Thank you for not being perky

BEFORE:

So Badger came over on Friday and was all brutal and making fun of me and all my crap. But she whirled through my stuff while I dithered and tried to pause to go through and old pbin of post cards or photos or started to sort my 57 billion pairs of tights. She would slap my hand and say NO! we are decrufting on a grand scale! not going through minutia!

And so it went.

We whisked through my front shelves and the coat rack area. Moved upstairs to the bedroom and did a quick tidying job and then moved my sewing stuff from there into the craft room. You can now see the floor in the craft room. it isnt organized but everything is at least close to in the right place AND most importantly I feel a great weight has lifted off me and I can finally go in there and feel like I can get something done. Before it was all too oppressive and depressing.

This is the view looking towards the closet/walkway to our bedroom. You can see we are beginning to stack up bins of fabric over there by the wall. And you can see the clear barrier/railing that Vim put up a few weeks ago to keep Jack from falling to his doom. It’s very cute althoguh you can’t tell that from the blurry picture.

Here is a view of the floor! exciting! We had to stop at one point becauses I started getting hives from all the dust and I drank a bunch of benedryl and started getting sleepy. Also, Vim and Jack got home and Jack was needing attention.

I will take some after photos later!

well, my dress is almost finished. Yesterday I worked on sewing on the second to last piece. I had nightmares about it after I went to bed. The dress was 4 inches too short somehow and made me look fat.

The piece I have left to sew is the next collar point piece. I think that the front facing and collar on this dress were needlessly complicated AND the worst part is that when I was ironing on the fusible interfacing I kept messing it up and finally I was like, “fuck this noise, I’m moving on.” And now I am paying the price because the facing pieces are sort of rumply and the interfacing is coming off. The second I wash this dress that shit is going to fall right off. SONOFABITCH!

I keep day dreaming about the NEXT thing that I am going to sew and how rad it will be. hahahaha. I have to stop myself from abandoning this dress.

I’m thinking of ways I could salvage the facing problem, I could rip it all off or I could quilt it. man, I have no clue. I decided to use white pearly snaps applied with my fancy new industrial snap putter oner. I’ll try to finish it tonight or tomorrow.

Look at all the cute dresses on this site: http://www.angelfire.com/planet/getgoretro/dresses.html!

crappy blurry picture of my dress in progress:

I like new years. I like thinking about what I did over the last year and dreaming up new shit to do. It’s hard ot remember all the things I did this year!

In 2008 I:
went to Hawaii
camped out at the ranch
quit my day job
got better at and had more fun parenting a toddler
made some friends
blogged a lot
sold my crafty stuff at a craft fair
got way way better at sewing
tried a variety of new crafty things

Some basic goals have for 2009 are:
make more money crafting and blogging
learn some spanish? (i’m not sure if I am fully behind this one yet)
get even better at sewing - finish some clothing
use back up care more often
get massages
get some other regular childcare
budget
lose weight/get stronger

Also make these salted caramel cupcakes.

2008 rocked compared to 2007 and I’m anticipating 2009 will be even better.

By now is everyone realizing the problem with using your own cloth grocery bags?

That’s right, no steady stream of free small garbage bags for your bathroom/kids room trash bin.

So now I have to go BUY my own garbage bags?! Fuck no. Unless the grocery store plans on giving me a small box of small kitchen garbage bags then I am going to continue forgetting the cloth bags in my trunk every single time I go to the store.

I’m posting over at indie crafts everyday and I have a really hard time not swearing and being a sarcastic ass most of the time. Crafts are cheerful and homey and fun you FUCKERS! get with it.

Last night in the bath I had about 67 million crafty idea for the new year (kill me now) and also realized that once Christmas is over (plus one more small quick project before new years) and I will be home free as far as crafting for other folks is concerned. Not that I don’t love crafting stuff for my family… it’s just the deadlines that kill me. When I was in school a deadline was a surefire way to see me hiking along the ocean or crying in bed or anything except doing what needed to be done. And at work usually a deadline meant freaking out and begging other people to help me and now here I am whinging about having to craft presents for my family. Will I never be satisfied?!

I think i half-assedly tried to list out some new year crafty projects in a previous post but it doesn’t come near to scratching the surface. I ordered a bunch of vintage patterns on etsy and I am having dreams about slips. I want to make slips. full slips, half slips, split slips… er any other kind of slip you can think of. pretty frothy ruffled ones… plain black ones, oh which reminds me why did I not buy that old’s 80’s crinoline pattern from the antique store?!? Shit. Now I have to go back there probably with a baby in tow and said baby is GRABBY and SQUIRMY and QUICK. Also, SCREAMY.

