amazon_syren: (Feast Icon)
( Aug. 25th, 2014 01:56 pm)
Made another 2.5L "bruschetta-in-a-jar" today (currently processing in the canning bath). Have also started the apricot butter (FINALLY), though I'm not expecting a lot of end-product by the time it's done... Maybe two cups at the most? We'll see.

Canning Update:
5 pint jars of bruschetta + 7 one-cup jars of bruschetta = 4.25L bruschetta in a Jar
2 pint jars of diced tomatoes + 8 one-cup jars of diced tomatoes = 4L diced tomatoes
5 cup jars of tomato-peach sals + 1 half-cup jar of (mild) tomato-peach sals = ~1.3L salsa
+
8 pint jars of garlic-dill cucumber pickles
1.5 C black currant jelly
2 one-cup jars of asparagus relish (one of which lives in the fridge, as it didn't seal quite right)
4 half-cup jars of black currant curd (made with ribena – aka black currant simple syrup – about a month ago)
+
1-2 C (flattened out in a single freezer bag) frozen edamole (made from previously frozen edamame)
9 half-cups of frozen roasted-and-diced Sicillian eggplant
2-3 C frozen golden zucchini rounds
2 C frozen (freezing) raspberries
2 L (or so) frozen serviceberries
1 L (or so) frozen red currants
+
~1 C dried nectarine chunks (stored in the fridge because they're not totally dry)
~2 C dried peach chunks (stored in the fridge because they're not totally dry)

~*~

I'm hoping to add the following (but we'll see what we can get):
2+ one-cup jars of apricot butter
+
12-20 half-cup jars of roasted-garlic-balsamic tomato sauce
+
8 one-cup jars pear butter (with maple syrup for some of the sweetener)
8-12 one-cup jars pumpkin butter (with maple syrup for most of the sweetener)
8 one-cup jars of apple butter
4-8 half-cup jars of crab apple jelly
4-8 half-cup jars of cranberry curd
+
9 (more) half-cups of frozen roasted-and-diced Sicillian eggplant (this will totally happen, as the eggplant is already part-way processed and just needs to be rinsed, roasted, diced, and frozen before I can check it off my list)
2-3 C (more) frozen golden zucchini rounds (we'll see when I get around to this - I'm quite enjoying having them fresh right now)
24 half-cups of frozen blanched rainbow chard and/or other cooking greens (wish me luck)
+
1-2L dried tomatoes (here's hoping I can slice them thin enough to make this work)


NOTE: I will, of course, also be availing myself of as many bags of frozen broccoli florets, cauliflower florets, snap beans, and edamame as I can manage to stuff into my chest freezer... but I'll be letting companies like Arctic Garden and President's Choice do that bit for me.

Wish me luck with the rest of my canning! :-D


TTFN,
Amazon. :-D
Hey there!
So the Glebe Metro is now carrying Seed To Sausage sausages (3 for $10 or so, so not cheap) in a variety of flavours. (Apple & sage, Red wine & garlic, Maple & walnut, Onion & peppers, and I think there's a spicy/chorizzo type as well).
You'd think I'd just go to the actual store half a block from my house, but NOOOOOOOOOO, I have to go to the grocery store and get them that way. :-P

But anyway. What I'm aiming for here is this:
They get their pork from local farmers. I have no idea if they get their pork from local ethical/humane farmers, although I hope so. (Maybe I should just stick my head in the door and ask for the names of the farms?)
But you guys, their sausages are actually really good.
Like the "free from" and "traditionally raised" stuff that I usually get? It's got nothing on this stuff!

So. While, in my experience, fancy-ethical-artisanal-expensive animal products... don't actually taste any different from the not-so-ethical stuff, and while I'm typically buying it for reasons of Better Quality of Life for the Critter... This stuff is also better because it's amazingly delicious.

