Thing-a-day.com

Fridays are Cocktail Days for my Thing-a-Day!

I started this on Sunday night, infusing vodka with candied ginger.

My invented drink uses this infused vodka, 2 oz. of it, with…
0.5 oz. of homemade sweet & sour mix
2 dashes Fee’s orange bitters
and one of my homemade brandied cherries for garnish!

It turned out pretty well balanced, with sweet, sour and spicy flavors!

At the beach.

Yesterday I went to Tap Plastics and bought some resin after working on the programmer (yesterday’s thing).

At dinner last night (which saved me from pulling my hair out for the entire evening trying to get virtual pc to flash the xbee modules from my mac) I was complaining that I have had a problem engaging the current zeitgeist and writing new (poly punk) music. It was suggested that perhaps it was because I was too focused on things that go blink in the night.

So today built an 8×8 panel using cat 5 wire with the insulation trimmed back. After experimenting with the resin I was able to cast this using the mold that I made wednesday.

I am relatively happy though it is a little time intensive.

I have this huge collection of random change from multiple countries in the change tray at the door. (It’s from me and my mate’s frequent travel overseas.) It was always getting mixed up with my local change. So:

It’s a pretty simple fold from Makoto Yamaguchi’s Joyful Life with Origami (ISBN 4-7916-0085-1, sorry for the German link, only one I could find). I made these from oversized (~27cm square) plain paper and they are still fairly sturdy. The folded dimension is about 5.5-6cm square/cubed.

Each colour represents a different country: Argentina (light blue), Brasil (yellow), Singapore (green, ran out of red paper), Hong Kong (pink, ditto), Malaysia (purple - why not?)

I have too much US and Canadian change to use one of these unless I were to use a 1m-wide piece of paper

tonight i dyed a turtleneck from a creme color to gray. i know that’s totally boring, but it had to be done, and it probably wouldn’t've happened for another month or more (past turtleneck-wearing season), had it not been for thing.a.day…

why not just buy a gray turtleneck, you ask? that’s a good question! i did look for one, but i couldn’t find one that i liked and that didn’t tickle my neck… you see, i have this thing about turtlenecks and can’t usually wear them—in fact, i haven’t worn them since high school until this year… because they tickle my neck, and i used end up having to pull them down off my neck all day whenever i would wear them… but i found a kind that i like… it’s thin and good for layering and the neck is loose enough (but not too loose!) so it doesn’t tickle my neck. i bought a bunch of them in multiple colors, but they were out of gray. so i bought a creme-colored one thinking that i could dye it if i needed to… and i even continued to look for another gray turtleneck, but couldn’t find one… this was like 3 months ago…. and i tend to procrastinate about stuff like this… so it didn’t look like i would actually get a gray turtleneck anytime soon, but today, because i hadn’t made a thing yet, i decided that would be my thing today, and i actually dragged myself to the store after work, bought some dye, and dyed/dried the whole thing when i got home. thank you, thing.a.day! my other clothes thank you too, for now they will have a gray turtleneck companion to keep them company!

also, here is a picture of a scorpion that i took the other day but forgot to upload:

(I’m going for it! Still cleaning up images for prints.)

Also, this is technically from two days ago, but for good measure here’s something that took a little more time:

This is a close up of a much larger image…I’ve got a bunch of compositions using the same woman, but most look way better blown up so you can really see the moire patterns

Last minute thing for the day. I plyed two super thing yarns I’ve spun and have been sitting on bobbins for months.

-robyn

i am working on some artist trading cards tonight…using prints of a couple pieces from earlier this month.. here is a scan of the first one.

the others i doodled extra little lines on to make them originals/more unique…and have not yet gotten to finishing…

Today I spent 12 hours reinstalling winblows and all my apps. I can’t wait for the day I can run Mac OS on my BOXX. I want to sent Billy Gates a bill for the months of my life wasted fixing his crappy products. Anyway I’m posting a screen shot of my newly installed system. Thats all folks.

Today I happened upon one of the pieces of a felted sweater project that I started awhile ago. This happens a lot in our house. I’m so enthusiastic to start new projects and then something happens and the project is put on hold until I find it some days/months/years later. Somehow this felted piece ended up in our clean laundry basket so I found it and started thinking about using it. It was once the front of a small cashmere sweater (from Value Village) that I felted in the washing machine. The material is really soft, thick and warm. It seems like it would make a cute jumper dress for my daughter, if it was sewn together with the matching back piece. I decided to needle-felt some heart & flower designs on the front. I didn’t have time to finish the needle-felting tonight, but will post the result tomorrow.

