Adventures in Jerkiness

Moved

2011-06-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I realize I should put here, in case someone comes across it, where you can find me now!
blog of art: Inky Phalangies (inkyphalangies.blogspot.com)
web comic: The Jerks (the-jerks.com)
comic publlications: Flying Dodo Publications (flyingdodopublications.com)
deviantart: lunavalse (lunavalse.deviantart.com)

Enjoy!

Mermaid

2010-08-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend I drew a mermaid on 6x6 bristol board. I used just a regular ball point pen, though, because it was too freakin' hot to use the dip pen. I haven't even inked the pencils for Arthur and Georgie I did last Tuesday because it has been too hot out. The ink goops up almost as fast as I can get the pen to the page. Hopefully this Saturday morning or Sunday morning, I will be able to. But I have to get my hair dyed for my High School Reunion in a couple weeks.

I was inspired by the Girls Drawing Girls blog, whose theme last week was mermaids so I saw a bajillion mermaid drawings and had to do this one to get it out of my brain. For some reason I am tending to draw people with great big heads and tiny little necks...

Also, this weekend we got to have "lunch" with my Aunt Bonnie who lives in New York. I haven't seen her in two years about, so that was nice. We went to the Greenbean and Yum. I got a Peach Granola Muffin that was divine and Bonnie got a Vanilla Lavender Italian Soda. Pretty good. I would have preferred more vanilla less lavender. Then we ran home and got the dogs and represented the Boyle's at my Aunt Carol's party because none of the rest of my immediate family could go. Jerks. :) Actually, Isaac might have gone after we left, since we had to leave early because we have a headlight out. Fortunately, we were going to bring the car in for a tune up today anyways so we just had them fix that at the same time.

Playing catchup

2010-08-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

Whoops. I forgot to post in a while. Maybe next time I will post about the plants. There is a new one...

Well, I have been up to a lot. Let's start with Harry Potter Crafts. I participated in the last swap, which was potions themed. Here is the very practical swap I received. From left to right, there is glittering body spray that smells like pear, brown sugar hand sanitizer, and baking soda based cleanser. And I think a small hand-knit sock.

I sent my recipient a potions recipe box.

This was pretty fun to make. I got the box at Good will and sanded and painted it. I am pretty pleased. I think if I make another, though, it will be even better.

I also sent her these potions. The sleeping Draught broke, but I sent it without the liquid. I put the correct number of drops of food coloring in each bottle so she only had to add the water to get these colors.

Haha. Funny stuff, right? Anyways, here is a scarf I wove. This one was tricky because the yarn I used was shlubby.Crystal Palace Yarns Waikiki in Kiwi/Mango. I am a bit smitten with it. It is nice and soft.

I also knit these socks from the Rockin'Sock Club in just under a week and a half. Pretty awesome, right?

They are pretty comfy. My next project is the Lilac Leaf Shawl. I have one end done and I am almost at the same point on the other end. I just need to have it done by October 15 for the Nordic Knitting Conference, which makes me giddy every time I think about it.

Also, I bought this funny magnet I drew for The Jerks Store. We will get pictures posted when it arrives and let you know how the quality is. $7 is a good price for a test though. Better than just buying a bag. Since Abe has a job now and I can never tell when the dishes are clean or dirty, we got this so I don't have to call him at work and ask.

Finally, I drew this the other day and I am pleased. I think it was inspired by looking at drawings of Regina Spektor on Deviant Art.

Check it out

2010-08-06T05:38:00.000-07:00

Check out my desktop. I can't stop laughing.

A short post

2010-08-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to link to this which is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while. The guy that did it took WWII photos and found the places they were taken then took pictures today and overlaid the WWII photos so you can see both times at once. Some of them are really powerful.

--Abe

Good news

2010-08-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

So, after much deliberation and consideration, I went back to the metro and asked if I could work there. My friends Kim and Jeff were amazing and not only got me rehired but did it quickly too. I'll be on the schedule that starts this Friday!

The pay isn't fabulous but it's not much lower than nintendo and the work environment and management are about 10 billion billion billion times better. So I am very pleased and Angela is really happy as well.

I went in on Sunday to fill out some paperwork and I spent like 3 hours there chatting with old friends and new people too. It was really fun.

I have some pictures to post that we took at the blowing sands gallery this weekend. We dropped in there with Anita and Jim. They both seemed to enjoy the show. Jim became our official first customer of The Jerks too! He bought one of the collections of the first twelve comics that I made for the gallery. You can see the cover, and order one if you want, here.

Anyway, I can't find the cable to get the pictures off my phone at the moment so I'll edit this post and add them tonight or tomorrow after I find that darn thing.

--Abe

Two birds on a wire

2010-07-27T16:01:00.001-07:00

I didn't get a chance to post earlier because I had to go to the dentist for a cleaning today. My teeth hurt. Anyways, this Friday I actually did some digital painting. Very fun. Here it is, a short comic inspired by the song Two Birds on a Wire by Regina Spektor on the CD Far. This may be made into a print at some point once we figure out how. Sound good?

Here's a link to a better one.

I also have the plain black and white version up there.

An Isaac'ed weekend

2010-07-20T12:24:00.001-07:00

Here's a head kerchief thing I knit with three different yarns from the Phat Fiber box I bought a long time ago. I tried buying one this time but kept getting errors from Etsy so I think I am done with that little experiment. :(

My brother came over this weekend. We had a good time. He arrived before I got home from work, so Abe met him downtown, where they had coffee. Then they came home and played Team Fortress together. When I got home, we went to the Phinneywood Farmer's Market. Isaac bought Strawberry wine, Tayberry wine, and Blackberry wine and let us have the remainders of the strawberry and tayberry. Unfortunately, I didn't like either, but Abe did. So he can have those and I will drink beer. That night Isaac and I played some Lego Batman and it was awesome. I can't wait for him to come down and play with me again. Abe played through it once with me and that was apparently enough for him.

On Saturday, we didn't wake up until 10. Whoops. We went to Patty's Eggnest across the street for breakfast. I had swedish pancakes with strawberries instead of lingonberries. They were pretty good. Then we rushed over to the Sidewalk sale at Acorn Street where I think we (Isaac and I) spent 2 hours or so looking at the yarn. I found this great french one that looked like fur, but I wanted to make a whole purse with it and it was $8 for 17 yards. That was way too expensive. So I bought some other stuff.

The Waikiki from Crystal Palace will some day be woven into an AWESOME scarf. I think it will be awesome. It is the Kiwis/Mangos colorway and I just love it.

The Baby Alpaca Grande from Plymouth Yarns will be fingerless gloves. They were supposed to come with a free pattern, but I didn't get it because I forgot to ask. Though perhaps it is inside the band? Anyways, I can undoubtedly find a pattern on Ravelry, my love. It is so soft, you can barely tell you are touching it. I will make the fingerless gloves and see how it wears. I might get two more skeins to make a pair of the best slipper socks ever.

Finally, there is the Noro Sukko. I think I will be making the Swallowtail shawl out of that. It is a simple shawl pattern and it appears others have done that with success and it looks nice. The colors of the yarn are black, green and brown, as far as I can tell, but I bet there are surprise colors inside too. There always are.

Then we went to the Cartoonists North West meeting where Milt Prigee gave a talk/answered questions. It was fun. He does editorial cartoons, which Abe is more into than I am. Then we dropped Isaac off at the train station to get back home to his GIRLFRIEND. :) Good for him.

Anyways, the other thing I bought at Acorn Street was a skein of Noro to make a tea cozy. And make a tea cosy I did. (I think I just heard one of the dogs fart...) So here it is in all its glory. This is a nice pattern. I am not kidding. I think the whole thing can be knit up in 4 hours (small version). If I hadn't been distracted by how much I love the first X-Men movie, I think I could have knit the whole thing Saturday night, but as it is, I sat there just holding the knitting for a fair chunk of time. So I finished it Sunday morning while I drank tea.

This week on the Ten Ton Studios Sketch Challenge, the theme was Nocturno, an Argentinian graphic novel, by Salvador Sanz. Lovely, but I can't find it in English. Anyways, here is what I drew. It is also up on the Forum.

Last week, I also started the Lilac Leaf Shawl so I will have a Nancy Bush Estonian Lace Shawl to where when I go to the Nordic Knitting Conference in October! (I am taking Icelandic Lace on Saturday and Estonian Cuffs on Sunday.) I started with the other end so that I can knit the middle until I run out of yarn or finish the pattern, whichever comes first. My skein of yarn is about 50 yards smaller than the one called for so I wasn't sure I would have enough.

One of my friends, Celina, put a link to I Write Like on her blog. So I though I would give it a shot. Here are my results. I tried a bunch of things because that is how I am.

When I put in writing from the blog, which is a bit stream of consciousness: Vladimir Nabokov. Abe was impressed.

A story I wrote in high school (which I may end up turning into a graphic novel - 'Cigar Smoke' if I ever talk about it again): Jack London.

Office Cowboy is apparently written like Stephen King. (Haha. There is a joke in that sentence if you know of Stephen King's writing style well enough.)

The water lady story is like Harry Harrison, who I have no idea who that is.

At this point I stared to think it is just completely random.

Vergamon is apparently written like Dan Brown.

A paper for a TC class my last year of college: Agatha Christie.

Hmph.

I will have pictures of my plants in my next post, maybe.

I hate titles

2010-07-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

So, I found this article on the naked capitalism blog and I think that everyone should read it.

It blows my mind that the sheriffs office just goes and sets up an auction for whatever house the banks tell them to without checking to see if the bank that makes the request is even the issuer of the mortgage for the house, or that the name on the notice even matches the name of the owner in the county records.

The Jerks comic is coming along quite well. I'm really pleased with it. Angela's art is just getting better and better. And my stories, which began with poop and vomit jokes, are actually moving toward less potty humor which you'll see in a few weeks.

I re-started playing WoW last week after Angela and I spent an hour being nostalgic about it. My favorite feature of the game now is the random dungeon finder. It usually doesn't take more than about 15 minutes and most of the groups have been excellent; friendly people, competent playing, willing to work with the strengths and weaknesses of the group members. It's also really nice that I can play for an hour or two and actually *DO* something in that time. EQ2 has gotten to the point where it takes hours and hours to get anything done and I always logout feeling like I wasted my time.

Wow, I got distracted by webcomics there, stopped mid-sentence and just came back after like 45 minutes.

--Abe

Here is some yarn for you...

2010-07-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

First, check it out - I made Abe a toy. I started this, no kidding, in July of 2005 and finished it in July 2010. Go Ravelry for keeping that information for me. I am crazy, yes.

Two weekends ago, we had a good ol' time. Saturday we went to my mom's and met my brother's new girlfriend, who seems nice. My mom and I spent most of the day washing 10 lbs of wool in her yard. That was a lot of work. Then I brought it home and I have been washing it even more. Boil it on the stove and dry it in the oven. I am done, and it only took 4 days to wash all 10 lbs! Now I have to card it and then I have to spin it. And probably dye some of it. I spun up a test of the 10 lbs of shetland(?) that I had already washed and it is a creamy lemony color. The one I am currently washing is quite white. And filthy. Lots of poop and bugs and grains (their food) and even pieces of hoof.

I also found this car on one of the blogs I read. Holy Cow. I would consider driving that, but not in the rain...

Maybe this is what we need to have a less jerky comic.

Uh...

More recently, since it seems I haven't posted in a while, we have The Jerks up at the Blowing Sands Gallery in Ballard. Our stuff should be up until about Aug 11. There are free stickers and some small comic books for sale. We hung out on Saturday night and hula hooped a bit. I don't know if we will sell anything, but a couple of the people there liked our stuff. The president (Mary Beth) of Cartoonists Northwest thought they were cute and liked the humor. So there are other people out there that like poop humor.

At one point, we also had a pinata, which was pretty funny. It was a mermaid that Mary Beth'd had for a while and put fresh candy in. We didn't have a place to hang it so they tried just tossing it in the air, but that didn't work. Then a lady with a cane let people use her cane to whack at it like a baseball. Eventually, no kidding, little Tootsie Rolls started coming out her butt. I was nearly doubled over with laughter. Good times.

I also started working on a Positions Swap for the Harry Potter Crafts group. I am pretty excited. I think the items are going to be great, when they are done. I hope they ship ok!

I've been doing the Tour de Fleece (spinning every day that the Tour de France is running). I was supposed to start on Saturday when I went to Mom's, but I got distracted by washing all the wool. But Sunday and Monday I spun up a couple skeins. One is teeny tiny. 2-ply lace yarn. The other is the fourth of five skeins of Monkey Farts Corridale from Spunky Eclectic which I really like. I somehow messed it up, but whatever. Hopefully the next one will go better.

Day 3:

Day 4 (from knittyandcolor in the Dragonskin colorway which I got in a Phat Fiber Box):

Day 5:

Day 6:

Day 7 (the same knittyandcolor but all spun up and plied; I also washed some of the Monkey Farts to make sure the color wouldn't leech too much, and it didn't!):

Day 8 (wool mill ends and carbonized fiber - I spun this while watching the very weird movie Krull):

Day 9 (from Xtreme Spinning in the Princess Bride colorway from the Phat Fiber box):

I forgot to take a picture of my spinning on day to. But I was just plying the singles from Day 9 and didn't even finish. I drew Arthur and Georgie stuff until about 9, so I didn't have much time. The backgrounds are getting more and more detailed, so I am needing more time.

After the long weekend

2010-07-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of fun over the long 4th of July weekend. It started when Angela got off work 2 hours early on Friday! We went to the farmers market and got some sausage which I later turned in to our favorite sausage stuff. Then on Saturday we went to Bellingham to celebrate with Anita and Jim and Isaac and his new girl friend who's name I can't quite remember at the moment. She was nice though.

On Friday we stopped at Fred Meyer to get something or other and the up escalator was broken. I totally mis-stepped the first few steps and sort of lurched like a broken robot. This cause Angela to start laughing and flailing about so much that she tripped and fell UP the stairs. Her knee landed right on the front edge of one of the escalator steps and it gave her a wicked bruise.

Then on Saturday my left leg got devoured by mosquitoes and now it looks like I have leprosy or something.

Then Angela spent the rest of the weekend washing raw wool and drying it in our oven while I played EQ2. It was a fantastic weekend.

Jeez, I almost forgot to mention that I created a store at cafepress for the-jerks.com yesterday and I made a few items; two shirts, a magnet, a button, a bag, and a few others. There's a link in the top nav bar of http://the-jerks.com or you can go there directly at http://www.cafepress.com/the_jerks

--Abe

Happy friday

2010-07-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

So http://the-jerks.com/ now has eight comics posted. I'm really excited about how it's coming along. Angela's made great strides on the art in the last few weeks so we've got comics that look even better than the ones that are up now. So keep checking back there's some good stuff coming in the next few weeks.

We checked out the collected Iron Man comics volume one from the library last weekend and I read a few chapters of it this week. Wow. It's not even veiled, it's straight up cold war propaganda. The movies are actually way tamer in this regard. The writing is also *terrible* like it was written in five minutes with no editing on the back of a napkin or something. The art is pretty good though. It's my favorite part by far.

I submitted a short story to the Aeon Award competition this week. First prize is 1000 euros so wish me luck!

--Abe

Snow and Rain

2010-06-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

When I was reading blogs, I found this website, the cartoonist studio. Here is my favorite studio, I think: Tom Batiuk, who does Crankshaft. It was fun to look at all the studios. My studio is currently the couch. I have a drawing board that fits on my lap, a TV Table that I set up to put my ink and water and nibs on. And all the drawing stuff that will fit, like the nibs and pens, inks and erasers, go into a fishing tackle box next to the couch. I also have a full spectrum light that I can set on it side behind the drawing board if I need to trace something, like this drawing! I did it on the "brown" paper, Yupo, which I call brown because it is made of polypropylene. It is fun to work on though. I used a water brush and watercolor pencils to make this. I like the trees and snow, but I don't know how well the girl turned out.

I also draw this, though I drew this in my spare time at work. It is on the cardboard from the back of a pad of paper that I had finished. I like it a lot. It was rather inspired by Edward Gorey. I didn't have a reference of his, but it turned out ok.

Here is this week's Ten Ton Studio Sketch Challenge . The first one is pretty dang funny. I would like to draw something, but I can't think of anything.

I started working on this cropped cardigan for summer (I say cardigan because I will be adding sleeves). I had about 800 yards of cotton and didn't know what to do with it, so I looked up the gauge, weight, yardage, and fiber on Ravelry and found 4 patterns that I liked to choose from. How sweet is that. I also found this top that I plan to make using two different colors of yarn. I might even use two different weights. I might have to modify the pattern a bit, but the top part could be a bit lacy. And this tank top, which is cute and simple and super easy to modify, I bet. And this little Hexacomb Cardigan that I want to make with robin's egg blue for the main part and a nice sunny yellow for the hems. If you look at it on Ravelry, there are some great color combos, so I might do another combo other than blue and yellow.

I have also wanted to start another Harry Potter kick lately. I have a bunch in my queue, so I will probably just finish up some of those, but I might start up on the Harry Potter Craft group again. This month is a challenge to create a transfigured object. Not sure what I will do yet. If anything. And I might join the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap, round 11. I have at least 2 pairs of started Ravenclaw socks that I should finish. One is my own pattern. Another is from the Harry Potter knitting book, which is an okay book, but not great.

I was working on other socks, Ravenswirl and Ada Lovelace, both Rockin' Sock Club kits. But both ended up being too tight to fit over my heel, so I need to rip both out and work a bigger size or something. I am not sure what to do. More increases at the gusset on the Ada Lovelace? I think I will just make the L instead of the medium. Sigh. I had only finished the ankle on the Ravenswirl and the leg part wouldn't fit over my heel. Maybe I have a giant instep?

FridayFridayFriday

2010-06-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

Not a lot to talk about today.

I've been working on a short story to submit to the Aeon Award competition. Angela is going to give it one last proof reading this weekend and then I'll pay my fee and send it in.

I've been doing a lot of thinking and experimenting with the mechanics of how I tell the story in my writing. I've primarily written in a first person present tense style over the years but I am experimenting with a third person non-omniscient present tense these days. No one but me has read any of this yet though. Not even Angela although she will, in all likelihood, be the first.

I've been spending a lot of time in the battle grounds in EQ2 lately as well. So far I really prefer my Wizard to the other classes I have. Unfortunately my slots are all full or I'd probably make either a pally or shadowknight specifically for the BGs.

The BGs at level 90 are really brutal. There are *a lot* of people that can one shot Denaso. I was going to link you to Denasos info page on eq2 players but their search is busted atm so you don;t get to see her nerd sheet. I need to get her some more lvl 90 PvP gear and that one shotting should stop. Hopefully. I'm also going to play Eunika, my berzerker, in some BGs as well.

Anyway, off to post on the arachknits etsy shop.

--Abe

I wove

2010-06-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

What a fun weekend. On Saturday, our house was all clean, which was a nice change of pace, Abe... Anyways, we had a nice relaxed morning with tea and stuff. Then we went to the Cartoonist NW meeting. The information was OK, about SEO, but I don't know if we will use it. We'll see. Perhaps we will start a couple of twitter accounts since people seem to like those so much. But at the meeting, we talked to the president of the group and decided we would really join and include some of our work in the art show they are having in July in Ballard. More details to follow. We even talked to some of the people in the group instead of just running out of the room. I we showed someone who is working on a new syndicated comic (or getting ready to submit it?) our Bus Stop story. He seemed to like it. I couldn't really tell. His comic was funny. Shrub - keep an eye out for it.

The mom and Jim came over for dinner. They spent the afternoon with one of Jim's professors. Turns out that professor is the dad of one of the ladies I sort of work with. So that was funny. We had a really good time. We were supposed to get a picture of mom's scarf I wove for her for mother's day, but we didn't get a chance. She sent me this "bad" picture. (haha - better than the ones I take.) She didn't want me to post it, but I have to post something. It is just too exciting.

We had some steak and corn and pink mashed potatoes. Cute. And some beer. We tried a white seasonal ale from Pike Brewery, but I don't think anyone particularly cared for it. Then we all moved on to Smithwick's, which has taken its place as my favorite. The dogs behaved OK. Mom was sitting in a chair and Nisa leapt into her lap, but mom seemed to think it was funny. She also got to try on her nearly finished Girl Friday sweater and we bought some buttons for it that should be delivered soon. I hope by the end of the week. I only have 1.5 inches of 1x1 rib left to knit and a couple ends to weave in. Then I can finish blocking it and sew on the buttons. I finally did the thing where you wrap the wet knitting all up in a towel and step on it, then block it. Wow does that make a difference. I will never look back. That is a forever thing for me now. This way it can block over night instead of waiting 3 days to a week for the dratted thing to dry. Thanks, Yarn Harlot!

Before they left, we showed them Super Rub-A-Dub, which they simply did not appreciate, and the demo of Fairy Tale Fights where you play Little Red Riding Hood in a white room and massacre other fairy tale characters. Very funny. That demo cracks me up. It is nothing like the game, so I am wary of buying the game, but we'll see.