Anyway. That's it for me. Tasty sausage is tasty. :-)


TTFN,
Amazon. :-)
Tags:
I just got a call from one of my temp agencies offering me a shot at (just a shot at) a four-month part-time contract. $42/day - which would work out to about $2,600.00 for the contract in its entirety. Enough to cover my part of the rent AND most of our groceries for the four months in question.
The hours are 3-6pm, Monday-Friday. About a 40-minute walk from home, with a grocery store (among other things) on the way if I need to pick something up.

Sounds pretty good.

And I'm angsty about the whole possibility for the STUPID reason that I'm afraid I'd "always be late" due to working on other crap until I had to hope I could catch a #14 to get there in 15 minutes instead of 40.
It's ridiculous.

Yes, IF I got it, I'd have to work out a way to do Fabulous Friday Dinner as something other than a Braise - roasting things, or else determining that we would have Hors D'Oeuvres every Friday to snack on while the dinner cooked in the oven after I got home (it's Friday - that would be fine). If I had to work it so that Writing Time took place, long-hand, at the Sparks-and-Metcalfe Bridgehead and I set an alarm to go off in my purse at 2:40 so that I'd only have to walk two blocks to be at work on time, then that's not going to hurt me and will probably mean I Get More Done - heck, working as a receptionist during the "late" hours, might mean I have the opporunity to type up what I hand-wrote earlier in the day, each day. Maybe. (Maybe not, but I can dream).
The fact that the part-time hours are (a) above minimum wage, and (b) still during my wife's standard working hours? That's a fantastic bonus! :-)
The fact that the 4 months thing is... kind of being suggested as a "probationary period" of some sort... might work out. (I mean, I don't want to be temping for ever, but $14/hr is quite respectable as far as I'm concerned).
Would I prefer to get the part-time gig that's 20 minutes from my door, at a CHC, and pays $18.50/hr? Fuck yes! But I haven't heard from them at this point, and I'm not really expecting to anymore (they closed the competition about two weeks ago, so...)

Yeah. Basically, I'm posting this in the hopes of people sending me some Good Job Vibes. Because I'd like some of those, please. :-)
Tags:
Okay.
So I spent the past hour chopping up peaches and nectarines.
Know what I've learned?

(1) For some reason, the stone-fruit that I'm getting at the grocery store (Foodland Ontario peaches and netarines from Nicastro's + Foodland Ontario peaches from the Glebe Metro) have cracked pits, or pits that are not-too-solid and that slice open when you go to cut the fruit off the seed. I have no idea what this means, though I'm somewhat inclined to try growing a peach if that's looking like it could work out.

(2) The nectarines I got were cling-stone rather than free-stone, so not all that easy to work with.

(3) Even when the fruit that you get is from in-Province (so, like, a day away by truck rather than a day away by airplane - still a day away), you're going to have a mixture of already-ripe, nearly-ripe, and not-ripe-at-all peaches/nectarines in your 3-litre box of fruit. Gods, that's a piss-off. :-P

Anyway. So here's what I've done:
I cut something like 9 peaches and 18 nectarines into eighths (so cut them in half, and then cut each half into quarters) in the hopes that (a) they'll dry a little faster - I'll talk about that, shortly, and (b) they'll be pre-sized for as many different purposes as possible (so, like, good for thowing into a coffee cake OR into a yoghurt parfait OR into a braise OR into a bag of car-snacks... without having to be trimmed or halved or whatever once they've already been dried).

Drying times for nectarines are listed (in the instruction manual that my dehydrator did, in fact, come with - it was tucked between two of the trays rather than down the side of the box) as 6-16 hours. Drying times for peaches are listed as 14-18 hours.

I know that I'm going to have to rotate the trays - bring the ones on the top of the stack to the bottom and vice-versa - rought every three hours.
I also know that my peach chunks aren't all the same size. Same goes for my nectarine chunks.
Basically, I'm going to have to keep an eye on things all day. :-)

So we'll see how this goes.

Right now I'm feeling weirdly stressed about it all. This may have more to do with needing to eat breakfast than anything else, but my shoulders are kind of up around my ears a little bit. Also, the dehydrator totally sounds like an electric hand-dryer is going on the other side of the room. I suspect this is going to become a little grating by the end of the day, but we'll see.

