Survival Sunday: De-bake-cals and Deliciousness

As you may have noticed, it sometimes takes me a while to get around to things I want to do. Sometimes, this is from pure laziness, (okay, that's usually why things don't get done) but sometimes I fail to finish things in a timely manner simply because I absolutely cannot. This has been the case with the oft-spoken of muffins. I haven't had the time, space, or ingredients to make the chocolate breakfast muffins I wanted to.

So I waited. I made ramen bowl after ramen bowl, tried udons and flying-fish-flavored soups, and I really enjoyed myself! I'm hoping you guys enjoyed my kitchen foibles, too.

But today, it happened. I saw that the kitchen was empty. No one was in it. No one wanted me to grab anything for them. I didn't even grab coffee. I just went for it. And lo, the cocoa powder was in the right place, and while I did have to hunt for the light brown sugar, it all came together in the end! I was super stoked. I gathered all of my ingredients into one place, readied my hastily-scrawled recipe card, cracked out my phone to take pictures with and went to work.

They're a jumbled mess, but here are my ingredients, and lucky me!
We had only 2 eggs left in the older container!

Now, after putting all of your ingredients where you can easily reach them, the next most important steps are to set up your baking vessel and preheat the oven. I had a bunch of paper liners for my muffin tin, but you can absolutely use silicone if that's what you prefer. That's kinda what they exist for, right? Anywho, I lined my tin, spritzed the liners with a little cooking spray because I'm an idiot, and then set that aside. I cranked the oven up to the required 350℉, washed my hands, and set about measuring my dry ingredients!

I'm not sure why there was 1 white paper liner, but it was the only one.
There were also exactly 12 liners left.
This is less weird than the eggs, since they come in packs of 60, and we've had these for years.
And our muffin tins have 12 pots per pan, so...
Multiples of 12.
Math.
Yay.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that 350℉ is about 175℃
I have an American oven to work with, so I use Fahrenheit.
I also use Cups, Teaspoons, etc. I don't own a kitchen scale.
I'd certainly like to, though...

Imperial griping aside, I then started on measuring out my ingredients. I used one of the medium-large bowls we have and put each dry ingredient into that bowl. For wet ingredients, I had a large Pyrex measuring cup with a spout and everything. All the wet stuff went in there, got mixed up and then mixed into the dry ingredients waiting in the bowl.

2/3 cups Cocoa Powder

2 cups flour
If you want that flour to come out right, you really have to sprinkle it into the cup.
And yes, a scale would be more helpful, but we've already established that I don't have one.

1 1/4 cups Light Brown Sugar

1 tsp baking soda, 3/4 tsp salt
Oh... I hope it was just 1 tsp baking soda...
I'll let you know when I try one :|

1 cup Chocolate Chips

Mixed Everything Together!

2 large eggs

2/3 Cup Milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil (because I didn't have unsalted butter)

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

2 tsp vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

That looks nice.
And blurry.
I mixed it all together. Use a fork.
Spoons don't displace the yolk enough.

So now that I've got my wet combined, my dry combined, and both sets of ingredients put together, we have to combine them!

Looks nice... I guess

I promise, it's blurry for a reason.

Why is my combination photo blurry? Because that batter is like extra-thick cement. Seriously. It's ridiculous how thick it is. I had to keep adding tiny splashes of milk just to get it to move in the bowl. And don't even get me started on how hard it was to put in the cups. It was a nightmare. If you have a pastry bag on hand, use it for this. Trust me. It was hellacious with a pair of spoons. It took forever. I utterly botched one, but I left it anyway.

It's the slightly 'roidy looking cup in the back.

After baking for a minute or so, since I thought I'd forgotten to take a pic.

Baked! I hope.
UPDATE: Yes. Baked. Hopefully, that includes roidy McGoo up there on the left...

Okay, now the true test: I'm going to go and try one. I hope they don't suck!

...

Yay! they don't suck! They're definitely sweet, and the littlest one might be a bit overbaked and a little dry, but... they're not bad at all! Definitely give these a try. Just... maybe don't try to take pictures of things while you're baking if it's your first time trying, lol!

So yeah, that'll do it for me!

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 214: Pacifish

I'm sorry for how late this is going up today, guys. I had a bear of a time getting these screenshots and putting them in order. Who knew - being completely tech-illiterate is hard...