In The Jerks news, I am now able to do the two pencils for each week's comics in one evening. If I don't wait to long to get started. I think the upcoming ones are just getting better. At least in regards to my drawing if not in hilarity. And next time I post, I will have an actual non The Jerks drawing to post. I just have to Photoshop it together since the stupid scanner is an inch too small to scan the whole thing.

Update: I posted an image at the Ten Ton Studio sketch challenge. Go check it out. :) It's not super amazing, but it has a lot of background and I really need to work on backgrounds.

Abe's my etsy fiend.

2010-06-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

So Abe is posting needles on Etsy for me because I can't be bothered. I am so busy doing other things that I don't have the 30 to 45 minutes or so it takes to do the photo shoot and all the data entry. Buh. Today he posted these funny spades needles.

We got our second comment on the comic, but it seems to have been spam. :'( After next week, I am not sure if I will continue to post comic updates on my Facebook page because I don't think anyone cares. We'll see. Maybe I can annoy them all into looking. It is weird to send the notice out to people who I haven't seen since high school, but whatever. I hear about their nights out drinking or their days out running.

I started posting The Jerks comics to DeviantArt. Though I will just post the previous week's comics there on Tuesday instead of the same day.

The porkchop dinner didn't turn out as well the second night light it does with the Cream of Mushroom soup. Oh well. It was still good. Surprise surprise, the french cook book food doesn't lend itself well to the microwave.

This weekend, I watched Delgo. I liked it more than Abe. It was a nice-to-look-at movie, for sure. Not the best, but interesting enough. It was just a plain classic story, but it was also a Family PG movie, so I didn't expect much. Actually, the concept art they showed throughout the credits was far more amazing than the art in the movie. I wish the movie had been done in the style of the concept art, which was gorgeous. From the concept art, it looks like there could have been more interesting detail in the movie, too, but for a Family movie, they have to keep it short. Weird voice cast, though. Freddie Prince Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Eric Idol, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, many other weird ones.

I got an email from Amazon today about a book that comes out June 29, Knitting MochiMochi by Anna Hrachovec. Wow. I must admit I am excited for that book. Cute Cute stuff. On Ravelry, she has a bunch of cute patterns, like bats whose wings close shut with a button so you can hang them from the ceiling, baby alligators, pigeons that can actually perch on things, a resistor and a capacitor, "dust bunnies," a bath tub with bubbles, a toilet paper roll, and so much more. She also did woodins ("a tiny apparition that lives in fallen trees and is characterized by its asymmetrical ears and leaf tail"), which is a cute pattern from Knitty.

Monday madness

2010-06-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

So on Friday night we went to the Phinney farmers market and got some locally grown organic pork chops among other things. On Saturday the pork was thawed but it was too hot to cook. On Sunday I spent most of the day cooking. First I made some bread. Nothing fancy, just the fast white bread recipe from the joy of cooking. I used the SAF Red Instant Yeast that I ordered from King Arthur Flour last week. The bread was awesome, like always, but the yeast made it rise almost double what the old Fleischmann's yeast I used to use did.

Check it out:

Then, for dinner I fried the pork chops:

Made some white sauce with fried mushrooms and onions:

Put it all on rice and served it with some fresh corn:

It was an awesome meal :-)

I caught Nisa being a real jerk on Sunday too. The litter box is in the bathroom for two reasons, first to keep the dogs from trapping the cat in there and second to keep them from eating the kitty-roca. Nisa still finds ways to be a jerk though.

No way to know for sure how long that'd been going on when I caught her but it's entirely possible that the cat had been stuck in the bathroom for a half hour or more.

New comic posted at http://the-jerks.com/ tomorrow morning! Be sure to look for it.

--Abe

Friday!

2010-06-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

So, we voted Nisa the jerks of the week because she ate some huge turd on our walk and Angela had to dig it out of her mouth. It was gross. Then, she climbed up on the table and ate all of the cats food. So I pushed the chairs in as far as they would go and later I caught her pushing one of the chairs out!

We've posted two comics on http://the-jerks.com/ this week. Our schedule is Tuesdays and Thursdays. It look like we had about 3K hits since Tuesday morning which is pretty good. Hopefully that will get a lot bigger over the next six months or so.

I've been busy all day and I have a lot to do still so this one is short.

--Abe

The Jerks is a live web comic!

2010-06-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Woot. So the comic is up: the-jerks.com. Every Tuesday, Thursday, barring Abe forgetting. We have about a month of backlog. I haven't really worked on much else, drawing wise. I do have these sketches I did during breaks at work.

Abe has been looking over the views on the-jerks.com and they are coming from all over the world. But mostly between 9 and 5 on the server time. Weird, right?

We did go see Iron Man 2 last weekend. That was actually a really fun movie and I have no idea why it got such bad reviews. I thought it was really fun and completely in the same vein as the first one. It was so loud though. Almost too loud for me to hear, but not quite, if you know what I mean. I am so glad we saw it in theaters. Maybe the bad reviews were from "traditionalist" Iron Man fans, but I know nothing about Iron Man except these movies. Abe and I were talking about it and we can't think of any good way to follow all the "canon" from the comics. They are going to draw in people with no knowledge of background so everything is new. If they just tried to take an existing comic and make that into a movie, it wouldn't translate well because the comics tend to assume a basic amount of knowledge (usually it seems to me). I like the approach they have taken where they make a story based on existing pieces of story. It is a new story based on old story. That way it is new to the newbies and the old fans. Old fans get to see live action pieces of the story they love but in new context. I could just be talking out my butt, but I like how they are doing them.

I have been watching Ten Ton Studios sketch challenge and their challenge this week is what a superhero of supervillain of your choice would look like from a different era. There are already some really good ones. I might do the drawing, but I don't know if I will enter. Can you say lazy? Scanning sucks. I dream of one day owning a scanner large enough to scan in one shot a 9x12 piece of paper. Ooh. That is about an inch or half an inch larger in width and length than my current one. Annoying, right? I have no idea what superhero I would draw or what era to move them too. Abe had a good idea that I will try though. If I can get it done in time, maybe I will post it. I only have to give it away if the winner likes mine enough and that is a bit of an honor.

I know I had an epiphany about the Water Lady story, but I haven't been able to bring myself to draw any character sketches yet. I really need to get on that. In my defense, I have been working on The Jerks and trying to focus on that. Though I guess sometimes I get distracted by drawing a picture for the circus story, which doesn't even have a story line yet.

This past Friday, I got my May Rockin' Sock Club kit in the mail. I am doing the Ada Lovelace sock. It came with a nice green Spirits yarn, which means it is barely colored at all, but I think it is lovely. The pattern is sort of steam-punk according to the description from the designer. It has a mix of lace and cables, which I just love. In fact, that is used on my spats. I think I should make some of those spats and sell them on Etsy. And some of my gloves. Today, I will get Abe to start posting items on Etsy. I have a fair number of items ready to post, but they need pictures and stuff and Abe can post them. Anyways, back to the new sock kit, I started Friday night and am currently working on the heel flap of the first sock. So I am about a quarter done. This cuff looks kind of short, but complicated, so it is hard to gauge. I am working on this instead of my mom's sweater. Bad Angela. But my plan is to work complete the first sock, complete the second sleeve of mom's cardigan, complete the second sock, and then complete the right front of mom's cardigan. Then I will basically be done with both. But not really, because then on the sweater, I have to block it, sew it, and knit the button band stuff. Which shouldn't take too long. And I can't finish that until mom gets me the buttons so I know how big, where, and how many button holes to make.

Monday

2010-06-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

So, the new website for our comics is a terribly kept secret :-)

I've finally got it all working and set up the way we want it so we are going to post the first comic there tomorrow. We'll be posting comics there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This blog will continue to be our personal blog. We haven't decided on the posting schedule for this blog yet but we'll let you now as soon as we figure it out.

I made some kick ass oatmeal, maple syrup and bacon bread yesterday. It makes the best damn sandwiches :-)

I'm watching the Ken Burns WW II documentary, The War, while I work on the site. It's pretty fantastic.

--Abe

Happy Friday!

2010-06-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Angela asked me to post today.

On Wednesday night I went to Dissonant Plane to see Thione Diop and his brother play the drums. They were totally awesome. They played for about an hour or so and they asked and answered questions in between songs. I bought one of their CDs. It's awesome.

I finished Dragon Age earlier in the week. I enjoyed the game a lot. The story was well executed if a bit unoriginal. The party characters were *awesome* though. I played a human noble lady rogue and I peopled my party with good characters; Wynne, Leliana, and Alistair. I made Alistair a shield wielding tank, Wynne in to a heal bot and me and Leliana into a dual wielding death squad. We pretty much just rolled through everything.

I wanted to keep playing after the end but, for some reason, the game took away both of my characters weapons. That pissed me off so much that I haven't played it.

Instead I went totally different and have been playing Dawn of War II, which I've mentioned previously. I hope to finish it this weekend.

--Abe

Wednesday weirdness

2010-06-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

We don't usually post on Wednesday but I forgot to post on Monday so . . .

I spent all day working on our little surprise. It was a long and painful experience. I'll post about it in detail once the secret is out.

I've been playing Dawn of War II lately. I generally dislike RTS games because I find micro-management to be a form of torture rather than a game. However, DoWII does away with micro-management of bases, resources and resource gathering and leaves you with just managing your squads of hilariously over-the-top space marines as they shoot, hack, chainsaw, explode and stomp their way through hordes of Orcs, Eldar and Tyranids. It's a good time all the way around.

Well back to hacking away at the project.

--Abe

Phinney market and sewing

2010-06-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

We had a pretty good weekend. On Friday we went to the Phinney Farmer's Market, which was the first one this year. It is very small, but has some good stuff. Not much in the way of vegetables yet, unless you like thumb-sized asparagus or salad (which I hate). But we did find a place that sold local, grass-fed, organic, free-range meat (of the 4-legged variety). We got a huge piece of top sirloin that will make three meals for each of us. Holy cow. (haha)

We also got some potatoes from them -- Purple Majesty. Made into mashed potatoes, they looked like Play-doh. But they tasted like normal potatoes. The meat tasted amazing, though. A little pricey, and you had to buy whatever size they had, but Abe just cut it into three pieces and then he cooks that and cuts it in half. I am drooling just in writing this. We also had some organic corn on the cob with it. Man that is a good meal. Anyways, they also sell bratwurst, so next Friday, we will go again and get maybe some pork chops and some bratwurst. Hopefully there will be more vegetables soon.Isn't that just the best looking dinner. The meat really does taste different than the other meat we have gotten. I cannot wait to try those bratwursts.

Then we went to good will. Or was that Saturday. Anyways, Abe got some shorts and a shirt, and I got some comfy corduroy pants and a cool black and white hounds tooth purse with red trim. Then I went to the mall and got a new wallet because mine was pissing me off. Every time I opened it the stupid cards would all fall out. So I went to Fuego and got an Angry Little Girls wallet. It is really cute. I almost wish I had gotten the vampire one, but this one is great and now I am not one of THOSE people. Turns out I LOVE that store. It is similar to hot topic, but funnier.

I also drew some more for the upcoming web comic, including a header image. So we are getting there. Arthur and Georgie are fun to draw. Actually, there are two new characters who are also way fun to draw. I will draw away and then stop to look at it as a whole and laugh every single time.

Yesterday, I wanted to go get some zippers for the cloth I bought to make skirts from. So when I got home, I made a skirt. I also got another zipper to fix a skirt that had a broken zipper. So now I have two skirts to wear. The skirt I made myself looks great. I had to make some darts and mess those up, but I think my shirts will cover it, and if not, I can always go back and fix it. I should have read the instructions in my Skirt book on how to make darts. Anyways, the book is Sew What: Skirts and it is awesome. The one I made yesterday was A-Line. I also plan to make a straight skirt with some green and cream hounds tooth, and a pleated skirt with some green and brown plaid. While I got the zippers, I also bought some clearance fabric because it as 30% off, so I got some cute red fabric that I will use as a layer over some black fabric for a skirt. I think that will be really cute. And I got some yellow fabric with pink dots that I will make into bloomers for which I will tat some lace to attach at the bottom of each leg. Nice, yeah? (FYI, I was totally spacing out every time Abe took a picture of me in this skirt.)

I have plans. I have too many plans. This is on top of all the knitting I have to do, including the new Rockin' Sock Club kit that should be coming in the next couple weeks (so far I am two for two - received two kits and both are already knit up) and the sweater I am knitting for my mom. Another Girl Friday, but in evergreen. It is coming right along. I have the left front, back, and one sleeve done. I started the second sleeve yesterday, but I only got about an inch in. I also have the Raven Swirl (rav) Rockin' Sock Club socks on the needles. I am almost half way done with the first sock. I love this pattern and can't wait for them to be done. Speaking of plans, I also got a free coat rack and I plan to sand and paint it this summer...There is a chance I might have more to do than can possibly be done...

One day when I was working on something at work, I looked out the window at the rain and had a bit of an epiphany on how to tell my water lady story. It was very satisfying. So that is my next big comics project.

Friday hooray!

2010-05-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hey it's Friday on a three day weekend :-)

I'm working hard on the new the-jerks.com and you should hopefully see the fruits of my work in the next week or two.

We're going to the Phinney Farmers Market tonight when Angela gets home. We're going to get some fresh veggies for dinner tonight.

Valve upgraded Half-Life 2 and Episode One to the most recent build of the source engine this past week when they released the Half-Life 2 games on the mac platform. They also added achievements to HL2 and Ep1. I'm kinda burned out on RPGs so I think I am going to replay the entire Half-Life series when I finish Dragon Age.

Speaking of which, I haven't had any time to play DA in the last few days which is kind of frustrating because my save is about five minutes into the battle of Denerim and I'm pretty sure that's the end of the game. When I finish it I will post a review and some thoughts.

I finished a short story recently. The first draft was completed a few months ago and it's been aging since then. Last week I opened it up and did a second draft. I cut about 7 pages from it, rewrote a bunch of dialog, fixed a ton of grammar and punctuation errors, fixed a bunch of consistency issues and added a ton of character development. Angela is going to hit it with the editor bat sometime in the coming week and then I'll send it off to some magazines and see if I can make a few bucks off it.

I am *very* happy with the story even though I am acutely aware of many ways that it is lacking. I've got few other stories that are ready for comprehensive second drafts in the next month or so and I'm really looking forward to finishing up my current top secret project so I can get back to working on the fiction.

Well, I'm gong to make some coffee and put on some laundry now :-) Have a great weekend.

--Abe

Home Sweet Homo Erectus

2010-05-25T12:21:00.001-07:00

Finally, here is the painting I did while I was on vacation. Pretty fun, right? Well, I had fun with it anyways. I really like the eye sockets. This got me excited to do more painting, too, which means I might finally get around to doing something with poor little Umbrella girl.

In a couple weekends, we are going to do a craft fair with Abe's mom. Abe will have more information tomorrow, but it is in Lake City from 9 to 5 or 6. We will have knitting needles and other knitting stuff, cards (blue lady), and comics (Bus Stop). We will see how well the comics sell and then put them up for sell on etsy.

More Dragon Age

2010-05-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

I played dragon age on sunday. Now that I'm into a part of the game that I haven't played before the voice acting is much less annoying. I am concerned about replaying the game though.

I had a weird situation where the game was crashing to desktop every time I killed a certain boss. It turned out that there's a big explosion with a bunch of particles and stuff that happens when the guy dies and that's what was crashing the game. All I had to do was turn off "post processing effects" and it worked like a charm.

The game is buggy as hell though. Not Bethesda buggy mind you but buggy nevertheless. It crashes to the desktop randomly which is pretty annoying. Most of the time it takes a few hours but sometimes it crashes after just a half hour or so. The one that bothers me the most is that when combat starts, the volume of the music jumps up by about 30%. So I am constantly adjusting the volume because if I turn it down enough that the combat music isn't painfully loud I can barely hear the characters talking when I'm not in combat. The other bugs I've noticed are that some quest npcs don't lose their overhead indicators when the quest is turned in.

I'm really enjoying the story though. And the characters in my party are mostly interesting and are very well voice acted. I find myself actually enjoying talking to them.

--Abe

Funny Video

2010-05-22T07:05:00.001-07:00

This is really funny. It looks like any other pair of talking heads at the beginning but you'll soon realize that they are mercilessly lampooning the state of the worlds economy :-)

Angela went to Portland for a few days with a friend so I've been playing Dragon Age which was actually a christmas present I got for myself. I had started playing it when I first got it but I was not enamored of the party mechanics and I got frustrated with micromanaging stupid bots and gave up. This time I made a group composed entirely to support my main character who is a rogue and I'm having a great time.

I've got to say that the voice acting gets pretty tedious the second time through though.

Last I checked I had about 22 hours in to it and the game says I've completed 33% of the game. I'm doing every quest I can find and I'm exploring and talking to everyone so I expect it'll be a hefty chunk or time before I'm done with the game.

--Abe

Coming Changes

2010-05-18T19:42:00.001-07:00

So, there are some changes coming to the blog in the near future. For now, the only thing that's going to change is that http://www.the-jerks.com is NOT going to automatically take you to the blog anymore. Instead you will need to go to http://adventuresinjerkiness.blogspot.com and, because I'm nice, I'll set up a page on http://www.the-jerks.com with a link to the blog :-)

In a little while there will be more changes and I think you'll enjoy them.

--Abe

Vacation is fun. Now I remember.

2010-05-18T12:23:00.001-07:00

So I guess I never posted about my vacation. Here goes.

We started out packing my mom's VW bug (new version) with tons of art supplies and promptly driving south to go to Lake Quinalt. And promtply taking the wrong highway and going on a huge detour to Hoodsport, if that means anything to you. But once we got back on track all was well and we got to the Lochaerie Resort without any further problems. We did stop at a gas station so my mom could make sure she was going the right way, but we were.

View Larger Map

The Cabin was very nice, though we had to make about 5 trips down two or three flights of very steep, uneven stairs to get all our stuff down to the cabin. I like the stairs when we weren't carrying all our stuff. And I thought to myself, "Well, I would rather be carrying all this down than up and Abe and Jim will be here to carry it all back up..." The Cabin itself was nice. Small, but nice. And I thought to myself, "Abe might have a hard time here since it all seems to be size for mom and myself." My mom and me are within a quarter inch of each other in height. Abe is almost a foot taller than me. The bedrooms all look out on the lake. The porch faced the trees, but we did sit out there and drink cocoa one evening. That was fun. Mom got some great pictures of some birds. Yellow Thrush? She got pictures of a loon swimming in the lake and some common merganzers taking off from the lake. In the morning, the hills around the lake were covered in fog. Absolutely gorgeous.

We spent our evenings in front of the fire place (they give you firewood for each night) doing crossword puzzles mom had brought with her from the newspaper. We wanted to get more because we were running out, but not a single store in teh lake quinalt area carried them. Doh.

During the day, we intended to do a lot of art. I apparently don't know how to do that yet. It is hard to switch from a cubicle for work to a couch. :) Anyways, we didn't do much because on the first day, mom had heard mice in the walls; and on the second day, we found mouse poop; and on the third day, a mouse came tearing ass out from behind the fireplace. So we spent a lot of time trying to work out that problem.

In addition to the "pets" we had not requested, mom forgot her watercolor paper block, so we called Abe and him look up the nearest art store, which was in Forks. So we spent a few hours and drove to Forks. Oh, and for the first few days, mom had a very sore back. She thinks it was from the stress of actually taking a working vacation, which I tend to agree. So in Forks, we found the art store pretty easily. Small town, so it was not the most varied art store. Mom ended up getting some cheap watercolor paper in sheets because they didn't even sell watercolor blocks. When we went up to the counter, I noticed a bunch of Twilight fan art and twilight merch, like notepads and pins. I giggled to myself. When my mom asked the art store lady where we could go for lunch, she mentioned the Twilight restaurant. And then a Mexican restaurant, which is where we went. We did drive past the Twilight restaurant, and I giggled again. The window displays were a bunch of stuff from the book covers. Anyways, the mexican restaurant was a converted gas station. The food tasted ok, but made me a bit sick.

Then we went grocery shopping. The grocery store had a section devoted to twilight with rain boots and hoodies and bumper stickers. Things like "The rain and the vampires both suck in Forks, WA." Yikes. I ended up getting some corn that was cookable in the microwave because that is all they had. And it was really gross. Tasted like chemicals.

On the way back from Forks, we stopped by a beach. We would have walked more, but mom's back hurt too much. We grabbed a cool looking bottle that had little things that had grown on it, like clams or something. Cleaning up the beach.

Anyways, the cabin was fun, but what with mice pooping in our dishes (so unsanitary), we decided to leave and ended up spending the rest of vacation at my moms. We ended up having to lug everything back up, including about 7 days worth of food, without the aid of our men. While we were at the cabin, I had started a painting for Abe, "Home Sweet Homo Erectus," and a pencil of Arthur and Georgie.

On the way back home, we stopped by our apartment so I could say hi to Abe and the dogs. And grab some things, like more crossword puzzles. We spent the entire drive up to bellingham doing the crossword puzzles.

