's Cubes all over yourselves.

Oh, and everything smells like plastic and all the music sounds exactly like the Kraftwerk song "Computer World". Really.

Since it is after all 1983, we offer a Ghostbusters quote: "I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought" because, ya know, I live in The Future and it's all pretty horrifying here what with all the teleporting robots and plastic children and all.

Holy Crap, 1983--pt. 3

2010-08-16T15:21:00.015-04:00

Before you think that 1983 JC Penney catalog was only full of leftover 1970s comedy van crap, check out these cheapo vaguely New Wave-ish sunglasses. There was one tiny page of brightly colored, barely fun fashions for teen girls in this catalog and most everything else in the juniors' section was all very very preppy or secretary-ish and every bit of it was polyester or acrylic and it all stunk on ice. Picking school clothes out of this catalog sucked so much ass when I was in high school it wasn't even funny.

Why should anyone care?

Because I still have a purple pair. I recall they were better as a hairband than as sunglasses. These were rescued from that early '80s time capsule/storeroom of crap I'd left at my parents' house some years back that I hadn't gotten around to tossing. I didn't actually get mine from Penney's, they came from a trip I took with a high school friend to Myrtle Beach I think in 1982 or '83 and she accused me of buying them solely to embarrass her. I think she said the same thing about the spray-on copper junk I used to put in my hair and when I admitted I liked the band KISS in the 6th grade.

I was never embarrassing on purpose, it just happened.

As an added bonus, we have a shirt I had to have back in '82-83 which came from a tiny clothing shop that occasionally had hipper things than the other crap stores I was dragged to and made to shop for school clothes in. Note the boxy shape, asymmetrical fastening & collar, and the fashionable early-80s shoulder flanges. Bitchin'! Strangely enough, it still fits, though it's about 4 inches too short at the waist. I can't imagine that I've grown 4 inches taller since high school.

As soon as I can get some metal snaps I'm totally drafting a more fitted one in black, since I already have the fabric. I used to have an identical blue shirt that I would layer underneath the burgundy one that I think got tossed mid-80s. See, a black one with slightly bigger snaps could function both as Industrial or Victorian Mad Scientist gear.

Yes, it can. Shut up.

I had to have the shirt mostly because it reminded me of the shirt Mike Score is wearing in the 1982 Flock of Seagulls video "I Ran" and I think asymmetrical snappy-fastening shirts were all the rage back in the day. Pretty much asymmetrical anything was hep back in the early '80s. Haircuts, clothes, makeup, one long earring, belts that were 4" wide on one side and 1/2" on the other. Crap like that.

I'll get the 1980s out of my system soon enough and get back to an 1880s beaded watch chain I've been dying to make, and thread on a few more rows on the antique beaded purse.

Or take a damn nap.

Holy Crap, 1983--pt. 2

2010-08-16T11:00:00.015-04:00

After my last post on Unspeakable 1980s Van Horrors, my brother wanted to know, randomly I hope, if there was a van toilet available. No. Despite there being all sorts of solid-wood van furniture, van sinks, a van backgammon table, and fancy brass van track lighting, there wasn't a van toilet to be had. So whizz away in that stainless steel colonial-style van sink to your heart's content!

See, there's even a colonial-style van hutch to house all your fine van china and Grandma's antique van silverware, and a skimpy little van clothes closet in case your old lady has been hasslin' you about not hanging up your threads. There's even a teeny little van fridge to put your Bud and Boone's Farm in.

Here's a set of really hoity-toity solid pine junk--a van hutch and a van wardrobe with a fussy little valance that's supposed to fit around the ceiling. Makes me wonder if there isn't a canopied van bed in the catalog somewhere and I haven't run across it yet. Don't ask me where in the van you're supposed to install all this crap. You almost have to pull a second van behind the first to fit it all in.

Vans. Meh. I know nothing of vans. Now pickup trucks, we had those in spades. I know all about pickup trucks. When I was looking for the aforementioned mythical van toilet for my brother I found a whole section on pickup truck accessories. Oh, bestill my heart! *swoons sarcastically*

You might think this is an old sofabed being utilized as an extra seat. You would be totally wrong. It's a brand-new sofabed made just for the back of a pickup truck. A sofabed. For the back of a pickup truck. Outside. Really.

For what it's worth the sofabed is covered in "plaid Herculon(R) olefin fabric" which unfortunately they don't say you can hose down or run through a car wash if need be.

Being from the South I have on multiple occasions seen real sofas being misused in this manner, usually when the sofa is too ratty for the den but still "too good" to be thrown away so they wind up being used for extra truck seating on long trips when they're not being used as porch furniture. Normally they are occupied by lardy redneck male offspring of all ages, usually shirtless and sunburnt, all waving/making faces/flipping rude gestures at you as you drive behind them. I won't even speculate on the carnival of smells it produces after it's been caught in the rain during a fishing trip or has had several generations of hound dogs and filthy children being born and/or conceived on it.

When I win that Oscar for Best Script Assistant For a Late-Night Infomercial you betcha I'm showing up in a pickup truck with lit-up running boards. See, it says "for a Grand Entrance" right there in the catalog. I mean you can't get much more Grand than pulling up to the curb in a pickup truck with light-up running boards and a plaid sofabed in the back.

Holy Crap, 1983

2010-08-15T18:17:00.014-04:00

While I was rummaging around through those old Sears catalogs I found some horribly creepy furniture in a JC Penney Fall and Winter 1983, way tackier than I remembered. Because I know next to nothing about 1983 van culture I had initially assumed that "van furniture" was some kind of clumsy name for a style of lounge seating or even a type of nasty fabric, and that the above photo was a particularly butt-ugly den. Noooooo. That's the interior of some jive turkey's Love Machine. Notice the sofa in the back--it opens into a bed.

Ewwwwwww.

Heavens to Murgatroid, you could even buy solid wood van cabinets and shit. In colonial style. Who the hell had a colonial style van anyhow, George Washington? Look, a bar and a sink! I'm guessing the sink could double as an emergency toilet if your old lady has sucked down too much Boone's Farm.

Shut up. Don't try and tell me that sink doesn't remind you of some sort of institutional toilet.

Crushed velvet curtains with macrame tiebacks. These really defy description. In fact, they pretty much make me want to weep uncontrollably.

Fun With Sears & Roebuck

2010-08-15T15:11:00.017-04:00

This is something I've been wanting to play with for a while. I've got a pile of old Sears & Roebuck catalogs and a few early reprints and I thought I would pick out one item from say, the 1983 catalog, and then follow it back to 1897, so long as Blogger isn't being all cranky-ass and eating my photos again.

Don't know what's up with that.

So to begin with I've picked out a stereo system, Sears high-end-ish. I could have easily done snowboots or pickle jars or mysterious products for your "lady days" but I went with stereos. You'll thank me later. Nobody wants to see endless images of snowboots unless you've got a fetish I don't want to know about and I'm saving the girly products for another time.

Our first example is from the 1983 Sears Wishbook. I know. You're saying $679.99 isn't much, but consider it's 1983 money, so it's kinda like a couple thousand bucks or something. You could shag carpet your rec room, get bubble windows for your van, and buy water beds for both your old ladies for $679.99 and still have some bread left for enough Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill to get them both drunk with.

Really.

"As the tone arm softly floats down to the record, prepare yourself for great stereo reproduction thanks to our magnetic cartridge. And when its done, don't get up, the tone arm will automatically return." Ha. I have a ton of vinyl that has this closed loop at the end, probably manufactured as a cruel joke, which makes the thing turn around and around and around until you finally get up and change it by hand.

Sears Spring through Summer 1965. "Sound is instant--unlike tubes, transistors need no warm up, go to work at once." I wish they'd shown this one with the lid opened because they're sorta cool inside. My parents had one of these cabinet stereos (different model) for years and I remember playing the Talking Heads Remain In Light on it really loud in the early 80s. I'm sure it sounded like ass, but considering what the stereo my brother and I shared sounded like I didn't have anything much for comparison.

And $279.95 is like thousands in 2010 money. You could purchase a very nice vacation home on Mars for $279.95, and they'd throw in the jetpack for free.

Sears Spring and Summer 1949. Damn, $375.00 is like $10,000 today! I bet you could buy several WWII Army Air Corp surplus bombers for $375.00, back in the day.

"Help yourself to exciting fun! By magnetizing a durable stainless steel wire, you can record radio programs, disc records or from microphone." Recording on wire has got to be kinda like magic, at least until you want to play it back a couple years later and you realize everyone on the planet has switched to magnetic tape.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. 1902. Remember kids, $75.00 was almost $100,000 in those days. You could buy a couple of houses with $75 and have cash left over for some horsehair parlor furniture.

This particular model has "...one 42-inch monster amplifying brass horn, doubling or tripling the sound which can be obtained even from this wonderfully loud and brilliant machine..." So, what you're saying is the neighbors will be pounding on the walls and calling the police when you crank this puppy up? If they didn't already hate "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" they will now.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1897. $25.00 was like a million bucks.! In fact, $25.00 was the entire yearly budget of NASA in 1897.

This one is shown without its fancy horn, but it does come with a bottle of oil and a screwdriver, perhaps for when you invite the Tin Man over and he has a little too much Boone's Farm. And the less said about such available Graphophone hits as "Darky Shuffle" the better.

None More Leaves

2010-08-15T10:21:00.007-04:00

I officially have enough leaves on my bracelet now, so I can shut the hell up about it. The damned thing is now crammed so full of leaves it looks like something you'd leave on the curb for the trashmen* during fall leaf collection or perhaps a branch from one of the drought-ridden trees on my block. Last count is 68 leaves, and 7 strange round, globby things that I'd put on in the first round with the mistaken idea that it would fill everything out. For comparison check out the wimpy version.

(picture that Blogger keeps eating should be placed here)

How many more leaves do you think I could shove in there? The answer is none. None more leaves. Perhaps a globule or two, but none more leaves.

Now I can go back to crocheting the beady antique purse. Since it's been much too nasty and humid to count and thread teeny seed beads accurately I've done a whole four rows since my last photo in July. I should have been done long before now. I had gotten a pretty good head of steam at the beginning, but then the heat came and I've only done the Leaf Orgy Bracelet and made about three dozen false starts on a knitted vest I'm designing. Oh, and I've spent hour upon hour perusing bead magazines for Shit I'll Order the Beads For But Won't Get Started On. At least beads are cheap.

*No, I don't mean the band The Trashmen. (pause) Or do I?

Three Minutes to Midnight

2010-08-07T19:49:00.004-04:00

While we're snickering at nuclear annihilation, or just maybe some minor glowing in the dark, here's my June, 1950 copy of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Despite its snazzy cover it's pretty dull going. No comics or anything. Not even a page of Science Goofs, you know, sort of like the humor pages in Reader's Digest.

It was also completely lacking in any sort of instruction on the care and manufacture of atomic devices, which doesn't advance my plans for World Domination one whit.

Atomic Science, my ass.

Sheet of Crap

2010-08-07T18:52:00.012-04:00

This is another piece of crap I neglected to throw out when I was clearing out some stuff at my parents' house. This was a brochure I saved from a interminably dull family road trip we took way back in the mid 80s. I've blotted most of it from my memory, except for the part where one of my cousins got carsick within the first hour or so.

Note how the brochure is for the Three Mile Island Visitors Center, rather than for the nuclear plant itself. If you think how horribly lame it was to visit the Visitors Center instead of the plant you'll realize just how fucking dull the whole exercise was. They didn't even sell any goddamn souvenirs. There were some keychains on display, but none for sale, as though this would be something incredibly cool they'd be selling sometime in the distant future, long after I was gone.

Those keychains were taunting me. Still are, to this day.

Oh, and Three Mile Island is pretty damn close to Hershey, PA, where all the chocolate bars are made. I like to think there was some glowing/fizzing/sparking chocolate made after the meltdown, but yet again I'd most likely be horribly disappointed.

I'm always disappointed. Horribly so.

WTF 1980s?

2010-08-02T10:48:00.005-04:00

When I hauled a bunch of crap back here from my parents' house I had intended to post some of it for your amusement. Of course that was several months ago and I'm just now getting to it. Booooo, I suck.

Our first entry is from a March 1980 TV Guide. Yes, I used to collect TV Guides when I was a kid. Shut up and get over it.

Anyhow, note how there's no cable TV. Note how several different channels have the same damn TV show on at the same damn time. Also note the sensitive, heartwarming nature of the Very Special Episode of Laverne & Shirley I've helpfully circled.

The mind reels and perhaps boggles a bit before giving up completely.

Icky!

2010-08-02T10:16:00.023-04:00

More on waterbugs vs. cockroaches. According to my bug books "waterbugs" and Palmetto bugs are all in reality the American Cockroach, who lives in the disgustingly humid south. I' d previously thought they didn't fly much around here. Ha. Ha ha ha. Apparently I don't look up at the streetlamps much at night, otherwise I would have seen the horrible things hurling themselves head-first into the bulbs and ricocheting off into the dark, just so they could put their nasty little bug feet all over me when I had my back turned.

Since they don't have those where I come from I'd been thinking they were just excessively clumsy moths, and yes, on particularly humid nights you can hear them flapping past and then clunk! right into a lamp. My only other excuse is that I can't see for shit at night. I can't drive in it, so don't expect me to correctly identify disgusting flying things.

The little teeny, regular-sized guys are German Cockroaches and everybody gots 'em. Awwwwww. Aren't they cute? Bleeeh.

But I think waterbugs get way bigger than 2". I've seen some that should be on a leash for crap's sake.

But just to prove that I really do like crawly things, here's some bug porn.

Growing Weary of Leaves

2010-08-01T16:32:00.002-04:00

I just ordered like 60 more leaves in maybe ten different shades of amber, topaz, and brown. Crap, you'd think the 30 I already had would have been enough, but noooooo, I have to have a whole pile of stinkin' leaves. I have to be the Leaf Queen. Dammit. Hopefully that will finally be enough and that I still won't have to cram in more round beads.

As you can see, Grady is completely bored by the whole leaf thing.

Blast and Damnation

2010-08-01T13:23:00.007-04:00

Not nearly enough fucking leaves. What appeared to be an orgiastic crapload of leafy goodness was merely a smattering, a veritable tease of leaves. Dammit to hell! Ordering more as we speak. Grrr.

Mmmmm, Leafy

2010-08-01T10:31:00.008-04:00

Since I've already had much, much too much coffee this morning I've started on a bracelet. I ordered a crapload of glass leaves in browns & purples, a sterling charm bracelet, and a flower toggle. I looked at the free Flower Patch Bracelet pattern at Fusion Beads and decided I'd rather have a bunch of dead leaves and brown berries instead of cheery spring flowers right now. I'm gearing up for fall, see.

I'm perpetually gearing up for fall. Screw summer. I don't own a bathing suit, or at least one that was made after 1955, and I burn to a crisp if I'm out in the sun for maybe ten minutes. I also can't abide the humidity so I don't go outdoors during the day if I can help it.

The bluish leaves are only that color on one side--the reverse is a really nice amber. I should have ordered three of everything instead of two so I'll most likely have to fill in with some dark amber drops and random amber beads. Later I'll dunk the whole mess in liver of sulfur to blacken up the metal.

The really filthy blue denim fabric isn't upholstery, it's the beanbag side of an ancient lap desk that I turn over and use to keep my seed beads from rolling away, so it's all splattered and dribbled with coffee. I keep looking for a good beading surface but all I'm finding right now are those crap things used for stringing beads. The next time I'm at the thrift store I should look for a tray that I can line with velour or something, or perhaps sew a flat beanbag that I could actually put in the wash when I've spilled too much crap on it.

Leaves! Can't you hear them rustling?

I do adore brown leaves, for no apparent sane reason. It seems to go way beyond the whole fall thing into a freakish leafy obsession. (That beady purse I'm working on is brown leaves as well.) Don't get me wrong, flowers are great in the right place and I like when my houseplants bloom, but by around June I'm usually pretty sick of the damn things and I'm ready for every pastel-colored, sweet-smelling thing to die already.

runs away to go play in the leaves

Find It Before I Kill It

2010-08-01T09:47:00.006-04:00

It's time to play another round of Find the Spotted Thing!

canned applause & fake cheering
This time Grady the Spotted Thing has very cleverly hidden himself among the furnishings but has left some obscure clues as to his whereabouts.

The first clue means that at least he's in the building.
...I think...

...getting warmer...