I'm fretting about a dozen things right now - mostly to do with Vigilance and worrying about who/what is going to come out of the wood-work (and try to eat the food) if I leave the house for a couple of hours between tray-rotations.

I'm trying to distract myself by (A) listening to podcasts, (B) sorting out my to-do lists, and (C) writing a chocolate-chili peanut-butter cookie recipe that... I think is going to be pretty damn good. :-)

Anyway. I've got candles and cookies to make - which will hopefully take me the hour-and-a-half that I need to fill between now and the first time I have to rotate my drying racks (after-which point I am hitting up the grocery store because I'm out of yeast(!) and need that if I'm going to make me some bread - so I'm going to head out.


TTFN,
Amazon. :-)
Making garlic-dill cucumber pickles.
Except that they contain very little garlic (alas). Let this be a lesson to me: Plan Vietnamese Garlic Chives that are available early-on and are perenial... y'know, in the event that I have a yard to garden at some point in the hopefully-not-TOO-distant future.

Last night, I processed half of my eight pint-jars in a boiling water bath... A process which resulted in a lot of over-flow and a lot of lost (leaked) pickling solution... So I'm trying again, this morning, with the jars the other way up[1].

The funny thing is that the jars that lost all the pickling solution? They still sealed. They might have been just fine to eat from in a month or three (or six, or twelve...) but I don't know that, so I opted to try again.

Anyway. The first batch is out (one jar has already sealed, I'm waiting for the tell-tale "plunk" from the othe three), and the other batch is processing. :-)

I'm hoping that this works.
So far, this season, I've done a moderate amount of freezing - serviceberries, strawberries, pesto, raspberries, "edamole" (although that was made, in large part, from previously-frozen edamame, so I'm not sure if it counts), and red currants - but only a little bit of canning (two cups of asparagus relish, four half-cups of black-currant curd). The pickles are my first "big batch" of canning in 2014, and I'm hoping that they'll work out, in part because - while Fridge Pickles are great and all - I don't want to have to eat through four litres of vinegarry, quasi-cooked cukes in a couple of weeks. (Ha! And a second jar just sealed! Woohoo!) So make that three litres of vinegarry, quasi-cooked, cukes. But you get the idea.

I continue to have high hopes around preserving - particularly tomato-based preserves (roasted-garlic balsamic tomato sauce, for sure, as well as a significantly larger batch of spicy tomato-peach salsa[2] - think 8-12 cups rather than three - and (maaaaaaaaaaaybe) some crushed tomatoes, most likely done as one-cup jars rather than two-cup jars... in the name of getting them to seal.

Which brings me back around to my pint-jars of cucumber pickles and my hope that they, too, will seal properly.
Getting a half-cup jar to seal is easy. It's small. Five minutes (ten, tops, for if you're doing fruit curds or other "dense...ish" preserves) and the lids'll plunk shut, fully sealed, in no time. But, I find, the bigger the jar, the longer the processing time (this is not surprising) but also the longer it takes for the seal to form after coming out of the bath. I'm not sure why this is, but it makes for some (mild-to-moderate) anxiety while waiting to see if the seals form at all.

Anyway.
So that's where I'm at with the canning and other forms of preserving.


TTFN,
Amazon.


[1] When I'm processing half-cup, or even whole-cup (half-pint), jars of preserves, I do what my mom did and use a frying pan with the jars flipped lid-side-down. Less water, yeah, but lots of steam (which is quite a bit hotter than water, thank-you-very-much). It works just fine.

[2] I admit, in the interests of finding out if it would work[3], I'm inclined to try making this stuff using slivers of dried appricots rather than diced fresh peaches...

