Thanksgiving Inspiration; Family Cookbooks

In 2005, I published Creating an Heirloom: Writing Your Family's Cookbook. Since then, a lot has changed in publishing options. I knew I needed to update the book, it had gone out of print, and the publishing chapter was inadequate. With Thanksgiving (and family cooking) around the corner, I was finally goosed into getting that chapter rewritten and updating the book. I wasn't able to get it done before Thanksgiving because of some formatting issues, but it's done now! And the Kindle edition is going to be available tomorrow, hopefully. Yay!

Available at Amazon.

I can now stop feeling guilty about neglecting my ode to family cooking, and go back to concentrating on making more Sesame Street dolls for my daughter for Christmas. (This year, she's requested Dr. Thad and the Medications.)

October's Hat: Pumpkin Beret

A quickie, made in a few hours. This is the same beret pattern I always use (McCall's 2629, out of print), but the top of the beret is pieced to look like the lobes (ribs?) of a pumpkin. Once I got it all sewn together, I ran a stitch up the bottom of the hat to connect with the pieced top. Yes, there is a seam that runs through the middle of my "pumpkin," but I didn't want to spend the day figuring out how to do it without the seam.

To get the stem, I cut a piece of felt on slight angle and rolled it up. I stitched that together at the bottom, and secured the loose end, then stitched it to the center of my beret. I found a pattern for pumpkin leaves, and used a crocheted corkscrew to look like vine, using a YouTube tutorial. (Yes, it's true: I didn't know how to make one of those things until today.) I was lucky enough to have yarn that matched the felt on hand. In fact, all of this was from my stash.

You can see the vertical stitch here.

Honestly, I don't think this could have been any simpler. And now I have something to wear when I meet Jill Thompson later this month!

The Skirt of Evil!

Cross-posted to Plastic Heroines. This is going to be really brief, because I didn't get nearly enough sleep. Then I think I might have to take a nap before dinner... I'll post more about the overskirt I made later.

I finally got the Skirt of Evil cut out and sewn up. I finished the skirt at midnight, and got up this morning to make an overskirt. (It's the same simple pattern as the Skirt of Awesome, but this time I sewed the seams down.)

I saw the fabric at Joann's, but it was pricey, then they had an internet-only 24-hour sale, and I caved. Unfortunately, one of the styles (the dark grey in the top row) sold out, but I was able to buy some in the store (not on super-sale).

Purchased at Joann's. If you love it, go get it; they're sold out online.

I need 13 wedges to make my skirt. To figure out how I wanted to use the fabric, I used a triskaidecagon* with the wedges marked out, and the Photoshop "define pattern" and "fill" tools, and played with it until I got this:

Top of the image is the front of the skirt.

That enabled me to play with the colors and patterns until I got the look I wanted. Then I knew how many wedges of each color I needed, and could cut them out. Pinning it together took nearly as long as sewing. Then I turned in all the exposed edges, stiched them down, turned the waistband and added bias tape to the hem. There are no exposed edges, none.

Comfortable, floaty... and evil!

The overskirt is shimmer tulle petals attached to an elastic band using half hitch knots. It's longer in the back.

Sparkly!

The overskirt isn't supposed to look like a tutu, or a petticoat (worn on top); it's supposed to look like a cloud of malevolence, stalking toward you. Mwahahahahaaaaaaa!

More craziness: e.l.f. makeup featuring palettes for four Disney villains, found at Walgreens. Bought 'em. Had to. All four of those ladies (Evil Queen, Maleficent, Cruella and Ursula) are all on my skirt! 



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* triskaidecagon = 13-sided polygon

Geeky Creations

I'm attending Geek Girl Con next month, and nothing is ever simple. Not when you're me, anyway... So I have all these projects in my head of things I want to do/make/wear, and (as usual) things aren't going as smoothly as I would prefer.

My first project was inspired by a friend commenting that I needed a little top hat to go with the Skirt of Awesome. And dammit, he was right. I used the Fleece Fun pattern and made one with fabric left over from the skirt, and have been playing with it since, trying to get the materials exactly right.

The decorative element at the band is a button. I originally
had a brooch, but it was too big and heavy. I still have to
attach this to a headband, and sew things on.