I went to Church of Craft this Sunday and lugged my huge sewing machine along. I sewed two pillowcases as presents and worked on my dress some. The collar is killing me. I powered through (not an ideal thing to do while sewing) and I think I have the thing attached right. But the pattern blows. It says to baste the collar on but then nowhere in the rest of the pattern instructions do I see instructions on when to actually SEW IT ON. in a sturdy fashion.

I need to find an easier dress pattern. I have some possible candidates but I may just end up taking one of those ‘make a pattern from a ready to wear dress’ classes. I have this cute little rockabilly-esque see through black dress that I would love to replicate.

Here are a few possible patterns:
very easy

okay I’m too lazy to keep searching right now. Any dress pattern suggestions?

Test from scribe fire:

Looking for cute and easy dress pattern. HALP!

I was just making handkerchiefs because they were pretty, and I could, and I wanted to buy that outrageously expensive fabric. My sister bought one from me (actually one made from one of my old skirts…) and she said she loved it and used it all the time.

I am now a convert. These things are cute and great to use to wipe a little kids nose. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend that you haul off and blow your nose super hard when you have a snotty cold…
But for delicate lady like nose wiping they are great and they don’t come part in your pocket and when you accidentally wash them they don’t shred all over the place and force you to spend forever picking little balled up pieces off your other clothes.

Have you ever cooked an onion and had it smell horrible and tinny? I have been making beef stroganoff since I was like 15 and one time when I was about 25 I made it and when I cooked the onion part the tinny smell happened and ruined the entire batch. and so I went back to the store got more stuff and ruined ANOTHER batch. horrible! I forget why this happens, but at the time there was NO GOOGLE. y’all remember the days before GOOGLE? I mean, there was yahoo and stuff, like Alta Vista and Excite, pale comparisons.

Anyway, I think it has to do with the heat being too high and not enough oil? anyone know? Google is actually failing me right now… (FAIL).

At the time I thought something was horribly wrong with me. Like, I was getting old or turning into a horse.

Minnie’s Comfort Food Beef Stroganoff Recipe
Warning: This recipe contains no actual measurements and lots of swear words.
Beef - I usually get pre-cut stir fry beef, a pound or pound and a half. DO NOT accidentally buy stew meat. No.
Mushrooms - get some. I get small brown ones and sometimes a portabello too. You can use white button mushrooms if you have to but the brown ones have a much earthier, buttery, nuttier flavor that I like.
onion - one yellow onion
sour cream - go ahead and get the full fat kind. If you are on some diet that requires caloric restriction do not under any circumstances attempt to make this recipe.
chicken broth - I always buy the low sodium kind ina box - 32 ounces. Then I add an assload of salt.

Cut up the beef into bite sized pieces. Girl bit sized pieces not guy bite sized.
on a dinner plate put some flour, salt and pepper and add the beef cubes. Coat thoroughly. Do not walk away and let the flour commingle with the gross beef juiciness so that it get sticky.
in a large pan (not a non-stick one) put in some olive oil AND butter. look, don’t question me. Oil and butter.
Heat it up.
add the beef.
While the beef is cooking cut up the mushrooms to your desired mushroom chunk size.
cut up the onion into small small pieces because nothing is grosser than a slab of onion.
The meat should be nicely browned. If it got all gunky than you did something wrong. The meat should brown and leave brown stuff on the pan. use your metal spatula to sort of scrap up the brown stuff.
Remove the meat from the pan.
add more oil and butter.
add the onions and cook until it starts to get translucent and then add th mushrooms. Cook until the mushroom do that thing where they release all the water in them and start to get brown.
add the meat
cook for a bit. salt if desired.
add in about 16 ounces of chicken broth and simmer with cover on for however long.
check it and stir every once in a while.
uncover and turn the heat way up. add more broth. get annoyed that it isn’t thickening and add some flour of cornstarch stuff.
I like to have a lot of sauce but not watery. you can tell your sauce is the right consistency if you scrap your metal spatula along the bottom of the pan, parting the sauce and you can see the bottom of the pan for about 3 seconds before the sauce covers up the bottom of the pan again.
turn off heat.
add desired amount of sour cream.
mix up.

oh yeah and all this time you have also been making elbow noodles.
put cooked elbow noodles in a bowl cover with strog. add a small dolop of sour cream if you want.

It’s even better the next day.