...nearly there...

Gotcha!

Uhhhh, oh my.

Nobody Around Here Understands My Potato

2010-07-31T20:33:00.021-04:00

As if to make up for my colossally god-awful, smelly, wasted, 105-degree weekend, this one promises to be totally made of win. The temp will be about 20 degrees cooler and maybe I'll get some beading or sewing done, or at least get some damn rest so I'm not sleepwalking again.

For some mutated win I only had to hop on a city bus and ride about ten blocks downtown last night to get the ball rolling. What's round on the ends and high in the middle? O-Hi-O!

See, DEVO. I was actually maybe only six feet from the stage. My camera is so technologically advanced that it can make close-ups look like I am all the way on the other side of the room. I am so lucky.

About 78% of my pictures either were blurry beyond recognition, very nearly completely black, or were quite nice snaps of some damn fool's arm with a camera way nicer than mine.

Purposefully weird lighting effect thingy, rather than my camera dying like a dog. Or perhaps it is dying. The thing was so hot by the time I got home I had to take out the batteries and memory card in case it caught fire, blew up, or slowly melted into a slightly more useful brick.

A large portion of my photos are plagued by giant heads. I'm hoping my own massive, alienesque head has engulfed someone else's perfect shots. Having a Big Irish Head could have its uses, and not for Good either. I'll totally use it for Evil.

Behold, a head so large it threatens to swallow an entire drum kit whole. Run!

Fe-fi-fo-fum! My personal favorite, Jerry emerging from the top of a giant's head. I like to think there's a steering wheel in there and he can drive the giant around and make it stomp on stuff. I specifically planted myself at left part of the stage to see a guy mostly hidden by a huge fucking head. Now I can die happy.

Artistically book-ended by two battling giant heads. See, I'm sure there's some arty-farty photography term for this but I was probably asleep at my desk or in the back of the classroom eating chalk or something.

And don't forget the screen captures from some seriously low-res video (shhh, don't ask about the sound). Remember kids, my camera was a whole $17 on eBay!

It's a Beautiful World. But only if you have a fancy camera like the guy in the bottom right frame.

Brains Melted and Stuck to the Side

2010-07-31T19:57:00.005-04:00

I have officially designated July as The Month of Suck, for the very reason illustrated below.

As you can see, last Saturday was a balmy 90 degrees Fahrenheit at 9:22 am, with the potential for 106 degrees. It fails to mention that the day before was at least 102 and that Sunday made it up to 105.

Awesome.

I can't be bothered to remember how many days over 99 degrees we had for the previous two weeks. No point, really, since the entire month of July has melted into one stinky blob. It's as though that page in the calendar has turned into a horrid combination of hot tar and sidewalk gum, delicately scented with sewer gas and bus vomit.

So no crafting whatsoever last weekend, despite all my plans--work on the beady purse, turn a giant black canvas messenger bag into a much smaller bag, sew something (I forget exactly what), and make some more jewelry.

Ha. Ha ha ha.

I only managed to stick to the sofa with a container of ice cream melting in my lap while reading those god-awful Twilight novels. Remind me to stick to mad scientists, zombies, the thing that ate the grandma, and Martians because I don't think I can take any more whiny emo vampires. I'm not sure who I want to punch first, Edward or Bella. Most likely Edward for all that "not 'til we're married" crapola.

Or I'll just klunk their heads together like Moe.

I would have polished all four of them off in less than a week if they had arrived in order like I'd hoped. At one point I had book 1 and 4 and had to fill in for a week with Jan Brunvand's The Study of American Folklore because, to paraphrase a line from The Big Bang Theory, I prefer Stephenie Meyer disappoint me in the order she had intended.

As an antidote I've started reading Koushun Takami's Battle Royale because now I'm in the mood for some Japanese students killing each other. I blame the wimpy vampires.

It's Really Stupid

2010-07-04T21:32:00.010-04:00

I forgot a stupid thing I was going to put into my last post. No, it wasn't another picture of a fat-assed spotted cat, or more needlework I haven't finished. Nope. It was something much more magical!

*makes magic sound*

Or not.

If you've ever lived in a large Southern city you've more than likely run across waterbugs. "Waterbug" is a nice, refined word for "giant cockroach". They're much, much bigger than the regular run-of-the-mill kind, but a tad smaller than Palmetto Bugs and thankfully don't seem to have the ability to fly. They're also not those things called waterbugs that twirl around in ponds and mind their own business.

When I first moved here I got all grossed out at the big-ass cockroaches stampeding through peoples' kitchens and behaving like they owned the place. "If you have waterbugs, you don't have cockroaches," they'd insist. Some even claimed waterbugs ate the cockroaches.

Ha. Ha fucking ha ha ha.

These morons didn't seem to want to own up to the fact that they had giant filthy mutant bugs waddling around all over everything they owned with their nasty bug feet. I swear some of these people named the fool things. In places like that you only drank their beer and left before anybody broke out the edibles because the thought of bug tracks in the butter was just too much to bear.

And yes, I have seen with my own eyes cockroaches and waterbugs cohabitating in an unclean and unnatural fashion.

So, a couple of weeks ago I came into work and saw a waterbug at least three inches long lying on its back on the floor. I walked past it a couple of times as I turned on the lights and shut off the alarm and figured it had got into some bug poison and keeled over and died during the night. "Good riddance, you fat bastard," I thought. I figured that if somebody stepped on it there would be a lot of guts squirted and tracked across the floor so I decided to get it by the antenna and fling it outside. My coworker had just pulled up and when I stepped outside I held it up and made a face. She said, "ewwwwwww!" from her Jeep and waited for me to get rid of the nasty thing.

I tossed it away and as soon as it hit the sidewalk it rocketed back towards me. The only thing I could think of was that I didn't want bug guts on my shoe so I kicked it away instead of stomping the life out it, and of course it galloped back towards me like a rabid dog. While I'm kicking and yelling "gaaah!!!" my coworker is shrieking "ewww!" from her Jeep. I yelled and kicked it away from me about four times in a troublingly insane little dance before it finally changed direction and disappeared between some cobblestones, probably lying in wait for its next victim. Holy crap. I was sure it would ambush me when I took out the trash and hit me over the head with a lead pipe.

Then it would crawl on me with its nasty cockroach feet. Ewwwwwww.

I'm guessing the damned thing was lounging in the air conditioner, on its back like Grady, and I had to come along and wake it up. Brrrrr!

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the scary illustration above. I've had that lying around for a couple of months now and I've never had a good reason to use it. Not that this post is a good reason.

Zzzzzzzzzz.

2010-07-04T15:08:00.022-04:00

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Snoresnort...wha-what?

Lemme alone. I'm sleeping.

Lately, I've been having to get up earlier than usual, work my ass off, then come home and stay awake just long enough to barely cook something for dinner, then I'm fast asleep on the sofa. I usually turn the computer on when I come in the door, then I fall asleep, get up a couple hours later and put on my pajamas, turn the computer back off, and go to bed. So, instead of not working enough hours I'm now working entirely too many hours, or just enough to cause me to sleepwalk.

Besides the sleepwalking, the next-to-best part are all the weekend plans I make for e-mails, things I'm going to sew up or patterns I'm going to finally write down and post, or maybe write a novel and rebuild that time machine. Has any of that gotten done? Hell no.

Back to the sleepwalking. Fun fun fun.

I woke up one night and seriously thought Grady had hauled a whole nest of baby birds onto the bed. I could clearly see little gold & black birdies hopping around him. So I yelled at him and grabbed for a bird, couldn't catch it so I got out of bed, put on my glasses, and turned on the light. I was actually crawling around hunting under the bed before I completely woke up and realized that there were no effin' birds anywhere near me. I even picked the damn cat up in case he was sitting on them, because he does that to crickets he's torturing.

A week or so later, I woke up and looked at the space between the dresser and the doorway and thought somebody had broken into my apartment and stolen an antique standing lamp out of there and I nearly had a heart attack. I'd gotten out of bed to turn the light on but decided that they were still rummaging around through the apartment so I got back into bed and crawled under the covers so nobody would see me.

Firstly, there has never been an antique lamp in that corner, ever. It lives in the other room, next to my sofa. And nobody in their right mind would sneak in just to steal some manky old lamp.

A few years ago I had a similar waking dream where I opened my eyes and could clearly see scientists in lab coats measuring the stuff in my bedroom. I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn't ruin their experiment.

Another time I really thought Damien was thirsty, so I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to refill his water bowl and wound up pouring it all over him and my legs.

It's a damn shame I can't sleepwalk all the way to work and nap while I'm there. God knows, I've tried. Sometime during the sleepwalking incidents I picked up the hot end of a soldering iron a couple times and I've been dropping a bit more glass than usual. Yes, soldering irons are a tad warm, like 900 degrees warm. At this rate I'll never be a hand model.

I've been trying to crochet this beaded bag on weekends, but I seem to spend most of my time threading the damn beads on in the wrong order. I'm a little tired of crocheting a few stitches, shreiking "Why don't these look like leaves???" then having to cut the thread and pull off a section of beads to redo. I'm sure if I was awake at all I'd do a better job. I can maybe thread on about four rows in a weekend and then I crochet a dozen or so stitches when I'm awake. The beads don't scan accurately at all--they're supposed to be dark & light amber with darker stems and a black background.

I've been using black DMC size 8 pearl cotton (which is next to impossible to find on the internets unless you need a case of ten), a size 5 crochet hook, and size 11/0 beads. I'm guessing this may have originally been done with smaller beads since this monster is about 9" across and most of the antique bags I've seen were maybe 7" wide or smaller. It'll have a honkin' thick beady fringe like some of the antique bags at Tri-State Antique Center. (I dare any of you to stay away from this site. It's a veritable orgy of antique beaded bags.) That site gives me way too many ideas.

The pattern is from an M. Heminway & Sons manual from I think 1900-1910 and it was charted from an antique bag, but they inexplicably changed the rosebuds in the bottom section to oak leaves. No finished size given, of course. Remember kids, beads are cheaper than yarn! The expected price of the bag is maybe $18 altogether, not counting a purse frame if I decide on using one.

I really want to do one with more than four colors. I've got a handful of patterns I found since I started this bag, ones with floral wreaths and cabbage roses, and most of those are 10-15 colors. There will be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over those.

But at least they're cheap.

Here's a cotton lace stocking I finished a while back. I haven't touched the other one in a couple months but I think I've actually knitted maybe seven inches on that one before I got sleepy and lost it in my UFO pile. I was trying to finish the pattern and post it for spring but you see how that worked out. It'll be ready for fall. That's it, fall. These are cotton lace stockings for fall, she says, not entirely convinced.

The Land Whale was a year old at the end of April. I weighed him on my new shipping scale and he's a little over 14 lbs. Fat bastard. And don't think that lolling around on his back is some kind of rarity. I've got several dozen more images very nearly exactly like this one, not counting the ones I've deleted. It's actually gotten pretty damned tiresome. Nobody wants to look at cat junk all day.

Spotted Things are great for TV reception. I think everyone should hie themselves down to the pound and snag themselves an Ocicat for that very purpose. See, I can get History International now.

Mmmm, spotted. But is he gray? Is he brown? Or is he an unholy conglomeration of both? Too much trouble to think about it. Taking a nap instead.

Happy Ethnic Drinking Day

2010-03-17T20:27:00.012-04:00

Bleeeehhhh. My internets are still stopped up. I haven't been a whole lot faster than 14.4 bpm for the past couple of weeks and my emails are piling up. When my connection gets slow Netscape gets cranky and won't give me my emails.

Note to my brother: Before you make your usual "ha ha Netscape" comment I will remind you that you use some hillbilly outfit stationed in a disused tobacco barn with equipment most likely cobbled together from an old moonshine still and a 35-year-old pickup truck on blocks. Nyahh.

So I've been able to use Etsy convos and if I want to waste an hour or so, I can upload literary crap like this. I had intended to troubleshoot my stinky internet connection this past weekend by crawling around behind the TV, disconnecting every jerry-rigged hookup and redoing it all but nooooo, I got sidelined by an Interesting Cough.

What's an Interesting Cough, you say? An Interesting Cough spends its first two weeks as a sinus infection that simmers in the background, sometimes causing that burning-lava-in-the-nose feeling oh so familiar to me, sometimes making me want to drill a hole in my cheekbones to let the demons out. I took that lovely sinus infection to Philly and back, then set it aside for a bit. Weekend before last it transmogrified into a three day long sore throat and by Friday I developed the Interesting Cough, a Cough so Interesting my boss sent me home early on Friday because she had grown weary of hearing me go on and on like a barnyard animal in distress.

Apparently Interesting Coughs are harbingers of the flu so last weekend I camped out on the sofa deliriously hoping Grady wouldn't take it into his head to eat me while I was doped up on cough meds, and thus diddly-squat was accomplished. For the past two days this week I've been staggering around at work with one ear stopped up and the other one ringing so loud I'm very nearly deaf. The Interesting Cough becomes less Interesting and more Annoying. But I no longer feel like I've been run over, not feeling good exactly, but not feeling like death warmed over either.

Monday I went to the supermarket for more meds and soup. I got excited (not really) that Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup was on sale so I grabbed a couple cans. Ha. In reality what I wound up with was WTF??? in a can. Those heretics at Campbell's got it into their heads that since people liked Chicken Noodle and Cream of Chicken then why not combine the two? Oh, and get a couple of marketing geniuses to make sure the word "creamy" is in small print so sick people won't notice until they get it home. When a glob of apricot-colored gunk plopped out of the can instead of the usual cheery yellow broth I thought I had gotten ahold of a bad can of soup, not a bad soup idea.

Two days ago when I was really sick I thought the half-assed recipe on the back of the can suggested that you take a bowl of Creamy Chicken Noodle and pour it over a salad rather than having soup and a salad. I don't think I'm well enough to be completely sure that isn't what they meant.

*mutter mumble cough*

Meanwhile, I've just discovered my home is the center of a wonky magnetic vortex. Behold, Severina's Mysterious Standing Broom! Booooo, spooky!

Later this evening, after a couple more shots of Nyquil, I shall fly it to Hogwarts.

Illogical, you say? I pity the fool who's illogical!

I'm going back to my deathbed.

New Stocking Progress and No Creepy Duck This Time

2010-03-01T10:33:00.006-05:00

Warning: Bad photo! Fat cat! The one thing I will most definitely be getting with my tax refund this year is a new digital camera, probably last year's Nikon because it'll be cheaper, but most definitely one comparable to what died on me two years ago. Hopefully that will put an end to lousy crap shots like this one. Dammit to hell.

Nearly done with the decreases on the new stocking design. Since it isn't ribbed and the fabric doesn't pull in as closely as the Victorian pattern I have to decrease down to about 70-80 stitches for the ankle, as opposed to the 104 the 1880s pattern called for. Now that I see it all laid out next to a Spotted Dirigible, it seems a mite large, but it really isn't that much wider than the stripy pair.

The good thing about designing stockings, socks or gloves is that you can photograph and post the pattern when you're only half done. So once I've darned in the toe I can post it without having yet knitted the second one.

The weather will most likely be much too warm by the time I get the pair finished for me to wear them. Bah! Buuuut I can then start fooling with designing some black lace cotton ones, or maybe something like the black & white stripy pair on the same page.

Oh, the Humanity.

2010-03-01T08:56:00.010-05:00

For those of you who are wondering what that tragic maiden flight of the still-experimental Hindengrady was like, here is the one photograph I managed to get before I ran for my life. Cats are just slam full of methane, so I strongly suggest you watch it with the cigarette lighters and keep them well away from gas stoves.

Imagine the sheer horror, the tragic loss of life, the smell of burning fur!

...and for those of you who completely don't give a crap, here's a cute little duck I made in the laboratory. Sadly, like most of my experiments, the Grady-Pig ate it not long before his flying inferno.

Must repair the spotted dirigible. I'm sure there's a World Domination use for a gassy, flammable giant cat. Mu-hu-hu-hahahaaaaaa!

several minutes of embarrassed throat clearing

Mmmmm, Warm and Fuzzy

2010-03-01T08:33:00.006-05:00

Grady-Pig says, "Remember that fuzzy little spotted thing with the giant feet?"

"Yeah, I ate him. I'd like a few more, please. With gravy this time."

