Sewing on ice

Hey! Remember Valentine's day? Yeah, neither do I. My idea had been to make a penguin for my boyfriend and I had set about it kind of on time, but alas, it turned out that I was merely finding another distraction and reason to procrastinate. So the project was put on hold until such time as I could finish it properly without the goblins of guilt tugging at my hair. Here's how it went.

I thought I would start out doing a bit of research about penguins. My trusty Google at my side, I dove into the internet and you know what I found out? Making a true-to-life colour pattern on a penguin is really difficult. Here I was thinking that they're mostly like Tux. They aren't. I decided though to stick to what I know and went for the familiar pattern we all know and love. A chubby dinner-suit-wearing bird with awkward little legs.

See that? How the bloody hell do you do that in terms of fabric?

Or this?

Or this?

I got about sketching. Drawing a silly little ball of cuteness with a Valentine's day theme wasn't difficult at all. Pin a heart on something and the theme part of it takes care of itself. Then I set about measuring and drawing a pattern. I get really OCD about sewing patterns. Where as any normal human being would just freehand it onto a piece of paper, I had to use rulers (yes, plural), bits of string and a compass. Complete bloody time-suck, but I was very happy with the end results.

After the tough part was through, I purchased felt and set about cutting out the pieces. This was about the time that I realized I will have to pause this project because I had spent the better part of a day working on it. The parts were stored in a box and put away for the time being. After my exams, I visited the bf and brought the penguin parts along (does that sound morbid to you? Does to me) fully intending to present him with his penguin on the spot. Being the scatter-brained genius I happen to be, I forgot to bring any stuffing and again, the poor little penguin's creation was put on hold. He spent about a month in that box, moving from my desk to my travel bag to my to-do bin.

Finally, after much delay, I started putting the little guy together. Soon after completing the body and wings I realized that he was too small to have those legs as well, and thus to pasture that idea was put, leaving the penguin go be a flat-footed ball of adorableness.

 That whole "Measure twice, cut once" thing turns out to be true. I shook my fist angrily at the god of useful proverbs when I discovered that through all my obsessive calculating, drawing and measuring, I forgot to take into account the curve of the body for the length of the wings. What this meant in practical terms was that the penguin's wings were too small to hold the heart. A quick heart transplant later the heart was big enough to hold, but created a whole new problem: You couldn't see most of the penguin because of the heart.

Well, bother! What to do now? Scrap the whole heart thing? But then it won't be a Valentine's day thing! It simply must be a Valentine's day thing because... reasons! And you can't tell it would be unless there's hearts and/or flowers and/or chocolate. I suppose I could have smeared some chocolate on him, but why would I do that when I could enjoy it instead? To the side the heart went, being held up by the brave little penguin, who was pretty tired of my miscalculations by this point. 

Adding some final, but important touches, namely eyes and a tail, the little guy was finally ready to be mailed to my boyfriend's office, where he now lives happily, reminding him of me and home. Oh, btw, did I mention he loves penguins? That's why I went with the penguin in the first place :)

Stock credit: sxc.hu

The white no-bake cake of doom

Everybody in my family likes the white cake and it is the go-to cake for marking any occasion. It's quick and easy and people tell me it's delicious. Frankly, I've made it so many times, it lost all appeal to me, but since I'm strapped for a topic to write about, and late to boot, here's how the white cake is made.

First you will need a lot of very yummy ingredients: 

• 1 liter of whipped cream
• about 1 liter of sour cream
• 1 kilo of defrosted frozen fruit (I used cherries and raspberries)
• 3 layers of cake (store-bought)
• around 200g of sugar

You will also need a huge-ass bowl, like the yellow one in the picture. Why, you ask? Because no mere mortal bowl can take this much stuff without spilling! (does that sound a little bit pervy?)

See, what did I tell you? That's what one liter of whipped cream looks like. It took me 20 minutes to make that sucker stiff (I'm turning into Nigella with the food porn). It made me long for a nice KitchenAid mixer that mixes stuff for me and that I don't have to put any effort into. Until the day that happens though, it's the elbow-grease path for me.

After that is done, in another much smaller bowl, we mix the sour cream and the sugar, then add this mixture to the whipped cream. Folding this is a bit tricky because the whipped cream moves out of the way for the sour cream and sometimes you are left with a bunch of sour cream on the bottom, which, though making for a good dirty joke, isn't much good for a cake, because it will just spill out. So take your spatula, mixer, hamster wheel or whatever you like to stir with and patiently even out the mixture.

And you're done! That's all the preparation you need to do.

 
 

So what you do next is you separate your cake layers and place one on the serving dish. Cover it with the cream mixture, leaving about 1cm of the edges free, so when you press down, the filling won't spill over. Then put the berries over the cream and add another layer of cream. Cover all this with the next cake layer and press down gently.