In Bellingham, we also didn't get much done because we had all this money and I wanted to spend it! (Refund) I got an Ashford 16" rigid heddle loom from NW Handspun Yarns. And then I made mom a scarf (with her help). It was super fun. I can't wait to make another, but it has been SO HOT. It is cooler today, so I guess that is what I will do. Yay for rain. The loom came needing to be put together. It is a good thing I didn't wait to do that until I got back home because it was so hard to get the screws in we ended up having to use mom's drill as an electric screw driver. A few comments on the directions. The two pieces that are both marked H are not identical, they are the exact opposite, so they should have different letters. The pieces are not labeled, so you have to figure it out. The tools that are optional, like wood glue, should be marked optional in the tool list, not just in the instruction steps. There was something else, but I have forgotten now. And with about an hours time, we had the whole thing put together and were starting the scarf.

Anyways, we also went to Goodwill, where I got some shoes for $7 that I had been eyeing at Fred Meyer's for $35. I also got an awesome green cardigan (smaller guage than I can do with awesome buttons and a great color), a herringbone sweatshirt (no hood! Yay!), a white button-up shirt (which turned out to be too big, but I will see what I can do to fix it), and a box with drawers (black and painted with moon and stars). I went back with Abe later and got a 99 cent green v-neck t-shirt and an awesome green goblet. Abe hates it (the 70s goblet).

In all, I had a great time. Abe came up Friday to pick me up. That is when we went to Goodwill. That was the day we did my birthday celebration with my family.

For my birthday, Isaac gave me a bone large-eye blunt needle that he had made with the information he learned in the Bone Carving class that was his birthday present from mom, jim, abe, and me. The bone came from a porkchop he'd had for dinner. Haha. And mom bought me some books at Hendersons: Weaving things you can use, The joy of hand weaving (though mine was printed in 1950), How to draw and sell comic strips, How to draw and sell comics (which I just realized is the by the same guy who did the previous book...), and Aubrey Beardsley: Sixty selected drawings. The Aubrey Beardsley one might be my favorite. Turns out one of his drawings was used as the cover on one of my favorite books, The Einstein Intersection.

For my birthday and Mother's day, we had a GREAT dinner on Friday. Jim made polenta, which I could never complain about and nearly have to force him to make everytime. Man that stuff is good. We also had the Brussel Sprouts Braised in Butter from the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And from the same book, we had chicken breasts in mushrooms and onions. That might just be the best chicken I have ever had or will have in my life. Holy cow. The whole chicken thing took about half an hour. The sauce (butter, mushrooms, green onions, vermouth, chicken stock, and cream) was amazing. It was good on the polenta and brussel sprouts, too. I am drooling just thinking of this meal. For dessert we had some delicious pistachio/almond ice cream with chocolate syrup. Yummy.

I had such a great time for a week and a half hanging out with my mom. She apparently spends a lot of her time saying mixed metaphors. About every other time she said something was a mixed metaphor. And it was contagious. I couldn't get a metaphor right by the end of the trip. Her studio was awesome, so we had a great time working our butts off there, even if we could only really agree on Frank Sinatra for music. No complaints here. I love Sinatra. I hope to do it again sometime. I could see mom and Jim running an art-themed bed and breakfast. :)

On Sunday, it turns out I had left all my birthday books at my mom's so we met her at my grandma's for tea and scones with my aunts. Before that, we went to Fluevog and I finished buying the shoes I had on layaway. They are comfortable and awesome. These are great shoes. We also went to Third Place Books in Lake City. I got the first two volumes of Walking Dead for Abe. I haven't read them yet, so no comment there. I also got myself Amphigorey and Amphigorey Also, and a book on Gothic Art. The Gothic Art book is just for reference. I might read a bit, but probably not much. I got it for the pictures. Gorey is amazing. I think these books will be a much-used reference.

After all this, I still had Monday to recup and Abe and I played Borderlands, which I really enjoy. I am playing Mordecai, the hunter, and I have to say, I am loving the snipers. I can kill a Rakk (flying thing) from halfway across the map or so. If I can see it, I can kill it. Totally awesome.

On Wednesday, we went to Outback for dinner and Abe gave me the two CDs previously mentioned. They are really good. I knew I would like Regina, but I really like The Reverend Horton Heat. That is some upbeat music. Great for a sunny car ride home with the stereo and A/C blasting. The first song has a start that reminds me or reggae, which gets my hackles up, but it only lasts a few seconds and then she starts to sing and I am comforted.

Anyways, back to the near present. This last Saturday, we went to the NW Cartoonists group and Abe told everyone I was shy and I put a comic of Arthur up for voting for Best of teh NW. It was pretty funny. If I can, I will get a copy or something and post it here. It was just Arthur being scared in a way slightly inspired by anime/manga. The guy who was supposed to come talk never showed up, but we did watch a video of Scott McCloud on TEDtalk. That was still fun. At least one person voted for Arthur for Best of the NW. And it wasn't me or Abe. (I think part of the rules involves not voting for yourself.)

So next time I post, I will put up the Home Sweet Homo Erectus. And this image makes me laugh every time I see it. The whole thing is great, but that one is the best. Haha. Adam West.

We now resume our regularly scheduled programming

2010-05-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

Now that Angelas vacation is over we can get back to our regular posting pattern.

Yesterday was her birthday. I got her a few cds. Far by Regina Spektor who is just Regina in our house and Laughin' and Cryin' with the Reverend Horton Heat by The Reverend Horton Heat. I chose Far because Angela loves Regina and Laughin' and Cryin' because she's been really interested in rockabilly music recently.

We listened to Laughin' and Cryin' in the car last night and it's pretty awesome. The musicianship is excellent. The music is fun and interesting and the lyrics are often very funny.

I'm hoping to listen to Far either tonight or tomorrow.

I got the first two collections of The Walking Dead this past weekend and it's awesome. I'm not usually into zombie stuff but this is more of an apocalypse story that happens to have zombies. Apparently there's going to be a TV show based on it as well. Weird.

At the end of her vacation, Angela bought herself a copy of Borderlands and we've been playing it together. It's a fun game to play alone but it's fantastic to play with a friend. I'm looking forward to a few months of good times playing it with her.

In other news, I'm still writing, looking for a job and playing the bass. Now I'm starting to try to learn to play the guitar as well.

My heart bleeds for them

2010-05-05T17:55:00.000-07:00

Those poor unfortunate rich folks. It's such a tough world that they're worried that they won't be able to continue getting richer.

--Abe

Stumptown to vacation in no time flat

2010-04-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Here was my description of our trip to Stumptown to my co-worker:
"well, we drove to Portland Saturday morning and went to Stumptown Comic Fest. we only walked around for about an hour over the course of the whole day as we spent most of the time in panels. But somehow I still ended up with 6 blisters!! They we drove back and got home in plenty of time to miss the I-5 Northbound closure."

Because of one of the panels, Self Publishing like a Rockstar, I started reading Octopus Pie, which I am really enjoying.

Here is a blister montage. Haha.I didn't take a picture of the one on my big toe because you can't really see it. The ones on the arch of my left foot are by far the most painful.

The digital painting class was great. I started working on something last night. I don't know how it will turn out, but I have high hopes. I have a tiny portion of it done even though I worked on it for about 2 hours. I did keep messing up and having to fix that, but that just takes practice. The guy who does Dresden Codak led the session. It was really impressive to watch him take 30 minutes and make a really cute little pic. I learned the brush settings I need and stuff. Very cool. You know, I was going to write a huge long post about all the stuff I learned, but I am too lazy.

Since I will be gone for so long, here are some pics I have done. First, a color of the Creeper from before I took the digital painting class. This is just a completely different style of coloring from the digital painting. Probably much faster. I like both.

Next, here is a picture called 'Bunny Loves Robot.' I have not decided what to do with this pic yet. I drew it much smaller a long time ago. So I scanned it, printed it larger, traced it again while make it much better, and then I inked it.

When I get back from vacation, I should have a lot of shtuff to put up here and on deviant art. Or not. Depends on what I work on. I have grand plans. I have no idea how much I will get done because it is not often then I have this much time to work on art. I should have the thumbnails done for another graphic story and some drafts of the main characters. I might even have a funny digital painting of batman. I did an ink of it, but I hate it. I like the pencil still, but I might need to fix that too. I already packed a bunch of stuff for vacation. In addition to my art box, with my ink and brushes and some water colors and other random stuff, I packed a bag of paper: 9x12 water color, 11x17 Bristol board (two kinds: with and without the blue lines for comics), 9x12 Bristol board, lots of computer paper, water color sketch books (including the one with the original Umbrella Girl drawings, which I am thinking of redoing), and more. I would bring my 11x17 water color paper, but I can't find it anywhere and I am so bummed about it because there are two nice paintings in there. :'(

Completely non sequitor, if you like comics, you might want to watch the videos made by Crazy Sexy Geeks.

I also forgot to post this earlier. I drew this for Isaac in the car on the way up for his birthday. Haha.

Stumptown

2010-04-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

We went to Stumptown this weekend. It was awesome.

Google maps estimated it would take us 4 hours to drive to Portland. Angela totally freaked out cause I'd told her it would take like 3 hours. We left at 6:45 and got there at 9:45 :-) I'm pretty sure the estimate was assuming traffic and there was none.

We walked through the booths on the main floor but neither of us particularly enjoys large crowds of people so we went straight to the seminar things that we were really interested in. We saw one about digital painting which was primarily for Angela but I found it to be fascinating. Then we went to one on copyright and IP law. It was long, like 2 hours, but very interesting as well. Next up was one on story telling without words that turned out to be a dud. It was more like a low quality free college class than a seminar. We left early. Last up was Self Publishing like a Rock Star which was both funny and interesting.

Then we spent all day Sunday sitting around the house recovering :-)

For the next few weeks I'll probably be the only one posting because Angela is heading to Lake Quinault for a much deserved and greatly needed vacation.

--Abe

Outage

2010-04-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the outage over the weekend. Our DNS service expired and I didn't get any sort of notification about it happening. Then, when it expired all the settings got wiped and I had to re-figure out how to set it up. Of course I set it up wrong the first time but it took 48 hours for the dns settings to work so I didn't find out till this morning. It's all good now though.

--Abe

Volcano pics

2010-04-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Check these out! Straight from Iceland. Those pictures are just amazing.

We're headed to Stumptown this weekend. Going to drive down to Portland in the morning and drive back that night. It's going to be a really long day but should be a lot of fun too.

I've been working on one of my stories a lot lately. I'm super happy with how it's coming along. So happy that I want to talk about it and tell everyone about it but instead I'm going to just get back to work on it. You all can read it when I'm done :-)

I thought that this interactive chart was very interesting. You don't often see this type of unemployment data broken down by metro area. According to that chart the number of people employed in the Seattle area has decreased an average of 4.63% per month for the last three months. That's just scary.

--Abe

Dino-Vamp - now in color

2010-04-20T13:12:00.001-07:00

Fun weekend. We went to this month's Cartoonists Northwest meeting. They are very nice. The lead lady even recognized us from last month. This month, we listened to Michael Foster, who does a comic called "Larry's Cafe." It is fun and inspiring to hear about other people who are doing art.

I have been watching Arrested Development on the weekends, since I finished Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That show is really funny. I have been having a hard time drawing the last week, but I did draw The Creeper this weekend, which was last week's challenge on Ten Ton Studios. I think he turned out OK. Could be better, but that will just happen with practice. What I have been trying to get the energy to do for the last week is start the thumbnails of the Gardner story. We have most of a script. And I basically know how the ending goes. There are a few frames I know almost exactly what I hope they will look like. I need to do character sketches (a lot) of the two main characters.

Finally, here is a color version of the Dino-Vamp cartoon. This is my first real color job in Photoshop, so please forgive.

So this weekend, I also watched Superman Doomsday. I thought it was weird how much he tore up the city when it was completely unnecessary and in a real situation, some of his fighting tactics, like throwing a bad guy through a building so the whole thing collapses (at the end of a work day) would have killed a heck of a lot of people. At one point, he even has the option to move the fight to outside the city and brings it right back to the center. One thing though, I loved was how they animated Superman taking off for flight. I think that is exactly what it would look like and it was so graceful. Make me want to be able to fly. :)

I also watched The Devil's Own. That was pretty good. Not much to say about it though. The description on Netflix is terrible. Has hardly anything to do with the actual story.

And I watched The Sasquatch Gang, which was pretty funny. It has a very similar feel to Napoleon Dynamite, which makes sense, since it is the same director.

And finally, (this is actually in reverse order) I watched School Ties with a young Brendan Frasier and Matt Damon. Matt Damon was not famous at the time and had a main role, but not the biggest role. I liked it, actually. I really like Brendan Frasier. He is usually really funny. This was not funny, but I think he did the part really well. I think he probably could have been a more serious actor if he wanted to, but he really seems to like making dumb comedies, which is not a bad thing in my opinion.

Here are some comics I found recently:

The Intrepid GirlBot - So far, I like it a lot. It is very cute. Along the lines of Abominable Charles Christopher, it seems to me. Just in orange instead of blue and a girl bot instead of an abominable snowman.
Gunnerkrigg Court - I love this one. I think it is in print too, but I have to save my money, so I can only read it online for now. Though perhaps I will buy a commission or something. I might start doing that. I was thinking of starting a collection of different characters knitting. :)
Love me nice - Hilarious. What a funny idea for a comic.
Heropotamus - I haven't read too far in this, just the new posts for a week or two, but it seems pretty funny. Light hearted. So far.

Don't these look like fun?! Too pricey for me right now, but maybe some time in the future.

Funny and terrifying

2010-04-16T06:02:00.001-07:00

This out http://crackshackormansion.com/ It seems that Vancouver Canada has been having a little real estate bubble. I thought the crappy run down houses with asking prices in the 300Ks in Seattle were ridiculous!

--Abe

this is awesome

2010-04-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this. That's just crazy!

--Abe

Whoops

2010-04-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

Well, this weekend was fun. We went to greek and mom and I split the Rack of Lamb again, which is always amazingly good. But I never have clean dishes at the restaurant we went to. Oh well.

This weekend my mom also showed me how to color my comics in photoshop. And I went, "Duh. You should me that last time I was here. I will remember this time." And I did. I have started on coloring the Dino-Vamp. I will post it when I am done. But that will probably be next week. Might have been today had I not been totally distracted by Corgis on You Tube. I looked up Talking Corgis and found this:

That was so funny. Then we finally hooked up the Web cam and started recording the corgis. Not a very good camcorder, but better than none.

Also, our dogs totally do some of that. Nisa also does a funny little growl while she stands up next to Abe. Here is a quick little video of me making Nisa sit up and lay down. You can see how bad Abe's camera work is. And that Nisa moves far too fast for the camera. Watch her tail, too. Very funny.

Monday blah

2010-04-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

I got busy writing and doing things around the house and forgot to post. We went to Bellingham this weekend to celebrate Isaacs birthday. It was fun.

Also, Anita helped us to take the inks of "Harrowing tales at the Bus Stop" and turn them into a book. She also printed up like four copies for us. We gave one to her and Jim and one to Isaac and kept the other two for ourselves. It looks fantastic! It was really fun to see her work. I'm so thankful for her help. She made it look so professional. I'm also super proud of Angela :-)

Take a look at this article on zerohedge. It's an analysis of the costs of living in america right now. Interesting reading. Last month 6900 people filed for bankruptcy every day. That's more people than in the depths post-crash madness back in March.

--Abe

A little news for you

2010-04-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Kyrgyzstan is burning. News at elev-- Oh yeah the US media doesn't seem to be covering this. The single reference to it on cnn.coms front page is "Troubled Kyrgyzstan vital to US" which refers to the fact that a very important air base is located there. The lone picture in the article is of a woman kissing a baby.

--Abe

I'm boring

2010-04-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

I just can't think of anything to talk about today. I had the same problem on Monday. I started researching something, got distracted, forgot to post and then forgot what I had been researching. Angela made fun of me when I told her.

Yeah, Alice was pretty average. It looked ok but the story was kinda meh. There were big stretches of "Hey look at how cool our CGI is" that added nothing to the movie at all.

I read a number of financial blogs. I used to read them daily but they started really depressing me so I'm down to a few times a week. Ah! I remembered what I was researching! I found this article on RollingStone. I'm pretty confident that if that doesn't make you angry as hell you're either a banker or so out-of-touch that you don't even understand what you've read.

--Abe

Margarita time

2010-04-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday was my mom's birthday and we met in Burlington for a movie and lunch with my Aunt Carol, too. We went to the Cascade mall theater and Alice in Wonderland started 20 minutes late. Annoying. The movie was good, but not as good as I expected. I think part of it was the theater. The film seemed darker than it maybe should have been and the sound was pretty quite. It also should have been way longer. I think they cut a lot out. I think the white Queen needed more explanation because there were hints that she had more story but they never got around to telling it. Bummer.

Then we went to El Cazador for lunch. Abe and I had delicious Taquitos. And for dessert, mom bought us all a plate of Xangos to share, which is cheese cake wrapped in a flour tortilla and then deep fried. Sounded gross, but it tasted really good. It was an appropriate place for lunch because for her birthday, I made mom the Frozen Margarita socks. Those were terrible to make, but she seems to like them, so they were worth it. I got done with the first one and couldn't bring myself to make the second one. Mostly because of the annoying cactus on the ankle. And then to top it all off, when I finally did it. I put the cactus on the same side of both ankles so now she has two left socks. Agh. I put it off so long that Friday night we stayed up until almost 1 so I could try to finish the socks, but I ended up finishing them in the car on the way up to the movie instead.

The top of the sock is supposed to look like the salt rim of the glass. Haha. That was probably the most fun part. So before I gave them to mom, I asked her if she planned on having a Margarita, and she didn't so I was a little disappointed. But she thought the socks were so funny when she opened them that she showed them to the waitress and asked for a matching margarita. And I was too dumb to get a picture of that. :( But she is wearing them today, so I guess she must like them. And that makes three items off my list, though I also added one (Slip Jig socks from Rockin' Sock Club).

This weekend, I also finished the pencils for the bus stop story and started inking. The cover and first page are basically done. I need to add some white gauche to the first page, but that will be quick (I hope I don't completely mess it up).

Also this weekend, I got through all the Criminal Intent available for streaming, which was season 6. I started watching Rescue Me. That show is kind of depressing though (yeah, I know I just finished 6 years of Criminal Intent, a show about the worst or most complicated crimes).

Abe just informed me about a doggly adventure in jerkiness. He came out from wherever he was and found the dogs sitting all happy together on the couch with a pillow between them. On closer inspection there was a hole in that pillow which led to a hole in the actual pillow from which they dogs had been gleefully removing the stuffing. Other than the two holes, the outer one of which had already been there, the thing is fine. It is an old pillow from my grandma when I was in grade school or so. One side is Xmas and the other is little bo peep. Jerks.

In other news, it is so cold in our apartment, that in addition to my traditional PJ work outfit for Work-At-Home-Tuesday, I also have on my 'house sweater,' hat, fingerless mittens, scarf, blanket around my legs, socks, and slippers and I am still cold.

Thursday thursday thursday

2010-04-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to talk about at the moment. I'm having a hard time keeping up with the news because it just seems like the world is going to hell in a hand basket and it just depresses me to know the details.

I'm pretty burned out on video games as well. I've been spending my free time reading. In the last week I've read books IV and V in the Dark Tower series, a graphic novel called Black Summer and I've started re-reading The Stand. I'm in a real Stephen King phase I guess.

I'm looking forward to watching more Lost this weekend with Angela.

--Abe

Uh, wow, just wow.

Queen of Beads resurfaces

2010-03-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend I lost the pattern for one project I am working on and got mad at the other one, so I needed another project to work on. So I finished the Queen of Beads (rav) from the Rockin' Sock Club January 2009 kit. You know, the one that Nisa promptly chewed a bunch of the beads of one of the ankles of. Remember this?

Well, anyways, I worked on that Friday night and Saturday morning. It was really fun. It was nice to remember what a clever little pattern that is. Anyways, first I had to find everything and it was all over the place. The two socks had finally gathered together on top of my dresser under a bunch of other clothes. The remaining yarn with some beads was in the dining room. And it turns out there were more beads in the little package they came in in my knitting toolbox. Which is good because it looks like the cat ate a bunch of the remaining yarn and beads. Stupid cat.

So first, I removed the ankle starting from the lowest existing hole. I just wiggled that strand out until the ankle was detached. This was mostly easy though later it seems I lost a row somewhere.

Then I realized I didn't have enough beads so I ripped back the ruined ankle to get all the beads. I stopped ripping when I had all the holes, which meant I basically just had to start where the beading started so I used the existing topic and didn't have to cast on and work the 10 rows of rib. Which is always nice.

I picked up the stitches and started the ankle. I didn't find the extra beads until I had already started so I had to cut the yarn, thread on the extra beads and then I started up again. I didn't think I would have enough beads, so I left off the first row of beads, which is a pity. Oh well.

Once I had knit the ankle down to the length I had removed it (I just looked at the existing sock to tell how far to go in the pattern), I use Kitchener stitch to attach the ankle to the foot that was awaiting on stitch holders. I was hoping to attach it on an all knit row, but too bad, I guess. It was on a row with knit and purl, which was easier to do than some other rows. So I had to do the Kitchener stitch backwards at times, but that wasn't too hard.

