This year, I am carrying two swords

Previous Halloween entry: Trick/Treat/Trip



The first picture taken of me tonight, as the office braces for its Halloween party. I am carrying two types of swords and I intend to run around and pose some more with the damn things, as I am quite happy with them and I have never had a chance to do something like this. XD

There should be more later, or I will try to get someone to take other photos, I don't know.....

Scenes from my university

I recently found cause to write about UP-Diliman, the university that I attended for a few years, in rather elegiac terms in a story.

As that story is supposed to be part of a project where both words and images come together, I took it upon myself to add some references for the artist who will draw my story, and to this end I went out last Sunday to photograph my uni.

Turns out it was perfect weather to take pictures: a blue sky overhead, a sun that was not overwhelming in its light and in fact was a bit moody and muted. There were also not a lot of people on the grounds, which my SO and I attributed to that weekend being the first of the semester break, meaning, everyone might have gone home for a couple of weeks.

He and I took turns with the camera. I'm pretty sure that the third photo is his.

The facade of Ang Bahay ng Alumni features a striking stained-glass half-circle window, which unfortunately is not that obvious in this light. [Hint: it's that massive window with the iron traceries.] The name of the building roughly translates to "The Home of the Alumni".

A look up, up, up the UP Carillon. When we were at uni together we used to spend afternoons listening to the distant songs of the bells as they were rung in this tower. Recently the whole thing has undergone a facelift and it now looks much better than it did ten years ago.

The facade of Palma Hall, also known as AS [Arts and Sciences] and LA [Liberal Arts], depending on your generation, as seen through some of the acacia trees planted along the Academic Oval. Photo by my partner.

A photo of one side of the Academic Oval, taken by me while sitting on the sidewalk opposite Palma Hall. I really like the atmosphere in this photo: it makes us look as though we were the only people in the area. In fact there were a few bicyclists making the rounds - I just got lucky; I took the photo while they were still far away.

For all its flaws and strange idiosyncrasies I still think my uni is gorgeous and a joy to be in. I hope these pictures help convey that.

Home Improvement! We finally get a proper closet

The joke of this Sunday morning was, "I want a sonic screwdriver and I want it now."

We WERE watching a couple of guys assemble the closet we'd purchased last week, after all.

Hard to believe that we've been living in our apartment for close to three years and only now managed to have enough money for a closet. That might have had something to do with the fact that moving in had been expensive all on its own, and I was directing most of my money to just getting by.

Now I have some money stored safely away, so I was able to get something we badly needed.


The nice thing about this closet: lots and lots of space for organizing clothes. There's a mirror in one of the doors, too, so it's now possible for us to do a complete check on our outfits before heading out the door.


The main storage space in the closet.

[Yes, those are our chocobos. I took them back home after a brief stint in the office with me.]

Now I have to spend most of tonight organizing a ton of things. Hope that the Internet holds out and that the storm doesn't hit us very badly.

Scenes from a Vacation

I was on hiatus for a couple of weeks. As you might have noticed, the last blog entry had been on my birthday - and then radio silence here and on the Facebook fan page.

Well, that was due to a vacation. Took some time off, which culminated in me and my partner celebrating yesterday [Binary Day, otherwise known as 10-10-10] in a Chinese food marathon with friends and family.

Pics or it didn't happen, so here's some of the food from the past weekend:

Elbert's Cheesesteak - provolone cheesesteak hoagie, fries, iced tea and orange juice, 8-10-10.

Toast Box for breakfast with chocobos, 10-10-10

Conti's cakes for dessert, 10-10-10

I should try to go back to more regular posting from here on out. As it's almost time for the busy season to start at work, not to mention I've a 20k-plus story to write, I'll do my best.

It's National Coming Out Day. All my love to friends and readers and especially to a wonderful queer friend of mine in the US. And here is a possibly relevant video.


Chris Colfer [Glee's Kurt Hummel] for the Trevor Project: "It gets better."

And I'm 28 and a geek.

Well, THIS cake ain't a lie at all.


My frabjous birthday cake, courtesy of my wonderful partner. If you're wondering about the inscription, it's because we've been very amused by the Panda Cheese commercials.

Subtitled versions here:



And now I go to work. [Vacation next week!]

Kanin Club Again: Brunch Before a Birthday

Related posts:
Meal in the City: "Crispy Dinuguan" at Kanin Club, UP-Ayala Technohub
Meal in the City: Kanin Club Redux

As one of us will soon be turning a year older, my partner and I went back to Kanin Club today for a celebratory brunch. Here's what we had to eat.

All photos taken by my partner.

