French Women Make me Nervous

This is both true and the new title to my novel which, until recently, was titled "Cloudy With a Silver Lining".

Yes, I know it's a terrible title which is why my new title is "Silver (or French Women Make me Nervous). I got the idea from this website, which is a Title Generator.

Wonderful things, title generators. You can get great titles at the click of a button rather than wracking your brain and picking something LAME (Yes D.M, the title of your novel is lame and unoriginal...but that rant is for another time. Bashing people on a blog seems cowardly though I secretly actually wrote out a huge rant against her and then deleted it because I felt mean even though she is- okay, enough. I can rise above petty reviews that aren't really reviews at all.)

Oh yikes, now that the rant is gone, this blog post is really short...Pressing forwards!

Here's the title generator.

http://www.guywiththecoat.com/titlegenerator.html

This particular title generator can be pretty sassy at times. Not only was a sub-title "French women make me nervous" but there was one called "The people Adolf Hitler Meets in Heaven". And there's more than one type of title generator out there. There's the awesome kind like the one I used that gives you pretentiously amusing titles, there's the kind that generates titles from words you feed into it (I'm not sure how it works but it's pretty cool, though it makes silly titles sometimes) and then there's the kind that feeds you Harlequin romance novel titles like "The Widow's Silhouette" or "The Silken Rose" and "The Erect Menagerie".

I don't know where that last one came from but I swear it was on the list.

The one I used was not necessarily the most original, given that it copy/pasted bits and piece of classic titles and famous works but it was definitely the most amusing. Who wouldn't want to read a novel titled "French Women Make me Nervous"?

Okay, the french woman isn't the main plot in my novel and heck, they're not even in France but she is french! And a redhead...a redheaded frenchwoman. A fiery redheaded french woman!

Sacre bleu!

(You can read my whole rant here in case you were interested:  http://www.thoughts.com/fungiportal/rant-that-youre-only-reading-because-you-read-my-google-blog

Like A Boss

You know those people who always have a sense of false modestly and it makes you so angry because you're all "but fuck, you're really really really really good at this!"

And the conversation goes as such: (Person A is the false-modesty asshole and Person B is the complimenter)

Person A: haha, nahh. I'm okay (fishes for a compliment)

Person B: Are you kidding? This is amazing!

Person A: Nah, it's okay (still fishing for compliments).

Person B: What are you talking about? It's gorgeous!

Person A: Really? (adopts false expression of surprise)

Person B: Yeah, really. It's great! You could sell these you know...

Person A: Haha, nahh...

And so it continues..

As you may or may not have noticed, I am not one of these people. If I suddenly come to the conclusion that I am good at something, I will say this:

*BLEEP* YES. LIKE A BOSS. I AM AWESOME.

I have issues with modesty sometimes. Though in other situations I am incredibly humble. Anyways, the point  of this discussion about modesty is to show you two projects that I ridiculously proud of. Well, three. Although you can't really see one of them because it did not photograph well. 

First Up:

My hippie bag. That is, HIPPIE and not HIPSTER. There is a difference. Hippie is all flowy skirts and laid back attitude and Hipster is drinking bad beer, dressing like a slob and quoting dead american poets. 

I am crazy proud of this bag. Not only is it big enough to hold school books and other crap, it is really really sturdy. The only thing I would have changed is the length of the strap (speaking of which, it's connected to my bag via these really cool round plastic beads that I found at Chaton Beads. They match the bag quite nicely). 

Anyways, I found this pattern in "Stitch n Bitch: The Happy Hooker". I'm sure you can find this book at your library or you can buy it. I think it's around $20.00 CDN...But yes, since this pattern is from a book and not an online tutorial/other user I don't think I should post the pattern, especially given that it was three pages long...

But here's the gist of this bag:

1. Find a pattern for squares that you like (make sure they don't stretch too much)

2. Make 12 of them.

3. Crochet them together

4. Crochet a couple rounds around the rectangle you've just made. Turn it inside out, sew the bottom together and turn it right side out. 

5. Make a strap (any width) started from a solid ring or from the side of the bag, make it as long as you want and attach it to the other side.

Et voila! A useful, awesome bag that'll make your friends ask you for one too. Then you can say "Sure! But it may take a while (even though you made yours in like, 3 days...)

Oh, and make sure you use a sturdy, non-stretchy yarn like cotton. Nothing is worse than making a large bag out of acrylic. And if possible, buy a strap/ribbon/cord for the strap of your bag as the cotton strap stretches a lot, or just make a short strap. And if you do crochet your own strap, double the yarn to make it thicker and sturdier.

So now that you've seen my boss bag, here is something pretty cool too:

This a style of crochet known as "Turkish Crochet". This is not a place where I will be posting a tutorial but if you go on Ravelry and type in "Turkish Crochet" you will undoubtedly find the same tutorial as I did. I made these bracelets for a couple friends of mine for their birthdays (these bracelets make wonderful gifts as you can use any beads your want really-I used seashells, go figure- and they can be as chunky or as delicate as you want. 

So now that you've seen what I am good at, here is the piece de resistance: 

Oh yes. 

These are mini origami crane and water bomb drop earrings. Each earring comes personalized with your choice of figure (crane, water bomb, flower, owl etc...), paper (patterned, plain color...) and matching crystal drops (I have no red crystals so I use white instead, though I will be investing in red crystals as soon as possible!). Each pair is $10 if you would like to order and each is customized according to your specifications and coated in FIMO glaze to ensure stability and protection (and shiny-ness). The figures are about 2 cm in height and width. 

So there you have it. I am feeling incredibly pleased with what I have accomplished over the last two days (origami figures, turkish crochet bracelets--the bag was made a couple months ago--). 

God I'm good sometimes ^_^

Oh, and I forgot about this hat that I made the other day (in case you couldn't tell, I have quite a bit of free time because IT'S SUMMER TIME BIIIITCH!! Ah, the perks of being in CEGEP. You start the same time as high school students but finish a month earlier :)

Yup, that's me. I have huge eyes sometimes. Mostly when people point cameras at me...
But anyways, this hat is made of a mixture of 20% Alpaca/80% Acrylic and doubled with a pink/grey/white/black variegated mohair that is 30% Mohair/70% Other wool. It's really REALLY comfy. And warm. And it has braided straps on the sides. And a big, fat, giant POM POM. This is the first time a pompom has looked good so I'm really excited :)