It’s amazing how little you (and by you I mean me) can manage to get one in 3 hours. I’m still working on my dress in fits and starts a little here and there.

Months ago I had a huge tearful saga about the sleeves. Who knew sleeves were such little bitches? I had made a pattern adjustment ot the sleeves but when it came time to sew them in they seemed HUGE. So I at first assumed that I had fucked up the adjustment and I went through this absurd range of emotions. Mostly about how I was DOOMED TO FAIL. Recriminations about my idiocy and incompetence were flung at my head, there were tears involved and a certainty that I would never succeed at anything EVER in my entire life. Sometimes I wonder how I have made it this far in life…

But as it turns out the adjustments were correct and I am NOT DOOMED. Cap sleeves are apparently a bitch and take practice (shocker) and there is a crapload of ironing involved.

The sleeves are done and came out pretty well with only a little bit of accidental pleating. Now, I am on the collar and front facing.

I have another sinking feeling that it isn’t going to fit very well also that it is too busy with the bird fabric. DAMMIT. I feel sad.

I’ve decided that I am too wishywashy to accept custom orders. Right now that is. I think in order to do so you have to lay out parameters and stick with them and you have to have a selection, on hand, of choices for the customer. It can’t just be all nebulous like the one I am working on right now. I said something like, “oh, I’ll put some black lace on it”. But really, I don’t have black lace on hand that is appropriate and whatever black lace is in my vision may not be what is in the customers vision AT ALL. There’s no way to know. Now, if I had had two kinds of black lace and had them photographed and sent them to the client for her to choose then that would have worked out fine. ALAS.

So yeah, it’s a learning process for me.

Craft fairs, what think ye? Is it just me or were there like 45,000 craft fairs this season? I didn’t make it to all of them and missed the stupid crucible one! wtf?! I had it on my calender and the day of I was all, “we’re going to the crucible fair!” and then we didn’t. I don’t know what that’s about.

I did well and had fun at the BB. It is an established fair that gets a good turn out. I also did a tiny craft fair at a bar on Sunday night last. The Okalnd DIY one. It was fun and I could tell that the organizer worked hard to do all the organizing. However, it was at a dumb time and while I loved the venue as a bar it might not attract the right crafty buying sort of crowd. With more and better advertising it could work though. For the most part I was thinking, “WHY am I freezing my ass off in the rain on a Sunday night with the scungiest 20 yr old boy (not quite) hipsters on the planet in this dive bar?!” aHhahahah

Anywho. I’m not sure how people end up making a living doing this or if they actually ever do. Especially with out getting burned out. I’m kind of finally sick of making spats!

It has been quite a week. Last time we sent out an update NIMBY still
needed $17,000 to pay the $36,000 security deposit this week and cover
the costs of moving. That number is now only $3,300.

Ways to Donate:

PayPal: NIMBYLLC@yahoo.com
website: http://www.nimbyspace.org
Contact Rachael at rachael@nimbyspace.org for info on tax-deductible or
in-kind donations.

Something amazing happened in this past week. The entire community has
rallied around NIMBY to make sure it can get through this transition and
continue to serve the DIY/ Art community. Donations have poured in from
all over the world, many from people who have never been to NIMBY and
perhaps never even seen art created at NIMBY. Organizations such as
Burning Man, MAKE Magazine, The Shipyard, The Crucible and many others
have all pitched in financial support. Countless people have forwarded
NIMBY emails on to their lists, worn NIMBY T-Shirts to events they were
at, and passed out NIMBY fliers. It has worked. We have overcome what
may have seemed impossible obstacles because of your support.

At this time we only have another $3,300 to go to cover the costs of
moving. This is a very small number and we know we can raise the
remainder. If you have been waiting to donate, please take this
opportunity to be a part of making NIMBY 2.0 a reality.

We are also still need of people to help with the move itself. There is
a lot still to be torn apart and packed up at the old NIMBY. Moving 40
containers and countless truckloads of junk will also require help.
Email rachael@nimbyspace.org if you want more details on how to get
involved.

Ways to Donate:

PayPal: NIMBYLLC@yahoo.com
website: http://www.nimbyspace.org
Contact Rachael at rachael@nimbyspace.org for info on tax-deductible or
in-kind donations.

What is NIMBY?