Once I had it all attached it looked like this. Not too bad, I don't think. Considering. The colors are a bit off because the original sock had been washed, but one wash and I don't think you will be able to tell. I am pretty pleased with my darn clever self.

(that's LnO: CI in the background)

In other worlds, yes, Lost kind of freaks me out. I like to watch an episode of Star Trek: TNG before we got to bed after lost. That always cheers me up. You know what else cheers me up? The Highlander series is available for instant view on Netflix!! So I am about 3 episodes into that. It is pretty bad - early 90s clothes, grainy filming, and bad acting - but I do love it so. Connor MacLeod reminds me so much of Booth, too. Weird. So I watch an episode of that sandwiching a billion episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Which I freakin' love. Goren and Eames are my favorites, but I worry that they will be gone. Season 6 started without half the cast from the previous 6 seasons and only 1 of their exists was explained. So weird. It isn't even mentioned.

I would just like to point out that when I saw Abe installing Linux, I told him he would be back on Windows in a week. Every 6 months to a year he switches to Linux and then gets all annoyed and switches back to Windows. He really should just listen to me. :)

Finally, here are some pics. This is a couple of doodles I did at work while waiting for meetings to start. They almost always start late for one reason or another and I am always there a little early because I don't want to be late. You think I would learn. I just really don't want to be late though. The other is the pencil I drew for the DinoVamp comic. As a side note, some day I will try to color it in photoshop, but I think I really suck at it. I did have fun with that comic.

Posty post post

2010-03-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

We've been watching Lost on the netflix streaming thing. I'm enjoying it quite a bit more than I anticipated I would. The direction is damn fine, the music is good, the writing is excellent and the acting is pretty damn good too. We're only up to about episode 12 in the first season right now. We've been watching it more sparingly than I would like because it freaks Angela out so we have to stop a few hours before we go to sleep. She's such a baby :-P

I reminded myself why I hate linux this weekend, at least for desktop use. I won't go into the gory details. Good thing windows 7 is basically pretty darn good. And almost every piece of open source software that I would use in linux is available in windows and works as well or better anyway. So.

I'm almost done reading Wolves of the Calla which is book five of the Dark Tower series. I'm really looking forward to getting to the end of this story since I've been reading it most of my life at this point. I've been sitting on the bed and reading for a few hours most nights. The dogs come in and hang out with me. They love it but Angela feels left out because she has to sit on the couch alone while she knits.

The job search is still basically fruitless. There are *tons* of jobs in the medical field. Not a one of which am I qualified for. I'd go to one of the community colleges and get a quick certificate in phlebotomy if I could afford to, but in order to be eligible, I need to pay for one quarter of full time classes which is a bit of a catch-22.

I'm so deeply thankful for Angela. Without her I'd have long ago found myself living in a cardboard box somewhere.

One of our neighbors got a job at the new Little Caesars pizza that opened in the mini-mall next to our apartment. Funny how all the people that got hired there for jobs that interact with the public are college and high school girls. They did hire one older guy, he's probably in his 50s, to stand on the sidewalk and wave a "5 dollar pepperoni pizza" sign. Of course that's a grand opening promotion and will end soon. I feel for that guy. I wonder what he will do when the promotion is over and they don't need him to hold that sign anymore. I would have gladly taken that job.

--Abe

edit:

I thought that this post on Mish's blog was hysterically funny because I have sent my resume off to at least three local vets/kennels for exactly the job that he is talking about.

'Cause all vampires wear capes

2010-03-26T16:32:00.001-07:00

I drew this from this comic from Hijinks Ensue. This is the DinoVamp combo. All he wanted was a little elephant blood to go with his awesome cape and look what happens.

This took two evenings. Probably 4 hours or less. Also, the first drawing I have done on bristol board and the first one I have inked directly over my pencils. I had to look up a T-Rex online because I only new the most generic sense of what they look like.

This is on the Bristol board for comics with the non-reproducible blue lines at the edges, that I didn't really follow because I am a spaz. And I used my new Davinci #2 round brush. Which I absolutely love. Really my favorite brand so far.

Dorks and our lists

2010-03-23T12:48:00.001-07:00

So I think you can guess that I like lists. So here are more lists. We added a page of the web comics that Abe and I read and a page of the blogs that Abe and I read. I also went through my Ravelry projects and updated all the projects I am not actively working on to 'Hibernating' status.

The Cartoonists Northwest meeting really was fun. I came home ready to work and got the first three pages and the cover of the bus stop story ready for inking. 6 pages to go. Street art actually sounds like a lot of fun, when legal. Wheat pasting paper art to poles and buildings. Slapping stickers everywhere. It is really part of the solution to the problem of how disgusting a place can get when that many people use the same area. That and people not being disgusting. Reminds me of how bummed I was when they painted over the cute graffiti and the highway support next to the I-5 express lane tunnels. I can't believe they would rather have gray cement to look at than a cute little weird bunny thing.

So sometime we must have hit a huge pot hole (I know where is most likely and have a guess at the exact pothole and moment) and now we have get the car fixed. It is covered by insurance, though, which is a relief. Save us over 50% since we just have to pay the deductible. But the particular part of road where I bet we got the damage is absolutely terrible and if I could go around it without adding a stupid amount of time to my drive I would. They need to rip up the road and start over, but it is a very high traffic road. They should just figure out how much of the road they can rip up and replace in a single day and do that every Saturday until they get that whole patch of road fixed. "Just" I say. Psh.

You know... one of my favorite things about Tuesday is having Tofu Yakisoba from Ichi Bento in North City for lunch. Yum. So delicious.

Cartoonists Northwest and stuff

2010-03-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

We went to the Cartoonists Northwest meeting this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun. More fun than I expected it to be. We had a blast.

starheadboy gave a presentation about "street art". It was very educational. His love of his art and his playfulness was pretty inspiring.

I started reading book 4 of The Dark Tower series a few days ago. I know that "real" writers look down on Stephen King but I seriously think that 99.999% of that is just sour grapes. He's a great story teller and I'm thoroughly enjoying this particular story.

Also, apparently, there's some sort of flash game that's based on the series on his website called Discordia. It does warn you not to play until you've read the books though so I can't tell you more than I have about it.

--Abe

Ooh la la Iron Man

2010-03-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

From one of the people I watch on deviantart, I found this thing on Awesome Iron Man covers. The first two are my favorite. The first one, because it is Art Nouveau. The second because it is Skottie Young. Which I could tell without reading the name of the artist.

Now, I am trying to remember to just do it with this new comic thing I am working on. It is hard and intimidating. Right now I am just drawing the foreground. The main character and all that. Then I will draw the background and secondary characters. Which there are a lot of. I have the layout of all the pages done. I just need to fill them in. I am having a hard time with the profile, but he looks fine and consistent in 3/4 and straight on. I guess he, who we have called Aaron, though he has no name in the comic, is consistent in all the profiles, but not really the same from profile to the others. Oh well. Practice, practice, practice.

Last night for St. Patty's, Abe and I have some of the best potato and bratwurst thing ever. The bratwurst must have been completely utterly fresh. I don't think I ever had bratwurst that good. They are made right at teh grocery store we go to and wow. Yum. We also had some beers. I have a Guinness Smithwicks Irish Ale. Those are yummy. I can't decide if I like the Buffalo Bill's Brewery Pumpkin Ale or that Irish Ale better.

The monday post that wasn't

2010-03-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post on Monday so I'll try to make up for it today :-)

ECCC was super fun. The part where we wandered around on the show floor surrounded by thousands of sweaty stank ass dorks was not so great but the little conference things we went to were awesome. Whil Wheaton, er, Will Weaton, was very funny.

I've been playing Torchlight pretty obsessively for the last few days. It's a profoundly simple game but it's a lot of fun. It's sort of the Quake 3 of dungeon crawlers. Like Quake 3, Torchlight is a stripped down, bare bones, just the essentials sort of game. Both take the less-is-more approach to pinnacles of excellence.

Or I might just be really easily impressed.

I'm reading Breaking Dawn right now. It's a guilty pleasure. Actually, the first two books were guilty pleasures the last two are like a clinically obese dude in a muumuu walking out of a krispy kreme with 4 dozen donuts and a 72 oz coffee.

I'm like 100 pages in to the book and there's been exactly one plot point so far and when it came, I laughed out loud. So, yeah, my goal is to get it done by Friday so Angela can read it before it goes back to the library.

We'll be having the exorcism for the house on Monday, black tie, byob, no pets, no muumuu's.

I wanted to post this video because Glen Beck is such a slimy douche and it's just fantastic to see John Stewart skewer him. Enjoy :-)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Sour Gropes

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

--Abe

Oh Oh I had to add this one because, A) It's awesome B) It's Terrifying

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Rebecca Skloot

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care reform

Goblins and ECCC

2010-03-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some colors of some drawings. Neither of these were in photoshop. The first one is a water color version, which I think I prefer. I did it on printer paper though, so it bled a lot. I fixed that in photoshop.

Second, we have the color pencil version. I think I would use the color pencil to choose the colors I want and then do the water color for the final piece. I am not sure if I should do the water color on the same piece as the original ink or print it and then water color it. If I do that, I would certainly need to use different paper in the printer, I just don't know what.

I have also inked a lot more. But all stuff that isn't mine. I did one of the pages from the Art of Comic Book Inking. Such a good book. And I did Wonder Woman by JMan-3H. That was a blast to ink. Took forever with all that detail though. And I inked Batman - Dynamic Trio by cinar. Very fun. Also took a very long time. I started that Batman one when we got back from ComiCon. I was too tired to do anything else. I am still tired. The combination of daylight's savings and a day surrounded by that many people really has me worn out. I wish I had taken Monday off instead of a half day Friday. I took a half day on Friday because I was so freakin' tired from learning to sleep with a night guard. It didn't help right away (still had the nerve pain in my neck or whatever it was), but it seems to be gone now. I just need to wait and see if it comes back.

Anyways, I am working on a new story by Abe. I have the guys head down well, but his body. Arg. I need to practice that. It is really fun to work on though. I hope to have the whole thing done and printed in a tiny chap book by Stumptown Comic Fest. I think we are going to that in April. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaking of, ECCC was a lot of fun. We started by looking at the exhibit hall. Meh. We looked for Skottie Young and Ben Templesmith. Found Ben Templesmith, and Skottie Young (deviantart) was supposed to be next to him. Turns out Skottie Young's flight was canceled and there were no others from that airport. Maybe next year. :'( Then we went the Wil Wheaton Awesome Hour, which was pretty awesome. He read from some of his books and took about 7 minutes of questions at the end. Idiot Abe didn't get a picture of him because we were too far away. Then we stayed (same room) for Leonard Nimoy, which was awesome. I liked that one more than Abe did. He seems like a really cool guy. Passionate and thoughtful. And just the best voice ever. He liked the new Star Trek movie, which is good, since he was in it... And you know what? There were more people for Wil Wheaton the for Leonard Nimoy. Crazy, right?

Then we ran downstairs for the Image panel. I thought they would go over taking submissions, but instead it was a review of their upcoming projects and then a Q&A. Which was still a good time. Ben Templesmith was on the panel. When the first Choker collected book comes out, I think we will get it. The ECCC special cover of the single comic book was $10. Abe absolutely refused to get that.

Then we spent some time being annoyed and wandering around the booths. I was thinking of buying some Wormwood Gentleman Corpse and getting Ben Templesmith to sign them, but there was too much noise and too many people to allow for adequate thinking so we gave up after wandering around with scowls on our faces and went to the room the next panel we wanted to see was. Turned out to be the Oni Press one where they review what they have coming out and they also sound like a good company. So Abe ran out and bought the first Ghost Projekt.

The final panel was Art Techniques with Todd McFarlane, who was running the meeting using GoToMeeting and he was on the phone which they put up to the mic. That was interesting. He sounds very passionate, so that was fun. Couldn't hear him when he got a little too excited. At one point, his screen froze on our end and his editor was trying to get him to stop talking. He said "Todd" no less than 20 times before Todd actually stopped talking and found out our screen wasn't following his anymore. I was hoping the panel would be more on the tools and less on drawing, but I did finally get the face ratios I was wanting so now I don't have to go to the Face class for $99. Then we went home. And zonked out. Man I was tired. I watched some netflix and inked that batman. I think I might have knit for a bit too. I was pretty tired, so I don't really remember.

And speaking of the face class, which is by Nils Osmar, I found some other classes I really want to take from him this summer: Drawing in pen, brush & ink, and How to make money as an artist. I would like to take How to draw clothing too. Sucks though because The ink one is on a Wednesday, the clothes ones is the next day on Thursday. I would be so freakin' tired. Oh yeah, they are both 7-10. I usually go to bed at 9 or 10. The how to make money one is on a Saturday, which is certainly the best time for me.

You know what else we found out about at ECCC, which relates to the above classes, is Cartoonists NW. They meet on the third Saturday of every month. Looks like fun. That is this weekend, so we are going to go check it out. Last month's meeting was about self publising, so bummer we couldn't go to that. This month is about a graffiti artist. But they will go over more than just that. Looks like fun.

Oblivion part 2

2010-03-11T12:30:00.001-08:00

So, here's my review of the sand box part of oblivion.

The fact that creatures scale to your level completely destroyed my ability to enjoy the sandbox aspect of this game. As my character leveled up, she seemed to get less and less powerful. The numbers on her gear and in her character sheet got higher and higher but she got less and less powerful in relation to the creatures I was fighting.

So, the sand box gets a big fat raspberry.

I played Torchlight last night. I noticed that they had added steam accomplishments sometime after I had stopped playing. So I made a vanquisher and played for a few hours.

Torchlight is the most fun game that I've played in forever. Within minutes of playing I kept finding myself thinking stuff like "Damn this game is so much fun!". So I'm probably going to keep playing it, ostensibly so I can get the achievements but really just because it's fun.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm glad to see that the Greeks are finally getting some air time in the mainstream media.

If you've noticed that the weekly unemployment reports are being touted as good news upon good news for the last few weeks, take a look at this which points out that the 4 week moving average is showing an increasing trend in unemployment claims since about January.

--Abe

Monsters and Dames ... and snuggies

2010-03-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

First things first, a little drawing love. Here is a goblin or something and the Monsters & Dames drawing I did. I plan to try coloring these in Photoshop. I have to be sure to close everything else and save whatever it open because last time, the stupid program kept crashing when I tried to color (old snow white). For the Monsters and Dames drawing, I like everything but the legs of the monster. I think I gave up on them. I do realize, I need more than just a #1 Round and a #4 flat...

I have also inked Hellboy v. The Tentacles by voya and Chakata cover by Thegerjoos. But since they are not mine, I will not post them. Just super super super fun practice. And the actual ink of the cover is better than mine. But I am guessing that one was done at a bigger scale and possibly using more than just a #1 brush. I could only do it at 8.5 x 11 because I had to print it. It was really fun to ink and took about 4.5 hours. Wow. Long time.

Well, we were having t-shirt weather while it was snowing like crazy every where else. Now we are freezing. We had to scrape ice off the car windows before we drove to the dentist this morning (where I got my night guard and lower "retainer"). The dogs are all wrapped up in their snuggies.

Oblivion

2010-03-08T11:42:00.001-08:00

So, technically, I beat Oblivion this weekend. I say technically because, while I played through the main story arc, the world remains and has god knows how many quests and stories left for me to discover and play through. So I thought I'd do a two part review. This first one will focus entirely on the central campaign of the game and the next one will focus on the sandbox aspect.

Unlike Bioshock, whose developers added the patina of literature by riffing on Ayn Rands Objectivist philosophy, Oblivion has no pretensions about itself or its goals. It's a straightforward high fantasy good vs evil sort of story that even includes such delights as people eternally burning in lava and the last minute surprise twist that the world rightfully belongs to the devil. All in all the main story was a yawn. There's an incredible amount of depth in the elder scrolls world and the main story of Oblivion basically neglected nearly all of it.

Much like Morrowind, you spend a great deal of time earning the respect of the various factions in Tamriel. Unlike in Morrowind, where this need felt strongly grounded in the story and made sense, in Oblivion it is essentially an mmo style time-sink designed to keep you from working through the story too quickly. Bravo.

My last real grievance with the main story is that, in the end, all you do is stand there and watch the climax. You are literally rooted in place unable to do anything. Then, to top it off, there's no denouement at all. The story just sort of ends and the only tangible outcome is that all of the npcs in Tamriel now want to gossip with you about what happened in the climax where you were locked in place watching events transpire passively. Oh, and you get a set of armor that you have to wait two weeks in game time to receive.

That being said there were a number of memorable characters, like Baurus, Jauffre and Martin, who weren't able to completely come to life but were life-like enough for me to develop some attachment to.

So, the main story arc for Oblivion gets a big fat "Meh" from me. There are some interesting ideas in there but they weren't developed as fully as they should have been. Graphics wise the game is great. It's beautiful to look at even nearly 4 years after its initial release. Stability wise the game is below average for games of the "AAA" breed. It's buggy. It crashes randomly. Creatures glitch out, get stuck on things, fall into pits and then climb out and twitch like fast-forwarded meth addicts having epileptic seizures.

And, after all that negativity, let me reiterate that I really enjoyed playing Oblivion and would happily recommend it to anyone that's interested in it because, relative to its peers, it's outstanding.

The second half of my review of Oblivion will be posted in a while, when I've tired of playing in the sand box and am ready to move to a new game.

--Abe

Edit:

And, in totally unrelated news, take a look at this and prepare yourself for taxes to go up, way up.

Olympic Cardigan

2010-03-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

So. I won gold. Check out the medal I won. :)

I like the color a lot and it is comfy other than being a little too short. I find myself pulling it down all day long. When I am not lazy, I will reblock the bottom half. It is not long enough and stretches enough to be as long as I want. Next time, I would also move the big cable towards the center 4-8 more stitches. It is nearly in the middle right now. I like the two cables together.

The other problem is that the sleeves are just a skitch too tight. They fit, I just have to pull the sleeve on a bit. The sleeves are also about half an inch too short.

I got the whole thing done in a week and 1 day (Edit - I mean 2 weeks and 1 day-der...). I think that is pretty good considering I took time out to draw and stuff. I knit more than usual, but not all the time. I didn't take it to work with me or anything. And I was getting all moody because I hadn't been drawing so after about 4 days I took most of a night off to draw. I am pretty please with myself.

So I guess I should take a picture of the shoulder since that was the whole point of the design. Der.

If you have noticed, there has not been much drawing action and that is because I have been practicing inking and that has been involving pencils that I did not draw. If I want to post them, I have to ask the penciller. Which I do not look forward to. Though, I have to say, inking them has been super super fun. I did a Rocketeer and Hellboy. I think they turned out pretty well. And I had so so so much fun. I do have some inks of my own pencils, but they are not as good. I need really tight pencils and I have no idea what I am doing, so I better get practicing drawing tight pencils. Abe and I have a great idea for a way to practice writing and drawing. I think it will be really fun.

Finished Bioshock

2010-03-02T12:50:00.001-08:00

I finished Bioshock a few nighta ago. My last save was about 90 minutes from the end of the game. There really weren't any new developments in the story or characters relationships in that time. The bad guy got addicted to splicing after finally trying it. The german lady kept on her course of atoning for her sins. The little sisters got creepier.

The game probably should have ended in Ryans office. Then the sequel could have picked up immediately after. Everything after Ryans office felt forced to me, like the writers didn't really know what their story was about for sure so they kept adding things onto the end until they ran out of time.

Then they made a warm-fuzzy montage just to be sure. "Oh, all he wanted was a family, what a nice man." Ugg. The game had pretensions of depth but ultimately it was like a mountain range reflected on the surface of a mud puddle.

The "Would you kindly" thing was a very nice critique of the gaming convention of a non-present person directing you through a radio. Those people are rarely untrustworthy in games. Although it ultimately failed because the only choice the person playing has is to either play or not play. If you choose to play then you are following the linear path, if you choose not to play, well, the whole thing is moot then isn't it? Sure, it provided an explanation for the characters experience but it left the player out in the cold. And that gets to the core problem of FPSs and RPGs, the character is neither the character nor the player but an amalgam of both and focusing on one to the detriment of the other just lessens the whole experience.

A for effort. B+ for combat. A for graphics and art design. D for sound since I was plagued by bugs, anomalies and badness through the entire game. C+ for overall rating. There are definitely way worse games out there. Bioshock desperately wants to transcend its medium, and it gets a lot of points for trying to do that, but it ultimately fails in that goal.

On to Oblivion!

--Abe

Knitting goals

2010-03-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

Abe made his list of games that he started and never finished, so here is mine. It is all the knitting projects I have that are waiting for me. Don't be scared. I haven't even started some, but know exactly what I plan to do with the yarn.

