Making Stuff, Week 6: Blood Oranges

It’s a short post this week, once again timed to coincide with Fiber Arts Friday. It’s short because I’ve forced myself to concentrate on mostly one project this week: the commissioned yarn I’m making for a coworker, a yarn I’ve already featured here (100% alpaca from Benz, 2-plied as one red and one black strand each). It’s taken longer than I thought because it turns out he needs more yarn than I anticipated, which required more washing fleece, drying fleece, carding fleece, dyeing fleece…

But in between all of that I did manage to do some more dyeing experiments, sticking mostly with the red family so I could see some consistent changes. I didn’t take individual pictures this week of all the individual batches after they were dyed, but I did take pieces of each fiber and mark them for my records. First I dyed the last of my Falkland wool, about an ounce, with a 2:1 ratio of Burgundy to Scarlet, and then I dyed one ounce of Merino wool with the opposite ratio, 1:2 of Burgundy to Scarlet. The shades turned out really pretty and distinct enough to notice. Finally, I dyed another couple of ounces of Merino with a roughly 2:1 ratio of Fire Red to Salmon, something I was just interested in seeing the results of since Salmon is so orangey-pink. That turned out to be a very pretty dark, dusty pinkish-red.

I stuck with the red this week because I figured this way, after seeing all of the dyeing results and keeping samples for my records, I could card them together into a blended batt along with the bright orangey salmon Falkland I had leftover from my beaded yarn experiment. Looking at all the colors together before carding, I had this image that they might look like the colors of a blood orange when put together.

A Merino/Falkland batt. I'm calling the colorway 'Blood Orange'.

Sure enough, that’s almost exactly how it came out. I didn’t carefully weight out the percentages but rather wanted to experiment as I carded it together, but I’m sure it’s roughly 50/50 Merino and Falkland. I blended it in roughly organized layers: The Scarlet/Salmon mix first, then some Salmon Falkland, then some Fire Red/Scarlet Merino, then some Scarlet/Burgundy Merino, then some Salmon Falkland, then some Burgundy/Scarlet Merino, followed by more Salmon Falkland. I left the batts at one blending pass to retain the color banding. I ended up with just over six ounces.

Spinning Term: “Batts”
Batts are flat rectangles of fiber that have usually been prepared with a drum carder — a machine with two barrels of teeth that “card”, or align, the fibers together. Batts are different from top in that the fibers do not have to be all the same length, and drum-carded batts will produce more blended batches of color when created with dyed fibers. Because they are fluffy rectangles of variously-aligned fibers instead of long strips of perfectly-aligned fibers (as in top), batts, when spun, typically produce a woolen yarn, one that is lofty, airy, and warm.

The yarn I plan to make from this will be a roughly worsted weight yarn, spun semi-thick-and-thin, and then plied with some kind of glittery, dark thread. I still have to determine how I want to spin the batts — I don’t want them to blend too well so I don’t want to pull them into roving (which would only serve to help the fibers blend even more), so I’m thinking of simply pulling off hunks and spinning from the long side to get a definite woolen result. We’ll see how that goes. I really can’t wait to spin these and I’m hoping I’ll be able to begin them this weekend at the Issaquah Spin-In.

Don’t forget, check out more Fiber Arts Friday posts!

holy crap, i’m alive

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with an entertaining explanation as to why there’s been no updates to the site in the last couple of months — that I’d been asked to start an orphanage in the Congo; that I’d been told I’m the long lost and last living descendant of Scottish royalty and must take my place as the heir to the throne of Castle Lochbaron McCrankledoor. But in the end I decided that the truth was still pretty entertaining: I’ve taken a job in Washington state and have spent the last couple months moving, settling in, visiting family, and more.

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that’s right, I AM a bad ass.

Despite the fact that my picture graces the bulletin boards of every post office across the United States, my friend Matt saw fit to take me to a shooting range in which high-powered explosive weapons would be placed into my hands and I would be allowed — nay, encouraged — to fire them with willful abandon.
This isn’t entirely new to me. Back in high school I was in Marine Corps. Junior ROTC where I was not only a good shot on the air rifle team (I had a sharpshooter medal), but I was able to spend a week in full immersion at Parris Island, Marine Corps. boot camp. Part of the boot camp experience was the M-16 rifle course, and I’m proud to say that I didn’t do too badly, but that experience is a distant memory…

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a new design

It was about time the site got a makeover, and given that I’m employed in a job that requires graphic design skills, it seemed a shame to let my own site sit around looking like it was still wearing tab collars and bellbottoms (okay, before bellbottoms came back to be cool again).
Now you guys can finally see what it is I’ve been working on behind the scenes here, and I hope you like it. Not everything is finished yet, and in fact many things are still in transition. But given that most people are here to read my blog I thought that I could work on finishing up the rest of the site and make most of it live. You may find a broken link here and there or a page that hasn’t been converted over to the new design. Don’t worry…it’ll all be taken care of soon.