Random Recaps or Something

2010-02-28T16:15:00.006-05:00

This cat-measuring exercise was requested by Ms. O'Kitten. Yes, that's a yardstick not a ruler. I also managed to get a tape measure around his gut and the Prince of Whales is 17 inches around. I think there's something there shouldn't be in his Kitten Chow, like maybe some secret government chemical nonsense that was meant for the Defense Department. You know, that stuff they feed the Giant War Animals.

Stop looking at me like that!

He also has learned the power of invisibility. He can fade away, much like the Cheshire Cat, but leaving his spots behind instead of a smile. Then he'll fling himself at the back of my knees when I least expect it and I'll lie on the floor with a broken back until the Beast gets hungry. That should be about three hours after he's cleaned out his bowl of Defense Department Kitten Chow.

This entirely random scan is the back seam of the aforementioned Victorian stocking that I completely forgot to show until Mouse asked how it was done. The seam stitch is both colors of yarn purled together so you don't wind up with a bazillion stupid little yarn ends to darn in. The inside has a little ridge but it isn't noticeable. The instructions say to purl together all five colors of the multi-striped ladies' silk stocking but I think that would just make a honkin' big ridge and would get pretty damned tiresome after a couple dozen rows.

This is the last of the Goddamned Snow. At least until Tuesday. I will then be pretending that whatever falls out of the sky is nuclear fallout.

Super Stink, Super Stink, He's Super Stinky

2010-02-27T20:21:00.003-05:00

Blast and damnation! Grady cornered yet another stink bug and before I could get it away from him and flush it down the toilet, he jumped up and down on it until it funked up my side of the room.

That makes seven of the foul things.

I'm starting to wonder if these aren't in reality the same stink bug, since I never see more than one at a time. It could possibly have some sort of bug Super Power that enables it to crawl out of the sewer back into my building where it lurks in a corner plotting, plotting, plotting.

I'm not paranoid. No sir.

She Just Won't Shut Up About the Damned Stockings

2010-02-22T21:34:00.006-05:00

While I was searching around the apartment for images of stripy Victorian stockings I found a catalog with some early Edwardian black cotton lace jobbies and black & white cotton patterned ones.

rubs hands together all mad-scientist-like

These are early enough in the Edwardian era that stockings are still mostly knit in black, rather than the white stuff that came later on. They're all very fine-gauge lisle cotton, which would have a nice, hard finish, and the lace looks pretty intricate. Much too fine for hand-knitting, but I could probably muddle through something that has the same look. I'm really looking for a boot-lace stocking sort of like the one at the top left or the top right, but I really like the black & white striped No. 5213.

Maybe a rayon or silk-blend might hold up better than cotton. It at least wouldn't fade or shrink like cotton.

Here's a late-Victorian (1890s) cotton lisle boot-lace stocking I've already wasted everyone's time with a couple months ago.

wanders away

It's Acrylic. Sorry.

2010-02-22T17:13:00.003-05:00

A partial lace & cable stocking tossed on the scanner because I'm effing tired of shaky pictures done with that rotten digital camera of mine.

After my last post you'd think I'd learn my lesson about acrylic. Nope. I'm knitting a second pair of stockings in the same fingering-weight gray acrylic pillaged from a thrift-store sweater, and I knitted the gray stripes on the Victorian ones with it. (The first pair was my Skull Stockings.) I didn't think one sweater would have that much yardage. It was a frumpy oversized double-knit ribbed cardigan and I think I still have a bag around here with some unfrogged pieces in it. Holy crap, I could maybe crank out a couple pairs of socks when I'm done!

But it at least doesn't smell like that ginormous 1980s Aran thing.

I've been trying like hell all weekend to visit about 15 or so blogs but with my absurdly slow connection I can't even get to anyone's comments section before it all craps out on me. I can upload photos, but that takes at least a couple minutes for each one. Damn dial-up usually isn't this slow for more than a day or so before it goes back to normal--I suspect Grady has either jiggled my phone jack or technology is back to hating me again.

Either it's the primitive technology being overloaded or you people post too many damn pictures for my dial-up to handle.

So, "Hi! Great entry!" to everyone on the list, at least until the AEther clears up and the magic vapours flow through the phone lines again and I can visit for real.

The Knitting, It Scares Me

2010-02-22T14:05:00.004-05:00

A vintage sweater pattern from 1940 that I pressed and sewed up on Saturday. It still needs shoulder pads and a handful of black buttons. I picked this one out specifically because of the strange sleeve caps. When I started it I didn't have the spare cash to buy all one color yarn so I frogged two thrift-store cashmere sweaters--a black long-sleeved one in a frumpy style and a short-sleeved pink one with moth holes. I didn't have enough of the black to make the ribbing on the sleeves as long as it was supposed to be, so I did 2" instead of 3". It kinda needs the 3" sleeve ribbing. Hopefully the pocket flaps won't curl like that once I get the buttons on. I'm considering putting a little pointed collar from another 1940s pattern on it because I don't particularly like the plain round neck hole.

The only pattern changes, besides the color and the sleeve ribbing was that I added two inches to the bottom length. Women were a lot shorter in those days and I have to add at least that much to vintage knitting and sewing patterns. It fits pretty well, but the cashmere yarn is a little limp so I'm forced to put in shoulder pads just to make the sleeves look less deformed. I'd like to get some silk/wool blend yarn in one color and knit it again, but maybe without the fussy little "lookit my tits!" pockets.

Yes, I will be posting the pattern up at the Stitch-O-Rama in a couple days, along with a handful of other 1940s sweaters.

No, I will not be posting the pattern to this Aran Nightmare. This man-eatin' sweater was designed from scratch and knitted by me way back in 1986 and it was meant to be oversized. Remember, "oversized" in 1986 meant three people could get into it at one time and still do the Safety Dance. It measures 50" around the chest and is maybe 30" from the neck to the bottom ribbing. I think I used every cable in the Barbara Walker books for no real logical reason I can remember (except to show off some mad knittin' skillz) so it's not a pretty sight. I keep putting this monstrosity in the thrift store bag but I swear it keeps on crawling back out. You can smell the acrylic from across the room and despite its massive weight it isn't at all warm, plus its sheer acreage fills one dresser drawer all by itself.

I shopped for my yarn in Woolworth's in those days and despite the name, Woolworth's never sold any wool, at least when I was learning to knit. Just imagine a Vogue Knitting designer sweater whipped up in Red Heart Super Saver acrylic.

weeps hysterically

Look, 1886 Stockings!

2010-02-21T21:53:00.006-05:00

Here are those damnable stripy Victorian stockings I've been promising to photograph when I got done knitting them. I really want a pair in the original 1880s colors--black, crimson, deep blue, old gold, and pink but I haven't looked for any silk or rayon yarn recently.

I couldn't be bothered to haul out a garter belt, so for the photo they're staying up by themselves, sort of. But "opera length" is perfect for shorter skirts.

I ordered the boots online about five years ago because I wanted a pair of tall Victorian-style leather things like a pair I saw in the old 1940s fetish mag Bizarre. I can't wear them outside unless I know I've got a ride because they soles are suede and I don't want to wear them out.

That crummy sock I was knitting in Philly had to be frogged because the gauge came out too small and for some reason I didn't pack the little 6" ruler I keep in my knitting stuff. I had gotten too far into the pattern for any adjustment, so it miraculously transformed itself backinto a ball of yarn when I got back home and checked my gauge. Poof! Just like that!

While I was out of town I had intended to work on a stocking I was designing, but I threw the sock makings into my bag and completely forgot about the stocking and the needles slipped out of the yarn when I was rummaging around looking for my pajamas. I picked them back up about three days ago when I went into Code Red Total Sock Fail, so I'm now about 16" into a gray lace & cable thingy.

I would have been further along with the damned things, but I spent entirely too much of my day building Roman cities playing Caesar III.

I flushed a stink bug yesterday and there's another one flying around loose in the apartment that Grady hasn't been able to catch. That makes six of the nasty things so far this winter.

Mmmmm, Blizzardy...

2010-02-21T19:38:00.010-05:00

Last week I had an amusing travelogue all planned out, but by the time I got home and got back to work I really couldn't be bothered. It might have been as insufferable as some of the vacation slide shows I had to endure as a child. My grandparents would haul out the slide projector and various relatives would load several hundred slides into the carousels, about half of which were souvenir slides bought at Stuckey's, and the remaining ones seemed to have been taken in frightening places where gravity followed no natural law and the inhabitants had the tops of their heads chopped off.

So I weeded out a wee handful, because I only want everyone to suffer a tiny bit. (dun dun duuun!) This time. Plus a lot of the photos were really pretty stinky. *shakes fist* Curse you, HP Photosmart! My tax refund will go towards buying a real camera, with a macro. Dang it.

*weeps over her dead Nikon*

OK, we normally would have driven to Philadelphia on Wednesday, unloaded the van, checked into the hotel, then set up part of the display. Thursday would have been an all-day setup, then the actual show starts on Friday and runs through Sunday. If I go along I ride up in the van, then leave on the train on Friday since I'm not needed for taking customers' orders. This year we took the chance leaving Richmond a day early to beat the storm, but that meant finding another hotel for Tuesday night since the one we had for the week didn't have a room ready.

Couple pics of the convention hall, where about 1500 craftspeople (I think it was a lot less this year due to the recession) set up booths and buyers from around the country make wholesale orders. Prices range from a couple bucks to several thousand dollars. Mostly what was being ordered by stores and galleries were more practical things, rather than decorative artsy stuff, which is kind of unfortunate for the artists, plus there's competition from all the cheap stuff being made overseas.

There were some buyers who decided to not spend the money this year flying in for the weekend, others came in late because of delays at the airports, others drove through the snow. Some will order from the Accursed Catalog we mailed to our regular customers.

Completed setup, after about 12 hours straight work. All this stuff, displays and show samples, is crammed in a rental van. For my part, I stood one of those solid back panels up and knocked one of those teeny light fixtures off the horizontal bar in front and because I can never do only a little bit of damage, a couple hours later I stood another panel up and thought my boss had a hold of it (she hadn't) and it fell onto the metal tinker-toy kinda display at the far right, and because the entire thing is interconnected I nearly tore down the whole shebang. Go me! Strangely, the gods were busy farting in someone else's general direction that day and the whole display held, otherwise I would have had to sleep in the van.

Very few orders for the fancy window things and sculptural stuff at the left of the display but loads for the mirrors. I might very well be getting a real paycheck in a few weeks.

Each of those solid panels is about 8 ft tall and is pretty heavy--they have to be solid enough to drive nails into. We've got eight of the fool things and my wrist is only just beginning to get back to normal. Between loading up, unloading, and setting up I strained a tendon so it hurts when I turn a key in a lock or use a can opener but not when I knit or use a mouse.

We got out of there at maybe 8:30 Thursday night, had a couple drinks and dinner, then got the subway back to the hotel by 10:30. The room had those retarded Sleep Number beds, which to me seem to just be glorified air mattresses, and Wednesday night I couldn't get the thing comfortable. Thursday I deflated it to about a 10 and slept like a log.

Trying to find a parking place before we landed in a ditch. You can see by that yellow barrel it was blowing hard from the south. When we got in on Tuesday they wouldn't let us unload early because there was an auto show being taken down in the convention center. We parked in a lot across the street from the hall for the night and on Wednesday morning dug the van out of the snow to unload but because we couldn't use the outdoor loading ramp they let us drive inside into part of the hall and use the freight elevator. That wound up taking about four hours instead of the usual 45 minutes, so there was another 5" of snow on top of the 7" from the night before plus blizzard winds when we finally got out of there. We also had to check out of the hotel we had in Chinatown for the night and get to the other hotel in Rittenhouse Square before the cabbies all gave up and went home.

Look, it's all blizzardy. But as you can see, the cabbies never went home.

The one bit of the park in Rittenhouse Square that didn't have about 3,000 people in it all chasing each other and trying to shove snow down the backs of each other's trousers. There was a damn snazzy snow fort, but the picture didn't come out.

Random bad photo of the subway. Oddly, it seemed much cleaner than the bus I ride back & forth to work every day. It didn't even have a weird smell. I thought weird smells were mandatory for public transport. It did, however, have a completely unintelligible intercom system, which I thought was just a joke on sitcoms. You either have to count the stops, or read the signs at each stop so you don't accidentally wind up in New Jersey. Yes, there was a subway to New Jersey.

A bad night photo. Since I went to art school I'm gonna claim I meant it to look like that. I shall entitle it "Spire No. 17 (The Night Watch)," or some such pretentious rubbish.

This one should have one of those crap titles like "The Economics of Neon (Electric Love No. 4, The Dreamscape)". Gaaah, I should be shot for that one.

Slide show over. You can all wake up now. I, for one, have an army of Strangling Robots to assemble.

Etsy Preview

2010-02-17T19:57:00.006-05:00

Preview of a couple of new pendants I'll be posting for sale at Perfidious Beadworks sometime this week, one with a Victorian-era engraved image, both with copper from the scrap bin at work, antique watch junk and keys, and sterling silver and copper wire. No bead embroidery this time, but there are large beads in the chains. The intention was that they resemble some of the big overdone Victorian pendants I have illustrations of but the fanned corrugated copper makes them go really Art-Deco.

Of course this means I have to find more objects. Like these ginormous washers I picked up in the street on Monday, for instance. I don't find nearly enough interesting free crap in the street for jewelry-making. I should be filling my pockets with washers and bolts and suchlike every damn day, but I suspect some giant magnetic creature hoovers them up before I can leave my apartment.

No, I don't know what that means.

On ice!

Owww.

2010-02-14T18:13:00.006-05:00

Banged-up and stiff. I've got an awesome knot on my right elbow from hitting it on the bathroom towel bar on Wednesday and myriad bumps and bruises from hauling around heavy wooden packing crates and I twisted my right wrist putting together some big stupid wood display panels. Dammit to hell.

The train dragged into Richmond at 6:30 pm Friday, so I've spent most of my time since then either soaking in a steaming hot tub or sprawled on the sofa being smothered and mauled by a fat Ocicat.

Philadelphia is quite a bit more organized digging out from under their last two snow storms than DC. Philly got 28" last weekend, then another 15" while I was there and they pretty much got downtown streets and sidewalks cleared the next day. Even during the actual blizzard part there were still cabs out and restaurants open. Washington DC, the whole city shut down and they hadn't really put much of a dent in plowing all the previous weekend's snow--Tuesday they still had ice on the Beltway.

It turns out I'm getting paid for four days this week, despite my confused whining that it would only be two, and I'll make up that Friday sometime before payday. Inexplicably, Grady didn't destroy anything, at least until I got settled on the sofa. He'd saved up four days of Cat Evil for me.

Coming next time: Trip photos and confused rambling, plus pieces of a 1940s top I'd finished knitting before I left, and new Etsy jewelry nobody's going to buy.

Back to sleep, knitting, or maybe some sleep-knitting.

Holiday Snaps, pt.1

2010-02-10T19:48:00.000-05:00

That's a genuine Russian mink hat from the GUM department store, by the way.

I should be turning the heel on a sock,but I don't feel like it. Nyyaaah.

Snowmageddon 2010

2010-02-10T17:16:00.003-05:00

One pic from Philadelphia whilst I have the internets working. Blizzard in Chinatown, taken at about 2:30 this afternoon. More to come.

Back to knitting.

Photo added later, mostly to give my brother something to grumble about. Rittenhouse Square under an assload of snow.

Back to knitting, for real this time.

Grr.

2010-02-07T12:09:00.003-05:00

Change of plans. We will be leaving Tuesday ahead of the storm and since I'm not being paid for travel time or sitting in a hotel room I'm losing another day of work. At this rate I will be eating cardboard.

There will be pictures. Angry, angry pictures.

So, in a smelly little nutshell* I will be rushing like hell to get somewhere I didn't want to go, a day ahead of schedule, to do things I didn't want to do in the first place, and will only be paid for about twelve hours of it.

I suppose I will bring some goddamned knitting, though I'm more likely to stab people than knit anything. Grumble.

*Random history reference: During the Medieval times it was the height of hilarity to fart into a nutshell, then open the aforementioned nutshell under someone's nose. And no, doing this to someone wouldn't make me any happier right at the moment.

Dear Snow, You Suck.

2010-02-06T10:05:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, we had yet more snow and sleet so another workday lost to the elements this week. I don't know whose ass to kick first, Mother Nature or Old Man Winter. I've got two feet, so maybe I can kick both asses at once. Multi-tasking I believe it's called, or alternately "multi-ass-kicking".

