missing those city nights…
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we're not kids anymore.

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@supersonar
missing those city nights…
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HD on my instagram
my shop
Art by CottonValent
Monstrosity I created while playing around with Autodesk Mudbox.
Bi pride chain maille bracelets! I had a lot of fun designing and making these, and I hope you guys have just as much fun wearing them. :)
Get yours on Etsy at listing/682364284
So for my birthday, I had put up some random dinosaur twirly hanging decorations. I didn’t want to take them down, so for Mardi Gras, I took some Mardi Gras paper napkins and taped them to the dinosaurs. Truly the best thing I have ever done in my life.
My latest commission - Raspberyl from Disgaea 3! There are magnets embedded in her hands and spellbook, and wire in her horns, wings, and tail for maximum posability. This one was a lot of work, but a LOT of fun too.
So after learning to crochet this summer, I was left with a bunch of random items like flowers, granny squares, and practice stitches. I decided to take them all apart and put them back together again into a single work. I liked a pattern my Mom had brought home for a popcorn granny, so I decided to turn all my white and rainbow yarn scraps into popcorn grannies. I tried out a “join-as-you-go” method I’d seen online, stitching the squares together as they were made. I discovered the importance of staggering short and long scraps: it turns out that if you use too many short ones in a row, you’ll end up trying to stitch over the tops of 5 different tails and that whole row of stitches will end up looking bloated and distended. (I had to rip everything back out and try again.)
I’m not sure if it was because a) I have a death grip and make everything too tight; b) my two yarns weren’t actually exactly the same size; or c) I didn’t do the join-as-you-go process right, but somehow my square of granny squares didn’t look very squarish. I was almost out white yarn by this point but still had a bunch of rainbow yarn, so I tried to make the edge look better with a simple scallop border that hooked into the chain spaces. The scallop really made the edge look a lot better! I even took the rest of my white yarn and made little feet for the corners. (Note: I barely got the tassels through at this length. It would be wise to make them longer than I did here.)
I still have a tiny bit of rainbow yarn left, but I largely succeeded in my mission to re-purpose all my “homework assignments” and scraps!
This summer, I learned to crochet! It was sort of by accident, too. It was my Mom who wanted to learn to crochet, so a brother of mine signed her up for a class at the local university. My sister and I decided to study her lessons when she got home, so we could all learn to crochet together. I had a heck of a time understanding anything out until I discovered the existence of rainbow yarn, which allowed me to finally figure out where my stitches were and what my yarn was doing when I pulled it through. I ended up doing all my lessons with a combination of white and rainbow yarns, just because it was the easiest for me to see what was going on.
With the family cat helpfully sitting on all our patterns, my Mom and my sister and I worked our way through basic stitches (chains, slips, single, double, triple, various 2- and 3-togs, popcorns, and so on) and patterns (flowers, granny squares, waves, chevrons, and so on). The above are all my “homework assignments,” although I kind of basically did what I felt like, since I wasn’t actually enrolled in the class.
Hey, all! I'm Alex aka kiwoa and I need help - I'm moving to Chicago! Which is awesome! It's my dream, really. Moving is expensive, though, and while we had good intentions, we got pressured into applying for an apartment that, in retrospect, is not right for us. Like, AT ALL. Sadly, that means...
If you donate at least $25, I’ll send you a coupon code for that amount off any order from my Etsy shop. Please help if you can!
Signal boost!
When I was in undergrad, my friend Steve asked me what orange zest is. He and Jon were supposed to make pan de muerto for their Spanish class, but the recipe called for orange zest, and they were baffled. I told him it was the orange-colored part of the peel; you can take it off with a cheese...
Alex! Alex! I actually wrote this story up right after it happened! (It was... ten years ago, OMG!) If you want even more hilarious details, here you go! Taken from my journal, with a few edits for clarity. :)
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This year, as a group project for Spanish class, we were told to craft a traditional object, or cook a traditional food, for Día de los Muertos. I worked with my friend Jon, and we made two decent loaves of Bread of the Dead. Our friend Steve, a year below us in the Spanish program, worked with his classmates Priolo and Jiajing. Apparently, none of the three had ever cooked bread from scratch before, yet they attempted the exact same bread project Jon and I had.
