Smokey the Magnificent

My lack of blogging for the last few days is largely due to an unexpected sewing kick. I accidentally got inspired perusing Craftster and decided to make a skirt out of a remnant of pin-striped fabric I got cheap from the Fabric Barn. Once I hauled the fabric out to look at it I realised there wasn’t enough for a really froofy skirt, so I amended the plan to a top, which then morphed into a tunic and finally a dress, albeit non-froofy. I have about three square inches of fabric left over - none too shabby. As for the dress, I will post pictures of it as soon as Helpdesk Man takes them. I am quite ridiculously pleased with it, having never constructed a wearable garment for myself before, much less drafted my own pattern. And other than an obnoxious thirteen-year-old from church, who informed my small sister quite clearly that she did not like it, opinions are favourable. (So HAH, obnoxious thirteen-year-old from church. So’s your face!)

Anyway, giddy with the high of successful garment construction I have spent the past several days sketching various nursing-friendly dresses on bits of paper. Today I am going to Spotlight with Mama to buy fabric for (budget permitting) several of them, including a double-layered fairy-inspired garden party dress incorporating hippie/bohemian and Victorian crazy quilt elements, and a sailor-style Victorian child-slash-swing-type dress. Apparently I can no more stick to a genre than Joss Whedon - speaking of which, did you hear Dollhouse was cancelled? Not that we’re surprised.

Anyway. here’s a question for you. For a million dollars, would you keep a dead donkey in your backyard for a year? The rules are: it’s freshly dead to begin with, and you can’t conceal it by planting a hedge of hibiscus or flinging compost on it or erecting a tiny picket fence. It just has to lie there… chillin’. Helpdesk Man said he totally would, and sounded so enthusiastic I haggled, and beat him down to about 50,000 before he called me a sicko and refused to discuss it any further. He is weak in the fibre.

The party was OK… not spectacular, but not disastrous. We’ll get to that shortly. Firstly, there are two questions which have been bothering me, and both relate to bodily fluids. Perhaps you could help me out.

1. Blood is salty, no? I read somewhere that it has the same salinity as seawater, which was supposed to prove something meaningful and evolutionary; but whether that be the case or no, if one cuts a gash in one’s forearm and sucks the blood (accidentally, I mean; while making a flan, perhaps; not just for kicks), it tastes like salt. So. Wouldn’t drinking a whole pint of it, or however much vampires drink at one go, make you extremely dehydrated? I mean, vampire physiology is presumably constructed so as to cope with it; one does not envisage them carrying along a bottle of Evian. Well, Edward probably would. It’s the sort of marvy accoutrement one would expect a sparkly vampire to tote. But anyhoo. Blood. Salty. Yes. Interesting thought, no?

2. If one were alone in the wilderness, miles from civilisation, clean water, alcohol, antibiotics etc and a repellent crocodile bit off half your arm, would it a) improve your situation or b) otherwise to throom on your own stump? Urine is sterile and acidic, which makes me feel it would have antibacterial or cleansing properties of some sort. But mebbe not. And it would hurt. Helpdesk Man cautiously gave his opinion that it might be better to do so than not, but hesitated to make a definitive pronouncement. I like that in a man. It stops us from being sued. But what do you think, standard disclaimers aside? And if you thought it was the right thing to do, would you do it?

Anyway. Party. Yes. It was OK. Apart from the guest of honour’s family and my own family, there were only two guests present; fortunately, my family is capacious and the guest of honour had her parents visiting, so combined with our lack of chairs we managed to fill up the living room tolerably well. Much to my amazement, people bought Tupperware (!!); my small sister Ruth came over in the morning and baked practically all the food while I worked on the quilt, which I got finished (Is Better Than Perfect) more or less in time; and the snortlepig’s behaviour impressed the Tupperware lady so much (?!) she gave her a tiny pink container in a Handy Size. It seems the key to successful Tupperwaring is enthusiastically pointing out how any size of container, be it barely big enough to hold a crocus or large enough to host swim meets in, is Handy. I wonder if they conducted studies to find out the average household volume of leftover lasagna, or the typical quantity of Scroggin consumed by a family of four? At any rate we all agreed meekly that the various sizes were Handy indeed, and she got a bit cocky and asked me for an onion in order to demonstrate a device called, I kid you not, the Happy Chopper. It’s not a DC villain; it dices.

After this event my dear friends came over and we ate leftovers while watching American Graffti (kinda slow, Harrison Ford’s part smaller than expected) and The Lost Boys (all kinds of awesome; why do vampires have universally ridiculous hair? Is it a function of old age? “Ahh, I can’t keep up with the styles any more, I’m two hundred years old - here, love, pour a bottle of bleach on it and we’ll fling a bit of moose tallow in for texture.”).

