A Very Cthulhu Christmas

I made this tiny Cthulhu for my dad for Christmas, based on the pattern in Creepy Cute Crochet :) As you can see, it turned out perfectly fine, and I make all apologies for every negative thought I have ever had about the patterns. As I said (at length) in a previous post, reading instructions on whether to crochet in both loops rather than in the back loop only is rather important -_- I will at some point post a picture of an earlier attempt at a Cthulhu from the same pattern. I also made another tiny Cthulhu, with slightly different eyes, for a friend for her birthday.

Anyway, just so that you can see that I do actually ~make stuff.

Lazy Mixed Bean Wrap

I honestly have no idea what to call this meal, but I had it for lunch today and it was super tasty! It's also in keeping with my goal of having simpler, more affordable meals. The beans are made from a recipe by That Creepy Guy Over There :)

Serves: 2-3 (depending on how much you eat... it would easily be enough for my two sisters and I. However, the recipe is super easy to double/triple/quadruple/ALL THE FOOD)

Ingredients:

Salsa-type thing:
2 small tomatoes, diced
1/2 onion, finally chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander
Mixed beans:
240g mixed beans (this could be a drained can of mixed beans, or basically any beans you have lying around. The mix I used was chickpeas, white beans and red kidney beans)
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs dried coriander
2 tsp paprika (or more... your call)
1 tbs lemon juice
salt to taste

some salad leaves, roughly chopped of the leaves are large (I used cos lettuce, by virtue of its presence in my fridge)

2-3 wraps (a wrap per person, at the very least)


Optional extras:
Whatever spicy sauce you eat (I used Chipoltle Tabasco, but if you don't eat refined sugar I'd advise something else)
Red onion sprouts
More fresh coriander to garnish (what? I like coriander...)
Guacamole

(image credit: http://www.hurstbeans.com)

Method:

1.) Mix the salsa ingredients together, reserving half of the chopped onion to add to the beans. Set aside.
2.) Drain and rinse your beans if they're canned. Heat oil in pan over medium heat. While the oil is heating up, pulse two thirds of the beans in a food processor with the spices, lemon juice and remaining onion until it forms a coarse paste.
3.) Add the bean paste and whole beans to the pan, and cook (stirring constantly) until the bean paste darkens slightly. A non-stick pan is your friend here. I'd say this takes about 5 minutes, but basically cook it until the onion is cooked and the mixture tries to form a ball as opposed to being a gloopy paste. Season to taste.
4.) Divide lettuce, salsa and bean paste between wraps, and eat immediately.

Alternatively, this goes well with nachos.

Enjoy!

The Frugal Vegan and Other Goals for the Year

In case this has not already become apparent from my general behaviour and throw-away comments, I am a student living away from home. This means that I do all my own cooking, which is in part what allowed me to make the change to become veggie, and eventually vegan. Unfortunately transport has always been a bit of a problem for me, so my shopping habits (and therefore eating habits) aren't always ideal. In addition to this, I often end up spending more money than I should on groceries, because I buy from wherever is closest. I will also admit that I have been relying a bit heavily on pre-made meat analogues, just because it's convenient.

I didn't really think much of it until I had a conversation with a friend who had gone vegetarian for Lent. He mentioned that his grocery bills were much lower than in the past, particularly since he ate legumes rather than meat or meat analogues. He then asked if being vegan worked out cheaper for me than being vegetarian (the logic being that I no longer spend money on milk, cheese and yoghurt)... and I had to admit that I really didn't think so. In fact, I suspect my grocery bills are higher than they were when I was veg.

The reason for this being, of course, that a lot of vegan products available in other countries are only available here at a greatly inflated price, if you can get them at all... A 200g block of vegan mozzarella will set me back around R60, whilst dairy mozzarella costs that much PER KILO. Not to mention the food miles... Fortunately soy milk and meat analogues are less expensive, thanks to my two preferred brands (MA Milk Alternative by Good Hope International Beverages and Fry's, respectively), and both brands manufacture their products locally (yay lower food miles!). But I still feel I can cut costs even further.

After this conversation with my friend, I decided that this year will be the year that I cut way back on highly processed (and expensive) products, particularly non-local ones, and focus on fresh produce, legumes and whole grains instead. Having my veggie sister now living with me, finally having a car and wanting to lose a bit of weight definitely adds to my resolve. And lastly, there's a Korean store, a Chinese store, and an Indian wholesale store (spices and legumes) close to my house, and a farmer's market-type store (Fruit and Veg City, for other South Africans :P) within driving distance. So I really have no excuse.

In the spirit of saving some other people money too, I'm hoping to post some recipes and meal ideas that I have found are both tasty and affordable. If anyone else has anything they'd like to share, let me know :)

Things in Jars

One of the craft ideas I have been bashing around is to crochet miscellaneous things (like small octopi, weird aliens, whatever...) and then put them in jars with mock-scientific labels. As ideas go, it is one. I googled the idea ("amigurumi in jar") to see what's out there... and holy cow, the internet is weird.

Some things are really cute, like this Spider in a Jar from 1400 Amigurumi Patterns:

(Ngaw look at his widdle eyes and legs ^_^ )

Other things are really cool, like this baby alien (and others) from These Loving Hands

and the eyeballs in a jar:

Or just really awesome, like these mushrooms by SquidHead (she also has lots of octopus amigurumi ^_^ this makes me happy)

But what caused me to double-take was this, by Lil' Spider Baby:

Yep. It's a foetus in a jar. Why this disturbed me, whereas the eyeballs or the needle-felted teddy-bear foetuses in one of my earlier posts didn't, I have no idea. Maybe we should ask Freud or my mother ^_^

Gadzooks! A post!! a.k.a Musings on amigurumi basics and why reading instructions is important

A NOTE BEFORE I BEGIN: My posts will henceforth be written offline and then dragged around on a flash drive until I get somewhere with internet. Hence the date on this and hopefully future posts. I have not lost my mind (that I'm aware of), despite what the contradiction between the written date and the posting date may imply. That is all. As you were, gentlemen.

