Live Granades » Making Things

Podcasting at Dragon*Con 2011

Stephen — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 01:58:50 +0000

My Dragon*Con this year was far more packed than normal, so I’m splitting my normal recap post into several, divided by topic. First up is podcasting! We did our usual live episode of WhatTheCast, which was raucous and fun. We had Patrick Jarrett calling in as our roving sports reporter from Philadelphia, where he was covering the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour as part of his job as Editor in Chief of Gathering Magic. We got to meet Lizzie Lynch, who learned about Dragon*Con from WhatTheCast years ago and was attending the con for the first time.

Oh, yeah, and we won one of these:

That’s a Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Fan or News Podcast. It’s a juried award, and I was thrilled that we won it.

That would have been plenty to make this Dragon*Con special, but Sunday night topped it all in terms of sheer surreal wonderfulness. Colin Ferguson, who plays Sheriff Carter on the sadly-cancelled Eureka, agreed to be part of Disasterpiece Theatre, my other podcast.

So of course we had to cast him in the Eureka movie as directed by Michael Bay.

He was an excellent guest, funny as hell, and was quite willing to invent terrible things for his fellow Eureka cast members to do in the movie, like having Felicia Day play a villain with an over-the-top German accent.

I will note that the above is not the first picture we took with him. When we asked him if he’d be willing to take a cast photo with us, he said, “Sure! We should do it in the bathtub. We can all pretend to be passed out.”

I believe this will now be the picture I use for my professional science gigs.

Needs more yarn

Misty — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:24:53 +0000

Pretty much everyone who reads this blog knows that in the past year I’ve become rather crazy about crochet. It has pretty well consumed my free time. And I mean it when I say “consumed.” If I’m sitting, I have a hook, yarn, pattern or all three in my hands. My current tally in my ravelry.com projects list is 108. That number is actually a bit low because I made a lots of hats for charity before Thanksgiving last year. So in reality my completed projects number is closer to 200.

And charity is the reason for this post. So far, I’ve made hats for Arkansas Children’s Hospital, toys for foster children, bears for Mother Bear Project, booties for pregnancy support services, hats for the homeless, and a few adult hats for a friend of a friend who is headed for brain surgery sometime soon. I have loved every minute of it but all of this takes yarn, lots and lots of yarn.

This is where you come in! I need yarn. So I’m asking if you are a crafter, to clean out your stash. Ask your friends and relatives if they want to clean out their yarn closets. If you already watch Freecycle in your area, keep your eye out for yarn and snag it if it comes available.

New yarn is best for donating to hospital situations and worsted weight works best for the kinds of project I do. But if you have older yarn or different weights, I’ll take those as well and make it work. I got an excellent windfall last year from Freecycle via Danielle of baby weight yarn and that’s what at least half of the hospital hats were made from.

My goal is to continue to turn out hats, scarves, shawls and toys for disadvantaged folks. If I can use up some yarn that needs a home, even better! Email me if you have yarn or other thoughts and ideas.

Addendum: I should have given a shout out to my yarn store of choice: Knit Unto Others in Arkadelphia, AR. Stephen’s mom spends most of her days there with the owner, Claire. The shop is fantastic! Full of lovely yarn and lovelier people and as the name claims, they are all about keeping people warm and snugly.

Growing up Crafty

Misty — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:23:14 +0000

There are lots of things I love about Eli and Liza. They are kind and funny and smart and, best of all, interested in making things.

It’s a bit late in the season, but both of the kids wanted a scarf to wear. So yesterday Liza and I purchased yarn (she picked out both hers and Eli’s) to make scarves. Liza got right to work on hers…

Liza spent about 45 minutes yesterday afternoon “crocheting” her yarn. She kept asking me how to do it and so I showed her a chain stitch and how to do it with her fingers. I told her that it would be a lot easier for her when she got a bit older. She was happy with what she could do.

After she went to bed last night, I made her a scarf and had enough yarn left over to make a tiny hat. She proudly wore them to take Dad to the airport at 5:30 this morning.

Eli was less enthusiastic about his. I think the teen years are going to be made of eye rolls, long suffering sighs, and homemade robots.

Octopus Cake

Misty — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 02:31:40 +0000

Several folks have asked me today about Eli’s birthday cake from the photo in the previous post.