First, I will list the one I already finished my Knitting Olympics cardigan. The sleeves are a bit tight, but other than that it turned out well. I might add reinforcing ribbon to the button bands, though. I will try to get picture up on Friday.
Stochastic blanket-for us-my pattern: this is a blanket I am making from all the left over Lion Brand Homespun yarn I have. I ask Abe for a number between 1 and 10 and grab a ball out of the bag. I am knitting it from the center. I have no idea who long it will take to knit this or how large it is, so I have no idea how far I am.
fingerless cable gloves-Abe-0%-my pattern: I have not started these, but I am really excited to. These will be my own pattern. Tweedy sock yarn from Knit Picks.
Striped gloves-for me-50%-Knitting and tea: I have one done but it was so fiddly I haven't had the energy to do the second. But it was mentioned on the Mason-Dixon blog, so now I have to finish. I might even fix the one finger that is the wrong length (too long).

Tidings of Joy-for us-0%-Knit Picks kit (no longer available): This is the Xmas ornament kit from Knit Picks. I have a number of them done, but I forgot to take pics or anything. I will work on these again next fall. I think I have done the candy cane, plum, cheery, and hat. Maybe another one. That leaves a lot to do though.
Nautie-75%-Knitty: This is a little snail toy. It is fun to knit. I am not sure why I have't finished it yet.

Tawashis: This is only sort of a project. I have a book and crochet hook and the yarn. I can make whatever I want. But the book is in Japanese, so when I get stuck, I am just stuck. I suppose I could ask on the Tawashi group on Ravelry.

Green Cable socks-for me-1%-my pattern: I started these at the M1 retreat a year and a half ago. I should probably finish these. But I can't use the needles they are on. Metal dpns. They really hurt my fingers. I love the colorway. It is XXL Trekking yarn. I had to try it because the Yarn Harlot raves about it all the time.

Cashmere Scarf-for me-25%-LYS Tour pattern: This pattern is from the first year that I did the LYS Tour. It is fun to work, but it is a fuzzy cashemere so I can't work on it when my hands are sweaty and that means working on it in the dead of winter, which we have not had this year.

Handspun Sailor Scarf-50%-my pattern: I had a dream of a scarf so I spun up some yarn and dyed it. Now it is in the knitting stage. I don't really like it, but maybe I will write up the pattern or something because other people might like it. It is a little weird. Maybe I won't.

Little girl's hat-30%-my pattern: My original plan was to make this for my cousin Jenny's kids, but I think I am taking too long and it won't fit by the time I get it to them. Oh well. I will save it for the next person who has a girl. It is green and yellow and pink and my own pattern. Double knit. Sort of fair isle-y.

Garden Daze-50%-RSC2009: Sorry to say, my least favorite colorway and pattern from RSC 2009. I knit the one and really didn't like it, so it is sitting.

Black Shrug-for me-50%-One Skein Shrug: I bought the One Skein Wonder shrug pattern from Stefanie Japel and this is a modified version with lace on the sleeves and a small lace pattern on the back. I like it but the sleeves are annoying me. I should finish it for this summer though.

Blue/Black Blanket-for us?-25%-some internet pattern: This was going to be a gift - 4+ years ago. I think I will just keep it for myself now. There was a pillow to go with it, but I started this when I didn't know much about knitting so the guage is WAY off.

Frozen Margarita socks-Mom?-0%-Tsock: Kit from 2008 Tsock clob. Not a fan. I might make these for my mom. Maybe this is what I will take on my vacation. Maybe not.

b/w long sleeve shrug-for me-1%-my pattern: I am excited for this to be done. But I only have about 2 inches and I don't remember what size needles I was using. For lace yarn. I think it was a 0. I took them out to use for another project. I just wanted something to give me long sleeves without having to wear a whole second shirt.

Ganomy Green-Abe-0% (ripped)-Elizabeth Zimmerman (EZ) pattern: Abe's hat. I started it and it was too small. I had to adjust the pattern because I am using sock weight yarn. It will look awesome when it is done, but I had to rip out and I will need to cast on more stitches next time. I already wrote down my notes for the changes. I just need to unkink the yarn I used already.

Blue slippers-for me-25%-my pattern: This is a dumb project. Worsted to Bulky weight acrylic yarn on large needles, but too small for the yarn. I just don't know what else to do with this yarn. Lion Brand Jiffy.

Cowboy boot socks-for mom or Carol-1%-Tsock: another 2008 Tsock club kit. Meh. Another pair I won't wear. Maybe I will make them for my mom or my aunt Carol. My mom's feet are a little bigger than mine and my aunt Carol's are a little or a lot smaller, I am not sure.

Random Baby Blanket-my pattern: I started this when I was working at my last job, I think. Anyways. I am not that far. I think it might have been for one of my cousins and I am less than a foot in. I don't know what to do with it. Maybe I will knit it up and donate it. Or save it for the next babyshower.

Nite Owl Cardi-for me-0%-my pattern: This is my own project. I really want to make a cardigan that looks like Nite Owl from Watchmen. I got some sock yarn in a good color from Knit Picks. I just need to come up with the "feather" stitch pattern. This is going to be a tricky cardigan to make.

Handknit Fliptop Mitts-for me-50%-based on some pattern: These are going to look great when I finish them. It is from my own handspun. I just need to get working on them. I think I am over or about half done.

Squid-for me-0%-print out: I got this in one of the Harry Potter things I did. It is all the yarn and the pattern I need to make a squid toy. So funny. I look forward to it.

Some hat-for me-0%-my pattern: I don't know what to call it. This is my own pattern and I have done some drawings for it. I just need to do it. This is one I plan to write the pattern for and either submit it to a magazine like Twist Collective or just sell on Etsy and Ravelry.

War of Roses socks-for me-5%-Tsock: Another 2008 Tsock club kit. I actually like this one. It is a bit tricky with some intarsia on the toe, but I can't wait to knit it up. Unfortnuately, she is stuck in the 80s because the socks are reversed colors. I am not sure if there is enough yarn to knit both in the same colors.

Firebird socks-for me-0% (ripped)-Tsock: Another 2008 Tsock Club kit. I like these ones too. But I did such a bad job the first time that I just ripped it out. So I will start these again sometime. I look forward to them. It is a mix of lace and embroidery to get an awesome firebird effect. Though with the right yarn, these could make some pretty wicked peacock socks. I would like to try that sometime. :)

Tsuspense socks-10%-Tsock: Yes another 2008 Tsock Club kit. Not a fan. Rainbow colors. Hearts and happiness. Again, reminds me of the 80s. The cool part was that each kit, she sent one color for the socks, hence the suspense. And she started at the heel.

Frenchman's Creek socks-for me-0%-Tsock: The last pair of 2008 Tsock Club kit that I will list. I kind of like these. But they have a giant lacy top. That might look okay with my Mini Gorgeous shoes, though. If I can wear pink socks (Cascadia RSC) with them, I can wear froofy lace.

Xmas hat-for us-0%-my pattern: This is some nice Lion Brand Wool yarn in xmas colors. I am going to do stripes. Long and pointy with a pom pom. Maybe Next fall.

Another Xmas hat-for us-0%-my pattern: This is acrylic yarn in a cool tweedy color. Not sue what my plans are with this.

Blue Ganomy-for me-0%-EZ pattern: This is for me from some Spin Cycle Blue alpaca and some handspun by me in black alpaca. Single ply. I don't know if my handspun is turning out ok. :(

Dragonfly bag-50+%-my pattern: I am not sure what to do with this. I guess I will finish it and felt it and make it a gift for someone. Or sell it on Etsy if it turn out nice.

Curtain-for us-not far-my pattern: Oh yes, this is from the pound skeins of acrylic in a boucle green and yellow. I want to make curtains. We'll see. That is a big project.It is cast on, but I have forgotten the lace patterns and I don't know if I wrote it down anywhere.

Corrie Vest-for me-40%-Knit Picks Kit: This is my current project. A $13 kit with 8 balls of yarn. Fair Isle. I am working on the underbust rows right now. I like it a lot. Though I am worried because I read that it sags a lot over the course of a day. It also has a steek, which I have never done before. That involves knitting it flat and then cutting it. You can sew on either side of the cut if you are worried it will come apart, but if you use wool, that is unlikely, I hear.

Netted socks-for me-0%-RSC 2009 kit: I love this color way. Not a big fan of the pattern yet, but that is just by looking at it. It looks loose, which I don't like in my socks. But that is one of the next things I want to knit. Now that I have awesome shoes to wear my handknit socks with, I am really excited to knit tons of cool socks.

Raven Swirl Socks-for me-0%-RSC 2009 kit: I am really looking forward to making these too. Cookie A socks. How could I not?

Noro Gaia II-for me-0%-shawl: I got some more Noro Kureyon sock yarn to make a lighter version of the Gaia shawl I already have. I wear the current one all the time.

Noro cowl-for me-0%-my pattern: This is going to be inspired by the Gaia shawl. I might do a feather and fan thing with a row of stockinetter and a row of lace. We'll see.I want it to be long enough to pull over my head, too.

Brown Socks-Abe-55%-my pattern: I have one done and the toe of the second. When I am done with the corrie vest, I should probably finish these before I lose them. They are just so frickin' big. And on US0 needles. Doh. I am dumb. But I didn't want teh fabric to be too loose. Anything large was too loose for my taste. Self pattering sock yarn. They won't really go with Abe's new shoes, I don't think. But he can wear pants.

Queen of Beads-for me-75%-RSC 2009 kit. This was the first kit from last year, but Nisa ate the top of one. I just need to cut off the top of that one, re knit it and sew that bad boy on. These are a great pair of socks, so I am looking forward to being able to wear them again. I will try to get good pics documenting this process. I should do it after Abe's sock. Maybe before. They are just going to be one of the fastest projects to complete.

Laminaria shawl-for me-0%-Knitty pattern: I have some green Sanguine Gryphon lace yarn I want to make this pattern with. I got it on the M1 retreat.

black shawl-for me-0%-Knitted Lace of Estonia: I just want to make any shawl from that book using this great Malabrigo lace skein.

Featherweight Cardi-for me-0%: I am not sure which pattern to use yet. I just happen to have some fine cashmere yarn, probably lace weight or finer, that I want to make a cardigan out of. There is the Featherweight cardigan and I got an interweave magazine with a great one in it, too. I have brown, white, and blue, so I could make both and still have some left over.

Lenore socks-0%-BlueMoon pattern: I have the yarn but I still need to buy the pattern. The pattern is only $6, or so, so that is not a big deal.

In addition, I have, but can't find right now, Viper Pilot Socks (which I love, they just take a lot of concentration, it seems), Tree of Life Blanket (which I messed up so I have to rip back a bit), Abe's Linux Penguin mittens, a green shrug (though I don't like it very much), a crocheted kitchen towel (from the LYS Tour 2008), cabled purse (which is really already knitted, it just needs to be sewn together and given a liner), Ravenclaw Quidditch Socks (which are too short, so I need to rip out the CO on the one I made and add another brown and blue stripe), Laundry basket (though this plan might not pan out - too floppy), Who dog sweaters (#1 and #2 as in Cat in the Hat), Unlucky Wrap (which was my practice olympic knitting for the summer olympics and I failed miserably), and Ravenclaw socks (I have one done, and they are pretty nice, but it is my pattern). These are all listed in my Ravelry projects, but they are not in my yarn closet, which I just cleaned. I guess I better clean my old yarn closet and see if they are in there.

And you know what. I also want to make the Andrea shawl and mitts, which I have nothing for. They are available from Knit Picks. The patterns by that lady are awesome, though I am pretty sure I have mentioned that already, now that I write it. I think I have enough knitting to get me through they year...Plus I have all the RSC kits that will come ever two months. I should get another one at the end of this month. And the come with two patterns, so I will want to spend and extra $20 for a skein to make the second pattern. I have decided to go with Monsoon for Flabella, January's second pattern. (Or, while posting these pictures, I found that somewhere I have a skein of M1 Retreat yarn. I might be able to use that.)

So you might think that if I do all this, I will use up all my yarn, but I still have three bins of yarn not used by these projects plus a bunch or roving to spin up. So I am trying to go on a yarn diet and use up all my yarn. Which now is a good time since Abe is still looking for a job. I guess instead of buying up blue moon yarn to make the second pattern, I should use sock yarn I already own.

Games and stuff

2010-03-01T14:40:00.001-08:00

So I've decided to take a break from mmo's for a bit. My play time is limited and I'm very frustrated with the 10% fun, 90% work thing that is so fundamental to mmo design.

I have a huge pile of single player games that I've never finished so I decided to make a list of them and play through them. Here's my list as it exists at this moment. I still need to dig out my big box of games from the closet so I can make my complete list. You might notice that almost every game in this list was released after November 2004. That must be a coincidence . . .

Warhammer 40K Dawn of War

Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 2

No One Lives Forever 2

Uru

Edited to add:

Shadows of Undrentide

Mechwarrior 4

Lionheart

Vampire the Masquerade redemption

Beyond Good and Evil

Temple of Elemental Evil

System Shock 2

I started this weekend playing Bioshock.

I bought it the day it came out but, at the time, I had a wide screen monitor and the developer decided to deal with widescreen by cropping the top and bottom of the image rather than adding to the sides. This resulted in an extremely narrow field of view which gave me incredible motion sickness. I bought the game, got home and installed it, played it for about 30 minutes, turned my computer off, took 2 tylenols, laid down and spent the next 2 hours trying not to throw up.

I have a non-widescreen monitor now so I've been able to play the game without any negative side effects. I think I am about an hour from the end of the game at this point. It's *very* short, maybe 15 hours all told. The game is beautiful and is fun to play. It's pretty much Deus Ex for dummies. Although the characters, of which there are far fewer than Deus Ex, seem generally much more fully developed.

I'll probably finish Bioshock this evening after dinner. Then I'm going to play Oblivion.

I also bought Oblivion on the day it came out. I played it like a fiend for about a week. I had something like 60 hours of play on my character when the game crashed as I was zoning out of a city. The crash corrupted my save game. I'd been playing for about 8 hours at this point and I hadn't saved. When I discovered that I would have to replay the last 8 hours of the game, I deleted the corrupted saves and uninstalled the game. I haven't even been able to bring myself to look at it until recently. It came out in March 2006!

Oblivion should keep me busy for 2 or 3 weeks I figure. Then I'll head back to Dragon Age which I'd stopped playing because it got to the point where I had to micromanage my party so much that I felt like I was working rather than playing. I think I might try making a new character that's almost entirely focused on healing and I'll just stand in the background and heal the party. I'll have to do some research on that one before I restart. That could suck if there's a bunch of solo stuff later in the game.

As I write this, I'm listening to the sound track for Vanguard. The music for that game is fantastic. It's sad that single player games tend to have very utilitarian music while mmo's tend to have much more fully developed themes. There are some notable exceptions however, Arcanum has an amazing soundtrack written by Ben Houge and you can find links to download it here.

--Abe

bass

2010-02-26T15:28:00.000-08:00

Angela bought me a bass for valentines day. The one in that picture is exactly what mine looks like. It's actually a pretty nice bass. The intonation was totally fubar though. I noticed it after a few days of playing and I fixed it yesterday. The bass sounds even better now that the notes are in tune everywhere on the fretboard. LOL

I'm really enjoying playing again. I play for at least an hour almost every day. Today I came up with this little thing that totally sounds like mid-90s emo rock to me. Still, its got a shake-your-booty rhythm thats fun to play. Now I just need a drummer . . .

There's been a lot of stuff going on in my eq2 guild. Too much to relate all of it here. The biggest change for me is that another member finally moved her inquisitor from the raid guild she was in to our guild. She plays her inquis as an actual healer (and WAAAY out gears me) so she's sort of taken over my spot in the guild groups. In the interim I've been dpsing on Dennika while I madly power level a swashy. At this point in the life of the new expansion, Dennika actually does about as much dps as an equivalently geared mage because the mages hit ratings are so damn low against deep orange and red mobs. It's damn cool to be parsing 2+K zonewide in the hole at lvl 82 on an Inquisitor :-)

My swashy is named Prentice. He's going to be a pirate. So his full name will be Pirate Prentice who just happens to be a character in Gravity's Rainbow. He's going to worship Bristlebane and I think I'm going to name his pet "Banana" if I can. Or maybe I will come up with something better once I get the pet quest done.

They added battlegrounds to EQ2 this week. I haven't had a chance to try them out yet because they were busted last night but I'm hoping to have a set of PvP gear made for Dennika this weekend so I can give them a whirl. I have my doubts about whether EQ2 PvP will be fun but I'm hoping against hope that they did a good job.

--Abe

I hate coming up with titles

2010-02-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

Like the title says.

Anyway, I went to feed the cat a few days ago and the food bag felt really empty when I picked it up so I just upended it into her bowl. And this is what happened.

Angela laughed so hard at that giant pile of cat food.

I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in about 10 years. I only have to fillings but they are old silver ones and both have cracked both of my teeth. To I need to have them drilled out and the cracks ground down and filled. It's only going to cost 700 bucks . . . for one quarter of my mouth. Total cost for all the stuff I need done is close to 2000. On the bright side they said that other than my 5 teeth with issues all of the other ones are in excellent shape and so are my gums.

We re-arranged our living room and it is *awesome*. Our computers are out next to the front door and the old computer room is now a reading / music room. It's really nice to be able to talk with Angela in the evenings while she watches tv and knits and I play video games.

Anyway, have a great day.

--Abe

Sweater so close

2010-02-23T12:42:00.000-08:00

The Olympic cardigan is coming along okay. Sunday, I finished the back, ripped back and reknit the sleeve cap on the finished sleeve and started the second sleeve. Now I have about half the second sleeve to do and then I am ready for finishing. Though I don't even have buttons yet... Also on Sunday, I realized that the Olympics were to engrossing to watch while knitting, so I had to switch to Netflix and I watched season 1 of Criminal Intent. Which worked quite well.

I have also taken a few breaks from knitting to draw. So I have a couple of pencils that I need to ink. I started inking one of an apparently hungry teddy bear, but it just wasn't working. I am going to try scotch taping a copy of the pencil drawing to the back of the vellum and ink that way so I can turn the papers without moving them from each other and losing my place. I also was inspired by the Dames and Monsters book for sale at the Emerald City Comic Con and penciled a picture last night. It is pretty funny, I think. We'll see how it turns out. So I am liking drawing with the brush. I need to practice when to chose the brush or the pen. I think the dames and monsters one will use both.

So about the ECCC, I would really like to go this year. There are a couple panels on Saturday I am really looking forward to. But it will be $40 for Abe and me to go if we pay now. $$$. Abe needs to get some of his fillings fixed and that is pricey. I guess I should use this unfilled weekend to fix up arachknits stuff and post new items that aren't really new but haven't been up before. Now that I have the camera phone, I will just use that because our actual camera just blows. Takes 8 pictures and runs out of batteries. They are great pictures though. :) Anyways, Leonard Nimoy and Wil Wheaton will both be at ECCC so I would like to go see both of them speak. And Image has a panel, so we should really go see that one in particular. That means we will be there pretty much all day so I think I need to dress more practical this year. My boots were too heavy for standing around that long last year. And there are no chairs anywhere except the few at the food booth and they are always full, so I think I will wear pants. I wish I could wear the Mini Gorgeous, but Friday we went to the Eden winter party (where I won a Webcam...) and after 3 hours my feet felt like they were going to fall off.

Also, I watched some of The Guild on Netflix and it was freakin' funny. Sadly funny if you can feel their pain, which Abe and I can totally get. He didn't watch it with me because he was busy raiding... Though we rearranged our apartment to get around tripping the breaker all the time so now the computers are in the living room and it is kind of awesome. Though now I can't watch the emotional movies by myself. :)

Edited to add: This weekend, we went to Bai Pai for lunch which is really close to Acorn Street Yarn Shop, so we had to go there and show our love so I accidentally bought two skeins of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn. I will make a light Gaia shawl and a cowl. Eee.

Chocolate Bread

2010-02-18T18:32:00.000-08:00

I made a loaf of chocolate bread today. It turned out really good. It's very subtle. I mixed the dough until the chocolate had entirely melted so the dough was this deep dark brown. It smelled so good when it was cooking. In a few minutes, when I'm finished with dinner, I'm going to slice a piece off and toast it.

The new EQ2 expansion is pretty damn good. The sundered frontier is a very nice zone with some beautiful views, good music and fun quests.

I've been playing my bass every day lately. I'm starting to get my stamina back and haven't yet had a full blown blister :-)

Well, off to EQ2. Later.

--Abe

Cascadia

2010-02-17T18:40:00.001-08:00

Well, here are the Cascadia socks, my first Rockin' Sock Club socks for 2010. AND those are my new Mini Goregous shoes. Jealous yes? The more I wear them the more comfortable they got. Both the socks and the shoes. I do believe that most of my hand knit socks will be pictured in these shoes. Aren't they cuter than the second picture? The second pic is alright, but for good lookin' feet, nothing beats a pair of Fluevogs.

Next I have an picture I drew at work. Just using a regular pen. Cute, yes?

And here is the pencil pic I drew at work to put in the little Tyler frame that is stuck to my monitor. (Tyler is the company I work for).

Pseudo-Monday Blues

2010-02-16T12:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I have Windows 7 and I find it a bit annoying. I haven't used it much though, so maybe I will get used to it. I think the most annoying part is having lost all my setup/organization in iTunes. I have to uncheck all the songs I don't actually want to listen to (mostly Abe's cds). All my playlists are gone. :( I am big on playlists. Based on mood. And all my ratings are gone. I had lists by rating, too. Bah.

