Tag: fantasy

What the Boss Likes : a new mask pattern

Hello world!

Ugh, this pandemic really needs to stop.   I’m bored, depressed and just done with it.  I was reading a old book I picked up in a thrift store, “Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern” for those of you who read fantasy.  It’s all about a pandemic on Anne McCaffrey’s Pern.  The disease has symptom: fever, headache and cough.  It was really weird to read that during this time.  Alas, I have no dragon to hang out with.

On that note, I’ve been working with some mask patterns I’ve found on the web and adjusting them to what I need.  Being one of the glasses wearing persuasion, I need something that doesn’t make my glasses fog up and being a little hard of hearing (thanks, childhood ear infections that blew out my eardrums!) I find it easier if I can see people’s lips and find it easier if I can smile at people, being that I’m currently working in retail (I am a plant merchandiser at a Lowe’s, which means I move plants around to make them look pretty and throw out the ones that are dying.  Oh and don’t forget the eternal sweeping the area)

So, you may find below my pattern that I cobbled from these two: first mask video and pattern  and  mask pattern for glasses by Barb.

My pattern is hand drawn and until I master my pen tablet, this is how it will be.  Anyone at all is more than welcome to improve on it.  My pattern is really for an experienced seamstress/seamster, and they’ll know to put cuts in curves to make it work out.  Print out at 100%.

I used a page protector that I stole from my husband, who is addicted to office supplies, to make the window.  It’s a decent weight of clear plastic and this particular one is a matte finish.

Things you might want to know:

Cut little slits in the fabric for the curves so it doesn’t bunch up.

Use a wider stitch length when sewing the plastic in so you don’t perforate the plastic too much and have the window fall out.

The chin and nose are gathered with a thread so they can fit around the face a little better.  It’s just like using a thread as the string on a drawstring bag.

The center hole will be cut as shown.  Fold the flaps back.  The flaps can be cut narrower so you won’t have quite so much to fold back.  It just depend on how comfortable you are with really narrow stitching.  I double stitched around the window just to make sure everything was caught.

A light film of dish soap can help with the fogging.

If you have any questions, please ask. This was a quick and dirty project of mine.

 

And yes, that is a deer skull behind me above our fake fireplace.  I found that deer skull about 40 years ago as a very decayed roadkill, and it hadn’t had the antlers eaten off by a porcupine.  My parents weren’t thrilled that I brought it home.  😀  I will have to admit that wearing this mask reminds me of those weird  cartoons with people’s mouths placed on them, like Clutch Cargo.

May you all be happy and safe!

What the Boss Likes : a story long in the making

So, I’ve finished a story I’ve been working on for…. oh 10 years or more.  I figured I needed to finish something since I’m depressed, tired and generally pissed off about a job that I interviewed for and then the employer decided that, at 3:30 on a Friday, they had to “rethink” the position.

It’s a sword and sorcery story, the beginning of a long possible set of stories about D&D characters we played long ago that I am very fond of.  It’s nothing original, but not much is.  It’s how you do it, not how original it is.  It’s loosely based in the Forgotten Realms, but my husband’s version.  Some names are the same, a lot of details aren’t.

If you are interested, you are welcome to read the 42 pages I wrote.  If not, no harm no foul.  If you like to do some critique, I welcome it.  If you are just out to be mean, trust me, no one is as hard on me as myself.  I won’t be impressed.

Here it is.

Oh and read this too.  It’s for free on scribd if you subscribe.

What the Boss Likes – Brothers Bright, Whitestone Motion Pictures – Appalachian gothic

I’m very fond of American myths dealing with our own monsters and magic.  This started with reading stories about Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan,  a strange turn when I read “The Lottery” and the Cthulhu mythos, the stories about “Silver John” by Manly Wade Wellman, and into role-playing games like “Deadlands“.    Southern gothic is a subset.

Very cool applachian gothic music and videos from Whitestone Motion Pictures and Brothers Bright (they are apparently the same thing):

If you watch the movie below, you’ll see the kind of forests I grew up around, sans monsters of course  🙂

and a curious little animated video about the west.  I may have posted this sometime in the past.

Delta Rae’s Bottom of the River (note the lady in the mirror)

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – surprise, the world is going to end….again

from atheistmemebase.com
from atheistmemebase.com

Since we have the usual claims of “the end times are a-comin’” thanks to the current uptick in world violence, I thought I’d devote a blog entry to the wonderful world of eschatology or as we know it here in the US, TrueChristians and their violent fantasies.

To start out, we have a recent Billy Graham column, a favorite of mine for its entertaining hypocrisy and cherry picking. Here the querent asks if we will ever see “true world peace”.

