crockpotcauldron

The misadventures of Mort continue! I have finally polished off my huge sketchbook. That thing has lasted me years! I already want a new one exactly like it, but I am going to be sensible and use up the other sketchbooks I already own.

Mort's latest:
https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682806052602986496/mort-has-made-it-to-firetop-mountain-its-going
https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682935912810905600/mort-tripped-over-a-rock-and-accidentally-threw

He's had a wild time! The barrel of dungeon juice turned out to be rum, which gave him 6 HP. He only had time to look at one thing in that room, so he lost out on looting a corpse which had a silver cross, a lot of gold, and the most enchanted sword in the game. But he got to drink that sweet, sweet mysterious dungeon liquid.

I have been steadily improving, and I think it's time to put some time into leveling up specific skills. Some expression studies, learning bones and muscles, hands, perspective, inking, shading. You know, everything. A bit daunting, but I have really been enjoying drawing lately.

It has been a while since I've played rpgs with friends, and I miss it, so the other day I pulled my copy of Deathtrap Dungeon off the shelf. For the first time, I decided to actually roll the dice instead of cheating my way through, and it's nowhere near as annoying as I thought it was in high school! You roll for skill, stamina, and luck, which you use to fight monsters and get through tricky situations. I spent a lot of time drinking Mysterious Dungeon Liquids, and I wholeheartedly recommend chugging as many as possible, even though one of them turned out to be acid that burned my jaw off. There's a certain charm to brutal old dungeon crawls. I spent some time mapping out the choice paths, and also doodling the funny bits. I figured, people treat video game protagonists like characters and write fanfic about them, so a choose your own adventure protagonist can be a character too. I have named him Mort Manifold, because he dies a lot.

I haven't warmed up to Dreamwidth's image hosting and I'm currently on mobile, so here are the Tumblr links.

https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682589702544670720/unearthed-my-old-copy-of-deathtrap-dungeon-and-im
https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682625568565608448/everything-is-going-great-for-mort-hes-a-well
https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682691840665927681/the-adventures-of-mort-manifold-continue-he-had-a

Drawing cartoons of the funny bits has always been one of my favorite parts of rpgs. I miss being able to hang out with my friends, but that won't be happening any time soon. Still, this was a fun set of afternoons, and I like how a lot of the doodles turned out! I have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain after this, but then I'm out of books. Back in high school I tried ordering an assortment of choose your own adventure books online going by the blurbs, but I only wound up liking two of them, so we'll see how it goes this time.

We don't have a tree this year. Haven't pulled down the tub of decorations from storage, haven't started cookies. I miss it, but also it's a lot of work. Most of it was for my grandma - she loves bubble lights and cookies, and we plan the menu around what she likes. I feel a bit disoriented - I feel like there's an Event coming, but there's nothing to say it's Christmas-specific. Could be a birthday, you know? We do have presents and a turkey, at least. I should wrap presents tomorrow.

I finished the presents for my parents. Here's the denim sashiko pouch for my dad: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJCQKfWDtqE/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
My first attempt at sashiko, and it didn't go too badly! I traced the pattern with a template I cut from a plastic lid, and I have no idea how people actually do this stuff - do they have a chalk carbon paper? A stamp? It came out a little wonky, but that's okay.

The cardinal and squirrel paper pieced pouch for my mom: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJCPyN_D9_f/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
I drafted those with Quilt Assistant, and I'm really getting the hang of how it works. The squirrel could be better, though - more of a curve on the back, more pieces to incorporate a leg and a lighter underbelly. I'm also, through brute force, getting better at installing zippers.

I'm supposed to be making stuff for my twin, the kiddo, more grandparents, friends, and guildmates. Instead, I am transcribing Slave Detective stories. Did I tell you I almost have the full set? Only four left to get, two of which are going to be easy to get. Through the grace of a private collector and what I suspect is a librarian, I got a couple dozen of them! I've been at this for a year and a half, though it feels like much longer. This year has felt very, very long. I have enjoyed transcribing the stories, though. It's very soothing to untangle OCR's nonsense and add stories to the archive. I am starting to consider what to do with the stories once I have the full set - obviously, I want to read through them for my own pleasure, with a sense of continuity. Lightly edit them to make sure the formatting is consistent across the series. Then perhaps see if Project Gutenberg wants them? I am not sure what to do with a book whose copyright has been undefended through decades of Mike Ashley republishing stories in anthologies, but which is not technically public domain yet, since it was published in the 50s and 60s. Or is it? It was published in England, not sure about their copyright law. I do kinda want to print out a copy for myself, but it's going to be around 400 pages, I think.