This past week, I was looking for something new and idle to play around with, and I found this:

Pacifish is a game from Conifer Studios over on Kongregate, and it's... it's certainly something different. I like games where you can just walk away and let things happen. I like games where you unlock things by doing other things. I like gambling. Pacifish covers all of these things! I've taken screenshots of all the major screens at level 18, but I've also left a lot of game for you to explore.

Currently, I'm catching fish, materials, and basically garbage in a Forest River, which is one of several locations you can go to. 

It's quite bucolic. Very peaceful. Wow.

I enjoy the fact that you can catch rocks. It's very Charlie Brown. Thankfully, though, rocks can be taken over to the market and sold or donated for gold or EXP.

It's a pleasant little store, yes?

Now, catching fish at the locations can earn you some player EXP, but the shop has its own EXP bar, which you fill by donating various fish, materials, or just plain trash (like rocks). You don't earn gold for things you donate, but boy is it nice to level up that market... You end up with a lot better possible bait or equipment you can get from the shop the higher the Market level.

And then there's the Hatchery...

Say you want to get extra gold or EXP for your market, but you're really slow at fishing or you have really bad luck. Fear not: you can hatch certain fish over at the Hatchery! After a while, these auto-generated fish may even reward you by inbreeding a nice golden version of themselves. These gold fish can be traded for upgrades, sold, or even eaten!

Oh yes, you can eat your fish...

Now, when you eat your fishies, you gain extra health and attack speed, which leads us (very suddenly, since eating is both self-explanatory and really weird in this game, which you'll see if you play it) to the next screen: Fighting

It amuses me to no end that it looks like you're beating fish, rocks, & gold dust to death with your fishing rod.

I really like the fighting part of Pacifish. You earn EXP, gold, and Pixels, one of the three currencies. The currencies, by the way, are Gold (pretty normal), Pixels, and Tokens. Pixels are used to upgrade your fighting stats. As you can see, I attack once every 2.8 seconds, I regenerated 2% of my HP every second, my damage ranges from 8-14 points, I perform a critical hit 6% of the time, and when I do, it's at 260% of my damage range (20.8-36.4 points). I'm not doing too well against the bosses, sadly.

Enough about fighting, let's talk about crafting!

I usually really enjoy crafting in games, but this one is kinda annoying, to be honest. You have to have the right items, you have to upgrade your workshop, and you have to find recipes. All of this is random, difficult, and hard to track what you need when. Thankfully, you can buy a lot of items you need for crafting in the store, and Gold is pretty easy to come by (especially if you're hatching lots of fish).

Now, earlier, I mentioned Tokens as the third form of currency. I also mentioned my love of gambling with fake money. Tokens are used to gamble on a slot machine. You cannot lose tokens on this machine. It always gives you something!

I like to play with 3 Tokens at once. You buy Tokens with Gold or win them with blue stars.

I really like winning stuff at the slot machine. You can win free spins, tokens, pixels, gold, even EXP! You can also win "fragments", which are a demi-currency.

These Fragments are used for upgrades!

Ah upgrades. I love upgrading things. Except my computer. That's always a slog. But here - upgrading is great. You trade your Fragments for Parts, then you use your Parts to upgrade things like your fishing speed, your Fragment chances, and your payouts from the "Casino" which is just the slot machine.

It's a fun little game, guys. It's not a serious game, and you're not ever in real damage. It's a good time. If you're ever in need of a silly little time-sink, maybe give it a try!

That'll do it for me, today. I've got a few things to keep working on, and I'm gonna try to kill the River Boss here. Wish me luck!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Filmic Friday 214: Triple Horror Showdown

I promised, and I'm delivering!

We watched three "horror" movies recently, and I wanted to do a quick rundown of all three. The first movie was set up by Film & Editing Friendo, since he'd had quite the saga getting the darn thing in the first place. The second was viewed at the request of Friendo's mom, who we'll call Epic Mom Deserving of All Honor & Praise... or maybe just Epic Mom. I think Epic Mom suits. Anyway, the third was a the request of both Z & myself because it's one of those so-bad-it's-good movies we've become obsessed with over the years.

Without Further Ado: The Triple Horror Showdown COMMENCES!

Buckle Up, Kids...

