Fulfilling Facebook PAY IT FORWARD Obligations

Unused Vanna's Glamour+Stash Busting=Jewelry.  Yes, I've apparently become one of those people.  Except I have yarn in Kendra colors which means I can turn Kendra into one of those people.

I assume Kendra's neck is at least as dainty as mine.  

When sewing on snaps, it is very important to make sure the snap is right side up.  "But, Kate, who would be that stupid?" you may ask.  It's actually quite simple--shut up; I'm smart.

I don't know if one could--or should--wear these things together, but I also made this bad ass, glittering wrist band.  I haven't tested it, but based on this picture it looks like it'd be really great for punching people and possibly stopping bullets.

Fly like an eagle

My gentleman caller likes manly things like camping and sports and cutting down trees or whatever it is non-English majors do.  This posed a challenge since most of my ideas for using up yarn are either stupid cute things or stupid video game things.

Then I remembered: sports have mascots!  And I have the internet to tell me what NHL mascots are.

According to Wikipedia, the mascot for the Washington Capitals is Slapshot the Eagle.  

According to me, you can very easily turn the Easy Crochet Critters Snowy Owl into a Bald Eagle.  Do the first 9 rows in white, then switch to brown.  For the feathered ruff, I crocheted the first row of brown in the back loops.  You can totally stick it to Vanna White by not using Vanna's Choice Yarn to alter the patterns that I'm sure she herself put so much effort into designing.

I was going to try to make a tiny jersey, but my critical mistake was sewing the wings on before attempting to make clothes.  Also, it is incredibly difficult to find tiny hockey sticks when you live in Virginia.

Meow

My stash is too big, which is obviously only a problem when it's something like yarn.  I mean, if I had a huge and unwieldy stash of drugs, I could just get some glowsticks, put my shameful techno on repeat, and have the awesomest week ever.  Or make some damn money.

But as far as I know, yarn doesn't get you high or make 80's/90's PSA drug dealers think you're cool.  So, now I either need to try inhaling acrylic yarn fumes or make a bunch of shit.  I'm considering craft vending, but in the meantime, one of those Catwoman dolls I've been planning to make for a shameful amount of time.

As usual, Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More! body and Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet head.  Because, as usual, I cannot figure out what the flippity fuck I'm doing with the Creepy Cute head.

This is the cotton yarn left over from pretending I was going to make something for Kendra and actually making Darth Vader.  I should probably have used a smaller hook size since you can see the stuffing in this picture.

The goggles are three pieces of felt: the strap around the head, the bottom layer of the cat's eye shape, and the frame.  For the lenses I used these orange...dots from the scrapbooking section.  I was going to put googly eyes underneath them, but there's no curve to the "lens" and it didn't look quite right.  I ended up drawing eyes on the adhesive side of the dots with a permanent marker.  This took a few tries.  Gluing the goggles together was one of those moments where I wondered if I was going to have to come up with a less pathetic reason for my severe burns.  But the extra glue looks kind of like fangs!

Just so you know, Ben Franklin and my attic do not have flesh colored felt.  The best option I could find was "cashmere tan" which was too dark even against black.

The solution: foam.  Which was even better since I could just draw the mouth on with a permanent marker.  Amazingly, I managed to do that right the first time.

The foam took some trimming to get right, but worked out pretty well considering I have no skills and just did it freehand.

For the ears I shaped and cut two black pipe cleaners into ^ shapes (Is there a word for that?  They're not triangles since there's only two "lines" and they don't have the middle bar of an A).  I glued the ^'s onto some black felt, then cut them out and risked additional hot glue gun injuries.  (Actually, gluing the ears on wasn't as bad as the little pieces of the mask--I just held the tips of the ears and pushed down, then lightly smoothed down the bottom edge of the felt.)

Amigurumi World does have a pattern for little cat ears, but I just got too frustrated.  Sometimes the cotton yarn splits a lot, and I just didn't have the patience to make something so small.

I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to make the zipper pull for her catsuit, but I probably will give her arms.  Just so she can hold a whip.

Prison wine

My parents are somewhere in the Caribbean this week, so obviously it's time to 1)invite my bitch over, 2)throw a huge 80's teen comedy style party, and 3)Spike [My] Juice.

Amy got me a Spike Your Juice kit for Christmas, and I got myself 64 ounces of Kroger Grape Cranberry juice to ferment.

Like many of my beloved Simonsen recipes, Spike Your Juice is incredibly simple/lazy: pour magic booze crystals into useless, non-alcoholic juice; close with airlock/rubber stopper; open bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau 2010 (because you need something to drink while you're waiting to turn juice into prison hooch); and wait 48 hours.

