verbminx's blog

Miso happy!

I just used a pun that I ordinarily find slightly offensive. I mean, even when Yum Pop sold cute "Miso happy!" shirts, I bought a sushi one that says, "Raw power!" Because the whole pidgin aspect is kind of a turnoff, even though I prefer miso soup to sushi.

And this post is about miso soup, but hang on just a minute so I can give you an update on my last post, which was way too long ago, but hey! I've been busy!

The sweater and the buttons both arrived very quickly. The buttons are cute and have a sort of foil texture in person (that is, the picture under the lens is luminous). And as suspected, the sweater's buttons aren't purple. They're weird tortoiseshell-ish-style buttons, mottled tan and white. So I was all set to replace the buttons when I figured out that the Tokyo buttons I bought were just a mite too large for the sweater's buttonholes. I mean... maybe a millimeter or two at the most, just large enough that I can't force it through the buttonhole. Also, the sweaters are super-pilly, though that may calm down after they've been washed a few times.

OK, miso soup. I've been pretty devoted to Sushi Chef White Miso Soup for a while; however, it's kind of expensive, going for around $1.40 per packet at Whole Foods.

Recently, someone bought Kikkoman Tofu Miso Soup at the regular grocery store... I don't know how much it costs, but I suspect it's a bit cheaper (people on Amazon are saying that the Amazon price is outrageous). It's a mix of red and white miso, and unlike Sushi Chef, I don't think it has shiitake mushrooms.

As it turns out, I love the taste; the only thing I'm not so keen on is the amount of seaweed in it. I even found a taste test in which Kikkoman Tofu Miso won over eight other instant misos (Sushi Chef was not one of the brands that was tested). I've been sick lately, and hot soup was just the ticket... I really looked forward to my cup of miso.

I wouldn't just post on this blog about tasty instant miso soup. Oh, no, there is a point to all this. You get three packets of soup in each package. When I opened the package last week, I was totally delighted to see the design of the interior packet. It has this retro-modern charm that you don't see in a lot of modern packaging. (No one has scanned the packet yet, and I keep forgetting to. Maybe one of these days?)

Bioshock ADAM syringe gun

I've never played this game, and I'm not feeling well, which means No Photos For You, but: please go check out this ADAM syringe gun replica at Volpin Props. It's pretty awesome. The Little Sisters use them to collect genetic material. When you're done, check out the rest of Volpin Props. I love this kind of prop reproduction, because I love to continue to develop my ability to look at something and know how it's made.

Still keeping up with the paper journaling, though not as regularly as I had been. Taking it all to the park with me a few weeks back was fun, but I had to come home and print and cut out the photos and tape them into the journal, and that was tedious and took some time.

Paper journal, Staedtler Triplus pens, collage stuff, and printable DIY creativity kits

In the recent past, I haven't felt much like doing any kind of online journaling. There are plenty of reasons, but the ultimate one was that there was little I felt like sharing with the world. So, in mid-April, I started keeping a paper journal (something I never did with any regularity in the past, and have not even done sporadically in the past decade of slice-of-life blogging). I have the largest Piccadilly (Moleskine-style) Notebook, and a set of 20 Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pens that I love, and the variety keeps me faithful.

My favorite thing to do is to make a gradient of paragraphs down the page, with successively darker shades of ink. The molded plastic case that the pens come in is a small marvel of engineering, with a little tube for each marker, a snap-back lid that also forms a stand, and an interesting ridged texture. The triangular shape of the pens is ergonomic; they're lightweight and comfortable to use; in effect they're like a longer, triangular version of Marvy's LePen with fewer design flaws. I'm also happy with the notebook, but its ribbon marker did come loose the other day. (Here's Black Cover's review of the Piccadilly Notebook.)

(Oh my god click on "molded plastic case" and then look at the other fineliner stuff on the menu. I'm geeking out over the pen-shaped pen cup you can get!)

I'm also using some scrapbooking paper I've had around forever for collage backgrounds; when cut to page size, The Old World Stack and The Rock Star Stack are both great, though Old World has more papers that are usable in this way. The patterns are muted, and most of them are smaller scale and cover the whole page. I use a page I removed from the center of one signature as a template for cutting the papers down. The cutting is done with a craft knife and a self-healing mat.