This weekend was pretty fun. Abe didn't have the best Valentine's, but stil a pretty good time. We went down to Fluevog and both got shoes. Pretty nice. I got the Mini Gorgeous to wear with all my hand knit socks, and I am sure I will wear them all the freakin' time. I also put the Mini Dollface on layaway, which is awesome because they only had one pair close to my size and it fit fine. And they weren't sure if they would get any more shipments. I would have been super bummed to have missed this pair, so I am glad I put them on layaway. I should be able to get them by my birthday. :) Abe also got the Angels Supervog. These, I swear, are the most colorful shoes Abe has ever had. At least since I met him. I am so glad I finally got him to try on a pair of their shoes. I am pretty sure he is converted and will save up money to buy their shoes when he needs more in the future. Yay. I had wanted to try on Earl of Warwick Coventry, but they did not have my size. :( Oh well. I would have wanted to put those on layaway too and there are other things I want to buy someday. I tried on the Fellowships Jenna, but I wasn't as big a fan of them on as just to look at. Which was too bad. The leather was crazy soft. Sounds like a good thing I didn't get them though, because the last two reviews of them are about how they wear poorly. Which at over $300 is not acceptable.

We also went to Luisa's which was delish as usual and later we watched WALL-E, which is,no kidding, one of the cutest movies of all time. I love it.

On Friday, the Olympics started and so I started the Knitting Olympics. I am doing pretty good. 4 days in and I have a sleeve done, the left front done, and I am over half done with the right front. That leaves the rest of the right front, the back, and the other sleeve. Then I sew it all together and knit the button bands and the collar. I think that is doable with 2 weekends to go. I think I can finish the right front and the back by the end of next weekend. There is one glitch. I might need to rip back the sleeve caps and knit them a bit longer to match the front and back. The pattern from the handy book of sweater patterns doesn't seem to really do that. Oh well. At least I have only done one sleeve. I was going to take a picture every day, but I totally forgot. Oh well.

On Saturday, my mom and Jim came down. We had a great time. First we went to see Avatar. Wow. I couldn't tell what was CGI and what was real. It was amazing. The plot line was pretty typical, but I barely even noticed because I enjoyed the characters and the visuals so much. We did end up watching it in 3-D. The new 3-D is pretty amazing, but man it gave me such a headache. I had to keep readjusting my eyes throughout the movie. I think I would watch a cartoon in 3-D (like shrek and the new viking movie), but no more realistic. I will definately be buying Avatar on Blue-Ray. I can see why it was the number one movie for so long. By the time I got home that night, I was already ready to watch it again.

We went to Suni's for lunch afterwards. Delish. I had my usual Avacado Bacon Burger with an egg. Everyone loved their food. I asked for no fries and got them anyways. And I just realized I got charged for them and shouldn't have. Oh well. Less than $2.

Saturday we also went to Daniel Smith just south of downtown Seattle. They have a lot of stuff, go figure. So I got some Vellum, a #0 round brush for inking, a kneaded eraser, another pen handle for a different type of nib that I accidently bought the last time I went to Dakota Art, and some gaouche, which I cannot pronounce, for covering my mistakes and maybe even for drawing with. On Monday I went to Dakota because after practicing, I found the #0 was a little too small, so I got a #1 round and a #4 flat. The vellum is totally AWESOME as opposed to regular tracing paper which is so thin. you can see back on Zorro (wikipedia), if you look close, that there are wrinkles in the large black sections. Which is going to be a problem with Gone. I have decided I will just post that here, since there will be the wrinkle problem and that is not professional enough to send out. I really like the brush on the Vellum. I made some sketches. There is the leg of the Rocketeer (wikipedia), Mariella from another story, some sketches from my art class.

As notes on that Rocketeer pic, I was trying for a certain style and failing. I fall back into my own style pretty quickly. I am pretty satisfied with it other than that, though. His left thigh is a little too long and his feet are a little too small, but other than that. I am pleased with his shirt and various wrinkles. Originally, it was supposed to be tilted 90 degrees counter-clockwise so his feet were pointing down but there was something wrong with it and I changed the orientation. So his rocket packs don't quite seem to work with what is going on, but I still like it.

Well, I am getting ready to go to the dentist soon to get a mouth guard. Sexy. Abe gets to go get his teeth cleaned, lucky dog. :) I am actually pretty excited because it should help with the pain I am getting. I clench my jaw when I feel weird. Weird as in stressed or anxious or whatnot. I also grind my teeth a bit. And now that I have had my wisdom teeth removed, they are moving all over the place. The mouth guard should help that. I am also getting a lower retainer type thing to keep the bottom one from moving too. I have switched to Sensodyne because the new gaps where my teeth are moving has gotten really sensative, but it is not helping. And it tastes terrible. So I am switching to Crest ProHealth or something.

Finally, a little shout out to LeVar Burton, who was born in Germany in 1957 today. You know, Geordi La Forge. He created and hosted Reading Rainbow. If you check out his wikipedia page, he is looking a bit aged, but he kind of is. 50 and over is kind of aged. He has won a surprising number of awards for Reading Rainbow, at least surprising to me. Looks like around 15 to me.

I would have spell checked this, but the button refuses to work for my mouse, so screw it.

What the hell day of the week is it anyway?

2010-02-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

It's wednesday or thursday I'm sure of it. Here's a very cool drawing of The Rocketeer that Angela did recently. I like it.

I spent most of yesterday upgrading her desktop to Windows 7. I've got all of her hardware working, including the print/scanner/copier. And I've got most of her programs installed and set up the way that she likes them.

I spent most of today playing my bass and working on the pdf for my apple, stilton, and apricot bread. I re-resized the pictures because I'd screwed up the scaling last time and they all looked like crap. I also tried to make the pages have a more artistic layout. Angela looked at my last draft and said "It is so obvious that a man made this." So, I'm trying to gussy it up a bit. The pictures look way better anyway and they are all a uniform size now as well.

Once the recipe pdf is done, I'm going to list it on etsy and see if I can get a few bucks rolling in. Once this one is done, I'm moving on to a cook book who's contents are a secret for now. A delicious secret.

Of course, I also did the requisite laundry and dishes today too. I'm a regular house wife again.

--Abe

Zorro

2010-02-09T12:17:00.001-08:00

Well here is my crappy Zorro inspired by ComicTwart. Practice Practice Practice. I might draw another one. I messed up in a few places, like the dots above his head that I completely forgot to erase and the line at the edge of the hallway shadow, which I inked in. Whoops.

I am currently working on the Corrie Vest from Knit Picks. I would link to it ,but it looks like that bad boy is outta here. It is really fun, though now I am worried because I just read that it apparently starts to droop even with only one day wearing it. I might have to do some reinforcing crochet.

I was going to knit it straight through, but I think I am going to do the Knitting Olympics and knit a cardigan from the 12th to the 28th (from the opening to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics). I have the yarn and a swatch and the pattern. I need to rerun the numbers on the pattern though since it is a heavily modified version of a saddle shoulder in the Book of Sweater Patterns.

I also finished the first RSC socks. They are ok. I am not a fan of pink though. I will wear them on Sunday as Abe and I tromp around the city for Valentine's day. We MIGHT go to the Sci-fi museum. Anyways, with my next paycheck I am going to get another skein of STR (Socks that Rock) so I can make the other pattern. I intellectually want to go with a blue or gray to make it look like rain as the designer kind of intended, but I can't help but want to make it green. We'll see. Here are the ones I am thinking about: Jade, Stormy Weather, Nyame, Green-Eyed Monster (though it isn't really appropriate, I just love this color), Monsoon (I am leaning towards this one as a compromise), or Typhoon Tina.

When I get a chance, I also want to get the Andrea shawl and mitts from Knit Picks. These are so awesome. Both were designed by Kirsten Kapur who has a lot of really great patterns. So of course I favorited her on Ravelry.

I am also considering getting a Cricket Loom. It is small and I think I can set it on my lap while I sit on the couch to use it. That is how I use my drawing board and it wasn't intended for that either. Anyways, I can weave up some scarves an stuff. With a little sewing and knitting, I think I can make up some cool hat. And with more sewing and additional fabric, I can make up some skirts. All for myself at first, but once I get them down, to sell on Etsy. I am a slow poke and still have not put up those hats for sale on Etsy. Perhaps I will get ready for that tonight. It is just such a pain to use our good camera. I am tempted to use the poor photos on my phone.

Bellingham

2010-02-08T13:14:00.001-08:00

We up to Bellingham this Saturday. Angela and her mom want to take a trip to Ireland this year and they wanted to see if they could afford to and to plan out an itinerary if they could.

While they did that, me and Isaac went to Bellingham and wandered around. We went to Cosmic Comics which had a surprisingly good selection of comics. Then we went to a local music store, but I've forgotten the name of it so I can't link to it. They had a great selection of CDs though. Lots of older stuff and new stuff. Isaac got the new Tom Waits album; Glitter and Doom Live. I got Frizzle Fry by Primus for myself and Your funeral . . . My trial by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for Angela.

Then we walked all over down town Bellingham. We had a great time.

--Abe

Don't you like the wolf now?

2010-02-02T19:06:00.000-08:00

Finally! Here is that Little Red Riding Hood comic that I am sure I have previously mentioned. I forgot about it, so it could have been up a long time ago.

Well, the post is short tonight because Abe is waiting to turn his computer on until I turn mine off because they don't like each other.

Not a lot going on

2010-02-01T21:06:00.000-08:00

We went up to Bellingham last friday for a birthday party for Angelas friend Rijil. We had a great time. We both really want to move to Bellingham and the smell of the ocean as we got out of the car just brought it home to us both.

I'm getting my tax return in a few weeks and I'm going to go to the dentist with the money. It's been like 10 years since I've had a cleaning. It's going to be expensive but it will be nice to have clean teeth :-)

I started trying to teach Angela how to play the guitar tonight. We're always talking about playing music together but the bass and piano aren't the best instruments for jamming. I can't really play the guitar though so it's going to be interesting helping Angela learn.

--Abe

Amazing thing in China

2010-01-29T06:17:00.000-08:00

I had to share this video. There's a few minutes of introduction but it gets fascinating after that.

--Abe

Happy Birthday Rijl!

2010-01-28T20:21:00.000-08:00

I don't think she reads this, but happy birthday anyways! I drew this pic over the last few nights. The original idea was not for a card for Rijl, but when I started drawing it, I thought it would be a great card to give to her on Friday when I see her for dinner with her family. We will head up right after I get home from work. We have been friends since I was born, so we have quite a bit of history. I wish we could live in the same city at some point, but that is not looking likely. I don't want to get all gushy, so I will leave it at that.

Anyways, this pic is inspired by Edward Gorey. I am reading his book Amphigorey Again. I am very tempted to buy the book. Perhaps I can find an inexpensive one online. I got this copy from the library and it is due this weekend. I looked at the price on the cover--$35! (on sale at Amazon for $23...) It is pretty big and hard cover. But it has a TON of great pics by him in there. Great study of his work. This picture was a ton of fun to draw. Like Zen drawing. All those little lines. The skirt was particularly fun and I think her legs turned out well. But I am not so good at hands. I just need practice.

You know, I would like to go back to school for illustration, but it is so expensive, and I can learn a lot on my own. I will just have to work hard on my own and practice a lot.

LoTRo Fails me

2010-01-27T15:15:00.001-08:00

So, I played lord of the rings online all last weekend and I had a great time. My other game subscription was ending so I decided to renew lotro. Only problem is that turbines billing system won't accept my card number and won't let me update the one they have on file. So, after a few days of trying, I decided not to play lotro.

The computer room looks fantastic! It's all clean and organized. There's plenty of room to walk around and the floor isn't covered in a 3 inch layer of dog hair! It's awesome :-)

I applied for a technical support job at a place up in Bellingham. I'm really hoping that they call me at least because I've sent my resume to this specific company for a few different jobs over the past year.

I don't have a lot to say today. Sorry if you feel ripped off.

--Abe

Movies, my friends

2010-01-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

Nisa seems to be feeling better, though she has gone a bit crazy and keeps starting crazy fights with Ernie, who does not seem to want to participate, really.

All that's left of Abe's closet cleaning is to take the remaining stuff to goodwill, but first he has to go to Central Market and get me a chicken, which he will cook for dinner for me tomorrow while he eats spaghetti for dinner. Woo for me. He also has to get me a bunch of brussel sprouts. So I am having chicken and brussel sprouts for the rest of the week, though spaghetti tonight.

I went to the dentist today, which always rattles my brain a bit. Possible explanation if I sound a little weird today. I was going to fix up another image today but maybe I will fix it up for Friday instead.

Did I mention I finished Abe's first sock? That was fun...not. Took forever. And I still have another to do. It's OK, I guess. I really do like knitting with that dang self-patterning yarn. It is a bit short, but not horribly so.

This weekend, with poor little Nisa asleep at my side, I watched a lot of TV.

On Friday, I watched Sherlock Holmes: The Last Vampyre. That was OK. I was pretty tired and almost fell asleep at the end, but it was fun enough. The guy who plays Sherlock is a little less skinny than I always picture the drug-addled Holmes. And Watson looked a little more dim-witted than I usually think. But it was OK.

On Saturday, I went crazy. I started with Dinosaurus! The exclamation point is part of the name. It was a terrible 60s scifi. I could not stop laughing at the dinosaurs. Pretty funny. Maybe a bit sexist, but no more than anything else at the time. The Neanderthal was funny. The actor played that pretty funny. Then I watched Alien Trespass, which I highly do not recommend. I am a little surprised I finished watching it, but I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was some sort of fake news at the beginning and then the movie played and then... that was it. It was supposed to be a spoof of classic 50s sci-fi, so maybe I didn't get the joke. Eric McCormack was in it. Weird. It also had the dad from that horrible 80s show with the kid whose adult voice narrated the whole ting? That was boring, so I watched Mike Birbiglia, a stand up comic. He is pretty funny. I have heard him on the 7:20 Funny that now plays on 96.5 on Jack as the 7:19 funny. It plays right before I get to work. Then I watched an animated Hellboy: Blood and Iron. It was surprisingly good. It even had the actors from the movies doing the voice overs. I would definitely watch more of those. I like that in the animation, they can give Hellboy his appropriate hoofed feet instead of the boots in the movie. Then I started to watch Urchin, but was way not into that. It was just weird and poorly acted. One character just looked like some guy reciting lines and trying to respond to them. :( So I switched to Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have no idea why it did so poorly. The first one was a pleasure to watch and so was the second one. Pure eye candy. Absolutely beautiful. The cure for a sweet tooth without the candy. I wish I had seen it on the big screen. It was a bit too long, but it was so pretty, I didn't really mind. I would have minded less in the theater because I could have seen it better. This was the end of the night so I was tired and having a hard time focusing my eyes.

Then on Sunday, I watched the first and started watching the second seasons of Grey's Anatomy so I can watch the new season 5 DVDs (as instant play on netflix). I freakin' love this show. I have no idea why I love it so much or why it affects me so much, but it might just be one of my favorite shows ever. I have seen the first season 6 times now and I love it as much now as the first time.

Friday, we are going up to Bellingham for a friend's birthday. Then next weekend we will go to Bellingham again so I can possibly plan a trip with my mom. But I might want to postpone that a year, depending on my tax return because the dentist (and my doctor, actually) says I really need a mouth guard for when I sleep. The reasons are two fold. One, I need to stop my teeth from moving. Since I got my wisdom teeth out, they have moved so that there are 5 places between my molars where I can easily floss with my hair. From my head. Gross, I know, but handy because it hurts when a big chunk of steak gets stuck in there. Why not carry around floss you ask? I am lazy and a scumbag. Come one now. Two, I clench my jaw a lot when I sleep and that is very bad. I keep having a crazy nerve thing in my neck and the doctor said the way to fix it is to get a mouth guard. It is the scary kind of electric hurt, so I do want to stop that from happening. So I got my W2 the other day and will file my taxes and make the plans I need to make. Woo. Taxes. At least I should get my first Rockin' Sock Club kit in the next few weeks. When that comes, all other projects, yes even Abe's first pair of socks, go straight in the hibernating pile until that pair is done. I am a little sad because I think they showed us the yarn on the blog and it looks all pinky. But if it is a dark pink, I guess it will be okay.

Happy Monday

2010-01-25T12:41:00.000-08:00

Soon, very soon, the closet will be done. Our house has been a terrible mess since last week. Tomorrow I'm heading to the good will to donate an old tv, an old monitor and a bunch of other stuff. I should have the living room back to basically normal in the next few hours too.

Turbine was kind enough to let me play Lord of the Rings Online for free all weekend. I had a blast. They've made some amazing improvements to the performance of the game engine since I last played. It used to hitch and stutter a lot but these days I just turned everything up as high as it would go and it runs like greased shit out of a ducks ass. Wow, I just actually thought about that saying for the first time in my life. How would one get the greased shit into the Duck, so that it could come out of the ass, without damaging the Duck in some unspeakable way. Hmm.

Anyway, excellent game and it was made all the better because my friend Night from EQ2 joined me. It was the first time we've been able to play together in months and months and I had a great time.

We finally got Nisa spayed this past weekend. Turns out she had a false pregnancy going. We thought she was just getting fat over the past few months! This morning she was able to walk up the stairs to the apartment by herself for the first time. She's mostly been sleeping. In fact she's asleep on the couch right now. I tried to take a picture of her in the pillow and blanket throne she had constructed for herself but as soon as the camera came out she buried her head under the pillows.

Well, back to the moving and cleaning.

--Abe

Boxing match

2010-01-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

First, I'll start you off with this comic. This is the boxer comic I have been talking about. Hope you like it.

I have been listening to Imelda May a lot lately, and the more I listen to it, the more I like it. Some of the songs even give me goose bumps. My favorites are Johnny's Got A Boom Boom and Smotherin' Me. When I first heard it, Johnny's Got a Boom Boom sounded like a duet between her and the bass. Now that I am understanding the lyrics more and more, it definitely is a duet between the two. With GREAT lyrics. And Smotherin' Me is so bluesy you can taste it. It is upbeat blues, but still definitely blues. 12-bar blues, apparently. Abe says that every time we hear it anyways. But the CD didn't come with the lyrics printed out, so most of the time I have no idea what she is saying. I have figured out more now than the first time I heard it, but probably less than half. I may have found the lyrics online, but they are not official, so they could be wrong.

On the cleaning front, I got filing boxes and it is awesome. I have a box for my art and a box for other paper stuff, which turns out I have a lot: stories, knitting patterns, etc. So I am going around the apartment grabbing my random piles of papers and organizing them in the boxes. It is going to be really nice to have them all organized and safe. I have a little blue folder to use for drawing projects that are in process, so it will be kept with my tackle box of inking supplies and my drawing board. It is a pretty nice set up I have going on. It is close enough to the TV that I can listen to that (as opposed to the radio since my radio gets terrible reception) and I can turn to look when necessary.

I also cleaned up some boxes. Combined two into one of stuff I am saving for when I have a real office that I can decorate however I want (in a house). When we can, we will have an office separate from our desktop computers, which are for gaming, really. I hope to have a Mac to work on my graphics with by then. One of the small ones that are just a monitor. One of the two boxes was my old musty dress-up clothes. And some dog clothes I made for Patience, my Whippet, when I was in grade school.

On the knitting front,I am more than half done with one of Abe's brown socks. I hope he likes them. He says he does, but we'll see. At least I find knitting with self pattering yarn to be really fun. This one is kind of lame in that the vertical stripes don't line up at all (and it is because of erratic dyeing, not my knitting). Unless it was meant to be stochastic. But Abe loves stochastic, so it doesn't really matter. And you know what? I do love turning a short row heel. I find the method pleasing.

I have also realized that to remain happy and in a good mood, it is very helpful for me to draw every day, which includes inking. So I better get on that. After such a terrible night's sleep on Sunday because of the wind, I was really tired so I just sat on the couch and knit. I didn't realize until last night that it was affecting my mood. I think I just need to take a little time to draw, even if it is just little non-comic stuff in a sketch pad.

-Angela

Thursday

2010-01-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

So, yesterday we were having a conversation about what to do with all the crap that lives in the closet in our computer room. Somehow I ended up volunteering to pull everything out, open and organize every box and divide what remained between garbage and things to be donated to the good will. I spent all afternoon working on it and got maybe 1/3 done.

So, I'm taking a break from wrestling with boxes full of ages old crap to eat my lunch and write you this wonderful story.

This is good news. And the market is down ~400 points over the last few days putting it back in 2009 territory.

This has me all screwed up. With any luck the republicans will be able to kill the "health care reform" bill now. The part that really bothers me about the bill is that as it exists now it mandates that everyone in america buy health insurance but provides no affordable options for low income people. So you'll get the choice between buying insurance at around 2700 dollars a year or paying a 750 dollar fine per year. Good choice there.

I haven't had health insurance for a few years and so I've paid cash every time I went to the doctor. My total for last year ran about 500 bucks and I had day surgery in that time frame!

And this is rather depressing as well.