As I'm sitting here writing this (overly delayed) post, I am mentally facepalming so hard my brain might haemmorhage. If you'd care to listen to my misadventure in the form of a melodramatic rant, read on :) If not, skip to the TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read, for those who don't know) at the end ;)

I've been crocheting for around a year now, after learning how to do so from a series of magazines called The Art of Crochet, which I bought whenever I happened to wander into a CNA. I don't wander into CNA's terribly often, so I have the magazines more or less in pairs with a ten to twelve issue gap between each pair ;) Regardless, I learnt how to do the basic crochet stitches, and learnt that most patterns are simply modifications of those stitches. Simple, right? And really, since all I really want to make is amigurumi, I should be fine, right? So this intrepid little crafter promptly bought all the yarn she could lay her grubby hands on, and started making things from a friend's copy of Creepy Cute Crochet.

And they were hideous. Tiny malformed abbherations which looked oddly ribbed and stretched and god knows what else. I went onto the internet (yay for the repository of all knowledge!! \o/) and the all-knowing internet told me that all I really needed to do was turn my crochet work inside-out before stuffing. Ta-da, no more ribs! Yay, mystery solved, shove the tiny abbherations into the corner, my world is good once more.

Or is it? Ever in the back of my mind was the niggling doubt about the tiny abbherations... their tiny bodies all weirdly elongated... in a night-sweat of being haunted by my past failure (what? crocheting is serious business, yo) I looked up some product reviews of Creepy Cute Crochet, and some others complained of the same problem. So it's not just me... I'm not the problem, right? RIGHT??? And in a fit of denial I have not made anything from someone else's pattern since. I made up the pattern for my Bunnies based loosely off what I have seen in other patterns, and a vague understanding of the effects of increasing and decreasing on the shape of an amigurumi. For the most part, I think I did pretty well. But my stitches still didn't look as tight or neat as some others, and the tiny gaps left by decreases bugged me. I finally sucked up my pride today, and happened upon Planet June (who has recently come to Cape Town! Where I live!! How cool?? *dies*) and her lovely tutorials.

MIND. BLOWN.

Because I had learnt to crochet normally, for non-amigurumi purposes, I had been taught to crochet in the back loop only (BLO). Which is dandy when you're doing someting like double crochet (UK treble crochet) back and forth, makes a pretty pattern, world is shiny. But as a method for amigurumi, it sucks quite a lot. Your stitches are immediately longer and more open than they would be if you crocheted under BOTH loops. Which makes sense. Also, it makes your invisible decreases, you know, invisible. *claws at face a little*

Which brings me to the point of my long and melodramatic rant... I may have to rework all my patterns, because the shaping is entirely different depending on how you stitch. I do know that how you do it is a matter of personal style, but I feel that the methods suggested by June are far superior to what I've been doing. Wibble. But at least I have learnt something new, and hopefully my amigurumi would be better for it. I wonder if maybe I should try my hand at Creepy Cute Crochet again, and see if my results are better this time round?

Aside from all that, I have been working on some very enjoyable projects and ideas. Now that I'm on holiday I will hopefully do more crafting. And more blogging! My lack of internet has been very frustrating, but I think by writing my blog posts and then just dragging them along on a flash drive until I get to somewhere with internet I will end up being more prolific. Rather than just ranting at myself in my mind like a crazy person ^_^

TLDR:
- Read Planet June's tutorials. Your life will be better for it.
- I will have to remake my old patterns and am being a big girls' blouse about it.
- Crochet patterns often assume you know things that you don't. Always make sure what they expect of you before whining about your amigurumi looking mangled.
- I hope to blog more by writing my posts as they occur to me, and then posting them when I can.

Mother's Day Cupcakes

I am a very bad blogger... I feel somewhat guilty for not posting for so long. In my defense, however, it is exam time, so I'm at home (internet-less) knee-deep in textbooks. However, I finally have some pictures of the cupcakes I baked for Boyfriend's mom for Mother's Day (I may have mentioned them). The recipe is from one of my innumerable recipe books (I will check the exact book and exact recipe when I get home from the internet cafe, and edit this post as soon as I know). Suffice to say that the cake bit has fresh raspberries and lemon zest in, and the icing is made from vegan cream cheese and raspberry jam. They were sweet and tart and amazing. And thanks to my friend Claire at Claire Gritten Photography, they look just as good in photographs! :)

As an apology for lack of recent posts, here, have some pictures and be happy!

omnomnom cupcake.

EDIT: they are in fact Sweetheart Raspberry Lemon Cupcakes, from The Everything Vegan Cookbook by Jolinda Hackett. :)

HorrorBunny Progress

I feel somewhat bad about only posting again now, but I have been run off my feet the past little while, with a really busy test week behind me. I took this weekend off, and spent most of Saturday baking and finishing off Cthubunny and Wererabbit :D Why yes, I am finally telling you what the hell I've been working on. I also baked a banana loaf and some cupcakes for Mother's Day, which was on Sunday. My amazing friend Claire has taken pictures of all the crafts and baking, so the moment I motivate my lazy self to go get the pictures from her, you can admire the fruits of my labours.

In addition to the two HorrorBunnies (and one other bunny) I have now finished, I am stitching together a third addition to the motley HorrorBunny group, FrankenBunny :) I am especially excited about him. Hopefully Claire and I can go take some fun shots of the bunnies when they're finished.