Best yet, I discovered that my dates were all out of whack and my article isn’t actually due until Tuesday. Cue choruses of Mormon cherubs. Perhaps I will make it to Christmas after all.

• Nobody is going to come to the baby shower-cum-Tupperware party tomorrow. I can’t blame them. I’m tempted to ditch it, and I’m hosting. I did finally get hold of the Tupperware lady, and she assured me she’d “only speak for half an hour”. Half an hour? How much is there to say? What if I bring up bisphenol-A in a fit of rebellion? What if I panic when nobody buys anything and end up with microwaveable jelly moulds? What if the woman gives me a Look to indicate scorn and hatred for my having dragged her out on a Saturday? Only one person has RSVPed, and she made very sure to say she couldn’t stay long - presumably so she could scarper at the first sight of a pourable cereal container.
• I have no idea how to structure this article of mine that’s due on Monday. None. And it’s 800 words too short.
• I also have 6000 more words to go on NaNoWriMo. Most of them will probably be rewrites of the article. Feh.
• I was supposed to go shopping for groceries with Sister-in-Law today. She is not online and has not shown up. How am I to get the ingredients to make the lemon slice, the chocolate cornflake slice, the focaccia, the puff pastry cheese straws, the pecan tarts, the forgotten cookies and the cupcakes? And how will I have time to make them?
• Also, the baby quilt. It is Not Done. Not remotely done. It is barely even a flimsy. I can chain-stitch the stems this evening in theory, but only if the snortlepig isn’t climbing all over me. Hah.
• And I have to tidy up the garden, otherwise the church ladies will turn up and want to investigate every nook and cranny of it. And there’s a dead bird on the back lawn. Helpdesk Man, informed of this in panic-stricken tones, says consolingly “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere”.

Ha! Word from Sister-in-Law. Am still in PJs. Half an hour, she says. This is OK. Will give the pig more time to nap. I will think of calming things, but not the ocean because that makes me nervy. Maybe the sky, although I had a horrible dream last night that - oh, never mind. I am clearly wibbling. Into the breach!

Last night my two small sisters came over while Helpdesk Man was out gadding. We watched The Truman Show, made a kind of faux pie thing with fruit salad in it and fettucine carbonara, researched the Great Exhibition and started making a kimono top for the snortlepig. Great larks.

I finished the top this morning. I’m not entirely sure about it, but it was very quick to make and covers her delicate wee neck and arms from the blazing sun better than my shirred tops do. And after all, if she ends up with a freckled decolletage before she even has a decolletage, her chances of making a profitable match are slim to nil. And who will support her during her bitter long years of barely-respectable old maiditude? Muggins here, that’s who. So I was thinking of doing another kimono top in a nice lineny colour, with slightly darkish red bias binding and some chunky appliqued flowers on stems. Thoughts?

We wandered over to the Gardens this afternoon for the shots.

I include this last not because it shows off the top, but because it is one of approximately three photos in existence in which the snortlepig and myself occupy the same frame. If I ever had to prove she was my daughter in a court of law, this could be an issue. In other respects it is probably a Good Thing, as I photograph about as well as Elijah Wood (no, really. Candid shots? Hoo boy. He does OK if you tart him up with lights and discreetly applied eye makeup, but slap him in a crowd full of fans and he tends to look geekier than they do. Which is endearing really, if anything, but presumably must be a trial to him as an actor. Interestingly, after I saw Sin City he has looked retroactively creepy in all the photos I took from the Return of the King premiere. Not that I look through them on a regular basis or anything; we were moving house. Still, though. And actually, my photography has improved somewhat in the intervening years… most of the premiere photos were of my thumb. And even my thumb is unphotogenic. It’s not the most Herculean of thumbs to start off with, me having dropped a ladder on it in my youth; but on camera you can practically see it squinting and holding its mouth funny. Quite fascinating. I wonder if it’s pathological.).

Other items of note:

1. I just discovered the best craft blog: Ruffles and Stuff. Lots of clothing recons, adult-to-toddler stuff in particular, and a lovely Victoriana twist to many of her projects which I can pretend is steampunk, not that she uses the term.

2. Helpdesk Man’s best friend mentioned the other day that he wanted to see our wedding video, and a cold chill ran down my back. Not just because of the oddness of a human voluntarily signing up to watch someone else’s wedding video - he was the best man and made a speech, so it sort of makes sense - but because in the three-years-in-November we’ve been married, I have been unable to bring myself to watch it. Is this common to brides, I wonder?