[3] Because The Goal is to eventually own a yard that is big enough (20x12?) to grow a dwarf, two-variety apricot tree for the purposes of harvesting fruit for fresh-eating, drying, possibly fermenting into Country Wine, and canning as fruit butter, fruit-in-simple-syrup, "jam", and salsa.
Tags:
Hey, you guys!
So I got a call from a temp agency, saying that they want to present me for a PART TIME reception gig that could be one month and could be six (medical leave) for a construction company out on Walkley Road.
Basically, if I got this, I'd be spending $6/day to have a two-hour (round trip) commute for a four-hour shift... which sucks. BUT I'd ALSO be making $13/hr (so call it $35/day after taxes and transit fees), five days a week, for at least a month, possibly more. Also it would be only one bus - the 86 - which is kind of a relief to know. And roughly half of my commute would be walking (lovely during most of the year, doable during 100% of it): 15 minutes to the 86 stop at the bottom of the hill. Then another 15 minutes (or there-abouts) to get from the 86 stop to the workplace. Alternatively, I could take the 95 to Hurdman and transfer to the 192, and that would get me there (in theory) in the same amount of time, but with less walking, if the day turned out to be crappy. Either way.

Anyway. So I'm kind of relieved to hear that there might be a job in the offing, and I'm hoping (sorry, person I'd be filling in for) that the current receptionist's medical leave actually takes longer to heal up than the bare minimum. I would like it if this gig lasted most/all off the summer (I think). Because it would give me some decent work, that I'm already good at, and would net me about $700/month... AND it would see me through to the beginning of September, when my day-time modeling jobs (which I would pretty-much be borked for, if I took this gig) will be starting up again, and also when all the summer employees go back to school and various Help Wanted signs might start turning up a little closer to home.

This could (maybe) be exactly what I need. Fingers crossed for me, SVP? :-D


In other news:
(1) I voted this morning - DONE! :-D

(2) Took a walk around the neighbourhood and chatted up a neighbour about their container garden (she works at the LCBO, and they straight-up gave her a super-dwarf apple tree as part of a promotion - I totally want to work there, now!) -- I have since found her on facebook (we have a specific person in common, so she was easy to track down) -- and I think we will get along just dandily. :-D

(3) My attempts at fermentation continue apace. Right now, my fermenting-tea smells really terrible. As in: It smells less like beer and more like farts. Which is, I gather, par for the course when using yoghurt bacteria (as well as yeast) to do the fermenting. I figure, if I keep it in the fridge for 2 months, and routinely unseal it to keep the pressure from building up too much, then I might just wind up with something ever-so-slightly-fizzy and delicious. But we shall see.


Still To Do:
Write 1000+ words on The Novel
Do Laundry (and change the sheets)
Do some dishes (I don't wanna, but they're taking up a lot of space)
Text Ghost the address, apartment number, and buzz code for my mom's apartment
Get myself out to my mom's apartment (leaving around 5pm) for my brother's 30th Birthday Get-Together

Ghost may or may not actually come to the birthday thing. She had a bit of a work-accident on Tuesday - seven stitches in her arm, but nothing torn or broken except the skin (THANK YOU all the gods(!!!) for that one!), and is fine but rather sore - so she may or may not be up to an evening out, depending on how her arm is doing (she's keeping a pretty close eye on it wrt infection, which is part of what that's about).


TTFN,
Amazon. :-)
So I just got back to the house.
I headed out with Ghost this morning - she to catch her bus to work, and me to drop off a resume at The Red Apron. It's a cute little shop. The fanciest of fancy grocery stores, but there you have it. It smells good when you walk in. :-)
Here's hoping that someone gets their dream job offered to them with a July start-date, and that they decide to hire me to take over the position.

Further to this, I... )


This afternoon will include:
Writing at least 1000 words for The Novel (I may already have most of the next scene or three written, so I will have a look and see if I can't get a little bit ahead of myself on this front)
Grating cheese (ideally using the food processor)
Dishes
Making pesto (probably)
Changing the sheets (probably)


Up, up, and away! :-)


TTFN,
Amazon.


[1] Think: 3 cups of roughly-chopped garlic chives + 1/4 C crumbled walnuts (or chestnut meal) + 1/4 C grape seed oil + 1 tbsp white wine vinegar + 2 tbsp nutritional yeast + 1 tbsp dried basil + 1 tbsp water + pinch each salt & black pepper --> Chuck it all in a food processor (possibly before grating mozzarella cheese) and blend until well purreed. Freeze by the cup OR half-cup for use on pasta and pizza.