I have recently become obsessed with the idea of a Lamy Safari fine point fountain pen filled with J. Herbin ink in "Poussiere de Lune," but we will see if I can force this obsession to GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY.

Anyway, along with all this paper journaling happiness, there are two free printable creativity aids, one of them recent, the other older. I thought it would be nice to post them here.

• 75 Ways to Draw More from Michael Nobbs
• Artist's Survival Kit from Keri Smith

Download, print, and enjoy!

What to do about sinusitis

Sinuses - bionerd

Harvard Women's Health Watch published this fantastic new article about sinus problems. It explains the roots of the condition, and what you can do about it, in detail, but also in simple language. If you live in this kind of misery, I can't recommend this article and its suggestions highly enough.

It's timely for me for a couple of reasons. One is that I have had a lot of sinus infections in the last year. I've been plagued with them since I was about 12 years old, but I had been able to stave them off for a while in the relatively recent past. More about that in a minute.

Because I don't have health insurance -- I haven't had it in a decade -- I usually go to the clinic at a local drugstore for this kind of illness. There was a new LPN when I was there last month, and she was much more aggressive about her recommendations than the previous nurses have been. I wound up with a new humidifier, a renewed commitment to nasal lavage and Mucinex, and a course of antibiotics.

The funny thing is that I wrote a long, mildly controversial article about nasal lavage -- sinus rinses -- about 15 months ago, but after I wrote the article, I started to neglect the rinses themselves. The preparation can be time-consuming -- cleaning the NeilMed bottle, boiling water, waiting for it to cool, having a clean area to do the rinse itself, etc. If you'd like to read the article, it's here: Cleaning Your Sinuses.

I had waited several years to get a humidifier -- for some reason, I thought it would be too wet for my bedroom, make all the books damp, etc, but that hasn't been the case at all. I'm thrilled to have it now. I don't even seem to mind that it means an extra trip up and down the stairs at some point during the day, when I rinse and refill the water tank. The one I bought is this Vicks Warm Mist model, for about $37. It's kept near the wall 3-4 feet from my bed.

The second reason the article is timely for me is that my mother just had outpatient surgery on her sinuses, and I've been helping her out for about the past 10 days. She's a terrible patient, because she doesn't take the recommendations to stay in bed seriously enough. The first few days were unpleasant, but she's doing much better now.

The whole thing started this past fall when she had a sinus infection that wouldn't go away. Eventually they did some kind of Serious Business scan of her head (CT? fMRI? PET? I don't know) and determined that one of her sinus cavities was completely packed. There were some visits to an ENT and surgeons after that, and it turned out that one whole side of her sinuses had been blocked for most of her life by a deviated septum. The surgeon removed a bone spur and left a stent in for a week.

My mother absolutely refuses to do sinus rinses, because she says the idea makes her gag (she's kind of a delicate flower about stuff like that). I'm wondering how much she'll protest if she continues to be in a state of chronic sinusitis even after the surgery.

The Harvard article was linked from Popgadget, which I've been reading for years. The blogger there commented that it seemed like nasal rinsing was becoming mainstream in the last few years, when before it had been considered a New Age thing (anyone else remember when George on Six Feet Under gave Ruth a neti pot as a gift, and she was mightily annoyed?).

I'd argue that the mainstreaming of sinus rinses has to do with NeilMed distributing its kits as free samples to doctors' offices. My kit came from my boyfriend's mom, who was the lab tech in an office for many years. I've tried a couple of different products of this kind, and NeilMed's Sinus Rinse Regular Kit is the best -- the easiest to use, the most comfortable solution mix, etc.

I'm hilariously evangelistic about this product; add this Harvard article to the list of things I will be gushing about in the future.

(Thanks to Flickr's Bionerd for supporting the Creative Commons with this pic from a sinus scan!)

OutsaPop - recycled fashion blog

Just a quick note to say that I discovered OutsaPop earlier and thought it was worth a look. There's been a "reconstructed fashion" trend the last few years, but I find that most pieces in most of the books that have been published on the topic lately are just eccentric and unflattering, particularly if the book is aimed at high school girls. You have to be sixteen to get away with dowdy "art clothing."

That's not the case with OutsaPop, the brainchild of a Finnish fashion grad named Outi; most of the stuff showcased here is actually wearable and current, and plenty of tutorials are linked.