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let’s play catch up

Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Let’s do some catching up.
Last week I went up to Washington state for my dad’s wedding. It was a wonderful ceremony; he and my new mom/stepmom (either one is perfectly fine, I think) were married in her backyard at sunset in the rock garden that overlooks a cove off the Puget Sound on the Key Penninsula. There were about forty or fifty friends and family members, and we spent the day leading up to sunset having some wine and mingling and catching up with everyone. The ceremony lasted about ten or fifteen minutes; my sister Xoe and I walked our dad out, and then Molly’s daughter Stephanie walked Molly out. Stephanie’s two daughters carried the rings. It was lovely, of course, and everyone got all teary-eyed as you’re supposed to do at a wedding. I think the whole family feels the way Len and I do: we’re so happy to have Molly in the family, so everyone wish them a nice congratulations.
Apart from that, my time in July and August was spent in the garden, so let’s talk a little bit about that. Summer is just about over and I think I can say that for my first full-scale garden, I’ve had a pretty successful first run. Here’s a summary of each vegetable and how it’s done.
Beans
The beans are among the most successful of the garden veggies this year. I grew three varieties: Jacob’s Cattle dry beans, Brittle Wax beans, and Kentucky Wonder pole beans, an afterthought that I threw into the potato buckets slightly late in the season. Despite that, I’ve gotten at least a couple of bunches of them, and it was a good way to utilize the empty space in the potato buckets. The yellow wax beans have also done very well — I’ve gotten at least a couple of pounds from those, and man, are they tasty! I gathered only about a cup of Jacob’s Cattle beans, though; that should be enough for one good-sized batch of soup.
The only trouble with the bush beans is that they seem to take up a lot of space for their yield. I’d like to try and find a yellow wax pole bean and a dry pole bean as well — I plan to do quite a few more potato buckets next year in the driveway (since we have a lot of space in the corner) and would like to do all my beans in the buckets to leave more space in the garden.
Potatoes
I haven’t dug up the potatoes yet, but if the tops are any indication of how well they’re doing then they seem to be great so far. I’m growing two kinds: Peruvian Purple potatoes, and some run-of-the-mill white potato that my friend Rick gave us. The tops of the white potato have died off, so that means they’re ready to dig up. The tops on the purple potatoes are just about dead as well, so perhaps I’ll dig up all the potatoes tomorrow.
Peppers
Even though peppers are your standard garden vegetable that anyone can grow, they’ve done surprisingly poorly in my garden this year, but I believe that was my own fault and I think I know what I did wrong. I started them in tiny seed packs but never transferred them to anything larger; as a result, they were very small when I transplanted them and possibly nutritionally deprived. So unfortunately I got no purple or red bells like I’d planned. Bummer, especially since sweet peppers are one of my favorite veggies. The nursery transplants that I put in as a backup plan are doing fine, but while the peppers look beautiful they’re still green. I’m hoping they’ll turn red before it gets too cold. Finally, the chili peppers that I planted a bit late look beautiful, but they haven’t turned red yet, either.
Turnips
My turnips were so beautiful in the ground! They grew and grew and then poked their little purple shoulders up out of the ground. I dug them all up and they looked so nice and tasty. We put them in a pot for cleaning…and then let them sit too long because we didn’t have proper storage for them. As a result they rotted away and we never got a chance to taste them. I’m sad about that.
Beets
I had some beets in a plot. But Len, good-intentioned though he was, mistook them for weeds and tilled them in. D’oh.
Squash
I planted three types of squash this year, and like a completely newbie I planted two varieties — the Delicata and the Yellow Summer squash — too close to each other. As a result I’ve got two different squashes growing on one plant. It’s bizarre. And somehow the yellow squash plants died off and seemed to succumb to a bug or a disease, and so we only got one yellow squash off of them.