Then I was apparently experiencing an alien possession, because I decided that I needed a petticoat to go under the Skirt of Awesome. The petticoat is equally awesome, and matches the bias tape perfectly... and is inches too short. :( So, I bought a half-slip, removed the elastic from the petticoat, and will tack it onto the half-slip to lower the level of floof so it hits the hem of the skirt.

Currently safety-pinned on, I have to sew it yet.

I decided that for the Friday night kickoff party before the convention, I wanted to go kinda butch. I found a vest (that needed new buttons, natch), a sportcoat that I found on ebay that I'm still not 100% certain of, and a purple silk tie that I am going to embellish. Plus two purple fedoras (one is a trilby) that needed feathers. I need a plain white dress shirt, that I can wear with the tie. That's proving to be the biggest problem. With all of that, I also finally decided how I wanted to finish the spray painted jeans, so I have to finish that, too.

New hats! The purple/black houndstooth came with tan and red feathers -- ew.

I want to make a charm bracelet or two, using Shrinky-Dink plastic for inkjet printers, and a couple of necklaces. I've got my images ready to print out, but otherwise haven't started on that yet.

While I was at Joann's trying to find bits and pieces for the things I'm making, I stupidly glanced at the licensed fabric (just in case they had the Girl Power stuff or any related things). And I found some moody-colored stuff with the Disney villains on it. Then I looked at it online just after midnight, and saw that it was 40% online (web-exclusive sale) and only 25% off in-store. I couldn't resist. I started planning the skirt and an overskirt to wear with it. And then I checked online this afternoon... and saw that 2 of the 5 fabrics I ordered are already "unavailable" and I had to go get them in the store. At the higher price. (grrr...)

Won't that make an awesome skirt???

In the process of writing this post, the purple fabric has become "unavailable" and my order is still "processing." OMG... /headdesk (UPDATE: As of Thursday morning, 4/5 of them are "unavailable" and searching for "villain" - how they came up before - yields no results.)

I think it's time to break out the vodka.

Hallowe'en Comes Early!

I have a ton of action figures in the basement, displayed on Ikea bookshelves. One shelf had some of my Hallowe'en Barbies, but they were boxed and three deep on the shelf, so you couldn't see all of them. I got the idea to move them to the children's library (AKA, the guest room) and display them a little differently after I saw this blog post. I loved Valerie's idea of using props that are the right scale ("play scale" according to some Google searching), and decided that I needed a spooky tree for the witches. I had in my head an idea, and today I made it work. (Photo intensive!)

I forgot to take a photo of the first step, gathering a piece of dowel and a wire skeleton that had been a floral bush. Both things I had on hand, it just required me pulling the flowers off of the bush and taping them together. The dowel was even a good length without needing to be trimmed, because it was from another project already.

The dowel and the wire skeleton taped together, and all my gathered supplies.

Once I had those taped together, I wrapped the bottom part of the dowel in sheets of foam packing material, and pushed a toilet paper roll over the end.

Then I started layering newspaper around that, and pushed bent chenille stems into the cardboard tube. Those are going to be roots.

I wrapped the wire stems with more chenille stems, making branches.

It's about 32 inches tall.

I used newspaper to bulk up the base of the branches before I started taping them. The newspaper is also important because it enables the trunk and branches to be compressed (by squeezing them) after the tape is applied. This gives it a textured, wrinkled surface, looking more like bark.

I ended up using two different masking tapes, the second one being Scotch brand; the other brand wasn't sticking to itself very well. The Scotch masking tape did much better.

I added two more branches scavenged from more floral stems, because having branches only at the top looked weird. Once I had wrapped the entire tree -- branches and roots -- I used a twisted ring of newspaper to make a knothole on the trunk. The roots are reinforced with toothpicks, but it still doesn't sit quite level. I think I will probably glue a piece of balsa to the bottom to help it sit flat.

To show scale, with one of the dolls that will be part of the display.

I actually ended up cutting open the bottom and stuffing a couple of rocks into the cardboard tube, because it was really top-heavy. I haven't decided yet how I will color the tree, paint or stain or shoe polish... and I want to make "Spanish moss" with dyed cheesecloth to drape over the branches. (The guest room was supposed to be Mardi Gras inspired, so to keep it at least a little on topic, these witches are going to be in New Orleans, since NOLA also has a humongous Hallowe'en celebration.)

