シシおんな - The Shishi Girl

You stopped SOPA; you stopped PIPA!

2012-01-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Thank you, everyone. The Internet is safe for now, but there remains much to be done.

Don't back down. Keep the pressure on your representatives in Congress, and spread the word. SOPA and PIPA (and ACTA, an international agreement that is slowly evolving into similar legislation) are still on the table, and they'll be back.

Stop SOPA. Stop PIPA.

2012-01-18T00:05:00.000-07:00

This post will remain, long after the blackouts of January 18th have come and gone.

SOPA and PIPA are closely-related bills in the US legislature that, if passed, will cripple the Internet. They are scheduled to go up for a vote on January 24th.

This is not a drill.

Google: End Piracy, Not Liberty: sign the petition
StopTheWall.us: protest about PIPA directly to your senator

Learn about the bills (SOPA, PIPA) and make yourself heard.

WARNING: blog has reached critical mass

2012-01-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

Alright, damnitall, here we go:

I need to get my online data organized. First off is this blog, which IS still alive, honestly. It's connected to my private account and a webspace where I host designs for clients, though, which is less than optimal. Also, it is ugly. I can't design the space here the way I'd like to without circumventing a bunch of Blogger rules and garbage. Vehement MEH.

SO, with everyone's merciful understanding and forgiveness, please know that things are going to go royally haywire for a little while. I intend to leave everything up and accessible for as long as I can, and I will make any hot switches in the shortest length of time possible. That said, there are going to be broken links here and there. In the end, things should seamlessly redirect to wherever I decide to drop them for permanence... fingers crossed.

In the process, I will be permanently deleting some posts. These will generally be the posts that have nothing of interest to anyone, anywhere, anyway. (All the "oh crap what happened let me fix this sorry brb" posts, for example.) Anything that contains a pattern, tutorial, or experiment will remain online and fully accessible by the end of the cleanup. The current links to PDF patterns and diagrams, however, will break. I intend to replace them with a forwarding image.

Lastly, I will establish a secondary blog for some of the things that I would have previously posted here. I think. Maybe. Let me think it over. (If you're only here for patterns, don't worry; you'll still be in the right place.)

Postscriptively, happy new year to everyone. :3 I hope you've all had a great first week.

Damnitall.

2011-11-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

Something snapped in the overburdened monstrosity of a template I have been using on this blog for a long time, so MEH. I intend to redesign the whole thing this weekend.

...and then post new stuff.

Don't be afraid of any weird errors you see here for the next however many days, thanks. m(-_-;)m

Zzzzzzz...

2011-10-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

....zzzzzzz....

...GAH! WHA! WHA?!

WHERE AM I
WHAT MONTH IS IT
OH CR*P I AM WAY BEHIND ON EVERYTHING

Translation: I am both lazy AND I have been sick, and I really need to update. Sorry. Stay tuned.

What the Felt (or, good places to buy wool felt online)

2011-09-03T20:28:00.001-07:00

I'm shopping for felt. This is what I do to relax after utterly failing to make chicken stir-fry (apparently).

Also, I find it soothing to write reports comparing the online retailers of products for which I shop after utterly failing to make chicken stir-fry.

Yep.

I rated these on a less-than-scientific system, mind you; most of these players sell a wide variety of sizes and blends, but I make small stuff and I don't need 100% virgin unicorn wool. Ergo, the target is for the smallest piece for sale with one dimension of at least 12", with a blend of minimum 20% wool.

The Felted Ewe

Colors: 26
Wool percentage: 20% ~ 35% wool to rayon
Thickness: unknown
Size: 12" by 18"
Price: $1.35 each
Per square inch: $0.0063
Shipping: $7.00 US, more international

Commonwealth Felt

Colors: 60+
Wool percentage: 20% ~ 35% to rayon, 100% wool and bamboo/rayon available
Thickness: unknown
Size: 12" by 18" (and 36" by 36")
Price: $1.79 for 20%, $1.89 for 35% ($9.39 for square yard of either)
Per square inch: $0.0083 for 20%, $0.0088 for 35%
Shipping: $8.15 and up

Weir Crafts

Colors: 15
Wool Percentage: 70% to rayon, 100% wool and 50% bamboo/rayon available
Thickness: 1/16"
Size: 9" by 12" (larger sizes available)
Price: $1.75 each
Per square inch: $0.0162
Shipping: $4.99 and up

Erica's

Colors: ~90
Wool Percentage: 20%, 35%, and 70% to rayon, 100% wool on same page
Thickness: 1/16" for rayon blends, 7/64" for 100%
Size: 9" by 12" (larger sizes available)

Price: ranges from $1.05 to $1.50 based on color and blend, $2.15 for 100%
Shipping: ~$3.00+, varies widely depending upon size of order

Wool Felt Central

Colors: 98
Wool Percentage: 20% ~ 35% to rayon
Thickness: 1/16" for rayon blends, 7/64" for 100%

Size: 12" by 18" or by the yard (continuous)

Price: $1.75 each, $8.50 per yard for 20%, $9.50 per yard for 35%
Shipping: $5.99+

Other Places to Find Felt
I didn't do the math for these: they were either too jumbled up, too expensive (but still pretty to look at), obvious places to look, or temporarily closed (Felt-o-rama will re-open in January 2012).

Colonial Crafts
A Child's Dream
Create for Less
Felt-o-rama

AND NOW I WILL EAT MY SAD CHICKEN STIR-FRY AS PENANCE. (〒д〒)

Experiment: A Mess (Poured Fondant)

2011-07-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

My sister needed to bake up some cookies to send to a friend, so I suggested a method of decorating that I'd wanted to try for some time now: poured fondant. It is, in essence, the same thing as glace icing, but instead of adding more liquid, you heat it up juuust a little to get the sugar to a liquid state, then beat the mixture briefly to force the recrystallization of the sugar to remain fine and even. This supposedly allows you to simply pour it over whatever baked good you're trying to decorate for a solid, even layer. It sets quickly by cooling, then locks into a matte sugar shell within 24 hours.

The recipe is fantastically simple:

6 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 cup water
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
1~2 teaspoons extract flavoring as desired
food coloring as desired

Mix everything in a pot over low heat to 92~100 degrees F, pour over something edible.

Here's the mixing...

...and, uh... the aftermath of the pouring.

Disclaimer: Those cookies with clean-cut edges in the back of the image were achieved by literally carving them out of a sheet of hardened fondant sludge.

In brief, this is a hard process to control. Even with twice the water called for in the recipe and increasing the temperature all the way to 105 degrees F, the fondant was never thin enough to really pour over the cookies. It was more like laying down sugary tarp that kinda draped over the sides of each cookie and made indistinct sugary lumps of all of them. I'm not quite sure why this happened, but I suspect either the distinct lack of humidity in the desert or the cheap confectioner's sugar I picked up at Walmart is to blame.

One more try, dipping the cookies into the fondant while keeping it over steady low heat. They do this with cupcakes, the Internet tells me.

what the Internet tells me

real life*

...dipping 0.25" thick cookies into hot sugar sludge = not the most fun thing ever. SIGH.

Maybe I'll make petit fours someday, but I won't revisit poured fondant until then.

This will be my last attempt at decorated cookies for a while as I get back to posting patterns I have neglected for a long time.

* I really wanted to photoshop David DeVore into that image, but alas, I have neither the time nor the skills.

Experiment: Stamped Impression Cookies

2011-07-05T21:34:00.001-07:00

Short one. To decorate cookies with a full coat of icing, you usually do it in two steps. First, piping, where you go around the edges with a line of icing that is thick enough to not flow off the edge of the cookie, then let it set up before step two, flooding, where you fill the outlined area(s) with an icing that is slightly thinner.

example of piped icing on cookies, before the flooding step (hands and creativity provided by my sister)

Piping exists entirely as a series of dams to keep the flood icing from overflowing the sides of the cookie. There are, conceivably, many other ways of setting up these dams. For example, what happens if you press foam stamp shapes into soft cookie dough, bake it, then fill the impressions with glace icing? Do the walls of the indentations work as well as piped borders to hold the shape of the icing?

Conclusion: Yes. Yes they do.

Additionally, chocolate sugar cookie dough offers many creative avenues worth perusal. :D

Yes, it is a poo cookie. No, I am not ten years old.

Experiment: Glace Icing (and a Lecture)

2011-06-25T16:20:00.003-07:00

Not satisfied in the least with the outcome of the last experiment, I have been puttering around on the Internet in search of an alternative method of decorating cookies with hard icing... and wouldn't you know it, there IS one. Lads and ladies, glace icing:

The Crafty Penguin

Drakegore on Flickr

Glace icing is similar to royal icing in that it hardens atop cookies, so it's good for fine decorating and making treats that have to survive transit. Unlike royal icing, it does not require egg whites or meringue powder, so it doesn't taste like you were baking in the forge at a tin mill. Which is nice.

this is nasty stuff

SO HERE GOES THE EXPERIMENT PART AGAIN

I made some more cookies, same recipe as before. Then I got a recipe for glace icing from here, with alterations. There seems to be several variations among professional bakers as to which are the correct alchemical elements in this concoction. There's a general consensus on the confectioner's sugar, corn syrup, and your choice of clear flavored extract. Then, a division: milk or water? And, if milk: whole or skim?

OH GOD SO MANY CHOICES

I can't think of why you'd want to use whole milk in any recipe that doesn't specifically rely on the fat content, and as far as making a sugar-based icing that you intend to set hard, fats and oils of any kind would likely sabotage the effort.

Water offers a unique benefit. The other three ingredients in glace icing are all shelf-stable, meaning they can be left at room temperature in closed containers and will not rot. Using water as the final ingredient maintains this property, rendering an icing that can essentially go in the pantry for weeks (perhaps even months?) in a sealed bottle and be used as needed.

I chose skim milk for this first try, for reasons explained further down the page. There is another decision to be made; how to color the icing?

WHY IS THIS SO HARD

...actually, it's not that hard. The liquid food coloring that you buy at the supermarket is the cheapest and most widely-available food dye out there, and it's likely something you've worked with before at kindergarten or in your mom's kitchen. You can also find more concentrated food dyes at specialty shops (and most craft stores, nowdays, since boutique baking has exploded into a billion dollar industry with TV shows and designer brands of icing and tools and competitions with celebrity judges and... wait, am I still in the parentheses?)

Eh-hem. Concentrated food dyes come in two types: gel and paste. There are several brands available, including Wilton, Ateco, and AmeriColor. Both are generally more expensive than liquid dyes.

Now, the sneaky insight part of this post, AKA why I went to college: knowing the nature of your available mediums can help you cheat at achieving bright color.

OH NO A LONG EXPLANATION

Every coloring medium falls somewhere on a spectrum of transparency. At one end, you have translucence; inks and dyes that add their color on top of any colors already present. This is like adding a wash of blue watercolor to black text on a white page -- the white takes on the blue hue, while the black text remains fully visible and unaffected. No matter how many times you wash the page with blue, the black test isn't going to be covered -- you will only supersaturate the page with blue until it reaches the maximum available hue of the ink.

On the other end of the spectrum is opacity. Opaque inks and other mediums have the additional property of coverage. When applied to a page, a completely opaque medium will blot out any colors underneath and fill the area with its own exact color. If you applied an opaque coat of blue paint to the white page of black text mentioned above, you would simply end up with a blue sheet of paper -- both the text and the white background would be gone. No matter how many coats of blue opaque paint you used, however, the hue will not increase in saturation, as it would with a translucent dye; you would be unable to change the value of the one blue shade your paint produced with the first coat.

Applied to coloring foodstuffs, here's the trick: liquid and gel food dyes fall on the translucent end of the spectrum, but pastes fall on the opaque side. (Skim milk (remember?) is also highly opaque.) Glace icing itself is semi-translucent and will not provide an opaque "ground" for brighter colors to "stand" on. If you use add some white food coloring paste to your icing, you are infusing the icing with this necessary ground, which means you can get away with using the cheaper translucent liquid food dyes to achieve your full spectrum of color. Using skim milk (rather than water) in the composition of the icing further enhances this opaque white ground quality.

Holy crap, that was verbose. o.o' Sorry.

Short version:

To get bright colors with minimal investment in specialty food dyes, use about 10~20 drops of white paste food dye when you mix up a batch of icing, then divide and color it with regular liquid dyes from the supermarket. (You can always invest in a full spectrum of pastes and gels later if you decide colored icing is your calling in life.)

SO THAT IS WHAT I DID, with American "bright white" paste found at the Hobby Lobby* up in Phoenix.

Outcome:

Woot, b*tches!

Conclusions

Glace icing tastes GOOD. Not as good as buttercream icing (frosting), that soft stuff on cakes that I could eat by the spoonful (and have, on occasion), but glace is dramatically better than royal icing. If I could fault it for anything, it'd be that it's on the upper edge of tolerable sweetness... but paired with a crisp buttery cookie, this works to the sum benefit of both.

Glace icing is easy to make. Four ingredients, none of them exotic, no need for an appliance beater or special paddles, no time limits. Also can be made to last weeks without refrigeration if you use water in place of milk and keep it in sealed containers. You can't beat that.

Glace icing hardens exactly well enough. It takes a drying time of 24 hours (or more, for thick icing on big cookies), but glace does reach a point of stability beyond which it can be stacked, packaged, and mailed (by parcel post, even). It does NOT become crystalline-hard, like royal icing. One thing you need to be careful about is letting the piped outline set up before flooding the interior...and glace icing tends to form lower barriers, so don't overfill:

Oops.

...but also, don't underfill, because glace icing sinks as it dries. This didn't seem to be as much of a problem the first time I made it with skim milk, but subsequent batches made with water seem to sink down in the middle. I'm still hoping to figure out if the water is really the culprit, or if it has something to do with the dry atmosphere to be found in any kitchen in the Arizona desert (4% relative humidity, woah).

Glace icing tends to blur a little at the edges between colors. Both milk and water recipes showed this effect... it's like a 2-pixel feathering, if you're familiar with photo editing software. Again, this might be caused by my own inexperience at the technique, the weather conditions in Arizona, alignment of the planets, or butterflies flapping their wings in Africa. Or it could just be intrinsic to glace icing.

High-gloss only. The corn syrup, an integral ingredient for stability of the icing as it is applied to the cookies, gives glace an inherently shiny finish. This is the exact opposite of the flat, solid look of royal icing. Not too much of a price to pay for the improvement in flavor and ease of production, but it means that desirable hard shell of matte candy color remains out of my reach... for now.

Aaaand that's the end of that particular experiment, thought I am still making cookies and glace icing. Like I mentioned up there somewhere, these iced cookies ship well, and I can't think of anyone in my book of addresses who could not use some cookies right about now. (Honestly; can you?)

*Hey Hobby Lobby: please build a freakin' store in Tucson already.

Still Alive

2011-06-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

(...and still channeling Gladys after a weekend of Portal 2 jokes with my sister.)

That Which Has Been Going On:

a second iced-cookie experiment, now with 200% more success and zero meringue powder*
further experiments with surplus craft supplies (and further cementing my hatred of painting things)*
using the Internet to solve my problems, like old cellphones and random collectibles from childhood, both of which help ease my insatiable desire to visit the post office every day
rigging up an Etsy shop (!)

* post coming soon

Experiment: Royal Icing

2011-04-22T20:18:00.001-07:00

Damn you, cookies. Damn your delicious siren song. Curse your versatility, an appropriate snack for all ages and all venues, from after-school munch to high tea presentables. Most of all, your glorious presentation under coats of delicate icing; your transformation from flat crunchy biscuit to a perfectly appointed treat for the eyes as well as the tongue, sweet and tempting...

Damn it all, I gotta try this.

Between my sweet tooth and the books at the library, the call of the decorated cookie has been too much for me to ignore this spring. I usually make cookies from the "drop" family; that is, drop spoonfuls of dough on the cookies sheet, bake, cool, eat. Chocolate chip cookies are the most famous member of this family; so are snickerdoodles, most cookies involving peanut butter, or any chunky cookies full of nuts, candy, dried berries, oats, etc.

But I digress.

To make the sugar-shelled glory of finely decorated cookies, you need to start with a flat, clean canvas of rolled-and-cut cookies, and develop your decorations around the medium of royal icing; that mysterious sugary paste that requires unfamiliar powdered egg ingredients. Beyond the gingerbread cookie recipe I inherited from my mother, I have very little experience with rolled cookies. I have exactly ZERO experience with royal icing. However THIS:

O.O !!!

"now with more sparkles!"

Dood. Ornithology and sugar? I'm in.