Screams of a Winter Night is only really unique in that it had one of the most epic online marketing campaigns I've ever heard of, having never witnessed it myself. Apparently, there's a certain distributor run by a madman in a banana costume (they call him Banana Man), and they got ahold of a print of this film. Rather than just clean it up and distribute it like a sensible company, Code Red decided to pimp this movie like it was the work of God. No, seriously, one of the taglines they had in their advertising was "And on the 8th Day, God Created Screams of a Winter Night". Yikes.

I don't think there was anything resembling a deity involved in this movie.

Film & Editing Friendo had been telling us about this film for ages. Part of this is because it was almost impossible to get ahold of, (since Code Red is run by, as I mentioned a crazy person in a banana costume,) and part of it's because it's a weird, off-putting film. And I don't mean off-putting in the Screaming Mad George way. I mean off-putting as in, it's going to put you off of movies for a while. I kid. I kid. I don't kid.

Screams is an anthology film from 1979 following a group of boring college-age adults out to a spoopy cabin in the woods. That's not a typo. It's just not that spooky. I mean, it's definitely somewhere in the 1870s-1970s decor range, and it looks like someone smoked the film-stock, and they're just such uninteresting people... oof. Anyway, they go to this cabin and one of them starts telling a story of how the cabin exploded because of wind demons a long time ago. It's not a good story. He's nearly incomprehensible. Much like the rest of the movie.

This shot right here? That's 75% of the film.

Now, unfortunately for us, everyone seems to have a "scary" story they want to tell as night falls. The acting is bad, the scripts are bad, and honestly? That's what saves this movie. It's a super-amateurish movie with good concepts, and it uses some interesting urban legends to progress itself. Unfortunately, it takes itself way too seriously. The college kids are also the only actors in the whole movie, so that's also a stretch, because they're usually supposed to be playing different roles in the stories, but they just come off as the same characters over and over again.

I have to say, my favorite part of how dumb this movie can be is how it begins with a completely black screen for about ten minutes while we listen to another movie happening. I know it's supposed to be the events that Glasses McNocharisma talks about, but it's baffling. Oh, and then, when the black screen resolves, we're jammed into an eternal driving scene. Drugs in the late 70s must've really mellowed people out, because no 80s cokehead would be able to withstand the nonstop tedium...

And on the 8th day, God created Screams of a Winter Night.
...
God was just starting his third year of film school.

 What really gets my goat, though, is that the best segment was cut from the final product. I mean, we have the stupid Green Light segment, the tired old makeout-point-hook-killer segment (which we never see the killer), and a bunch of kids sitting around talking, but...

No stutter-booing graveyard ghost scene?!

Seriously, the haunted graveyard segment was the best. It was interesting, it had some great zombie effects, it had clearly had the most effort put into it. It actually looked like it was from a different movie! I mean, same actors, so clearly same movie, but... it had action, it had writing, it had a gruesome death where someone impaled himself on a wrought iron fence! It rocked by comparison to the hackneyed and bland writing & acting on the other segments. Maybe that's why it was cut. It made the rest of the movie look bad.

There are some interesting moments, I guess :P

Of course, the most action we get besides the cut graveyard bit is the finale. The wind blows too hard and people panic, some running out into the woods, others being slaughtered dramatically when the wind blows in the windows and knocks down chandeliers and eventually somehow causes another explosion. Very cool. Unfortunately, we then cut from the destruction to a small group of dweebs running through the woods with a rented-helicopter shot blasting the trees with the downdraft. It would be interesting if we hadn't just cut from mayhem...

And that's Screams of a Winter Night. Don't pay for it if you can help it. Seriously. Find someone who has a copy and just watch it with them.




Next, we have Epic Mom's choice: Enter the Devil.

Do not be fooled by how cool this cover is.

Enter the Devil is an Evil Cult film from 1972. Set in southwest Texas, this movie follows a bunch of people just trying to live their lives and farm whatever it is they're farming using migrant labor. Unfortunately...

There's a murder-cult to contend with.

This movie is all about the ways the murder-cult kills people. With a name like Enter the Devil, you'd be expecting this to be a Satanist-panic movie, but it's not. These guys? They're 100% Catholic. Seriously. Not Satanists at all - they're killing for... reasons? Not to appease the Devil, that's for sure. Actually, there's no mention of the Devil at all in this movie outside of the title. Heck, they talk way more about snakes!