But it's mostly done; from concept to execution in one day. I even stained the wood shelves to match the bookcases that are in the library!

UPDATE #1: I did end up spray painting it flat black. I decided that while the shoe polish treatment does look cool (google: shoe polish masking tape), it's not the effect I want. So once this dries, I'm going to dry brush brownish-grey on the high spots. In the meantime, I need to hunt up some cheesecloth for the Spanish moss... I also need to do something about the base, because it really doesn't want to stand upright.

UPDATE #2: I added thin pieces of balsa to the base to help stabilize it. I also finished the detail painting I wanted to do, along with a little surprise.

Without flash

With flash

Surprise!

UPDATE #3: Cheesecloth moss is finished! I trimmed the "finished" edges off the strip of cheesecloth, because I wanted it to be ragged. I cut it into strips of varying lengths and widths, and played with the placement on the tree until I had what I felt were enough.

I used grey and yellow-green acrylic paint in quite a bit of water and added the strips. It wasn't enough pigment, though, so I added black paint and added the strips to the paint/water bath. I squeezed out the water, and patted the cheesecloth with a paper towel. There were some bits of paint that didn't get completely dissolved, and that left some darker spots on some of the strips. I used a tension rod in a doorway to hang the strips to dry. I could have dried them flat, but the paint stiffens the cloth; if I wanted them to hang over the branches, I needed to hang them from something.

They also wanted to curl into themselves, so I had to gently pull the strips back open. I didn't want it to be completely flat, though, because Spanish moss doesn't hang in a tidy sheet from the trees, either. Once the pieces were dry (didn't take long), I started putting them back on the tree. The color didn't have enough green in it, and the moss is a living thing, so I used the tip of a loaded brush to apply dots of the yellow-green randomly to the hanging strips, just like you might see on living moss.

True fact -- Spanish moss isn't moss at all. It's an angiosperm, and belongs to the same family as bromeliads.

Hats on Hold

Yeah, yeah, it was bound to happen. When you have the attention span of a caffeinated puppy, it was pretty much inevitable. I'm not done with hats -- they're too much fun to make! -- but they're going to be on hold for a while, as I've bounced to other things. I would like to point out that before I bounced, I made 27 hats (no, I haven't posted all of them, obviously). So while I may not meet my Hat A Month posting goal, I have certainly made a year's worth of hats in quantity.

I'll get back to them, I have too many Plans not to.

Terrifying New Project

For an online class about gender and comic books, I had to draw a comic based on a personal experience with gender. I'm no illustrator, so that was pretty tough for me to manage. However, the assignment did start me thinking about another project that I've been working on in my head, something so personal that I'm not really even comfortable sharing it openly yet.

In the class chatroom, I was talking to another student who encouraged me to start putting things on paper (even if it was just random brainstorming) and get it off that mental back burner. So yesterday, I worked on it, pretty much all day. What I have to show for hours of work? Six hand-written pages, that I then distilled into 2 pages typed into a Word doc. That's it. *sigh* I obsessed over naming; every name was chosen deliberately, and I needed 21 names.

Then I decided to hit up our new Half Price Books store to see if they had any good books for learning to draw. I ended up with:

How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains by Christopher Hart,
and How to Draw Manga V. 1 by Ben Dunn* -- I found things in both books that I thought would help,
and since it was Half Price Books, it was reasonable to get both.

I don't know what my style is, if I even have one, but both of these offered some basic mechanics as well as particular styles. I already had a sketchbook that I bought for this purpose (before I bought those books, before I started the class). So I guess now it's time to work on figure studies. The writing may always come more naturally to me, but if I can make the images I have in my head come out on paper, then maybe I'll be able to translate it into something that's really mine.

The fear comes into play when I'm honestly afraid to try, and possibly fail. This particular creation is the convergence of a number of things that are meaningful to me, so it's incredibly personal, and why I have only entrusted some of the details a couple of people. It's fragile yet...

When I have something I'm proud of, I'll share it, but until then, this project is under wraps.

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*Ben Dunn's website doesn't seem to be working, or I'd link him, too.