Found this on a bathroom door at the Crown Bar on Friday/Beer Night:

Seems a bit sarcastic if you ask me.

I have previously expressed my admitted decline in personal fashion. Somewhere along the line I just stopped caring much or paying attention to what I wore. But, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like this:

^{(censored to protect the possibly unwilling)}
In case your eyes are faltering with conflict, let me detail this for you. First we have large boots covering up leg warmers which are covering up flowered leggings which are under a pink shirt which is under an oversized blue sweatshirt which is covered by a (somewhat tattered and fuzzed) scarf topped off with some seriously messed up hair.

Wow.

I’ve really got to work on my clothes. I don’t want to decline further. It seems like it would be scary.

So a couple weeks ago I noticed these swollen rose hips on Cleopatra:

Cleopatra, who has lost all her wonderful flowers by now and spent some time this summer growing a new, long, vining stalk, has a dozen of these seed pods going strong. Since I didn’t pull the blooms as rose gardeners do the seed pods developed unhindered. Apparently I could grow new, little, evil Cleopatra roses plants from seeds! Or possibly, new roses that have characteristics of Cleopatra’s parents even. This is an interesting idea, as Cleopatra is my first experience with blood-eating roses. Okay, that is an exaggeration. She doesn’t feed on blood (that I can prove!) but she certainly tries to draw it if anyone comes near.

I’ve got some gardener-style research to do. Roses from seeds …. hmm. Maybe.

As mentioned, I felt like carving some stamps and got a couple chances to do so last week. Here’s a picture of what I did:

The stamps themselves (on the right) are a bit hard to see here since the material they’re made of is white and low contrast. You may recognize the cat from earlier this year - I made that same drawing for a stamp I sent in a craftster swap. But, I liked it so much once it was done that I pulled the carbon tracing out of the trash and used it again on some spare material. When I pulled out all my carving stuff, there was the cat, waiting to become a new stamp for me.

Do you recognize the little house stamp or the castle-looking stamp?

The stamps on the light blue paper are kind of accessory stamps for my punches. I thought it would be nice to have stamps customized for the punches I have and I like how they turned out. Of course, they can still be used as regular stamps as well. Felt good to carve up some stamps again. Next time I have crafty time, I’d like to sew something. It has been a while since I did any stitching for myself and my machines are probably gathering dust by now.

Whew - I’m knackered. Slick and I spent the weekend cleaning up our backyard. I’d show you a before and after picture but, quite frankly, it would be embarrassing. We hauled away old deconstruction debris, we trimmed the abounding cherry and chokecherry trees, got rid of a beautifully rusting old desk and gathered up about ten bags of stray leaves. We are tired, but the back yard looks great. It looks almost as good as when we moved in, but this is fall and we moved in during late summer, so there is some weather discrepancy to be accounted for.

In a fit of annoyance last night, after showering away leaf bits and dirt, I cut off all my hair. It was about two feet long and now it is only 13″ at its longest, one inch at its shortest. It feels great! I was so sick of it and was starting to hate it. Now, all is wonderful shortness.

I think I’ll take pictures of the stamps I carved, just so you guys can have some pictures to look at. Stay tuned.

Sorry I was blogligent for three days there. It seemed like a good opportunity to focus on my personal relationship with God. And since I am happily a devout atheist, that meant lots of sleeping late, guzzling coffee and catching up on my favorite craft blogs. But I’m here now and isn’t that what you’ve all been waiting for?

Last night I made some stamps. They weren’t spectacular or any of my best work, but I wanted to make something and felt like carving. I also spent some time trying to get the hang of using an Xacto instead of my gouges. Gouges are still my preferred method. I have more control with them, but I will continue to work on my Xacto carving skills because I am already having problems with tiny spaces that my smallest gouge won’t fit into.

I’d show you the progress test sheet of the ones I carved, but most of the ones I did are made to fit inside the space created by some of my paper punches and it would just look silly without the punch part. So you’re just going to have to take my word for it. Or you can come over to my house and feign interest in the crafts to see them for yourself, but then I might try to convince you to try carving your own stamp and … well, you are warned.

Yesterday, Slick and I took a long, crunching through the leaves walk all over downtown. This nearly obscene fall weather (76F - in November. _{But there’s no such thing as global warming, you frakking hippie tree hugger Democrat. Yeah right.}) makes for very nice walks. I saw another crow graffiti and this paste up:

The paste up graffiti is less common, but I’m glad to see some expressive variety around. Can’t all be spray paint and stencils.

Here is what our house looked like for Halloween. We keep adding more lights every year, which has worked out pretty well. We are going to have to replace the cheapo string lights on the house eaves with some all weather rope lights. The strings we have up now have faded to nearly white and I’d like something brighter. We try to stick to things that light up because we have a dark block - no streetlights - which is great for seeing stars from your front yard without light pollution. Although, I’m going to pick up some cheapo plastic Jock-O-Lanterns that plug in and light up for the edges of the yard to bring more visibility. The lights you see above are somewhat diminished by the ample spread of our porch light which we keep on for trick-or-treating traditional invitations.