Since there's a pit of murder-rattlers that's maintained by the murder-cult.

Honestly, there's nothing wrong with Enter the Devil, but that's the problem. There's nothing really wrong with it. It's not tacky, or hilariously poorly shot, and there aren't any particularly strange performances. This is a problem, since it's a very slow-moving movie for a film about a bunch of robed murder-mavens slowly killing their way through a Texas town. I mean, I suppose we could latch onto the upsetting amount of body hair? We see way too much of the lead when he has a sex scene with the pretty lady. Don't get attached to her, btw.

But yeah, Enter The Devil is definitely a group-setting-only movie. That, or it's a film to watch when you really need a nap, because while it's not actually boring, it is very lulling. And weird. It's pretty weird.

Kudos on not having the bad guys actually be Devil-worshippers, though. That's pretty different!



Z & I chose a movie that has become near & dear to our hearts. It's a film that we once saw discussed in a review on YouTube, then we found a Joe-Bob Briggs episode with the movie in it, and we were hooked! So Film & Editing Friendo finds a copy, and he settles us all down, and we're so excited, and he cues it up and the production logo appears and...

He Rick Rolled us.

Seriously.

I mean, this was on Monday, so he kind of had to, but wow. That was smooooooooth.

Then, when the laughter and friendly sniping finished, he was awesome enough to cue up the real movie.

That movie was Howling VII: New Moon Rising. And it's amazing.

Don't be fooled by this cover. Nothing this exciting happens.

Howling: New Moon Rising is the seventh movie in the Howling franchise, and the best way you can tell that is by the fact that it's mostly made up of flashbacks to other, better-made movies in the series. Directed by (kind of) and starring an actor from a previous movie (the Australian Clive Turner, playing the character "Ted"), this movie is set in the very real bucolic desert village of Pioneertown, CA. Why is this important? Because aside from Clive, most everyone else in this movie is an actual resident of Pioneertown. This includes the greatest and most important resident/character in this movie:

Behold: Pappy Allen, a true genius and a wonderful actor.
I'm not even kidding, he's a joy and a treasure in this movie.

What's the story of Howling VII? Who really knows. We mostly just follow Clive Turner around and watch him whine about no one knowing who George Jones is while working at the local bar. There's a story in there somewhere, but who cares about that when you have a bunch of wonky cowboys playing with their zippers to an a cappella version of Deep in the Heart of Texas for some reason?

Seriously, I've seen this movie 3-4 times now and still don't know what's happening here...

When the movie does decide to throw story at us, it's usually in a combination of flashbacks to other movies or really boring discussions between this derpy priest guy and an ancient detective who makes Matlock look like Mannix.

Though I'm extra-envious of this dull priest's awesome lamp back there.
I want one.

The crowning glory of this movie is, of course, the saga of Pappy & his chili. Why you'd prepare chili over an open flame in the dustiest place in town right next to a flipping road, I don't know, but Pappy does what Pappy does, and we common folk must never question His Greatness.

One of the residents rolls up to Pappy, stirring away at his chili with a diligence and grace only the most dedicated country-western folksinger can muster, and asks him a question. When he answers, she peels out like an utter cretin and the road dust from her stupid bigwheel truck utterly peppers the chili. This becomes a running joke - so much so, that in honor of this glorious scene (which is much later in the movie than I remember), Epic Mom made us our own chili, which we happily "dirtied" with pepper, cheese (which chili can be served with), and delicious bagel crouton thingies.

Perfection.

Pappy, there's dirt in the chili

But where, in this werewolf movie, are the werewolves?

Ah, you sweet summer child. It's Howling VII. You get red-filtered scenes every so often to indicate a werewolf hunting people down. No wolf for you. Not unless it's in flashbacks.

So many different werewolves... so little effort.

But basically, it boils down to this: people start dying, they blame Ted (Clive's character), and then it turns out to not be him. It's some random person in the town who we know nothing about.

via Gfycat

It's freaking awesome.

I would absolutely recommend watching any of these movies, provided you have the right friend group. Not everyone loves bad movies, after all, and all of these movies qualify as "bad" by standard definitions. I, personally, love Howling VII with all my bitter black heart, but not everyone will. It can be a slog if you're not into it.