Anyway, tomorrow I will get back to sewing. I have a great idea for a present for the kiddo.

So I cleared my cookies and forgot this site existed. Ah well. Anyway, I've been down for a while because I strained my tendons making hexagons, and it turns out crafting was extremely good for my morale. Rest and calcium has turned me back into a reasonable human being. Where did I leave off?

The kitten was taken by a stray and feral cat charity, don't worry about it. The cats who actually belong in our house are doing well, and helping us with the iguana invasion, though they chicken out after a certain size.

I have been doing a bit of air dry clay sculpting, mostly little monster faces. No idea what to do with them, but they're fun to make. Maybe they will be dolls or mixed media art someday. I've been making postcards again, which is fun but I'm out of stamps and sulky that I can only order them in large quantities. I did figure out the post office website and send a package off, though - exciting news! A friend in my generation has picked up quilting! Apparently Gen Con is offering workshops. I've sent off supplies for the second wall quilt they have planned. Thrilled to be able to talk about quilt stuff.

I've been spending a lot of time trawling Project Gutenberg for free reads now that I can't get to the dime cart. I love the randomize button, there's a lot of weird shit out there. Highlights include Left To Themselves (a cute gay boy's adventure novel), many of the WWI POW escape memoirs, and the genre "sexy werewolf houseguest eats your children."

In non-mask news, the mystery game was great. I made myself a bowtie, dressed in my best James Bond outfit, and braided my hair all fancy (French braid bun with two extra little French braids leading back to it and wrapping around the base of the bun, looked cool as hell) and made a fancy little snack. The game itself was pretty good - I don't actually recommend using the hour timer if it's just the two of you chilling online. The game was more tactile than I expected for a box of paper, and the puzzles were decent. It was really nice to have a special occasion with a friend.

The next mystery is dentist-themed. I can work with that. Outfit, hairstyle (I'm thinking French herringbone braid), and snack, and a few hours of puzzles with a friend. After that, space station, which we are both really looking forward to. After that, either buy some expansion packs on eBay, or start writing my own.

Mask production continues. We have made a decent amount and are packing them to mail off, so I've taken the time to do some recreational sewing. I made a little appliqué wall quilt of an alien chilling in a spaceship with a robot cat. It's a lot like that goofy UFO one I made a while back. It was fun and relaxing. I'd link a photo, but I still have to quilt it. I liked the challenge of putting together a picture from the scraps I had available - it kind of forces creativity and flexibility. My guild is doing a phone tree, so I've been chatting with various quilters, and a lot of em have tons of unfinished projects and stockpiles of fabric, so they're set for a while. It's good to have indoors hobbies at a time like this. I have a few IKEA storage cube drawers of cloth, which is a decent amount, and I like scrappy quilts to begin with, so I'm gonna be okay. I've been smashing a lot of needles on the dang mask nose wires, but I have a lot of needle packs. I know how to service my own machine, so I'm good on that front. Batting is going to be the sticking point for me, but there's no law saying I have to emerge from quarantine with completed quilts.

I have put together 340 hexagons this month, in between other things. That's a fifth of the quilt. While I am happy to have visible progress, I also really just want the quilt already, and a fifth seems like a pittance, especially since my rosy-eyed goal for the month was almost half a quilt. I have begun bribing myself with stickers. I'm gonna have at least 70 cute little stickers at the end of this.

I have learned several valuable lessons so far:

1) Don't make a large quilt by hand out of small hexagons
2) Stop using questionable fabrics and small seam allowances
3) If your pattern tesselates, you really do have to accurately cut your templates
4) It's easier to make progress if you don't let the numbers intimidate you

But also I just really want the dang quilt finished and on my bed.