3. A flounce is like a ruffle, but instead of being gathered at the top which produces a bulky and textured top section, the flare is created by sewing the concave portion of a curved (as in gently U-shaped) piece of fabric to a straight piece of fabric, thus creating a smoother line. I learned that today. I learned what a peplum was the other day too, but I forget the finer points. Jackets have them flaring gently over the hips, sometimes. Not in my wardrobe, though.

4. As of the tail end of Season 6 Mulder’s hair has gone distressingly poofy. I hope this is a mere two-episode aberrance, not his new look. It’s practically a pompadour. Incidentally, does it not seem to you that hair in TV shows tends to get worse rather than better as the shows progress? Not universally - Friends comes to mind - but look at Cordy in Angel. Or Willow’s Season 7 look. Or Felicity, of course…

5. November starts tomorrow. NaNoWriMo. I feel distinctly uninspired.

I currently have 43 article titles jotted down for my NaNo challenge. Of course, now I have them I keep wanting to write the articles, which would be counterproductive, although still ultimately useful. This is the problem with challenges. Too often the artificial constructs suppress creativity or cause one to look for weaselly loopholes.

We’ve been sick again this week. Helpdesk Man took two days off, and I spent many hours languishing on the bed while the snortlepig pulled long strings of gore for her nose and then freaked out because her hands were “yucky!”. Sweet child, not too bright.

Well anyway, I think the sickness caused my brain leach out my ears because I can’t think of a thing worth blogging about. Saw 500 Days of Summer… made a tiny apple pie… saw the best episode of The X-Files yet (season 6, the one where the alien pretends to be a Black baseball player, and Scully and Mulder indulge in  witty tofu-related banter)… sent the pig to visit her grandparents, but she came home early in disgrace after tipping her bowl of dinner upside down… bought two wooden crates off TradeMe that were meant for storing jeans in (an oddly specific function, I felt) and planted punkins in ‘em… made cupcakes… you know. Nothing uber. Nothing that would sway a slightly conscientious gunman from shooting me in the head. Well, I washed my hair. No, that probably wouldn’t do it. Maybe I’m still suffering from residual sickness-related Moops?

Anyhoo. I did finish two tops for the snortlepig, so here they am! I apologise for the lousy photo quality, and by “apologise” I mean “blame Helpdesk Man”. Any time nice photos appear on this blog, they were generally taken by my small sister. Photography is one of those talents I admire from afar, marvelling with some fear at its technical aspects. Similarly, synchronised swimming.

I wasn’t too sure about this one when I made it - it has a few rows of shirring at the waist (if the pig had a waist) as well as the bust (ditto). I kinda like it on, though. It bulges pleasingly around her midriff.

The colour isn’t great in these photos, but I’m very fond of it - a deep chocolate brown, with pale pink for the straps and what the snortlepig calls the “dottos”. I shirred this top out of a remnant, which turned out to be a wee bit too narrow to wrap around the pig; so rather than stretching the shirring, I added a vaguely corset-laced affair on the back with some rather nice chocolate and pink double-sided ribbon. I’d hoped to find pink ribbon with dark chocolate dottos, but this works too.

My next project ought to be finishing the baby quilt, given that the baby in question is now a week old; but I have been smitten with the desire to make the snortlepig a bubble dress, so we will see. It’s odd; up until now I didn’t even like bubble dresses (or skirts, or tops), but I suspect the pig would look pleasing in one. Perhaps I am compensating for my own lack of fashion sense by wishing to dress the pig according to the latest trends, thus perpetuating the cycle of slavery to fast fashion and bondage to The Man while bypassing it myself?

You recall my case of the moops? Of course you do. And I’d just like to offer a heartfelt thanks to those of my readers who rallied around with chocolates, flowers, homemade cards and generous monetary contributions. It does my heart good to know that my modest literary efforts touch so many lives. Thank you, shiny people.

Hmph.

Anyway.

If you can bear to look up from your bally frosted flakes and cast a glance of cynicism at the screen, allow me to inform your turgid eyeballs that I am No Longer Moop. The secret for curing the moops, apparently, is as follows:

Make Mexican almond cookies and fling a bit of lemon in for luck; make chocolate chip cookies also; send them off with Helpdesk Man for his marvy young vocal collective’s marvy Labour Weekend singing workshop (ooo!); have the tin return empty with enthused compliments; bake a second batch of chocolate chip cookies for the next day while at the same time baking cheese profiteroles, mocha pecan pie, plum chicken with rice and caramelised carrots for guests; finish the straps on the snortlepig’s top; watch two Disney movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Little Voice; plant a zucchini seedling; spring-clean the bedroom, and dry a successful load of washing before the rain can sneak in.