...is inspiration far more powerful than I can resist. So I got me a book and a canister of meringue powder and READY SET GO.

This book (above right), which was available at the library, is actually the Xmas special edition of the other book (above left), which was not, but will be shortly, because I requested it through interlibrary loan and the Empress of Librarians was all "hey, that's a cool book" and she ordered some copies for Pima county yaaay. :D

I'm not going to detail the recipe and making of the cookies in the book, because it's not my recipe and pretty much a moot point. You can make any cookie as a base for decorating so long as it possesses two particular qualities: flat and stiff. Crunchy butter cookies or hard gingerbread; that sort of thing. The book has recipes for butter sugar cookies, butter chocolate cookies, and gingerbread. I made the butter sugar cookies.

NOW HERE IS THE EXPERIMENT PART:

Royal Icing

The unique chemical nature of this stuff made me apprehensive about it's creation, but if you measure carefully and follow directions, it seems to come out more or less as it should be on the first try. One thing I have learned regarding the use of royal icing on cookies is that it needs to be made in two formats; piping and flood.

Piping is the stiffer stuff that keeps more of its shape and dries harder. It can be used in several ways, but for this elementary experiment, it's basically what you use to draw outlines of different areas you want to color. It is the "pen" of cookie illustration.

Flood icing has the same components as piping icing, but a higher ratio of water. Ergo, it flows a little more freely. Once you've drawn all the outlines you want with piping icing, you fill in the spaces with flood icing. It hits the piped borders and stops, giving an effect like cloisonne work. You can also add flood icing of different colors on top of a flooded background; it will sink in to the same blob, you can swirl the colors together for cool effects (called "feathering", I think).

ancient enameling technique compared to modern cookie (yep)

The other thing I have learned about royal icing is that its key ingredient is egg albumen, and that this can be supplied in one of at least three ways: liquid pasteurized egg whites, powdered egg whites, and meringue powder. A fourth way (zeroith way?) is just using egg whites that you separate from regular ol' whole eggs you get from a chicken or the store, but this carries a risk of salmonella, so don't do it and then blame me when you get sick.

I couldn't find powdered egg whites anywhere in town, and I didn't want to measure out liquid egg whites, so for convenience, I chose to use meringue powder. Maybe a bad choice on my part, since it makes things taste tinny and kinda bitter.

(I will not use this again.)

Now I am going to put down the recipe for royal icing -- using meringue power -- as provided in the book, specifically because THERE IS AN ERROR IN IT. A quick look around the Internet establishes that several bakers have identified a typo whereby "teaspoons" was accidentally replaced by "tablespoons" in the measurement of meringue powder. The publisher has acknowledged the mistake and will supposedly correct it in future reprints. In the meantime:

Here is the correct recipe for royal icing, adapted from the book Cookie Craft Christmas:

For Piping
2 cups confectioners' sugar (1/2 pound)
4 teaspoons meringue powder
3 tablespoons of warm water*
1 tablespoon lemon juice OR 1/2 to 1 teaspoon flavored extract

For Flooding
2 cups confectioners' sugar (1/2 pound)
4 teaspoons meringue powder
6 tablespoons of warm water*
1 tablespoon lemon juice OR 1/2 to 1 teaspoon flavored extract

*Notice that the amount of water is the only difference between piping and flooding icing.

"Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat on high speed with an electric mixer, 5 to 10 minutes or until icing reaches desired consistency. Store in airtight containers when not in use."

SO HERE IS WHAT I DID:

I put the piping icing, which I left white, in a quart Ziploc bag (thick freezer type) and cut a tiny hole in one tip to make a ghetto decorating bag. The flood icing went into three sammich bags along with some 5 to 15 drops of standard cheapo grocery store food coloring in each, which I then squished around in the sealed bags to color the stuff three ways: yellow, pink, and light green. I later added a darker green to the originally light green icing bag, making a darker green fourth color.

AND HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED:

...hmm.

Conclusions

I cannot pipe royal icing worth a crap. In hindsight, this is because I made the rookie mistake of putting the tip of the icing bag against the cookie when squeezing out the icing. The correct way, apparently, is to "drape" the icing, holding the tip of the bag an inch or two above the cookie and allowing the string of icing to hang down, directing where it falls to make your shapes. So... yeah. Learning process. -_-; (You are supposed to put the tip of the bag against the cookie when adding flood icing, however.)

Meringue powder tastes bad. After the icing dried on the cookies, they actually tasted rather decent and lemony. The frosting alone, however, is bleh. Even though they contained the same ratio of sugar and meringue powder to flavoring, the piping icing was considerably less offensive than the flood icing. I can only assume the addition of more water in the flood icing causes a different reaction with the meringue powder. If I ever try royal icing again, I will use pasteurized egg whites.

Liquid food coloring is for pastel colors only. If you want strong colors, get paste colors in the little jars. It simply takes too much liquid coloring to get any considerable color at all, and you'll end up changing the consistency of the frosting with all those little drops.

Ziploc baggies are not equivalent to decorator bags. The quart bag worked admirably, but my control over the flow of the icing was poor compared to the control I could have gotten with a coupler and a few decorating tips. One of the sammich bags had a blow-out, taking out a few cookies with a sudden flood of squishy icing. Decorating bags are not expensive, but the cheapskate in me wants to try this technique before I spring for a pack of plastic cones. It's apparently a tried-and-true pro technique to fold baking parchment to make one's own disposable paper cones for frosting, and heaven knows I'm a nerd for folding paper. :D

Extra piping icing (and to a lesser extent, flood icing) can be used to make fancy tea sugars. Run out of cookies, but still have icing? It can last a while in the fridge in sealed containers, but it'll start to separate after a few days. You can use leftover icing to practice your decorating technique on wax paper or bakers' parchment, leave the sugary scribbles to dry overnight, and then use them like large, misshapen sugar cubes in your tea or coffee. As a bonus, the meringue flavor pretty much vanishes when dissolved in coffee or stronger tea.

Tea sugars! Fancy ones!

And that's the end of that experiment... but not of my lust for cookies. I can imagine I'll be back on this track someday. In the meantime, anybody want a tin of meringue powder? <:P

5:29

2011-04-18T22:08:00.002-07:00

The tsunami in Miyagi prefecture, as viewed from Shidzukawa high school. Public schools are commonly built atop hills in Japan, especially in the Tohoku region, specifically to become safe zones in the case of tsunami. The public is instructed from childhood to gather at schools in case of any disaster or emergency.

In 5 minutes and 29 seconds, the entire town of Minamisanriku is destroyed.

This is the last post I'll make for a while regarding the tragedies in Japan, but please don't forget that the suffering continues every day, in millions of ways great and small. Your generosity can make all the difference. If you haven't already, please consider making a donation of your time or resources to help Japan.

Besides the American Red Cross, the International Rescue Committee and CARE are two highly-rated charities currently working to provide relief and aid in Japan. There are many others. Check with your favorite charity.

The BBB's List of Accredited Charities Providing Relief to Japan
and

American Institute of Philanthropy's List of Preferred Charities

Thank you very much; a million hearts rely upon your kindness.

たいへんどうもありがとうございました；お世話になりました。

Did someone say "Postcard Project"? O,O

2011-03-26T17:31:00.001-07:00

I am (still) on the AJET-Chicago Consulate mailing list. Every so often, a former JET or two gets in contact with the group to rally us all to certain projects. One Jennifer Bohn, now stationed with the Peace Corps at a high school in Tonga, is asking for postcards from as many places around the world as she can spread the word. Maybe you have some cool postcards and colorful stamps you're just itching to use. Well, here's your invitation:

Malo e lelei,

Greetings from the Kingdom of Tonga! My name is Jennifer Bohn and I am a Peace Corps volunteer here. My students at 'Eua High School and I are working on a project and we need your assistance. We are asking everyone outside of Tonga to please send us a postcard of your hometown/city.

We are trying to collect as many postcards as possible. This project will help enhance the student's understanding of other places and cultures in the U.S. and around the world. Postcards will be posted in the library, next to the new student-created world map. It doesn't matter if the postcard is from Green Bay, Buenos Aires, Istanbul: we will take them all! Please send postcards to:

'EUA HIGH SCHOOL
c/o U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 24
'Ohonua, 'Eua
KINGDOM OF TONGA
SOUTH PACIFIC

I will keep a running list of all the postcards received with their origin on the EHS Website. Everyone is encouraged to check to see if their postcard successfully makes it to EHS and to learn more about the school.

The project offers a great chance cultural exchange for everyone involved. The project begins now and will continue until the end of my Peace Corps service in December 2011. Please help out if you can and tell everyone you know! Feel free to forward this information to anyone and everyone.

If you have any questions/comments or want to know more information about my work in Tonga, please do not hesitate to contact me via my blog. Thank you very much or, as we say here in Tonga, malo 'aupito!

Personally, I am in an itchy-sendy state all the damn time, and it just takes the words "postcard project" for me to send the philately flying. Honestly, have you seen the new forever stamps at the USPS? Let's get those babies posted! XD

Supermoon

2011-03-19T22:39:00.001-07:00

Happy Lunar Perigee.

Supermoon over the Catalina Mountains, Tucson, Arizona.

"Don't Panic."

2011-03-17T17:24:00.001-07:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all; hopefully you have some corned beef and beer (or at least beer) to get you through the evening.

If you or anyone close to you happens to be contemplating the purchase of potassium iodine in the near future, may I strongly recommend that you do not add to the uneducated, panic-driven run on such capsules unless you are living in the eastern half of Japan or intend to join the relief effort there within the next six weeks. No, there is no nuclear cloud coming to California. Hawaii is absolutely safe (watch out for that Kilauea, though).

This crap:

...is exactly that; crap. A lulzy hoax born on 4chan. So many idiots have been trolled by these images and other hype that now there is a shortage of potassium iodine for the people who actually need it in Japan.

There are several hundred technicians and engineers being cycled in and out of the nuclear plant in Fukushima right now, 24 hours a day, working tirelessly to stop the reactors from going into full meltdown. They are the only ones in the world thus far exposed to any levels of radiation that could be deemed dangerous by modern medicine. Many of these men and women have lost their homes and their families to the quake and subsequent tsunami, but they are still volunteering to go into harm's way to avert a third disaster, doing all that they can to save their fellow citizens. The least we can do is not buy up all the pills they need to protect themselves from thyroid cancer.

Please spread the word. Tell people to cut this crap out. If you have iodine pills, contact your local branch of the Red Cross for a way to donate them. Thank you very, very much.

3.14 - Pi Day

2011-03-14T22:51:00.003-07:00

It's Pi Day again; hope you've all had your slice today. The radiation situation is getting pretty serious in Fukushima. What kind of wicked misfortune is it that the only nation in the world to have been struck with nuclear weapons is now facing what could be the simultaneous meltdown of three nuclear reactors? Honestly. これがまんできなさそう。

Even though Japan is a modern, first-world country with some of the best disaster preparation possible, the scope of the damage done is truly epic. Please consider making a donation to your favorite international charity to ease the suffering of the displaced and wounded in this immediate aftermath. Please by donating now to the Red Cross.

NHK World channel, live in English:

8.9

2011-03-11T07:55:00.003-07:00

Remember this little girl?

She lives here:

This is Kamaishi, at the end of the trainline I rode into town every weekend.

This is Kamaishi now:

Live feed of Japanese news:

日本にいる皆さん、私とこの世界は君様のために祈っています。気をつけてお大事にします。

>:E

2011-01-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

(That's a face up there.)

Okay, just for the few family members who read this blog:

1) Dad, Liz, and I are alive.
2) We had nothing to do with shooting or getting shot at the local Safeway.
3) Tucson is still a nice place to live, although our representation in D.C. will be short one congresswoman for a while.

Why the everloving hell do we need civilian access to extended-capacity clips?

And I have a crap-ton of things to post, but laundry and spring cleaning are eating my hours.
(Also, hummingbirds in the yaaarrrd~!)

TODAY

2010-12-25T12:46:00.001-07:00

CHRISTMAAAAAS

Merry Xmas. :D

Fruit Overload

2010-12-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

AAAAAAAAUGH~~

Arizona is a great climate for citrus trees. So great, in fact, that people plant them in their yards for decoration. People like the former owners of my house.

AND THEN THERE IS FRUIT EVERYWHERE.

There wouldn't be so much fruit, actually, if it weren't for the fact that it is sunny and 79 degrees Fahrenheit today, the tenth of December. DECEMBER, damnit. Maybe it's the midwesterner in me, but the very word "December" is entirely incompatible with sunny and 79.

Meanwhile, the citrus trees apparently opine: "Hey, still warm? Let's drop a second harvest. Whee!"

Which returns me to:

AAAAAAAAUGH what do I do with all of this?!

I know what to do with lemons. Actually, I love lemons. Lemon is my favorite flavor of most anything. Lemon bars, lemon spritz cookies, lemon ice cream... here is a fantastic recipe for lemonade, by the way. I can probably use up all the lemons on my own.

Oranges... well, orange-cranberry scones are a hit with my dad, and orange juice is always good.

...but what the hell do I do with five-dozen grapefruit? o_o

Happy Hannukah: חנוכה שמח

2010-12-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

ハッピー　ハンヌカー ♥

(Have a latke for me.)

Limks

2010-11-19T15:30:00.003-07:00

I really need to link to some people.
Anyone feel like exchanging links with me? :D
Please? ;_;

富士山：ふじさん, Mount Fuji

2010-11-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Woah, a softie pattern? Really?

Yep! :D

I've been sitting on this "mountain" idea for a long time, trying to figure out how to make it more mountainous. The original small version looked like crap:

Pfft, first try.

Then I tried to make a really big, fluffy one out of some fleece material, like a wumphy-fumphy pillow, but it also ended up looking like crap:

...especially when compared to real mountains.

...and then I discovered that somebody else had already made a much nicer soft Fuji:

damnit

...so fark that. Here's an Eyjafjoell, or Merapi, if you prefer.

Okay, not quite as bad.

平和な場所と見えるけど、実は、富士山も活火山です。Despite it's peaceful visage in modern times, it is important to note that Fuji-san is also still an active volcano.

(She could blow any minute - save the tea!!!)

And, if you're interested, the word for volcano in Japanese is kazan, written with two very basic kanji: "fire" and "mountain".

火 = fire
山 = mountain
火山 = volcano

Pretty easy, right? This is actually the way most Japanese words are formed. Even single kanji, since they began as ideograms (shorthand pictures meant to illustrate the thing they were describing), can be built out of simpler kanji stuck together:

木 = tree
森 = forest

日 = sun
月 = moon
明 = bright

Hey, you just learned some kanji. :D 楽しみしてね！

MY CUP!!! D:>

2010-11-15T14:13:00.001-07:00

Damnit. That was my favorite cup. ﾟ･｡(｡/□＼｡)｡･ﾟ

Real post coming later.

Postality II

2010-11-13T21:22:00.001-07:00

Hells yeah, Postcrossing is awesome. Successfully sent cards to Finland, France, and Canada; the USPS is still working on a pair to Russia and the Netherlands. Best of all, Finland and Croatia each sent me one back! ♡

Here is my gallery of cards received~ ♪♫

Now, on a different issue, can anyone out there catch the Japanese unicode symbols I use all the time on this blog? Here's a test:

〠

Do you see a strange little face symbol? That's the Japanese post's Nanba-kun (ナンバ君、"Mr. Number") character, essentially the J-version of Mr. Zip.

If you do not see the strange little face (you might get a little box instead), would you kindly let me know what browser you're using in the comments section? Thank you very much~♡

Halloweeeeeeen~

2010-10-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

~is my favorite holiday but I never seem to have time to prepare for it buuu~~ (´∩｀。)

Today, besides finally buying candy (are there even any kids in our neighborhood? I've only seen maybe one), I took some junk and some other junk and put them together into decorative junk. I also took pictures, because I wanted to know exactly how serious the camera was when it said "battery low". Not very serious, apparently.

One nice part about this particular junk+junk=thing project is that it's impermanent. That is, you can get the glass forms back when you're done. Or, if you prefer, you can make them permanent with a simple trade of adhesives.

Too Easy Halloween Lantern Tutorial

extremely, super, little-kid-doable easy

Materials

orange tissue paper

opaque black paper (or any dark color, really)

glass jars, bowls, cups, or what have you

scotch tape

ponytail bands (or rubber bands)

scissors

spray adhesive (optional, only for permanent lanterns)

Cut up your black paper into jack-o-lantern eyes, moths, noses, or whatever Halloweeny shape you want. Consider the shape and size of your glass objects when you do this.

