[Ssthisto]

skigod377 wrote:

Yeah! Stupid bunny. I felt sorry for the snake, too… though im sure the rabbit was just protecting its young. If that bunny was wrapped up in a snakes grip, im sure you would feel different. Snakes kill rabbits all the time.

Honestly? No, I’d still be worried about the snake!

I’m definitely a reptile person, not a mammal one.

[Ssthisto]

Can I be the first person to say I feel very sorry for the snake?

It wasn’t in ‘feed mode’ to begin with – the strikes it was making were defensive strikes to get that blasted furry beast away from it – and being chased and bitten and SHAKEN by the rabbit can’t have been pleasant at all.

Horrible little furry thing.

[Ssthisto]

Arlla wrote:

dragonessjade wrote:

lol…maybe you should leave one side like the seashell and the other side like the fish.

I actually considered that, too! ^_^ lol

Alright, here it is…I painted this last night, so there’s obviously still a lot that needs to be done, but there’s also quite a bit of what is done that’s going to be altered in the end I thing…

That is so PRETTY. I thought the pastelly seashell was nice, but this side is something I’d want to have sat next to my bed or on my computer desk where I can see it all the time.

[Ssthisto]

Wasps.
A wasp in a room makes me freeze if it’s far and I can’t make myself stay still if it’s near me.

Parasites that attach and CLING.
Even the WORD “leech” makes me cringe. So do ticks.

Being touched by strangers in crowds.
And it’s not just them-touching-me that is what I’m afraid of – it’s whether THIS is going to be one of those times when I lash out at someone for doing it. I don’t WANT to strike someone that doesn’t know that brushing against me when I’m already upset by being crowded is a sensory overload I can’t deal with; I tense up and tighten down, which makes me more stressed about being in the crowd…

I don’t get out much, and almost never if I’m not with at least one ‘safe’ person who can keep me from overstressing.

Certain textures can cause phobia-like reactions; I had a major problem before Christmas with the “Sizzle-Pak” brand crinkled packing paper shreds. Something about how it felt made my skin crawl worse than sticking my hand in a bag of mealworms.

Weirdly, I’m terrified of heights… but not of falling. I did a ropes course while on holiday. Climbing up the ladders was excruciating and I didn’t think I could do it – I think it was worse than actually walking across the beams because it was making me higher off the ground. Walking across the beams – and wires – was panicky. My brain was doing a litany of “this is too high, the ground is too far, your feet aren’t supposed to be on the ground when you’re up this high, you’re too high up, what are you doing climbing higher” even as I was telling myself “It’s a ropes course. You know the ropes can handle thousands of pounds of weight, you did the lifting tackle website with their safe load weights. The ladders aren’t going to kill you. You’re better than this.”

But once they got me up onto a one-foot-square platform on top of a very wobbly telephone pole and said “Jump for the trapeze” … I had NO trouble doing that. Never mind that I hadn’t experienced “My full weight hitting the end of the ropes to prove they can take it” or anything (lowering me to the ground from the beams was a slow thing where my weight gradually went onto the rope) – I just JUMPED as though I had wings. No fear at all, even knowing that if the rope broke I’d fall thirty feet.

I was always a bit like that doing the high dive at the YMCA – climbing up to the board was hard. Jumping off – that moment of flight – was easy.

[Ssthisto]

I can certainly empathise.

The bank has raised our mortgage payments three times in the last six months, from £720 in June 06 to closer to £780 now… supposedly to be in line with the Bank of England rate. Yeah, groceries and bus passes also go up, too – my bus pass is now £10 more expensive per month than it was last year.

However, I only get a pay review once a year, and at my last pay review I was awarded £0.50 per hour more – which, after tax, works out to having about £20 a month more.

So there’s about £50 per month that my cost of living has increased but my means has not.

We aren’t hurting for money… yet. Give us another few months.

[Ssthisto]

ddvm wrote:

guess no one told him bunnies are vegetarians since he ate the meat as well as the noodles.

You know, if you get right down to it, I don’t think ANY ‘vegetarian’ animal has read the dictionary definition of ‘vegetarian’.

I’ve known horses that loved bacon sandwiches, rabbits and parrots that eat chicken… I don’t think ANY animal will turn down meat if they can get it, particularly not super-tasty people-food meat.

That said, my cat doesn’t know that the peas out of my partner’s chicken fried rice aren’t meat.

[Ssthisto]

skigod377 wrote:

Mmmmmm…this sweet potatoe pie is in the oven right now…the filling tastes gooooooddddd!!

Lucky you … and surprise of surprises, the Christmas present my mom sent me from the states included four tins of Pumpkin Pie Filling mix… so I might just get to have pumpkin pie sooner than I thought!

