Butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, onion, potato, cauliflower cut into cubes; drenched with balsamic vinegar and olive oil with white pepper, rosemary, and cumin; topped with breadcrumbs. Yum!

But I did it. Only place to go from here is up. Maybe I'll take a class... Thanks to J for allowing his penis to be posted to teh interwebs.

I reverse engineered a pattern for this hat, which looked really good on a friend. I've got it cut out in black velvet but will leave out the dangly bits as I think they look silly. Hat itself probably tomorrow.

Ourobouros is still in the works but I had a busy couple of days. Plus I am very distractable!

Bread! Plain and basic and yummy. It did not rise normally and consequently is somewhat flat on top. Has a lovely chewy consistency though.

Made yesterday and a quarter gone already.

Tunnpannkaka! I have made Swedish pancakes for the first time in many many months. There are six people in my apartment now and we each had two. Yum!

-Rachel

Now for something completely different. I made a little audio clip of a
couple tracks of singing loops... I got the name from a person on an IRC
channel I hang out on, but for a looping clip it seemed appropriate. I
used Apple's Garageband program which I'd never used before, and
hopefully won't have to use again. Did you know there is no way to EDIT
THE WAVEFORM in a track? How can you have an audio processing program
and not be able to edit waveforms? Geez.

Anyway it is very sloppy and with lots of background noise that I
couldn't filter out. My mike sucks. The volume is too low. But it was
a lot of fun anyway, and isn't that the whole point?

I cast two more today. Instead of resin, I tried an opaque urethane plastic. I used a pin to muddle the tip of the mold and the second time was successful in getting no bubble. I added dye to the urethanes too, and ended up with a vaguely white person flesh tone. It needs more pink but I only bought yellow and violet so this was the best I could do.
The second horn I also cut down and carved out to the shape of the nose. Howcer I was foiled in my attempts to attach it as I seem to have misplaced my spirit gum and the other adhesives I have were all unsuitable in one way or another. I did try flour and water as that always sticks to my hands... But it did not stick to the plastic. Gonna buy some spirit gum tomorrow.

The resin one is not really sticky any more but still smells bad. I did some research online and saw that platinum cure silicone is recommended for resin as the tin cure, which is cheaper, doesn't react as well. The platimnum cure silicones are of course a lot more expensive. A mold release and higher heat are suggested as improving the results for tin cure silicones so I will try those, why not?

The first test cast of the nose horn mold is not an unmitigated success. I used a two part casting resin with some colorant, but I didn't manage to measure the parts correctly and the resin came out sticky instead of smooth :( There is also an air bubble on the tip of the horn because I didn't pour it well enough. So this one will not be placed on the nose, but I'll try again tomorrow.

Mold in the background, horn in the front ("people gettin hostile, wanna killll someone!")

This Thing will take 8-12 hours of setting time before it can be properly observed, so I can only explain it now. It is a test mold for the Ourobouros snake parts, as the materials I got for that are unfamiliar to me and my moldmaking skills are out of date. The item inside the mold is a little horn (to be worn on the nose). I'll cast it in a variety of materials tomorrow to see how they work without using up too much material. The little cup in front, full of blue, is the silicone mold, in a cup I cut down from a vitamin bottle. The paper cup behind is what I mixed the silicone in, and you can also see the scale I used (it's a two part silicone by weight) and the containers of the two parts.

My guess at the volume needed turned out very close I am pleased to say, so I had minimal waste. It was 57 grams of A so I added 5+ grams of B. My scale doesn't show fractions of grams so I could not be more precise; we'll see how it turns out tomorrow.

I didn't think to take a picture of the clay horn before I covered it up in silicone. Tomorrow!

I have had this costume partly done since Halloween, when I got sick and didn't go out in it :(. Now I have finished it, complete with star! Thanks Jason for modelling.