Tape your paper pieces to the surface of your glass objects. Most types of scotch tape can easily be peeled off of glass, but if you have to be sure that there won't be any stickiness left on your glass, use "magic" type tape. Don't worry that you can see the tape; when the lanterns are lit, taped areas become indistinguishable.

Now we wrap the glass forms in a sheet of tissue paper. If your form has straight, parallel sides, like a jar, you can just wrap it in a sheet...

...tape the bottom edges under the jar...

...and put a hairband around the rim to hold the sheet in place.

Done.

If you're using a round shape, just set it in the center of a sheet of paper...

...wrap the paper up around it, gently, and stuff the loose ends into the top of the jar to hold them up...

...then secure with a hairband around the rim, trimming away extra paper from the opening.

Done again.

Lastly, if your glass form is shaped such that it can't be banded at the top, you can either improvise with tape around the edges, or use the secret weapon of papercraft: adhesive spray.

Boom.

Warning: Adhesive spray (spray mount, spray gum, aerosol glue, etc.) is very sticky and will make your paper-to-glass bond pretty damn near permanent. Re-positionable (impermanent) spray adhesive exists, but it is also awfully sticky, and does indeed become permanent on whatever surface it is originally applied to. As with all spray cans, use in a well-ventilated area.

Another Warning: Always protect work surfaces with scrap paper when using spray adhesive, unless you want a gummy table. No-one wants a gummy table, though. Gummy tables suck.

If using spray adhesive, first invert your glass form in the middle of a sheet of tissue paper. Then, spray the ever-loving hell out it.

Okay, maybe not that much. Just get an even coat of spray on glass and tissue alike.

Now, very carefully, turn your glass right-side up in the middle of the sheet, being careful not to let the gummy tissue touch the gummy glass, otherwise they'll fall in love IMMEDIATELY and stick like happy ever after. Guess what I did when trying to turn my glass over... yeah.

Once your glass is right-side up, lift up the paper on all sides and wrap it around the glass. It'll stick real tight, real fast, and make a wrinkly effect. Pat it down to flatten it out.

Lastly, cut away the extra paper from the opening of the glass. Voila.

Add tea candles, display on Halloween night. Or be a dork and use them for mood lighting in the bathroom. Like me. :3

Guess where this picture was taken.

As always, have fun, and Happy Halloween! ハロウィーンおめでとう、たのしみして！

Postality

2010-10-14T20:43:00.001-07:00

I had this idea once to exchange postcards with people if they emailed me their addresses, but only four people ever responded, and I chickened out on sending postcards to most of them because I couldn't make nice enough postcards. Also, everybody in Ku House lost their jobs right about then, so... you know, distractions.

I just found this today. :D

I think I'll be able to do it this time, without the pressure of knowing who I'm sending to... also, there are a ton more decent postcards available in Arizona than I ever found in Missouri.

Experiment: Pastel Crayons + Oven

2010-09-24T21:41:00.001-07:00

Having moved into the new Ku House (and getting all my boxes of ~~crap~~ ~~garbage~~ stuff back from storage), I've been coming across tons and tons of old "kiddy grade"* art supplies that I've never used. They include cheapo oil pastels, which aren't really oil pastels like those you might find in a box at an art store labeled as such, but rather the waxy, hard stumps that come with colored pencils and questionable watercolors in a wooden box that gets billing as a hundred-piece kit for little artists. I received these lovely presents from family at Christmas... and again on my birthday... some 10 years ago, when I did more illustration than making-of-stuff. The sentiment was (and still is) much appreciated, but I now have a collection of some 70+ chunks of highly-pigmented oily wax without a cause. Furthermore, none of the charities around here will accept art supplies. ;_;

Hmm. Waxy stuff melts, doesn't it?

Here's what happens when you put pastel crayons in the oven.

First up, I tired drawing on a piece of scrap board, conveniently broken into size by my sister via Taekwondo practice. The pastels didn't take kindly to the surface at first, so I softened them up a bit by holding them over a lit candle for a few seconds at a time. They got all smeary. I put the colorful, smeary piece of wood in the oven at 225 for about 20 minutes.

"If you are drawing with wax crayons, draw a bee," an elderly Japanese lady once told me, as we colored pictures with some kindergartners and other elderly folks at a care center, "to show that you appreciate the wax."

Well, okay. I was hoping the colors would mesh together more than they did and smooth out a little. I also wasn't expecting the oily halo on the wood, but that's kinda cool. The oven did take care of the loose crumbles of pastel that clung to the board... you know, the kind that you have to pick off really carefully, otherwise you brush them accidentally and they leave little streaks of stray color all over your picture. Additionally, neither this nor any of the rest of the following procedures produced any bad smell; there was only a light scent of wax when dealing directly with the hot piece as it was removed from the oven.

Next up, melting the pastels and dripping directly on the board. If rubbing warm pastels on the surface of wood made them stick half-heartedly, surely dripping hot melted pastel from a few inches above would give greater adhesion. Less control, of course, but that wasn't really my interest any more -- I just wanted to make pretty colors. After dripping (and it wasn't quite as drippy as I expected), I put the board into the oven again, this time at 275 for 15 minutes.

Flammability was not an issue. :D

The colored patches meshed together a little better, and even traveled across the board... while in other places they didn't blend at all, just met and evened out. Also, I had a lot of little bubbles pop up from the wax. They left a sort of mottled surface texture.

Once more at 320 for 30 minutes:

...and that's enough of that.

Lastly, I wanted to try making a wacky crayon. You can recycle broken wax crayons into a shiny new chunk-o-crayon that looks exciting to little kids (and anyone easily distracted by bright colors, like me). It seemed like waxy pastel crayons might benefit form the same treatment. I got a piece of tough old tupperware, broke bits off the pastels, and jumbled them up in the tupperware mold. A metal mold (like a muffin tin) would be the safer choice, but I didn't have one of an acceptable size. The piece-filled mold was placed on a scrappy baking sheet for the sake of stability and catching any melt that might bubble over. This ended up not being an issue at all, as the pastels melted and sank to the bottom of the mold without any spitting and very minimal bubbling.

Bake for 30 minutes at 300, and voila:

...not at all worth eating, but visually intriguing, nonetheless.

EDIT: And, at Keira's insistence, here is how it draws:

The pastels did in fact melt just like normal crayons do, and the tupperware was not affected except for some colorful residue that I scrubbed out later. I should mention that there was a layer of translucent, cloudy oil/wax that formed on the surface of the block as it was forming in the oven. When cooled, this layer was the same consistency as that of the colorful block below it, but rubbing it on paper produced no color. I shaved the layer off with a craft knife before taking the image you see above.

In conclusion, one can indeed put cheap pastel crayons in the oven to produce various effects without fear of immolation, explosions, bizarre and persistent smells, or ruining the oven with little waxy splatters. The actual quality of the effects achieved remains debatable... but experimentation is always preferable to throwing away unused art supplies.

...and I still have a lot of pastel crayons to use up. -_-;

*In truth, there is no such thing as kiddy grade or student grade materials; you can make real, sincere art out of anything -- the only limit is the artist's vision. :D

More excuses... sort of.

2010-08-24T17:14:00.004-07:00

So we've been in the process of moving Ku House (which has been an apartment sine last August) to an actual house, which is fantastically painted in bright reds and oranges and yellows on the inside and has the most awesome view from the backyard, ever.

During this process, there's a gap of many days since canceling internet service at the apartment and getting it set up at the house, which will hopefully occur this coming Friday if Comcast does not consist entirely of mean jerks. :<

In the meantime, water is falling from the sky and eating the mountains in big grey waves of The Nothing, like from Neverending Story. :D

Here is a picture:

Those are the Catalina Mountains, as viewed from their western side, looking east. They continue much farther to the north (left) than you can see them here, mainly because the sky is om-nom-nomming them with it's pointy rain teeth.

Monsoon season is awesome.

A List

2010-07-24T17:37:00.002-07:00

A bilingual list of (some of) the stuff I need to make into softies:

郵便車 (yuubinsha, a post truck)
郵便箱 (yuubinbako, a post box)
ラジオ (rajio, a radio; which can also be 無線, musen)
せみ (semi, a cicada)
サボテン (saboten, a cactus)
ヒトデ (hitode, a sea star)
ベタ (beta, a fighting fish)
ホットドッグ (hotto-doggu, a hot dog, for some silly reason)
小さな蟹 (chiisana kani, a tiny crab)
太っている鯣 (futotteiru surume, a fat cuttlefish)
鮫 (same, a shark, because SereneSky asked for one)

Any suggestions to add to the list? :3

"You're on my list, Birdman!"

ゆびぬき：yubinuki, Japanese thimbles

2010-07-12T21:20:00.002-07:00

Once again, I have been side-tracked into another J-craft. I officially cannot resist pretty things. Not even a little bit.

These are seriously awesome, though.

The word yubinuki simply means "thimble" in Japanese. It can refer to the bucket thimbles we're accustomed to in the west, leather cuff thimbles, metal pad thimbles, or any one of several "thing that goes on your finger when you are sewing" accessories.

the above images are all yubinuki,and all blatantly stolen from the Internet

What we've specifically got here are kaga yubinuki (加賀指ぬき). They are padded fabric rings decorated with silk thread. The origin of this style of thimble is credited to the Kaga region of old Japan, modern day Ishikawa prefecture, hence the term kaga yubinuki. When the term "yubinuki" is used in English, it is almost always in reference to this unique type of embroidered thimble.

I discovered yubinuki by way of a related craft called temari (てまり), a topic upon which I really, really hope to do a tutorial soon. The two are related in that they both apply colorful geometric patterns of silk thread to a padded, curved surface. Yubinuki, however, are easier in my humble opinion: there are fewer divisions to keep track of, only one stitch to remember, and they are generally much smaller.

The materials to make a yubinuki are fantastically simple. You need only a small piece of fabric, a needle, some thread in a few colors, some strips of paper, and a little padding. The Japanese use loose-fiber silk padding, but for those stitching in the west, I find that a bit of an unrolled cotton ball works just as well. (Polyfil does NOT work very well, as it is very springy and hard to wrap around the ring base without bits of it sticking out everywhere.)

もし日本語が読めれば、こちらには簡単な how-to があります。:D
If you can read Japanese, here is a simple tutorial all on one page. A more complete tutorial and the pattern to make the double yabane (arrow-tail) pattern can be found here. Even if you don't read Japanese, it's worth a look at just the pictures in each tutorial -- you'll quickly get the feel for what is being done.

Yubinuki instructions in English are a little harder to come by. Fortunately, there is Chloe Patricia and her blog, Ma Mercerie. Madam Patricia gives excellent tutorials for building a thimble base, stitching, making and using patterns, and more, all in English. パツリシア様、大変お世話になりました！

Once you're comfortable with building a ring base, all you need to do is learn the knot to start a new thread on the ring:

...and the single stitch used to make all the various patterns:

What allows for the variety of patterns is the number of divisions you mark on the ring (how many zig-zags of each thread), and in what order the different colors of threads reach across each other. After you get used to the basic stitch, you'll likely be able to mentally de-construct a finished yubinuki and understand the pattern used to make it. I'll be posting the basic ones as I finish graphing them out. :D

Until then:

Tutorials
Base-making tutorial: excellent pictures, Japanese text - also shows how to divide strips without measuring, using a line set or graph (from てんとう虫がやって来た)
Base and stitch tutorial: in Japanese (from Fujix Ltd. publishing)
Base and double yabane pattern tutorial: in Japanese, click each link in order from top to bottom to get a breakdown of materials, base making, divisions, stitch method, and pattern (from Thimble Japan)

Galleries
From 茶飲み話: works from 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 (all separate links)
From Zuccaさん: handmade yubinuki gallery
From Quilt-Yui: handmade yubinuki divided by design type (click the various links beneath the words 店主のギャラリー, the fourth menu item down in the left-hand frame)
From 人鳥官: yubinuki and quilting, link goes directly to yubinuki section

Blogs
Small pieces (category 加賀指ぬき)
Amerika tsukuri (full of yubinuki, temari, and miniatures of both)

...and there are a ton more. Try copy-pasting the Japanese term 加賀ゆびぬき (kaga yubinuki) into a GIS. Or, you know, just click here. :D

All actual pictures of kaga yubinuki in this post have been blatantly stolen from the Internet; I wanted to credit them, but I lost the links to the sites from which I saved them, 'cause I'm an idiot. -_-; すばらしい加賀指ぬきの写真は無断に盗まれてしまいました。もしかして、あなた様の写真がこちらに見つけて、おしえてください。大変申し訳ありません。

I'll be back soon with a step-by-step of some patterns~

まだ生きているよ！

2010-07-08T17:02:00.002-07:00

それは "I am still alive!" と言う意味です。And now I've missed the entire month of June, too. -_-;

I seriously, honestly intend to post tonight, and later in the week, about Japanese thimbles (yubinuki), which have kinda captured my heart for a few weeks.

Aren't they pretty? (click image to visit creator's site)

Also, I am backdating this post to July 8th, which was Quex Day. ^x^

May Be

2010-05-02T17:37:00.002-07:00

It's May. Damn. I missed the entire month of April. -_-;

News!

Good: Computer is fixed. The natives of Bleeping Computer.com are geniuses.

Bad: Crappy Anti-illegal Immigration bill + police getting shot up during drug busts + getting back into the 90s this week in the Land of Az. Also, it's very windy today and things are blowing away. :/

Good: Strawberries are $0.88 per pound in local grocery.

Bad: Unmitigated oil disaster off the south coast, the Koreas are duking it out under the radar, car-full-of-bomb in Times Square, WTF?

Good: Car-full-of-bomb was apparently built by a complete dumbass. Hah.

Bad: Tornadoes are kicking the midwest's collective ass, Tennessee is flooding, and the Blackhawks blew game 1 of their series against Van-farking-couver. (GRR.)

Good: I have stuff to post!

Bad: I don't have time to post it right now.

BACK SHORTLY. （♪Always look on the bright side of life~♪)

o(｀Д´#)o Gyaaaaaa~

2010-03-28T15:06:00.003-07:00

...that's an angry face, by the way.

I am become very much distracted from making stuff in these recent days, as the need to repair a particular something has attracted great pertinence. G*ddamn you, Microsoft and all your cronies, for making your system so farking easy to corrupt. *fist in air, shaking and rage*

Fortuitously, I run and work on a Mac. That is the entire reason I can make this post. :D

Unfortuitously,* I am the default IT manager for my entire family. This means that whenever "hey, it's doing something weird" becomes applicable to the PC, I have a job to do. -_-;

Three tips for anyone running Windows-whatever-version:

1) Keep that firewall up, damnit! This is the 2010's, and firewalls aren't just for uptight techies and CIA agents anymore. If you don't have a firewall or don't trust the strength of the one you have, Comodo and Zone Alarm are both excellent and free of charge. Important: if you use Zone Alarm, be sure to deactivate the debugging feature, else you'll get a snowballing file called tvdebug.log that takes up space on your machine. If you use Comodo, I suggest installing only the firewall portion... there's better anti-virus freeware to be had elsewhere.

2) Don't buy McAfee. I cannot rightly speak for Norton, as I have not used it in years, but word on the forums is that neither are even half as good as some freeware out there. McAfee, besides being a subscription service, is also a major culprit in slowing down the overall performance of a PC -- sloppy programming means it takes up too much of your machine's memory and processing resources. Also, it's not very good at what it's supposed to do; namely, catching bad stuff and keeping it off your computer. Case in point, the family computer that I am now trying to save from a complete flush-and-reinstall-everything scenario has had a subscription to McAfee Security Center (the full line of McAfee's anti-everything + extra firewall and privacy protection) for three years running, and it STILL has been badly screwed by a rootkit, viral rogue, and more trojans than there ever were in the historic Trojan army.

3) Be really, really careful about what you do on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. If the file size is to small (or too big) to be the thing you intend to download, don't touch it. If the file name reflects exactly the same search terms you put in to find it and nothing more, don't touch it. If you don't recognize the file type, don't touch it. And for torrent files... try to choose from torrents that are rated positively and/or have worthwhile comments on them.

Or alternatively, get a Mac. :3

Anyway, I'll be back when the bugs are gone. ;_;

* "Unfortuitously" is not a proper word. Also, I am not endorsed by any of the products or services mentioned above.