Yesterday I made chocolate fondue, but we ate it so there are no pictures.

Today I felt like trying out some new origami models. I found the instructions on this site. It’s all in Japanese, so it was a little harder to follow along. There are a ton of models and the diagrams are clear enough.  I made a Valentine heart and some cute little blossoms. I think the blossoms would make good earrings.

Static

The world

with its stories

of red wars

and haunting tragedy

is sometimes

too much,

and though

I want to listen

all I hear

is static

at my ears.

Title: Mmm… candy!
Description: Homer Simpson portrait done in gummy candies
Inspirations: Today is National Gumdrop Day and Matt Groening’s birthday (1954)

Another guerilla art-type-thing. This definitely would’ve been in earlier if a) I hadn’t had to babysit my little brother, and b) the site hadn’t gone down right as I was about to post it.

My relationship with sleep has been a good one, for the most part. Or at least that’s how I think of it. But upon further reflection I think that I have been something of a jerk in the relationship.

I enjoy sleeping, and periodically bemoan the fact that I wasn’t fortunate enough to be born into a culture more supportive of napping. When I used to do a lot of babysitting, I was constantly pleading with the sleep-resisting five year olds: “Trust me, you think you don’t want to take a nap, but in twenty years or so you’re going to really want one and not be able to get it, so just take it today, will you?” It didn’t work, but it made me feel better.

Now that I’m a parent, and especially because we’re into the thick of college application review season in my household, sleep has taken a bit of a hit. The lovely T often doesn’t get home until what used to be our bedtime, and then of course there’s all that catching up to do.

Poor sleep, taken for granted and always getting pushed further down on the list of priorities. I have made my peace with the crazier hours, and it was the early days of parenting that made it possible… once you let go of the idea that sleep should happen at a particular time during the day, it’s less frustrating to find yourself still awake at 12:23am.

But I do pay a price. I can feel that my mind is not as sharp, that my balance is a little off, and that my temper runs shorter when I’m tired. I get a second wind, and I count on it, but I remember another trick from early parenting… the way to tell how tired you are is to remember how you felt when you first woke up that morning. Before coffee. Before your second wind. Like most people, I need more sleep than I get, but it seems that I am an unrepentant jerk… I’ve got another late night planned tonight. And no nap in sight.

Today’s thing for me is a recipe I found on the Food Network website that I thought would be good and wanted to try. It requires setting it up in the slow-cooker before bed. Since Hubby & I had to babysit tonight (side note: does it count if you “make” a baby stop crying by rocking him while pacing the floors?) I decided that this was perfect.

Here’s the link to get to the oatmeal: Alton Brown’s Overnight Oatmeal. The only thing is that I couldn’t find dried figs, so I substituted dried apples. I thought they’d go well with cranberries.

I also finished and attached a leg and started the 2nd one for a bunny I’m working on. I’ll be giving that to one of my grandmothers for her birthday next month. So far for that I have the body, a leg, 2 arms done and the mouth embroidered on.

I added yet another row to the background of my house study bird quilt today. Now it’s ready for the applique!

Last year was a big year of loss, so I thought this would be a good theme to explore. Jeff, my partner in hangman, wants you to know he solved the puzzle in two missed letters, and that I drew the hangman after he already won. Now that his reputation is cleared… 

The birthday party preparations continue at Sassafras House. We are in the full-court press to prepare for the all-boy sleepover. The ice cream cake was secured this afternoon and tonight we went out to get the party favors. When we came home, JT put the treat bags together. Getting him to fall asleep was a bit of a challenge, calling up all of my powers of creativity.

Back when I made the box out of the record album cover, one of the inner sleeves had these perfect little 2″ square pictures of other vintage records. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them, and today I finally found the tiles to do it.

I am going to write a longer, more detailed post about this, probably just on my regular blog, but for now I just have time to show you the finished items. The process was pretty fun and I have more ideas for the rest of these tiles…

Yeah there’s specks and stuff on the table top. It’s my $5 yard sale craft table, it gets abused. Badly. Oh, and no that chick on the bottom right magnet isn’t naked. She’s wearing some sort of wholesome, peach colored western garb.