That being said, it's always fun to combine movies with food, so pour yourself a bowl of chili and strap in, peeps!


Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 214: Unfinished Business

As you may be able to guess from the title, I've still got work to do on Luigi. In my defense, there's a lot of space to fill and a lot of colored pencil lines to make, and do you know how hard it is to keep colored pencils sharp?!

You probably do.

I mean. It's colored pencils. And I'm using ones that are usually set aside for my nieces, which means they're all cracked up inside. I'm constantly dropping leads and sharpening away, and for that reason, when my 2pm cutoff time arrived, I wasn't quite as finished as I'd have liked! Oops!

Ah well. That just means I have another week to plan out a new piece of art, lol!

My first set of pencils consisted of a set of 5 - blue, light blue, purple, dark purple, black.

So I raided another box for their black, purple, & blue pencils and here we are!

Hm... needs more pencils...

I hope this looks cool to you guys, so far, because I actually really like it. I should've been more random where the small stars go, but so far, so good!

Now I've got to go stop the cat from eating a bunch of beef fat that I forgot to chuck from the steak & eggs I made for lunch. Ugh. Evie, no.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Wednesdaymania 214

I was going to write a big thing on one of the Pay Per Views I've watched on the Network, but I honestly can't remember much. This is what insomnia does, kids. It robs you of your short term memory, and that's the least of your concerns. Mostly because you can't remember what else it's doing to you...

Anyway, here's what I learned this week!

If you've been here before, you may recall that I was fortunate enough to go the ROH/NJPW Global Wars show in Lewiston, Maine, which was right before Cody Rhodes' knee exploded. During this show, there was a dark match starring a guy I'd never heard of called The Retrosexual Anthony Greene. This guy blew me away. I expected him to be all flash and no substance and he proved me amazingly wrong. Seriously. Watch out for RetroAG at a show near you - he's a genius.

And he's also one of the last guys speaking Carny in the Business, apparently. No, seriously, Carny was a big part of wrestling back in the day, but with the "death" of Kayfabe, fewer and fewer guys come up through the ranks knowing how to properly throw Carny into a sentence to confuse the Marks like you or I. I can't help but respect the heck out of anyone who is so dedicated to the history of wrestling, the history if its language, struggles, triumphs, and its climb into modern day. The fact that he's also a world class talent doesn't hurt matters any, either.

And the Platinum Hunnies are fantastico. Muy fantastico.

But I'm not just here to blither on about how I love RetroAG and cannot wait for him to take the scene by storm.

I'd also like to talk about the John Oliver thing.

If you're not aware, John Oliver used his show recently to discuss how Vince McMahon and the WWE are pretty well taking advantage of their wrestlers by refusing to make them employees. If any other business took their independent contractors and made them sign contracts that, while paying an insane amount on the surface, did not guarantee them health insurance or other general worker's protections while also monopolizing their likeness & presence by denying them the right to work in their own chosen field for a certain amount of time before, during, and often after their contracts fully come into effect and/or end, we'd consider that business to be pretty shady.

The fact that Oliver straight up considers these contracts to be an abdication of responsibility on McMahon's part, regarding the health and wellbeing of the wrestlers, is also pretty interesting. I have to agree with Oliver. Vince McMahon & his company may hurl money at the wellness program, but it's no different from any other business overworking and exhausting their employees and then throwing money at yoga classes, rather than giving them actual time to recover from the exhaustion caused by the job.

These are people who have to pay for nearly everything out of their own pockets. No one else buys their boots or trunks. No one else pays for their rental cars. No one else pays for their hotel rooms. If you're constantly having to pay for food, travel, housing, and gear, that adds up fast. Then you have the fact that they are, largely, uninsured and, like Jackie Chan's stunt men, some may even be uninsurable. This is outrageous when you consider how much healthcare costs here in the US.

It doesn't matter if you're being paid six figures when you have to pay six figures to have your neck repaired, your shoulder fixed, your body put back together after 300 days of constant travel and physical strain. The ridiculous performance schedules, the over-abundance of public events, and the endless hours on the road quickly build up. It's a breeding ground for addiction, because you don't have the time to recover. You have to get back on the road to pay for the divorce you just got because you're never home anymore. You have to go back to work to pay for the surgeries you just had because a poorly-trained moron dropped you on your neck, but they won't be punished because the boss is in love with them. You're in constant pain, so you try to treat it. You might use drugs. You might drink. You might exercise until your body is too exhausted to care about the pain any more.