A portion of this post will be echoed on Omnomnomnibus, as that is a more fitting location for the subject. :D

St. Pancakes Day

2010-03-17T22:55:00.002-07:00

I hope you are all full of corned beef and cabbage and potatoes... and beer, if you're of the proper age. ^w^ Here's something to be full of tomorrow morning: shamrock pancakes. (Not shamrock flavored, mind you, just shaped funny.)　四葉ホットケーキを作りましょう！

green pancake batter and strawberry pieces

Add some green food coloring to your favorite pancake batter. Also, cut up some fruit into smallish pieces. I'm using strawberries, but you can use almost anything. Bananas work really well because they're so sticky.

(this is figure 2)

Prep your pan with oil/butter (you know how to make pancakes). Then, BEFORE you pour your pancake, put four of those little fruit pieces in the pan, as in figure 2.

*splut* is the Official Sound of Pancake Batter™

Now pour some green batter into the middle of the four fruit pieces. It should spread out between and around the fruit to make a shamrock-ish shape. You can tilt the pan a little to help form the right shape. (If your fruit pieces just get pushed out of the way, try stickier fruit or bigger pieces.)

wonky, but delicious

Ta-daa! Shamrocks, kinda! (I'm not the best at this.) With some poking and prodding, you can get much more appealing shamrocky shapes. Or, you could add more fruit pieces and make a daisy shape with 5 or 6 petals. It all depends upon how creative you can be in the early morning, before breakfast.

If you need a pancake recipe, this one's great:

Strawberry-Vanilla Pancakes

1 cup flour
0.5 cups oats (rolled, instant, steel cut, whatever)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1 egg
0.75 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped strawberries
0.25 cup chopped almonds (optional)

In a large bowl, mix together flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, lightly beat together egg, milk, and vanilla. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and stir it all together. Stir in the chopped strawberries (and almonds, if you want them).

...and if you need them:

Basic Pancake-Making Instructions

Oil or butter the bottom of a frying pan or griddle. Heat the pan over medium-high heat, or until the butter/oil starts to sizzle. Stir the batter up a little, and pour some into the pan to form a pool of your desired pancake size. Flip your pancake when bubbles appear in the middle. Repeat until all of your batter has turned into delicious pancakes. If your pancakes start sticking or burning to the pan, wipe it out and oil or butter the bottom again.

...and if you're out of maple:

Almondine Syrup

1 cup white sugar
1.25 cup brown sugar
1 cup water

1 teaspoon almond extract

Combine both sugars and water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir and stir and stir, slowly but constantly, for about a minute as the pot heats up. There is too much sugar for the water to dissolve it all, so you’ll have a sugary sludge on the bottom and liquid on the top. Let the mixture heat up to the boiling point, giving it a slow but thorough stir about once a minute.

Once the mixture begins to boil, start stirring constantly. Boil the syrup (still stirring) for roughly 3 minutes, monitoring the temperature so that it doesn’t boil over or burn. The syrup should now be a transparent dark brown liquid.

Remove the saucepan from heat and immediately add the almond extract (it might puff or hiss when it hits the hot syrup; this is a good sign). Stir the pot about 20 times around to be sure everything is mixed together, then cover the syrup with plastic wrap and let it cool to room temperature (takes a few hours). Don’t put it in the fridge yet!

Once your syrup is cool, it’s ready to enjoy. Store extra syrup in an airtight container in the fridge. It might form a sugar crust on the top, but unless it grows something really strange, like fuzz or spots on the surface, it’s still okay to eat.

3.1415926YEAAAAAAAH

2010-03-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

It's Pi Day! The best math-and-pastry-based holiday of the year! I'm making this pie right now; ~~will post pictures later if it works out.~~

UPDATE: Well, it was delicious, but ugly. At least it was low fat. :3

These, meanwhile, are not ugly:

apple

pumpkin

candied lemon

um... cranberry fish... ?

My clever sister makes very tiny things out of polymer clay, including pies. You can see all of her work in detail here: Fushica on Deviant Art.

And for my nerd comrades: the Pi Calc applet by Mikko Tommila.

もんきり：monkiri, family crest paper cutting

2010-03-06T22:28:00.003-07:00

On the topic of kamon, here's something you can do with them. :D

click to download patterns in a PDF file

家紋：かもん、kamon, meaning "house" (家) + "crest" or "coat of arms" (紋)
切り：きり、kiri, meaning "cutting"; from the verb kiru, "to cut"
紋きり：monkiri, which translates roughly to "coat-of-arms cutting"

Monkiri (also called monkiri asobi) uses many folds and and brightly-colored paper to make paper cut-outs of popular family crests. The symmetrical and geometric nature of most kamon makes them perfect subjects for this craft. It's very similar to cutting out paper snowflakes. All you need to get started is some thin colored paper and sharp scissors.

click to visit the page I stole this graphic from: it's got a few patterns

It's popular to decorate blank uchiwa (団扇, paddle fans) and paper lanterns with monkiri.

They're nice on cards and wrapping, too. :3　楽しみして！

* Intending no offense to Canada... In fact, thank you, Canada! Your "eh" has helped me explain the sound of Japanese words ending in "e" in countless conversations. Also, I really like maple sugar candy and hockey. You guys are awesome.

家紋：kamon, meaning "family crest"

2010-02-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to write about these forever. :D

家紋：かもん、kamon, meaning "house" (家) + "crest" or "coat of arms" (紋)

Alternative terms include:
紋章：もんしょう、monshou, "coat of arms badge"
紋所：もんどころ、"coat of arms place" (?)
...or simply mon in conversation.

some famous rulers and their family crests; the bottom right crest is that of the Tokugawa family

If you have any sustained interest in Japan, you've likely seen kamon symbols somewhere before. They are embroidered or dyed on the chest of formal kimono, on the eaves of traditional roofing, printed on noren curtains, on flags of temples and shrines, and can generally be spotted in many other places.

on a roof peak

on formal kimono

this curtain at a jinja (Shinto shrine) displays the kamon of two families

the "dove" mon at Morooka Kumano Jinja (師岡熊野神社）

lanterns painted with kamon

shirts decorated with kamon are a popular item with the younger generations: which family's kamon they display is not necessarily important...

...while keychains with one's family mon are popular among the middle generations; many services exist in Japan that will personalize lighters, cellphones, portable game systems, etc. with any mon you like

a kamon on a public building, in this case a community meeting center

a chrysanthemum kamon appears on the Japanese passport; the 16-petal chrysanthemum crest is a symbol of Japan as a sovereign nation

Kamon symbols, much like the lions and eagles of heraldry, are powerful graphic elements. Unlike western heraldry, however, kamon are uncomplicated and geometric. They were originally simplified by the constraints under which they were designed, used, and cataloged.

All traditional kamon are plain black and white, with no intermediate tones or shading. This two-tone limit makes them much easier to reproduce in a variety of media, as well as bold enough to be seen clearly on flags across the ancient battlefield. Most kamon are also round, and thus all the easier to fit on variously-shaped surfaces and items. Lastly, the vast majority of kamon have one or more axes of symmetry, sometimes as many as 14 or 16.

the kamon of the Imperial Family of Japan 十六弁八重表菊紋, or jyuurokuben-yae-hyou-kiku-mon, "16-petal double layer displayed chrysanthemum crest"

Common motifs found in traditional kamon include flowers, leaves, birds, turtles, butterflies, kanji, or representational abstract shapes, but there are always exceptions.

Likewise, many kamon rely on the same popular icon, but present it in markedly different ways to distinguish each from the other. Closely related kamon may (but do not always) belong to offspring of a famous family or separate families who established themselves in similar professions.

selected kamon variations on the kikyou (Chinese bellflower)

If you have a traditional Japanese name, there are books and websites whereby you can look up your family's kamon symbol. Some people even design an original kamon to represent their own family in modern times. I had a student who made his own stamp of a kamon with a Super Famicom controller ringed by its cord... he used it on his homework. :3

If you like history, this article on Epoch Times gives a brief overview of the origins of the kamon system. There are also a few modern, for-fun Kamon Generators by Ayataka beverage group - you give your name and birthdate, and they assign you an original kamon (you'll need Japanese text enabled on your machine to use the input form).

a modern kamon design, appropriate for Arizona :3

Here are some sites that provide a catalogue of the traditional kamon:

Kamon Shijou (Kamon Marketplace by BBPlus)
You can search by keyword, browse by subject, or browse alphabetically (hiraganically?) by kamon name. (You can also order stickers, keychains, pins, and other goods with any kamon you like... if you know how to navigate in Japanese.)

Japanese Clip Art
An English site with a selection of the more famous kamon (and other images) for free download. Yay!

Kamon Japan
A site that offers display plaques and castings with the kamon of famous rulers... has adorable little illustrations of those rulers, too. XD

楽しみして、ね！　^_^

Rawr. (a day late)

2010-02-15T17:00:00.003-07:00

Okay, NOW it's 2010. Happy Chinese New Year of the Tiger. :D

Finally, a new pattern. I've been away from playing with felt for a while (largely because I still can't find where the movers packed it), but by the awesomeness of Nikki-the-Great, I had some special Japanese felt in reserve. (Just enough orange for a tiger -- Taihen doumo, Nikki!)

Also, process pictures. :3 Don't forget: right side of fabric means side that will be facing out when the whole thing is done; wrong side means the side that will be hidden facing the stuffing.

ONE: sew tummy and tail tips onto the right sides of fabric

TWO: make the tail

This involves little more than putting the two tail panels right-sides-together and sewing around, remembering to leave the base of the tail open. Turn the tail right-side out, stuff it with fluff, and maybe add the applique stripes now, because it's harder to add them once the tail is attached to the body.

THREE: attach the tail

The "top" of the tail, that being the inside of the curve, should be facing the right side of the back panel. You can pin or baste it into place, whatever works for you.

FOUR: attach the bottom+sides piece

That long pointy piece provides both the bottom and the sides for this type of softie... it's built on the premise of a lunch bag "wedge" shape. Again, pin or baste it into place, making sure that it's relatively centered and even on both sides. (Ignore the seam in the middle of the piece I used here... I needed to improvise a longer piece from a tinier shape.)

FIVE: attach the front (face) piece

Just a reminder, all these pieces are facing wrong side out, right side in, with the tail hidden in the middle. Sew everything up, and remember to leave a hole of roughly 3cm unsewn somewhere, so you can invert your tiger and stuff it. (Ha, that sounds like a poorly-translated insult... "hey buddy, you can go invert your tiger and stuff it for all I care!")

SIX: invert and stuff

If you did everything right, you should now have this: white tummy on the front, tail attached at the bottom of the back. Now we get to stuff it up. If you want to make it more stable when it's sitting up (a good idea with this design, cause the bottom is so narrow), put something a little heavier in the bottom. I like to tape 10 pennies together and set them in as a weight, or make a little sack of rice out of some scrap fabric and put that in there.

SEVEN: applique like crazy

I like this part... usually. Small pieces can be fussy sometimes. Using thread the same color as the piece you are attaching, applique the first layer of pieces onto the face and back of your form. I say the first layer because some of the pieces go on top of others. There is no special stitch to use: blanket stitch gives a nice edge if you have shiny thread or embroidery cotton, or you can just tack the pieces on with even stitches like I did. (Don't pull the thread too tight, else you'll get a wiggly scalloped edge on the applied pieces.)

EIGHT: back view

Once the stripes are on the back of your tiger, you're done there. (Note that the two stripes on either side go all the way around to the front.) As for the face...

NINE: 出来上がり - done!

Add the muzzle, eyebrows, and nose -- you now have a funny-looking Sack-o'-Tiger™ of your very own. おめでとう、congratulations! :D

So anyway, I hope to be around more often now. My sincere thanks to everyone who's been stopping by the blog, even while I wasn't posting anything new. You guys really cheer me up. m(-_-)m

まんげつ：mangetsu, meaning "full moon"

2009-12-31T20:46:00.001-07:00

If you've been outside in the past few hours, I'm sure you've noticed that tonight is mangetsu (満月), a full-moon night. It's also the 13th full moon of this year, which in some cultures is called a blue moon. (Not in Japan, mind you, but there is a good song about the "blue moon of January", or ichigatsu no aoi tsuki, called Yasashii Yoake (Gentle Dawn) that you can listen to if you like J-music.)

It's also the last night of the decade. :D

Please let me wish you all a cookie and a happy end to the year; I hope to see you all again in the first hours of 2010, and for many years thereafter. Cheers! 乾杯!

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

明けましておめでとうございます！

Ha ha happy holidays. :D

2009-12-25T21:10:00.001-07:00

After making cookies, dinner, pie, and burning a very argumentative DVD (grr, stupid encoding errors) I am officially lazy. XD I'll be back sometime before the new year. (^3^)

Note to Self

2009-12-14T19:07:00.002-07:00

I'm putting this here for my own benefit, so I don't keep losing it when it falls off the fridge. By all means, please do try it for yourself if you like fluffy, thick pizza crust.

The Best Pizza Crust Recipe I Have Ever Found
in Eleven Years of Searching
poorly illustrated by Ku

Notes in addendum:

"Rapid rise yeast" means exactly that; active dry isn't powerful enough for a fluffy dough. "Knead a whole lot" means fold and smash and roll up and repeat like 20 or 30 times. "Punch down the dough" might mean something else to serious chefs, but in this recipe it means "beat the shit out of it for serious". Adding a tablespoon of crushed rosemary to the dry flour makes it herby-good. :D

2 + 2

2009-12-06T20:15:00.021-07:00

Some people out there are freaking awesome. Some people can take several simple things and make them into one awesome thing.

For example, the mathematical proof I shall hereafter call "Lovebiser's Equation":

redwork* + oblong panels = lovely redwork ornaments

tripart embroidered ornament by Lovebiser

click image to go to very clever tutorial

Some people see a plain shape and think "I can make that infinitely cuter."

Pomeranian Plushie by meow726, who also made a cow

And SOME people are fans of great video games and even pick out all the right items to properly katamaru and get them in the picture for plus 10 points.

Zombieneko made the Prince. <3

Let's all petition her to make a Prince pattern. XD

皆さん、このまま色々な小物を作ってがんばりましょう！

Everybody 'round the world, let's keep making stuff! :D

*redwork and blackwork are essentially the same thing, except redwork is done in red. Seriously.

[!] : Your startup disk is almost full.

2009-12-05T23:18:00.002-07:00

Oh no oh no, there are so many things I am supposed to be doing right now and I haven't done enough of them kyaaaa~ ｩェ—｡ﾟﾟ(ﾉ´д｀ヾ｡)ﾟﾟ｡—ﾝ

And I want to open an Esty store so I can support my crafting ~~habit~~
addiction but nobody will ever buy anything I make kyaaaa~ 。ﾟヾ(´A｀)ノﾟ｡ｩﾜｧｰﾝ

And why the hell didn't anybody ever tell me about the Hotsuma-Tsutae and the yamato-kotoba system before now, damnitall?! ヽ(≧Д≦)ノｳﾜｧｧﾝ!!

I'm gonna go look at the cheerful Nikki's life to help me feel better. （/×＼）

...which reminds me that I ought to be writing all my nengajyou soon, too. -_-; Damn.

I'll be back sometime this week with a pattern.
I hope.
If I can find it under all this other stuff I'm supposed to be doing. ;_;

感謝祭：kanshasai, meaning "Thanksgiving Celebration"

2009-11-26T15:50:00.003-07:00

Those are relatively tough kanji, actually. The last one, 「祭」is まつり、matsuri, meaning "festival", which you may have heard before in Japanese media. :3

I was going to make the traditional list of "things I am thankful for", derp derp, but that would be a very long post, including such things as clean water, pugs, and Canada.

Instead, here is a list of groups whose hard work I am thankful for.

The ASPCA: American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

11/19/09: Wilma, rescued by the ASPCA

The first and oldest humane organization in the Western Hemisphere, the ASPCA works to rescue animals from abuse, pass humane laws, and share resources with shelters nationwide.

donate to the ASPCA or donate as a holiday gift to someone special

Unicef: The United Nations Children's Fund

The United Nations Children's Fund was created by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, to provide emergency food and health care to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II. It has since evolved into the world's largest advocate for children in impoverished and war-torn nations, providing long-term humanitarian assistance to children and their mothers.

donate to UNICEF

PRBO Conservation Science

Founded as Point Reyes Bird Observatory in 1965, PRBO Conservation Science is dedicated to conserving birds, other wildlife and ecosystems worldwide through innovative scientific research and outreach.

donate to PRBO

If there's another cause you favor, you can always find a charity of your own to support. :D

Or if you've got a few minutes, you can donate your clicks to a good cause.