You should end up with something like this. The top layer doesn't have any berries, except the ones that will be used for decorating. Now all you have to do is put the remaining cream mixture onto the sides of the cake and it's done!

This, in total, took a half hour to make, despite the horrid cream whipping session. The cake is really easy to make, but it isn't for the faint of heart or the lactose intolerant. I usually have some cream mix left over and I combine it with the juice that came from defrosting the berries. It makes for a simple and yummy ice-cream.

Oh, and finally, don't forget to do the little lad dance if you want your cake piece!

George, the slacker brain

Somewhere along the way, I had to become grown up. I don't know how this goes for other people, but at the somewhat advanced age of 27, I still find myself confused by the adult world and its responsibilities. Part of my brain wishes to play forever and doesn't understand why exactly I should do all these dull tasks that are a part of everyday life. Play-brain, from now named George, grasps some basic human rules like brushing teeth and paying for stuff. He enjoys showers, sitting in the library while being quiet and even enjoys calculating how much money is to be set aside for bills. What George doesn't like, it seems, is everything else. 

"Why? Why do I have to study? I would much rather draw! I don't wanna study! I want to look at stuff online!!!" - yells George petulantly and then goes on to drag me into his slacker schemes. I know I must fight this impulse, but I've been finding that very difficult ever since puberty. Maybe it's because I never had a rebellious phase, maybe it's because my hamster died, who knows? I hope to one day have a lot of money to give to some nice shrink who will tell me why this is.

For now, though, I am interested in solutions and how to keep George from totally messing up my life! Books have always been the go-to thing so I tried self-help books. Who better to help me than me, right? Here is what I found out: I really don't like self-help books! The few I've read were long-winded, somewhat patronizing and spun the same sentences 27 ways. I'm not saying all of them are bad. My sample wasn't large enough to establish this without any doubt. I am saying, however, that I would like my advice given to me in concise, logical terms without any fluff on the sides.

Enter lifehack.org! Oh joy of joys, I found a good one! I've been slowly following this page for about ten or so days now and I really like their style. The articles are divided by topic to lifestyle, communication, productivity, work. It's all peppered with inspirational quotes and this thing called '30sec tip'. Oh boy are those things painful. In two or three sentences, this short article makes you assess your life choices and plans for the future. Unlike the patronizing "do this or fail at life" approach, the 30sec tip tells you "Look, I know you're an adult and you can do as you please, I'm just offering this for your consideration. Another perspective, if you will. Just think about it, that's all I ask."

I hate that 'motivational' quote: "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?". Failing is an integral part of the human experience. The thing to ask is "What would you do after you've failed?". Pick yourself up by use bootstraps or wallow? I've been known to wallow. I've spent a considerable amount of time doing this and if there were such a thing I would have a black belt in wallowing. The thing is though, being a wallow-ninja isn't a cool thing to be. It made me sluggish and angry at both the world and myself. While some people can make being angry at the world profitable, like Gordon Ramsay, I couldn't do it. George just wanted to sit in the corner and hate everything and everybody. Hm. I guess I did have my rebellious phase after all, it just wasn't particularly impressive. 

George and I are just barely on speaking terms, or whatever you call being "in touch" with your slacker-brain. Seems there is no hack anywhere that will kill George forever and the smug little bastard knows it. I am stuck with him. For the past few days we have worked out a compromise of sorts. He lets me work a little and then I let him have fun. Somehow this always gets out of hand and I end up doing much less of the useful stuff than I had originally planned, but it's a start. 

Here is one useful link for those of us with productivity problems. I've recently "discovered" the GTD (Getting Things Done) method, but being notoriously slow at reading, haven't moved past page 5 or so. When I do (see how I use "when" instead of "if"? Take that, George!) I'll write about it, hopefully. In the meantime, good luck to us all!

Stock credit: xn3ctz

Zombie Love

Valentine's day is upon us and despite my efforts to prepare a good design for it, things didn't end up too well and I'm fighting to make my self-imposed deadline. The first idea I had was of a zombie hugging a brain and that's what I went with.

Turns out it's much harder to draw a zombie than I originally thought. Thankfully deviantArt to the rescue, with many a tutorial on drawing a skull. Because, really, it isn't a zombie if it has an entire face, am I right? The wonderful stock of SenshiStock provided a good reference for a pose, though I couldn't exactly capture the facial expression... what with the zombie not having lips and eyelids. Still, I took this nice lady's lovely stock and doodled all over it so I could get some skull practice.

You know just up there when I said it's hard to draw a zombie? It's even harder to make one look cute. My first attempt ended up looking too creepy and I was about ready to scrap the whole thing. Decided against it, thankfully. No point in giving up on the first go and all that. Even if your zombie looks like a horror reject version of the Phantom of the opera...