Interesting, no?

In other news… NaNoWriMo. Until yesterday I was planning to cheat, spending the month updating my pretentious fable about an autistic penguin from last year’s 22,000 words to a chunkier 50,000. For various reasons - not least of which, I’m not sure I can squeeze another 28,000 words out of a pretentious autistic-penguin-featuring fable - I have decided to go for the more mainstream cheat of completing 50,000 non-fiction words within the month. That’s articles, queries… blogging, I guess, so be prepared for several more What I Dreamed Last Night posts, folks… shopping lists will be excluded, but only because in these economic climes they tend towards fantasy in any case. *sigh* Which brings me to another compelling argument re the change of plans: viz, it is more lucrative. (And so the soul of Smokey the Magnificent dies a little, dreams crushed by the Muse-strangling spectre of a mortgage. Except I don’t even have a mortgage. I can’t afford one.)

Anyway, that gives me six days in which to prepare. Planning being allowed under NaNo rules, I was thinking of writing as many article titles as I could on a bit of paper and simply attempting to plow through as many as I can in a day. My Suite articles tend to be 600 words or so, so three a day would do it; but I was hoping to do some print stuff too, as well as the article on historical maternity wear that’s due December 1.

So, anyone have any article ideas for me to write? Dad suggested some time ago I do a piece on the benefits of raw milk, so I just might query a newish eco magazine on the topic. Hey, do you think I could expand “Which is more absorbent, a poodle or a horse?” into a full-blown op-ed?

Remember how I made the piggie a dress using a free Oliver and S pattern? Well, it’s finally warm enough for her to wear it. Here she is at the park in Cambridge. The pink hat was made by Helpdesk Man’s mother; it’s cute, but the pig was not so keen on wearing it. Anyone have a pattern for a summer hat for toddlers that attaches to the head with bolts?

She is nice, no? The pig herself seems to think so - during the uploading process she has been simpering and saying “Baby!” in a loving fashion and trying to pat the screen. She has a large, smallish ego.

1. I have discovered a new breakfast: Greek-style yoghurt mixed with a little cream and holier-than-thou Anathoth seventy-four-strawberries-to-the-inch jam. It’s verrah nice.

2. A few weeks ago I made a list of all the things we need for the new house, including bookshelves, a single bed, a desk, several chests of drawers and a hutch dresser. Panicked, Helpdesk Man went on TradeMe and bought a projector and a fedora.

3.Yesterday practically my only mother left for the other side of the world after having lunch with me and the snortlepig. It was unrelated, though. She’s probably at Singapore airport right now (and when I say “probably”, bear in mind that geography was never my strong point and she could be anywhere from Auckland to London, not discounting the bottom of the Seine).

4. Helpdesk Man and I had a lovers’ quarrel yesterday due to him being a friggin’ tard. You may help us settle it in my favour. Is a goose more similar to a duck than a fox is to a dog? Answer carefully. To foster impartiality I will not reveal on which side of the question my loyalties lie, only pointing out that good grief, foxes dig burrows and leap!

5. A wily reader will note I have not updated my Challenge progress from last week. It was… passable. “Lacked Vigour”, I would have scrawled on it in red pen if I were the teacher. But I did write several articles (no queries, though) and do a fair few houseworky things. My raised bed is now snugly full of earth - and if the weather clears up, I’ll plant spring onions and carrots in it today - and I’m slowly filling the half-wine-casks with garden mix.

6. I am making a baby quilt. It was going to be a very simple affair, 5-inch squares of pink and leftover brown from my patchwork skirt. But when I did that I wasn’t too thrilled with the colours, and my squares lacked the gridlike precision every other quilter on the Internet seems effortlessly able to accomplish |)how, people, HOW?). So I thought I’d disguise both aspects by covering the thing in appliqued leaves and Suffolk puff flowers. So far the effect is pleasing, but it has tranformed the project from  a quick whip-it-up-in-a-spare-morning affair to a fairly labour-intensive gig. And the woman in question tends to have her babies a few weeks early; so. Wish me luck and expedient blanket-stitching.

7. Two words that should be banned from the English language? Manky and sook. It is a little-known fact that Anakin Skywalker may never have turmed to the Dark Side had Obi-Wan not happened upon him after the death of his mother and sarcastically enquired “Having a bit of a sook?”

I have discovered a new love. Shirring.