[2] Okay, yes, freezing cheese kind of screws with the texture. However since this stuff was bought to be melted anyway? I'm fine with chucking it in the freezer.

[3] Black currant syrup from the grocery store. It's, like, $10 for a litre of the stuff, and I use it to make black currant curd - it's delish.
So, the concert yesterday was awesome. :-)
It was wonderful to see Heather again, and lovely to get to chat with s00j more than I usually get to. She says "I love it when the internet gets out of the way" and gave me a big, big hug. :-) Ghost told her a story that she'd never told anyone before. We're curious to see where it goes from there.
We picked up "Fairytale" and "Wonders" from the merch table, and I'm (slowly) ripping them to my computer.

I also picked up tickets to the June 14th twelve-hour telling of The Iliad (woohoo!) which Ghost and I are greatly looking forward to. (There will be wine and snacks and knitting and other good things to be enjoyed during the telling, as well).

This afternoon there will be weaving, I think, and possibly some knitting as well, but this morning will involve (A) a little bit of tidying (just the coffee table, I think) and (B) a little bit of baking, as well. :-)


TTFN,
Amazon.
So, having listened to them both about a billion times on YouTube, I finally ordered Carry the Fire (Delta Rae) and Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Against Me!) and will have two new CDs in my hot little hands in... ab out another month. I hope they'll arrive earlier, but there you go. By the end of May I may even have forgotten when I ordered them and getting them in the mail will be a wonderful and fabulous surprise.
I also ordered a (cheap!) copy of Wanting, in Arabic which is Trish Salah's first book of poetry (many years old, at this point - her new one is coming out in, like, five more days). I'm honestly not sure what to expect. Trish's poetry is... Okay, the pieces of Trish's poetry that I've read ten towards the dense and word-play-ish. Stuff done with aliteration that follows the order of the alphabet.
So we'll see what I think about it.
Beyond that, I got to go on a road-trip with Ghost today - her bike broke down in Sharbot Lake yesterday afternoon, and we got to go and collect it in a cube van this morning - and I managed to finish a knitted cowl (for my sister). My Ghost wants me to make her one in black, which I think I'll do - I've got some black yarn left over from her hat (which was, originally, going to be a shrug for me) that I can put towards such a thing, and it'll give me an idea of what amount of yarn will be needed to do a knitted dress for myself out of similarly-weighted yarn.
I have PLANS to make myself a knitted dress (or, alternatively, a cobbled-together dress made of t-shirts and tank tops from, like, Giant Tiger or something) with leather accents, so it would be good to know how many skeins of yarn I'm likely to need (answer: a good 4-5 times an many as it will take to make a cowl, but I can work with that).
Anyway. It's another project to work on while I wait for the next round of Shawl Yarn to come in. :-)
As a side note, there is this song: Shivers. It's a cover of a Rowland S. Howard song, performed by Against Me! Meaning: Performed by a trans woman. The lyrics take on a particular meaning in that light).


TTFN,
Amazon.
So. A friend of mine has a family with a sugar shack.
She's offered to haul home an order for me in May. What I've ordered:

1 gallon (8 tins) of maple syrup
1 kg (two packages) of cassinade - which has the same consistency as brown sugar, so it's reasonably soft and can be used in baking
1 box of a dozen maple-butter filled chocolates


I'm figuring that this will keep us in syrup for a good two years, possibly more, and it'll mean that - next time I run out of a brown sugar (which should take a little while, I realize) - I'll have a much more local source already on hand. YAY!

I'm really happy about this offer. She's only making it to some of her close friends - I suggested that she put that list on facebook or something, as it would get her family some extra business, but she's making the run by train which means a lot of heavy lifting for her. So she's trying to keep things "in the family" as much as possible.

It makes me wonder about Buying Clubs, however, and whether or not something closer to home - like the Vanier sugar shack, for example - would do a bulk order with similar prices. Don't know, but it's something to consider.