With the Great Unpacking comes examination of stuff I have. Fabric gets washed, examined, and sorted. Things get categorized. Works in progress get judged. And boy are there works in progress. A short list, in order of likely finishes:

1) Bears for charity: hate em, but by god I'm getting em out of my sewing room. Faces are on, I'm nearly done stitching, then it's just clip, flip, and stuff, and send off with a ribbon. I can certainly donate some ribbon and juvenile fabric to go with em.

2) Needlebooks: piece the insides, sandwich, quilt, flip, cut and add pages. No big deal, and I need these suckers done by the next guild meeting.

3) Dwarf quilt: still needs a dwarf, a hobbit, and a wizard. Gloin's cloak needs redoing with a less glaringly white cloth. The blocks need to be picked clean of paper, trimmed, and adjusted for equal width across the quilt. Gotta interface and add the gold road, maybe add borders, hunt down batting, sandwich, quilt, bind, and add hanging sleeve and rod. I'm very stoked about this project.

4) Laundry hamper: I still need it, but I'm scared of buttonholes. I'm gonna have to use the buttonhole function on Otto for the very first time. I got the white velcro for it, at least! I also have more canvas now, so even if I fuck up the cutting again, I'm safe.

5) Blue and orange hexagons: I'm having a great time. Four nights of sewing turned 48 hexagons into a 10 by 10 inch block (it's hard to measure hexagons so I'm being conservative here). That is not fast at all, but also it's adding up. Sooner or later it will be something.

Other stuff: eh. Who knows. Might get around to it. A lot of it is really dependent on stash - if I don't have the material or equipment for something, it lingers on the backburner forever and I eventually get enthusiastic about a different project. I currently have in the tub some cat mats that just need quilting, some scattered blocks for a Homestuck quilt I started for a friend forever ago, some leftover blocks from a quilt for me, a quilt for me that needs quilting but the curvy quilting kills my tendons, paper pieced wolves, some goldfish platform shoes that need new plastic tops for their compartments, a pillow I might or might not turn into a wall quilt, and a scavenged old block that needs cleaning and then it might become a pillow.

That's just the stuff that physically exists right now. I have fabrics and stuff for plenty more projects, as well as patterns and vague plans for more. But hey, things are progressing. My little bulletin board has been quite good at making me think about all the stuff I have in the works.

We've pulled the old Tetanus Express out of storage, blasted off the grime, and started to look into our repair options. My parents say I'm not allowed to call it the Tetanus Express. I have gotten a lecture on the actual ways in which tetanus is transmitted. It's a Singer 66K with Lotus decals and a two-drawer treadle, made in 1910. It's honestly not in too rough condition - there isn't much fluffcrud in it, and the machine runs almost smoothly when I crank it. The treadle works fine, and there are even a couple spare leather belts. It has a bit of rust, the thinner wood bits have taken a beating, and I have my suspicions about the upper tension dial, but it doesn't look like a lost cause. It's a bit wild to see a machine made of wood, leather, and metal, but I suspect it will outlast Otto if I can get it running again. The black and gold is really surprisingly beautiful. It's a pity modern machines don't look like that anymore.

I have been cleaning up my sewing room from the scrapstravaganza of paper piecing, and doing the final sort to get things into the box shelf and out of the cardboard boxes and big plastic tubs. Remember, I didn't have time to fully move in before Christmas happened. I'm almost there, and I'm loving the clean lines. The loot from the guild sale is occupying an entire tub on its own, and I'm in the middle of hemming it all so it can go through the wash. It's going to be more than a day of work. I've been slowed down by the fact that I am terribly allergic to dust.

The ugly fabric box has been a great success. It feels satisfying to separate the questionable stuff from my preferred palette, and I've actually been dipping into it regularly for scraps to use up. Ugliness is a strong spice.

All my quilting cotton storage bins are full to bursting, and my scrap tubs are too, so scrappy projects are on the menu. The dwarves don't really count - they use a scrap here or there, but they're mostly good at busting my blue yardage and my upholstery samples. The needlebooks are prime tiny scrap territory, but they are tiny and didn't actually use up all that much fabric, when all is said and done. I've dipped into my blue scrap tub and started an English paper piecing hexagon project for the evenings, since I got a taste for it while I was doing the needlebooks. I like handwork, and it's nice to have something to do in the evenings. It's blue and orange - I know I don't have that much orange, but I love it, and fabric is for using. There's twice as much blue as orange, so that should stretch it a bit further. Since this is for scrapbusting, the hexagons are quite small. I can put together a block of fourteen hexagons totaling about five by five inches per evening, so that's going to be steadily simmering on the back burner for a while. No idea what size the end goal is.