I'm full of happiness today aren't I?

At least unemployment is up for the week and a whopping 652,364 people rolled out of regular unemployment and on to emergency unemployment benefits. That puts about 12 million people receiving unemployment benefits of some kind.

--Abe

How cute is Ernie?!?

2010-01-19T18:19:00.000-08:00

Seriously? check out this super cute picture of Ernie. He is in his Snuggie. I mean, does it get much cuter than this? What is his deal? How did he get to be so cute? He certainly didn't learn from me. Freak of nature in his adorability. In the background you can see Nisa wandering around and her pink snuggie on the floor. It was not a cold day and she gets all excited when one of us gets up and walks around.

You know what I forgot to mention last time? I was mentioned on the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog January 5, 2010. They linked to my crazy pics on the vertical striped gloves I started. Sweet, yes? I cannot believe how many views those gloves have had. I better get on 'em. They are just so hard! So many...buh...18! And I messed up last time. The ring finger is longer than the others (though you can't tell when it is on) and the increase on the thumb is weird. I really want to finish them because they will be awesome when they are done.

Also, I don't cat call Faith, I boo her. Silly Abe.

You know what else? It is Girl Scout cookie time of year again. Uh oh.

I finished the second of three layers for the boxing comic. I just have the hatch mark darkening for the background and then I get to scan it all and try to get it to look good in photoshop. That'll be fun... Not. Photoshop is my least favorite part. I like the inking, getting it on my hands, dipping the pen, watching it flow onto the paper, seeing my hand shake when it gets tired. I really need to keep doing all my physical therapy for my arm. Dumb me. I have no idea, but my right hand is so weak. Not as bad as before I did physical therapy, but still really bad.

At the library, I am going to borrow The Art of Comic-Book Inking from the library. I hope it is helpful. I am not sure how else to learn. I mean other than just doing it. Which is my only other strategy and seems to be going well. I learned a lot on Gone and the boxing comic. I need to do a very detailed pencil under the ink, for one. I also learned I need to remember to put the shadows in the pencil. Well, I am now off to add in the hatching to the boxing comic background.

Monday

2010-01-18T11:54:00.001-08:00

Happy Monday.

We spent most of the weekend watching Season three of Buffy. Faith makes her appearance in this season. I really really dislike, not the character, but the actress that plays her. Angela actively hates her. She actually called out cat calls and mocking comments at the TV nearly every time Faith appeared on screen.

I tried to get us set up to play the Unlimited Free Trial of Warhammer online but our breaker tripped again while we were at the character creation screen. So we went and watched more tv.

--Abe

We got the data cable

2010-01-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

Yay! We got the cord for the phone to copy the photos! So this is what happens. Let's start with knitting:

Brennan hat. I am not kidding, this hat took 5 hours. It is based on a hat that Brennan wears on Bones. And that was while I knit slowly while watching TV. The yarn was actually one of my Santa presents (from myself). Haha. I got two skeins (Lion Bran Alpine, a single-ply bulky 100% wool), but I only needed one. I made some fingerless mittens out of the other skein, but I don't like them. It is rapidly turning into one of my favorite hats. I have also made one for Abe in a lovely cream tweedy yarn and a green one for my Mom. This hat is so fun and quick to knit. I plan to sell them on Etsy, as I think I said before. I have a black one done and half a red one. I just need to clean them up and get pictures and they are ready for Etsy.

Next we have a very old felted tea cozy that I just never got a finished picture of. Lazy me. I like it a lot. It is made of Malabrigo yarn, which is one of the best yarns ever. Gorgeous. This color is great, though it is very muted in this picture. So the camera does not take accurate color pics, but it is so much easier to use. Doesn't run out of batteries after 8 pictures and trying to upload them to the computer. This was a LYS Tour pattern from Weaving Works (2008). It only took 2 days in May to knit and felt, but it took half a year to get the pic. I know. You're shocked.

Here we have the Gaia shawl. Another totally awesome, totally quick (for a shawl) shawl. Haha. I modified it a bit. Slightly larger needles and instead of being reversible, I made it all stockinette. I think I might make another one of these. I like it a lot. It is made of Noro Kureyon Sock yarn, which is gorgeous. Love it. I knit this in about a week. Wow.

Next, we have the green silk scarf thingy that I am not particularly fond of. This is another LYS Tour 2008 pattern from Bad Woman Yarn. I don't really wear it. I don't know how to wear it without looking dumb. Oh well.

Then we have the Thick Stripe Shawl. This is a Lion Brand pattern, but instead, I used a bunch of random wool. Some of it is hand spun, mine and others, and some is random whatever. I have not yet decided if I like it, but Abe and his mom both like it, so it can't be that bad. I wore it a lot when it was cold late last year (2009...).

This one is awesome, Sheldon's sick hat from The Big Bang Theory. I really like it. I got some alpaca in a fawn color from Etsy. Then I dyed it with cherry Kool-Aid. And it is AWESOME. I love how it smells. I smile every time I put it on. A cross between alpaca and cherry Kool-Aid. Still. And the color stays well. I did not spin it very well. I intended to make a single-ply bulky yarn but ended up making a bulky 3-ply yarn. Some of it is spun way too tight.

I have started some socks for Abe. These will be his first hand-kit socks. They are going to take for frick frack'n ever, though. 90 st on US0 needles. (That is pretty dang small if you couldn't tell.) Doh. I think his first pair should have been with thicker yarn. They are fun to knit though. I enjoy self-patterned yarn. I also got the same yarn in green for me. I think I will knit a sock for him, a sock for me, a sock for him, and a sock for me (that order...not that it is unusual for me to make pairs of socks).

Finally, here are the gloves I made for my mom for Christmas. Aren't they lovely? This is the Lotus Leaf Mittens pattern from Twist Collective. The pattern was nice and clear. I lost the pattern and they very kindly sent the link again for me to download the PDF. I learned a lot about doing Fair Isle on these mittens. I hope mom enjoys them.

Woo. Now plants. Here is the catnip. The cat ripped out most of them leaving only this huge serpentine one. I found them all wadded up on the table one morning. Whatever.

Here is the mint. It is growing really weird. Crazy. It is getting really tall with small leaves. You can see the original leaves because they are brown and wilted.

And here is a new plant from Sindy, Abe's mom. Look at them go. When we got it, there were five tiny buds, one just barely poking through the dirt. I am curious how long it will take us to kill it.

And WOW here is PART of my mom's Xmas present to me: 30 lbs of unprocessed wool. Split fairly evenly between something black, some Shetland, and Suffolk. This is the Suffolk. I started washing it in the tub, but then I took smaller amounts and baked them in water. It gets pretty nice after hand-carding. It is a lovely cream color. I have carded a grocery bag full and I have two more grocery bags full that are uncarded. Plus all this stuff drying over the shower rod. It is awesome. I can't wait to do the rest. Cardi here I come.

And here is my new inking setup with the nibs and all. That is the semi-transparent drawing board I got from DickBlick.com. On the right is a tackle box full of nibs and ink and stuff. All the paper is the tracing paper and stuff I have drawn on. I really like it. It feels great to draw every night. I would love to get the chance to do that for a living. Well, expect more pictures. It is easy with the camera phone.

Sorry if the pics and text are off. It bothers me, but I can't figure out how to fix it. Blogger does not respect HTML, because I have every paragraph and every image in

tags. :(

Thursday

2010-01-14T19:49:00.000-08:00

So, I've been reading Invincible lately. I checked out books 5, 6 and 11 from the library since that was all the had. It's a very fun super hero story. I've put the first few books on hold after I read the first book that I had :-) I've never really been much for super hero comics, even when I was a kid. And there are some things that I just do not get. Like the obsessive focus on the characters costumes. I do find it very funny that one of the characters in the comic is a normal guy who runs a tailer shop that specializes in designing super hero costumes though.

Image comics publishes Invincible. You can read the first issue of a lot of their comics here which is about the coolest thing for a comic book publisher to have on their website ever. Invincible is there if you want to check it out.

Mice Templar is there as well, another comic that I really enjoy.

--Abe

Gone in the works

2010-01-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I (we) have a solution for our photo problems. We got new phones that seem to take pretty good pictures. Good enough for the Web anyways. LG Neon. So we bought the $20 cord to transfer the pictures on the phone to our computers. And that way we won't eat through batteries for the real camera so fast. We bought it online today because the store at the mall sucks. So we should get it in the next week or so and then there will be pictures galore. Maybe more than you ever wanted.

Anyways, I really like the new phones. Some things bug me, like on my old phone, I could set the weekly recurrence for a number of weeks (like every 3 or 4 weeks), but on the new one, it is either every week on the same day or every month on the same date. Blegh. Oh well. Also, no games. And horrible ring tones. I think I might be able to fix that when we get the cord and I can put some ring tones on my phone. Maybe.

I started inking the Gone story. I am nervous and excited. I hope it looks good in the end. Abe likes it. I don't know what to think. I am really enjoying working with the nib pen. I had to go buy new stuff though because mine are all about 15 years old and rusty. Sigh. I feel old that I have 15-year-old rusty tools. Still. I got them in high school/junior high. The new ones work great. Really great. I have not had a drip since I got the new ones. I like the old handle better because it had a larger cork grip, but the new one is ok. It was only $3 at Dakota Art. I also bought three pairs of nibs, one pair of which does not fit in this handle. Doh. What an idiot. It would have been nice if the people at the store had pointed it out, but maybe I looked like I knew what I was doing.

I wish I new how to use Illustrator and Flash because Penny Arcade has a position open for an Associate Designer. Oh well. At least my boss is giving me a lot of graphics work lately. That is pretty fun, actually. I am pretty good with Photoshop, though I just learned about the effects for layers in the last month, so I am pretty unqualified for a real designer position like that. Still. It would be totally awesome to work for Penny Arcade, who are no more than a 15-minute car ride away. And that is bad traffic. Abe found that while job hunting this morning. He would have applied, but he is even less qualified for that than I am.

Speaking of drawing (though not really), I am also working on a funny one-page boxing comic. It is taking longer than I expected, but it is pretty fun and I think it will turn out great. I haven't decided on whether or not I will color it, which will add a lot of time. It is a pretty busy comic, even though it is such a simple idea. So far it will be three sheets (of tracing paper) already: the comic, the background, and the shading. I am doing the shading on Gone on a separate sheet of paper from the line inking, too. I just realized I am only half way done with the first page because I forgot I had to do the shading. My self imposed deadline for Gone is the 15th, but if I can't (and I don't think I can) I should be able to finish it up on Saturday (the 16th) if my friend doesn't call me to come up this weekend. Not sure what I will do with it when it is done. If I want to get it published, I shouldn't put it up on the Web anywhere.

Monday update

2010-01-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

Angela stayed home friday because she wasn't feeling well. So we watched Buffy and Battlestar Galactica. We watched almost the entire second season of Buffy and most of season 2.5 of BSG.

On the economic front, I wanted to show you this chart which shows the percentage of the US population that is in the workforce. This includes the people that are reported in the unemployment rate. We're basically back to the percentage we had in the mid-late 70s and mid 80s.

--Abe

Economic stuff

2010-01-08T07:14:00.001-08:00

I'm no expert on economics, I studied anthropology in college, but I read the news daily and I follow a few financial blogs that are run by people that really know their stuff. They report in much finer detail than more general news sources like CNN, NPR, or BBC do. Below is a sort of summarization from a number of different sources.

Today the government announced the unemployment numbers for December. According to their statistics 85,000 jobs were lost last month. They also revised November from a loss to a gain and October from a gain to a loss. The official reported unemployment rate sits unchanged at 10% for December. That only includes people currently receiving unemployment benefits.

2.5 million people were "marginally attached" which means they are unemployed and have looked for a job in the last 12 months but not in the last 4 weeks. In December of 08 that number was 578,000 people. These people are not counted in the reported unemployment number or percentage.

Between November 09 and December 09, the number of people receiving "Emergency Unemployment Compensation" benefits rose from 3.594 million to 5.143 million people, a 43% increase. And, those people are not counted in the reported unemployment numbers either.

Officially, unemployment is 10%, Clearly though the number of people without jobs is massively higher and is closer to 20%.

Things are just as bad in Europe too. Take a look at this article at the NY Times. Unemployment in Latvia is over 22% and Spain is over 19% In Spain, people 25 and under are 43.8% unemployed.

This is a huge amount of data to digest but there are some very interesting details in it. The numbers are in a wonky format though, if you see 207,000 read it as 207 million and 4,100 is 4.1 million. That chart shows quarterly data from 1999-2009 in both raw and seasonally adjusted formats. Annual numbers are in the far right column.

At this time, 73.9% of people age 25 and over with a bachelors degree or higher are employed which is down from 78.5% in 1999. 65.5% of people age 25 and older with a bachelors degree are employed, down from a high of 72% in 1999. 56.1% of people age 25 and over with a high school diploma are employed, down from 62.6% in 1999. And only 39.7% of people age 25 and older who do not have high school diplomas are employed, down from a high of 43.3% in 2007.

Sources are:

http://www.zerohedge.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://www.bls.gov/

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

--Abe

Sherlock

2010-01-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, we saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was...good. :) I really enjoy the Sherlock stories (one of my grandma's got me the complete Sherlock Holmes for Xmas one year). This was not those. This was a more action-oriented Sherlock. As long as I reminded myself it was not meant to be a depiction of the books, it was good. He seemed to be on a bit more cocaine or whatever it was and was much more childish in the movie. Makes me want to watch the old British Sherlock movies, which just happen to be available for instant play on Netflix... Watson was even more different between the two than Sherlock. I think. He is cockier and more confident. I haven't read the stories in a long time, so that is just what I remember of Watson in my head. I did really enjoy it though, and I am glad we saw it on the big screen. It is a very pretty movie. And did I mention the sort of steam punk aesthetic? The actors all played their rolls well. I think Robert Downey Jr. could have (at least visually) played Holmes as a more serious, less wild-hair-up-his-butt character, too. He has the appropriate haggard look.

I think this movie was the start of a heap of Rock n' Roll Remakes. Not a new style, there just happens to be a whole bunch coming out at once. Clash of the Titans is another. And the original Clash of the Titans is also available for instant play on Netflix, so there is another one for me to watch. There is another Iron Man, Iron Man II, which is definitely one. The preview intrigued me. He makes Tony Stark look like such a cocky douche, which I find hilarious. I have never read the Iron Man comics so I don't know how appropriate that is. Maybe The Wolfman, but I don't think that one is so rock n' roll.

Wool washing is slow going. I might be a quarter done? Maybe a third? But it is a nice creamy color when it is all washed and carded. I have a grocery bag full of it carded. This batch is Suffolk. Can't remember if I said that in my last post. Mom though it was Shetland, but maybe the other bag of white is Shetland. I am really excited for the dark wool. It is really pretty. During carding I even get most of the vegetable matter (VM) out. There is almost always just a little left in, but nothing gross or huge. I think I am really getting a pattern down for the two stages, washing and carding. Drying sucks. Did I say I burned some of it? I tried drying 4 pans at once in the oven which meant putting some of it on the bottom rack and I totally burnt the bottom rack. But I can pick it off and it should be fine. I will probably bag those two together and use them separately from everything else because the staple length (is that the right term) will be a little off what with the burning. I don't know if I am carding it right, but it is still looking nice.

Anyone a fan of Big Bang Theory? Check out SheldonShirts.com. It has a list of where you can get the shirts and stuff that Sheldon and the other characters on Big Bang Theory wear. Totally awesome. Sheldon has a lot of great shirts. Though you can see from the Leonard lists that even though he wears great shirts they are covered with his coat.

I wonder where our camera is. I have stuff to take pictures of. Lots of stuff: Noro shawl, thick shawl, orange cowl, short green silk scarf thing, Sheldon's sick hat, Tidings of Joy ornaments (candy cane, hat, plum, cherry, and I started the lights, though they are all packed so that might be for next year!), lorna socks, the one finished striped glove, felted tea cozy, Brennan hat (mine and Abe's), and Penny's Xmas hat. And that is just the knitting stuff. I should also get a pic of the crazy mint. And I have a few drawings to scan, though Abe should be able to do that now. I should also get a pic of my ruined Queen of Blues sock (those are not mine, I just don't know where my pic is...)and then FIX it. I have to cut off the whole ankle part, but at least it will be easy to knit. Attaching it will be the tricky part since I am pretty sure it is an ankle-down sock, which means Kitchener stitching it back on or something.

Abe made delicious oatmeal maple bread. We used it for PBJ today. Yum. That bread is just ridiculous. So good. And he cleaned the apartment and wow. It looks great. So nice. I forgot what it was like to live in a clean apartment with vacuumed floors.

And in completely other news, I think I am going to knit hats to sell on etsy. I didn't see anything too similar on etsy. I think they will be about $25 each. And I am trying to come up with a single skeins worth matching fingerless mittens.

Jobless again

2010-01-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

I don't want to talk about it. On the bright side there'll be a lot more posting here from me starting now. And our house will finally be clean again. I baked real bread last night. Not batter bread but kneaded bread. I made two loaves of oatmeal maple syrup bread. It is SO tasty. I sent a few slices to work with Angela so she could share with her coworkers.

I started playing Dragon Age Origins a few days ago. I got it for my birthday back in December but the controls really turned me off the first time I tried it. I tweaked with the controls and got them working a lot better for me and now I'm really enjoying the game. I made a lady dwarf warrior. I'm going with dual wielding. The story so far is more mystery and promises than story but I'm only like 2 hours in to the game. If it doesn't pick up a bit in the next few hours I'll worry but for now I'm just assuming that the developers are assuming I'm a moron and are consequently spending WAY too much time letting me figure out how to move, click buttons and watch cut scenes.

Unfortunately for them I mastered those skills over a decade ago . . . .

I spent a few hours looking for jobs this morning and I've spent the rest of the day cleaning up the Christmas decorations. Once that is done then I can start actually cleaning the house. LOL

--Abe

Happy New Year -let's see pics

2010-01-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

Well Happy New Year. Abe and I got to ring it in sick. He played EQ2 most of the night. I watched Jim Gaffigan: Beyond the Pale, and Step Brothers. Because we have Netflix and you can watch some movies instantly over your PS3! I love it. So very much. Both had me laughing out loud.

We also finished watching season 1 of Sanctuary, a Syfy series (what a dumb name...). It started out with a ton of blue screen action, but as the series went on, perhaps their budget got bigger or their ideas got smaller because there were less and less blue screens. The characters are fun. And the writing gets better as you go through the season.

I wish that instant play was available for Highlander. I really want to watch it but I don't want to have to wait for the DVDs in the mail. Oh well. Maybe someday.

So here are some pictures. I had intended to post this poem before Xmas, but our decorations are still up so I guess it still counts, right? I wrote this poem in 8th or 9th grade. I think 8th. My English class was making a book of xmas poems for the parents. I turned this in. My teacher said it was good but that the other parents probably wouldn't like this in their book of xmas poetry, so two more poems later I came up with something acceptable that I don't remember. I always liked this poem though.

Then we have a picture I drew of Abe's oldest character in EQ2, Denaso. It was fun to draw, though I don't know how accurate it is. I think she is one of Abe's first characters. I should really write more here to get Blogger to show the image lined up well with the text, but I don't really have much to say. It is Crayola colored pencils and technical pens. Fun, but it is hard to put together on the computer.

Next we have an ink of a chicken in electronic pants that are kind of out of control. I thought of this picture as I was going to sleep one night. I really do enjoy the hatch marks. They are fun. I have a book by Edward Gorey on hold at the library (Google images). My mom recommend I look at his work as a good example of hatch marks. I look forward to perusing his art. Mostly children's books, but I like that kind of art, I guess. Anyways, this was also done with a technical pen. My smallest for the whole thing. I probably should have outlined the pants in a thicker pen so they would stand out more.

Here is an ink of Nisa. I drew the pencil version a few years ago and then traced it a few weeks ago with a nib pen. That was an absolute blast. I really like working with the nib pen that you dip in ink. I plan to use that more often. It takes a little more practice because the ink doesn't dry as fast and can drip, which is why there is a big solid black spot on her left ear. I found my old pen and nibs from high school. I didn't know what to do with them then, but I am so glad I kept them. This is why I have a tendency to not throw anything away. I want to try it again many years later and will probably like it better.

Last we have a squirrel ink also using the nib. I realized I needed to practice with this pen and style, so I looked through my old drawing pads for pictures I liked so I could trace them with the ink nib pen. I think I drew this squirrel in pencil in high school.

All of these (except the xmas poem) are already up on deviantart. Someone already favorited Chick in Electronic Pants and someone else commented that the squirrel is cute.

Anyways, we had a good Xmas, even though it didn't snow this year. I was very lucky this year. Top of my list of wants, though I didn't tell anyone, was Umbrella Academy: Volume 2. And Abe got it for me. Totally awesome. He also got me Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, et al. That night we made lamb chops, onion potatoes, and brussel sprouts, so I made the Brussel Sprouts Braised in Butter. They were a little over cooked, but they were still really good. I can't wait to make it again. Very simple. Once you make it, you don't really need a recipe, so I was telling everyone about them. Haha.