The hilarity began immediately.
To begin with, the recipe for Bread of the Dead calls for orange zest. Not knowing what orange zest was, Steve asked our friend Alex. She told him that it involved grating the outer, orange part of the orange peel, but not the bitter white pith. This is, of course, entirely correct.
Steve began to grate the orange peel. After a while, however, he decided that it was too slow a process. So, he ditched the grater, took a knife, and chopped up centimeter-square chunks of whole orange rind, including the bitter white pith. These he dumped into the batter in place of orange zest.
Then, Priolo kneaded the dough. It’s normal for bread dough to get sticky while kneading; the solution is to add a handful of flour and continue kneading. Priolo, however, did not know this. So, when the dough got sticky, he poured cooking oil over the batter to make it slick. Yes, oil.
Eventually, Steve’s team got the dough kneaded up, and placed it in a bowl to rise. Now, this is where logic fails: for some inexplicable reason, they decided to put it in the freezer to rise. Because, clearly, microorganisms live and eat best in freezing temperatures. At least Jon caught this and corrected them before all their yeast had died.
Wonder of wonders, though, the bread did actually rise, and Steve’s team baked it and poured an orange glaze all over it. Steve alone had the courage to sample their creation. The verdict: the bread tasted greasy, and the orange chunks were, not unexpectedly, somewhat... bitter.
Things got even better the next day during Spanish class itself. Jon and I were in a different class than Steve; ours met later in the day. Upon arrival, everyone in the class shared the fruits of our labors, then settled down to start the lesson. Our professor, Señora Arjona, started off by telling us that all the food our class had produced was tasty and well-made. It contrasted greatly, she said, with some of the food brought in by the beginner’s class.
For example, she said, there was one group in the earlier class that had made what they claimed was Bread of the Dead. It didn’t look right, however; there were all sorts of yellow chunks in it. She had thought the chunks were kernels of corn, because that’s what they looked like, even though that made no sense. She was quickly disabused of this notion the instant she sampled the bread. It turned out, she said, that the yellow chunks were pieces of whole orange peel!
Señora Arjona then made a funny face, and concluded: boy, was it bitter!
Jon and I couldn’t stop laughing.
SPECIAL - any animal you want! My dog Opal has been having some rough times recently, and while she’s doing fine now, all the tests and x-rays and emergency care have put a big dent in my wallet. So, in order to try and recoup some of those costs, I’m offering a special deal: any animal (imaginary or real, any color, any mood, any expression) you want for only $50. No extra charge for pattern development, wire armature, etc., and just to sweeten the pot, if you order before 12/15, I promise you’ll have it before Christmas.
Plush are generally under 7”. Pictures are for style reference only; all of those plush (mantis, platypus, gorilla, cuttlefish, bearded vulture) are already claimed. :) Thank you! Note: While I will do my best to keep all dog hairs off of the plush, these do come from a pet-friendly home.
There are twelve spots available; when those run out, the deal is done!
Reblog! I have the mantis and it is gorgeous!
Alex Day 2014 : vociferous, purple, mantis : supersonar
OMG! Check out this awesome mantis, made for me all by hand by the incredible kiwoa! Can't wait to see it in person! <3
Photoshop drawing of me and my friend Alex as magical girls. I warped her designs into my own style.
So many grasshoppers. Seriously, there are a lot of grasshoppers here. And they blend in really well with concrete/asphalt, so when you walk down the sidewalk, it's like the sidewalk itself is disintegrating just ahead of you and reassembling elsewhere in your wake. (I haven't been walking the last couple of days, though, since the weather has been hitting 97+.)
No really, we have so many grasshoppers they are showing up on radar now.
Crane Fly
This guy was hanging out in the backyard today:
kiwoa replied to your post:Mustard
See, if you’d been eating a BIGHOTDOG.COM, that never would have happened.
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