Happy Thanksgiving, 感謝祭おめでとうございます。:3

The End of Cake

2009-11-15T00:02:00.002-07:00

タダイマカエリマシタ！！！＞w＜　I'm back!

Grr, Google Ads, cut it out! This is not a cake blog! I know there have been some cake-related things in the past few months, but no! This is a blog about toys and sewing and paper and string and Japan!

See? A soft toy pattern! It's a plushie! ...of a cake. -_-;

This is the last cake-themed thing I'll post for a while. I promise. Really.

Click to download the pattern as a PDF; instructions and pictures below.

I made this thing on the fly as a present for a former co-worker, the lovely Diana G., who knows everything there is to know about cake decorating and Wilton stuff. I wish I had some pictures of all the cakes she made and demo-decorated on Saturdays, 'cause damn, girl, were they ever awesome. And freaking sweet, too. Like the kind of sweet where you can feel the sugar crystallizing in your veins, but you still want more because it's just SOOOO good.

...eh-hem. ^^;

This is a pretty easy softie in theory; getting the edges of the frosting pieces to lay as you want and stitching them down with blanket stitch is a little bit of a challenge. Just go slow and it'll be fine. It helps if you make the whole cake form first, stuffing and all, and then sew the top frosting layer on to the finished form, so you're not fighting to get it pinned down on a limp, unstuffed model.

A Pictorial Walkthrough

1. Here are your pieces:

2. With a complementary color of perle cotton or embroidery floss, blanket stitch the frosting band to one of the layer side bands. (It helps to baste the pieces together first to keep them lined up while you stitch.)

blanket stitch, close up

3. This is what it should look like. Blanket stitch is a very easy and clean stitch that covers the raw edge of the felt and maintains that little bit of depth between the two pieces. If you have never done blanket stitch before, here's a lovely tutorial that shows it step-by-step.

top layer, frosted bottom layer

4. Using regular thread, sew the other cake layer band to the top of the "frosted" one you just finished.

"layer sammich", with finished seam along the top

NOTE: From here on, take care to remember which end is up, else things might get sewn to the wrong side of other things, which is a sucky mistake to make. :(

5. Sew your completed cake sides into a broad loop, wrong side (with all your seams) facing out.

...like this.

6. Sew on the bottom layer of the cake. It's really not hard to sew a circle onto the end of a tube; just line up the edge of the circle with the edge of the tube/cylinder of fabric, take a few stitches where the two are aligned, then turn the circle a bit and repeat.

This is the top end, actually; notice the frosting on the bottom? I wasn't paying attention. -_-;

7. Sew on the top cake layer just as you did with the bottom, but remember to leave a gap of about 1.5 inches or so (3 cm+) to turn the form right side out. Stuff the finished form and sew the turning gap closed; it doesn't need to be pretty, because the top layer of frosting is going to hide it anyway.

Okay, so wait a second. Why did we just sew a top layer onto the cake if we're going to cover it up with the round frosting piece? Because it makes this last step much easier.

a blanket stitch in progress; going around the top frosting layer

8. Lay your frosting piece atop your finished, stuffed, stitched-closed cake form. Make sure it's centered. (Also, make sure it's on the right end.) Either pin on baste the piece into place so it doesn't get off-kilter while you're going around with the blanket stitch. Using the same embroidery cotton from before, blanket stitch all around the edge of the frosting top layer, laying each "ruffle" of frosting down over the edge of the cake as you go. Navigating the hills and valleys isn't really that hard if you just remember to keep your stitches evenly spaced and parallel to the closest tangent point of the edge.

For the strawberry on top, just make a tiny version of this softie. :D

Thanks for all the cake, Diana! (Especially for making the lemon ones, and letting me eat the extra frosting!) X3

楽しみして、ナハン〜！

Oh yeah, Halloween is coming.

2009-10-20T16:43:00.001-07:00

I almost forgot. :D

Got some papercutting patterns for Halloween. If you like paper (I do) and are pretty cheap (I am), paper decorations are the way to go.

the ghosts are red because, g*dd*amnitall, would you believe that I had absolutely no white tissue paper

...and here are the patterns:

Yay! :D 楽しみしてね！
PS: GRR where did the movers pack all my felt~?!

I forgot to mention a thing.

2009-10-05T04:44:00.000-07:00

It would be this thing, which is a consortium of the crap I love about the Internet. I had to put it all somewhere, and my hard drive was clearly not that somewhere.

In any case, all the links to webcomics, references, etc. that I had up in the original iterations of The Shishi Girl along the side over here --> can now be found on Omnomnomnibus, plus randomness.

Example:

Yeah.

PS: I've almost almost almost got a new stuffie pattern done, expect it shortly~

Update: Dawn Smith

2009-10-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

Still has her brain tumor, still desperately petitioning CIGNA to approve the surgery doctors have been waiting for two years to perform. She's on pain medication while she waits, and now, CIGNA has jacked the price she has to pay for that medicine from $10 to $1,115.

From Dawn:

I'm at the end of my rope. What CIGNA is doing to me is—well, it's outrageous.

I have a brain tumor. Doctors are ready to help me. But CIGNA has been blocking me from getting testing and treatment for two years, while almost doubling my premiums.

Then, this week was the kicker. CIGNA's pharmacy called to say that the co-pay on the medicine that helps control my debilitating head pain is skyrocketing from $10 to $1,115. That's not a typo. They're making me pay one hundred times what I'm paying now, in addition to my $753/month premium.

I can't afford that. So when the pain comes, I won't have any defense. I'll spend hours in the fetal position, out of my mind with pain.

When my story went public a couple of weeks ago—with the help of over 100,000 MoveOn members—CIGNA said they would pay for a test I'd been asking for at Cleveland Clinic. It was a step in the right direction. But after two years of denials, and with a long course of treatment ahead of me, I knew better than to just take them at their word.

So I asked questions. But they wouldn't offer any explanation for why they denied my coverage for so long, or any assurance that they had changed their procedures so I wouldn't face the same unjust denials again. And I began to wonder if they were more interested in just sweeping my story under the rug than actually helping me.

When I got this latest news from CIGNA's pharmacy on Tuesday, I kept asking myself, is this a mistake? Or is this happening because I went public with my case? Are other CIGNA customers receiving the same phone calls?

I used to give CIGNA the benefit of the doubt, but after years of unexplained denials, I've had enough. So I'm asking for your help again. For myself, and for everyone else who is suffering, I am asking CIGNA for answers.

And I think it would help if thousands of people like you were to join me in demanding them. I'm writing them a short letter with a simple question: Why? Can you add your name to my letter?

click here to sign the letter

Here's what I've written to Dr. Jeffrey Kang, CIGNA's Chief Medical Officer:

"As you probably know, your company has denied me needed care for two years while I suffer from a debilitating but treatable brain tumor. I pay my $753.47 premiums. I follow the proper procedures. But CIGNA refuses to give me the care I need. Instead, you keep increasing my prices. First my premiums rose by hundreds of dollars, and now my prescription costs are going up by more than 10,000%.

"What makes you think you can treat sick people this way? When will you stop doing this to me and the thousands of people like me who are suffering? And if you solve this latest problem, how do I know you won't do this to me again next week—that you're actually changing your ways and not just trying to make your PR problem disappear?

"Please answer these questions. I need to know, for the sake of my health and my life. Many others have signed this letter too, to support me and make sure I get answers."

Thanks for all you're doing. I don't know where I'd be without your help.

Most sincerely,
Dawn

Please, please, please. Help Dawn Smith.

Pretty Damn Important

2009-09-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

I have no health insurance. Dawn Smith might as well not have any health insurance.

From MoveOn.org:

Dawn Smith lives in Atlanta. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with a rare, but treatable brain tumor. Her doctors are ready to remove it, but they can't because CIGNA refuses to pay for the surgery.

Dawn has been fighting CIGNA on her own, but now she's asking for help. CIGNA may be able to ignore her, but they won't be able to ignore millions of us standing together.

I just added my name to the group of people standing with Dawn. Will you join me so we can shine a light on Big Insurance's abusive tactics, get Dawn the care she needs and make sure they don't do this to anyone again? You can sign at the link below

http://pol.moveon.org/dawnsmith/

I had health insurance.

When I was a minor, I was a dependent on my father's plan. I got to keep that health insurance when I went to college because I was a full-time student. Then I got a job teaching English in Japan (JET program) and was automatically enrolled into the Japanese National Health Coverage program, 国民健康保険 kokumin-kenkou-houken, when I applied for a work visa.

It was actually pretty cool. As a function of paying my local taxes, I could go to any clinic or hospital in any city in the prefecture, for any type of sickness or discomfort. I caught a bad flu over the winter (aching all over, barfing, fever, delusions, the whole nine yards) and went, without an appointment, to the nearest clinic, on a weekend. I showed them my little orange and white Kokumin card, waited 20 minutes in a quiet waiting room with some tea, then was seen directly by a doctor. He checked me out, asked me about my symptoms (in English, even), and asked a few questions: we mutually decided it sounded like I had the coastal flu, and he went over the symptoms and usual progress of the virus to be sure it matched with the symptoms I'd experienced. Then he wrote down a combination of two medicines on my chart, and we went up front to the nurse's desk. I bowed goodbye and thanks to the doctor, the nurse read my chart, and brought me my proscriptions from the medicine room, along with dosing instructions in English. My copay was exactly 1,000 yen. About $10 USD.

Then I came back to the US.

The health care industry in the States does not consider Japan's Kokumin health care to be a legitimate form of "continuing coverage," so I could not re-apply for any plan I had been covered by in the past, even at a higher rate. In addition, treatment for any condition I had developed before, even while covered by US health insurance companies, would no-longer be covered by any plan on the market.

I applied as an individual, age 24, non-smoker, non-drinker, and was subsequently denied coverage by Cigna, Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Health, and Assurant to any plan at any cost. The reason given for the denials was always that I have PCOS and hypothyroidism.

Neither of these conditions are terminal. Neither are even considered serious by the doctors who diagnosed me. Both are well-controlled by medication.

I am currently paying for those medications out-of-pocket at about $300 a month because I have no health insurance, no prescription coverage. There are no generics available for one of the medications I must take daily, and the manufacturer offers no discount programs or assistance.

I need to find a job that offers health care. I cannot be a freelancer anymore -- I must be corporately employed. Most employers in my field, however, do not offer major medical insurance. I'm still looking for even one that does.

Until then, I am nervous, insecure, and one of America's 40 million or more uninsured.

Kitchen Status: Fully Operational

2009-09-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like moving across the country to turn up stuff you didn't even know you had.

Like a bundt pan. o_o' And when life unpacks you a bundt pan, there is but one thing to do.

Almond Bundt Cake
with almond drizzle icing and toasted almonds

Original recipes from Allrecipes.com: Glazed Almond Bundt Cake and Vanilla Glaze;
altered and recombined from suggestions on the site and the availability of stuff in my kitchen.

Cake Ingredients:

2.5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoon salt
0.5 cup raw, ground almonds*
1 cup of butter, softened
2 cups of white sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons almond extract
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup milk

*can sometimes be found ground in the store, but the best way to get ground almonds is to take slivered or sliced almonds and put them in a food processor for about 30 seconds, just until they're in tiny bits. If you're using whole almonds, add a little granulated sugar to the processor to help keep the almond oil from binding your grinds into a paste.

Cake Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Generously grease and flour a 10 (12) inch Bundt pan. If you skimp on the pan greasing+flouring, you will have a hell of a time getting your finished cake out of the pan. Seriously.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and ground almonds. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. If using an electric mixer, use medium speed to introduce ingredients to each other, then high to cream them together. Beat in the eggs two at a time at low speed, then stir in the almond extract and vanilla.
Adding your dry ingredients to the wet, alternately beat in (at low speed) the flour mixture and 1 cup milk, mixing just until you have a homogeneous batter. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a stick of dry spaghetti inserted into the center of the width of the cake comes out clean. Cool cake in pan for 10 minutes, then turn it over and ease it out of the pan onto a wire rack. Allow cake to cool completely before icing.

Almond Icing:

1.5 cups confectioners' sugar
2.5 tablespoons milk
1/8 teaspoon salt (aka "two pinches")
0.25 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon melted butter

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl, then add the wet ingredients and stir until you have a creamy consistency. Easy. Drizzle the icing over your cooled cake.

The only thing left to do is sprinkle some toasted almond slices on there. To toast them fresh (always better than buying toasted almond bits from the store), just spread about a half cup of raw sliced almonds on a baking pan and pop them into the oven at 350 for about 5 to 7 minutes. You can do this while preheating the oven for the cake. :D

This cake kept pretty well in just a tupperware box, actually, and was eaten (with family, although I COULD have finished it off all by myself) over the course of 5 days. Almondy goodness for breakfast. >w<

楽しみして！

Son of Ramen Cake: Sushi Cake

2009-09-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Please note this post has been delayed by several months because of the move this summer. Sorry. -_-;

My sister's birthday is the season of weird cakes. Last year, it was a bowl of ramen. This year, we tried a piece of sushi.

私の妹の誕生日は毎年面白いケーキを作ってみる。。。が、「面白い」って、実はとても変です。享年のテーマはラーメンでした。今年はお寿司でした。マジですよ。寿司見たいケーキを作ってみました。

お寿司ケーキ．．．かな．．．？

The result was... eh, lacking something in the department of realism. However, I remain convinced that the concept and design are solid enough that this cake could be, in the hands of an experienced sugarcrafter, a really slick show.

Coincidentally, I imagine many of you fall into the "experienced sugarcrafter" category. *hint hint*

Here's the original process developed in this first, experimental instance of... Sushi Cake.

STEP ZERO
Make some round cakes and stack 'em up. Three 8-inch rounds were used here, the domed tops of each cut off (to level the cake, but you probably already knew that), and a layer of frosting spread between the layers (to make the layers stick together, but I'm pretty sure you knew about that too). Flavor is entirely arbitrary; per my sister's desires, I used strawberry and chocolate cake mix, marbled together.

STEP ONE
Spread white or off-white frosting all over the top the cake. Again, flavor is arbitrary, constrained only by the fact that it needs to be of a whitish color. We used cream cheese frosting (again, sister's choice) from a can. And not the "whipped" kind, because I hate it.

STEP TWO
Now you need sprinkles. Lots of Sprinkles. Sprinkles that look like rice, or as close to rice as you can possibly find them. I believe they call this shape of sprinkle "jimmies", or at least that's what they were labeled when I finally found them in Missouri. Incredibly, I could not actually find plain white jimmies, but the local Hobby Lobby was able to come up with these cool pearlized off-white ones for me, which actually look even more like cooked rice than I was originally hoping for.

寿司ご飯のように　：D

Sprinkle the sprinkles (hurray for immediate noun-verb congruity in a sentence!), all around the top of the cake, leaving a round area in the middle of the cake with only frosting. This will be the "core" of the sushi, where the key ingredients would be rolled up if the sushi were real. You might want to make an indentation in the frosting to mark out this part. The wide ring of sprinkles, meanwhile, is the thick layer of rice. It looks more rice-like as you get a heavier coating of sprinkles on there... try to completely hide the underlying frosting.

STEP THREE
Now we need a substitute for the seaweed wrap (焼き海苔：やきのり： yakinori, literally "cooked seaweed") that goes around a roll of sushi. You could, of course, actually use yakinori... or you could find/make the darkest, blue-green-brown frosting that you possibly can. If you know how to make frosting and have access to powerful sugary secrets, you can probably do this very well. In my case, I had a can of lemon frosting (yes, sister wanted lemon), and several vials of food coloring. This is the lemon frosting after about two little bottles of blue, two of green, a few drops of yellow and a hit of red:

やきのり色（か？）アイシング

...not very nori-colored, but the base frosting was starting to get watered down with all the food coloring, so... meh. Spread your seaweed-colored frosting all around the sides of the cake, keeping the surface smooth and even so it looks at least a little like a wrap around sushi, and not like bizarre green frosting on a cake.

Your cake should now look something like this. Actually, your cake should look better than this.

