DIY Cat Toy

Since most of what I'm working on right now is super sekrit, here's an easy project.

Step 1. Use toilet paper until all that remains is a cardboard tube.
Step 2. Set tube upright near kitten

Kittens hate nothing more than the sight of an upright toilet paper tube.  They will go to any lengths to immediately knock it over and smack it around for daring to stand on one end like a small cardboard Rory Calhoun.

SABLE

The online cross stitch community uses "SABLE" as an acronym for Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy.  I think I'm still at a point where I could do all of my current cross stitch patterns if I actually sat down and did them (and maybe stopped trying to leave the house or work).  There might be some colors of floss I might not use again, but there are certain colors that I go through pretty frequently.  And while my floss collection can be a pain in the butt to deal with sometimes, it still could all fit in a reusable grocery bag.

Yarn takes up a lot of space.  And sometimes you end up with a little extra that's too much to throw away, but god only knows what you could actually do with it.  And if you get into crochet for the amigurumi, well, you totally *need* certain colors, and it's cheaper to buy the whole thing of Red Heart that you'll only use a tiny fraction of, and seriously, some day I am going to make that wool blazer I bought all the damn yarn for.  So, I am no longer buying yarn (except for the times I do) and only looking for projects that will let me use up all the damn yarn I already have.

My grandparents are moving into a retirement home (This may seem completely unrelated, but just go with it).  They've been slowly giving their possessions away for years, but my grandfather's 95th birthday was a hobbit celebration: guests were offered whatever they wanted to haul away.  Such as liquor purchased in New York state.  Which seems perfectly fine unless you know that my grandparents haven't lived in NY since the mid-80's.  Some of the things poured down the sink were probably older than my sister.

My grandmother knits and crochets.  She is no longer able to go up and down stairs, so it's difficult to date her yarn stash in the basement.  As a devoted descendant (inspired by my mother's nagging), I have hauled away at least two bags of yarn.  This picture is just what made it into the house, and what I haven't already started using.

Having recently tried to figure out how vintage/potentially poisonous old booze is, I have decided that "not having a website on the packaging" is a bad sign.  For the yarn that's still labeled, the term "Machine Launderable" suggests some distant era as does the price tag--68¢.  

I'd make some "Depression Era at Work" comment about all the tiny little yarn scraps, but this is the Hoarders gene.  This is why I was already Code SABLE before taking in somebody else's stash.

Having grabbed some slightly larger stray balls (hurr hurr), some of them don't appear to be the same type or weight as the others.  Which I suspect will make even scrap afghans or shelter Snuggles difficult.

Solution: cat toys.  Lion Brand has a free pattern for a fortune cookie, but that's just stupid.  And I would've had to walk all the way upstairs to get some fortune cookie colored yarn.  Which is part of my Too Much Fucking Yarn Collection, not What the Hell Am I Going to Do With Grandma's Yarn? Collection.  

Making Pac-Man combined using up some of my yarn inheritance and my love of blatant copyright violations.  Crochet a circle, fold it in half, and crochet the edges together.

Once you've gone a little over halfway, add some stuffing and catnip.  You'll need to add a little more stuffing as you finish it.  I'd also say more catnip, but that's because I like my cat to get completely stoned.

A smart person would've remembered that Zoot is 6 (old, fat, and lazy in puss years) and that the little foster kitten upstairs would probably enjoy beating up Pac-Man more.  Zoot deigned to swat at Pac-Man and chew on him for a bit, but this completely exhausted her.

What the Hell is Needle Tatting?

Got The Forgotten Crafts out of the library.  It's interesting, but it's much more "here's some shit you would've been expected to know how to do" than "here's how you do it."  I still don't really know what tatting is, but now I know that you need a shuttle and some thread, and it's "much as a spider spins a web behind her as she goes."

My interest in tatting is based on the fact that Ben Franklin (and I think Hobby Lobby too) have a kit on needle tatting which is the only place I ever see the damn thing referenced.  Knitters and crocheters are easy to find.  Outside of family members I don't think I've encountered another cross stitcher in real life, but I can find them on the internet.  I've at least seen crewel and candlewicking and other obscure needlecraft that nobody other than my mother wants to do.  But needle tatting?  Other than two paragraphs in The Forgotten Arts and Crafts and that kit at Ben Franklin, needle tatting does not exist.  Sometimes I think I want to learn it just so I can make my own needle tatting book and/or kit.  Working title: What the Hell is Needle Tatting?

Despite being written in the 1980's, The Forgotten Arts and Crafts still manages to long for a time when people knew their place and you could refer to people as "peasants".  Such as the peasants who enjoyed the useless, decorative results of tatting.  Ahh, for those halcyon days when the lower classes could be contented with a tatted collar and embroidery had yet to be ruined by the Victorians:

"As the nineteeth century wore on so taste declined (according to my taste at least) and embroidery reached perhaps its pit in Berlin wool-work....

On second thoughts, perhaps this was not the bottom of the pit.  Perhaps that has been reached today, when ready-to-embroider canvases are sold in shopping malls.  Clumsy representations of the paintings of old masters are already painted on them and the colored wool to create the picture is supplied with it.  This is not what the high art of embroidery is all about."

I'm trying to decide what exactly sullies the good name of high embroidery.  The ugly pattern?  The fact that it comes with the materials?  The male author manages to separate knitting, crochet, lace making, and tatting, but there is only a section on "embroidery."  Based on the description I assume he's complaining about needlepoint kits.  Needlepoint (like cross stitch) is technically a type of embroidery, but no gentlewoman would ever refer to it as such.  To appear suitably educated, a lady must remember that embroidery primarily refers to a trasnfered or drawn design covered over or filled in with a variety of stitches.  Such as this.