[Ssthisto]

Greater Basilisk wrote:

Of course the book is always better than the movie

I’d have to disagree… there are a couple of notable cases I can think of where the movie was better.

The Green Mile (film) has a better ending than the book – less depressing. And knowing how sad the ending of the film is… that’s saying something.

I personally think Eragon (the film) is better than the book… because I’m STILL trying to drag myself through the book. Yes, the film missed out a lot. Darn good thing, too.

Forrest Gump (film) was better than the book; that said, I wish they hadn’t misquoted the “box of chocolates” line. The original quote was:

Quote:

Life ain’t a box of chocolates.

Gump’s momma was a pessimist.

The dramatic timing in Harry Potter 1 and 2 (films) was better than in the books – as though she’d gone back and thought “yes, this scene works better if we put it HERE instead” – particularly the scene where Harry defeats Riddle’s spirit in #2.

But on the other hand… I’m not sure I’m looking forward to Wee Free Men.

[Ssthisto]

Pam, those are great links – thanks!

[Ssthisto]

Greater Basilisk wrote:

Saphira? She was just as bad. She has fuzz, fur and feathers, bird wings instead of leathery wings, and her headdress is the lamest possible. Admittedly there’s no rules for how dragons look, but what’s so hard about making her interesting, even if the book cover illustrator couldn’t? And if interestingness isn’t possible, they could at least have made her anatomically correct. Her wings didn’t even attach at the shoulder!

Now, I thought Saphira’s design was the BEST thing about the whole movie….

I like the feathers, down and scales – it made her look semi-avian, and not the typical batwinged scaly reptile. Sort of Windstone-ish, dragons with feathered wings 🙂

As for the shoulders… well, I thought her wingshoulders were definitely under-muscled where they attached to the spine, but I don’t think that wings should always attach directly above or onto the forelegs. The way I draw my dragon species, the wing limbs actually attach along the spine further forward than the forelimbs; designing them a bit further back isn’t that bad.

I didn’t think the movie was that great (It’s Dragonriders of Pern without Thread, Lord of the Rings without Mordor and Star Wars without Yoda) but… a lot more likeable than the book, which I am still trying to plug through. It’s a 250-page book, maximum, that has been inexplicably stretched to 500… not that I have a problem with long books, since I really like Stephen King’s The Stand, the Dark Tower series and It – all much longer than Eragon … but it feels so much like WORK reading Eragon! It’s not added high description, because there’s not all that much good descriptive language. It’s not added ‘content’ since much of what’s being said could have been condensed down into about half the length – two or three towns in the first 250 pages instead of six – for pacing. It’s as though there are hundreds of extra words sneaking in there when I’m not looking.

And while I’m talking about it… I started a novel when I was twelve, worked on it until I was seventeen. Lost most of it when I emigrated from the ‘States, and have just the first draft, five hundred pages of longhand in a box in my loft. It’s not fantastic. I started off with no clear idea of plot and dragged people through random and meaningless towns and situations without thinking of pacing or style. I write decent short stories, but my novel isn’t amazing. I know bad writing when I see it, and since this book’s trying to pass itself off as ‘young adult’… it’s not doing a good job of it, regardless of the author’s age (and he was a minimum of nineteen when he finished. Maybe re-reading it as Stephen King – who is my literary favourite – describes in “On Writing” would have done it some good… formula being “Final Draft = First Draft – 10%”)

I thought the movie was OK – maybe not something I’d go see again, since I’ve seen all the ‘source material’ before – but not dire. The book…. is pretty dire.

[Ssthisto]

Melody wrote:

They are almost all one-piece moulds.

Have you ever posted a photo of any of the moulds? It would be educational to see what they actually look like from the outside (since we know what the insides come out looking like!) – how thick are they? Are they fairly stiff, or are they pretty stretchy? Do they need any kind of support while they’re in use?

Quote:

[=cyan]You are doing this the right way! Finding out what ways to achieve what you envision and then tayloring your sculpture to best fit a realistic way to get there is the trick. So often folks send me a photo of a sculpture that is already finished and ask: “How do I cast this?”. It is much harder to do it backwards like that!

I’d much rather alter my design BEFORE making the emotional investment in building the sculpture (yeah, I get attached to my pieces!) instead of building it and, say, having the mould destroy the original in the process of committing mould suicide because I picked the wrong materials for the job… which is what happened to my last attempt-at-making-a-mould sculpture. (Latex + green clay + allergic sculptor = bad)

I’m also going to actually DRAW what I want to make from as many angles as possible before I try casting anything, just so I know where the possible sticking points or difficult bits will be.