[via Haute Macabre.]

Weekend Designer; goodbye to Red Lipstick Blog

Chanel-wallyg

One of my long-term favorite crafty/fashion/artsy blogs, Red Lipstick, ceased publication yesterday. I'm disappointed! I haven't been following a lot of blogs lately, but I've started to get back into it, and it was a blog I was definitely planning to catch up with.

Staceyjoy's second-to-last post at Red Lipstick was about Weekend Designer, a site I think a lot of crafty types will want to check out -- sewing patterns for recent runway items. Many of the patterns are simple -- skirts, blouses, and accessories made mostly from squares -- but some are as complex as jeans or tailored vests.

I'm not sure whether you will actually wear a caftan after you make it, and I think I might put some waist darts on that pencil skirt; even so, it's worth more than a look. Their tagline is, "It ain't rocket science." You'll learn a lot about drafting your own patterns if you do some of their more complex projects. They seem to be taking the mystery out of sewing as much as Threadbanger aims to, but with less of an indie-rock vibe.

I'm not sure where else this has been featured lately: I'm keeping up with WhipUp and not so much with CRAFT, these days. Both are good, but about a year or so ago, CRAFT started to focus a lot on local craft shows & other stuff that isn't of much interest if you don't live in [insert hipster-friendly metro area *here*], along with a lot of patterns for sale (great if you're the person selling them, not so much if you're interested in free tutorials). A lot of the same free tutorials show up on WhipUp first. That said, I always enjoy CRAFT when I do get around to checking it out.

(Creative Commons photo of Chanel boutique in Paris by Flickr's wallyg.)

Gourmet's Favorite Cookies: 1941-2008

Cookies-belochkavita

I don't remember where I got this link the other day -- it could have been any number of places. At any rate, here they are:

Gourmet Magazine's Favorite Cookies: 1941-2008 includes a recipe for the "best cookie" of each year. There's a wide variety, from savory cookies meant to be dipped in coffee, to tart-like creations, to stained glass window cookies, to basic gingerbread men. One of my particular favorites is listed for 1965: Ginger Sugar Cookies (here's another take on this recipe).

(Creative Commons photo of Dried Cranberry Shortbread Cookies by Flickr user Belochkavita.)

Paper Museum's free printable projects for the holidays

Every time I've tried to post to Vox since my last post, that Firefox 3 bug has eaten everything I've written... hence radio silence on this end.

However, I come bringing seasonal goodies!

Hl_index_xmas

I love the Japanese site Paper Museum. It's probably best-known for its printable room boxes, but what I wanted to bring to everyone's attention is actually a few pages of free pop-up cards that you can download and make.

• Christmas cards
• New Year's cards
• Letter sets
• Many more possible craft projects (vehicles, insects, boxes, etc.)
• If you check out the room boxes link, there are some winter and Christmas rooms there.
  

These are meant for A4 paper, which is a bit longer than American letter-size paper. I'd print on legal-size stock, I guess. You'll need the supplies you'd need for any other papercraft project -- craft knife, cutting mat, straight edge, gluestick or glue pen or both, etc. Skip any purple link buttons, which are just supply shopping links, but download the materials under the pink buttons (all in PDF form).

It's helpful to have the Perapera-kun (or Rikai-chan) Firefox extension for Japanese text translation installed -- hover over a word or phrase on a web page, and you'll get a popup with its meaning. To use Perapera-kun, you need to install Rikai-chan's dictionaries. This is useful for all Japanese sites, in my experience, though sometimes it can be a struggle to hash through to anything cohesive... it just depends on the site and how things are phrased there. For example, hovering over the room box links with Perapera-kun enabled will give you the name of each room.

Three blogs I like, and some sad news

There are different sites that I read for different reasons, but three of them are a mood-lifting pleasure any time I drop by:

• iCiNG - Happy blog by Gala Darling. The focus is on the girly, sparkly style side, cheerful and uplifting without being simpy... sort of like having a really awesome friend. Difficult to describe, so just give it a visit.
• Posie Gets Cozy - One of the most popular crafty-ish blogs out there. Something about Alicia, the way she writes, and the things she says just makes me feel good.
• LA CARMINA - The newest on the list; I just discovered this one about two weeks ago. Carmen focuses on Gothic Lolita fashion, but has lots of posts that cover tangential interests: DIY versions of clothes by designers like h.Naoto, a Lolita of the week, related historical fashion, makeup, designers. Working my way through the archives!