In a fit of artiness I spent yesterday making the snortlepig a summer dress… and by “spent yesterday” I do mean the entire day. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to take that long, but then, I adjusted the pattern. I did a sort of patchworky thing with three different green fabrics I had instead of just using the one fabric - fun, but it involved carving up the pattern with scissors, which felt v nerve-wracking and transgressive. And I had to make my own bias binding, and continuously-bind the hem of the skirt. Ooh, and I flat-felled the side seams, just to show I could.

The point is, it was time-consuming and fiddly. But when night fell and I realised that amazingly, I didn’t feel burned out, I decided to start on a simpler project - a shirred strappy top. So I looked up this shirring tute to refresh my memory and felt inspired, and then read the several dozen comments saying “Help, this doesn’t work” and felt uninspired again. But it does work! Just like that! I practically finished the top in ten minutes flat, and would have if the snortlepig hadn’t woken up. And now I’m trying to think up ways to incorporate shirring into every other outfit she’ll ever wear. Any ideas?

Last night we went to visit the nephewpig. He is cute in a not-very-good-looking-but-will-doubtless-improve-with-a-steady-diet-and-clean-living kind of way. Lots of hair, big ears, and was missing his left hand, although I was assured it was chillin’ in his onesie somewhere. Sister-in-law had the labour from hell, poor thing - Syntocinon, epidural, continuous foetal monitoring so had to lie on the bed the whole time, threatened C-section due to tachycardia, and had to be put under general anaesthetic afterwards for stitches. She seems remarkably OK with it all though - not effusive by any means, but not curled up gibbering in the corner either.

The snortlepig, to our surprise, behaved in an impeccably cousinly way. Not only was she not jealous when I held the baby for half an hour, but she gave him hugs and kisses (v rare for her at the best of times) and tried very gently to remove a bit of skunge from his eye. She even learned a new word - “baby”. Yes, it is still nameless, although I heard the two alternatives and let’s just say, nobody’s gonna be scratching his head wondering what religion the kidling’s parents are.

So, question: Do you feel the mother has the right to choose the baby’s name, within reason? Do you feel her right to do so increases proportionately to the unpleasantness of the labour?

Also, do you feel virtuous when you eat fish? We had fish last night and I felt virtuous. Virtuous, and full of fish.

The puff pastry performed admirably, rising to glorious heights and flaking into as many layers as could be wished. The custard squares as a whole weren’t quite as successful, though. They tasted good, but I was unable to replicate the rubbery solidity of bakery custard squares. Instead it made a thickish custard that promptly squoze out the sides when I tried to cut them. Any ideas? Helpdesk Man suggested using gelatine and it may come to that, but I don’t quite fancy the idea. Maybe I could try doing a baked custard - they tend to be firm and cuttable. Sort of a Spanish flan deal which I then slapped between puff pastry and iced. It seems tedious though, and none of the recipes I’ve found suggest it. Maybe Firm and Upright Custard is simply not reproducible by the home cook, being comprised of chemicals too vile to name. I suspect that is the case… but I like Firm and Upright Custard. A conundrum.

Took the pig to Lollipop’s Playland on Saturday. It’s an indoor play area thingy with a ball pit, bouncy castle, tunnels and so on. The pig had a marvellous time, although much of it was spent in examining, dropping and laboriously finding again (and again and again) a number of large sequins which had presumably fallen off some child’s clothes. In between times she amused herself immensely by bouncing on the bouncy castle, stealing her aunt’s fries and trying to climb up slides in the toddler section (a vulgar and loutish practice of which I disapprove). When we left at the end I was surprised at her biddability, vaguely expecting a tantrum… and then we discovered she still had the sequins clutched firmly in her fat wee hand.

Right, well, this week’s challenge is to be productive. Because I have things to do, including sorting out some drearily soul-sucking matter with the IRD (turns out throwing away letters from them on the grounds that one is not really into taxes and finds the whole process sordid isn’t as sound a financial plan as one might think); binding a quilt; hastily making some summer tops for the snortlepig; and plowing through a huge number of books, DVDs and CDs lent to me by various folk who want them back. And I need to write more articles, of course. I keep getting behind on my Hair Care articles - once a week comes around more often than expected.

So anyway, I am reluctantly allowing myself no internet again this week, except for email and work-related purposes. Hopefully I’ll either do useful things out of boredom or read some of my borrowed books instead.

Question: If you were going to sing an a cappella medley of TV theme songs, other than Friends and Scrubs and Charles in Charge, what would you pick? It would need to be something that matched those three fairly well in tone, so not the Enterprise theme (which is weedy and pathetic anyway) or the lyricised version of M*A*S*H* or anything.