STEP FOUR
Now you add the core of the roll; that is, you put things that look like a sushi core in that bare spot in the middle of the cake. Sushi allows for almost anything to be rolled up at its core, usually in sets of three to five ingredients. Because not all of these ingredients are easily imitable in a sweet format, I tried to mimic three of the more common ones:

オレンジ色チョコ飴、orange Sixlets = いくら、ikura, salmon roe (fish eggs)

赤ゼラチン、 cherry Jello (super thick "Jigglers" recipe) = まぐろ、maguro, raw tuna

ピスタチオプディング、 pistachio pudding = アボカド、 avocado

出来上がり...さああ。ケーキの味はいちごとチョコ、アイシングの味はクリームチーズとレモン。そして、実は、おいしかったよ。o_o' 本当に。

OKAY, so here's our chocolate+strawberry cake with cream cheese+lemon frostings,* topped with pudding, jello, and little chocolate candies, that is intended to look like a roll of sushi. In retrospect, I think my ratio of width-of-rice-band to sushi core was pretty off. A real roll of sushi has a thinner rice band and a wider core. Also, the pistachio pudding was way off the color of real avocado, and the wrong consistency. I think if I'd used a chunk of mint fudge or something, it'd have lent the right kind of shape and color to the whole thing.

Then again, there would likely have been a fight over who got the lump of fudge. -_-;

*And, would you believe, it actually tasted awesome. o_o'

The Land of AZ

2009-09-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not even going to make excuses for the long drought of activity, I'm just going to start posting again. Everybody cool with that? Okay, thanks.

So here we are: Ku House is thus established in southern Arizona. I like the vibe around here; it's a blend of cosmopolitan speed and wilderness heritage. Also, a massive artist/gallery community. :D

The weather's nice, too. There's no contest between Arizona heat and midwestern humidity; I'll gratefully take a week of 110° in Arizona over one day of 90° in Missouri.

Roughly 75% of all my ~~crap~~ "art stuff" is still in cardboard boxes, buried under and behind furniture, in a storage facility, an hour drive from the house. This includes all of my embroidery thread, yarn, crochet hooks, beads, paint, and fabric. (I'm going to be fussy and cross until I've managed to dig it all out. >_<)

In the meantime, however, I have tons of old half-finished tutorials to actually finish and post. Also, tons of pictures.

Thanks to all y'all who've kept dropping by despite a lack of activity. :D

Remedial Space-Time Continuum Management

2009-07-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

Ugh. I have always been a D student in the field of horology... I keep my clocks 5 to 15 minutes fast, I write to-do lists, I have at least three planner/calendar thingies... and still, what happens? I forget to email people and I slack off on blog posts. My sincere apologies to everyone. m(-_-)m

HOWEVER, I am confident that the current situation at Ku House affords me a little (veeeery little) mercy in the way of an ongoing distraction of the first order: we are moving away from our home of 7 years in pleasant Ballwin, Missouri, continuing westward to Tucson, Arizona.

So now my migration pattern goes like: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Japan¹, Missouri, Japan², Missouri, Arizona. And no, I'm not a military kid. ._.

All geography aside, the vast majority of my activities since the end of June have been non-craft and entirely uninteresting to all you fine folks out there on the Internet: getting carpet installed, fixing the front porch, WD-40ing the squeaky doors, giving junk away, powerwashing the house, hiring painters to kill the lovely pink color of the foyer, trying to compose something edible out of the perishables left in the pantry... that kind of stuff. I have about seven different things I want to make tutorials and patterns out of, but no time. ;_;

The good news is that this is the home stretch. Within 2 weeks, I expect we'll be done.
The bad news is the same; only two weeks remain until we leave Missouri. TT_TT

If anyone would like a nice house in Ballwin, I have one to reccommend.

What ho, changes afoot!

2009-07-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

Time once more to scuttle the page design... please ignore any temporary color clash, broken images, or poor column spacing.

Back shortly with new amusements, for serious.

Yay Quex Day~

2009-07-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

Today is Quex Day. :D

Here is what I got for Quex Day:

It is fantastic, and the lemmin skwarez are REAL. >w<
Thanks, Fushica. ヾ(￣∇￣=ﾉ

EDIT: Also, because Alpha is FANTASTIC, I got this:

...and I didn't even ask for his permission to post it here, but I am going to drop all the links I can to his DeviantArt page because he is a great guy.

Very Important

2009-06-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

Please, please, please:

Support Lt. Dan Choi.

Thank you all.

Westward (and a little Southward)

2009-06-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Whomsoever Hails From Arizona,

How is it out there? ._.

(Ku House is moving to Tucson.)

Regards,
Ku

スイカ : suika, meaning "watermelon"

2009-06-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

Booyaga, let's get this summer thing started. :D

Painting a Watermelon Pot

This is a short, easy craft you can do with minimal supplies and/or skill, thus making it a good option for kids. これは子供が簡単にできるクラフトです。

What you need:
必要な物：

A plain terra-cotta pot　普通なテラコッタ鉢
Some paintbrushes　絵筆
Acrylic paint in red, green, white, and black　アクリル絵の具：赤、緑、白、と黒

Most hobby stores will have all this. You don't need expensive "artist-grade" acrylic paints; there should be little bottles of acrylic craft paint available for not much more than a dollar. If you plan to put your pots outside, I’d suggest DecoArt's “Patio Paint".

こちらから、すべては英語でしまいます。簡単なクラフトのに、実は写真だけ見れば、すぐ分かると思います。(^_^)'

What you do:

Start with the white paint and make a ring all around your pot, just below the collar. This is going to be the white stripe between the green rind and red watermelon parts. Make the ring much wider than the actual white stripe you plan on showing. (It might take a few coats to get it really white.)

Next, take your green paint. If it’s a really bright green, add just a little black to darken it. Paint the collar of your pot with this dark green color. Paint over a little bit of the white area from before, taking care to get a clean line between the green and the white. You can use masking tape to protect the white that you don’t want to get green, or you can just go slow and pay attention.

Okay, now the red paint. Paint the rest of your pot red from the bottom up to the white stripe, going over the uneven edges of the white and making a clean line where the red stops. Now your white area should be as narrow as you want it.

Final touches now. Add some green paint to a blob of white paint and adjust the ratio between the two until you get a lighter green for the stripes on your watermelon rind. Now you just have to paint stripes on the darker green collar of the pot. You can make them wiggly or straight, or however you’d like. Be careful not to paint into the white band.

Lastly, get some black paint on your brush and paint little drop-shaped “seeds” at intervals around the red part of your pot. If you leave heavy dollops of paint for each seed, it’ll dry into a tiny paint lump that looks especially seed-like. You can add a few smaller white seeds here and there if you want a more realistic watermelon slice.

Done!

出来上がり！

Hopefully the scraggly basil plant likes its new home... make lots of leaves, little guy.

Yey summer~ :3

夏 : なつ, "natsu", meaning "summer"

2009-06-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

やっとうなつだ！ It’s officially Summer now if you go by the three-month divisions. Happy June to you!

I’ve been slacking off on the blog a little while the family tries to solve some other problems in the real world, like spiders on the wall, a jammed garage door, and unemployment. -_-; (Ongoing, fixed, and ongoing, respectively.)

In the meantime, there are just enough minutes in the day to goof off with thread:

I'm out of canvas. :(

...and paint pots. I'll be back later with a tutorial for a watermelon pot.

The Fate of Birdy

2009-05-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

M'lords and ladies, we have found our stoner cat.

Actually not a stoner, but rather, The Indomitable Baroness Lydia, belonging to my good friends (and gracious saviors when we're learning Bon Odori), His Majesty David and Her Highness Rachel. David is a design king, Rachel is a J-food queen, and together, they rule over a kingdom of anime and manga.

Thank you, Your Majesties, for allowing me the honor of drugging your cat. >w< ♡

Progress〜♪

2009-05-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

Watermelolon. >w<
すいか見える？:3

Still workin' on it.

Back shortly.

String Graffiti

2009-05-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

That's what it looks like to me, anyway. :3

A work in progress. Behold its desaturated, scanner-flattened glory.

Having been inspired anew to try my hand at embroidery, I am working on a needle roll. The plan is to stitch pretty colors all over this lovely piece of black cloth I've got, back it with muslin and a strip of thick velvet, load it with all my runaway needles, and roll the whole thing up with a loop-and-button closure. If it works, you can expect a pattern and a tutorial.

German brick stitch/Gobelin stitch be damned; I quickly got carried away and gave in to the temptation to stitch sideways and crossways and every which ways, hoping to pin down (no pun intended) a few of the more traditional Japanese fill patterns. I've got the 矢羽根 (yabane, arrow-tail pattern) and 十字 (juuji, cross pattern) down fairly well. I'm also experimenting with 七宝 (shippou, cloisonne pattern), but it's messy. Hmm.

I'll chart and post the first two patterns. They're not that hard, actually; you could probably just read them from the image.

A side note: By the numbers, this is 28-threads-per-inch jobelin cloth, stitched with 4 strands of cotton floss (DMC). Three strands will also give coverage without encroaching on bare rows, but it's noticeably thinner.

Medievaluable

2009-05-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

I really do not have an excuse for all the made up words. ._.

Oh god oh god, the new store is so very big. I keep getting lost. I also, however, keep finding terribly fun things to experiment with. You can expect some softies to start showing up in lovely printed or dyed cotton fabric soon, some paint+ink tutorials, more beading, and embroidery.

On the topic of embroidery, I have recently had the good fortune of discovering Medieval Arts and Crafts by Ms. Kathy Storm. She specializes in... well, Medieval art and craft traditions; including iconography and small authentic items done in a wonderful type of embroidery called German brick stitch (upright Gobelin stitch in modern terms, when applied as a single element). She has close to a dozen patterns charted and available for free right on the blog, along with pictures of finished purses and needle cases and a whole library of links to explore.

If you, like I, have an unyielding aversion to cross stitch, the German brick stitch might very well be your key to enjoying embroidery. It's simpler, faster, smoother, and highly geometric. It also has a fascinating history, which you can learn all about from the venerable House Wymarc. You can also snag some more patterns there - very cleanly charted and easy to follow.

I'll be at the store if anyone's looking for me, probably buried in an avalanche of fleece bolts. (Send help!)

I has a craft store. :D

2009-04-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

This is just to say
That a new Jo-Ann store
A superstore, mind you,
Will open on Tuesday

May the 5th, Cinco de Mayo,
at the following location:
15355 Manchester Rd
Ballwin, Missouri, 63011.

Please come see.
It will be fantastic;
So big
and so full of stuff.

Happy Earth Day, にゃ〜

2009-04-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day to you and your family. Most of all, happy Earth Day to the Earth. Please don't smite us, Earth. *invoke Barry White* We know we've been bad, we've treated you wrong... but we're sorry. It's gonna be different from now on, baby. Yeah. I promise.

And now, something completely different:

How to Make a Catnip Toy From Any Softie Pattern

...or, an alternative title...

For The Love of God, I Have To Find Something To Do With All This Catnip; Why Did I Ever Grow The Stuff In The First Place, And More Importantly How The Hell Did It Get Outside?

the enemy

This is nepeta cataria, or as it's commonly known, catnip. It's street name is nip, as in: "You got any nip, brother? Yeah, gimme a dime bag. The good stuff, man."

This fact established, my house (and a considerable portion of the back yard) have become to cats and catnip what Colombia is to the cocaine trade. (Sorry, Colombia.)

Nip grows quickly, roots deep, and will, hydra-like, replace any buds you remove with two new shoots. It will also (apparently) root itself from tiny clippings thrown carelessly into the yard and from there launch a blitzkrieg on your hapless lawn. In summary, if you do choose to grow catnip, you are going to need a lot of cats to keep it under control. Or at least one serious stoner cat.

what a stoner cat might look like

I do not have any cats, and this has been my downfall. My first plan to deal with the overgrowth was to visit cats in the local animal shelter with approximately a quarter-pound of catnip concealed in each pocket. This, while entertaining in the course of procedure, ended with the impromptu reupholstering of my coat with cat hairs, and shelter volunteers highly suspicious of the green flecks all over the floor, cages, and euphoric cats therein. I don't think the SPCA is going to let me in again, at least not without checking me for contraband.

Fortunately, I have several friends with cats. And I have their mailing addresses. And some boxes. And the patterns for many stuffed toys. :3

Without further ado, making a catnip toy.

Start by finding a pattern. Any softie pattern, available from this blog or otherwise, will work. In the pictures here, I am using the lovely bird pattern from Spool.

Now make your softie. However it's done, do it, but remember to exclude buttons, beads, or any small features that a cat could easily tear off and swallow. You might want to pick a tough fabric and make the seams extra-strong, too, just for the longevity of the toy... as cat-owners will attest, cats have sharp pointy things in a variety of places on their bodies and are adept at the destruction of toys and nearly everything else.

Go as far as to stuff your softie with polyfil, but don't sew it closed yet.

Okay, now sew a little pouch out of some scraps of fabric. Almost any fabric will work, so long as it's breathable (don't use vinyl or leather or anything like that). Canvas works well. When your pocket is three-sides sewn, fill it up with as much dried catnip as you can cram into it, then sew it shut. If you can squish the pouch and still smell the catnip through the fabric, it's perfect.

You could just pour some catnip into the unfinished soft toy along with all the stuffing, but this tends to result in the eventual escape of catnip flakes from the seams, all over the cat-owner's carpets, furniture, etc. By confining the nip in it's own little pouch, you can usually avoid this.

Last step. Through the opening left for stuffing your softie, put your pouch of catnip inside. It doesn't have to go in the middle of the stuffing - we're not trying to smuggle it across the border. Just poke it in there between the fabric and the stuffing, where it's likely a cat will be able to smell it.

Now just stitch up the stuffing gap, find a cat, and let 'er rip. :3

楽しみして〜

I be.

2009-04-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

That is, I remain extant. :D Yey.

Ku's most recent adventures include:

a foray into the world of stamp collecting (for reasons entirely aesthetic, a little compulsive, and not-at-all monetary)
experiments with paper glaze and similar dries-hard protective coatings
testing the patience of the St. Louis County library
owls
catnip, in that it has escaped the pot on the windowsill and is steadily conquering the backyard.

I have got a plan for that catnip, though... back shortly.

Caterpillar = あおむし, a-o-mu-shi

2009-04-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

Back to softie patterns! If there is anything more due for plushification (or softifaction, or stuffitization), it is the caterpillar. Or "callipitter" if you are, like me, prone to talking funny.

I am a caterpillar nut. I love them. Not just the cute kind or the fuzzy kind or the very hungry kind, but ALL of them. They are awesome. I can conceive of no living figure more wiggly, squishy, and just the right kind of amorphous to be cuddled and wuffled in softie format. Ergo:

click to download pattern

I wish good luck to anyone who decides to make a caterpillar. This is still an "easy" softie design as soft toys go, but it takes a little forethought and patience to get around the curves.

Better shot from the side. His butt looks exactly like his head, minus feelers and eyes - patterns on the back are entirely arbitrary.

Two things to watch out for are:

1) The feelers. These are not stuffed, just two layers of felt sewn against eachother for stiffness, then reversed to hide the stitching. Remember to position them with the clubbed ends aiming IN to the right side of the fabric when you have the whole figure wrong-side out for sewing, else they'll be lost when you go to turn the figure.

2) The darting* on the belly piece. This isn't really hard at all. You're just negating that section of fabric from the total surface of the figure by pinching it to the inside and sewing it up.

click to view full-size

In this case, the darts make sharper creases under the caterpillar's legs so that they'll aim downward, rather than just stick out to the sides. Darts are most useful in the "armpit" areas of many softie figures, since they can help direct the angle of the limb or take up unwanted fabric that would otherwise just fold into a wrinkle.

As always, remember to leave a space along one seam so you can turn the figure inside out before you stuff it. It's a little harder to decide where to leave your turning space in this caterpillar pattern because so many of the seams are curvy. I suggest placing the gap along the straight seam that runs right down the back of the caterpillar. You can always cover it up with some applique pattern pieces later. :3

And now, here is a little chant about caterpillars:

Caterpillar, caterpillar, fat and funny
Pick it up and rub it's tummy,
Feed it leaves and watch it play,
And put it back at the end of the day.

...and the simplified (for the sake of rhyme and rhythm) Japanese version:

あおむし、あおむし
ながくて、かわいい
ひろげて、あそべて、
かえして、グドバイ

aomushi, aomushi,
nagakute, kawaii,
hirogete, asobete,
kaeshite, gudobai

...the further extranslation of which is:

Caterpillar, caterpillar
Long and cute
Pick it up, play with it,
Put it back, goodbye!

...eh-hem. -_-;

In any case, please have fun. 楽しみしてね~

*I always thought this was called "tacking", but apparently tacking is something entirely different to people who actually sew for a living, so I'll take their word on it.

エイプリルフール :D

2009-04-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I've noticed the vast majority of visitors to this site are coming from IPs in Japan. I'm pretty sure 99.9% of my audience is Japanese, so I'm thinking I'll write all my posts and patterns from now on in straight Japanese. That is, no furigana, no English, just standard hyoujungo with all the customary kanji.