I'm interested to see how much maple syrup I use when it's (sginificantly more) affordable than usual. Like... I know I use maple syrup as part of the sugar in my home-made pumpkin butter preserves. Maple-based brown sugar is about six times as expensive as cane-based brown sugar (though it's only one-and-a-half times as expensive as organic, fairly traded cane-based brown sugar, so... Apples to apples, right?)
But I'm wondering... will I scrimp on expensive sugar? Or will I use it as a plentiful thing when I've got four litres of the stuff Just Lying Around?
In terms of canning, I can - apparently - only use maple syrup in place of 1/4 of the necessary sugar. I suspect that maple sugar would be more of a 1:1 exchange, but I could be wrong. Anybody know?

Anyway.
This is sort of Step One in my quest to do a lot of my grocery shopping "by year" with up-front payments through CSAs and bulk-buying.
Here's hoping it works out! :-D


TTFN,
Amazon.
amazon_syren: (Writerly)
( Apr. 9th, 2014 03:16 pm)
Um.
I didn't get the job.

I mean, I'm fine. Nothing's changed, and I no-longer need to worry about juggling RHO, modeling, and VERSeFest (the latter of which is volunteer, mind you) committments with another, much-larger-time-committment job. But...

DAMMIT! :-(

A little part of me kind of wants to cry.
I actually wanted that job. It wasn't just some stop-gap until I could afford (ecconomically, I mean) to go back to Normal Life again.

I guess I'm kind of mourning the might-have-been, y'know? The extra $1200 or so per month would have opened up SO MANY doors in terms of housing and savings, and we don't get to have that now (or, more accurately, we don't get to have that yet). It would have meant some wiggle room in terms of what we could afford to rent - an extra $400/month would give us a (cheap) rental house - the kind with three bedrooms, a laundry machine, a garden-able yard and maybe even a garrage for Ghost's tools and canoes and such. And that would still have meant $700+ after taxes that I could put into savings (read: towards a down-payment on a house we'd OWN). It would have made SUCH a difference!

I admit, I was kind of counting on it. :-(
Not in a particularly heavy "spending money I don't have" way[1] but... Oh, I hoped. I hoped so much. And I wasn't enough.
Eugh.
I feel so awful saying that. Both in the sense of "over-dramatic" and in the sense of "actually heart-broken". Even though I know I was a good candidate. Even though I know it was because someone else was more qualified (broader network of contacts, and a LOT more fundraising experience) than I was, not because I wasn't Good Enough. When they called to tell me I hadn't made it in, they said I was one of six people who go interviewed at all. Out of more than a hundred.
That's not much of a consolation prize when what I've missed out on is something that basically translated into Security and A Future through ethical and joy-inducing means. But... It's something. Worth remembering, anyway.

Eugh.

Anyway. Maybe the job'll come up again in another three-to-five years, and I'll have a lot more finance-related stuff under my belt to get it this time. Or maybe I'll have found something else in a similar (or not?) vein that provides the same kind of security and opportunities, and we'll have a house on the go and a garden to grow our own produce and everything already.

Here's hoping.


TTFN,
Amazon.


[1] Although I did get us yoga classes, and I did re-stock (ish) the "wine cellar" to the tune of about 8 bottles of wine + 2 bottles of sortilege (and 1 of their cream version) and a few other odds and sods, and the combination of those things probably works out to about $600-$650 worth of goods and activities
Reading Little House Off the Grid about a family of four who moved to the Napanee area (not that far from where I live, for those of you not in Ontario) to live in a Clearing In The Woods using solar and wind power and stuff like that there.

While this book will most likely be extremely helpful in terms of knowing what the pitfalls are and how to (hopefully) avoid them... gods, the authors (or one of them, anyway) are getting on my nerves! Preachy-vegetarian, preachy-environmentalist, and not very neighbourly... at least when they start out.
Hoy.
Granted, part of the not-very-neighbourly stuff may have come from being the go-to people when one of a number journalists wanted some kind of "extremist" (or possibly actually-extremist, I'm not sure) enviro-view on whatever was happening in Burlington at the time.
But still. It's irritating to have to deal with that Voice while trying to just find stuff out.