Yeah, don't look at him too long, you might have bad dreams. The writing that somehow made into the scan says "Bye bye", because I like to write comments in my notebooks. Hard habit to break, let me tell you!

Anyway, after much a-doodlin', erasing and re-doodling, a cute, happy zombie was... well, not born... transformed/transfigured... made! I'm gonna go with made. As a little sketch, he moved into Illustrator and underwent some adjustments, a lot of colouring and detailing. Lost some hair in the process, gained a lot of spotting and a brain in his jar of love. With some lettering added to convey the message I was trying to put out there for Valentine's day, "Zombie Love" was done.

So happy Valentine's day to all love-birds and happy chocolate 50% off day to everybody who'll shop on the 15th. Hope to see you in the queue!

A blog wouldn't be a blog without some shameless self-promotion so "Zombie Love" is available with or without letters at my Zazzle shop.

Castle Crashers Stole My Pants

from gamerzines.com

As some of you may know, there's a sale on. The big Steam Holiday Sale! (insert dramatic music here) Being the nerd that I am, I've been following it closely and voting twice each day so that I can get my holiday sale badge. Being broke like I am, I could only get Rocketbirds for my bf. I would like to think it's just me being all loving and caring, but I also wanted the achievements for buying and gifting a game. A few days later, the sale in full swing still, a conversation like this happened:

Him: Have you heard of Castle Crashers?

Me: Nope.

Him: I hear it's a good two-person co-op.

Me: I'll look it up.

(2 minutes later)

Me: Holy cr.ab! That's awesome! And the wee knights are so adorable! Look at their little funny hats!

Him: Would you like to give it a try?

Me: OH YES!

And so, on the n-th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four little knights! We were all pumped up and ready to go when the game crashed. Ok. No matter. Try again.

The opening scene was that of our two knights partying middle-ages style in a tavern. Useful note here: Player 1 gets the cooler dance. If you're player 2, you get to dance like a dork. Don't be player 2. When all of a sudden a soldier comes flying in through the door, bloody and then dies. All our fellow knights rush out to see what is happening and of course, I, despite my dorky dancing, run out as well, looking for enemies to slay!

This is the part where I would like to say that it would be great if the cut-scenes could be skipped. After the game crashing about the fourth time, I was sick of looking at the big white rock being stolen from my (shivering and scared) king's throne by a tiny ninja-wizard. The game was first released on Xbox, then on PlayStation 3 and even at the start of the game, it tells you that you'd be better off using a controller, instead of a keyboard.

Once we make our way past the barbarian hoards, we saw what the true, horrific, most heinous problem was: The barbarians were kidnapping our beautiful princesses! The nerve! We, of course, give chase, hunting down the fiends who dare lay their grubby hands on these precious examples of (rather big-eyed) perfection. Over the castle walls, through fields of muck and destruction we put down every barbarian who dares cross paths with us. Me, I get shot in the face by an arrow about every 5 steps, but where I lack in skill and coordination, I make up for with zeal. Fighting a canon goat (I swear, I'm not high, there is a canon goat), the barbarian lair is reached, with our princesses tied to poles and displayed by the arena where we face the final boss of this section. 

And what a boss he is! Masked, gigantic and carrying a gigantic shield. I died! I don't mean I died of fright. I meant my little orange knight got owned by the hulking fur-ball many a time and had to be resuscitated by my bf's green knight. That shows real devotion, ladies and gentlemen: Giving CPR to your fallen comrade in arms, while a horned behemoth is trying to turn you into a waffle. Not only that, but he also chugs some very flammable liquid and gives the deadliest burp of all times, sending himself and you and the other attacking barbarians flying across the arena. 

Though we didn't mean to, we both ended up dying. I was too slow delivering CPR and received a death blow from The Waffler up there. This made the game save our progress. Which was great, really. You know why? Because we had fought this boss three times before, having to go through all his minions again and again and again because right when the bastard is about to kick the proverbial bucket, the game would crash and we would lose any progress. But it doesn't crash like a normal game. Oh no. This one is so much more evil than that: It says your session is cancelled! It doesn't die completely, BSOD, block your computer, freeze your screen. No, it continues running, but all your progress goes up in smoke.

This was just a description and my impressions of the first mission. I loved the game, despite it's infuriating crashes, smashing all manner of buttons, aiming for any sort of effect. It's great fun to play with the option to talk to your team mate too, because it's a much faster way to let them know to "GO ON WITHOUT ME! SAVE THE PRINCESS!!!" So if you're looking for something to giggle at and enjoy in a carefree and very silly manner, then by all means get this game!

