Well I haven't updated in a while so here we go.

NaNo: Last Sunday and Monday (the 8th and 9th) I didn't write at all so the whole week has been a slog of trying not to fall any further behind. I had a good day today and finally, finally hit a spot where the words didn't require concentrating until I sweated blood to get the out. I'm still behind but I wrote 3k today and if I can manage that again tomorrow I will be caught up.

Knitting: I've got eight inches done on the vest for my Mom for Christmas. That's about 40% complete since Mom is shorter than I am.



I'm a bit farther along that this now, but I haven't taken a new photo and probably won't until I'm ready to divide for the arm holes in about five inches. ( Older stuff under the cut. )

Still no plot really, but there are a few more characters, which will help. Of course two of them were mostly filler, though I don't think Muriel is inclined to stay that way. Other than that there was also some world building today, or rather, world enhancing since I think I'm writing what amounts to "this world plus supernatural beings".

This is mostly so when I'm freaking out next year I will have proof that in 2009, as in 2007, I didn't have anything until a character showed up on the 29th.

I don't know what Apollonia does but she's making herself comfortable.

Now I need at least a genre and maybe a second character, based on past NaNo novels I can get something if I have that much.

It's been a while since I made any soap, and I still have lots of lye and oil around so someone has been pushing for more soap to use up the lye. :D

So I threw together a recipe (olive, canola, palm, and coconut for the curious) and figured I'd use up the aloe juice in the back of the fridge (unfortunately I didn't finish it off with this batch) and why not use some cut St. John's Wort while I was at it, and some tangerine and ti tree essential oils.

I had to beat the lye about a bit to break it up but that went well enough, no mishaps which is always a plus when handling lye. I dissolved it in water, half the total liquid for the recipe. The other half I did with the aloe juice into which I put the SJW after running it through my coffee grinder. My coffee grinder was bought entirely for grinding up herbs and things for soap and has never been used for its intended purpose of grinding coffee beans. I let the aloe sit on a warm burner while the lye cooled and measured out my oils.

While I was measuring my oils I realized I had palm oil and had accidentally used palm kernel oil in my calculations. A quick check with the calculator showed me that adding half a pound more palm oil would make my lye amount work. I normally make 8 pound recipes so it was a relief to find that the mold, an old plastic shelf that is a convenient low pan when you flip it over, will hold 8.5 pounds. My vertical mold holds only 8 pounds and the only reason I hadn't prepped that one was that I was expecting the soap to get rather hot while curing. That turned out to be a very good bit of foresight on my part.

Anyway, I warmed the oils just enough to melt them all, turned off the heat and went about doing a cold process soap. The lye went in and I stirred it for a while, then added the aloe, letting most of the vegetable matter stay in the pot, what went into the soap will add nice flecks of scrubbiness. At that point the soap was a nice creamy egg yellow. Alas, the aloe juice has sugars in it and lye and sugar means heat so it was shortly looking more like pumpkin pie.

Then I added the tangerine and ti tree oil... hello hot and seizing soap!

Suddenly my nice calm cold process soap was a fast moving hot process, without turning on the stove. The stick blender (long used for soap and missing several "teeth" off it's guard) was brought into play and I now have 8.5 pounds of dark glossy brown soap cooling in the mold. Well, cooling after it finishes reacting, it's still very hot right now.

I'm sure it will be fine.

For "Financial Solutions". Why? The motherfuckers keep calling me. The first time or two I just hung up, my only phone is a cell and I don't like paying for junk calls. The next time I listened to the message and pressed 2 to get off their list. I did the same the time after that. Today however I pressed 1 to get a person:

Fucktard: Financial Solutions, how are you today?

Me: Fine, but you've called me four times and I pre-

Fucktard: *hangs up*

Me: ...ssed the do not call... twice. *instant hate on*

So, the next time, shall I just hang up and live with the fuckers calling me? Press 2 again and hope the third time is the charm on getting OFF their fucking list? Press 1 and immediately say "Give me your supervisor"? Or maybe "DO. NOT. Hang up on me." and then tell me to be sure my number is off their list?

Is there anywhere I can stab these assholes where it will hurt?

Lately it seems I can't read recipes in comments without hitting on the infamous Mug Cake. Now for an emergency chocolate hit it's okay but the texture was always too... meaty, for lack of a better term, for my taste. This is undoubtedly due to the lack of leavening and the fact that there is a whole egg in one large coffee mug worth of cake. So I played around a bit, adding a pinch of salt, a smidge of baking soda, things of that sort, and managed to make it taste a bit better but it still didn't really have a cake texture in my opinion. So I tossed the "must fit in a coffee mug" requirement and came up with this.

Coffee Soup Mug Cake

This may work with a smaller mug, but to be safe get yourself a 20 oz mug of some sort. Spray the inside of the mug with your preferred cooking spray.

Mix up in the mug:

¹/₄ cup flour
¹/₃ cup sugar
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
¹/₄ tsp salt
¹/₈ tsp baking soda

Blend these dry ingredients before adding the following wet ones, it will make things easier.

1 egg
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
¹/₄ cup milk
¹/₂ tsp vanilla

Mix well.

Microwave on high for 3-3¹/₂ minutes. The cake will rise above the level of the mug!

Be sure to center the mug in your microwave so the cake will cook evenly and to minimize the chance of a spill over (I've only had it dribble over once, and the mug was not centered in the oven so there was a bit of a tilt, and the small dribble didn't make it all the way down the side of the mug so it was easy to clean up).

You may need a friend to help you eat it, or be greedy and save half for later. ;)

This recipe is slightly modified from one I found online somewhere.

1¹/₄ cup warm milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 Tbsp butter
¹/₄ cup sugar
³/₄ tsp salt
4 cups flour
1¹/₄ tsp yeast

Set the bread machine to the dough setting (or do it by hand, but I like the set it and walk away of the machine).

When the dough is done (1¹/₂ hours with my machine), turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, give it a few quick nudges and shape it into a dozen rolls. Keeping with my lazy approach I use non-stick foil to line my pans and put the rolls in the oven with the light on to rise for an hour or until doubled in size. (The light gives the oven just enough warmth for the rolls to rise well.) Pull them out and heat the oven to 350, bake for 10 minutes or until nicely browned (the lower tray always needs a couple minutes on the higher rack after the other tray has come out for me).

In the future I may try a variation using whole wheat for half of the flour and turbinado sugar.

I know a few members of my friends list/circle sew, therefore I will share out a link for drafting a corset and if you then use their link to share the link with a friend you can get a second PDF for including gussets, gores, and corded panels. Do note that this is basically an advertisement for Foundations Revealed, but the tutorial (which is for altering an existing pattern but could be adapted to drafting from scratch) is useful.

Yes, I intend to write another partial novel this year. I have no idea what I am going to write but the odds are it will be something in the science fiction and fantasy continuum as usual.

Also as usual, I've been getting pings off my older NaNo attempts. Last year's story was really hard to write, I spent the first half of the month whining (sorry Kris!) and writing was about as easy and pleasant as pulling teeth. Once I moved the story from England to New England it started rolling for me and ended up picking up things I hadn't expected, like alchemy and alchemists that aren't what they seems and occult books that manipulate events and people around them... and Lovecraft's cousin. Needless to say that story is a bit of a mess. The last few days have found my brain turning that tangled knot in all directions and tugging on things that look like they might lead to loose ends. I think I might know how to untangle it now.

And that is how I know that NaNo is coming, because my brain never gets enchanted with the older stories until it knows it has to start coming up with a new one.