So I suppose I'll be eating whatever I can scrounge from the Dollar Tree this month. Wonderful. I do love those 50-cent pot pies and the imitation "cheese" slices. Nummy.

*does a retarded little dollar-store dance*

Snow, snow, stinking stupid snow. I hate you and the clouds you were crapped out of. So there.

More of the same out this window as well. And it just keeps coming down. Fuck you, snow.

Supposedly I'll be able to make up the time I've lost. The Accursed Catalog went to the printer on Thursday but I'm still doing some rushed last-minute stuff we can print ourselves on Monday, then I'm off to Philadelphia for a trade show Wednesday and will take the train back home Friday.

While I'm gone I suppose Grady will lay waste to my apartment and everything I own. He found another stink bug last night and helpfully teased it until it spewed out bug-stink so there's still a weird smell in that corner of the room. I fully expect my apartment to be crawling with the nasty things while I'm gone.

Oh yeah, more snow on Tuesday. Yaaay.

Imagine the Litter Box

2010-02-02T21:23:00.006-05:00

This is an artist's impression of how big Grady will be a year from now. Be advised that this is pure speculation. Perhaps I won't be able to afford to feed him so he'll hunt down and kill clowns. Or maybe we'll join a hobo gang. You know, with stabbin' hobos instead of singin' ones.

Whatever. Back to that special level of hell that involves catalog layouts.

*shrieks quietly for a bit*

Ice Fail

2010-02-01T19:09:00.014-05:00

I'm now officially Tired of Winter. I've been walking past the windows and sneering at the stuff outside since Saturday morning. I'm fully expecting to slip and bust something important tomorrow on the way to the bus, though the most damage will likely be made after sundown when it all starts freezing up again.

I think I could do much, much worse than making faces and obscene gestures out my apartment windows. Let's see just how much I'm really hatin' on some ice today.

I found this a couple of weeks ago and it's been burning away at my guts since then. Dragnet On Ice. Holy crap, they've even got a bad guy in jail over in the right-hand corner. I fully expect Jack Webb to be strapping on his skates and twirling around out there, but I suppose I can't have everything.

Now you might think putting on a show like this involves complex design and costumes, creative writing and fancy sets. I don't think so at all. I believe you can slap the words "On Ice" on pretty much every TV show, movie, or novel and make some damn skating show out of it, but then I've most likely had several pots of coffee by now.

Saving Private Ryan On Ice. Skating military drama at it's finest. Thrill at the big D-Day scene where that guy gets his guts blown out. On ice!

For the science fiction fan, here's District 9 On Ice. You'll just have to wait for the show to start to see that fantastic prawn slum set. Plenty of explosions and gore here too. On ice!

From the mind of Stephen King we present It On Ice. Run little kids, it's Pennywise! On ice!

The Lost Weekend On Ice. This could be either from the book or the movie, take your pick. Whichever one has the worst DTs scene. On ice!

From the banned library shelves we have Venus In Furs On Ice. See inferior men put in their place by aggressive, dominant women. On ice!

Last but not least--Law & Order SVU On Ice, because you can't have enough sex crimes on skates. Crack New York detectives Benson and Stabler show off their mad detectin' skillz to get filthy creeps and pervs off the street. On ice!

Snowed In

2010-02-01T18:17:00.007-05:00

I was supposed to go in to work today to shriek and snarl at the Accursed Catalog but there's just way too much snow out there on the streets still. Not for me--I can skip on down to the bus stop on one of the few streets they always scrape first (Emergency Snow Route) and I'm good. No, my boss lives on a side street that most likely won't be scraped for a couple days yet and since most of the catalog stuff was going to involve the both of us I got to sleep in.

I'd better be able to make the day up, or I'm eating ramen for the next week.

Of course I had to go out in the stuff to buy cat litter today. It never fails. You pour in 3" of the last of your fresh litter hoping it will last until the blizzard/hurricane/zombie nightmare is over and your little darling either drinks several gallons of water or he invites several of his incontinent friends over in the night. So for the past two days I've been dumping baking soda in, hopefully to make my apartment a bit less cattified until I could get down to the supermarket today. They claimed we got maybe 7" here. HA. What I floundered through was at least 10" and I refuse to even discuss the snowdrifts I attempted to climb over only to sink down about two feet. So I got to flail helplessly around in the stuff carrying a 7-lb. bag of litter home, which Grady has completely ignored. I'm guessing he'd squeezed out every bit of cat waste products over the weekend and he's got to get loaded up again.

I'm so effing bored with the snow I couldn't be bothered to take any pictures of it this time. To add insult to injury it was too cold for it to pack into snowballs. I mean, what's the point of that? I may as well be throwing loose flour at people. Feh.

Observe the Prince of Whales. That's my size-10 foot next to him for comparison. At this point pouncing on my head in the night is no longer cute.

This is the second stink bug I've found in my apartment since December. These damn things should be either dead or frozen solid at this time of year. It was flying around slamming into lampshades and driving Grady nuts, or at least until it landed and he got a good whiff of the thing. The only bug Grady hasn't attempted to eat.

Ehhhh. What's next? New Etsy stuff to photograph, and the stockings, a handful of patterns to post to the Stitch-O-Rama, etc.

Or I could curl up on the sofa with the cat and take a nap.

Arrrrrghhhhh!!!

2010-01-28T19:17:00.002-05:00

Yes, that was the sound of insane shrieking. Delight in Severina's pain. Grr.

This is the time of year where we design the new line at work, print up the year's catalogs, and do a trade show so we can eat. In the midst of this there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

For the past two weeks or so my employer has been designing new prototypes which she then hands over to me with a totally misguided sense of my competence. I take assloads of measurements (a depressing percentage of which are wrong), label the types and colors of glass and/or fancy metalwork, and draw up working patterns for the production line. Later in the year these patterns will cause much hilarity and confusion among the employees. Oddly, I am then allowed to handle sharp technical pens and draw up the prototypes as black & white line drawings for the Accursed Catalog, the layouts of which I leave to your imagination. Much of the process involves things normally imagined only by Hieronymus Bosch and leaves me in a cold sweat for at least three months or so every year. Remind me when I get a new job to never ever say I know jack shit about computers.

In the meantime, whilst I wade through my pile-o-emails, please play a couple of rounds of Find the Spotted Thing.

P.S. I have finished the Victorian stockings and they fit. This weekend we'll be again buried under about 10 inches of snow so there will be pictures posted maybe Saturday. I also got some new 1940s sweater patterns to put up at the Stitch-O-Rama. I took out a little of my Catalog Fury on some yarn and got one sweater started already and it promises to knit up pretty fast.

Back to Catalog Purgatory for a couple more hours.

Feh.

Mis-Knitted

2010-01-02T08:18:00.006-05:00

After a couple good nights sleep I discovered precisely what the hell is wrong with the accursed 1886 stocking. I had "slept" for five nights on a concrete mattress and a pillow so flaming lumpy I dreamed it was actually a dead goat stuffed into a pillowcase (really, I did), so of course once I got home I immediately decided to knit the toe on this damned stocking just to have the fool thing done with.

Why? Because that's what knitters do, mostly because we've huffed so much yarn fiber our brains overheat a bit and no longer function properly, and partly because we're a little soft in the head to take up knitting in the first place.

See? Corrected Damned Thing. Because the toe was much too short the ankle looked huge, and when I tried it on I suppose the foot stretched enough to sort of fit. Once I had some real sleep and woke up completely I tried it on again I saw what the hell the issue was. I kind of thought it was merely a particularly crappy pattern but instead of knitting the toe the way I thought it was supposed to be I went along with what I blearily assumed the pattern instructions said.

Normally there is a decrease round, then a "knit plain" round in a sock toe.

"For the Toe--All black--Knit plain to the end of the needle, discontinuing the seam stitch; * on the instep needle, knit 4, slip 1, knit 1, pass the slipped stitch over, knit plain to within 6 stitches of the end of the needle, knit 2 together, knit 4; on the foot needle knit 4, slip 1, knit 1, pass the slipped stitch over, knit to within 6 stitches of the end of the second foot needle, knit 2 together, knit 4; knit 1 plain round; repeat from * till reduced to 26 stitches."

Can you find the "knit 1 plain round" sneakily hidden in the instructions? Why the hell wasn't it written as "Row 1 (decrease instructions), Row 2 knit 1 round"? And why the hell didn't I just knit the toe like I usually do? No sleep, that's why.

*shrieks insanely for a bit*

So remember kids, don't knit without proper rest or there'll be hell to pay. Maybe not hell to pay, but you'll post your mis-knitted crap all over the internets and whine about how it's gone all wrong and everyone will be snickering and pointing and stuff. You don't want that.

Look Away! Look Away!

2009-12-28T18:18:00.005-05:00

Yet another shitty photograph, courtesy of my eBay HP Photosmart. I'd buy a new digital camera, one with a really nice macro lens like my dead Nikon, but I kinda have to pay rent every month, so no new electronic doodads until I'm back working full time.

I finished knitting the accursed 1886 Stocking in a little over a week. Plenty long enough but it's huge in the ankle and instep--I really could have decreased ten more stitches and it would have fit perfectly. Or gone down a needle size. If I'd had a roll of black elastic thread (I have a roll of white) I could have knitted it into the top bit before the stripes started because it's a tad baggy 'round the thigh. Shouldn't matter since I'm going to use a garter belt to hold them up, but it would have been nice to have something handknit that doesn't puddle around my ankles after walking three steps.

Now I merely have to knit up an identical one without the improvements so it will match. Great. I have to make a second ill-fitting stocking or completely re-knit the first one. Poo.

I may just go ahead and re-try knitting a gaudy stripy pair in that rayon stuff since I've got so much of it, despite my previous failures with that particular yarn. I should rummage around on the internets for photos of antique Victorian stockings for color ideas. The Victoria & Albert Museum has a bunch in an industrial knitting exhibit, but I think I remember the photos being low-res. I could also be remembering the wrong museum. Maybe it was something about Victorian knitting mills in northern England?

Wrong museum, I think, because now I can't find it. I'm tired and don't care, actually. Pfffft. My brain hurts and I'm glad to be back in my own apartment, far, far away from pecan pies, chocolate chip cookies, turkey stuffing and buttermilk biscuits.

rambling on and on like an old woman

Here's a handknit stocking I found and it has a handy button at the top that attaches it to one's underthings. I've never seen that before, but there's the possibility they were made for a young child, so of course I've never seen such a thing.

On the Grady-Pig front, he didn't do too much damage at my parents' house, though he did seem to bug the living snot out of my brother. He also spent about three hours this morning riding in the kitty-carrier crapping out everything he'd eaten in the past week. (Grady, not my brother.) I guess this is his extra-special version of carsick.

The Victorian Stocking (Again)

2009-12-24T19:46:00.007-05:00

Yet more progress on the 1886 stocking. I'm mostly done with the decreases and it is now 22" long. The book on Victorian mourning jewelry I got for Xmas a couple of hours ago and I'll probably have my nose in it for the rest of the weekend when I'm not knitting or dealing with relatives.

I got some antique medical books to add to my collection: Physical Diagnosis (1919), A Text-Book of Operative Dentistry (1918), and DeLee's Obstetrics For Nurses (1946). Ickiness abounds!

I also got Billy Whiskers in France (1919), a kid's book about a goat wandering around loose in WWI Paris doing god knows what. Other books in the series are Billy Whiskers' Travels, Billy Whiskers Kidnapped, Billy Whiskers' Kids, Billy Whiskers' Grandkids, Billy Whiskers at the Circus, etc. Humph. They completely left out my personal favorites, Billy Whiskers Demon Goat and Billy Whiskers at the Glue Factory.

I'm more intrigued by the books advertised in the back, namely The Wonderful Electric Elephant and its sequel, On A Lark to the Planets. Apparently, beastly children Harold and Ione somehow acquire an electric elephant and go off on all sorts of hideous adventures that odious children during this time all seemed to have. Somehow this Wonderful Electric Elephant can also fly up into space and these two brats can annoy the living snot out of people on other worlds as well.

Random YouTube clip of Grady cow-wrestling. My brother has nothing better to do than film the damnable spotted beast.

help me

2009-12-24T18:59:00.004-05:00

This is the last photograph taken before his head split open and torrents of demons flew out.

The Horrible, Horrible Spotted Thing

2009-12-24T12:24:00.006-05:00

Grady has been completely awful since he got here yesterday afternoon. He has pulled the metal plug out of the bathroom sink, climbed the back door, tangled himself up in the blinds, dropped down behind the television twice and got himself stuck. Oh, and he's scratched everyone for fun.

Yaaay Grady!

He Sees You When You're Sleeping

2009-12-22T18:38:00.003-05:00

My last post from this location until Monday. I am to be taken away to my homeworld by my genetic relations for experimentation and mutation, then I shall be returned to my place of residence for another attempt at World Domination.

Or something.

I've got bags to pack and a cat to stew up. Ho ho ho. In the meantime, have a close look at what passed for festive Christmas wrapping paper in the 1960s. It was such an innocent time. I present to you: Santa Burgles A House!

"Need a bag? Hang on, I'll just dump this crap out and you can use this one."

"Shhhhhh. You go to the kitchen and get the silverware and I'll check the upstairs."

"What, you never heard of hiding valuables in the underwear drawer? OK, maybe I just like underwear. You got a problem with that?"

Who Done It?

2009-12-22T18:27:00.002-05:00

When I came in to work today I discovered that some unknown person had ordered me this fancy sleeping mask from Crude Things, possibly so I won't have to see Grady laying waste to my belongings early in the morning. Horribly, most mornings I actually look like this.

Who done it? I have my suspicions..

*points accusingly, then dances away in her mask*

Cat-Craft Time

2009-12-21T18:08:00.008-05:00

Huh. There's still snow outside. Well, crap.

I suppose that means it's Craft Time. Again.

While I'm trying to decide whether to make a nice furry hat or a tote bag out of the Fat Bastard's spotted hide I'll show everyone that the little monster has at least stayed cute, no matter how much of a fat-ass he's turned into in the past five months. Ninety percent of his destructiveness seems to come from his size--he just barrels through everything at full speed. Yesterday he slammed into the back of my leg and nearly knocked me over. Back in October His Lardy Highness managed to drag a wedding photograph from 1920 off the wall using only his tail and leaving broken glass on the rug that I'm still finding. You'd think he'd realize his bulk before he attempted a swan dive from the windowsill into that plant, but he's not exactly known for his intellect.

I think I could craft both a furry hat and a nice warm collar for my coat, plus the scraps might make a matching trim for my gloves. I think there's plenty of cat for all that.

Cold and Bored

2009-12-20T18:37:00.004-05:00

My neighborhood got 10"-11" of snow and now most of it is frozen solid. I wonder if I could make some snowshoes using a hot glue gun and random garbage? When I get back home from running my errands I could use them as half-assed last-minute Xmas gifts. I could jam some flowers in them and shazam!, two gifts. Pure genius.

Of course Fat Bastard Grady has spent the day being completely horrible. He discovered not too long ago that if he gets into the laundry basket he can reach this 1890s photograph. He also learned pretty quickly that if he then jiggles the bejesus out of the frame, the photograph falls out the back. It's a pretty big photo, like 16" x 20", so it makes a really cool banging noise when it hits the wall. Or at least it sounds cool to retarded kitty-cats.

I hear when you bang on a cat it makes a pretty cool noise, too.

More 1886 stocking progress, since it's too damn cold to do anything else and there isn't crap on TV. The photo's not out of focus, you just need your eyes checked! This is the last picture my smelly camera could manage before it sucked the juice out of the batteries and shut down. I wasn't going to pretend to be an ice-breaker and fight my way up the street for batteries today. No no no no no, no.

The stocking is now about 16 1/2" long and I decided to forgo the increases at the calf because they seemed unnecessary for this size, so I just started my decreases at about 12". At this rate I'll have one nearly completed before I pack up my stuff Tuesday night, though I'm not sure how I even got this far what with having to put my knitting down every few minutes to pound on a cat.

Knit, Knit, Knit, Purl

2009-12-19T16:40:00.007-05:00

Scan of my 1886 stocking progress. Instead of loads of colors I'm using black and gray, the black being a silk/wool blend and the gray was pillaged from a thrift store cardigan that I believe was made of acrylic, and I'm using size 2 US needles instead of the size 18 the pattern asked for. A modern size 18 UK would be 00000 US which doesn't sound right at all, even for someone with scarecrow legs. I think for silk I might go with a 00 but cast on more stitches. I still want the weirdo colors of the original pattern.