Getting a head start

I had spent a lot of time on Etsy, before my Chrome started crashing it and read quite a bit of the Seller Handbook. I found it immensely useful and would recommend it to anybody who would like to try and make a go of their crafting skills. It's written in a regular, human way without preaching or patronizing. The Seller Handbook (ESH from now on) is the reason I started this blog and also one of the motivators to take the time and learn to be better with my hands :)

Anyway, ESH says that you should prepare for the coming season before the season actually hits. So, for example, December 15th is not a good day to post your new Christmas themed designs, since, with settling orders, payments and shipping, the item might be late arriving. If you still want to risk it, here's a useful bit of reading for you, my fellow procrastinators. Still, better to avoid the stress, right?

I had wanted to do something holiday themed and even got in a bit of drawing in. Yes, as always, it was hamsters. This particular little guy was going to be a little ninja, trying to hit another hamster with a candy cane. I hadn't quite figured out what the other hamster would be doing to fight off the attack, but it would have been something epic, by all means.

The next idea was for a hamster stealing some chocolate chip cookies. I quite liked his happy little face and the one damaged ear was a little tribute to my current fluffy buddy, Treesha. I thought to myself that ok, this is too many hamsters, isn't it? I'm really pushing it. So I decided to take a hamster chill-pill and just not do anything for this holiday season. Yes, they're fuzzy and adorable, but you *can* have too much of a good thing.

Two decisions were made. One - the number of hamster designs should be equal to or less than 1. Two - I will prepare for each holiday/event/markable occasion on time. For 2013 (unless the world ends tomorrow), I've made a list of dates that require some sort of marking, when they are and when to start preparing themed products for them. You'd think this would be easy, but I assure you, it isn't. Many different holidays are marked throughout the world. I'm sure I'll be leaving much out, so please, let me know if you think I should add something. Also thanks to these guys for keeping their super fun site.

FEBRUARY

Groundhog day - February 2nd - January (just for giggles, I had to list this one)

Valentines day - February 14th - January

MARCH

Women's day - March 8th - January

Pi day - March 14th - February

St Patrick's day - March 17th - February

International Earth day - March 20th - February

Easter - March/April - February

APRIL

Mathematics Awareness month

Sexual Assault Awareness month

Autism Awareness month

MAY

Lupus Awareness month

Asthma Awareness month

World Press Freedom day - May 3rd - April

International Nurses day- May 12th - April

Mother's day - May 12th - April

International Museums day - May 18th - April

Towel day - May 25th - April

JUNE

LGBT Pride month

World Environment day - June 5th - May

Father's day - June 16th - May

JULY

Bastille day - July 14th - June

SEPTEMBER

International Literacy day - September 8th - August

International Talk Like A Pirate day - September 19th - August

OCTOBER

Breast Cancer Awareness month

World Vegetarian day - October 1st - September

Halloween - October 31st - September

NOVEMBER

Movember

COPD Awareness month

Thanksgiving - November 22nd - October

DECEMBER

Seasonal Depression Awareness month

World AIDS Awareness day - December 1st - November

New Year's Eve - December 31st - November

Remember the fuzzy

Two and a half years ago, this little guy came to live with me and bring joy to my life. His name was Betelgeuse, but he was soon affectionately renamed either "little B" or our equivalent of "Brutus", from the Popeye cartoons. My dad was the one to come up with Brutus, because the little fuzz ball would stand on his hind paws and try to make himself appear biger than he really was, strutting his stuff much like Brutus would in front of Olive. 

Brutus was a kind and patient little Syrian hamster. He never bit and enjoyed sitting on my shoulder, munching on lettuce or apple slices. He was also a bit of an escape artist and daredevil, getting out of his cage and jumping off my desk when I wasn't looking. He loved to roll around in his plastic ball, so much so that he wrecked two. He was a picky eater, opting more for sunflower and wheat seeds than anything else. 

Two months ago, my little fuzzy love died. One day, while I was away, he slowly stopped breathing. My mum buried him and said that he looked very tiny and was very still.

This little ball of fuzz was a great joy and a nice little companion. He also inspired some of my work and will probably stay the inspiration for any of my hamster drawings yet to come.

This is the drawing that started it all. The "Plooshkin" hamster. I don't know how we (my bf and I) came up with the name, but it sounded so adorable, it had to stay. I tried and failed many a time to transfer the actual drawing into digital form and finally, the little golden hamster was born! Little B did not appreciate my art much, choosing to nibble on the paper instead :)

Though strictly vegan, this little guy did at times appear bloodthirsty. The poor apple core didn't stand a chance! One day, the hamster decides to take a nap, not in his nest, but in the middle of the cage. I almost had a coronary, thinking he had died. It turned out he was alive and well and just sleeping happily. This is when the Zombie Hamster arrived into my head ad had to be put on paper and subsequently, in Illustrator as well.