Salad: green mangoes, onions, tomatoes, salted eggs, and bagoong [fermented shrimp paste] dressing. On the menu, this comes with cilantro; we had that taken out of the order since we're allergic to it.

Mains: crispy dinuguan and deep-fried tilapia, and rice of course.

The whole meal before we started eating it.

After the meal, we scotched our plans to go bowling and decided to go eat some dessert instead.

And dessert-slash-early-birthday-cake is Chocolate Fudge Cake from the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Meal in the City: Tempura Japanese Grill, SM Mall of Asia

Related post:
Dream Team!

After watching Despicable Me together with my partner, it was time to grab some eats, and we settled on one of our favorite places to eat: Tempura Japanese Grill.

[You might ask: Yes, but with so many restaurants in a mall you don't frequent, why settle for something familiar?

Answer: We wanted to eat comfort food.]

Here's what we had to eat.

As is our custom at Japanese restaurants, we ordered sashimi. We usually eat maguro. While the fish came from a fairly good catch, fresh and properly prepared, we couldn't say the same for the rather limp garnish of radish and carrot.

My meal of tonkatsu curry rice. Good stuff, wonderfully tasty without being overly salty. I liked how the kitchen balanced the sauce mix perfectly.

My partner's meal of chili mapo tofu ramen, the best dish that day, hands down. The kitchen was very generous with both the tofu and the ground pork, and the latter was perfectly seasoned, sinking into an already hearty broth and making it even tastier. I will have to order the version that goes over rice for the next time we eat at this restaurant.

Again, a good meal from a reliable restaurant. I'm glad to know that the food at the three branches I've been to has been uniformly nice. Have to go back for the other new dishes on the menu, too.

Crochet works: yarn for side projects

I'm temporarily setting aside the afghan project to tackle a couple of interesting side projects of the commission type.

Wow, I talk about yarn A LOT on this blog, have you noticed?

And I'm going to talk about it some more with this post, in which I show off some recent acquisitions - each of which has already been earmarked for a specific project.


This dark green yarn is for a special request / commission from my mother. I'm going to try making a pouch for her smartphone, in the same general pattern as my RPG dice bag. The only difference will be the size of the project - she has one of those Samsung QWERTY-keypad phones, and it's kinda large, so I have to adapt accordingly.


This speckled purple yarn was originally intended to be made up into a pouch for my younger sister's external hard disk. [As you can probably guess - yeah, she likes purple. A LOT. The scarf I made for her is just ONE piece of evidence.]

Recently, though, my sister decided to do something else with this yarn instead: she wants it to be an insert in an orange beanie.

And how orange is orange? Well, how about this?


I found this variegated red-orange-yellow-shaded Red Heart yarn at Dreams Yarnshoppe today. It was pretty much the sort of thing I had in mind, so I bought two skeins' worth.


The two yarns for my sister's commission. I think it will be INTERESTING to see how these two opposing colors work up together. This was my sister's idea; I'm just executing it - but I'm pretty sure the resulting photos will be VERY bright. At least that. *snicker*

If I have any of that orange stuff left over I'll make my own version of Jayne Cobb's hat. Gorram it I finally found something that would suit. Shiny!

Return to the Scarf Project: work in progress

Whenever I make a scarf I tend to think of it as not actually having a pattern at all since I often do it in double crochet, or some very simple combination of very basic stitches.

Where I really go crazy is in the color selection. I'm lucky to now have a sizable yarn stash, with so many possibilities for creation and for crafting coolness.

By request of my sister, who is going away to college to become a professional chef, I've gone back to making scarves. Specifically, THIS one:

It's going to be much skinnier than the other scarves I've made - it's only 13 dc across.

As my sister's favorite color is purple, I'm doing this one in a tweed of purple chenille and dark gray yarns.

Close-up on the colors in the scarf.

I'm shooting to have this finished before June 15, so I guess I have to get a move on - I want it to be at least six feet long and I've only finished a third of it so far.

Towel Day 2010: Hoopy froods.

25 May 2010: Commemorating Douglas Adams with a towel and a smile.

[Boy was I ever lucky my hair cooperated for this shot!]

A tale of loot pouring from the sky

Sometimes when it really rains the world's sturdiest umbrella won't be enough shelter.

But in a case like this I would really not mind getting drenched.

Here's a round-up of this year's accumulated loot so far.

1. Crafting loot


I hope you remember how happy I have been to complete my battery of crochet hooks.


And just for reference, this was my stash as of yesterday....