The zucchini, however, has been doing great (because you can’t kill zucchini if you try) and we’ve had several of those over the season. The Delicata squashes look wonderful and I’ll be picking those this weekend. We’ll see if cross-pollination has ruined them when I open them up for cooking.
Radishes
The radishes really seemed to take a long time to grow, and because of that they were really hot. I’ve planted a new variety not long ago, a Chinese radish, that looks interesting. Pictures will follow when they’re big enough to pull out of the ground.
Spinach
The spinach really did well this year, and unlike some spinach it didn’t have any E. Coli in it. I got about a salad and a half out of it, which means I definitely need to plant more next year. A couple of weeks ago I planted another batch.
Lettuce
Another very successful veggie in the garden. I really liked this variety (Yugoslavian Red), although some of the stuff I picked at the height of the summer heat was a little bitter, which was to be expected. The early stuff was deliciously sweet. I’d like to plant two or maybe three varieties next year, if I can spare the room. This and spinach are two vegetables that I’m going to try growing in the cool sunroom in containers over winter.
Tomatoes
These have to be put down as unsuccessful. Like the peppers, I started them a little late and kept them in small seed packs for too long; when I planted them their leaves were purple, which signified a lack of nutrition. Next year I plan to start them earlier and make sure I transplant them into larger pots before going into the garden so they get good and big before they’re set out.
We did try and plant the small seedlings we had in tomato buckets in order to grow them upside down. We’re going to try this next year, too. The one seedling that lived, though, seemed to do really well until it was plucked, I’m guessing, right out of the pot by a bird. I went out one day and it was gone.
The nursery Brandywine transplants that I put in are doing very well, though, and Len says they’re very tasty tomatoes (I’m not a tomato fan myself).
Carrots
I didn’t get to plan that many of these this year and I wasn’t really sure they’d grow at all because my soil wasn’t the nice, light soil that carrots love. I didn’t pick a few out of the ground, though, and while they were short and stubby they were also pretty tasty. Next year I’ll be added sphagnum moss into the soil to help lighten it up and make it a little softer for the carrots. I got some Purple Haze carrot seeds to try for next year — purple carrots!
Brussels Sprouts
These are a late veggie so they haven’t produced any sprouts yet, but the plants themselves look nice and healthy. We’ve got twelve plants out there; that should give us a great yield.
Broccoli
I think the broccoli was my favorite vegetable from the garden this year next to the beans and spinach. I have never eaten broccoli so tasty and fresh before. It didn’t need anything on it, just a bit of steaming and it was good to go. I thought that cutting off the shoots and then the subsequent side shoots would be the only harvest I’d get, but each plant kept producing quite a bit. I didn’t plant that much, so we only got a tiny bit each meal, but if I plant just a few more next year we should have a great harvest.
Watermelon
Last year our watermelons did all right, but this year I’ve got only one growing out there. Not sure why that is.
Currants
We picked about two gallon-sized plastic bags of currants this year! They’re sitting in the freezer just waiting to be turned into something. I’m mostly likely going to make some jam out of them, and maybe I’ll try a pie.
Raspberries
Last year we got a ton of raspberries. This year, we didn’t get to them fast enough and the birds took them. Better luck next year, I guess. That’s another sad loss this year. I love raspberries.
Chives
We have chives growing at the side of the house, and they’ve done well since we’ve lived here. Tasty stuff!
I’ve learned a lot this year, and the gardening season isn’t over yet — I still have some of my cold-weather stuff to grow and harvest, and I’m planning on growing stuff in containers in the house as well. Next year, wish me luck on more successful tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies. I’ll also take a picture of the front of the house to show how well all the flowers are doing.
I’ve got some other stuff to write about but I’ll save it for later this weekend and let this post steep a little bit like a fine tea.

