crafty, ruminations 1 Comment

Hobbies

OMG. I just made a batch of banana candles, and now the whole ground floor of my house smells like banana pudding. Oh, yum.

Once my test votive sets up, it’ll be time to burn that along with my coconut test candle to see if, together, it really would smell like banana cream pie. If it does… Oh, yeah. New candle flavor on the menu.

Edit, Friday Night: I’m burning the votive I made for myself, and it has kind of an odd chemical/medicinal smell. That’s really disappointing, because it has such a great cold scent. Ah, well. That’s why I buy one-ounce samples instead of huge vats o’ fragrance oil.

On the subject of candlemaking, I was just thinking… Does anyone else have a tendency to burn out (very punny) really fast on hobbies? Not entirely, I suppose, but…
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news

High School Teacher Goes Ballistic

Holy shit. I never had a teacher go off like this in high school, thank goodness. When Mr. Mantel wants you to stand up for the National Anthem, you’re damn well gonna stand up, or you’ll get your chair pulled out from underneath you.

Teacher freaks out about National Anthem, with Video

Edit: If you’d like to download the video, there’s a torrent here. Apparently all the sites hosting the video are starting to get bogged down. (Go figure.)

randomness 1 Comment

Guilty Pleasures

Um… I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but…

For the past couple of days, I’ve been on a Barry Manilow kick. o.O

I only wish I could find the original Barry Manilow Greatest Hits album in mp3. I downloaded the Greatest Hits Platinum Collection, but it’s not the same. Most of the tunes are his 80’s songs and remakes of his older hits, not the original 70’s tunes I played over and over on my cassette player during that one summer when I was thirteen. (Gotta love double-album-length cassettes. That tape I once scammed from my Mom had is now apparently available on CD as Volumes 1 and 2, with a bonus track on each.)

Is it any wonder that I was a social reject? 😛

otaku 2 Comments

Goddammit.

Motherfuck. I’m not going to be able to go to the Animarathon on April 2nd, even though it’s only 20 minutes from my freaking house.

Why?

Because I have to be in Saginaw fucking Michigan that day. Three hours away. Playing my mellophone.

Not go to Saginaw? Not an option. Why? Damn commitment to the damn corps.

Why couldn’t I be all wishy-washy and half-assed and just say I can’t make it? Why won’t my brain let me? God damn my integrity.

Have fun at the FREE ANIME CONVENTION down the road next month, Aaron. Let me know how it goes. Maybe I’ll get to go *next* year.

*smoke pouring from ears*

sewing

Need My Sewing Fix

I swear to God. It?s like a fucking addiction.

I spent fifteen minutes of my 20-minute break today sketching out ideas for a new totoro hat design.

Part of me is like, didn?t you want to try making those s?mores candles tonight? or practice your mellophone? and part of me is like, OMG I might have the answer to the standee-up ears!

Seriously, though—now that I?m actually fabricating hats, coming up with ideas, and being generally creative, I can understand why it?s impossible to find actual character hat patterns online. Especially since so many people sell their hats for a profit. It?s kind of like with soy candles: it?s impossible to find all the little tips and tricks all in one place, just because individual candlemakers (myself included) are so proud of having figured it out themselves, and they?ll be damned if they?ll share their hard work with budding candlists for free.

I know that, once I get this totoro hat to look just right, I ain?t planning on posting a pattern. Buy one and seam-rip it if you really want to know the secret of the totoro hat. 😉

But that might be a while…