[Ssthisto]

I’m starting to think about trying to make a sculpture or two that can be moulded and cast, and I’ve just got some questions about the way that Windstone moulds are made.

I’d been planning on doing sculpey originals, and either cast-resin or cast plaster/hydrostone finished pieces. I know that the plaster, due to its weight, does limit the shapes that one can make – thin and fragile things, for example, being a bit indicated against. This is sort of making me lean towards resin, on the basis that I could do the whippy tail that’s in my mind’s eye… but then, I really do prefer working with porous materials like clay and plaster, and the smell of resin makes me -really- ill. Can plaster be embedded with, say, a sturdy wire frame that would add strength to any whippy parts? My mental image does NOT require that the whippy bits be able to support any real weight other than their own – the piece’s weight will be supported in other ways.

Also, are the Windstone moulds generally one piece, two-piece or more? I’ve never noticed a seam line on any of the pieces I’ve got, but that could just be because someone is doing a darn good job of cleaning ’em up! If they’re one piece, what sort of mould material is used? I tried doing latex once, and that was about as successful as a chocolate teapot; since then I’ve discovered I have a pretty impressive latex allergy. Is there a flexible, reasonable alternative that’s not going to make the mouldmaker swell up like a balloon?

I’m also considering the possibility that the pieces I have in mind might have to be cast in several parts… particularly to avoid major undercuts if I do, say, wide spread wings. If this is the case, how does one go about sticking together cast plaster?

I am SUCH a nosy beast, and if I could afford the trip to California JUST to have a nosey around the factory, I would love to do so… but that’s an awfully long time on a plane!

[Ssthisto]

I have to admit that, of the two, I prefer the carrot pie – ingredients are easier to get hold of and it’s just so NICE!

Ski, I might have to take you up on that canned pumpkin at some point… it’d be nice if I could make a real pumpkin pie for a change!

[Ssthisto]

Greater Basilisk wrote:

And why should there be no palomino unicorns? Just because them medieval naturalists didn’t know what the palomino color was because America wasn’t discovered yet… doesn’t mean there were no palomino unicorns! 😉

Palomino isn’t an American thing, precisely…. all horses in the New World originated from horses that were brought over from the Old World (Eurasia) – by the Spanish, though there’s the possibility that horses COULD have been brought over the Bering land strait too…

Granted, at least Arabian horse people seem to call genetic palomino “Chestnut” and deny the existence of the creme gene in Arabs…

But a golden palomino-coloured unicorn is certainly within the realms of plausibility… just as much as a blue-eyed white animal (which, incidentally, would be a double dose of the creme gene, Cremello – which you get if you cross two palominos together!)

[Ssthisto]

The problem with using real pumpkin is that a lot of the pumpkins one gets around here (at least, from supermarkets…) are not eating pumpkins – they’re pretty watery and tasteless. They’ve mostly been grown for size.

And because I mentioned it, here’s my mock-pumpkin pie recipes:

Mock-Pumpkin pie #1: Sweet Potato Pie

About a pound of peeled, sliced sweet potato
1/2 cup of softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 unbaked pie crust

DIRECTIONS
Boil sweet potato chunks until they are soft – poke them with a fork a few times to see if they’re done.

Mash the sweet potato in a bowl. Add butter, and mix well with a mixer. Stir in the sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth. Pour filling into an unbaked pie crust.

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 55 to 60 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Pie will puff up like a souffle, and then will sink down as it cools.

Mock-Pumpkin “Guess what this pie is” #2

3/4 cup sugar
2 cups chopped carrots
1 whole orange or tangerine
1 cinnamon stick
a couple of cloves
2 eggs
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie shell

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Press the pie crust into the bottom and up the sides of a 9 inch pie plate.
Bake the pie shell for 3 to 5 minutes, just to firm it up, then remove from the oven, and set aside.

Mostly fill a saucepan with water and bring it to the boil. Once boiling, aggressively attack your whole orange with a sharp knife – stab it several times through the skin. Put the whole orange, peel and all, into the boiling water with the cinnamon stick and the cloves, and let boil until the orange is starting to lose its colour – your water should now be yellow-orange with juice and orange oil. Place carrots into the pan and cook until very tender. Poke them with a fork to find out.

Drain water, take out the orange, the cinnamon and the cloves and mash carrots until smooth using a food processor, or potato masher. I suggest the food processor if I’m honest.

In a medium bowl, mix together the carrot puree, sugar and eggs. Mix in the cinnamon and vanilla. Gradually stir in the milk. Pour the mixture into the partially baked pie shell.

Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake for an additional 40 to 45 minutes at the lower temperature, or until firm.

Either pie should be served with whipped cream, never custard or runny cream.

[Author]

Posts