It's funny. Because I read this, and I pick up on the eco-snobbery, but I also pick up on the... "Barhavan" attitudes of the writers, if I can use Ami_B's term. I wonder if it would be pissing me off as much if the authors had been more "grass-roots community solidarity" (yep, I'm totally using those buzz-words to make a point ;-) or if it'd blow right by me.
It would probably still piss me off, honestly, but... I could be wrong. :-\


Anyway.
Right now, I'm looking at solar panels, and how much I would need... I'd like (in the hypothetical situation where I own a house and, thus, have a roof to put these on) something like 1000 watts worth of solar panels on each slope (east and west) of the roof. Or, alternatively, 1000 watts on the eastern slope and 2000 watts (meaning 8 250-watt pannels) on the western slope, which gets hotter and brighter sun in my neck of the woods.
I don't actually have a clue how many watts, say, a full-sized fridge or an electric oven will go through...
It's funny. One of the authors talks about giving away all her small apliances - like the bread-maker and the toaster oven and the microwave - and all I could think was: Yes. But don't all of those use way less electricity than an electric stove/oven? (They do. But this family was using a propane-fed stove, so...)
It's something I'd really like to have a clue about. I know that the authors also had a wind-turbine going on, and I'm not sure how much of their electricity came from it vs their 8-12 75-watt solar pannels.

I mean... I'm using a 100-watt lightbulb right now. Plus my laptop. Plus the slow-cooker. Plus my fridge that runs 100% of the time. Plus my electric (urgh...) heat, which also runs 100% of the time. That's a LOT of wattage going on.
Cancel out the heat, because gods know I don't want to be relying on electric heat, and that takes care of a big, BIG chunk of it. But I don't actually know how much I'd be using. What if I add a chest freezer in there? How much is that?
Wrote out a stocking pattern a few days ago, and have had to change things up.
Making ankle socks first, as I've got (I think) enough yarn to do that.
Socks will be pink (rose/cerise?) cotton with teal (acrylic) heels and toes.

Cast on 40 stitches (pink)
Knit back-and-forth two rows
Knit-in-the-round 10 (maybe 12?) rows of [K2, P2]
Knit back-and-forth 40 rows
Knit-in-the-round 20 rows
Switch to teal yarn
Knit-in-the-round 10 rows(?)
Knit-in-the-round 10 rows, REDUCING using [K, K2tog]
Cast off (ish)
Crochet final bits of toe, and close

Put on sock. There should be a big hole that neatly fits your heel.
Using teal yarn, crochet the heel into the sock (diamond-shaped... sort of) by working around your own heel. Custom fit! ;-)

You can finish the sock by adding two rows of crochet/knit in the teal yearn around the top of the ankle, if you're so inclined. :-)


In theory, this will give me an ankle sock that (a) breathes, thanks to the cotton, but (b) has fairly sturdy wear-points, thanks to the acrylic. Any thoughs on this?

I may try to pre-shrink them by dunking them in hot water, wringing them out well, and then fitting them over my custom palster lasts (which will need be stuffed into plastic bags for soginess-avoidance) and drying them with a hair dryer. We shall see. :-)
So, I made these:

[caption id="attachment_1205" align="aligncenter" width="225"]Key to the Cure Piece A Seven pairs available, but that's it. 8mm amethyst beads + surgical steel hooks and silver-tone findings. 1.75" long, not including hooks. $20/pair. Key to the Cure
Piece A
Seven pairs available, but that's it.
8mm amethyst beads + surgical steel hooks and silver-tone key charms and findings.
1.75" long, not including hooks. $20/pair.
Click on the picture to go to their shop.[/caption]

If the picture isn't showing up:
Keys for the Cure Earring Collection, Piece A
8mm amethyst beads + surgical steel hooks and silver-tone findings.
1.75" long, not including hooks.
$20/pair.

