variations on a theme: mittens

mittens are warm, whimsical, and wonderful. but i think the traditional mitten pattern could use alittle updating.

there are now fingerless gloves with mitten caps, like this, but usually the thumb is enclosed. what about an optional thumb cap, an opening just over the pad of your thumb with overlapping edges? it would be pretty easy to make it so you could just slip the tip of your thumb out of the opening. (no phallic references, please.) i just thought of it the other day, when i had to take off my whole gloves just to operate the clickpad on my iPod. iPods and cellphones would be much easier to operate in the cold if you had mittens like that…

also: traditionally, bikers wear fingerless gloves, which in my opinion are just about as cold as bare hands when you’ve got the added windchill of pedal-coasting. mittens, however, are out of the question, as it’s nearly impossible to hold onto the handlebars *and* operate the brakes  when you’re wearing them. but mittens that had a split in between the middle finger and ring finger would be perfect! they’d look awfully odd, like you had three chunky fingers, but your fingers could huddle together for warmth, happily enclosed.

and finally (because this post would be incomplete without it) a link to the youtube clip of the Jason Webley-Professor Science-CFU-Mod 90 collaboration, ‘The Mitten Opera.’

 

this is a test

update: molly found a theme that does it! yay molly! but now methinks we really need a new header, especially as we like to this we’re eco-friendly travel people…

***

i am figuring out how to do an author byline, because it’s getting really annoying not knowing who’s written what unless each post is signed in the post. but i think i’ve figured it out!

***

didn’t work. molly, let’s change our theme. i’ve been doing research, and apparently some themes put the author byline at the top on the post and others don’t. this one doesn’t – i’m going to go looking for one that does!

-tara (hopefully soon i won’t have to sign within the post!)

 

STILL Pumpkin Season!

I just made my first pumpkin pie ever! It is also my first real pie of any kind. I dabbled in cheesecakes over the summer, but that doesn’t count – it’s called cheeseCAKE. (See picture below… what, aren’t your pies oval-shaped?)

The recipe I used for the pie can be found here; it’s quite simple and gives both US & UK heating instructions (though god knows about volume/liquid measurements). I used an actual pumpkin which was originally bought for jack-o-lantern purposes. Considering that I have about half a pumpkin leftover now (it was kind of an epic-size pumpkin; jack-o-lanterning it was just intimidating) later this week I plan to be trying pumpkin cheesecake and pumpkin soup, too. Maybe I’ll even make Molly’s pumpkin biscuits!

Baking for me tends to be a subjective activity, involving much tweaking of amounts and variations on a basic theme (terms like ‘20 minutes,’ for example, or ‘butter’ are frequently taken as suggestions).

I am also a space cadet. I don’t have a timer here, and remembering to check a clock isn’t my strong suit. Even when I DO have a timer, I frequently forget to turn it on. But I ALWAYS listen to music while baking, from getting out the ingredients to preheating to mixing to baking to cleaning up. It’s an intrinsic part of my process, the soundtrack. So today I had this great idea: making playlists specifically tailored to recipes. 

Certain songs could signal when it’s time to check for done-ness, and there would be really high-energy tunes at the end for dishwashing. Songs with a slow build for pulling out ingredients, and steady beats for minimal distraction while measuring and mixing. Alternatively, you could time a recipe to an already existing mix, just note around which songs landmark baking actions occur. A playlist for a pie would have an hour’s worth of ‘baking-time’ music, while a playlist for cookies would have groups of songs in ‘batches!’

-Tara

 

Pumpkin season!

I promised recipes on this blog, so here’s a recipe!  The last few days I’ve had a lot of turbulent energy after work that I needed to channel into something.  So I made a few pumpkin pies, and last night I made pumpkin biscuits.  I had never made pie or biscuits before, but they both came out quite nice.  My only regret with the biscuits is I made them a little too thin.  While they have a good biscuity texture, they’re also rather moist, which is nice.

-Molly

Pumpkin Biscuits!

 

Palin Pains 2: Debate Fun

I found this via Boing Boing. I think it’s brilliant.

Originally by Aden Renkai.

-Molly

 

Banksy!

Salute to Tesco, a 10 min walk from my dad’s house…

-Tara

 

Photoshop Follies

Now that “photoshopping” has become a commonly used term in pop culture vocabulary, even most non-digital artists can spot and laugh at a bad Photoshop job these days. But when the government is behind such an image, it becomes even more amusing and disturbing.

Evidently the Iranian government needs to hire some better photoshoppers… or better yet, STOP FIRING MISSILES. This image was printed on the front page of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and many others before someone noticed there was a missile too many, and an identical cloud of smoke.

Oh, and did you think that the satellite photos on Google maps were surely sacred? Apparently not, as evidenced by this secret alien landing site in Holland.

It seems like everyone is manipulating reality these days, from shady foreign governments, to bitter relatives removing undesired family members from vacation photos.

Manipulating photographs has been going on long before the advent of Photoshop, but the degree to which people are digitally altered today is unsettling. Sure, as a photoshop artist, it’s very easy for me to change the color of your shirt, remove a few zits, smooth out those wrinkles, trim a few pounds… but should I? Where to draw the line between a few touch ups and a completely fabricated makeover? I would hope that most women understand the degree to which celebrities and supermodels are digitally beautified these days, but I know that’s not the case.

I guess the bottom line is: don’t trust any image you see, and either launch the proper amount of nuclear weapons or just don’t bother launching any at all.

For more about Photoshop topics, see:

the Dove “Evolution” ad, and it’s many parodies

Photoshop Disasters - blog about poorly done and often amusing photoshop jobs

You Suck at Photoshop - very entertaining serialized fictional video blog, masquerading as actually useful Photoshop tutorials

-Molly