Now, to address those rumors --

Yes, as those of you who read Valleywag (does anyone who reads this blog also read Valleywag?) might already know, DIY Life will be on hiatus, perhaps permanently, starting on August 1. As far as I know, there are some extrapolated "reports" linking back to that which are inaccurate.

We're all super-bummed, but, you know, it happens. You'll see that we're still publishing, but those are posts we wrote and edited last week, doled out through the week... my work is almost done except for a few loose ends. The bright side is that my to-do list just got a lot shorter, which in itself is a relief!

This post about making a cute decorated jar full of felt strawberries is actually my last; however, I'm rescuing some research and written material that never got published, which may hit the web in some form sooner or later (here or somewhere else). I had a number of half-written articles in draft.

What have I been doing since the news came in Wednesday night? (Aside from apparently coming down with a sinus infection.)

Watching:

Infection

Reading:

House of Many Ways

Diana Wynne Jones

Kitty Kitty

Michele Jaffe

Pale Fire

Vladimir Nabokov

Happy Voodoo Gris Gris: Over 45 Easy-To-Make Lucky Charms & Talismans

Valerie Lefebvre

Gothic & Lolita Bible Volume 2

New dolly friends

Back in January, I wrote a monster post about some dolls I have and some dolls I wanted and some other things; now I can write a follow-up, since I've been expanding my doll collection lately. (This will have to do as a post topic; I haven't been making much lately, really.)

Pullip Veritas

I finally did get Pullip Veritas in May, for my birthday. She came from Hobby Link Japan, a great shop -- I totally recommend them. Much less expensive than on eBay, and because it was Golden Week and they were low on stock, I was able to joke about getting "the last Veritas in Japan!" (This is not actually the case; they restocked a few weeks later.) She's much prettier in person.

(HLJ is a perfect place to buy any of the kinds of things you'll see in this post -- including Re-Ment miniatures by the case box!)

I had some personal issues in May, and to cheer myself up, I wound up buying this:

L - Medicom Real Action Hero - promos

This is L from Death Note, part of Medicom's Real Action Heroes line. The figure is PVC, with real clothing; it's a 1/6 scale figure, so L and Light are both 12" and Misa is 10" -- they've made all three of the main characters, plus a creepy interrogation variant of Misa (which I will not be buying, ever).

I believe Light and Misa come with their respective notebooks (of doom), but L just comes with some extra hands (which, as the photos show, allow him to examine things and pose in some of his characteristic positions). The dolls are capable of assuming almost any pose that a real human might be able to. Here's a detail version of one of those shots....

L - Medicom Real Action Heroes

I might add that this particular doll action figure was more expensive than it had any right to be -- an MSRP more than either of the other two on this post. Some of that has to do with the articulation, I'm sure, but still....

It turns out that I have some old (bought in 2005) Re-Ment miniatures that are exactly the same type of cake that L is depicted eating. Serendipity! If I ever take him out of the box, there will be cake photos.

At any rate, two dolls in one month! Who can live at that speed? My next acquisition just arrived the other day, though I found her on eBay when I had a 10%-off coupon, and she came with free Pullip shoes, too... a really good bargain. She's another one you may recognize from January's big doll post:

Blythe - Dainty Biscuit (full)

Dainty Biscuit! She cost a little more thn the average Blythe -- she's some sort of limited edition, though just compared to the usual release, not compared to the ultra-limited ones. It's hard to tell, but most of the lace on her dress is actually cream-colored. Her face has a frosty sheen.

She also has special eye chips, nicer (IMO) than the standard ones that my original Blythe had (I didn't care for the pink or amber-brown). I think these are special shades of blue, violet, green, and brown.

Blythe - Dainty Biscuit

Here's hoping that the next time I post here, I'll have actual crafty stuff to share. But it's just as likely that I'll have bought... more dolls. (Oh, yeah, I also have Death Note Nendoroids -- anyone want to see those?)

The trouble -- concern at the prospect of becoming a creepy old lady doll collector. I try to keep it cool. ;)