Problem the first: apparently this is not the time to skimp on juice.  The first taste test revealed that my Grape Cranberry juice was still juice.  Further inspection revealed HFCS.  Now, I've heard that HFCS is totally fine based on the fact that it's made from corn, but it doesn't actually ferment.  And that's why you should always read the label (in the most delicious way).

So, Kroger Grape Cranberry juice has to be spiked the old fashioned way: vodka.

Attempt the Second: actually using one of the recommended juices, Welch's Black Cherry Concord Grape.  Or Concord Grape Black Cherry.  I'm not looking it up unless I'm getting paid for mentioning it.

When you put yeast in something that has actual sugar (instead of completely non-threatening HCFS), shit goes down.  From what I vaguely remember from a Wikipedia article, alcohol is what yeast pukes up when it has too much sugar.  Clearly the HFCS Defense League is right about how totally great HFCS is since it doesn't make yeast puke its little brains out.

Day 2 of fermentation and this totally looks like something I want to ingest!

Based on today's taste test this stuff tastes like sparkling grape juice, but I figured the night before a job interview was not the night to test how potent one's prison hooch was.

Day 3--Juice has been spiked, the crazy terlet wine plastic thing has been removed, and the bottle is in the fridge, waiting for the next time I need to get a bunch of sorority girls wasted!

Cupcakes, cupcakes, sweet cakes for all!

Part of becoming an adult is realizing that certain holidays are terrible and only exist to make you spend money and feel bad about yourself.  Valentine's Day is so crappy I'm already sick of Anti-Valentine's Day celebrations. This year I actually seem to have bewitched somebody with my feminine wiles, and I still have no Valentine's Day enthusiasm.  Hopeless romantic that I am, I've made sure to mention that I don't like chocolate or stupid teddy bears (which makes one wonder if one is being presumptuous or pushy, but then one remembers that is basically how one rolls).  I have much more enthusiasm about buying cheap classroom Valentines, taping Dum-Dums to them, and changing the caption to "Happy Valentine's Day, Sucker!" or "Happy Valentine's Day, Dum-Dum!"

But if there are seasonal muffin cups and Funfetti frosting, I will make dessert items for it.  If we had but world enough and time, I would probably be making this stupid cake.  Of course, I would never be able to get the overlapping thing right and my handwriting is abysmal.  And apparently fondant tastes bad, and I have no strategy for getting rid of this hypothetical cake.

Given my inability to figure out that typically cakes are consumed, it probably won't surprise you to know that I managed to acquire four boxes of cake mix.  (If you're wondering how to tell if the Food Addict or the Food Pusher is doing the baking, count how many boxes of cake mix are on hand.  If the answer is more than 1, it's the Food Pusher)

Obviously that means it's time to bring Valentine's cupcakes to people.  Not because I feel anything for them, but because I have too many damn boxes of cake mix.  And I may have bought both large and small cupcake wrappers.

Here's the group that went to karate class on Monday night, sitting in my new Wilton cupcake carrier.  Notice the time taken to melt the frosting in the microwave and to draw hearts on some of them with writing icing.

Another group went to classes on Tuesday.  That was how I learned that the cupcake carrier must remain completely level at all times or the cupcakes will fall over.  Hungry grad students will eat them anyway.

The Monday/Tuesday cupcakes were all lemon cake with vanilla frosting.  By Thursday I decided that frosting took too much effort.  As did cleaning the frosting and sprinkle encrusted cupcake carrier.

If you bring starving grad students and karate scholars unfrosted cupcakes, they'll eat those too.

One box of cake mix will make at least 72 mini cupcakes.  I could probably have made a few more, but ditched the last of the batter.  Which is wasteful, but in my defense, I already had 72 cupcakes.

The Wrath of Kubla Khan

Using my keen math skills, I've figured out that my MA program requires 30 credits, and at the end of this semester, I'll have 19+9 credits.  Which I am almost certain is more than half of 30.  Which means that I either need to start looking for a career or, ideally, a new way to avoid contributing anything to society ever.

If I've learned anything useful from literary scholarship, it's that 19th century white people love eating opium and then staring out the window for six hours (which, let me assure you, good sirs, is vastly superior to the savage method in which the Turk consumes his opium and communes with his fellow dusky barbarian!)  So I'm growing poppies.

Poppies, according to that episode of Seinfeld, somehow magically turn into opium.  Once these little seedlings turn into Heroin Blossoms and I figure out how exactly you make stupid flowers into drugs, I am going to be all set.  I have no idea what the street price is for homemade heroin/opium (or the Etsy price), but I assume it's got to be enough to avoid putting off a job search for at least a couple of months.