And here is my stash now. I think my ship just came in for the time being...that's a whopping ten pounds of yarn piled on top of the container, in shades of natural, black, and dark blue. It's a bit of a gift to me from dear friends of my parents.

You have no idea how my SABLE cup overfloweth right now.

I'm speechless and happy, is what I am right now.

Thank you.

2. Takarazuka Kagekidan loot


You've seen one of the books in this post already, but now it's arranged in the context of its sister purchases. I had a bit of a splurge sometime in April....

Well, that's that for now. I must away and get all my stash catalogued. Since it's a bit of a long weekend for me, I guess that means I'll catch you all on the other side. :D

Stars / In your multitudes.... [A crochet tutorial!]

Related posts:
Starry eyes and star-studded ideas
Ten-pointed crochet star - first attempt!
What a difference the right hook makes



Talking about stars again, so I thought it might be appropriate to have Philip Quast in the 10th Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables, singing Inspector Javert's theme, "Stars".

[He holds that final note for about 12 seconds! No wonder people jumped to their feet to applaud!]

So, you know that my current crochet pet project has been these ten-pointed stars that I keep making, sort of like piling up a series of motifs and then deciding what to do with them after they threaten to overrun a project box or two.

As a thought experiment, I started wondering what it would take to create a twelve-pointed version.

Those who are more skilled at crochet than I am, and who watched the video tutorial multiple times, will quickly have worked out that if each star point spans four stitches and a circle of forty stitches yields ten points, then a circle of forty-eight stitches will yield a star with twelve points.

I am only a newbie, so forgive me for taking so long to arrive at this conclusion.

Pictures and comments beneath the cut. I guess this is my first real crochet tutorial?

What a difference the right hook makes

Related posts:
Starry eyes and star-studded ideas
Ten-pointed crochet star - first attempt!

I'm still churning out those beautiful ten-point stars, but now I am working with an entirely different material: cotton crochet thread, like this:



I'd actually gotten this ball of thread early on when I took up crochet again, but found to my dismay that I had serious problems working with it. Now I know why: I was using the wrong hook. Maybe the largest steel crochet hook would work with this, but I prefer to use the new arrivals. Specifically, I've found that both the C-2 and D-3 hooks work well with this fine thread.

And here is the result of my hard work with these two new hooks and this old material.


This was done with the C hook, incorporating three rounds of star points. Looks kinda ruffly. This one just will not lay flat, no matter what I do. That doesn't mean it's not pretty or whatever - it's just that it's got limited uses if it cannot be flattened out.


And this motif was made with the D hook, incorporating only two rounds of the star points. I've come to the conclusion that I'll just stick with the two rounds for all other examples - not only can the star lie flat with just a little persuasion, it actually rather looks so much prettier.


And a stray example with some blue ombre crochet thread that I had on hand. I love the color of the thread, but I've decided that it doesn't quite work out so well with this motif. I'll look for some other way to use the thread.

All of these stars, including the MASSIVE gray one I did as a first attempt, are now hanging from the sides of my cubicle. I tend to think they give my workspace quite a bit of personality.

I wonder if I could try assembling multiple motifs into something like a scarf. Something very light and breezy, obviously, considering the cotton crochet thread and the fine hook and close work. Hmm.

*wanders off thinking*

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Crochet Hooks Galore

An almost-completed collection of crochet hooks [non-steel ones].

B-1 [2.25mm]
C-2 [2.75mm]
D-3 [3.25mm]
E-4 [3.50mm]
F-5 [3.75mm]
G-6 [4.00mm]
H-8 [5.00mm]
I-9 [5.50mm]
J-10 [6.00mm]
K-10.5 [6.50mm]
L-11 [8.00mm]
M-13 [9.00mm]
N-15 [10.00mm]

No, it's not a code. It's just a list of the hooks in the above photograph, arranged in ascending order from left to right.

With the arrival of the newest items - that would be the first four in the list - I'm pleased to announce that my battery of crochet hooks is pretty much complete.

I am a happy crochet geekette, yes I am. I'll just run along and go work up a few projects, shall I? :D Catch you on the other side.

This week's post o' fannish doom

[Pictures ahead!]


I...I think I'll be able to purchase this gorgeous magazine book, or mook as the Japanese call it, very soon! This is the mook "The Takarazuka III: Cosmos Troupe". It's something like a yearbook, with interviews, pictures, and general silliness of the actresses in a particular troupe of the Takarazuka Kagekidan. In this case, this would be the third installment of this mook for my favorite troupe, Sora - the last one, in fact, for the Top Stars Wao Youka and Hanafusa Mari.