The original was in silk and was meant to be mainly black with a section of 2 rounds crimson, 2 rounds pink, 2 rounds gold, 6 rounds blue, 2 rounds gold, 2 rounds pink, and 2 rounds crimson, then 12 rounds black. The instructions say to start increases for the calf at the point I am now, but since I'm a good bit taller than the average Victorian woman I'm going to knit at least 10" or 12" before I start the increases, plus I'd like them to be maybe opera length. Otherwise the damned things will wind up being knee socks.

I'd kind of like to knit some cotton boot lace stockings like this. Black pearle cotton maybe. I'll have to scrounge around my catalogs to see if I can get a cone of the stuff instead of those little balls.

Snowed In

2009-12-19T08:24:00.022-05:00

Hey, lookit what I woke up to. Snow! I went out in it this morning, mainly to get pictures before the local jackasses drove around in it. But even at 7:30 am there were tire tracks, apparently just to piss me off. It was kinda pointless to slog my way around the neighborhood through knee-deep snow to find the one street that hadn't been driven on, just for some damn picture, so I went back in. Now last night I doubt if there was anyone out except for fire trucks. Heard those all night long, in between giant cat feet pattering the windowpanes. I should have maybe gone out around midnight. Or maybe not.

Feh.

They were saying last night we'd get mostly rain and sleet, but I think the weatherman just flipped a coin or something because we wound up with nearly all snow. (I had typed "snao" which is the southern pronunciation) Normally we don't even get this kind of snow until January or February, so this was a bit of a surprise. We usually get a Strangely Warm and Wet Christmas around these parts, or maybe a Freezing Cold But Dampish Christmas, but hardly ever a White Christmas. Actually, by the time the holiday actually gets here the snow will be plowed up and mixed with sand so I'll be dreaming of a Filthy Pile of Brown Christmas.

See, the view outside my five windows consists of a wall, a wall with stained glass windows, and a wall. People would kill for that view! I kinda want to kill somebody because of that view.

But the very thought of snow up to one's ass spurred me on to dig up another project to carry with me for the holidays. A 1940s Vest and Panties set, found with a whole pile of other handy-dandy vintage patterns at Knit Wiki. I've got a couple of balls of fine-gauge burgundy wool of the same type I knitted the last pair of 1940s wool undies out of and those worked out great and yes, they really do stop Old Man Winter from slipping his creepy fingers up yer skirts and copping an icy feel. I do recommend wearing regular underwear under the damnable things, unless you like being all itchy in your lady regions.

The Fat Spotted Thing has been tearing from window to window in an effort to catch the snow. All night. My bed is between two windows so I was serenaded by hours and hours of the sounds of big, clumsy kitty feet smacking the glass. Why the hell I haven't already bought a little doggy harness and dragged his fat ass through the snow like a plow, I have no idea. I'm sorely tempted to go back out and get a pail of the stuff and cram him in it head-first.

Since he is the Catdog, most mornings he'll bring me toys in bed to play fetch with, usually before the alarm goes off and I'm still trying to sleep. This time he brought me more crap than usual, because apparently it was A Special Morning. I got a piece of plastic wrap from around the top of my coffee creamer, a strip of cardboard, and a mangy Xmas bow, all out of the kitchen trash. Most mornings he'll bring me old leaves, that disgusting stuffed cow, or the three-foot kitty wand with feathers and a bell on one end, so I should count myself lucky he only hauled some of the cleaner rubbish this time. It's probably a good thing I don't have mice at the moment since I'm quite sure he'll bring me one of those, or a part of one, and make it A Very Special Morning.

Or maybe he was doing some last-minute holiday gift crafting out of garbage.

My brother wants me to get him the sad, lonely little hat I spied outside my window Thursday night. Ha. I'm not going to dig the damn thing out of 10" of snow so you'll have to have to buy your own damn hat, bucko.

Because I Can't Knit Anything New

2009-12-17T20:17:00.005-05:00

I've been rummaging around through my old 1880s Weldon's knitting patterns looking for a portable project to haul with me for the holidays. Trying yet again to knit the 1886 striped silk stockings, except in black and gray because I haven't bothered to buy the plethora of colors the original patterns calls for--black, dark blue, crimson, pink, and old gold. One day I'll knit a pair of gaudy Victorian silk stockings in all those colors, but for right now I'm having to make do with black and gray. I made a sad attempt to knit them in colored rayon yarn but the yarn was pretty nasty and had no spring whatsoever so they wouldn't have stretched at all. Pfffffft.

The striped silk version I posted is nearly the same pattern as the plain ribbed lady's wool stocking (not posted) on the page previous so I figured, what the hell, I'll just knit them in black and gray wool/silk blend since it looks like I'll never get around to gathering up all the colors in silk, plus it's going to be cold for a bit so I'll get some use out of them.

The Spotted Thing is trying very hard to not rip apart and eat what little I've knitted thus far. If he doesn't eat it, this will be the knitting project I carry home with me this Xmas. If the little monster does eat it, I'll be redoing it this Xmas.

Random Mysterious Observance: Inexplicably there is a straw boater on the ground outside my window. I'm wondering if a barbershop quartet was chased between the buildings while I was at work, running for their lives while wacky old-timey piano music played. Or perhaps one of them was mugged and some unfeeling bastard stole his little arm garters. I missed it either way. Crap.

Snow tomorrow, so I'm expecting to be sent home from work early. There'll be about 8" of snow on top of that sad, lonely little hat by Saturday. Shame I never got around to leash-training Grady because there sure as hell would have been pictures of the little monster up to his ears in snow.

Horrible Beast

2009-12-14T11:09:00.006-05:00

Whilst I was attempting to put up the amusing and educational railroad post I had this little annoyance to contend with.

Bad, bad Grady, contemplating Houdini and working my last nerve. My camera sucks so much it can't even capture a slightly moving cat's head or a swinging tail. Feh. The brightly-colored canvas to the upper left is Obsidian Kitten's "Four Letter Words #1" that I got in an Etsy trade a while back, in case anyone was wondering.

I had planned to redo that damnable steambustle.com site this weekend, plus finish some beading for Etsy, and get started on a shrug I'm designing, but nooooo I had to get sick. The Spotted Thing is no help whatsoever, pouncing on me when I was laid out on the sofa, turning over a big plant in a stand during the night and throwing dirt all over the sofa again. Just this morning he got behind the TV and pulled the cord out of the outlet and for an encore climbed on my shoulder and bit the side of my head while I was at the computer.

See, I could make a purse out of him now, or wait until he reaches full size then construct a handy-dandy messenger bag. Still deciding on that one.

Furious update two hours later:

I don't even want to discuss how many times this poor plant has had a fat spotted cat either in it or hanging off of it this weekend. I wonder if I could make potholders out of ocicat hide?

Railway Accidents and Other Things to Do

2009-12-14T10:02:00.019-05:00

We take a break from the flu and caffeine induced blogging insanity of the past two days to lurk around in the private lives of dead people. Today we nose around in the Time Book of a Mr. Jas. T. Blevins of Grants Pass, Oregon. Say "hi" to Mr. Blevins, everyone.

We are to assume the gentleman is long since dead, unless of course he was some unholy species of cast iron steam man that went on a rampage and flattened the town of Grants Pass, Oregon before he stomped off into the night, never to be seen again. Sometimes, even today, you can still hear his lonely whistle...

I'm kind of partial to the Steam Man scenario, but then I have issues.

We see Mr. Blevins worked for the SP (Southern Pacific?) Railroad Company and during the months of August and September 1902 he worked 10 hour days, seven days a week for $2.00 a day. He doesn't note how many hours he allotted himself for grumbling about his miserable lot in life, how much time he spent weeping uncontrollably, or how many fingers and toes he still possessed at that time.

The Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. helpfully includes cheery statistics of how many railroad employees are killed or injured every year in collisions, derailments and "other accidents", leading me to wonder about the fate of Mr. Blevins since it seems trains were plowing into each other willy-nilly, flying off the tracks for no reason, catching fire out of spite, eating people, etc. and perhaps he met some tragic end. He filled in the months all the way to December 1902, but failed to put in any hours beyond October. Perhaps he finally read the accident report in the front of his Time Book and when he got his last paycheck high-tailed it out of there and got a less dangerous job back East in something like coal mining or mercury manufacture.

Or perhaps a rampaging feral train ate him.

looks innocent

In my defense, there were two novels by W. Grove, A Mexican Mystery (1888) and The Wreck of a World(1889), in which a rampaging steam engine eats trees and telegraph poles and eventually gets a taste for people. I haven't been able to track down either book in hard copy or download, and yes, I spend an inordinate amount of time downloading weird old books from Project Gutenburg.

Added later today:

Further rummaging around unearthed a couple of Mr. Blevins's tax receipts from 1892-93. I'm guessing that 1893 was the year he finally protested that steam men don't pay taxes and that extra 25 cents was what finally tipped him over the edge into his cast iron rampage.

See, this is why you should shred everything, otherwise demented collectors like myself will buy it and weave it into some bizarre and troubling world from which there is no escape.

From Hell Crafts Came

2009-12-13T11:14:00.023-05:00

I'm going to guess you haven't even started on your Xmas decorations, have you? What the hell's wrong with you? Run out of yarn? Not enough coffee???

I've decided to be helpful, despite my fevered delirium, and hunt up some quick 'n' easy crafting ideas and only a few of them are made from garbage. I'm sure you've run completely out of garbage by now so I'll wait a bit while you sneak out the back and rummage around through the neighbors' trash cans. Dig around way down at the bottom under the coffee grounds because that's where the good stuff is.

I don't know about you, but I don't have enough pipe-cleaner Rat Angels or Shocked Santas hanging from my tree. Santa's been watching everything you do on the sofa and he doesn't like it one bit. "What are you doing???" he seems to shriek as he flings his arms out. The Rat Angel is a bit ambivalent, like he's seen it already and is beyond caring. He then flitters away on his ginormous Dumbo ears.

Because you've been steadily raiding the medicine cabinets of your friends and their grandmas for "free samples" you've got a few extra pill bottles around the house. By "extra" I mean they're crammed under the sofa cushions, lurking in the fridge, and rolling around in the tub, so you've got plenty for this next project. With one bottle, a cheap plastic angel, and some string you can lovingly create this Oxycontin Ornament. It kinda helps to peel at least part of the label off.

See, in the dead of winter I always have extra daisies littering the house and I can never think of what to do with them. I mean, usually I just eat them but there's only so many flowers a girl can cram in. I've been told some people decorate with the damn things but I'm a little suspicious. So if you really insist on doing that I can at least point you in the direction of this Cheery Owl Centerpiece. See, he's disguised as a snowman. Festive!

No, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about but I can always blame the fever.

Since you've been hoarding bleach bottles like they're going out of style I think you should make a few Pervy Snowmen to decorate for the holidays. See, he's whipping open his little cape and showing you his junk. What, you think that's a broom?

Killjoy.

Don't even try to tell me this next one is a broom. Dammit.

Is that a mushroom or is that can really happy to see you? I won't tell anyone. Really. At least not while you're in the room.

Like pretty much every craft idea from 1970 that didn't involve paper mache or decoupage, this Priapic Storage Container is lovingly assembled from burlap and felt. I'm quite impressed by the felt glitter-substitute that shows just how magical this piece is. As you can see, it can be used to store that extra garbage you haven't crafted anything clever out of yet. I hear there's a pretty sharp Easter Bunny you can make out of wadded-up paper, chicken bones, and a paperclip.

Of course, being either lazy or cruel, I've completely neglected to post these Halloween ideas which could have saved you pots and pots of money during this recession by showing you how to craft your own costumes and decorations. Your friends would have never known you cheaped out and didn't buy them from the store, but then all your friends are probably drunk off their asses and wouldn't have noticed if you wandered into their house dressed in a refrigerator box. So it kind of didn't matter, did it?

Anyhow. You pretty much spent all year wondering what you would dress up as for Halloween. Planning and plotting but still coming up empty, then buying that cheap-ass witch hat from the drugstore at the last minute. I know you.

Now Halloween 2010 is only eleven months away so I suggest you start saving up your plastic bleach bottles for this cheerful Monkey-Clown Death Mask, since you used up your stash on Pervy Snowmen. There's not much more horrifying than a monkey or a clown so why not combine the two in a hellish hybrid? Handing out candy to the neighborhood kids? I suggest putting it on before you open the door so you'll have all that candy to yourself, plus anything the little beasts drop on the sidewalk as they scramble away.

I see they finally found the Skeletal Remains of Ike Broflovski. Someone has pretty disturbing ideas about the human anatomy and I blame budget cuts in the American school system. I'm sure in a biology lab somewhere there's a battered old skeleton with the forearms jerry-rigged onto the neck and a white balloon stuck on in place of the skull that the junior Satanists in Mrs. Neilson's sixth-grade science class stole.

There's not much else I can say about it. Not enough coffee, really. But it is mostly made of garbage, so that's something.

Feh. I'm going back to bed.

She's Had Much, Much Too Much Coffee

2009-12-12T22:58:00.010-05:00

Here's a fun quiz everyone can do and can "lead you to FUN and PROFITS!" Right. While I'm rummaging around through the neighbor's garbage in the dark I'll try and remember that macaroni and burnt matches can "lead me to FUN and PROFITS!"

Don't peek at the answers until you're done!

Ready?

1. Mock wrought iron made from--real wrought iron.
2. Parrot made from--a transmission from a 1957 Ford Fairlane, 3 buckets of concrete, a wooden clothes pin, an Atlas Rocket afterburner, and glitter.
3. Model steam engine made from--a whole turkey, 2 apple cores, and a banana peel.
4. Peacock plaque made from--water skis.
5. Bible school project made from--a pair of socks and the neighbor's dog.
6. Bride and groom made from--a leftover steak, 17 Coke bottles, used motor oil, and glitter.
7. Basket made from--a bowling ball, a stick of gum, and 3 sticks of dynamite.
8. Dragon plaque made from--a leftover policeman and glitter.

Now go do some of that "FUN and PROFITS!" crap. I won't stop you.

Disturbingly Natural

2009-12-12T17:10:00.001-05:00

Nothing says "Christmas" to me more than seeing Wino Santa locked in a life-or-death struggle with nature itself. Yes, it looks quite nasty but that's nature's way and you can't argue with nature. Run Santa, run!

This has disturbed me so much I think I should avert my eyes and refill my coffee mug.

Hateful Gifts For One And All

2009-12-12T16:00:00.048-05:00

You know it's that time of year when you see those people at the bottom of your list that you don't particularly like. That strange aunt who plays "pull my finger". The neighbor who takes the really good parking place out front every evening. The co-worker who decorates his cubicle with inspirational posters. You know, anyone you haven't offended with your "gifts" already or perhaps those who haven't learned their lesson in the previous years.

Of course it's much, much too late in the year to knit up this flashy sweater, you forgot to buy that battered cheese log at the Salvage Barn, plus you realized you're just too damn lazy to even shoplift a Chia Pet from the corner drug store. So what do you do?

What do you do? Well for starters you have some coffee.

I'm guessing you've already made everything from Last Minute Half-Assed Xmas Gifts, Gifts For People You Don't Like Very Much, and Gifts For People You Hate More Than Life Itself so you've come here in a desperate attempt to salvage your little holiday crap-fest. If it's a crap-fest you're planning, then a crap-fest it shall be.

But first, I wouldn't say "no" to another cup of coffee.

I'm not suggesting that you embroider this tasteful wall hanging of a Giant Avenging Nipple, because you haven't got time for that kind of foolishness. I say haul out the crayons, some mangy felt, a bottle of tequila and have at it. Make a wall hanging out of an old pillow case, draw it on the back of an acid-washed jean jacket with markers, or scribble it in the center of a paper bag, who the hell cares. I know I don't. Give it to that ex-boyfriend in honor of his ham-fisted attempts at foreplay.

Hey! That mug looks a little empty. More coffee? Certainly!

Remember that time you got really, really drunk and made a crapload of Halloween decorations? You don't? Hopefully your next gift recipient doesn't either.

This "upcycled" bleach-bottle-and-toilet-paper Dirty Old Witch Candy Jar is perfect for that smug office jackass who's always yanking your plastic soda bottles out of the trash and putting them in the recycling bin and being really fucking obvious about it. Fill it with those fuzzy peppermints you found in that yardsale grandma purse, because that's recycling, too.