As expected, Billy/his handlers, are not too crazy about world peace. He grudgingly admits that there can be periods of peace, even in ancient Israel, where per the myth, there was a period of 40 years of peace under a king name Othniel, a king mentioned in Judges 3 where the Israelites are *still* screwing around ignoring their god that supposedly does these amazing miracles. This chapter also mentions how this god has to repeatedly test his subjects. I guess that omniscience doesn’t quite work, eh? And, it has the best Conan-esque scene in it where Ehud stabs a king to the point that the hilt sank into the body and the “fat closed over it”. Billy seems to have missed that there was a whole *80* years of peace after this guy. Perhaps he didn’t want to draw attention to such a sword and sorcery story right out of other Bronze Age mythologies?

Billy is sure that there will never and should never be any world peace, because that would invalidate his book of myths. Violence and hatred is *necessary* to this god and its supposed plan per the bible, where it takes war and the death of anyone who disagrees with this god to get a “peace”, or in Billy’s words “His perfect rule of peace and justice over the whole earth”.. And even after that war in Revelation 19, we have only an “eon” aka “a thousand years” of peace under the reign of the Son of God (Revelation 20). It’s a finite period. Why does it have to end, you may ask? Because this god has no choice(!) and must let his archenemy go to corrupt those people that it didn’t kill before, in order to kill more of them . Satan seems to be a little stupid, first being the mechanism of JC’s “victory” e.g. getting murdered, and then trying to attack this god again. Can’t it read the bible to know what’s going to happen? 🙂

Billy invokes the claim of his bible that there will be “wars and rumors of wars. Do not be alarmed. Such things must happen.” Mark 13. Matthew 24 says the same thing and both go on to say, something that Billy neglects to mention, that anyone who claims that they know that JC is returning should not be believed. We’ve heard the same claims for thousands of years, that any uptick in war and misery is “surely” the sign that JC is returning. And it’s failed every single time. So much for coming “quickly” and “soon”. Billy says pray for peace. Hmmm, how is that to work if war is to happen no matter what, that God *needs* this violence? Is he advocating going against his god’s will? Not that it matters in that prayer does nothing.

A lot of the misery in the world is from religion, witness the nonsense in the eastern Mediterranean where two religions are sure that their imaginary friend gave them some patch of land that they will kill for, and where two sects of one religion are sure that the other should be destroyed for not teaching the religion “right”. Eliminating religion would certainly never eliminate all of the pain of the world, but it would give us humans one less reason for hating each other, one reason that never existed in the first place. Humans need to get through their thick heads that all humans are the same and that we have to work together. No god will ride in at the last minute and save us from ourselves.

What the Boss Likes – meet my newly created mascot, Ruby

Ruby
Ruby

Meet the blog’s new mascot, Ruby.  One of my other hobbies, other than cooking,  collecting unusual alcohol and dealing with religion, is sewing.  I used to do a lot of sewing of costumes for historical recreation and for science fiction cons, as well as for my friends.  I got out of the habit a few years back for various reasons.

One day, when cleaning up the house, I stumbled upon an old pattern I had bought more than 10 years ago.  It was a pattern for a dragon, and I had wanted to make one after I had been cheated by someone who was to make me one and who took my money and ran.  A pity that some people can be such vermin, but it did lead to me to this point.

The pattern was from Smallworks, a pattern company by the very talented Melinda Small.   The dragon pattern is here.  It’s very small and detailed pattern, and I was unable to accomplish some of the finer turning of the tail and horns so they’ve been altered to meet my sewing level.  The pattern does have very good directions but I have no idea just how one could actually do the turning through the narrow areas.  Evidently it’s not impossible, thanks to Ms. Small’s photos; I simply was unable to do it myself.  Ms. Small uses an old technique, called button joints, to great effect in this little beastie. The buttons can be seen as the small circles at the joints.

The fabrics are a odd dark red linen I bought years ago that is shot through with real copper threads. That’s what gives the glistening effect.  The purple is a black and purple shot taffeta.  I would not suggest using such a fabric, unless you know how to deal with the fraying edges.  I was using what was in the stash I have. The eyes are black faceted beads from an old broken necklace.  I intentionally used black thread so I could see what I was doing on this test subject.

dragon 2Ruby is my first attempt at the pattern and she didn’t come out too badly at all.  I don’t think she’s a dragon; being an old Dungeons and Dragons player, I find that all dragons need four legs and two wings.  A critter like this with two wings and only back feet is a wyvern to me. 🙂  I know I know, fantasy purist….  I’ll be working on my own pattern for a while and hopefully get a working dragon before we go to GenCon this August.

Here’s couple of old pictures of my earlier costuming work for your delectation and amusement:

Finally, a picture of our cat, Muffin, being cute. muffin

What the Boss Likes – Sleepy Hollow, tv series

SleepyHollow1_210x305I’ve found a new favorite on TV.  Sleepy Hollow (beware auto audio will start to play) is great.  A smart female hero,  a smart male hero (and good looking people as both).  Lots of potential conspiracies (Illuminati, anyone?  Covens and the Catholic church?)  And plenty of character actors that we all love.  Clancy Brown (the Kurgan from the Highlander movie, and much voice acting e.g. Lex Luthor on the Superman animated series), the fellow who plays the new Sulu is there (alas for only the first episode).  And the Rolling Stones  “Sympathy for the Devil” as a temporary theme (and how much did that licensing cost? 🙂  )  .