I imagine you one or two readers who speak English won't mind this at all. You can probably just figure everything out from the pictures. For example, here's a new pattern for a softie owl: the measurements are metric, and the instructions are in Japanese.

click to download pattern

If there are any complaints or questions, please let me know in the comments section. Thanks again, and ハッピーエイプリルフール！

We Aren't ND... (updated: ...or maybe we are!)

2009-03-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

EDIT: Within hours of receiving news that a large right-wing protest was on the rise to shame the University of Notre Dame into retracting an invitation to President Barack Obama to give the commencement speech for the class of 2009, I got this from a former professor:

Thank you for standing with Notre Dame and supporting its decision to host President Obama. In less than 24 hours we collected more than 20,000 signatures.

Click here to tell your friends and family about the ‘We Support Notre Dame’ campaign. After we launched our petition drive on Thursday, the Notre Dame administration announced that they were not backing down. The far right isn’t letting up either. Those attacking Notre Dame are claiming more than 190,000 signatures.

We need all hands on deck to spread the word about www.WeSupportNotreDame.org and to put the brakes on this latest effort to misuse the language of faith for political gain. Please help build the momentum and share this link with your friends and family.

Our nation's colleges and universities are meant to be places that embrace open dialogue about the issues of our day. Don't let Notre Dame cave to political pressure. Help send a clear message that we welcome President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame by encouraging others to join the campaign.

Good on you, ND. Maybe I will hang my diploma on the wall, after all. :D

Please join the cause if you agree. No affiliation with the university or Catholicism is necessary - we will be grateful for the support of anyone and everyone:

We Will be Honored to Have President Obama at Notre Dame | Facebook

iPetitions.com - Let's Have Obama at ND

Original post follows:

Well, I was going to post a new pattern, but I'm too miffed to do it right now.

My alma mater has decided to invite the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, to give the commencement speech for the class of 2009.

I find this awesome.

Other people do not find this so awesome. In fact, they are actually bitching out the current and former presidents of the university for even considering such an affront to their religious sensibilities (or lack thereof).

What the hell?

President Obama has reversed a BushII policy that restricts federal funds from being used to further embryonic stem-cell research which uses newly developed cell lines. Shorter version, "Now all the stem-cell scientists can use the money for their projects, not just the ones using the old cells." This research is (now) considered worthy of federal funding because of it's potential to develop treatments for the most challenging and serious diseases of our time, and yes, I am going to list them, because no matter how many times you hear the lineup, it is critical to remember that each one is still a raging epidemic out there.

Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, Lou Gehrig's Disease. Leukemia and lymphoma. Bone disorders, blood disorders, and immunological disorders. Paralysis, blindness, deafness.

Diabetes. Heart disease. Brain damage.

Cancer.

People suffer from these. They die from these. Not just theoretical people somewhere else in the world whom you will never meet, but your mother. Your father. Children. Sisters and brothers. Best friends. Your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your husband, your wife. Anyone and everyone you love.

Now, there are many perfectly healthy people who have dedicated their lives and their careers to stopping this from happening. They are not famous, they are not rich. They bend over microscopes, beside MRI machines, under blacklights, at the bedsides of the ill, with families who know they will lose that mother or father, son or daughter, unless the work of these dedicated people should soon succeed.

They have sought to find the cures for decades. They are still struggling today. Not to gain anything for themselves, but to save.

To save others. To save parents and children, best friends and lovers. To save the lives of theoretical people somewhere else in the world, whom they will never meet.

How is this disregard for life?

How is this a sin?

Bring the stem-cell researchers to the commencement. Let them give speeches. Maybe then the class of 2009 will learn what the honest "sanctity of life" is.

New pattern later, maybe after a few people finally come to their senses.

Minimimminimmiminimo.

2009-03-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

*deep breath*

Minimimmo. Yes, that's it. Finally.

Just a short link to the lovable and slightly creepy Minimimmo, a tiny yellow print-and-fold dood. The original Minimimmo has been out for a while now, but its creator (box73, Italian and good at it) keeps coming up with new, limited edition iterations of the design. Like Batman.

In the finest papercrafting style, this is one of those clever models that requires no glue or tape, but it might take a little patience (especially if you're printing out on regular computer paper).

Ev'viva il Conquista~

3.14

2009-03-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Happy Pi Day!

I'm baking one of these and enjoying a little song. I hope you enjoy it too. :D

White Day is coming, gentlemen.

2009-03-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

3.14.2009: White Day. Just when you thought you were safe from the roses and candy, the Japanese come up with another shoe to drop on you.

In Japan, Valentines Day is, as in many western nations, a holiday marked by the marketing, buying, selling, and presentation of gifts. (Love is in there somewhere, too.) The important part, though, is the gifts. Especially the chocolate. (Yay chocolate.)

UNlike many western nations, however, Japanese Valentines' Day is a one-way deal. No guys shelling out cash for dozens of roses, no "Pajama Grams," no kids exchanging little slips of glossy cardstock with popular cartoon stars and terrible puns printed on them, no reservations at restaurants, no tickets to the opera. Not in Japan.

Rather, on February 14th, the custom is simple: ladies give chocolate to gentlemen.

Girls --> chocolate --> boys.

And its not just the fellows with lady admirers, no sir. In the Japanese spirit of politeness, no gentleman is to be excluded. Girls are socially expected to give chocolate to every significant man in their personal, academic, and professional lives. Seriously. In fact, the term for such gifts of chocolate is 義理チョコ (giri-choco): literally "social obligation courtesy chocolate." In fact, the obligatory sentiment extends so far as to push over gender boundaries. Even if one's teacher or uppermost superior at work is female, it is commonly considered wise to give her Valentine's chocolates as well, just to show the proper respect.

This means chocolate for bosses, co-workers, principals, teachers, upperclassmen, club leaders, the janitor, your violin teacher, that nice old guy at the market with whom you chat sometimes, the college student in the apartment across from yours who watched your kids once for fifteen minutes when you had to run to the post office, etc.

But then, one month later... White Day arrives.

On March 14th of every year, having been given exactly one month to compose a master plan and seek the necessary ordnance, the gentlemen of Japan must repay all of their chocolatey debts. As before, propriety demands gifts for each and every lady in a fellow's life. Not only that, but should some girl whom you barely know give you a Valentine's chocolate... well, it would be grieviously un-Japanese of you not to return the sentiment.

And amidst all of the busy chocolate buying and selling and baking and decorating, the planning and the unplanned burning cake that set off the fire alarm, the agonizing question of whether or not you should give chocolate to your intimidating boss, your friend's ex-husband, that college student across the hall, that old man down the street who looks creepy but always wishes you good morning...

...hidden in the midst of all of that, there is the perfect alibi to give your very best homemade chocolates to the boy you love, and one month to prepare for his answer.

Ben Golub, Woodworker at Large

2009-03-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

My cousin Ben Golub (of the much-admired California Golubs) has put up one of his finest pieces on Taunton's Fine Woodworking site. It's a box for the storage of all the ingredients and utensils necessary to make two cups of chai tea... which requires quite a lot of ingredients and utensils, actually.

He's competing to win a brand-new table saw; please wish him luck if you're so inclined. :D

おひな様〜

2009-03-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

おひな祭 (Ohina Matsuri) is today~ ^w^

I won't spend your time on a lengthy explanation, suffice it to say that it is the famed Japanese doll festival held in honor of girls and young ladies, with the wish that they will grow up healthy and beautiful and find a happy marriage. Rainbows and unicorns.

...and if stereotypical domestic bliss isn't your thing, the dolls are still a ton of fun.

template and instructions: click to download

切り絵 (pronounced key-ree-EH) is somewhat different from paper cutting or kirigami. For the paper-loving crowd, here's a quick breakdown of the terms:

papercutting or paper cutting: general English term for any art produced by cutting one or more sheets of paper; generally assumes a minimum of drawn media

切り紙, kirigami: Japanese term that translates as "cut paper"; a not-necessarily broad term for cut paper arts, usually referring to geometric shapes cut from folded paper (think "paper snowflakes" and you've pretty much got it).

紋きり, monkiri: a branch of kirigami that deals specifically with the folding and cutting of paper to produce familiar mon (or kamon) family crests and motifs

切り絵, kiri-e or kirie: as presented in this post, means "cut image"; a term for images cut from a single, unfolded sheet of paper, usually black, which can manifest either as linework or as a positive-negative reduction image

wycinanki: Polish papercuts, with the Lowicz-style being unique in the world of papercutting for the use of multiple layers of bright colors

Of course, kiri-e isn't the most common medium for hina dolls. Most traditional ones are hard dolls, clothed in silk and embellishments, with ceramic faces and hands:

...or semi-soft ones made with just silk:

...or unique ones made from the empty, dyed cocoons of silk worms:

...but my favorite kind are always paper:

Hina dolls are probably one of the most fascinating elements of Japanese craft culture for folks who enjoy softies and figure work. For more images and inspiration, may I recommend searching the terms おひな様 or ひな人形 on Google image search. There are some amazing sets out there.

箱 : Hako, meaning "box"

2009-02-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

It's a good kanji to know. It's also a useful thing to be able to make.

It's even more useful if you can make one from a single sheet of paper, without glue or tape or anything.

便利な漢字。便利な作れる物。そして、紙を一枚でボンドなしもセロテプなしも作れるのが最高。:D

Folding instructions and blank template: click to download.

The pattern as given, when printed on a standard sheet of letter-size or A4 paper, makes a box roughly 2.5 inches square with a depth of 1 inch. It is the perfect size for two cookies, one atop the other. Like maybe chocolate & macadamia nut cookies. For White Day.

...see how easy it is? This is why I love paper. >w<

Here are some pre-colored versions of the pattern for your cutting-out-and-folding pleasure. Background designs taken from traditional Japanese repeating patterns, as available on Ikiya.

総模様のはこちらです。（いきやから模様）A4 でプリントしたら、出来上がった箱は6.25cm x 6.25cm x 2.5cmぐらいです。クッキを二個がちょう入りそうです。例えば、ホワイトチョコとマカデミアナツクッキ。ホワイトデーのために。>w<

楽しみ〜

いやだ、orange comes out so badly on this screen... I need to calibrate.

ただいま〜

2009-02-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

ただいま (tadaima): Phrase roughly translating to "I'm home!" or "I'm back!"

Where Ku has been since last post:

Driving sister to and from Kaplan center, whereat she is diligently preparing for the right of passage known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Coercing sister into getting a driver's license (or attempting thereto).
Fussing with studio space (read: basement) and killing spiders with great prejudice, for great justice.
Trying to spend less money at Ku House 'cause now all of us are unemployed. ;_;

Yeah. Crap. That last one is really trouble. -_-;

One possible way to alleviate the situation would be to sell stuffs on this very blog. Maybe. If I can figure out what sort of stuffs people want, anyway.

I began this blog with the two vague notions of "I like making things" and "other people, surely, also like making things." The theorem "perhaps other people like buying things that I like making" remains unproven.

In any case, we'll see. -_-

Back later with some patterny goodness, in preparation for おひな祭り、Ohina Matsuri, the girls' festival of court dolls. 待ってくれ、ね。

Mweh, wharrgarbl.

2009-01-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

YET ONE MORE EDIT: Clickiness is fixed. Everything now pops into a new tab (or window, depending on your browser and settings). Also, there is a searchy box for to search this blog and meh buddy's blog. Yey. :3 Now to fix the colors... -_-;

...also, PS: THUNDERSTORM, きゃああああああ!
February has gone insane~ X_x

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
Gonna be redesigning the blog for the next few days, so if you stop in and suddenly everything's all like "doodwtf," that'll be why.

外人達へ - To All Ye From Afar...

2009-01-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

アメリカの外からいらっしゃった皆様へ;
Dear persons from Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and those fine citizens of many other venerable nations who keep popping up on my IP list;

ヘロー！
Hi there!

いったいどうやってこちらへ来ましたか？　0.0？
How in the world did you come by this place? o.o?

さあ、どうやっても、ようこそ！＾w＾
In any case, welcome! ^w^

はがきを交換したい方はいませんか？　：D
Would anyone like to have a postcard exchange? :D

もししたければ、メールでご住所を教えてね。
If you do, please tell me your address in an email.

そして、私がすぐはがきを送ります。XD
I'll write you a postcard and send it along. XD

（もちろん、交換したいアメリカ内皆さんもどうぞ。）
(Of course, people living inside America can participate too.)*

かしこ、
Cheers,

九
Ku

*If you're from the states, I will do my best to avoid sending boring "Greetings from St. Louis!" and "World's Biggest Bucket of Budweiser!" postcards; I promise.

>w<

2009-01-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Seven days~

...no no no, I meant this:

Gonna be a bit nippy. Also, can I get some extra security on that pizza? Thanks.

If you're one of the lucky 240,000 at the swearing-in, please take a moment to remember the rest of us: the unfortunate millions who will have to stay at home, inside, and watch the proceedings on television, while we eat party snacks and drink warm delicious drinks with our friends. :D

And then we will play Wii while you are stuck in traffic. >w< (Just kidding; have a great time out there!)

Merry and Bright

2009-01-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

明けましておめでとうございます！

An auspicious new year to you and yours. ^_^

I would really like to thank all the folks who've been following this blog for whatever reason. I hope you aren't disappointed when the posts are few and far between or when they're weird. It's my sincerest wish to improve the quality and frequency of updates to Shishi Girl (and maybe explain why it's called what it is) in the coming year. よろしくおねがいします!

And now, BACK TO ~~WORK~~ MAKING STUFF!

We are currently in the midst of a strange period of time between two calendars: the Gregorian calendar, which dictates that the new year has begun, and the Chinese calendar, which pokes the Gregorian calendar hard in the ribs and gives it the look that says "not yet, idiot."

Eh-hem.

That is to say, for a few more weeks, the world will be at odds over what year it really is. For those among you who were too jetlagged from Christmas to enjoy the Eve celebrations (or if you drunk yourself into an early bedtime), this is good news. You have another New Year's Eve to enjoy! January 26th, save the date. And maybe make some Asian lanterns in the meantime.

For those who prefer hammer, nails, and metal to paper and glue, there is the good ol' tin can lantern. Here is what they look like, and how to make them

Tin Can Lantern Tutorial

You need:

cans
nails and/or tin punches
hammer
wire or string
tea lights (or any short, fat candle)

1) Get some tin cans together. If you have one of those safety-lid can openers that pry off the lid without sharp edges, try to use that for the opening of cans you intend to make lanterns from. Larger soup cans, baked bean cans, etc. are good; small coffee cans are even better. Cans that have a white or shiny reflective surface on the inside tend to make brighter lanterns.

1.5) Eat whatever good things are in the cans, then wash them out. Of course.

2) Fill the cans with water and put them in the freezer. Leave the water level about 1cm below the top so the ice will have some expansion room. The ice in the cans keeps them from denting in while you punch holes in step 3.

2.5) If you have a design in mind, draw it on the outside of the can with a marker so you can follow it later. Or just wing it, like I always do. XD

3) Punch holes through the frozen can with a hammer and nails. Make sure you're doing this in a safe place, like outside or somewhere that you won't accidentally hammer into the floor. Also, don't hurt yourself. Please. If you have or can borrow a metal punch, it makes the process much easier. You can make big holes with the punch, or tap it once to mark out dents that will settle the nail in place on the surface of the can, so it's not slipping around on the metal. Don't forget to punch two holes opposite from each other near the top rim of the can so that you can hang it.

4) Light 'em up. Put candle in the bottom of each lantern and hang it with a length of string or wire. I prefer wire because there's no fear of it burning if the flame gets too high.

I love these for Halloween because you can hang them in the trees where little candy-hunting kids won't accidentally knock them over or get too close and set their costumes on fire.

Unburnt children are always preferable to burnt ones. :D

More lantern patterns and tutorials on the Internet:

Cylindrical Harlequin-fold Lantern and another tut for the same shape
Indian Party Lantern (kinda similar to the Korean lantern)
Reverse-fold Lantern
Round Harlequin-fold Lanterns

Survival Confirmed

2008-12-27T12:54:00.001-07:00

I am back from California. ^-^

I am also still alive, despite the best efforts of low-altitude air turbulence. -,-'

And also, Xmas is FINALLY over. Finally. >w<

Back later with a post about making stuff that glows. :D

Cranberrilous*

2008-12-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

*Like persimmonius, not really a word.

There is a new camera in the family.