Have some more coffee?? Thank you!! I believe I will!!

Everyone loves turtles. Well, everyone except the designer of this little charmer who's been obviously hatin' on some damn turtles since way back. Save up all your used tissues and delicately mold them into a Leprous Floral Turtle and paint the resulting wad with the water you cleaned your brushes in last week and forgot about. This would be perfect for that trend-following hipster so tell them it's ironic and kitchy, because the hep kids on the internets are all digging the leprous turtles.

Oh my, the coffee pot is empty!!! What to do, what to do??? I know!!! Make another pot!!! Yes!!!

You've been wondering where are all the usual racist toys I manage to dig up, haven't you? You've also been wondering where the really lame gifts made of pipe cleaners are too, I bet. Maybe not, but I'm fevered and delirious at this point and the lights are real pretty and Abe Lincoln is talking to me through my TV and I can taste metal... Still, who on your list would turn down an Angry Eskimo if you told them you bought it from a little blind child who was selling them on the street corner? They'll be too guilt-ridden to throw it out and will be forced to display it prominently on their desk or hang it from the rear-view mirror. Try not to laugh hysterically every time you see it.

Aaaaand if you haven't already made enough crap out of old nuts, then here's a Whatever-the-Hell-It-Is, made of (what else?) old nuts. Leave this one on the desk of that fussy little busybody who's allergic to tree nuts, all the while waxing poetic about those long-ago times when you were a child and your grandfather taught you how they handcrafted gifts in Ye Olde Country out of old nuts and hot glue.

Heeeey4yy!!!1 Coffee shotssx!!! Woo000ooo!!11!

collapses twitching into a sweaty heap

The Worms Mock Me

2009-12-12T14:32:00.007-05:00

Since I've been neglecting to consume Reliable Worm Cakes, rub my body with Worm Syrup, and cram Celebrated Worm Lozenges up each nostril I appear to have acquired either a bad cold or a half-assed flu. I've just been taking my life in my own hands and the Worms mock me for it.

I've even neglected to cook these Jim-dandy Worm-Infested Sausages. Yeah, that's the stuff right there.

Don't ask me how much coffee I've had today already. Let's just say it's more than a mug and less than a gallon. And some macadamia nuts. Those are good for the flu, right? Coffee and macadamia nuts? I think I read somewhere the fat in the macadamias and the caffeine in the coffee join forces and burn through the germs like General Sherman did Atlanta, but that could be the fever talking.

Since I've spent the day sloppily using up every tissue in the house I'm likely to have to brave the cold tomorrow to walk about two blocks to the 7-11, or if I'm feeling especially adventurous, four blocks to the supermarket. That's four blocks both ways, for a box of fucking tissues. Maybe some more coffee.

The Spotted Thing is no help whatsoever. I begged, I pleaded, but in the end he clawed a chunk out of my hand and said, "Get your own damn tissues." Unfeeling fat bastard.

Magically Delicious, part duh.

2009-12-09T19:19:00.002-05:00

Because you can never have enough worm edibles around the house, I offer everyone Reliable Worm Cakes and Syrup. I suggest spreading the Cakes with Syrup, then having a couple of Dr. Wieland's Celebrated Sugar Worm Lozenges as dessert.

Nummy!

Magically Delicious

2009-12-07T19:36:00.003-05:00

Not only are these worm lozenges, they're sugar worm lozenges. Celebrated sugar worm lozenges. Not that the people on the label appear to be celebrating or anything; in fact they look positively depressed. Perhaps they haven't yet had their lozenge.

Mmmmm, sugar worm lozenges.

And the Crowd Goes Wild.

2009-12-06T15:44:00.008-05:00

Despite having a lardy cat dangling from my shoulder, I finally got New Crap posted at Etsy.

Go look. I'll be making more coffee.

Where the Hell Is It?

2009-12-06T09:08:00.020-05:00

I thought I'd share my new game which, in retrospect, I should have kept to myself. It's called Find the Spotted Thing and I've been playing it all morning in lieu of photographing my New Etsy Crap and posting it, like a normal human would. It's sort of like "Where's Waldo," if Waldo perhaps bit the living snot out of you when you found him.

No prizes will be awarded.

Later that morning, whilst I was trying fitfully to photograph New Etsy Crap...

This bit of nonsense is the Find the Spotted Thing Bonus Round, usually played either as a tie breaker or if none of the contestants could be bothered with Finding the Spotted Thing in the first place. As you can see this game can become quite tedious and get in the way of photographing New Etsy Crap.

And this is Find the Spotted Thing--Remedial, for those who had trouble with the more advanced version.

*claps listlessly*

Next Time: Gifts and holiday crafts you can make from Ocicat skin.

Things I'll Be Cranking Out This Weekend

2009-12-05T18:58:00.005-05:00

Besides posting New Etsy Crap, I'll be attempting to reconstruct the old steambustle.com site. I haven't been able to because my CD burner is dead and all my web software is on disks it can't read so I have to download a new program just to do some minor updates. I've forgotten most of my HTML and I need to do more than plug in a few words here and there. Just a little teeny basic program. A free one.

I've also got a bunch of patterns to upload to the Stitch-O-Rama and I kind of want to remodel that site too.

must buy more coffee

Preview of New Etsy Crap

2009-12-05T17:14:00.008-05:00

New Etsy Crap coming up at Perfidious Beadworks! Everyone needs New Crap so come buy some, yo. Said New Etsy Crap will most likely make its appearance Sunday, December 6th, if I can haul my carcass away from the television long enough to upload the photos and write amusing bios of the poor unfortunates on the pins. The writing and filling out all the technical Etsy stuff (shipping, tags, etc.) takes forever and I've been putting it off for about a week. I was kind of hoping brownies would take pity on me and type it up while I slept, but I suspect they've merely been raiding my fridge and leaving footprints on the cheese and drinking my beer. Tiny little bastards.

But once I get New Etsy Crap posted I can redraw a couple of corset patterns and sew up something new. I'm drowning in thrift store fabrics and there are a pile of patterns from Francis Grimble's Fashions of the Gilded Age I've been wanting to draft up and do something horrendously weird and industrial to. There is a draped overskirt in particular that I can not live without. Really. Can't do it. I'm trying not to die before I can sew the fool thing up.

These are mourning pins, beaded with Victorian-era "French jet" beads (black glass beads made to look like Whitby jet) and contain the usual grim visages of dead people in my photo collection. Look! I've even made a teeny Dirt Nap Guy. Awwwwww. Yes, I am quite aware that all my other pins are French-jet-beaded-with-dead-people-pins but these are totally different. See? Diff. Er. Ent. Instead of using those crummy amber-colored glass globs I rummaged around in the scrap glass at work, found some 1/4" thick glue-chip glass and cut up a pile of tiny rectangles that I hand-ground bevels onto while the boss wasn't looking, so they wind up looking a lot like the half-assed beveling you sometimes see on cheap 19th-century jewelry. These look ten times more authentic than the ones I've been doing plus I had no intention of going into the accursed scrapbooking section of Craft Hell and paying real money for beveled glass doodads I could make for free. Scrapbooking makes me angry. Grr.

Here's one in progress. You can barely tell by this vile image (cheap-ass eBay digital camera) that I've woven a lock of hair into what's called a "mourning knot" and stuck it under the "In Memory Of" thingy. Yes, all my pins look that bad in their embryonic state, but after a troublesome childhood they tend to eventually turn out pretty nice. Or as nice as a brooch with a dead guy in a casket can look. This one is having an especially rough adolescence and may require some severe redesigning, sort of like putting iron leg braces on a little kid who has pigeon toes.

I've also been learning a little Victorian hairwork, so expect some bracelets and such woven out of fake hair, horsehair, or silk thread. I mean, what else does one do with a set of old ponyfalls that have already been around the clubs and back if one doesn't wish to make them into dreads? I've already got a wide cuff with a buckle made of old pocketwatch parts sketched out that may make it out in the world if I can set up my weaving stand without having a damnably fat spotted cat hanging off everything.

Ooh, burgundy and white and black hair maybe... *scampers away*

It Was Dead When I Bought It, I Swear

2009-11-27T18:06:00.030-05:00

No, I didn't shave Grady and put him in a roasting pan. I spent yesterday morning doing unholy things to a dead bird, but luckily for anyone who came over to eat not one of those things involved Jell-o. And none of us got sick, in case you were wondering.

Grady got a saucer of roast chicken and gravy, mainly to shut him the hell up and to keep his fat ass off the table because the little pig thinks he's starving. The evening's entertainment involved him climbing both the bedroom and bathroom doors about seventy-five times and playing fetch for something like an hour, then he was out like a light for the rest of the night.

In the spirit of my fruitless attempts at World Domination, most of which involve boring everyone stupid or merely making random people miserable, we watched most of the Square Pegs DVD that I just got for about $4 used. I think I hate this show more than I did when it first aired back in 1982. The scripts are skimpy and tired, I hate the characters, and the clothes aren't even funny enough to keep me awake. Why the hell would two girls want to be friends with people who call them "that fat girl" and "that fat girl's friend"? Holy crap, I think I even hate the DEVO episode.

The only amusing line out of a whole fucking season of lame episodes was one where Muffy (that loud girl) and Patty (that fat girl's friend) are standing on a table in the lunchroom, god knows why. Jennifer and LaDonna (the two popular girls) are at foot-level staring at their preppy shoes. Jennifer says, totally perplexed, "Like, both of them are wearing brown shoes with, like, money in them." Completely pointless line and amusing for absolutely no reason, except that maybe by that point I was worn down and made delirious by 15 or so episodes of truly half-assed comedy writing.

My brother and his dorky friends used to wear black penny-loafers with dimes in them, fer chrissakes.

I thought the 80s were a bit scarier than Square Pegs wound up being. So, for a punchline we hauled out my high school yearbooks, which were quite a bit more amusing than any half-assed old sitcom. I'm still a bit horrified and creeped out by the whole exercise. Sadly, the part of the 80s when I was in high school was mostly dull and uneventful, rather than chock full of wacky sitcom-style happenings in goofy clothes while a perky New-Wave soundtrack blared. I had no friends named Ducky, nor knew any guys who skipped school to do lame things in Chicago, neither did I spend my 16th birthday eating cake with Jake Ryan. Life did not look like a Go-Go's video, unfortunately. I think I spent my three years of high school reading books and working on a Rubik's Cube. Oh yeah, girls who read and played with Rubik's Cubes were totally popular. Totally.

But at least I never wore shoes with, like, money in them.

Whilst blearily spending my post-Thanksgiving Friday watching MST3K tapes, I came across episode #604 Zombie Nightmare, which reminded me of this supremely retarded party game an acquaintance of sub-standard intelligence claims to have come up with. It seems you are presented with the scenario of being chased by vampires (or zombies, as the case may be) and you're trapped in a warehouse full of stuff and you have to use this stuff to fight them off. But he says the warehouse has "anything" in it, which I said wasn't much of a challenge. I could just go and pull the tarp off a Sherman tank or crack open that crate of Ninjas. It could be the warehouse for the flame-throwing-chainsaw factory or the one that holds atomic-powered robots. Not much of a challenge there.

"Suppose," I said, "just suppose this warehouse was full of pies? How the flaming hell would you kill vampires with pies?" Because I'm obnoxious like that, and I wonder about stuff like how you could fight off cannibalistic aliens with a bag of groceries or build a zombie-proof shelter with stuff found in a Taco Bell.

Or what if you were trapped in a warehouse much like the one my brother used to work in, the one that stored really cheap-ass party supplies? You'd have to fight vampires with one of those paddle ball thingies, a Chinese finger trap, and a whoopie cushion, all the while wearing a party hat. I mean, dude, if you're going to think up a fucking party game, at least use some imagination. It doesn't make me at all inclined to go to any parties where I'm going to fall asleep five minutes after I get there because the games suck.

A better game, instead of something pointless and brain-dead like deciding which middle-aged overdressed Sex and the City skank you're like, is to try and figure out which Big Bang Theory character you most resemble. I mean, that's a totally different head. Totally.

Ice Ice Baby

2009-11-21T09:13:00.004-05:00

I was saving this for another day, but since my buttheaded brother seems to be having a minor stroke about my Thanksgiving post I'm forced to use it now.

Picnic Menus, New Idea Woman's Magazine, June 1906.

Not only do they not give the recipes for any of the more distressing dishes, they also insist that one invites Vanilla Ice to the picnic and somehow contrive to get him into Tiny Nutmeg Melons. Perhaps he wears them like a brassiere and does a suggestive little dance.

Word to your mother.

Crappy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-21T07:43:00.022-05:00

You know Thanksgiving is creeping up on us, right? I'm fairly sure most of you people don't cook crap and tend to leave the table with all the free rolls and turkey legs you can cram in your pockets and down your socks when you think no one's looking. What, you're trying to tell me you don't use Thanksgiving to fill the fridge? Don't even try it. Lies hurt baby Jesus!

One way of avoiding being labeled as a freeloader is to bring a dish. It doesn't seem to matter what the hell is in that dish, just so long as it looks like you spent at least five minutes throwing it together. I've decided to provide a long-needed public service by providing recipes that will well-nigh guarantee that you'll never be asked to bring a dish ever again and you'll be free to stuff your bra with sweet potatoes to your heart's content.

These recipes are from the nearly inedible The New Jell-O Book of Surprises (1930) when people just didn't know any better. "Jell-O entrees. Jell-O salads. Jell-O relishes. Jell-O desserts. This booklet is so full of wonderfully good things you can make with Jell-O, your meals never, never get monotonous. Just open it...any page...and spring a real Jell-O surprise for dinner today!"

I'm scared already.

Chicken Mousse. Hmmm, mousse. I don't particularly like the idea of my chicken being foamy, smelling like the 1980s and looking like a Flock of Seagulls hairdo, but I'm picky that way. I'm guessing that by the time the Great Depression got cranking, people would pretty much eat anything they could get their hands on, though any normal person would have made chicken soup and had the lemon Jell-O with whipped cream for dessert. See, when you get all fancy you scare little kids and it just ain't right.

Corned Beef Loaf. This just screams "glistening and jiggly". I might be going out on a limb here, but I'd say this serves way more than ten people because only one or two in the crowd would be brave enough to even taste it. This is one of those recipes where the separate ingredients are perfectly fine by themselves but when they're combined they tend to resemble something that has been eaten once already. You'll be carrying this one back home with you, so be sure to stick it in the freezer to dust off and bring in next Thanksgiving. If you're lucky you might get several years out of it.

Cardinal Salad. The main disappointment of this recipe is that there isn't a speck of cardinal in it. Once we've all gotten over the glaring omission of dead birdies attractively molded around the center we can consider the comedy aspects of this festive salad. I'd say park it on the dessert table amid the Jell-O fruit molds and sit back and watch the fun when Grandpa bites into a particularly horse-radishy slab of beet, or when little Cindy gets ahold of that wad of grated onion you didn't mix in very well. And don't say a word when Aunt Bess puts a big scoop of Cool Whip on top!

Remember, it's not really Thanksgiving until somebody starts crying.

Yeah, I'm Bored

2009-11-20T20:18:00.003-05:00

I had a long and quite witty post all lined up, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was about. Feh.

The cat was neutered three weeks ago and whatdaya know, he's started humping that toy cow again. What, I never told you Grady was a sex machine? Now that you know you can't un-know it. Giggedy-giggedy.

He's also about nine pounds, which seems to me to be kinda hefty for a seven month old cat, but what do I know?

Two days ago I was watching TV and Grady comes running with a cricket dangling from his mouth. Not one of those cute little fat brown crickets that chirp, but a camel cricket, which has really long legs and doesn't make a sound. Probably eats books like the little brown ones. Anyhow, Grady played with it for a bit, then picked it up and carried it to the other room. He then brought it back to me, chewed on it, then ran back to the kitchen with it dangling by one leg. This went on for about ten minutes, back and forth, before he finally brought back what was pretty much a nubbin of cricket. Of course he's still playing with it, batting it back and forth, until I can get a napkin and peel it up off the rug.

Yesterday he found a prehistoric crouton under the stove and proceeded to play with that until I could get it away from him. I know it had to be at least three years old because I haven't bought any croutons since I moved in.

Crap. None of this was what I wanted to post about. I promise you it wasn't about the cat. Crap crap crap crappity crap.

