house of Absurdity...

you know you live in a house full of absurdity when your ridiculous requests go totally unquestioned.

me: uhm... sweetie, i need you to do me a tiny favor.
him: what?
me: i need you to... uhm... add some... uhm... censorship strips to... uhm...[long pause here]... a picture of naked Barbie dolls.
him: send me the picture.

and just like that, it was done.

i mentioned back at the start of the year that i was stepping wayyy outside my comfort zone by making clothes for Barbie dolls. well, that was just the beginning of the absurdity.

let me pause here to point out that i am not exactly a fan of Barbie. i do, however, love love LOVEEE making stuff. so, when one of his brother's kids started carrying around an armful of Barbies, i responded in the only way i could. i knitted and sewed a bunch of tiny clothes for Barbie dolls.

naturally, this meant that i had to purchase my own Barbie dolls. a dressmaker needs models, after all. i got a "regular size" Barbie and a "curvy" one so that i could cover the full spectrum. the smaller one was actually some sort of Scientist Barbie, which i chose because i like to torment myself every now and then with reminders of what my life used to be. and, yes... my cat is sniffing Barbie. i am sure there is a hashtag for that.

where was i? oh, yes... Barbie.

so, here is my tiny fashion show in all its glory. forget the "house" of Chanel or Givenchy or Dior. they are all amateurs. allow me to introduce you to the house of Absurdity. enjoy!

i did quite a bit of sewing for dolls back in the day, but this was my first time knitting for Barbie, so i spent some time picking out the right pattern to begin with. unfortunately, i picked out a yarn that was slightly too thin, so the overalls turned out a bit... uhm... well-fitted. it almost feels like i should be asking for another censorship strip.

i went for  thicker yarns, and both ladies now had slightly-less-well-fitted overalls.

then i made a dress that seemed more appropriate for Scientist Barbie to wear when standing up in front of a room full of university students who are pretending not to be looking at nonsense on the internet while she drones on about the parts of the brain. ask me how i know.

and i made a couple tunic-style sweaters that could be worn on their own, or with pants. if memory serves, the greenish-blue sweater was loosely based on this one, and the reddish-pink one was something i made up on the go. [random aside: that designer has a ton of Barbie-sized patterns (most of them are free) available in about eleven languages on her website and on Ravelry.]

 those pants were repurposed from some old sweats, so feel free to thank me for saving the planet.

i made the template for the pants by tracing a line around each doll onto some sub-par watercolor paper that we have been trying to get rid of for years. the pants were the perfect sizes, so i made two more, this time using stretch lace of the kind that is intended to be used as the trim on tacky dresses for weddings and sweet sixteens.

they are super-adorable with these strapless dresses...

which i made from some cheap Reebok socks that i found on sale somewhere. that one sock looks a bit smaller because i tossed it in the wash to see if it would shrink... and it did.

my absolute favorite item of all was the party dress for Curvy Barbie. in a word... stunning!

then i sorted the whole lot into two piles...

placed each pile into its own little bag...

and sent them off to the kid, who was only momentarily disappointed that is was not a tin full of chocolates. this was so much better.

naturally, i forgot to include (or even photograph) one item. the party dress for Dimensionally-Challenged Barbie. now i am going to be accused of being a reverse-sizeist.

i have enough scraps of fabric and leftover bits of yarn to make clothes for an army of Barbies, so there definitely will be more to come. and i have to add that i might have been more of a fan of this franchise if Curvy Barbie existed back in my day, because she has dimensions to which i can definitely relate.

now i feel like i need to go knit or sew some more tiny things. this will not end well.

blame it on the bingo...

the crafting world is full of "alongs". that being, people making/doing the same thing at roughly the same time for some shared sense of support and community. i am a self-proclaimed curmudgeon, so i really hate "alongs". naturally.

the rest of the fiber-crafting community, however, absolutely loves this sort of thing. whether it is a new pattern by a popular designer, or a new colorway from a favorite hand-dyer of yarns, there is always an along to be had.

so, after many years of shaking my head dismissively at so many of these groups, it saddens me to announce that i am engaging in what will be the first (and likely last) along of my fiber-crafting life.

this came about as a challenge of sorts to stop being so much of a curmudgeon about... well... everything. and i chose this particular along because it had the most "do whatever the heck you want" rules of any i could find.

the good people over at the Wet Coast Wools (which is both a podcast on the You Tubes and a yarn shop in Vancouver) are hosting a year-long Bingo-along. that is correct. they have created a harmonious blend of knitting (or crocheting, if you are into that sort of thing)... and BINGO. yes, please!

i joked at first that i would enter it if only to have something to regret as the year went on, and it turns out that i was not wrong. it is now approaching the middle of July, and i have yet to cross a single square off of the bingo card. boy do i ever regret this decision.