And as part of the teaser for the next episode?  The fellow from the Revolutionary War, having no idea that guns can fire more than one shot.  Watch it, it’s smart, detailed and a lot of fun.  At least in the pilot, hopefully, it will last and not be another great series that only lasts for a handful of episodes.

From The Kitchen, From the Bar and a movie – Grilled chicken, shandies and Jack the Giant Slayer

grilled chickenThis weekend, it being a little cooler than last, we decided to grill.  I pulled out a recipe from my latest issue of Saveur Magazine, Gai Yahng or Thai style chicken with sweet chili sauce.  It is basically a cilantro and garlic marinade for chicken, which you then grill.  I find gas grills to be banes of my existence, never getting hot enough and making everything taste of propane.  I’m of the opinion I may as well just cook on my gas stove on cast iron.  We grill with charcoal, preferably hardwood charcoal pieces and not briquets (our grill here, sans optional smoker box).  For chicken, I find that indirect grilling works best (instructions here), with the coals under one part of the grill grates and the other side empty.  Then you can control just how much heat the chicken gets.  It took about 50 minutes to grill 4 fat thighs to an internal temp of approximately 200 degrees F (around 100 celcius).

chicken mealThis recipe made some of the best grilled chicken we’ve had in a long time.  However, you *must* love cilantro and garlic.  I made a basic shredded carrot salad with a basic vinaigrette with cumin, paprika and just a pinch of cinnamon and caynne.  Quinoa with toasted onions rounded out the meal.

For beverage, we got the new Leinenkugel shandy pack (all cans).  They have just come out with an orange shandy to join their already tasty lemon and lemon/berry shandies.  The orange has a great but not overly sweet true orange flavor. They *all* went very well with the grilled spicy chicken.  They don’t even have the orange on their website yet, so here’s a link to the lemon.

The movie for the weekend was Jack the Giant Slayer.  I will have to say that I wasn’t expecting it to be very good.  However, I thought it was one of the better fantasy movies I’ve seen in a long long while.  It had appealing characters, the bad guy gets what he deserves, decent CGI and it was a great deal of fun to watch even for this pair of 45+ year old nerds.

What the Boss Likes – Hard Magic by Larry Correia, and some political caveats about the writer

Hard Magic. Not the best cover I’ve seen but it shows two characters, Jake and Faye.

First off, I’ve just finished “Hard Magic” by Larry Correia. It’s very good, excellent dieselpunk with magic.  I kinda wish it wasn’t. (BTW, I’ve tried to make sure that there are no spoilers about the book  in this post. But as always, read at your own risk.)

Why does it seem that so many people who like guns are hyper-conservative theocrats who glom onto any conspiracy theory out there?    

I like guns and am a decent shot. Paint cans should be fearful. I also rather like violence in my fiction, preferably when the bad guys get their come-uppance Michael Bay style. Blame that bloodthirsty streak on me being a child of the 1980s and watching too much A-Team.  Anyone can see that this isn’t the usual things to like from the generally liberal feminist atheist perspective I’ve written from on this blog, though you might have gotten a hint from the “rough men” post.  A dear departed friend of mine, who had this crazy beautiful gun collection and sons who shot in competition (and in the military) was one of the rare gun enthusiasts who was close to liberal as me (social liberal, fiscal conservative). Another question is why do so many people who like guns and who idolize the military manage never to have served at all?  And medical reasons don’t have much impact with me since I know someone who got in the Army, in an actual crawl-though-the-mud MOS, with at least three major medical things that would have got him an easy excuse to not serve at all.

As I said above I’ve recently read “Hard Magic” by Larry Corriea and absolutely loved it.  It’s dieselpunk through and through, with a good tight world, a coherent magic system (most of the magic reads more like superhero powers but there is some classic thamaturgy) excellent fight scenes and characters you can really like. So, I went out to see what Google could tell me about this man, who has quite a few books out.  And I really should have known what I’d find.  Alas, Mr. Correia, is a conservative Mormon who is sure that President Obama is going to take his guns.  Sad really, when someone who writes such a well-thought out story has to make some hilarious and baseless assumptions to go along with the claims that Mr. Obama has waited until maybe or maybe not getting a second term to do anything about guns at all.  Yep, that mean ol’ Obama was such a mastermind about getting the UN to take over, and to eliminate the 2nd Amendment, that he didn’t do a damn thing about taking away anyone’s guns and is in a very very close election that he very well might not win.  It takes a certain amount of pure stupidity to think that this is some actual plan.  I mean, really, Mr. Correia, you write better masterminds yourself.  Happily, nothing of his personal views seems to get in the way of a good story.  Continue reading “What the Boss Likes – Hard Magic by Larry Correia, and some political caveats about the writer” →