Available here.
amazon_syren: (Drama Llama)
( Nov. 12th, 2013 12:19 pm)
So...
I'm doing my typical thing. Meaning: I'm backing up my documents AFTER having had a minor computer emergency.
A glass of champagne got knocked over by accident last night while our company was over, and it upended completelyinto my computer keyboard.
O.O
That said, I'm typing this on said computer right now, so - other than some stickiness - I think we're okay.
Here's hoping.

None the less, backing up All The Files (or at least all the "important" files - like my writing, my modeling portfolio, my music, my outreach files, my Etsy pics, and our wedding photos) by email and Google Drive is... taking some time.
But it's happening.

There may be aportable external hard-drive in my future.

Onwards we go! :-)
Kintsukuroi - a Japanese word refering to broken pottery that has been repaired using gold laquer; it comes with the understanding that the object is more beautiful for having been broken.

YAY LANGUAGE! :-D
So. I am nowhere near done my costume for Unholy Harvest's opening night cabaret.
I mean, I'm a LOT closer than I was on Monday. But I've still got 2/3+ of a beaded-fringe skirt to finish. I think I can do it, since I won't be shopping for supplies tomorrow. But there's still a dozen strings of beads that I have to transfer to thread before I sew them onto the bottom hem of the harness. Plus dozens of mardigras-style beads to add AND (time allowing)space still to fill in between the fringe and the rest of the harness.

O.O

But I have to go to a meeting, and then be part of the cheering squad for Ghost while she's teaching this workshop tonight.

So I'm off.


TTFN,
Amazon. :-)
amazon_syren: (Default)
( Oct. 3rd, 2013 05:56 pm)
So... Not that I'm anywhere near even potentially custom-building my own dream-bungalow, BUT. Based on the themes that keep popping up over here (and, given my current furniture, not surprisingly), I seem to be aiming for:

Polished concrete (radiant heat, clearly) and/or hardwood/bamboo floors

A mix of stone (like: fieldstone) and/or cob/tuscan-plaster walls with built-in wood (typically *dark* wood like walnut or mahogany, but oak works, too) cupboards, cabinets, and shelving

HUGE windows that let in a tonne of natural light

Pocket doors

Arched doorways and/or windows; skylights

Clawfoot tubs; "tufted" upholstery on chairs and couches; leather and velvet (big surprise)

Open concept design/layout

Antique - or at least Antique style (queen anne reproductions? 1920s-aesthetics on touch-tone phones?)

Cast iron; stoneware; graphic prints on good china;

Woodburning stoves/fireplaces

Canopy-frame beds (good thing we've got one already, eh?)

Bone-handled knives

Cathedral ceilings; ceiling beams; groto-like areas with normal-heigh ceilings as part of larger loft spaces with cathedral ceilings

Wrought iron (or at least stuff that *looks* like wrought iron) wall sconces, floor-lamps, patio furniture, sewing tables, and similar

Chandaliers (and also lots of candles)

Big veggie-heavy gardens (duh)


I have big dreams. Still working on the "making them reality" part but... slowly but surely. :-)


TTFN,
Amazon.
amazon_syren: (Default)
( Jul. 12th, 2013 03:52 pm)
Feeling somewhat better.
Told my lovely wife my Ridculously Convaluted Idea that would tie in Imogene's third opponent to her inherited house... and she said "I can totally see that happening. Also, you just summarized your book for me without blowing the ending."

!!!

So, having been told by someone that the idea is actually workable and not a giant cluster-fuck, I'm going to run with it. (I would have run with it anyway, but I would have tried to down-play it as much as possible, rather than trying to see what happens when I make it a major focal point in the story).

I'm so relieved.

It means I don't have to find a way for Imogene's Mom (Louise) to show up unannounced and uninvited on the premises (which is good, because I was SO not prepared to go there).

Also, my paycheque from RHO arrived AND I got my tax refund (thank you Mitzu, Mattaer, and anyone else who had a hand in that one), which means that the phone bill and 1/3 of the credit card bill are now paid AND we have eggs, tomatoes, and snap beans. Huzzah! :-D


Now to make pickles. And maybe some other stuff.


TTFN,
Amazon.
.

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