Also, my mom and Jim got me 30 lbs of unprocessed wool!! And hand carders. I am in the process of washing about 10 lbs of the wool. It is going OK. I burned some when I was drying it in the oven (it is just too cold to try to dry it in the air). I started by throwing it all in the tub with hot water and a lot of soap, using a method I found on the Joy of Hand Spinning. That was a good start, but some if it is pretty dang dirty, so I have moved on to a smaller, slower, more precise method as described by the Yarn Harlot. I think this method of mass wash and then small wash is working well, but I have been sick so it is slower going than anticipated. Next time I will probably just do the small batches since I don't really have the time or space to wash and dry 10 lbs of wool at once. Anyways, I have 20 lbs of white wool to wash and 10 lbs of dark (black and brown). I very much intend to make a cardigan out of stripes of the natural white and dark. I think it will be very cool. I am not sure if I will use a cool pattern or if I will just do a basic cardigan from the Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. then all I have to do is decide on the number of rows per stripe, the shoulder style, and the neck style. This is very exciting.

I almost forgot to say that Abe also got me a cd by Imelda May and it is great. Rockabilly. The songs get stuck in my head and I don't mind. Abe heard an interview with her on NPR and then a song of hers and said she totally sounded like someone I would like. Very nice. Great CD. She's Irish. I don't know if she does concerts here, but I would love to go see her live.

Happy Holidays

2009-12-22T09:25:00.000-08:00

This is the image I (and Abe, I guess) sent out as a Xmas card. (Abe still will need to send it to his own friends since I only sent it to people I have email addresses for.) I drew it with a technical pen or two and colored it with watercolor pencils. I don't want to waste those, so I recently went and bought a set of Crayola colored pencils and they are really fun to work with. Plus there are about twice as many colors, including silver and gold, which can be useful.

So Happy Holidays one and all! It is the second day of winter and it is getting colder. It got warmer first, though.

Today is my last day of work for the year. I was going to work tomorrow, but my coworker Lucas and Abe convinced me to take my last day of PTO instead of the payout. So here I am working my last day of the year from home. It was a successful day too because I finally figured out the example of Oregon state tax withholding. Buh. Doesn't my job sound exciting?

Well, I hope it gets colder over the next two days because I want snow on Xmas day again.

Last Saturday, Abe's last day off before Xmas day, we went to my cousin's for a Xmas movie party. We were the first to show up and I think we were early. Good times though. They bought a house this year and it is nice and big. We got to see Tony's dad, who I haven't seen in a while. (Tony, or Anton as he likes to be called now, is my cousin). He brought Frango's over, which is a real treat since I used to get to eat them every year for Xmas, but now we rarely see him, so we don't get them. Yummy. He even brought lasagna, but I didn't get any of that. We watch A Muppet's Christmas Carol, which was awesome. On Monday, I still had the Ghost of Christmas Present's song stuck in my head. Which isn't so bad.

Also, I am knitting (poorly) the hat penny wore on the last Big Bang Theory of the year. I needed to use size 9s. I might make another one tomorrow... I used 7s, so I would use 9s tomorrow. I am pretty excited. Maybe I will post my final pattern here. I am just using some leftover Red Heart acrylic yarn from the first blanket I ever knit (which was for Xmas and looks terrible - dropped stitches, poor finishing, I never even weaved in the ends). Hopefully I can finish it to wear to Abe's mom, who he still hasn't called to make plans for Xmas Eve. Jerkface.

You know who is not a jerkface? My coworker Lucas, who kindly recycled my can of Diet Coke and washed my cups since I thought I was coming in on Wednesday, but since I am not, they would have sat there dirty for almost 2 weeks. I think the dirtiness grosses him out enough that he would have washed it even if he didn't like me. Haha.

Anyways, in other art news, I also recently went through my box of "art" stuff. I found an embroidery project I want to finish but may not be able to. I will give it a shot, I guess. I also found my ink and nibs. So last night I started practicing drawing with that. Well, I did one a few days ago too. So have more pictures to scan and post. It is just so annoying to try scanning. It only works half the time. We have a new set up that we have not tried yet, though, so it might work better now. The other problem is that I draw on paper that is larger than the scanner, so I have to scan each picture in two parts and then put them together in Photoshop. Anyways, I will stop complaining and just try to do it. I have at least 5 pictures to scan and post. I am not behind in any way. What are you talking about?

Happy Birthday Abe! (and a picture)

2009-12-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

Abe, my big sweetie, is another year older. Can't really tell though. Looks the same, acts the same. He makes me happy and I make him happy, so what else could you really ask for?

I got him pants for his birthday, yes pants. A pair of jeans and some pj pants. And, simple as he is, he loves them. Works well for me. I also got him some yarn so I can make him some mittens. My goal is to have them done before the end of January. We also went to Texas Style BBQ for lunch. It was good, but has made me a little sick. Abe is in love though. (He also got himself some games for his birthday - two of them were under $10 each...)

I also sent him to this. He laughed a lot, which I suppose is what you should do on your birthday.

And finally, here is the pic I intended to put up for Thanksgiving and forgot. Now we are off to Thai for dinner with Abe's mom and then to play EQ2 for the rest of the night. Should be a blast.

Comic tuesday

2009-12-08T10:10:00.001-08:00

This comic is strangely recursive.

I'm going to be 35 in a few days. I feel old.

I can't decide what to get myself as a present. I'm considering Borderlands, Dragon Age or just pre-paying for a 3 or 6 month subscription to EQ2 and pre-order its next expansion. On the other hand I might just buy a few comics and make a big credit card payment with the rest. You know you're getting old when making credit card payments with your birthday money ranks up with buying video games and comics.

Well, I need to run to catch the bus to work. Hope everyone is well :-)

--Abe

My thoughts on New Moon and the comic

2009-12-05T23:31:00.000-08:00

So I thought New Moon was good enough. It let me see the parts I had a hard time picturing, like the horse-sized wolves. But that was about it. I was disappointed with the whining in the book, but in the movie I was disappointed. It was barely good enough. I was glad that the annoying internal monologue of Bella was gone, but then they also left out the acting. It was a different director and I think that was part of the problem. I liked the direction of the first movie better. In this one it seemed like everyone could care less. They just went through the motions they thought they were supposed to without putting real thought or heart into it. But since the previous one was a bit better in regards to the acting, I would have to put it on the director.

When I read the book, I pictured Jane and her brother as pre-teens, like 9, but I guess she is might have supposed to be mid to late teens, so I guess Dakota Fanning was good. She looked beautiful. She was just older than I had pictured and I can't find any accurate information about Jane's age online. I am seeing 9 to 16 years old. Whatever.

I think in the end, if they don't keep getting worse, we will probably end up buying all four movies because it would be fun to watch them all in a row.

I think my least favorite thing about the whole series (though I haven't read the last book yet) is how pitiful Bella is. She drives me nuts. If my boyfriend all of a sudden changed his mind and told me he didn't want to be with me and I would never see him again, I would be pissed, even if I thought he was too good for me, because no matter how little I thought of myself, no one deserves to be treated like a toy that can be set aside and forgotten without regard. Let this be a note for you, Abe... :) Just joking. Sure, there would be some self doubt, but New Moon is like an exercise in self doubt. And she sure keeps with that theme throughout the everything, Bella thinking she is not good enough. Which can only mean to me that she also has trust issues since Edward tells her all the time that she is everything to him, blah, blah, blah.

Uh, but no kidding, I really enjoy the stories. I know that I have a lot of negative to say about it. I just think the books needed better editing and the movies needed better acting and directing (hand in hand).

Anyways, I just wanted to point out that I totally used a ruler to draw the lines in the last comic, so the crooked lie drives me nuts. Ah well. I did another one using the ruler and I think it looks awesome. At least the lines around the panels do... It is a Xmas one, so it won't be posted for a bit. I have at least three Xmas drawings to post. We don't decorate or anything until after the 11th to respect Abe's birthday, so we won't post the pics until then either.

Also, in the 4th panel, I forgot to draw in Georgie's fingers! And get ready. I think the next comic is pretty darn funny. :)

This was a bit more negative post than I had intended. The Twilight series just really frustrates me because it seems like such a great idea with poor execution. Especially for the books, being a technical writer, they can get hard to read. I just try to remind my self it is a teen book, though I think that is an even better reason to write well.

Oh, I also have a Thanksgiving illustration that we need to post. So get ready! I have been trying to draw and ink and color a lot, so I hope I can keep it up.

OMFG A COMIC?!?

2009-12-02T13:32:00.001-08:00

Yep, its a comic. And there's a second one that I can post in a few days too. They're sort of unintentionally related. This is part of an actual conversation that Angela and I had. I hope that this insight into the deepest workings of our minds doesn't leave you scarred for life.

New Moon was enjoyable but not very good, like a twinkie. It just felt very uninspired. The acting was meh, the music was meh, the cinematography was meh, the movie was meh. The book is so much better.

Bellas constant running internal monologue doesn't really bother me since she pretty much narrates the whole story and she *is* a teenage girl. My favorite characters are Jacob and Alice though and, while Jacob was decently portrayed in the movie, Alice was not the character that I read in the book. She was dressed like a frumpy 30-something housewife and the acting just seemed phoned in. A lot of the acting was like that actually. And the spinning and spinning camera. I think the cinematographer had just finished taking "Spinning camera for dramatic effect 101" and he/she really wanted to show off.

It's WTF cold here today. I'm wearing a wool hat, wool sweater, fleece hoodie, thermal socks, and a blanket and I'm Fuh-Fuh-Fuh-Fuh-Reeezing!

--Abe

My electronic entertainment enjoyment

2009-12-01T13:51:00.001-08:00

Things I have enjoyed through electronic entertainment the past week or so:

Professor Layton and the Curious Village - Abe got this for me for my DS and I LOVE it. Bunch of brain teasers and puzzles. I have been able to figure out almost all of them (except 2 I think). I have solved over 30 puzzles in the game. It is a little weird because the characters facial expressions never change regardless of the information they are relaying - I found a cat! That man was murdered! Yeah. But still fun. I got it and played it for 2.5 hours straight. Very fun.
Monk! I love Monk. Friday was the second to last episode of the series and next Friday is the series finale. Sad. But Sunday I watched a Monk marathon almost all day! Great show. I am bummed it is over, but I am sure they will continue showing all the old episodes. (I don't know if this is sad or not, but when you Google "Monk," the tv show comes up before things on monks.)
Boondock Saints II - I didn't even hear this was coming out until I think it was already out. Or a week or so before. So I went on Monday night to see it by myself since Abe hates the first movie. Freak. I loved it. I laughed out loud. It was gratuitously violent, wonderfully chummy, and used amazingly colorful language. I wish I could swear like that. I will be buying this on DVD or whatever for sure. I also finished watched the first one right before I left to catch the bus to see the second one. Awesome. The volume was up to loud, but it had basically everything I was hoping for. I laughed. I was sad. I jumped in my seat even when I knew it was coming. :)
Xmas music Time! I have checked all the xmas music in my iTunes so it plays in rotation with everything else now. Awesome.

Well, that is all. I finished up a five-day weekend of knitting and watching TV. Good times. Lost my keys, too, so I couldn't leave the house, but it turns out they were in a side pocket of my bag. Dork.

Tonight, Abe and I are going to see New Moon. I am really excited, but I am totally expecting to come out completely underwhelmed. I hope it is good though. I like the movie better than the first book because I didn't have to listen to as much of Bella's inane whining. And I hope that is more so the case in the second movie because I almost couldn't finish the second book because of it. I mean, I was physically unable to stop reading that book, which must be made of literary crack; otherwise I might have stopped reading it.

Also, we are almost done with Xmas shopping. A few things left to get for each other and a couple gifts for a couple other people and we are basically done. I am about halfway done with Abe's gifts.

For Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful chicken thigh dinner (which was supposed to be chicken breasts) with my mom the Sunday before because she was coming down to see Where the Wild Things are anyways and we had a yummy dinner. Then on The Day, we went to Abe's aunt and uncle's and that was fun. Played Trivial Pursuit on the Wii. Weird. And then I cooked a nice dinner with a yummy cornish game hen and yummy gravy on Friday while Abe was at work and we had that when he got home. Yummy. For thanks, we are both thankful Nisa is doing so well after being diagnosed with Addison's a year or so ago. (She also got a new harness from Annie's Sweatshop. I ripped it already, but I think I can fix it. It is sure darn cute.) We are also thankful that Ernie has lost so much weight and is a lot healthier now.

-Angela

Very tired

2009-11-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

Working a lot. Want you to see this. Be sure to press play. The darker the color the higher unemployment is in that area. It's divided by county.

Scary stuff.

--Abe

Post

2009-11-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

God, I'm beat. Been getting up around 5 am all week for work. And now it looks like my next day off is going to be wednesday!

I don't really have anything to say other than I wish I did lol

That's my new pet in WoW. Isn't he cute? Like OMFG squeal like a teenage girl cute.

Have I mentioned how tired I am?

--Abe

Pics for Art by Committee

2009-11-11T18:52:00.000-08:00

James Gurney, the guy who did Dinotopia, has a blog. And on that blog, he hosts "Art by committee" where once a month he posts a quote from a sci-fi or fantasy story and people send in pictures drawn from the quote. This month the quote is "He is shorter than I remember, and thin. His fur is grayed to white in a fringe around his head, just below his ears. His coat is dull, thinning, and coarse. His eyes, so bright I…" It was due on the 12th and I just got it in last night. This first one is the pencil I sent him. I think he liked it, which is so awesome. Made my day.

The pencil was really fun. Google is a nice help for reference pics. I had to scan it and such to do that and it was amazingly difficult. I think it shut the power down three times and we had to flip the breakers. Then it freaked out the scanner to be shut down like that so it took a good 20 minutes to get the scan done. I think the "power drain" from changing the size of the image in Photoshop killed the power again.

So then after I had that scanned and sent, I decided to try inking it. This first one I used a few different size technical pens from Faber-Castell. I only have three sizes: S, F, and M. I got them as a set for less than $15 from Fred Meyer's. Not quite sure what the equivalents are, but I think it is like 3, 5, and 8 or 10. I did the outline of the character in F, the inside lines with S, and the shading with M. It was fun. I wish I hadn't colored in his eyes with the hatching, but whatever.

This next one I did with a (slightly blunt) brush pen that came in the same little kit as the three technical pens. I really like the set. They are easy to use and a nice solid black color. I don't know which of the two I like better. I think parts of each. So I will probably use the brush for skin outlines and the technical pens for everything else. I had trouble with the shoes. Also had help from Google.

This was really fun. My favorite of the three is the pencil drawing. But I can't wait to find out the next quote on the 15th. This also inspired another image that I will draw. It is a more sarcastic version because the character is still quite rotund even though the quote is about the character being thinner than remembered. Maybe I will do that tonight.

Also, in the mail I have a drawing board with a translucent center on the way from DickBlick.com. So now I will have a better (and more ergonomic) place to draw. That will be nice. My current place is curled up on the couch, but I am having some problems with my right shoulder because of my posture (I think). I actually started physical therapy for it a few weeks ago and I was right, my right shoulder is...was...really tight. It is already a lot better. Speaking of, I better go do my exercises. Hooray. They are actually really easy and take probably 20 minutes.

Wormwood Good

2009-11-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

This weekend, Abe and I went to the library and got some comic books. I read the first Wormwood book by Ben Templesmith and I really like it. Funny, dark, weird, and pretty in a gross way. I like the art style. The main character is a magic maggot or something in a reanimated corpse. They don't come right out and say that until probably half way through that book, but you get the gist. Abe got that quicker than I did. I found it in another section of the library that has graphic novels. We thought it was just the one section in the Teens books, but those are mostly superheroes and other lighter stuff, so I was very pleased to find this other section. We also got a Conan one for Abe, and Harley Quinn and Pigeons from Hell for both of us. I am not interested in Conan at all.

Now I am reading Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (which I keep spelling Bathman...). I am liking it more and more. My favorite Batman, I think, will always be Michael Keaton. He was just everything I thought Batman should be. I think that I would never have picked Michael Keaton to play Batman and that is what makes him so perfect. He is an unassuming height, but not too short. He is polite and quite and refined in his tux but not boring looking. He has a twinkle in his eye that shows his intelligence and wit. But in his suit, he is powerful and serious. Strong and purposeful. This is what I think of Batman, not Michael Keaton, who I would guess is a bit of a weirdo but cool. Anyways, I am still enjoying this comic. Not quite my favorite art style, but OK. I did a tracing of a one page comic and I think it turned out well.

I also listened to Animal Farm on my commute last week. That book is a bit of a downer. Not what I was expecting. I think I was thinking of another book of his when I got the audio book. And now I am listening to Dubliners. I can get a complete short story or two in each way. I am not enjoying it as a car ride listen as much as I enjoyed Eragon. I actually really liked that one and need to put the next one on hold. The weird thing is that the last four or five books on CD I have gotten have been read by someone with a British accent.

Anyways, after the library we went to a cafe. (I almost wrote cage. Wouldn't it have been weird if we had gone to a cage?) They had a little bucket for donating to the businesses that were burned down in Greenwood a few weeks ago. Since then (Oct 23) and including then there have been a total of 10 fires in the area, most if not all apparently arson. Crazy! I don't know what is going on in Greenwood. The businesses that were destroyed in the first fire (which was so huge that the sirens woke Abe and me and it smelled of smoke at our place a 20-30 minute walk away (5 or less in the car) - well, none of them had insurance. They were all small, so not shocking. But the Greenwood area seems to be really pulling together to get the Green Bean Coffeehouse back going again. I think they help women in need get jobs there as jumping off points.

Uh, anyways, the cafe we went to was nice, though very small. I have no idea what the name is. I had a glass of milk. :) Abe and I sat there and read the comics we had just got at the library. Fun stuff.

Sweater!

2009-11-05T13:36:00.000-08:00

My cardigan is done (a while ago, but I have been busy)! I messed up a little, but I learned a lot. (That was my new haircut, but I have since had it cut again. And yes my hair is black instead of reddish now, thanks for noticing...)

The sleeves are a little too tight, but not so bad. They have loosened with use and are quite comfortable, now.

I forgot I would need to make the two front panels a little longer than the back. Oh well. Perhaps blocking can save me. (It didn't really.)

I learned how to sew a shoulder seam. It looks alright. I think it could look better. Perhaps I need to pull the yarn a bit tighter.

I learned how to sew a side seam! I love it. You can't even see there is a seam. Though I now know why you need the two spare stitches at each sewn edge.

I also successfully picked up the collar. Looks pretty snazzy.

From this, I learned that the Knitting Book of Answers is completely AWESOME. That is where I learned all the new techniques from. Dumb me, I have had it forever. It was already my go-to book for cast ons and bind offs. Now it is just getting better since I have actually started using it. Strange how that happens.

I also learned, that when Ernie is content, he makes a wonderful pattern holder...

Now I have also started the striped gloves from Knitting and Tea. They are a bit fiddly with 16+ stripes of vertical intarsia, but I think they will look great in the end. I have a method down. Here is how I started. That did not work.

So I put them on cards (Addi Turbo packaging cardboard), and that is working a lot better.

I also had to rip out Abe's Ganomy hat because the rat bastard just wasn't working. It ended up too small. So I wrote down the changes I need to make and hope to have it done before the middle of December. We'll see.

I actually also finished a knit pickle that was part of the Holiday Joy kit I got from Knit Picks. I am not kidding, I filled it with dill! Well, maybe a teaspoon of old dill and a bunch of stuffing. It is so awesome. Abe was going to take it to work today (but I think he forgot) and I will take it to work tomorrow (if I remember).

A few weekends ago now, I met my mom and aunt Carol at my grandma's. They played some domino like game with numbers while Abe and I watched because we were late and missed out. (Jim was there too.) But while we were there, I got back the Phat Fiber kit!! Phew. I love it. Since then, I have spun up this: the Munchkin Punchkin "Briar Rose" colorway in a 3ply lace weight. I think it looks really nice. This was a pleasure to spin. Soft wool and lovely colors.

I also spun this: My Fair Yarn "Ogre" colorway. (I think this is it - I have two greens, so I might have grabbed the wrong picture...) Actually, this might be wicked. I think I spun Ogre in a single ply lace weight and this is a three ply. Yeah. That's it. Shoot.

Finally, I have to show the world this picture of what happens to Abe's hair when he wears his headphones. We recently cut his hair and this had me laughing for a good five minutes before I thought to go get the camera.

No joke.

Belated Halloween

2009-11-03T18:17:00.001-08:00

Happy Halloween just a few days late. We spent the weekend doing the Halloween events in EQ2 and watching movies.

In one of the events you get turned in to a werewolf!

In another, the last boss is a giant version of yourself!

The goblins were giving out a buff that changed your appearance every time you zoned.

We had a great time.

--Abe

Thursday

2009-10-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

We're all over the map now as far as when we post goes. My schedule changes on a weekly basis and that makes it really hard to do anything with any sort of regularity.

So, it seems like we are having a sort of Cthulu week here. This drawing just cracks me up every time I think about it. It really shows Angelas twisted sense of humor at its finest.

Well, off to work for me. It's my personal Monday today.

--Abe