★o(´∇｀*o)♪☆YAY!☆♪(o*´∇｀)o★

This excites and pleases me beyond all measures. At long last, I don’t have to use my ancient 3MP, 2x-zoom, fresh-batteries-last-five-minutes, flash-is-dead, low-exposure, why-can’t-the-ISO-ever-reach-100-for-the-love-of-god Sony. To be fair, Sony, I really liked you. You could take a decent picture if it was high noon on a sunny day and everything in the frame was absolutely stationary and nothing of a bright red hue was present in the immediate vicinity. But now you suck. Into the backup bag with ye. *clunk*

Hello, Olympus! I’mma call you “Ollie.” :D

~~In honor of Ollie~~ For the purposes of a company Christmas party, there was some pie-making yesterday. The pie was required to have a Christmas flair about it, so my usual repertoire (apple, pumpkin, lemon) was of no use. Fortunately, there exists a lovely (read: extremely easy) recipe for cranberry pie.

I figured a cranberry pie must be really sour and tangy. The recipe is too easy, something has to be wrong with it. Maybe the pie bubbles over or burns easily or turns bitter. Something.

Nope.

Easiest damn pie ever.
Delicious as all hell.

I tweaked the original recipe just a little, and here it is:

Cranberry Pie

2 cans (16oz) of whole-berry cranberry sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 pie crust in 9” deep-dish pan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together (except the crust in the pan, obviously) until there are no visible clumps of sugar or spices, and the buttery bits are small and evenly dispersed in the sauce. Pour cranberry filling into your pie crust; leave the fill level about a 1/4 inch from the absolute top, because the filling does rise a little bit. Bake pie in the preheated oven for about an hour, or until crust looks done.

If you want to decorate the top, you can make cut-outs from extra pie dough, bake them on a pan for a few minutes, and then put them on the finished pie. Or use chipped nuts; walnuts and pecans taste good with cranberries.

Optionally, I imagine you could top the nearly-finished pie with butter crumbles and it’d be similarly fantastic, if not more so:

Butter Crumbles

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
5 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

Put everything in a bowl and stir it together until it’s crumbly. Put it on top of an open-face pie about ten minutes before it’s done and return crumble-topped pie to the oven for the rest of the ride.

Yay pie, yay camera. うれしい〜！>w<

The Waiting

2008-12-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Dear thing that I put into the oven, have you become pie yet?

*checks*

Not yet, I see.

Oh thing-in-the-oven, you disappoint me so. -_-

Back in short order~

Basic Geometry II

2008-12-06T11:01:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to math class. :D
Actually, no.

In addendum to the Easy Softie Ball in 12 Pieces, there exists an even easier way to make a ball in six pieces. The 6-piece version, like the 12-piece, only requires the copying and cutting out of one form, but there are only half as many copies to make. Ergo, easier. Yay!

Now, if you're interested in the math behind the form, a 6-piece from peels is actually a little more complex than a 12-piece from pentagons. The 12-piece ball isn't actually a ball in Euclidian geometry: it's a dodecahedron that becomes a ball when you sew it up and stuff it because the pressure of the stuffing inside applies evenly across the planes, seams, and vertices. The 6-piece ball, on the other hand, is an actual, true sphere in design and execution. This is because it employs the relationship between the circumference and diameter of the circle formed by the cross section of the final sphere at maximum diameter.

And you thought this was a post about softies. >w<

By now, you might be asking "hey Ku, what am I supposed to do with all these plush balls?"

Here is your answer:

Inexpensive, unbreakable, toddler-safe Christmas ornaments. Ta-da~!

Reiteration (繰り返し)

2008-12-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

As mentioned previously...

Hi thar. If you have arrived here whilst looking either to translate some prose into or out of Japanese, I should very much enjoy being of assistance. I love translation, and I need challenges -- many challenges -- to maintain mental acuity nihongo de. Pop me a comment in the most recent post and I'll get on it.

Just a reminder. :D

ALSO, to the people who keep showing up on my patrol list but never ask me anything:

"Inu," meaning "dog,"
in hiragana: いぬ and in kanji: 犬

"What time is it in Japan?"
Nihon de ima nanji desu ka?
...or in hiragana: にほんでいまなんじですか？
...or with kanji: 日本で今何時ですか？

"Shishi," meaning "lion" in the mythic sense,
in kanji: 獅子

New pattern tomorrow, イエ〜イ >w<

“I was told there’d be biscuits.”

2008-11-27T22:05:00.002-07:00

...and there are! :D

EDIT: Okay, as of September 2010, I have finally found the original paper copy of this damn recipe and have fixed it. The actual amount of milk is 3/4 cups. If you are using soy milk, per the lovely Calista, you will likely need one and one quarter cups of it.

They were born from the barely legible photocopy of a recipe, originally produced on an electric typewriter, handed out in seventh grade home economics class. The amounts of each ingredient were written entirely in teaspoons and fractions thereof, I suppose as an exercise to teach seventh-graders the conversion from teaspoons to cups and tablespoons. (We had yet to be visited by the saving grace of online unit-conversion sites, nor even desktop converter widgets.)

The title of the recipe is “Delicious Biscuits.”

The title is correct.

So delicious are the biscuits, in fact, that I have been compelled to keep safe the original page for more than a decade, render the teaspooniness out of it, and at long last commend it to the open internet where it can spread its powers of biscuitry to the ends of the earth.

Here y’all go:

Delicious Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted*
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup milk

*can switch to 1 cup all-purpose and 1 cup wheat flour if desired; increase milk to one cup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift all the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder) together in a bowl. Add the shortening and cut it in with a pastry cutter or a fork until it’s in small enough crumbly pieces that it sorta vanishes into the dry ingredients. Add the milk all at once and stir it in to make a sticky dough. Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead 8 to 10 times. Roll dough to about 0.5 inch thick (or a little thinner) and cut out circles with a cutter or a floured glass. Place biscuits on a baking sheet about an inch apart. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until biscuits are lightly browned and delicious-looking.

Godspeed, biscuits. Godspeed.

(Happy Thanksgiving! 感謝祭おめでとう！)

Pants. (a 'brief' essay)

2008-11-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

When people in the US say "pants," we're making reference to things like blue jeans, slacks, trousers, etc. The outermost layer of clothing that covers one's legs.

They look like this:

Elsewhere, this is not necessarily so.

For example, when folks in the UK say "pants," they are speaking of underpants. (Tightie-whities, boxers, briefs; you know what I mean.)

These things:

As a matter of fact, I have it from a reliable source (read: a JET from London) that when a British person of a certain age and subculture wishes to describe something (say, a cheap beer) that we might call "crappy" or "bullshit" in the US, they may choose the phrase "this beer is pants" to express their displeasure.

Naturally, I find this hilarious. Especially because it pertains to Japanese culture as well.

Many Japanese words are derived from the western pronunciation of the very same word. Some examples:

ketchup --> kechappu --> ケチャップ

coffee --> kouhii --> コーヒー
(note that the lack of a pronunciable "f" means that all F's become airy H's in Japanese)

personal computer --> pasonaru konpyuuta --> パソコン
(shortened to "pasokon" for ease of pronunciation)

Ergo, should you find yourself suddenly lacking a word in Japanese conversation, you may very well be able to fudge your way through by simply stuffing the equivalent English term through the filter of Japanese pronunciation.

Or not.

Having been adopted from the Queen's English before it was a term en vogue in the States, in Japan the word "pants" (pantsu [パンツ]) has retained its UK references. That is, "pantsu" refers to underwear, just as it does in the UK. If one wants to say "trousers," one should use the word zubon (ズボン).

American students forget this all the time.

Sure enough, led into a false sense of security by the comfort of so many English pronunciations translating directly into Japanese, most US students of Japanese language are doomed to commit a thousand errors with the word "pants" through the course of their linguistic exploration.

"I've got the room key in my underwear pocket."

"Hey, cute underpants. Are they new?"

Upon spilling coffee:
"Damn. Stained my underpants again."

...ad infinitum. There are, of course, many other tricky words that don't mean the same on the J-islands as they do in the states, but "pants" will forever be my favorite.

"Please pardon the small puddles on the floor.
I have only just come in from the rain,
and the cuffs of my underwear are wet."
~Ku

Heh, brief. Get it? Brief essay? (In any case, back shortly...)
Lulz, shortly. *snrk*

Since 1968

2008-11-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

Selvidge Middle School, Nov 4th, 7:00AM: Missourians gather to cast their votes.

Despite long waiting times and a cold morning, we watched for an hour and a half as not one person left the line. An old man came in a folding chair and sat just beyond the limits of the no-electioneering zone, wearing Obama pins and handing out leaflets to anyone who showed interest. "I've been waiting for this day since 1968," he told us.

I have never been so proud of my nation as I am today.

ハロウィーンの後で、サムヘイン〜

2008-11-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Lo, Samhain! Tonight's for gathering with friends and a fire, and maybe the extra candy from the night before.

But first, Halloween pictures. Hah.

Rachel; an Egyptologist, and David; a mummy. Both are awesome. They introduced me to the big crazy costume party in the central west end, whereupon the following images were collected.

The whole Mushroom Kingdom turns up in St. Louis. (Bonus points for giving the Toad costume to the biggest guy in the group.)

Going to a costume party with your buddy dressed like Goose and Maverick would be acceptable effort, but these doods built themselves a goddamn cardboard fighter and wore it all night. F*cking impressive, gentlemen. XD

I am a Carmen Sandiego nut, and I think I scared this poor girl. Much to my disappointment, no-one came dressed as Inspector Gadget... we could have had an epic battle of early-90s crime-themed cartoon characters.

Why dress up like a vampire or witch when you could be the happy lady from the Honey Bunches of Oats commercials? I bet Michael Phelps wishes he'd thought of that.

A vampire apple and a battered banana. No, I don't know why, but damnit, I liked their style.

Thanks, guys. I'd never get out of the house if it weren't for you. :D

EH-EE!

2008-10-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

Devil Rays versus the Red Sox. Game seven of the ALCS. Tonight's victor faces the Phillies for the World Series title.

...and I would care, if only it were the Cubs. ;_;

Ku's Chi-town loyalties aside, rays are cute. Cute things get turned into softies.

A new softie pattern, イエイ〜 Quite easy, just two pieces back-to-back. Make a big one to serve as a pillow for your favorite Rays fan. Or for your least-favorite Steve Irwin fan.

Stingray in Japanese is えい、which comes out ei in romaji, which should sound something like "eh-EE" if you're pronouncing it from English, which, incidentally, is identical to a common cry of celebration that appears in the Cajun dialect.

I envision one Japanese tourist who, upon visiting New Orleans, finds himself pondering why the colorful zydeco bands on the street corners keep yelling "STINGRAY!" between long passages of gnarled French.

And then I don't feel so bad about the Cubs. -_-

100 years and counting, buu.

ワンワンなど (short post)

2008-10-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

犬、inu
(hiragana: いぬ)
dog, canine

ワンワン、 wan-wan
(hiragana: わんわん)
Japanese onomatopoeia for a dog's bark

わんちゃん、wan-chan
an endearing term for a little dog, similar to "doggie" in English

A little softie dog, based on a pattern by the clever Runo, Japanese dollmaker. You can find the pattern on her blog, right here.

Back soon~

Birds and Beads

2008-10-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

やっと秋らしくなりましてよかった。^w^

One last image from the Japanese Festival:

This little bird, likely a female Anna's hummingbird, appeared in the welcome center and promptly started snacking on a flower arrangement. The staff set up a little feeder (should the flowers run dry of nectar), and the bird happily hovered over the crowd all afternoon.

蜂鳥: hachidori (hah-chee-doh-ree)
Hummingbird; literal translation is "bee bird."

And now, back to the show.

I have some beads here, and some thread. Beadweaving ensues. :D

Some really, really old CDS rings that Ku made in, I dunno, maybe middle school. -_-;

While you can find all manner of beadwork tutorials on the internet, I haven't yet come across one for conjoined daisy stitch. Ergo, I'mma make one meself.

The two are only slightly different:

CDS is stronger and more compact than regular daisy stitch because each flower shares its east and west petals with the one next to it.

This allows flowers to overlap:

...or, you can divide individual flowers with pillars of a counter color, たとえば:

In any case, here's how to do it:

All you need are some beads, some string of a gauge small enough to go through those beads, and a thin needle to help you get said string through aforementioned beads. ビーズ、糸、と針しかいらない。簡単でしょう？ ^-^

Basic Geometry

2008-09-25T20:50:00.000-07:00

ただいま〜

HAPPI BAASUDEI, お誕生日おめでとうございます！★d(o⌒∇⌒o)b☆

Happy Birthday to Rachel, the lovely lady on Humphrey street who brews kombucha for all her friends, and who baked her own tragically delicious birthday cake. I say "tragically" because it's all gone now. ;_; That was damn fine cake, Rachel. Majide.

And now for something completely different:
A Scotsman on a horse.

No, actually, it's a pattern. Yes, I am still making patterns! I would probably have them up more often, if only I stopped making things and focused instead on writing up how to make things for a while. Also, if my camera worked better.

This is one of several techniques to make a sphere in fabric. It's one of the more decorative methods, because you can pick twelve different colors and it comes out looking all colorful. It is also very easy, because there is only one pattern piece to cut out. Download the pattern sheet (with instructions) and see for yourself. I'mma put up some process pictures, just for fun:

Inside-out, with a gap for turning...

...turned right-side-out, and getting stuffed.

Simple, right? At the stuffing phase, if you want to make your ball extra special for any pets or children that you may intend to present it to, try sinking a little rattle or jingle bell into the very middle of the ball and stuff all around it.

A rattle is simple enough to make; just get a film canister and put some rice/beads/pebbles inside. A jingle bell is only marginally harder to set up, because if you just put a bell into the stuffing, it won't jingle, but if you put the bell into a film canister, you can't hear it very well. The solution is to cut small holes in your container, or get these:

Some (but not all) medicine bottle caps come with holes already formed into the sides. Just put a little bell inside two caps, tape them together, and you'll have a nice clear-ringing jingle mechanism.

それでは、楽しみしてね。Go have a ball!

...AUGH, I said it. I tried so hard not to make that pun... チェクショ〜ウ。>,<

A Short Note - 小さなノート

2008-09-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

(Yes, I have patterns to post. Come back in 5 hours.)

I notice a lot of folks who find this blog from a search engine are looking for help with Japanese language. They're either trying to find a word in hiragana, or looking for translations between English and Japanese.

If you, your personal self, are looking for such information, you can just drop me a comment at the bottom of a recent post. I'm always up for translating stuff. (It's the best practice I can get out here in ~~misery~~ Missouri.) If you're a language student, that's great, too* -- we can do practice conversations over IMs or Skype.

So don't be shy. :D

*If you're a language student just looking for a dictionary, please do treat yourself to the lovely Jim Breen WWJDIC. Draw-in kanji lookup is here, paragraph/page translation is here.

Japanese Festival 2008 (the aftermath thereof)

2008-09-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

I am a goddamn Bon Odori dancer. Oh hell yes. d(>ω<)b

Ku is somewhere in this picture.

The Missouri Botanical Garden held it's annual Japanese Festival this past Labor Day weekend, and for the first time evar (EVAR~!) I got to participate. ^-^

My younger sister and I are first-year members of a local Tozan Ryu group (for dancing, not shakuhachi), and we were privileged to perform dances for the Obon festival along with the rest of the troupe and about 200 festival attendees who, bravely, accepted sensei's challenge to dance along with us.

Obon (お盆) is the big autumnal holiday in Japan. It's similar in intent to Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, but different, of course, in style and execution. Obon comes with its own special music called ondo (音頭) and a collection of dances that are simply referred to as Bon odori (盆踊り), literally, "Obon dances." There are songs and correlating dances about all kinds of things, including (but not limited to) famous cities, coal miners, fireworks, traditional clothing, wishes for good fortune, and Pokemon.

Yes, Pokemon. And many other anime.

Besides dancing, there were lots of other lovely attractions as well:

Ikebana...

...and bonsai...

...and fans of kimono...

...and adorable Asian children...

...and a master of the deceptively difficult Japanese koma tops...

...and ♥origami♥...

...and a f*ck ton of Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures which are on loan to the gardens and have nothing to do with the Japanese festival, but were still photographically interesting...

...and more cosplayers than there should have been, so I didn't take pictures of them. XD

I hope you've all had an equally lovely weekend. If you should find yourself near St. Louis this autumn, please consider visiting the gardens; they're fantastic. 超すばらしい〜