Cucumbers Augustus @ Group RecipesSo! I dyed my hair with Creative Image Adore hair dye in Forest Green and, later, Purple Rage. Here are my experiences:
first time:
second time:
I just dyed the purple over the brown, but there were some bleached streaks left over from ages ago. (You can see those in the first-time picture, as well as tons of other pics of me here.) It turned a lovely pinkish bright raspberry purple on the bleached bits and gave the rest of my hair a really pretty almost auburn-y shine.
The green is much darker this time, probably because I rinsed it in achingly-cold water! I'm so impressed with this brand of dye. I'd never heard of it before but it's given me fantastic results.
My thoughts on it after using another color and a second time:
- I wish the bottles were designed differently. It's messy. They've got a sort of push-top design, like this: http://i1.ebayimg.com/05/i/001/2d/fc/6687_1_sbl.JPG And so the dye gets all over the bottle.
- The green is fairly thin and liquidy. The purple is thick, like hair gel. They seem to soak into the hair at about the same rate, though.
- The color pictured on the bottle is definitely not the color you will get. Putting the dye on a piece of plain white paper, though, and blotting it a little, will give you a nearly-exact swatch (over bleached hair, at least).
- Something I forgot from last time is that my hair feels absolutely amazing. I can't stop touching it.
I'm going to stick with this brand to try and get more pictures of its color range out there. I'm also going to keep track of how the purple fades, and see if it'll last as long as the green did. The green lasted 8 weeks and was still a pretty light lime by the time I dyed over it. (If not for St. Patrick's Day I probably wouldn't have bothered redyeing...but, I also wanted to add the purple, too.)
Clichés suck. They’re overused, hence the reason they are clichés. They are stock phrases with generic meanings and connotations. Occasionally bits of odd or outdated terms pop up in the stew. If they’re so overused, why are they still around? Because they’re useful. A few words can sum up an otherwise-lengthy situation into a handy ball of well-defined goodness. These phrases are overused because they work.
“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish,” Madame Example mutters to herself, yet there is not a single salmon or sardine in sight. Entirely unrelated to any sort of cookery (usually), Madame Example is just in a pretty frustrating or awkward situation. Maybe ninjas are attacking, or she just dropped her favorite china, but these have nothing to do with cauldrons of seafood. Prior to this paper, I had no idea, but after searching the internet, I found that it probably came from the practice of throwing live fish into boiling water. Supposedly after the fish had been boiled enough, they made a rather messy sort of stew. This is just one theory, and it may not be correct, but there are plenty of other phrases that have entered our language through literal actions turned figurative that it makes a good example. More importantly, it gives some spice to the otherwise-limited options of describing the happenings. In a way similar to the large variety of swears in the world, there are thousands of overused idioms available to talk about almost any sort of situation or thing. It’s just more interesting that way.
While on the subject of interesting things, the ninjas have accidentally stepped on the broken crockery at Madame Example’s house. The head ninja quietly steps up to the Madame, starting to explain in very vague and uncertain terms that he may, perhaps, need some form of medical assistance, possibly in the form of an adhesive bandage strip or some other sort of pre-prepared first-aid supplies. “Stop beating around the bush,” Madame Example snaps, “I haven’t got all day!” Unless the Madame is a horticulturist, there are no bushes in the house, and the poor ninja just wants a band-aid for his foot—no beating for him. This common phrase is derived from ye olde practise of hitting at bushes to make the birds fly up in order to catch and eat them. By beating around the bushes, instead of directly on them, there was a lot of work without much purpose. It’s not a far leap to see the figurative meaning’s evolution to simply “avoiding the point.” This phrase adds to our repertoire so that we don’t have to say “stop telling me things that are not the thing you mean to tell me!” and such, or even just “just say it” all the time.
These terms are just fine, but the real magic happens when you’re so familiar with them that they can be changed and still understood. “There’s a silver lining to this fine kettle of fish,” Example exclaims as she finds a brick of gold underneath the shards of her tea set. After all, a silver lining is the good side of a bad thing, and the kettle of fish is still an awkward situation. They’re easily combined into one new phrase that succinctly tells us what the Madame thinks of the new discovery. The established meanings of the phrases we learn in childhood allow us to construct new forms of idioms in adulthood, which thereby expand our range of colorful language to new lengths. Apart from giving us more ways to describe things, mixing metaphors can result in such amusing phrases as “the icing on the kettle of fish” or “birds of a feather cry wolf.” It’s funny because two logical happenings combine to make one that’s totally absurd in a literal sense, yet because of their separate meanings, they still make sense metaphorically.
Idioms can be poetic, simple, odd, or merely quirks of everyday language, but they give variety and allow more freedom of expression than merely literal phrases could provide. They can be a little overused, but there’s nothing wrong with airing them out every once in a while. They help to make the English language fun and fresh every day.