seriously, it was less than two months in, and people were already asking if they could start working on a second bingo card. meanwhile, i have set myself the goal of completing one row, and i am already failing at that.

i have more than enough projects in various stages of doneness that could be finished up and applied to said effort, but that would require me to be motivated or concerned, and i definitely do not resemble either of those things at present.

i did manage to finish one small project that would qualify for the "make something for an animal" square on the bingo card. see it?

how about now?

it is shown here modeled by my middle-kitty, Philly, a) because she looks like the model-kitty in the pattern, and b) because the other two cats had sense enough to go into hiding when i was looking for a furry mannequin.

it is a cape-like garment that is designed to keep a cat (or similar sized dog) warm, which makes sense for the recently-shaved cat in the original pattern photos. my cat, however, is about seventy-five percent fur, so the last thing she needs is even more warmth.

and, no... i do not intend to make a habit of knitting clothing for my cats. this was a one-off item that i made one evening while trying to distract myself from how disgusted i feel these days by the world around me. it was a brand new pattern that had just been posted to Ravelry, and i could not stop laughing at the thought of trying to get one of my cats into something like that.

i can assure you that Philly was not happy about being chosen to be the model, and she absolutely refused to look at me while i was taking the photographs. such a diva.

for now, the sweater will live in one of the nooks on my wall display of yarn-filled cans.

if memory serves, it was pouring outside... and i was sipping on some craft beer... and he was listening to music of some kind. so, while i could choose to blame it on the rain, the alcohol, or the boogie, i am going to blame it on the bingo.

a bonsai begins...

as i mentioned a couple days ago, we had to make a swift exit from the garden center before we ended up purchasing more plants than we had space to accommodate. the urge to spend money was especially strong in the bonsai section. sadly, the obsession did not end with our exit.

it should be noted that i am somewhat overconfident when it comes to the subject of growing all sorts of stuff. i can grow most of the tropical things that show up in people's homes as houseplants, and i welcome the challenge of growing all sorts of edible things.

i do, however, have two weaknesses where plants are concerned: i have never met an orchid that i did not kill, and i am genuinely afraid of being left alone with a bonsai, because it too will likely die. i skipped right past the display of orchids at the garden center, but i was absolutely smitten by all things bonsai.

naturally, it would not be enough to just buy one of the things and try to keep it alive. no. i decided that i wanted to start from scratch. luckily, we live in a place with lots of tree varieties that would be perfect for this sort of absurdity.

i was waxing poetically about all of the local trees i could use, when he turned and pointed at the massive old maple on the other side of the wall of glass. we are always having to weed mini-maples out of the balcony garden plants, which means that the thing i was looking for was literally right outside my door.

skip forward to the next day (a few-several hours ago, to be precise), when he stepped in from the balcony and handed me what i thought at first was a weed he probably wanted me to identify.

him: here is your future bonsai.

the main challenge with growing a tree while trying to keep it relatively tiny is to limit the amount of space in which the roots have to grow. i repurposed a little four-inch pot that housed one of the many transplants we purchased for a series of planting projects (which i will talk about at some point in the near future).

add one mini-maple, and... TA DA!!! a bonsai begins.

then i watered it and added it to a tray that contains a few other tiny plants, including a chunk of moss that was locally sourced... which is a polite way of saying that i scraped off a chunk of moss from the walkway alongside a local canal. it too will end up in a future project... if it survives that long.

and they are living for now on my highly-untidy workspace, next to a box of other assorted mini-plants. everything is mini it seems.

i actually did a thing...

i feel like i spend a lot of time stockpiling supplies and talking about my future-plans to make all sorts of random nonsense, so it pleases me to announce that i actually did a thing. feel free to applaud. i totally deserve it.

we recently purchased some candle-making supplies, back during my birthday three-day weekend. well, i tucked all of that away at the back of a shelf in the black-hole that is my crafting closet, and (for once) i did not instantly forget all about it. in fact, i could hear the tiny wax pellets calling to me as i laid in bed each night not sleeping. [random aside: insomnia sucks.]

so i pulled all of it out one day and actually made candles. yes... i am also impressed at this most astonishing feat.

i did not take any photos during the making part of the thing. this was a simple melt-and-pour process which consisted of melting the wax pellets, adding scented oils, then pouring the hot mixture into cleaned and re-purposed candle jars. i used three wicks in each jar, as that was the same number of wicks in the original candles from Bath & Body Works, and i adhered the wicks to the the jars with a tiny dollop of hot glue under the little metal base at the bottom end of each wick.

the trickiest part of this whole operation was keeping the wicks in place while the wax hardened, so i used a little candle-making trick. before adding the wax to the jars, i used a combination of clothespins and bamboo skewers (which i broke in half as they were very long) to position and secure the wicks. the hot wax was poured into the jars with this setup already in place.

there was one little container which did not require the bamboo skewer, so i just rested the clothespin on the rim of that jar. so adorable.

