"So a shishi walks into the graduate admissions office..."

(Stop me if you've heard this one before.)

I'm going to grad school, folks. Those of you who saw it coming six years ago, come up and claim your prize. I am, indeed, a born academic, and in the words of REO Speedwagon, "I can't fight this feelin' anymore."

Also in the words of REO Speedwagon, "I've seen hookers dancin' through Times Square with their heads held up so high." But that's another story. What was I going to say again?

Oh, yes: this does not mean the end of the blog. 

"Wait," said everyone, "you mean it's still going?"

Ku looked at Everyone with a tilt of her head. "What?"

"The blog," Everyone said, "Hadn't it already stopped long ago?"

"No," said Ku, visibly perturbed, "It never stopped, really.... I do come along every now and then and announce I'm alive, or encourage you to vote or something, don't I?"

"But you don't POST anything anymore," Everyone noted, "It's been ages since you've put up a new tutorial or photo... let's have a pattern, eh? Like the old days... like we used to."

"You would not believe the things I have on this side of the publish button," Ku replied with a thin smile and narrowed eyes, "Many things. Splendid things... but I will not reveal them until he time is right."

"And when should that be?" Everyone asked.

"Probably after I move into Ku House Tempe," Ku said, casually checking her watch to no benefit whatsoever, "sometime in the new year."

"Oh," said everyone, "damn."

So don't give up on me just yet. >:3

PS: Thank you for voting. :D

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

<Ku anger ENGAGED>

Suckah redirecting from mah blog just bettah step the HELL back. 

I ain't done here, no GOT-DAM way.

<Ku reset>

To anyone recently visiting who was redirected to some asshat's placeholder, I do apologize. A javascript installed from a Japanese page was corrupted when that J-page got hacked... so no more little ghostie on the sidebar. :<

Also, I am still alive. :3

WARNING: blog has reached critical mass

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.

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...

....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.

Still Alive

(...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

>:E

(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~!)

Fruit Overload

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

MY CUP!!! D:>

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

Real post coming later.

More excuses... sort of.

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.

May Be

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~

...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

[!] : Your startup disk is almost full.

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. ;_;

Pretty Damn Important

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.

The Land of AZ

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

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.

Westward (and a little Southward)

Dear Whomsoever Hails From Arizona,

How is it out there? ._.

(Ku House is moving to Tucson.)

Regards,
Ku

Happy Earth Day, にゃ〜

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〜

ただいま〜

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

Where Ku has been since last post:

1. Driving sister to and from Kaplan center, whereat she is diligently preparing for the right of passage known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
   
2. Coercing sister into getting a driver's license (or attempting thereto).
   
3. Fussing with studio space (read: basement) and killing spiders with great prejudice, for great justice.
   
4. 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。