Overall, I've really been enjoying this quilting groove.

I was drifting off to sleep on Christmas Eve when my sister called me from the next room, telling me my cat was fighting outside. She said she heard crashes and yowls, so I had to investigate. I found Nanook at the back door with a large rat dangling from his mouth.

I am not what you would call fond of putting my hands on dead rats, and also the last time I tried to confiscate a dead rat he whipped me in the eyeball with its tail, so I asked my sister's boyfriend how he felt about dead rats. He graciously volunteered to help, and after a brief chase I grabbed the cat, he grabbed the rat, and we proceeded to play tug o war. Nanook had a surprisingly good grip on the rat, and was disgruntled about having to give up his plans of disemboweling it on my bathroom rug. My mother opened her bedroom window and voted to let him keep the rat since it was Christmas, but I did not want to spend Christmas morning cleaning up rat remains and deworming my cat. We stole the rat and threw it in the trash.

Today, I made a small rat-shaped zipper pouch to thank my sister's boyfriend for his part. He laughed. https://www.instagram.com/p/B6g1PmpDhEQ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I have completed Log Bag. https://www.instagram.com/p/B6TpCtTjBgp/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I had a quarter yard of this nice tree bark print - you can see a scrap of it in the bluejay quilted tray, if you nose around my Instagram. I got it for paper pieced wolves, which I swear will still happen! They're just taking the scenic route into existence. Anyway, wood grain quilting looks absolutely fantastic with that fabric. I was aiming for ye olde flat zip pouch and then I was like "...log?" and added round end pieces, and here we are. I even added lining end pieces to make everything perfectly neat inside, since my dad is one of those people who won't stop picking at frayed edges. It used to drive him nuts when I mended the knees of my jeans with raw edged patches. Anyway, faking up my own pattern and measurements and design is a bit terrifying for me - I have old favorite tutorials I follow step by step, year after year. But it worked! It's a little wonky, but hey, it's a log. It's bigger than a pencil case, so he can fit his woodcarving tools and spoons in there if he wants.

So that's the end of the highest priority presents. I've got one more I'd like to knock out soonish - a squid pencil pouch from Choly Knight's tutorial, super cute - and then two more presents for probably some time in January. One of em's gonna be a lighthouse zipped pouch, and the jury is still out on the other one. I'm doing fantastic this year. I will be able to kick back and enjoy my comics and my cookie baking and not stay up late on Christmas Eve galloping the sewing machine.

Of course, I might still take the sewing machine out for a recreational trot. I was about to make a small cute needle book for myself last night, but I ran into some difficulties and wound up just punching holes in index cards for the needles, and stuffing em into the red cigarette case I inherited from my grandma. It's certainly a more practical solution, but not as cute. Ah well. There are still dwarves to make, at any rate.

I've frisked the library for any new werewolf stuff, and come across This Is Not A Werewolf Story, which swears it is based on the story of Bisclavret. Friends, it is not. This werewolf was heterosexual. Furthermore, the story was absolutely littered with shifters that were not werewolves - cougars, ravens, orcas, you name it. The only Bisclavret parallel came about three hundred pages in, when the stolen-clothes plot started, and even then, it was the barest scraping of a parallel - basically, just the clothes-related transformation (and even then it took a lot of liberties), and the theft, the scene with the king's boots, the attack on the wife, and the return of the clothing. Bisclavret was a boy attending a boarding school, Bisclavret's treacherous wife was just a new boy at school (the protag's love interest was a separate character, and a girl), the king was just the kid's dad, and the kid's mom was trapped in wolf form and hanging out with him on the weekends, and the kid's werecougar great-uncle was the villain of the plot? It was a mess. I am very annoyed at this for being heterosexual, mucking with the werewolf mythology, and not even remotely following the themes of the lai. Ah well. I'm sure somebody would like it. But dangit, it stripped out all the things I like in a werewolf story, and added so many of the things I do not like.