Corset Time

2009-10-05T16:31:00.005-04:00

I've been intending on posting these corset pics for a couple months. They're a bit meh and the photos suck because I'm still using that crap camera I got on eBay. Click on the photos so you can see just how much my camera sucks mega rancid dog's ass.

The two patterns I used--both are Civil War era corsets but the one on the left has gussets at the bust and hip and the one on the right is a basic French-style corset with hourglass-shaped pieces. Easy to follow instructions, but the fit isn't what I'm looking for. They're not intended for anything resembling figure-training and I was a bit too lazy to measure and do any adjusting. Crap. I'll sew the one on the right again, but not without some pretty severe waist shaping.

Simplicity 7215. I used black cotton coutil for the body of the corset and for the gussets I put in some antique embroidered silk from the thrift store that had some dry-rot holes and couldn't be used for anything big. It's a little too orange for my taste, but still nice and dramatic. The shaping could be a bit less cylindrical.

Interior of the above corset. Red lining fabric from an old coat and coutil was used for the boning casings. I kinda like the inside more than the outside. One thing I hate about this style of corset is all the hand sewing to get the gussets in properly and the hand stitching to keep the fabric from splitting, etc. I had done all the hand sewing a couple of months ago and did all the machine sewing one Saturday afternoon and nearly ruined my hands with my grommet setter.

Simplicity 5726. I cut this one out two sizes smaller than the pattern suggested and still had to take in a tuck in the fabric on either side of the back lacings, so it doesn't curve in nicely. This one will definitely be measured and redrawn so the pieces will curve in a couple of inches at the waist. The bust and hip measurements are fine. The skull fabric came from some butt-ugly thrift store skater pants--and I've been wanting to use it for something for ages.

I've worn them both out to the clubs and they're not uncomfortable and I get a lot of people wanting to know what the fabric is, but I really want them to be shaped a bit more hour-glassy. I normally take in about four inches at the waist so putting on a corset that maybe takes in one or two kinda ticks me off. Dammit.

I want my next corset to be PVC. Gots to be PVC, and I've found a couple places online that sell it cheap, not that it really needs to be since a corset only takes maybe a yard of fabric. Shame I haven't got the bucks for a pair of PVC platform boots to match. Crap.

And the Crap, It Just Don't Stop

2009-10-05T10:13:00.015-04:00

Nothing much happening here. I've been mostly attempting to read really god-awful books, then tossing them aside onto the Amazon Marketplace pile to sell. Feh. I should be posting a new Booklist of Horror some time. If I remember.

While I was typing this the Dog-Coughing Woman just walked under my window.

What, I never told you people about the Dog-Coughing Woman? Are you sitting comfortably? Well, one chilly morning, not long after young Severina moved into this enchanted apartment building next door to the accursed music department, she heard what seemed to be an asthmatic dog hacking up a lung. She could never get to her window fast enough in the mornings to spy the afflicted beast, but prayed it would soon recover and her sleep would return to its previously undisturbed state. No such luck. The coughing and hacking went on every morning around 7:30 am, like clockwork, and soon Severina spotted the culprit and discovered much to her horror that it wasn't an ailing canine. No sir. It was a middle-aged woman meandering between the enchanted apartment building and the accursed music department, possibly on her way to some wondrous university office or other. Huh, ponders Severina, I wonder who has cursed this innocent woman so that she now has Dog Lungs? Has she somehow offended an evil witch? Hopefully, she thinks, the afflicted woman will visit the village healer and will be returned to her human state. Noooo. That was at least three years ago and the Dog-Coughing Woman is doomed to make her lonely way between the buildings, for an eternity of endless circling and hacking. The end.

Besides the Dog-Coughing Woman, I'm also being serenaded by a beginning French-horn student. Yay. All I can say is at least it isn't a drum circle. Two years ago a bunch of the neighborhood hippies got an assortment of drums for Xmas that year and proceeded to spend their afternoons, when they weren't in class, pounding the hell out of these things in the little park across the street. This went on until classes ended for the semester in May and they went away. Or perhaps someone helpfully killed them all.

I've been slacking off on my knitting and spinning, partly because I've been fiddling with beads for my Etsy shop, mostly because Grady plays with anything that moves and it's nearly impossible to knit with a cat attached to the other end of your yarn. Actually he pretty much plays with everything, whether it moves or not. What kind of freak cat plays with a clothes-drying rack and a dustpan? A freak cat that eats part of a spinning wheel.

Exhibit A. I discovered a couple of days ago that he appears to have eaten the little 2" long flexible plastic bit that connects the treadle to the wheel so I can't use it until I find a replacement part. I'll either have to contact the wheel's manufacturer or jerry-rig something, preferably made out of part of a cat.

Exhibit B. Rummaging around through my photos I discovered that the little bastard gnawed it off a couple of months ago. I thought I was doing good to take off the drive band so he wouldn't chew that up but the little beast defeated me with his sneakiness. He's probably been laughing at me since June.

Yes, spinning wheel parts made of cat. I should market that very thing. And I should sell patterns for knitting bags made out of the rest of the cat.

Since I don't seem to be making new things, I should be re-doing old things, like these moth-eaten 1950s wool gloves. The fingers were badly darned, apparently by a totally blind lunatic, and the wool on the ends is worn thin enough that you can see my fingers through them. I wouldn't be able to re-darn them myself since I didn't have any matching yarn, and I'd almost have to re-knit the fingers anyhow. So I decided that I really liked the beadwork and figured I could make them into some snappy mitts that I would actually wear, instead of cramming them back into a drawer for the moths to finish up. I did one way back in the spring and I haven't touched them since. My UFO pile will soon topple over and smother me.

I really like this undies set, but I haven't got the pattern. I kinda want to design something with this same idea since it's starting to get chilly here and I really liked the ones I've already made, despite how huge the ass wounded up being in the Weldon's pattern (note to self: try the pattern using size 2 needles instead of 3). Wool 1940s underwear totally rules under skirts. I could probably use one of my knitted French knickers patterns and find the top bit somewhere. The lace design is a bit perplexing, though. I think I've got a few other lace patterns I like a bit better. I had almost decided on making this a one-piece but the buttoned crotch of the Weldon's cami-knickers was a little clunky and weird and I kinda liked the option of not wearing the top part if I had on a big sweater.

Here's a stocking I've started. I've been starting and frogging this same damned stocking for months now, and this is the furthest I've managed to knit so far, and that was last night. They'll be a variation of the gray acrylic Skull Stockings I did a while back. The yarn is some nice black silk/wool blend stuff left over from the snake stockings I did for the AntiCraft book, so it won't be disgustingly itchy like that gray acrylic. I've got an easy lace pattern I want to use so I can finish the damned things before spring thaw.

I've also got some damnable idea in my head of some pink and black Faire-Isle made from a moth-eaten pink top and an ugly black sweater, both thrift-store cashmere. We will see if it pans out.

Sleep well, Grady. You don't know it yet, but you're off to the vet this weekend for a little boy-kitty adjustment. *evil laugh* Snippity-snip-snip.

A Visit With the Catdog

2009-09-14T08:24:00.012-04:00

Bored, bored, bored. I need a good book or a new project or something. Crap.

Nothing much happening here, except Grady has now gotten to be about five pounds and isn't even five months old yet. He's going to be a monster. He's also one of these damn things which is a really doggy freakin' kitty-cat. He plays fetch and is a total face-licker and jumps all over anybody who visits. I don't even want to talk about how he always has to sit on my shoulder when I'm at the computer or the cat-hat behavior when I'm trying to sleep.

When I got a free spotted kitty I thought I was just getting a little mongerel, not some fancy Ocicat. "Bite my spotted ass," Grady says.

So I have invited into my home a Catdog, that mythical animal that combines some of the worst traits of both cats and dogs.

Here we have the usual climbing business that cats do just to piss their owners off. This usually happens about 6 am in one of the windows next to the bed or right as I'm dropping off to sleep, but sometimes he'll do it in the afternoon, just to mix things up.

Ahhh, a guilty dog expression, because you know cats never feel guilty about crap. Who knows what the hell he's done, or is plotting to do while my back is turned. See, cats plot and plan but dogs feel all guilty about it. His little catdog brain is probably having an overload right now.

Like most dogs, he enjoys digging in the dirt, not to crap in it like a cat but just for the sheer joy of flinging dirt everywhere. Or maybe to bury something. Who the hell knows. This is what I came home to a couple of weeks ago. Yaay, thanks Grady! So I swept it all up and put the smaller pot in the bigger cactus to (hopefully) cover up some of the dirt so he wouldn't dig again.

Of course I totally failed. He decided the very next day to tunnel underneath the little pot...

...and fling dirt all over the sofa and my knitting--which incidentally I haven't been able to do any of because he yanks on the yarn and the needles. I've since had to repot everything and put it all in much smaller pots so there's less dirt to tempt him and I've had to build little wire cages over some of the more fragile little plants he likes to roll around in and put rocks and glass pebbles in the larger ones to cover up what little dirt is left.

"Ha ha," he says. "I can dig up the little ones too!" The little bastard is relentless.

He Doesn't Take Dictation

2009-08-03T17:42:00.004-04:00

Ahhh, Grady Grady Grady.

Despite a promising start, I've since discovered the boy is completely hopeless at sewing. I was hemming a blouse on Saturday and he was sitting underneath the sewing machine and suddenly came up through the metal plate that covers the bobbin mechanism. Not the whole cat, just two very large gray paws. Not terribly helpful to give me a little heart attack pretending to be Thing from the Addams Family.

Holy crap.

When my brother was little he woke up screaming one night that there was a cow in his room. "I heard a cow!" he shrieked over and over. Well, I won't have to worry about cows wandering into my bedroom because I found something Grady is actually good at. Cow Hunting.

You'll notice a stray cow lurking next to my pillow. Grady pounces, deftly flips the cow around, and then he batters it around a bit before chewing on his nose. That cow will never sneak up on me again when I'm asleep! Let's just hope the apartment isn't infested with the little bastards because I don't think they make Cow Motels to trap them and I can't imagine where they'd nest.

Despite his new-found skills at cow-hunting, he's become pretty useless as a lab assistant. He can type pretty fast but his spelling is atrocious. He also tends to either play with or eat my experiments so I've either had to shut him up in the bathroom while I work or wait until he's asleep so I can get some work done.

Ohh, can't wait until it's time to go to the doc's for a little boykitty snip-a-roo. Heh heh.

Time to reformat my hard drive and reload The Sims. I downloaded some new furniture and crap for them and I haven't had a chance to use any of it. I keep intending to reformat but I spend my weekends either sewing or reading total crap books or watching even worse movies. Feh.

Addendum

2009-07-22T20:43:00.004-04:00

I forgot to mention Little Bastard Grady's favorite nighttime trick--pouncing on my head in the middle of the night. He'll bound from somewhere and belly-flop onto my face, wrapping all four paws around my head like the creature from Alien. He then tries to bite my forehead, all the while purring like a lawnmower. Sometimes I suspect someone is actually in my apartment throwing cats at me like the Crazy Cat Lady on The Simpsons.

He's now starting to think his name is "Goddammit Grady".

Fight fight fight, bite bite bite.

Cat Assistant At Work

2009-07-20T21:17:00.003-04:00

My new kitty assistant has informed me that his name is Grady. He has one of those tiny squeaks, like you'd stepped on a mouse, so I wasn't sure exactly what he was telling me for about a week. Not a terribly manly voice, but who am I to complain?

Thus far he's done his job well, usually bringing me my tools when I ask for them, especially if I'm using a catnip mouse in my experiments. Those he'll usually bring to me whenever I drop them. Now I just have to get him to bring me my coffee in the mornings or my eyeglasses when I can't remember where I've parked them.

Here he is, helping me with my newest project. I'm assembling a smallish zeppelin in my sitting room and the gasbag involves a lot of sewing, so young Master Grady has been a big help keeping the fabric steady and occasionally yanking on the ends to straighten them. I hope he'll do just as well when I start on my Rampaging Robot Army. He'd better know how to put in rivets, charge a battery, and load a cannon.

Great assistant, but he is a shameless exhibitionist. Nobody needs to see kitten junk.

Fresh Laboratory Assistant

2009-07-06T13:32:00.004-04:00

My newest cat assistant. I'm looking at his employment application and I can't quite read his handwriting so I'm not exactly sure what his name is just yet. I've just started training him in laboratory work and I'm hoping he'll do well pulling my sled in the Arctic. He's not much of a conversationalist so I might have to find some other way of entertaining myself on my next long Moon voyage. Hopefully he doesn't drink excessively, play loud music, or complain about my housekeeping.

Take That!

2009-05-31T22:15:00.004-04:00

Order from the US Department of Strange Disease Nomenclature:

We are currently researching names for whatever it is that ails my dink brother. Please do not touch him or invite others to do so, not even on a dare.

Dinky Gonads Syndrome
Contagious Pointy-Head Disease
Rampaging Tediousness Disorder
Spotted Jackass
Toes of Doom
Inevitable Crap-Spouting Disease
Perpetual Doofus Syndrome

Thank you.

Strange Disease Nomenclature Commanding Officer
Severina

Sub-Human! (points accusingly)

2009-05-28T18:51:00.007-04:00

Open Letter to My Non-Believing Jackass Brother:

What? What's that you say? You don't believe I spent last weekend cavorting around Spudland with the Smart Patrol?

I did, dammit! *stomps feet* I've still got residual horrors from that incident with the chocolate pudding. Lookit, my hands are still shaking!!!

Fine. I was going to invite you but I'll just go by myself next time. Nyyyyahhh.

You're just ticked that I didn't bring you any t-shirts, shot glasses, or postcards.

Questionable Holiday

2009-05-25T19:50:00.023-04:00

Since there's no orange beastie to keep me occupied (waahhh!) I decided to crank up the ol' time/space machine and take a little holiday. I did manage to take photos, but since my digital camera sucks total ass the pics aren't so hot. This may also be due to some sort of anomaly in the space/time continuum causing digital images to look shockingly like an ill-conceived computer game from the mid 1990s. I'll use real film next time.

Please click on the images for more hideous detail. It'll be just like you all came along with me.

I wound up in the near future, in a strange place called Spudland, and was immediately recruited by the Smart Patrol. I sat around in Smart Patrol HQ bored out of my mind with Jamie and Jeremy, who are a couple of sanctimonious little dorks who say things like "We're the Smart Patrol and that's not smart." I was tempted to put a "kick me" sign on Jamie's back, and you know that's something I'd totally do, but I was feeling a little lazy. You know how much trouble it is to find paper and tape and stuff in somebody else's house?

I'm also not too chuffed about that bright green indoor-outdoor carpeting they've got going on there. That crap must have totally been on sale.

I then accompanied Tanya to Lifeforms Unlimited, where it was hoped I could observe some recombinant DNA experiments in action, but unfortunately the main experiment (the dreaded Turkey Monkey!) escaped and was at large in the city. I had to leave before I got rooked into searching for the bastard thing. You know the new recruit is always the one who gets eaten, slimed, boinked, and/or zombified by whatever horrible thing is out there. It all sounded suspiciously like sending an ensign in a red shirt with the Away Team and I didn't want any part of it. Nooo sir.

I mean, I don't live in Spudland, so why should I care if it eats people, or craps on them, or gives them cooties, or whatever? Not my problem.

So I sneaked away and wasted a few hours with Grady, who seems to spend a lot of his free time whacked out on drugs in the alley behind Club DEVO. He'll also share the stuff with you, if you're into pharmaceuticals. He giggles and falls over a lot and the rest of the Smart Patrol don't seem to have a problem with it. I was a bit surprised there wasn't a lecture from Jamie, but then the dala had kicked in and I didn't care any more.

Dala. Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Heh.

You kinda have to be a little whacked out, since the only entertainment seems to be a herky-jerky holo-projection of an ancient DEVO performance or a recently mutated guy named Booji Boy warbling gawd knows what. Yeah, I bought tickets to both shows. You gonna make something of it? Huh? In all honesty, I could have spent a couple of hours in the alley lying face-down in a puddle thinking I was inside watching a show.

You do what you want on a holiday, and I'll do what the hell I want. If I want to sit in the alley like a hobo, then that's my business.

Locked away in a room the Golden Oasis Retirement Home was the real DEVO, occasionally playing songs, but mostly cursing and squabbling with each other like crazy old men do. "That's the same fuck-up you did 35 years ago!"