For the past five years NIMBY has been a space where artists, craftsmen
and tinkerers can create the new, the impossible, and the never seen
before. Many of the pieces at Burning Man, Coachella, the Maker Fair and
The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival are created and stored at NIMBY.
NIMBY not only offers space to create, but supports its artists with
resources, assistance in sourcing re-purposed material, as well as
logistical and technical guidance. Snook, the founder of NIMBY, is known
in the community as the guy to call when technical or logistical issues
seem insurmountable. This supportive culture shared by all members of
the NIMBY community is at the root of the amazing art that emerges from
its doors.

NIMBY has been the birthplace of Dance Dance Immolation, the Steam Punk
Tree House, Colossus, The Kinetic SteamWorks steam ship, Spike’s Vampire
Bar and so much more. NIMBY has hosted such epic events as Lost Vegas,
Eat Drink and Be Mary, Fight Night, Thunderdome, and the NIMBY Circus.
At the new NIMBY we are working to create a 30,000 square foot event/
gallery space with permanent installations of Michael Christian’s IT,
The Steam Punk Tree House, Colossus and the Big Rig Jig.

The City of Oakland has rolled out the red carpet to help. Trucking,
architectural drawings, contractors, and materials are all lined-up to
move in and build-out the new space. We also have 5 years of heart,
gumption and making it work behind us – but we need your support of a
donation.

Be a part of keeping NIMBY alive.

WHY DONATE?

NIMBY has served the community as Bay Areas largest DIY/ Industrial Art
Space. Most Bay Area artists who create large-scale work depend on NIMBY
for support.

Created at NIMBY:
Colossus - http://zacharycoffin.com/colossus/
Steam Punk Tree House - http://www.steamtreehouse.com/
Kinetic Steam Works - http://www.kineticsteamworks.org/
Dance Dance Immolation - http://www.interpretivearson.com/projects/ddi/
Cleavage in Space - http://images.burningman.com/index.cgi?image=12425

And the current home of:
Flaming Lotus Girls Serpent Mother -
http://www.flaminglotus.com/serpent_mother/Serpent_image_gallery/
Michael Christians IT - http://www.michaelchristian.com/

Check out more of our photos:
http://www.nimbyspace.org/?page_id=46

And artists:
http://www.nimbyspace.org/?page_id=32NIMBY

I’ll be at the The Oakland DIY Holi-DIY Expo at the Stork Club in Oakland tomorrow night selling spats. I’m looking forward to being at least a little bit raunchy with some elves and having a few drinks and selling a few pairs of spats.

I’m kind of not prepared for it as I slacked off all week. I need to bring lighting of some sort…

Slacking off is good but I feel an ever increasing number of projects sneaking up behind me. Curtains for Jacks room, my dress(!), shirts for Jack and pants.. um… other stuff. Smoking jackets, hat making.

And before I do any of that I need to get cracking on my Christmas presents. I think I’ll make white chocolate cacao nib bark again and also spicy hot chocolate.

Letly I’ve been drinking Dark and Stormies: dark rum, lime juice, ginger beer, lime wedge, candied ginger slice.

Someone told me about the Earl Greyhound, Earl grey infused vodka with grapefruit juice, which I am now dying to try. It’s not like I frequent fancy bars anymore and have the latest in drinks at my finger tips so I’m going to have to get crafty and make my own tea infused vodka.

How to make Tea Infused Vodka

Get some vodka, preferabley good vodka
get some loose leaf tea, in a pinch you could open a bag of tea
put loose tea in vodka
leave for 3 hours
strain tea out of vodka
prepare your favorite cocktail

I’m making earl grey vodka and green tea infused vodka today and I’ll let you know how it goes.

omfg i am so in love with these!

Link from rabittooth
via Make
*dies laughing*

You suck with your stupid outrageously priced ‘priority mail’. Priority mail is a load of shit and is in no way worth a free box. go fuck yourself.

I have taken 46 thousand free boxes from you and will now painstakingly turn them inside out just so that I can turn the tables and screw you out of some money.

love,
Minnie

Bazaar Bizarre was fun!

I went over to the county fair building on Saturday to help with general set up (btw, it’s great fun to volunteer at this sort of thing) and, because I am weird like that, had a satisfying time setting up a million tables.

I slacked a bit with my gigantic coffee and pondered setting up my table. I didn’t need much room and the stuff I bought fit on my table pretty well. I went with the taupe velvet curtain panel from Ikea and couple of cute pieces of luggage to use as display.

On Friday Vim took a special trip to work to make me a laser cut sign. and it’s his own design! It looks good no? I wonder if it would look good silk screened on to a t-shirt?

Sunday I picked up my friend G and she helped me arrange. I was very glad she could come with me in the morning as I needed her organizing, arranging mojo. With out her I would have been all dithery and annoying.