However, even with the warm (60s in the evening) weather, full-sized candy bars plus Play Doh for treats, we only got 12 trick-or-treaters! Hang on, let me work that out in caps so I can yell. Here, TWELVE!!! Last year we had 31 and I’d thought we’d trained them well. Where are they all at? WTF.

I am here, at home, alone, waiting for trick-or-treaters to come to my brightly lit up house. I should have alcohol. That would be better. Wait - I have vodka and pomegranate juice. I’ll bet I can make that tasty. Le sigh. Maybe we should start having a Halloween party. That would be fun to do on a night made for fun!

I just have to share with you guys my hero of the day. Mnemonic, who occasionally comments here, did a fantastic thing which you must read on his blog in this entry right here.

Incredible. I don’t know if I could have been that brazen. Well executed!

Go Mnemonic!

As previously mentioned, I got a flaker for a partner in my last swap. The “Once You Pop Swap, Round 8, Halloween Edition” swap on craftster.org. I got an Angel who crafted up some items for me with amazing speed and sent them Priority Mail so I could have my stuff before Halloween. Rather sweet of her. She (SunflowerSmiles) and I have different tastes and preferences, so it was a toss-up as to what I’d get. Turns out, I’d get fabulous!

Here is the freshly opened box with a handmade card on top with a nice note from her inside.

Here is the can, all done up:

A gravestone on the front and a death figure hovering over the contents.

And the contents of the can:

Carefully wrapped in tissue paper, we have on the upper left a skull and crossbones fascinator (fortunately, a somewhat lower keyed one than normally seen, which is perfect for me), below that are two hair clips and on the bottom right we have two glass pendants (one snake with gold detail and one subtle rose) strung on velvet ribbon with silver toggle clasps. These are all wonderful and I’ve already worn the rose pendant and fascinator out tonight! I am in dire need of accessory & wardrobe help and SunflowerSmiles has given me a big step in the right direction. I was worried about wearing the fascinator out to a coffee shop during the day in quiet little Cheyenne, WY, but never fear! Ymabean was there in bright orange and wearing her glitter bat headbobbles! We suited the Halloween Eve well.

Here’s a close view of the pendants.

Halloween crafty things! Stickers, stencils, painted wooden decorations with hanging strings and an excellent altered tag, made of wood, featuring a haunted house under a full moon and a zombie creature in the foreground. Love it.

Magnets! Conveniently, I like to put magnets on my giant WW2 era file cabinet and these are already in their new home. Slick keeps stopping by to move the eyeballs around to look at different things.

Inchies! Halloween inchies just for me! Yay. In that decorated tin at the bottom right were the earrings you see at the top left. They are pretty and I will absolutely wear them. She’s given me more accessory help!

And at last, Halloween candy, a decorated votive holder with votive and a striking black candle with raised, silver skull and swirl designs.

She really hit my tastes right on target and in such a short time as well. I think she’s a better partner than my real partner ever would have been. Sweet! And this wraps up swaps for me for a while again.

By a mother with three small, energetic children: “… and then we can get on the plane.” She looks around, “where’s your brother?”
Both the children she is speaking to shrug as she looks around, increasingly frantic. The third kid is only a gate away, looking through the windows, walking slowly.
“Niles!” calls the mom.
“Run, Niles, run!!” yells the middle sibling as the mother hustles over to the third kid.
“Go across the escalator; go, run!”
Niles has on headphones and happens to turn as his mother reaches him. Niles and the mother return slowly and the middle sibling is subsequently relegated to the seat at the end of the row for “being bad”.

I got such a kick out of the escape encouragements.

My allergens are still around as of right now. I sneezed and snuffed my way through an entire product demonstration this morning. I feel bad for people around me because I know they think I am sick and spreading my germs all over, but what to do? I need a sticker that says “Hello My Name Is: I’m NOT SICK, I have ALLERGIES, don’t worry” that I can put on my shirt.

I stopped taking my expensive allergy meds a couple weeks ago and my cheapo allergy meds last week. Too soon. As of today, I think I will just take them through the end of the year to be safe. I hate being miserable like this. Thankfully I have a light road week that I can skip out on one meeting and do everything else online. Easier to sneeze while typing than while talking to someone face to face. The moment I get home (currently stuck for four hours in the Omaha airport) I am taking those allergy pills. Dammit.

The moon is outside.
I saw the great uncomplicated thing
when I went to take a leak just now.
I should have looked at it longer.
I am a poor lover of the moon.
I see it all at once and that’s it
for me and the moon.

by Leonard Cohen