I made the cake Thursday afternoon from our favorite chocolate cake recipe.

Then my mom and I decorated it Friday morning. It is a retired Williams-Sonoma cake pan that I bought on a whim when they were closing it out for $7 at our local Williams-Sonoma store.

Eli has loved it from the moment I bought it and we often have octopus shaped cake at our house, although this is the first time I’ve taken the time to decorate it. Armed with photos from the internet, my mom and I iced it and stuck candy to his arms to be the tentacle suction cups. The octopus is purple because that is Eli’s favorite color. I found the fish candies at a party store and that was the icing on the cake, so to speak. Eli brought me his toy Wii-mote to add to the cake just before the kids arrived because as he said in his best “Duh, Mom” voice, “It’s a Wii party.”

It’s pretty homemade looking but the boys gobbled it up and my mom and I had a lot of fun decorating it. I have fond memories of my mom decorating my cakes from childhood and I’m glad that I finally did the same for Eli. Liza has already declared that she needs a fish cake for her birthday in May.

Photo Shoot

Misty — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 02:53:43 +0000

I’m a bit obsessed right now with keeping my ravelry.com page updated with photos of the work I’ve done. This is my Granny Square Shrug I re-finished this weekend. (I finished it the first time over Thanksgiving but it was WAY too big.) So I had to take it apart and make it a bit smaller and then sew the parts back together. While Stephen was taking my photo this morning before church, Liza had to get in on the action.

Shrug pattern by Kirsty.

Attack of the Brain Slugs

Misty — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 15:36:59 +0000

When I asked for Eli to pose for this photo, I asked him to look sad. He replied that he wanted to be happy. We got kinda bogged down in the discussion after that when I was explaining to him that when the brain slug is on your head you are most definitely not happy.

Brain Slug pattern by Alicia Ramirez.

50 hats: Done!

Misty — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:18:41 +0000

And here are a few of my favorites:

Hello! Kitty!

Misty — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:56:39 +0000

As you may have noticed, we’re a wee bit obsessed with the white kitten overlord around here. As proved by my constructing an idol this past week:

Many thanks to K & J Dolls for the pattern and to Glass Eyes Online for the official Hello Kitty! eyes and noses.

School Supplies

Misty — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:45:02 +0000

The day before the day before school starts. Eli starts First Grade tomorrow and he declared that Stephen would walk him in, but only that first day.

This past week I bought what felt like mountains of school supplies. First, I bought some for Eli. And then I made a second trip to buy for a local elementary school where 95% of the children get free or reduced price lunch. 475 kids out of the 500 that attend there don’t have the means to buy paper and pencils to take to school to learn.

I have been over and over this in my head this week in relation to Eli. How would I feel if I couldn’t buy him the things he needed to comfortably get an education? What would it mean to me to not be able to afford shoes for him to run and play in? How devastated and ashamed would I be to not have the money for my son to eat lunch while he was at school? And how that daily grind would eventually make me not care very much if he received a good education while he was there.

I’ve loved school supply season since before I started attending school. I love office supplies and have since I was about three — at least that’s my earliest memory of loving paper.

Paper takes me to my happy place. For me, it is the basis of creativity. Starting with a blank page and making something beautiful. Or making something not beautiful. It doesn’t matter because the process of putting pencil or brush or scissors to paper is the magical part.

Now think of the 475 kids that don’t have the means to do that. And in some cases have never even had the experience of a beautiful white blank piece of paper and a brand new pencil.

Every time I’ve thought of it this week, I’ve nearly cried.

So before you go out to buy school supplies this fall, find out where you can drop off a few items for a school in your area that needs help. Or ask your child’s teacher if there is a boy or girl in the class that needs a few things to help him/her get started. A package of paper or a few pencils don’t seem like much, but to one child you just might be opening a magical door.

Photos for a Rainy Monday

Misty — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:39:17 +0000

Here’s Liza eating her birthday cake at the giant locals kid birthday party we had a few weekends ago.

Here’s Eli pretending to be a robot in the box of one of Liza’s birthday presents. A pirate, my little pony robot.

And lastly, here are the two monsters I finished last night. They are going to my nephews when they visit in a couple of weeks.