Baby's got a brand new bag

Earlier this month in what was probably a temporary lapse in self-loathing, I decided that I was going to make some things to list in my Etsy store and get enough merchandise together to sell at a winery event/craft fair.  But probably a winery event so even if I ended up as  a creature driven and derided by my own vanity, it would be pretty easy to drink away my anger and anguish.

Hence the soap.  Also: wine bags.

This bizarre fit of self-confidence has been quickly followed by wondering how exactly I'm going to make enough stuff to sell and does it even matter since my brand is basically "stuff I thought was a good idea at the time (and also Pokemon)."

Soap's on

Step 1: Go down the pub
Step 2: Get free postcards.
Step 3: Cut up postcards to fit your soap molds.
Step 4: Put postcard pieces face down in the bottom of the mold.
Step 5: Pour clear glycerin soap over the center of your postcard piece.

For the rectangular mold I've got, I thought using a scrapbooking corner rounder would help with the fit, but I have since learned that an exact fit means it won't work--you want room for the object to float so you get full coverage.

And even if you do have room, sometimes you still end up with fail-soap.  But in my defense, trading card soap would be one of my most awesome, lazy craft ideas if I could actually get it to work.

Also, Hobby Lobby's brand of glycerin soap base is now on my shit list.  It's cheaper than the brand Michael's carries, but that's probably because HL's brand turned out cloudy/murky.

 Finished postcard soaps made with Michaels' clear glycerin base (with free lens flare!)

Drink like a fish soaps made using Hobby Lobby's glycerin soap base.  Guess I should've prayed harder.  I'm going to try using a little bit of color, but I'm worried about how that might look with some of the fish.

In Soviet Russia, Pikachu Chooses You!

First things first: don't forget to get your free Slurpee today!  And don't let them trick you into buying anything else.

Second things second: I have finally used up all of my radioactive yellow fabric.  Because of what I'd like to think of as imaginative counting, I ended up with two differently sized squares.  Which means that only one of these Pikachus is capable of love.

After staring at hand-stitched Pikachu (which is really a bleak moment in one's wasted life), I decided it wouldn't look right without the stripes.  Which are actually brown, but I thought that a limited palette would be more aesthetically pleasing.  Because true artists take those things into consideration when stitching Pikachu.

Balls

So, I saw these beautiful chocolate covered strawberries that are actually cake.  And I thought, "I can make these for my dear friend's birthday.  And everyone will look at my stupid dessert thing and worship me as a god!  A god, I say!"

After I finished laughing maniacally, I hit obstacle #1: no red velvet cake mix at the Kroger.  Using my enormous brain, I decided that I could just use strawberry cake and strawberry frosting.  I returned home, confident and full of hubris, to bake my cake.

In theory, cake pops are made by crumbling up cake and then mixing it with frosting.  It's easiest to mix it by hand, so this stage is wretchedly disgusting.

Instead of rolling my future cake pops into balls, I made strawberry shapes of varying competence before shoving them in the fridge.

My friends, cake pops are a lie.  They taunt you with their smooth, candy-coated surfaces and their charming details.  But man was not meant to dip wads of cake in candy!  I was like Icarus, flying higher and higher until the Sun melted my candy into twisted, deformed shapes.

A lesser person would have given up in despair.  She would have gnashed her teeth and torn out her hair.  I rebranded.

If I couldn't make beautiful fake strawberries, I'd bring the chum bucket.  Which I decided was totally appropriate since it was a beach themed party.

Even my greedy, gluttonous family was not enthusiastic about eating from the chum bucket for some reason.

Yesterday, like Icarus dragging his zombie corpse out of the sea, I decided it was time to try another cake pops related craft.  Since this one involved chocolate, I assumed it would be easier to trick people into eating it.

First saw the idea on Bakerella's site, but Google spits out a few other versions.

What you need:

• Package of Store brand chocolate sandwich cookies (unless you've got Oreos money)
• 8 oz of Neufchatel cheese (I figured it'd be okay to use instead of cream cheese since there was a picture of cheesecake on the box), softened
• Chocolate candy melts
• Wax paper
• Mixing bowl
• Large ziploc bag and rolling pin

All the other recipes seem to assume that everybody has a food processor.  Well, I don't live in The Sims, John D. Rockefeller!  For the rest of us poor bastards, put the cookies in the ziploc bag and crush them with the rolling pin.  You can also try hitting them or hand crushing them.  After they're in chunks you can kind of use a potato masher for further mashing.  Apparently you're supposed to set aside 7-9 cookies, but I assume that's only if you want to eat them.

Once the cookies are crushed into a fine powder (or, you know, close enough), add in the Neufchatel/cream cheese.  Attempt to stir it with a spoon, then a knife, then just use your hands.  Ideally you put wax paper on a flat, movable surface (like a cookie sheet) before you shoved your hands in the mixing bowl.  When your heart tells you it's ready, roll the dough into little balls and place them on your flat, movable surface.  Put your balls in the fridge and have some wine.  Let chill until you're slightly buzzed.

Melt the chocolate--if it's Wilton Candy Melts or the kind they sell at Ben Franklin, 45 seconds for the first time through the microwave, stir, then 30 seconds each time until they're melted.

I found it much easier to take a spoonful of chocolate and drip it/smooth it over my balls.  You don't get full coverage, but...well, the chum bucket was the result of dipping.

After coating your balls in chocolate, put them back in the fridge.  Have some more wine--you've earned it.  After the chocolate hardens, you can move your balls if your flat, movable surface takes up too much space.