Not everyone is Straight-Edge. Not everyone can survive the road life by sheer force of will. It's a business model that causes its own problems. Yes, there are sports where the athletes still suffer addiction or commit crimes or develop chronic injuries, but at least there is something of an off-season where they can try to rest up. Not so with WWE, which could absolutely afford to do two different seasons of wrestling for each show and still turn a heck of a profit. No, it's 300 days on (or more) and you pay for everything.

That six figure contract doesn't go very far if you're constantly in the hospital.

So yeah, I agree with most of the points John Oliver makes in his speech. I just don't think he grasps how little management cares about fan reaction. They have a deal with Saudi Arabia. Fans aren't happy. They don't care. Money is all they really care about, it seems.

And yeah, smooth of the WWE to be all "Oooh, John Oliver, please don't be mad! Come to Wrestlemania and let us show you what we're really all about!" but don't be fooled. What they really mean is "let us leach off of your fanbase by using your popularity to our advantage".

WWE makes me cynical. Most companies do.

I'm sure AEW will get there, eventually. That's just what companies do, because companies, by their very nature, are anti-person. They are anti-human. They exist to do one thing, and that is to turn a profit. Profit is not a human venture. Not really. Yeah, the money can be used for good things, but profit in and of itself is no noble goal.

But that's another thing.

Wrestling is not, by its own origins, noble. It's a business. It's a con. It's designed to separate people from their money. At its best, it becomes a lucrative art form. At its worst, it's a corporation built on the broken bodies of performers to feed money into the pockets of the owners. At its very worst, it's the Von Erich family. Yikes.

But that's depressing.

Let's talk about something nicer.

Let's talk about this whole Librarian thing in All Elite Wrestling.

Seriously, guys, let me know what you think about it, because I'm still not entirely convinced we're being worked and it's just a way to subtly hire Lanny Poffo. I'd pay for that. I really would. I mean, in my most fantastic moments, I think about making the video and presenting myself as a manager with a bunch of plays on "checking out" and "overdue" and keeping my stable as "Stacks" or something like that, but I've got serious stage fright issues, I can't travel, I can't wrestle, my pain tolerance is so bad that I have neither piercings nor tattoos and am terrified of frying things because the tiny pops of oil feel like being stabbed. I'm not cut out for the wrestling life. I'm just not.

But it'd be pretty cool.

And it'd be something to talk about.

But it's a terrible idea, on my part.

Is the Librarian a gimmick they're talking about for real? Is this exactly what they say it is - an opportunity? Or is this a work, and we're all marking out over nonsense? What do you guys think? Talk it over in the comments!

Also

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday 214: Wilder By The Day

Today has been strange, but not in a very bad way! I mean, there was some sad news from Christine McConnell, since The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell has been officially cancelled by Netflix :( Boo.

But.

Today also had one of the strangest wildlife sightings I've had since the bobcat.

We had not one, but TWO bald eagles having a mid-air tussle in my backyard this morning.

I've never seen a bald eagle at my house.

I've lived here 30 years and never seen one this far from the harbor, much less a pair!

Their squeaking at each other (eagles are not the most dignified-sounding of raptors, after all) was attracting the wrong kind of attention in the form of a pair of ticked off red-winged blackbirds and a very interested crow, so they had to break off from grabbing each other's talons mid-air and flew off towards, of all places, our local Dominos. It's an odd neighborhood, guys.

The wildlife tallies this week are:

• 1 coyote crossing way too close for comfort
• 1 owl in the back yard, just chilling
• 1 chipmunk stuffing its face under the bird feeder
• dozens of squirrels doing acrobatics trying to get to said bird feeder
• dozens of red winged blackbirds displaying their chevrons and screaming
• dozens of starlings & grackles fighting over scraps
• an obscene amount of pigeons that keep trying to reproduce on the roof above my bedroom at all fraking hours...
• six mallard ducks
• a flicker
• three Canada geese
• a smattering of seagulls
• one lonely tom turkey trying to hit on my neighbor's chickens (which had 0 interest)
• two angry (or possibly flirty) bald eagles

Sadly, I'm still garbage at photographing wildlife, but one day, I'll try to get good pictures of all the critters around my house!