gaming and girls

A couple of things.
First, Richard Cobbett has written a side-splitting article that will teach anyone how to write the perfect article about women and video games. If you aren’t aware, the consummate article about women in video games is one of the most popular cliches in gaming journalism, and I can’t say that I haven’t committed some of those cliches myself when I was in gaming journalism. I believe the subject of women who play video games, why they do, and what they look for in a video game as opposed to men is still an interesting subject, but it’s very difficult to write about it without reducing it to a page of tired and rehashed bullet points that include Lara Croft, men playing a female avatar for a day in an MMORPG, and how women — as if we’re one amorphous blob of conformity — want heavy social interaction in their games. Richard Cobbett highlights all of these in his great satirical article.
Recently I was approached by a friend at GameSpy that I used to work with; he and I had talked in the past about a good regular column about gaming and women in games done right, and he recently asked me if I was interested in doing it and if I’d do a sample article for them. To be honest, I’ve been struggling with writing something that doesn’t fit the cliches. I’m still trying to decide what kind of article would fit into such a column that I’d be happy with writing. My feeling is that there’s value in an article that discusses video games from a woman’s perspective. I do believe that while all women are different — as Hellchick I, along with Stevie “Killcreek” Case and a few others, have been the token female first-person shooter gamer examples of women who don’t fit the assumption of what women want out of video games — there are some very interesting sociological areas of discussion having to do with gender and video games. How to explore these in a regular column without being a qualified sociologist myself is the trick; I don’t want to just write a regular column about what games I’m currently playing.
The other thing I wanted to mention is the cool gaming bracelet featured in the picture above. A friend at work saw this charm bracelet featured on Girlz Gaming House — the charms are weapons from Quake 4, the game we made at Raven. A bunch of us loved it. It turns out that the web site was having a contest and these were the prizes, so I entered, and apparently a couple of other colleagues did, too. And the shameful thing is that I pulled out all the stops — I namedropped like a shameless hussy, including “Hellchick” and “Raven Software” and “We made Quake 4″ in my contest entry.
The guy running the site wrote all three of us from Raven who entered and said that he’d be happy to just send us some bracelets. We got them the other day and they’re fantastic! I’m planning to put mine proudly on my purse.

preserving preserves

Preserving and canning is something I’d never done before, but with the prospect of a huge garden and the fact that I picked gallons of berries from our yard last year, it was something I knew I’d want to do eventually.
My mother-in-law is the queen of preserving, and last year she’d sent me an entire kit: a boiling-water canner complete with tongs, magnetic lid lifter, funnel, jar lifter…the works. I called her for tips this week and decided to just jump in and give it a try because I still had gallons of currants and at least a couple of cups of raspberries in the freezer. And with the good weather coming, I figured I’d better do something with them now as I was going to get just as many berries this year. I also figured now was a good time to practice since I’m planning a huge garden this year and expect to have plenty to preserve at the end of the summer.
The first attempt today yielded something, but I’m not entirely sure it’s something edible. Following a recipe from the Ball company preserving bible, I cooked two cups of raspberries with two cups of currants and lots of sugar. I got it to gelling consistency when I realized that I still needed to replace the pot that was boiling the jars on the stove with the canner, and that the water in the canner needed to get to boiling temperature before I could fill the jars and put them in. By the time I organized everything, the fruit had gone a bit beyond gelling to candy-like consistency, and I have a feeling that when I open the jars they’ll actually be filled with raspberry-currant candy instead of the jam I had tried to make.
But Len realized that we could free up the burner on the stove by boiling the jars in a pot on the little portable burner that we use for our shabu shabu pot. So I took another four cups of currants from the gallon bag in the freezer — leaving another half bag in there still — and made another batch. This one came out much better and I think I’ve got my technique down now.
Tomorrow I’ll get to open up the half-jar that I filled with the last bits and check it out. If it’s good, then my friends can look forward to having jars of preserves foisted upon them later on.

hellchick 2.0 model update

Since a Mr. PenguinX asked what the latest news was on the model, I thought I’d put up a quick update.
Practically as soon as Paul put up his concepts, he got several emails from modelers in the community asking if they could model her. He told them that as long as I was given the rights to distribute the model, he was fine with people taking a stab at modeling her.
One modeler in particular has really made some progress on her. So much so that this is probably going to be the first model to be released based on the concepts. I think it’s fantastic work, especially the z-brush pass on her horns on the second page, which is where I snagged the pic from. (By the way, the page contains nudity and copious discussions of nudity. You’ve been warned.)
Arshlevon is doing fantastic work. I’ve emailed him to let him know how much I love the model so far and I’ll be promoting her here as soon as he’s done with her.
More on the comic as it progresses. And it’s definitely progressing…Paul has done all the roughing out of the comic pages and is now working on the detailed line work. Progress!

sickness HAT TRICK!

So over a week ago I started coming down with what I thought was a cold. I don’t like running off to doctors at the sign of a sniffle, so I let it run its course thinking that in about three days I’d start feeilng better. That didn’t happen. After about eight days I was still getting worse. And Len had whatever it was, too. Then this morning at about 4 a.m. I woke up feeling fluid in my ears. When I moved, I felt a crackling and then a POP! and a clear, sticky fluid came out of my ears.
Stuffy nose? Eh, it’s a cold. Fluid leaking out of your ears? Proooobbbbably a sign that you should see a doctor. A call to the nurse’s hot line confirmed this.
So we trundled in and found out that yes, I have a perforated eardrum, which was caused by a sinus infection coupled with developing walking pneumonia.
I hope I didn’t infect any of my coworkers this week.

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