Nothin' like watching old dudes fight. If I ran the Golden Oasis Retirement Home I'd sell tickets for it.

Biggest mistake? Helping Max feed them chocolate pudding. I still wake up screaming. Luckily, I left before the sponge baths which I suspect was another job for new Smart Patrol recruits.

I had just enough power left in the time/space machine to get home in time to unpack and do a load of laundry, wash my hair, and watch The Big Bang Theory before I went back to my regular work routine.

I'll be powered up again for another trip soon. Next time I'll bring my own "kick me" signs.

Faded Away

2009-05-16T07:32:00.003-04:00

Damien 7/10/1991-5/14/2009

In the past two weeks the orange beastie had been eating very little and had gotten pretty frail. He had suddenly become an elderly cat. I had even attempted feeding him prescription cat food with a syringe. He gave up early Friday morning.

Messy, argumentative, loud, brainy, major pain in the ass, and the best cat ever.

Craft Fail Extravaganza

2009-05-05T19:28:00.005-04:00

This weekend I spent three days glueing and molding and accomplishing jack diddly. The Gods of Craft mock me and fart in my general direction.

Craft Fail #1: I printed up several illustrations and glued them to glass, exactly like I've always done for those damnable Etsy pins. Then the next day I trimmed away the excess paper, as usual. All four peeled off with very little effort. WTF??? Normally it takes a lot of elbow grease and a very sharp X-Acto to scrape the pictures off the glass and these pretty much fell off in one piece. Same glue, same paper, same ink, same glass globs. No idea why they did this. I've even had a customer recently tell me she accidentally washed and put one of my pins in the clothes dryer and it survived unscathed so there's no reason the same exact glue should behave like this.

Craft Fail #2: I took a couple of glass thingies with the illustrations that had been securely stuck on last week and glued them to fabric, as usual. The fabric turned brittle and came off the glass in chips so I couldn't use those either.

Craft Fail #3: I was rummaging around in a tin of clock parts and inexplicably chose the most boring metal piece in there and decided to use the last of my silicone to make a mold of it because I thought I needed multiple boring metal pieces, only in colored plastic. Well, they wound up being even more boring than the original, if that's possible. You can't even tell they were molded from anything remotely interesting.

Observe teh boring. Sneer at the two identically dull round items in the bottom row. Or better yet, don't waste your energy. Go watch some paint dry.

Craft Fail #4: I discovered one bottle of my two-part plastic resin had a dried crust on the surface so I cracked it and poured a spoonful of it and mixed it in with the other and some powdered pigment, as fucking usual. It started frothing and swelling up in the molds and turning battleship gray instead of a nice bronze. Fine. I thought I could paint it and file down the backs. Ha! They never hardened. Two days later they're still bendy and spongy and completely useless for jewelry.

This is what I got for my birthday on Sunday. Total craft fail. Nobody gave me a new Strangling Robot or even a flamethrower. Hell, I could certainly use a flamethrower.

Name That Disorder! pt. 2

2009-05-05T19:23:00.003-04:00

From the Office of Strange Disease Nomenclature.

Verily, the disorder formerly known as "Circus Ass" shall henceforth be known as "Sideshow Ass". Please inform all afflicted parties of the change.

Thank you.

Strange Disease Nomenclature Commanding Officer
Severina

Name That Disorder!

2009-05-04T15:06:00.003-04:00

I decided that the names for diseases and disorders weren't very imaginative so I came up with a few for undiscovered conditions. Of course my brother wasn't very encouraging and said that only doctors and researchers get to name new stuff so I was wasting everyone's time.

The boy's a real buzz-kill.

Big Stupid Floppy Thing Syndrome.
Circus Ass.
Contagious Leaky Disease.
Questionable Nipples.
Inappropriate Crapping Disorder.
Sticky Toe Flakes.
Weird Unexplainable Smell Syndrome.

That's only a partial list, kids!

Same As It Ever Was

2009-05-04T13:15:00.004-04:00

Holy crap, I'm bored. Work four days, off three. You'd think I'd accomplish something in those three days beyond playing old computer games, reading bad novels, and wiping drool off the cat's chin. I've got a sewing pile that's reaching the ceiling, a mountain of unfinished Etsy shit that no-one will buy even if I finish it, and some long-abandoned website stuff that needs to be rearranged.

Feh, I say.

I've done nothing new beyond cleaning and rearranging the apartment, which is now beginning to turn greyish from its new coating of dust, and posting last month's Etsy rubbish. Nobody is buying a damned thing right now as far as I can tell.

I'd almost welcome a case of Swine Flu, just to make things sorta exciting. Maybe not. I had a two-week bout of some nasty headcold or sinus infection or space-cooties several weeks ago and no, it wasn't all that exciting. It was damned tedious.

So instead of nattering on and on about my wishlist of diseases I thought I'd wander over to my library and pull out a very special selection. Yes, "library", since my brother thinks "studio" isn't a terribly good description for that room. Jackass.

The Book of Wonders, 1917.

Mostly useful for the weird old illustrations that I've used on websites some years back, and the outdated information inside is always good for a laugh. Oddly enough, it doesn't mention that era's favorite hobbyhorses: self-pollution and dancing.

"Why Do We Wake Up In The Morning? We wake up naturally when we have sufficient rest. We wake up naturally, however, only when the destroyed parts of the body have been replaced." What? Did this book fall from some alternative past world where bits of the anatomy are ripped away in some apocalyptic battle or other and steadily replaced as one sleeps with new mechanical parts? Keen! I'll be on the first inter-dimensional steam engine heading that way. I could totally use a new mechanical head. It can't be any worse than the old parts I have made of meat.

Of course there are some supremely retarded answers like the one for "Where Do Living Things Come From?" God made everything and it took a really long time, then man "...was given additional powers so that he might become ruler of all living things..." Like the ability to shoot lightning bolts from his fingers? Maybe he could fly? No, wait, I got it. Man could bash weaker animals to bits with his hammerlike fists. Man smash! Yeah!

*squashes helpless baby animals flat with her fists for a bit*

I do love the cover. Observe the Mighty Space Owl who is angrily irradiating the Earth with the power of his ginormous eyes! Since the book came out in 1917, I postulate that the Mighty Space Owl is punishing the Earth by mutating ordinary influenza viruses into a super bug that wiped out millions. Take that, stupid Earth people!

Demolition Woman

2009-04-06T21:03:00.007-04:00

This weekend I decided to finally rearrange my bedroom to make better use of the space and to put all this crap I've collected up on the walls where it belongs instead of being propped up in every corner. I was originally going to move out of this place when my lease was up last month so there was no point in hanging up anything for two months only to have to take it all down and pack it up. The landlord wanted me to stay so they didn't raise the rent, I guess to keep from having to give me back my deposit.

I finally put some things in frames so now I have my autographed photos of Milton Berle, Hans Conried, and Bob Hope up on the wall behind the TV, and a few more antique photos in the bedroom. Paintings got shuffled around. The bed is going in a different direction so I'm sure I'll get up without my glasses and run right into the edge of the bathroom door.

I swept up enough cat hair to make about three more kitties. I think Damien invites his little kitty friends over while I'm at work and he shaves them because I can't imagine how one teeny little orange cat can shed that much hair. It wasn't even orange hair.

While I now have two nearly pristine rooms I sort of lost it while cutting down a giant crappy old poster frame into a smaller crappy old poster frame. Did you know crappy old poster frames stink like hell when you saw them apart? I'm guessing there is something smelly that is grown and harvested for the sole purpose of making crappy old poster frames.

Observe my living room, now looking like some crazy person lives here. Or an art student. For some reason I needed to dump out an entire tool box to build one frame. That red-handled stapler is pretty damn snazzy because not only does it fire staples all over the place, it also shoots several species of nails that tend to ricochet off the wood and wind up who the hell knows where. Not only can I do half-assed carpentry projects, I can make my living space dangerous to be in.

The cat has regained his ability to become invisible--you can see him just dematerializing off to the left, probably because he knows there's still a couple doses of medicine in the bottle and he's a little tired of me pouring it down his throat every day.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the studio and finish demolishing the living room because there just isn't enough stinky sawdust stuck to the bottoms of my feet and I'm sure there's at least one more bag of cat hair under the furniture.

Remodelling By Automobile

2009-04-05T17:41:00.003-04:00

Yes, the worst photograph, ever.

They actually took down the yellow police tape, but there were quite a few people still gawking like they had never seen a demolished porch before so I had to grab what shot I could when the stampede slowed. All those big slabs are granite and I'm supposing they've been sitting there minding their own business for something like 120 years when some fucktard decides to take a shortcut through them. There were two side rails to the porch but as you can see, they're now in a pile with the rest of the bricks and such. He also crashed into the car parked in front of the house but inexplicably it's still sitting there. I suppose if you've got the perfect parking spot you don't move your car, squashed fender or no squashed fender.

I'm supposed to be finishing up some new Etsy crap tonight so's I can get the photographs posted, for everyone to totally ignore. Damned recession.

The cat is being a complete pig today. He's discovered that he can eat dry food now but he's also still wiping his mouth with his paws and spreading food all over them so I wind up washing his filthy feet several times a day. This is the first day he didn't behave like he was starving to death and he's stayed out of my closet. He's definitely got his old energy back and has been trotting back & forth between me and the kitchen all damn day like he normally does, chattering to himself. I think the meds have done their job to heal his gums, but the doc couldn't do anything about all the talking, I'm afraid. That might've involved sewing his mouth shut.

In Which the Author Goes Completely Random Once More

2009-04-04T11:29:00.010-04:00

I'm too lazy this morning to get dressed and go look at the house with the enlarged front door. One should not use an automobile to do one's remodeling.

I've decided I want this snazzy little device for my birthday. Imagine putting a Visa or even a bus pass in it and sproiiiing! having it suddenly right at hand when you need it. This image came from The Gamblers which was part of the Time-Life Old West series printed in the mid 1970s.

Since I'm not getting anywhere building my army of Strangling Robots or even my strictly experimental Ass-Biting Robot I think I should get a giant robot with a flame-thrower mounted in his head, for World Domination purposes. It would be the best birthday present ever. You wouldn't even have to wrap it for me. I'd accept my gift gratefully, then quite gleefully trample it over your house a couple of times. I'd be testing it, you see.

Other failed robots include the nameless one which only produced offensive smells, the Solar-Powered Spanking Automaton, and those nasty little greasy things that might be robots but I suspect are merely my neighbors.

Don't remind me I need to make a long-neglected update (a total remodel, really) of Miss Meriwether's and to post some new things for Perfidious Beadworks.

Knock Knock

2009-04-04T00:53:00.004-04:00

I'm sitting here at my computer after midnight, mostly because I can't sleep and there's nothing on TV, and I hear tires squealing and a huge "whooomph!" I put on my shoes and go have a look and in a row of newly-restored Victorian brick apartment houses there's now one with a car jammed into its front entrance. Either they're remodeling with the wrong tools or some guy forgot his keys.

Nice.

It Goes On and On and On and On...

2009-03-30T15:48:00.005-04:00

In case nobody believes me about the cat. One of my brother's YouTube films of the orange beastie Xmas 2007.

What's his problem? He's pretty much pissed off because the shower faucet at my parents' house isn't at all like the tub faucet at home.

Something Resembling Normal

2009-03-30T08:35:00.005-04:00

The maladjusted orange beast must be getting back to whatever normal is because this morning he yanked a chunk off my spider plant.

Yesterday he sat on the rug and stared at me most of the day, drooling, and wouldn't eat more than a couple bites, then he'd go sit in the closet for a while. Then he'd stand next to me on the sofa and stare, then back to the closet.

Today he's back to his usual fussing and chattering and grumbling (the cat does not shut up), plus he's eaten more this morning than he had all day yesterday. Very little drooling, which is great because it was getting to be a bit disgusting. He's even starting to look a bit cleaner.

He's spent most of the morning wandering around the apartment talking to me, himself, or his imaginary friends--which is pretty much normal around here. He's part Siamese and part not right so I have a constant running commentary from him all day, every day. And he's freakin' loud on top of that.

You wouldn't think a scrawny little five pound cat could make so much noise, but try and ignore him when he's bored and the boy will rattle the windows. I'm sure the neighbors think I'm pounding the crap out of him. It's like those old cartoons where somebody uses a cat as a police siren by cranking his tail.

Tasty

2009-03-28T15:05:00.003-04:00

I've been informed that Bleeding Gums Murphy (the artist formerly known as Damien) has bad teeth and receding gums. My choices are to either give him a strange experimental not-for-kitties anti-inflammatory and antibiotics or have rotten teeth removed and major gum surgery.

Both choices aren't so hot for antique kitties. The meds can possibly cause kidney damage or the anesthesia could kill him. I've got ten days to see if the meds work and decide whether to start saving money for dental work ($500-$750), though supposedly you can maintain bad gums if the animal is really old ($25 a pop). Super.

The vet ooed and ahhed over him, said he was a handsome ginger boy (sounds like a porn mag) and had a strong heartbeat. I guess he only sees cats that old when they're scraggly and ready to be put down, eighteen being in the prehistoric range for kitty-cats. Surprisingly he only weighs five pounds, most of which is orange fur and gas. You know the little monster is going to live to be like 30, just out of spite.

I'm in for at least ten days of cat stink-eye whenever I squirt those meds down his throat. Right now he's got his back turned and his ears flat, hoping I'll notice just how pissed off he is, though I think he knows I'm ignoring him. Personally, I'd rather have that than a furious cat that pees on stuff or tries to rip my face off.

I suppose it's too late to trade him in for a box of turtles.

Kitty-Cat Revenge

2009-03-23T10:30:00.008-04:00

Oh, what did Damien the Cat From Hell do to me in exchange for a nice warm bath yesterday? He got clingy. Insisted on sleeping on my pillow next to my head or on top of me and purred in my face most of the night, and woke me up stupid-early this morning all disgusting and drooling. I woke up to a pair of walrus fangs of happy-cat slobber about six inches from my face. He apparently knows I can't see crap without my glasses so he helps me out by getting right up to my nose and shrieks, just in case I'm deaf as well as blind.

He's kinda like a disgusting little kid with booger-fingers. I think he knows the drool is vile and I'd rather not have it drip on my head while I sleep, so of course the little bastard's right next to my head. I push him away and there he is, right back in my face again. This went on for a couple of hours this morning before I finally gave up and got out of bed.

The slobbering was the main reason for the bath because he now drools almost constantly. He goes in for a teeth cleaning next week so that should resolve it. Or I'll be making nice little monogrammed dribble bibs for him.

Remember the ancient 1970s SNL skit (Michael Palin hosted) with an old guy with a drool bucket attached to his face? Some sort of Charles Dickens-kinda skit and Palin's job was to empty Dan Akroyd's drool bucket. Whatever. I'll be making one of those for the orange beastie if the vet tells me "he's just old--deal with it!"

Here he is drinking at his private fountain. He pretty much refuses to drink water out of a bowl. He usually sits directly under the faucet and lets the water run all over his chest and front feet. He also likes to drink the water when I'm in the tub (kinky beast) and sometimes he slips and falls in.

That cat just ain't right.

Oh, the Indignity!

2009-03-22T19:04:00.004-04:00

If you're a cat owner, or maybe borrowed a cat from somewhere, you know one of the most fun things you can do with it is to give the damned thing a bath.

Observe The Lord of the Fleas giving me the old stink-eye.

Yeah I know, slow weekend.

Several dozen false starts on new Etsy merchandise, no new books to read, jack shit on TV, and not enough memory to play with the Sims for more than a half hour before it locks up, so I washed the cat. I mean there's only so many times I can watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and DEVO's The Men Who Make the Music, plus I've already listened to Joy Division's Substance like 17 times this week already.

Meh.

More Dead Stuff At Etsy

2009-02-16T14:09:00.006-05:00

New stuff at Perfidious Beadworks, some of which inexplicably don't involve beads. Maybe I was thinking about beads while I made them. Yeah, that's the story.

Three new pins using Victorian beads and reproduction antique photographs from my collection. Edgar Allan Poe, Tobias, and Emma.

And as a companion to Dirt Nap Guy, we have The Undertaker's Demonstration. A lovely illustration from The Art and Science of Embalming, published in the 1890s.

I've got several more lying around partially done but the apartment's been too chilly for me to want to fool with goddamned beads. I think the noisy jackass who lived underneath me moved out because it's been uncharacteristically quiet and a bit colder these past couple weeks. Feh.