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Sources:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ket1.htm
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW191/page2.html
This is an essay I wrote for a class that got rejected for being too informal. I'm still fond of it, so I thought I'd put it on the internet. Please don't use this essay as your own work, ever, and link back to the permalink page if you choose to quote or otherwise use it.
I do all my drawings on plain paper first (sometimes lined notebook paper for rough sketches, usually normal white printer paper for nice sketches), in pencil. Sometimes I ink them with pens (especially if I want to color it in). Then I color if I'm going to do that. The khaki-colored lolita skirts to the left were sketched, inked, and colored, but I never bothered to clean them up more. (I actually never even finished the one I got started... ;_; )
Afterwards I scan it into my computer and use Paint.NET's line tool to trace over all the lines. I usually use a width of 2 or 3 pixels for outside lines and get finer widths as the details get smaller. Since I can't really go smaller than one pixel wide I usually try to figure out how many levels of detail I want and then use that number for the first width line.
The important thing is to use a layer above the sketch to trace (I like to trace different levels of details on different layers so then I can adjust and change my design more easily) so then when it comes time to color you can just turn off the sketch and add another layer under your lines for your color. Again, I like to have multiple layers so that I can adjust single colors as needed. It especially helps if some colors specifically go over others-- like in my
It's kind of long and a little bit complicated, but it's really not too bad. Once it's all colored I save it as a .pdn file to preserve the layers, then a .png to show it off to the internet! :)
The best part is that once it's done I can modify it thanks to the multiple layers if I change my mind or decide it needs something else added. You can see the changes made to my Pirate Hello Kitty design as it got improved through suggestions by forumgoers on Cosplay.com.
It turned out bigger than expected, despite getting gauge. Well, more like wider. It looks cool on though! I didn’t block it because the yarn is synthetic, or else it might have lost that funky rolly gathery look. But that’s kind of attractive in its own special way. It's made from this pattern (and yes, I am making those armwarmers too, but they're not done) and it looks much better on a real person than on my foam head. The only really truly annoying thing about the hat is that it looks AWFUL with flash photography. I guess it's just because of the chenille yarn, but it makes it look drab and blah and icky. The texture only really shows up in the non-flash photos.
The armwarmers (see above pattern link) are in-progress, about 60-70% through. One is completely done and I'm quite happy with it. The other is not quite halfway. It's getting worked on pretty rapidly, though, thanks to Netflix and its awesome selection of movies! I am in love with the instant-viewing ones. They're great quality with no waiting or even leaving my house.
Other in-progress projects include a simple green scarf, a cowl (see link for pictures of one; mine will look different though) to use up the rest of the rainbow yarn, and once my armwarmers are done, a set of little wings in the rest of the purple chenille yarn. I'm also going to use my leftover copper wire from the Elgala shoulderpads for the wings. ^_^
I have a few more things I'm likely to do -- my roommate Jello will be getting a hat (different from my beret) and leg o' mutton armwarmers, and I'm going to probably knit some Christmas presents this year. Then there are things I'd only LIKE to do, like corsets and more armwarmers and beautiful lacy socks...but they might get done anyways. I'm also toying with the idea of making myself some legwarmers like Ayumi Hamasaki wore in her Ladies Night video. There are great pictures of that costume here. I love the clean lines --and they're over-the-knee, which adds an extra bit of awesome elegance. I don't know what kind of yarn I'd knit them out of though. Maybe something pink!
Yay knitting. <3
Been cooking a fair bit recently.
I tried the Tuna Croquettes recipe from Alton Brown:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/tuna-croquette-recipe/index.html
I omitted the green onions since I didn't have any, and I used two three-ounce cans of tuna instead of a pouch. I also made my own bread crumbs from leftover dinner rolls since I had them on hand. They turned out fabulous, although some pieces had too much mustard! >_< I'd cut it back to one and a half teaspoons and make sure to mix it thoroughly.
I also made blondies:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/11/blondies-for-a-blondie/
I added one cup each of semisweet chocolate chips and walnut pieces. I baked them for 20 minutes and they are DIVINE, if a bit crumbly. Something is missing, though -- I'm thinking maybe I'd add a half-cup or so of butterscotch chips next time? They're sweet already so I'm hesitant to add white chocolate. It seems wonderfully adaptable though, so I'm going to play around with more add-ins later.
And finally, couscous!
http://www.smartspot.com/about/foods/other/near-east
I use plain couscous and cook it with chicken broth to make a simple savory starch. Right now I've got some with herbs that's cooking as I type; I'll post again if that turns out nice!
I used tuna croquettes, couscous, and cauliflower to make myself a cute bento!
It's beach-themed. <3 Yay! You can click the pictures to go to my Flickr to see more about the bento itself.
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