This is the poster for the final stage, or the last show before retirement, of current Yuki Top Stars Mizu Natsuki and Aihara Mika, Roger / Rock On! I have to agree with a friend of mine that the way the titles are written in the poster, they could just as easily be read as "Lodger / Lock On!" - and then you wonder what it really means in terms of the story....

...Yeah, I'm in sackcloth and ashes over Mizu's impending retirement, and I haven't even recovered from Ayabuki Mao's yet - Yumiko's last day in the Kagekidan is on April 25....


And just because all of a sudden the fannish circles in LiveJournal and, to a limited extent, Facebook, are all agog over him and his first full-length Doctor Who episode - I present the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, and his absolutely EPIC hair.

I am SO looking forward to the episode written for him by none other than NEIL FREAKING GAIMAN.

Two by two, scarf of blue

After a whole bunch of scarf projects ranging from the first crochet project I ever completed, a pair of six-feet scarves, and a scarf of the fangiftish persuasion, I'm finally working on making a scarf for myself.


Here's the first end section of the scarf, in Lion Brand Cotton-Ease (Turquoise). Technically this qualifies as a stash-diving project because I had this particular skein left over from the WaoHana Project.


First end section after 18 inches, after which I joined the yarn for the main body of the scarf: Lion Brand Cotton in Navy. After a sufficient length of this (the current target being either 24 or, for preference, 36 inches), I'll re-join the Turquoise Cotton-Ease to do the second 18-inch end section.


The scarf last night. You can see I've already put in a good-sized chunk of the Navy section. The goal here is to make either a six-foot scarf of my very own, or if the yarn falls short, something close to it. If the Navy section measures 24 inches, I'll have a five-foot scarf; if it measures 30, I'll have a five-and-a-half-foot scarf; if 36, six.

I'm not really using a pattern here, I'm just using a stitch I picked up from my copy of the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework. I suppose there is a pattern to be found in the fact that the scarf is composed of two blocks of blue? (Hence the allusion to River Tam's particular set of Furies in the post title.)

***

Geeky greetings:

> Happy Pi Day!

> Happy birthday, Albert Einstein!

> And gentlemen, please remember to give back to the ladies in your life: today is White Day!

Hyperbolic Salad Scrunchies: COMPLETE!

Related entries:

Scrunchies and a meditation on crochet-based geometry

Hyperbolic (Hypergirly) Scrunchies, Version 01: COMPLETE!

Both of these previous posts cite the source for the project made in this current entry.


Another set of Hyperbolic Scrunchies comes courtesy of my mom's request to have a set of her own. They're in green, hence the "Salad" in the post title, because that happens to be her favorite color.

This completes the first of my National Craft Month and National Crochet Month Crochet-Along projects.

Next up, a report on the scarf I'm making for...myself! And I'm going to be needing it very soon, because I'm changing jobs to an office with a rather cold climate. :D

First Visits: Sakae Sushi, SM Mall of Asia

All credit and blame for this one goes to Jonette at The Hobby Horse, specifically the Ureshii: 12 entry. If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't have known that I could eat conveyor-belt sushi here in the city.

Although, while she and her significant other went to the Sakae Sushi at SM North EDSA, my partner and I took the exact opposite route and went to the branch at SM Mall of Asia. OMGWTF yes we were so very far from home! (We were there for a change of scenery, and to see what we might find.)

Anyway, food pics a-plenty here.

The rules for the All-Day Sushi Buffet are in Jonette's post, but let me recap anyway: for PHP399 per head for adults, eat your pick of the conveyor belt (but no leftovers please or you get charged extra). The meal also includes a bowl of miso soup and unlimited refills on either hot or iced green tea. As it was a sunny day, my partner and I opted for the latter.


The first four plates. Yes, that is my partner in the R2-D2 shirt that I got him for Christmas 2009, waiting patiently for me to finish taking the photo. I LOVED the green iced tea and drank a lot of it.


Conveyor belt! After the two Japanese dudes in the photo came into the restaurant, I grinned at my partner and muttered, "Well, now you know this place is authentic; even Nihonjin visit it!" Since they ordered octopus and squid sushi, the conveyor belt started having those dishes on offer too.


A close-up on a packed conveyor belt.


A stack of empty dishes partway through the meal. My partner laughed at me when I muttered, "Okay, kill-count stands at 12." We wound up finishing off 16 plates! (Yes we were hungry, could you tell?)

And then afterwards we walked the meal off - and if you've ever been to SM Mall of Asia, you'll know that that is a ridiculously easy thing to do.

We'll probably visit the SM North EDSA branch at some point in the near future.