*!

I was going to make a baby blanket, and then I got lazy. 

End product?

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If you want to own a blanket made out of my old shirts (which is either cool, or creepy, or both maybe) then GO BID NOW.

You've got 34 hours from uh, now.  (Now as in when I posted this, not when you read it.)

Because my mom insists that Jewelry is what I'm best at and wouldn't take no for an answer.  I tried to explain to her that I don't have the supplies I need to make what I normally make, and she kept insisting that I have to have enough to make SOMETHING.

So here we go:

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I made the cord using several strands of thread, and tore apart a funky silver necklace for the clasp and silver ring for the drop.  The beads were a gift from an angel- not my normal thing, but I think it turned out nicely enough.

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I would never have picked these beads.  But I had them (Thank you, angel!) and when I poured them out, they seemed to tell me what they wanted to be.  By this point I had no monofilament, they were too heavy for thread, and I wanted to reserve what little coated wire I had left for something else.  So what to do, what to do?  I found a small roll of silver and just kind of... winged it.  I made curlicues like wind in a Winnie the Pooh drawing, and played with the idea of red leaves being blown by a very blue stream.  Something like a nursery rhyme illustration, bright but somehow peaceful.  I like it.

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So I've decided to sell the t-shirt comforter that I've been working on for, well, half of forever.  I pieced the top 7 years ago when I was newly married, and I pieced the back just last month.  Finishing it seems like an eternity, even though I know it's really not that long.

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So I decided to sell the comforter on Ebay.  I never know what to charge for these things, and since this particular one is also sentimental, I just couldn't settle on what I thought was a reasonable price.  (50?  75?  250?  I don't know!)

I thought, since my lovely neighbors always insist they'd be willing to pay more, I'd test that theory.

The starting bid is $15, what I need to recoup the cost of the materials and listing it.

I'm comfortable letting it go for that if it means it goes to someone I like.  (Mainly, dear reader, YOU!)

So, admire.

And then go bid, if you'd like!

I've been a little quiet here, because I've been dividing my time between "real" work and trying to actually post on my Wordpress blog.

So, in case you are interested, here's what's been happening on WordPress:

David’s real brilliance was not in his beauty, his grace, or his cleverness.  It was in his absolute faith in who God made him to be.- Think as David Thought

If I want to share the depth and wonder of my faith, it means letting people into my past.  It means telling stories that are embarrassing, painful, sometimes nothing short of humiliating.- Be More Vulnerable

Thus, the moral of the story is that we shouldn’t rush God’s calling.- Ishmael or Isaac

Allow me to try to explain this a different way.  Look at nature.  The snowmelt runs down the mountain because it must, it’s a natural directive, there is no other way.  But plumbing shows that we can sometimes tweak things to our advantage, we don’t change natural law but we change natural circumstances.- See Your Circumstances as Malleable

So, in case you can't see the theme, it's a series on overcoming obstacles.  I know none of the posts are tagged "gay sex", so it's not my most popular work- but I think it's important nonetheless.

Now I'm hungry, and I'll go make myself lunch.  :) 

Latest in a long line of doing everything possible to save money:  making my own yogurt.

It's actually stupidly easy.  All you need is a slow cooker, a candy thermometer, glass jars or large capacity drinking glasses, and the following ingredients:

1 cup organic yogurt (be sure it lists LIVE cultures in the ingredients)
1 can evaporated milk (use sweetened condensed if you want a sweeter mixture)
1 quart milk- plus a little.  (I just filled my old yogurt container up two thirds of the way twice)
honey and salt to taste

Fill your slow cooker halfway with warm water and set it on "low" or "warm"- whatever the lowest setting is.

Mix the evaporated milk with the yogurt in a saucepan, and then slowly blend in the plain milk.  Heat to 115 degrees.  Make sure from this point onward that the yogurt never goes below 100 degrees or above 130. 

Pour the mixture into the jars, and set them in the slow cooker.  Check the temperature every hour to make sure it stays in a happy place, and wait.  For runnier, milder yogurt you'll need to give it about four hours.  For thick, tangy yogurt you'll need to give it six to eight hours.

And that's it.  That is how yogurt is made.  It costs about two dollars for me to make two quarts, as opposed to the three dollars I'd been spending on one.  (The first time you make it you'll need to buy yogurt, but from then on you just make a new batch every time you only have a cup left.)

This may seem like a silly thing to worry over, but since my daughter eats at LEAST a quart a week, it matters.  The other benefit to making your own yogurt?  Making herb yogurt cheese.

Which I'll post a photo of tomorrow, along with instructions.  Promise.  :)

Life:  Still not actually done working on things for Epic Life Studios.  I've got one, possibly three jobs lined up afterwards.  I'm currently waiting on my Waikem Tablet so that I can do a manga-esque theme for a friend of mine with greater ease (scanning in hand-inked stuff is a pain in the ass.)

Thank God for Ebay and GIMP plug-ins.

Anyway.

Now, on to what you all (Kelly!) have been waiting for:  me, feeling ill for a few days, and finally getting around to reading.  First up is What the Dead Know by Laura Lipman, which I had been reading in three page stints on the toilet for the last month.  It was starting to get into my head anyway, because the book is written in brilliantly plotted snapshots of people's lives.  Instead of following one main character, it works more like a movie, capturing the essence of the storyline through endless sets of perceptions, leaving you wondering who is truly witnessing and remembering the truth and who is manipulating the perceptions of others to their own end.  I'm usually good at guessing with these sorts of things, and I still hadn't peiced the whole thing together by the big reveal.  And not because the author didn't give you all of the information you needed- she gave all and more.  She's just.  That.  Good.

Read it.

#2 on day two of feeling out of it was the Ruins.  Which is not a good book to read when you feel nauseous, because it will only make it worse.  But you'll read it anyway, because by thirty pages in you HAVE to know, even though you can already sense that you don't WANT to.  The story from page one has an air of inevitability, and the little teases the author throws in at every bend, when characters want to withdraw but don't, when they sense forboding but ignore it, when they allow themselves to be distracted away... it makes it all that much sharper, that much worse to read.

But like any good suspense novel, you have to keep reading even when you want to look away from the page.

The Ruins is a brilliant novel.  My husband pointed out after I'd finished the book and let out a disgruntled "WTF?  Brilliant but I wish I could forget it!" that he'd seen the trailer for the movie based on the book and it had looked horrible.  We watched the trailer together, and it looks even more dissapointing than the Beach.  For one- things are happening to the wrong characters, and if you change what happens to whom you're changing the patterns of behavior that the book is so brilliantly structured around.  That and the plot is changed, subtly, and the setting is changed horribly.  All of these things are integral to the book.  To put it plainly, the movie changes everything about the book that the author did best.

What idiots.

So there you go.

(And thank you, Kelly, for two completely enjoyable reads!  I can't wait to have time to read Heart Shaped Box!)

Spanky:  (is poking the couch with a pen)
Me: Spanky, pens are only for paper.  Either you draw on paper, or you lose the pen.
Spanky:  I don't think so.
Me:  Oh, really?
Spanky:  This is my pen, not yours.  You don't tell me how to use it.
Me: You are mine, therefore everything that is yours is mine, and I can in fact tell you how to use it.
Spanky:  You're talking crazy.
Me:  Fine.  I'm bigger than you, I win.
Spanky:  I want a smaller mommy.