I'm doing a shameless plug here for one of my favorite online bead stores, RocknRocks. I've bought stuff from them for several years now, always had excellent service, and I'm impressed with their efforts to ensure that their beads are not produced in a sweatshop environment. They're in a bit of a financial pickle and I'd really rather not see them close shop--if you are a bead fiend or you know someone who is, take a gander at their site.
Well, I tasted my log o' cheese the other day and it's very definitely not brie. It's super-sharp and still crumbly. I think it's not faring so well in the fridge and I may take it out to age at room temperature now that it's firmed up and all...
I've made myself some kefir too. I had some milk that was approaching its expiration date and I didn't want to drink it all because plain milk is kind of gross (I usually only use it for cooking these days). So I poured it into my two-thirds-empty kefir bottle, shook it up, and left it out on the counter for two days, shaking it and venting the gas from the bottle whenever I could remember to. Popped it back in the fridge for a few days, and I have a new batch of kefir again. I know that whole leaving milk out on the counter thing might sound gross, but you gotta remember that the reason kefir and yogurt were invented in the first place was to preserve milk back in the days before refrigeration. So long as you use all-natural kefir with live culture in it, you can totally do this, and in theory never actually need to buy bottled kefir again, only milk. I'll probably forget to replenish the bottle with milk sometime down the road and have to get a new one, but whatever.
Meanwhile in kombucha-land, I'm getting a good, floaty mat on two out of my four bottles. I have to clean out my old tea leaf jars and transfer everything into there so I can have one nice big mother culture. That will be tomorrow, I hope. Sometime this weekend anyhow.
Woo, I'm tired. I left work early today since my boss took a day off, hiked about 6 miles mostly along the shore, wrote down some good ideas for my script, and bought some ice cream on my way home. I've really got to do that more often. Now I'm going to go lie the heck down because my feet are tired.
=Awesome. There's a very solid steampunk contingent now, a trend capped off by an appearance by Jake von Slatt (which I missed because the schedule on the website was wrong and we arrived too late). Also, if you know the guy featured on YouTube who did the TGI Friday's comedy routine--he was there too, wandering about taking pictures. Is he local to me? Now I can't help but wonder if he goes to the same TGI Friday's I do. :p
The faire has grown exponentially since last year. Events go all the way to 10 PM tonight and they use the entire convention center grounds this time. There's just so much to see, it's overwhelming. And refreshing and inspiring. I'm going to look into Ponoko, for one. Their shtick is offering fabrication services for whatever you design. It sounds like it is totally awesome for people who know what they're doing but don't have the means or time to make all of it. But it also sounds like it's a PITA for people who don't know what they're doing, and really, the DIY mindset is great only up to a point. I would not trust myself for making, say, a dining table, since I have no experience in industrial design or engineering. I like the idea of using them to make custom jigsaw puzzles, and if I'm feeling really ambitious, I might use it to make myself a custom portfolio rack, since I have several large hand-me-down portfolios that are always awkward to store.
Tomorrow Adam Savage will be there to talk about his sculpture and movie replicas, but I don't think I'll be going back--a decision made reluctantly. It took a lot out of me and I was in pain before I finally decided to call it quits after the life-sized Mousetrap replica. And I guess I should get going on making my own stuff. Seafood dumplings comes to mind, as do some long-overdue earrings. I'm a little sad that Adam Savage is going to be only a mile away from me and I can't go meet him, but I've got to take it easy this weekend.
I was insistent about having mine on the colored T-shirts, so both dark color sets plus white are there for your most fashionable pleasure.
Where do ya think I'm going to be this weekend? Why, at the Maker Faire of course! I'm only sorry I can't wear a new Bajoran earring to it since I didn't have any time to work on it last month.
I've been a little distracted lately. Work has sucked hard this week and I'd been unable to go to my mail drop until today. There were loads of packages waiting for me; I've been ordering stuff off eBay for my various and sundry projects and also Boca Java had sent me another dubiously welcome crate of chai mix. Does anyone want some goddamn chai? I have too much now.
Anyhow, I get home and put my feet up when I get a call from my doctor. Last week's drama of using my vacation time to shuttle back and forth between diagnostic tests has finally ended, they found a cyst and a polyp, they'll have to be watched, blah blah further look into the polyp... oh and then my doc drops the bomb--she's retiring, effective IMMEDIATELY. As in, on Monday I have to find someone else to take me and my medical baggage on and discuss treatment options. My monkey is not pleased.
Anyhow so I spend the rest of the evening angsting and don't even bother to open my packages until right now. I got through my jewelry stuff and realized I ordered the wrong damn size for one set of stones and it's too late to return it because it's been sitting in my mailbox too long. Rargh! The last package is a large one, which I thought would be the sets of sapphire beads I ordered from that new vendor and I had literally ripped open one side of the box before I noticed that the return address said "Coulton".
Kind of amazing. :) I am greatly cheered. Thank you thankyouthankyou JoCo!
But here's some funny!
I'm dreading going back to work tomorrow, to be honest. I'm certain it won't be as bad as I think it is. But I wish my vacation had been longer. I'm up because it's frankly depressing. And because frustration, sadly, seems to be what allows me to rub two artistic brain cells together to make something.
I am still following my fish.
Delirium from Sandman is everyone's favorite. And the longer I stay in this dead-end job the more I feel like her.
Well, my cheese has taken an interesting turn. Apparently my improvised cheese press (by which I mean a contraption devised of a bamboo steamer, wax paper, cardboard, and a bucket of sea glass) did not press a sufficient amount of whey out of the curd and the resultant overly-moist cake fell to bits when I tried to dry it. I took a moment to taste it as I was gathering up the pieces and noticed that it is not particularly brie-ish. I've never heard of anyone making straight-up brie from kefir and I wonder if the microbe mix from the kefir is simply destined to turn this into a feta-like cheese (I've made kefir cheese with chevre starter before and it pretty much instantly turned into something feta-like, but I wasn't sure if the chevre or the kefir had more of a hand in it). So I mashed it back up, rolled it into a log with thyme, sage, and sesame seeds on the outside, wrapped it up and tossed it into the fridge to forget about for a while. If the brie culture wins, it'll hopefully rind over within the next two weeks. If the kefir culture wins, I'll have a sharp spreadable cheese. Either way, I win because I get cheese.
Oh, right! Also, I made two batches of kombucha starter out of loose leaf tea and a bottle and a half of GT's in hopes of growing my own mother colony. I know, I know, one more thing to carry on the move. But that thing is friggin' three bucks a bottle at Whole Paycheck! Can you blame me?
ETA: yes, this is how I procrastinate. Fox is very puzzled by how my procrastination is so productive. Usually blogging or cooking are what I do when I'm agitated or out of inspiration, and I think I've earned it this past week. I'll be hearing back from my doctor hopefully soon...
If there's one thing I hate, it's the rampant retouching of models in magazines. Imagine my chagrin to discover what they'd done to Josh in a recent fragrance ad. I had to respond with a 'de-shopping'...