Sorry for the gross camera phone pics. I forgot the camera. Which I REALLY regret since I could have taken pictures for a good vendor round up post on the Bazaar Bizarre Blog. Darn it!

I had a moment of sudden realization that spats are pretty.. er… specialized. Mostly everyone wears jewelry but surely only a very few will be remotely interested in spats. But dammit, spats are so cheerful. I swear when I wear them it make my day. I like the casual split toes to wear everyday with jeans and at the fair I wore some fancier grey velvet with jet buttons ones with a skirt.

I sold about half of my spats (17 pairs about) and made enough money to feel pleased with myself. Enough money to feel like I DESERVE a present. hahahaha.

I am now moving on to Spats V3.0. These will be taller and the buttons will be more towards the front and in a curvier line. Also the under shoe elastic needs to be adjustable to accomodate platforms and heel-less boots. I need to create a whole new pattern and also, since I have lost the first one, make a new pattern for men’s spats. All of which, of course, will be posted here for free for NON COMMERCIAL use.

I’ve been making spats and reading more crappy romance novels. Vim’s cat died and Jack has all his teeth (totally unrelated things).

The black and white spats have pink silk lining and velvet buttons. The other one is authentic Burberry raincoat fabric and has cheerful cloud lining (one cloud in there has a cute silver lining embroidered by me). I think I will use this neutral velvet curtain from Ikea as my tablecloth at the fair.

I go set up tomorrow!

I love the argyle ones with the star and flower buttons. OMG> I crack myself up. I also have an amusing pair that has silver ric rac. heh.

While Jack was napping the other day I whipped up a bunch of these lingerie bags out of the silk tie fabric samples that I got at East Bay Depot for Reuse. They are cute but nothing special. I kind of thought I needed a lower priced item to have displayed… I’m not sure how to price them.

Oh! and I did actually get approved to accept CC at the fair even though I waited until the very last second to unprocrastinate my ass and call them. Now I have to figure out how to take them…
a crayon and paper? Wha? To unprofessional you say?

I have not forgotten about you. Srsly. I know you are old and gray by now and have forgotten you ever entered a crappy internet contest that some jerkwad put on her blog but REST ASSURED! I actually have crap for you and actually thought about and have actually been living with massive guilt that I have not sent anything out yet.

GUILT! I tell you! I am great at living with a nagging little guilt. My eyeballs can smoothly slide over the package by the door way for YEARS before I remember to actually pick it up while I’m on my way out the door.

i have a few baby free hours tomorrow and will be picking things up, putting them in my car then taking them to the post office, all addressed and ready to go. I will not forget my wallet. I swear.

I posted recently about my unsatisfactory dentist experience and the saga continues.
After a posting that post I waited a week or so and then finally remembered to put up my YELP review of the dentist. In it I stressed how mice and pleasant the staff was. It’s true, they were very nice. If they had been mean, rude, abrupt or treated me like a piece of meat on an assembly line I would have been annoyed certainly. But also, I just DO NOT need to be treated like an old friend either. I don’t need that fake small town familiarity, in fact, I find it offensive. Apparently, so I understand, some people like it. Because they are fucktards.

If I DID live in a small town and I went to the same dentist since I was wee or always went to the same grocery store with the same checker and our kids all went to school together or something I can see how that would be nice, and we would exchange pleasantries and talk about our lives and say Hi on the street and be on a first name basis. but that is not my life!! and i don’t want to pretend it is. So.. Dear grocery store clerks, STOP using my first name! and Dear Dentist, STOP sending me a THANK YOU CARD. wtf!

Oh anyway, so a few days ago I got a message on my answering machine from the dentist. She read the YELP review and called to apologize. and then, here’s the kicker, tells me that they actually charged me for a cleaning even though I did not receive that service. She wants to refund my money (DUH BEEYOTCH!) but asked in the message that I call her. Why did they charge me for something I didn’t get. I call bullshit!

WHY must I call her? She has my address. So why?

You might think that her calling to tell me they overcharged me would make me feel like all was right with the world and that people do the right thing. But you would be wrong. It makes me madder than a hornet that has just been fucked over by an immoral dentist in soccer moms clothing.

Thank you Fluevog, finally I can remember how to spell your name, also, for these cute boots:

Aren’t those cute?! But fuck all, I wish I could wear knee high boots or at least mid calf boots. I KNOW I am not the only woman in the history of boot wearing to have fat calves so come ON BOOT MAKERS! make some larger calved boots already.