i left them to cool overnight before removing the makeshift scaffolding.

you will notice that the wicks are just a touch on the long side for these jars.

i considered purchasing shorter wicks, as most of the containers i have are this size. however, i do have a few taller ones waiting to be filled, so i opted to go for the longer wicks. all it takes is a quick snip to get rid of the extra bits. or... you can light it and watch it burn down to the top of the candle like the fuse on a cartoon stick of dynamite. [DISCLAIMER: i definitely do not recommend that last option, so please do not blame/sue me if your house burns down after giving it a try.]

i hate throwing things away, so those extra bits will not go to waste. you can buy the little metal discs that are attached to the bottom of wicks in a candle, so i will hang on to these trimmings for future use.

 
i placed my new candles in a basket...because i am lazy and i did not want to have to make multiple trips to put them away.

i also added a post-it note to the side of each jar with the combination of essential oils used and the concentration in the mix. and, yes... i actually weighed and calculated the percentage of oils... because i take pleasure in being a total dork.

some of them are scented with sandalwood and lemongrass...

and some are honeysuckle, pomegranate, and hibiscus.

i took the time to remove the labels from the jars back when i cleaned them, but there were a few labels that absolutely refused to budge. imagine my surprise when i spun around one of the jars with the honeysuckle combo, only to realized that it originally contained a honeysuckle candle. i take that as a sign that the Universe approves.

i stashed the basket of new candles on a shelf of my crafting closet, so now i am greeted with a wave of awesome smells every time i open that door. hopefully this will encourage me to make use of some more of the stuff tucked away inside that space.

please don't hurt me...

[i am attempting a week of daily posts in an effort to distract myself from being angry, frustrated, and disappointed... but mostly angry... about all sorts of stuff. wish me luck.]

we have a multi-part planting project in the works (some of which i will likely talk about later in the week... if i make it that far). unfortunately, we needed some parts that we did not already have on hand, so we started Sunday morning by driving to the other side of town to visit a new-to-us garden center. it was HUGE! we ended up making a hasty exit before we blew our budget for the next six months on gardeny (gardenish?) things. for example, we made the horrible mistake of checking out their bonsai section, so there might be some bonsai adventures in the not-too-distant future. the place is dangerous.

so, we paid for our stuff, then went racing to the car to get off the premises while we still could, assuming that all of the dangers would evaporate once we got back on the road. HUGE mistake!

we had barely turned the corner, when noticed a new-to-us Asian grocery store on the opposite side of the main street. it was HUGE. and they have an impressive assortment of... everything... including a seafood section with tanks full of swimming things all begging to become our next meal.

so, in we went, and home we came with this guy and a few of his friends.

i called this one Paco, because why not.

this is where things got interesting.

i should point out that we also purchased a new wok, because we had decided to give them a quick toss in the wok with some herb-y bits then splash on some sauce-y things and serve it with a bit of rice. naturally, he decided that this required a new wok.

me: we already have a wok.
him: but they have a whole aisle of woks, and they are all much nicer than ours.

so he ran off to select a wok, while i was left to bear the guilt of deciding which crabs would die for our culinary amusement.

fast-forward to a short while later, and we were standing in our kitchen, looking at the crabs splashing around in a container of cold water. this is when it suddenly dawned on us that someone would have to kill the things.

him: that is all you. i have never killed a crab in my life, and i would not know where to begin. 

so, i just stood there, staring at little Paco (who had already been separated from his friends), and there was only one thought running through my head.  

me: (said silently while staring at Paco) please don't hurt me. 

then i picked him up, wrapped him a kitchen towel—in case he had any thoughts of vengeance—and before long i had four crabs cleaned and quartered, with their claws removed and given a light crack to allow for maximum flavor penetration.

the new wok was hot and ready to go. in went a generous amount of chopped garlic, ginger, and green onions. that was followed by a sprinkling of five-spice powder and a healthy shake of the smoked paprika that manages to make its way into most things we eat around here. then came the crab pieces. i sauced it all with almost everything i could find. there was a fish sauce, light soy sauce, mirin, two types of Chinese cooking wine, Korean chili paste, and a healthy drizzle of sesame oil. i blanched some greens before beginning the crab dish, so i tossed them back into the wok at this point to warm them up again and get them coated in that everything sauce.

we dumped the whole lot into an old baking dish, and we served it along with a bit of plain rice.

it was so good! he is usually impatient when it comes to picking tiny bits of crab meat from their seemingly endless network of shells, but this dish was so tasty, that he gave it his very best effort. meanwhile, i was in a state of bliss through the whole thing.

we enjoyed our meal while watching Barbarella. this was a first time viewing for both of us, and it was the latest installment in the rather odd desire i have had of late to watch movies—most of them bad ones—that existed before my lifetime.

we ate. we laughed. we ate some more.

a good time was had by all... except maybe  Paco and his friends.