Anywho, here's what the next seven days are looking like:

• Tomorrow, I'll be talking about various wrestling topics!
• Thursday will be an artistic day, which hopefully will culminate in a 100% completed Luigi picture!
• Friday will finally be the triple-film extravaganza! I hope...
• Saturday will be about one of the games I've been playing (as usual)
• Sunday will have something to do with cooking
• Next Monday, I'll probably have an antique lace pattern to work on!
• Next Tuesday, I'll talk to you about random stuff again!

I'm working on a few more personal crochet projects, currently, including a vest & a capelet. I've never made an adult-sized garment. This should be interesting.

Also, I'm still working on the book I started in January, but it's much slower going than I'd hoped. Still, I'm going to keep at it. I need to finish this novel. I want to finish it. Because, weirdly enough, I also want to read it. Yeah, I'm that kind of weird writer. I write the stories I want to read because I know they're to weird and niche for anyone to have already written.

As a final note, I just want to mention that... uh... remember my Bathtubs Over Broadway review? Uh... I checked the Facebook post I'd made and someone who's name I didn't recognize had "liked" the post. The name was Dava Whisenant.

Who directed Bathtubs Over Broadway.

So yeah

This week has been strange in a pretty good way!

Go Enjoy Something, folks!

FC

Fiber Monday 214: Lost In Pattern Wonderland

I can't  figure out what to make, guys, and it's driving me bananas.

It's not that there isn't anything I want to make - I just can't figure out what I want to make or where I want to pull the pattern from!

Sure Ravelry is brilliant for patterns, and I've used it many times and will continue to do so, but boy... sometimes you just find something at your local library and think to yourself "I need this".

A truly lovely book that I will own one day!

I picked up Designer Crochet by Shannon Mullett-Bowlsby at the library around two weeks ago (time to return it - boo!), and while I don't always quite get what she's throwing down (my foundation single and half-double crochets are awful), I really, really want to make everything in there. In every size. In every color. It's all so pretty! And comfy looking! I just wanna make these patterns forever!

Now, conversely, I also picked up a book a few days ago from the "Free" bin in the entryway of the library, which is a marvelous resource for both novels & nonfiction, and sometimes it even has movies or music!

This book... Can you tell what era it's from? Because it's really, really obvious what era it's from...

Welcome to 1975 Hell, everyone!

Am I going to make everything in this book someday? You betcha. Is it all going to be hideous and tacky as heck? Definitely. Is it going to be in completely random colors that make 0 sense? Probably. That's how I roll. I'm a garbage person :P

So I've had two very cool books to work from, and I just haven't gotten around to them. How awful m I? I'm pretty awful. But I have an excuse!

See, recently, I've started following this lady named Bernadette Banner on YouTube. I'm very easy to lead, so of courses I fell down the historic-crafting-rabbit hole, and eventually, her gorgeous work on historic dress lead me to the Antique Pattern Library online.

What is the Antique Pattern Library?

This is a free online resource of old (and I mean old, we're talking 1800s in places) patterns of all sorts that have been digitized, mildly edited for clarity, and collected in convenient PDFs. I was shocked and pleased to learn that a large portion of the late-1800s crochet patterns came from my home state of Maine, and I've been smiling nonstop as I recognize family names from the pattern credits. I'm currently looking at Needlecraft, Vol. VII, No. 8, April 1916, which was a monthly magazine out of both Augusta, ME and New York, NY. It's chock-full of interesting patterns that I'm going to be playing around with. Right now, I'm looking specifically at the lace, since I would love to buy a bunch of spools of cotton and just... generate a buttload of lace edging for A) future projects, B) because it's pretty, and C) in case I find someone who needs some for a project so that I can D) sell it.

I've gone capitalist. Oops. My bad.

Anywho, I really do look forward to doing more crochet work that I can show you, but until then, feel free to thank me for sending you into the Twilight Zone of pattern-hunting, because I can guarantee, once you start poking around the APL or Ravelry, you will never fully return.

You'll always be wondering what the next page of patterns could be...

But for now,

Go Enjoy Something!
FC