Book!

Please excuse the pre-shower hideousness - it's the book you're looking at. So cool!

Grunok's voice

Transcrupt:

* CutiePie is tempted to record a speaking clip
Aatwork> do eet!
CutiePie> What would I say?
Aatwork> Read a poem?
CutiePie> ew no
CutiePie> I hates poetry
Aatwork> Then read a favourite passage from a book? :p
CutiePie> I could
CutiePie> OR
CutiePie> I could read from the bbc
CutiePie> or nz herald
CutiePie> Okay, let's see if that worked
CutiePie> And
CutiePie> If I can then figure out how to get it up on to the intarwubs
sk8rgrl> i'm off to sleep
sk8rgrl> we'll have a thing
sk8rgrl> where we all record ourselves
sk8rgrl> reading some ridiculous star wars quote
sk8rgrl> and put it up on the chimaera website
sk8rgrl> >:
CutiePie> Okay
CutiePie> Aa can stay 'wake with me and tell me how to get this up on teh intarwubs

Grunok - update

The old . . .



. . . and the new



Now I just need to put him back in banner form. And maybe tweak just a little more. So you may see it in, oh, another 6 months' time? :D

T-shirt designs

So this is what I've been doing. It's for my work, Adis - or rather for the social committee!

Triple Goodness

I was talking to some people about this dessert I was making today, so have uploaded the promised photos here. The recipe is as follows:

140g dark chocolate
3/4 cup of cream (double cream for you foreigners!), beaten to soft peaks
300g mascarpone cheese (I only used 250g, because that's how much was in the packet)
5 tablespoons Bailey's of other Irish cream liqueur

Melt the chocolate.
You can either do this in a bain-marie (a bowl or pot sat over, but not touching, another pot of simmering water - like a steamer, but solid-bottomed) or in the microwave. Either way, be very careful not to burn the chocolate! I did mine in the microwave, for one minute on high. You could still see the shapes of the chocolate, but as soon as I stirred it they disappeared, and it was melted.
Set it aside until it is at room temperature.

Whisk the mascarpone cheese together with the Baileys. Fold the whipped cream through this mixture.
Folding is using a metal spoon to lift the ingredients from the bottom and gently place them on the top. The idea of this is to keep fluffy things, like beaten egg whites, or in this instance, whipped cream, from going un-fluffy. Add all the cream to the bowl at once, and fold like this until it is combined.

Ensure that the chocolate has cooled to room temperature.
If it hasn't, it will make the cream melt and go flat, which is bad.
Spoon the cream mixture into your serving glasses, alternating spoonfuls of cream with rough layers of the cooled chocolate.
When you are spooning, try to be careful of the sides of the glass - ideally you don't want stuff on it, as it spoils the effect. Two ways you can avoid this are by a) using smaller glasses and filling them to the top, or b), using a damp paper towel to clean off any 'oops'es after you are done. that's what I did here. Hey, nobody's perfect ^.^
Using the wrong end of a spoon, swirl the layers rougly together.
You use the wrong end of a spoon because it's skinny, so it swirls nicely instead of mixing. You could use the flat of a knife or a skewer or something if you wanted.
Chill for half an hour or more.
This makes the chocolate solidify into little chunks. Yuuum.

Decorate with chocolate shavings, mint leaves, berries, little chocolates or anything else you like. I tend to leave mine plain because I like the way they look.

Bon Appetit!



Credit to the Edmonds recipe book 'Food for Flatters' (flatters means young people who live with roommates). They came up with this recipe, I just tweaked it a little.

New art

http://grunok.deviantart.com/art/Crazy-Woman-Pass-105636552

New stuff!

New pictures up on deviantArt (link is in the right hand column). Kinda boring - just me playing with how to make patterns flow on fabric - but new nonetheless :)

Still no job news from anything, though there are still things in the works.

Moving homes

Because it is a good place to post things which should never really see the light of day (pictures of my hair, rough sketches and in-between pics) I don't think I will abandon this blog completely, but I am now going to be posting my completed stuff at http://grunok.deviantart.com/ It is an art website where people give me feedback, and there is just so much art there! So much inspiration...

I currently have a gallery of just two things, but one of them hasn't been shown on here, and if you don't like that you can look at the things other people have done which I like. Some amazing things!

I will set a permanent link to my gallery in the links section.

The Gemmed Curtain, Silvermarshes

My first attempt at something to go up on Santharia. This is a close up of an upper section of (because my comp can't handle images any bigger than this) the Gemmed Curtain, a cliff in the Silvermarshes in Santharia. Obviously it's not done :p

You know.. . I think it's done

Troll composition

This is going to have to be pretty much completely redone, but this is where we're at for elements. I'm also going to have a male younger troll coming up from the back too - just head and shoulders. Maybe two of them, depending on how my muse feels...

Very close now...

The clothes are still only really blocked in, but those and a bit more work on the hair will see this pretty much finished!

Troll update

Not done yet, but at least it has a bit of colour. This will eventually go in a version of the cave I posted way back when. I love my boyfriend, he buy me wacom.

Progress

Still need to do more detail - hair, clothes, features etc - but we've got the background in, and the shape of the hair.

Two more Yargs

Ok Pike, here are two more Yargs. I think they are both much better shaped, and look much more like what you wanted. As I mentioned, I am working in quite a different way with these two, so theoretically they should turn out looking quite cool, and much more realistic than the first one would have.

Basically, I am about to get time constrained, so I am putting these up for you to choose which one I develop in to Yarg, rather than something which looks like a gross pink smudgy blob. Shoulders can be changed, as can skin colours, and on both of them the detail will be much better (no black lines in these ones). Obviously one is more detailed than the other, but try to ignore that and decide which one's expression you like best.

Yarg III (click on image to enlarge)




Yarg II (click on image to enlarge)

Back to heads

Well, obviously I am home. I was going to post a summation post to do with my travels, but there are so many other things to do since I got home.

So, this blog is going back to its original function: showing people pictures. This is a (so far unfinished) tentative picture of Yarg, a mischeivous pyromaniacal hobbit, for Pikel.

Wails and Other Surprises

I spent a few days last week in Wales. Cardiff, to be precise. It was horrible. I think this is not entirely Cardiff's fault - it was more a case of whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. A horrible hostel, some horrible people, some creepy people and some downright unsanitary people unfortunately weighed more heavily in the balance than did the nice people I met and the cool Victorian-era faux-medieval castles I saw. I won't condemn the whole of Wales, but what I have seen of it left a nasty taste in my mouth - sorry Wales.

Since my almost indecently joyful return to London I have kind of hung around for a few days, but on Saturday I went to Brighton! It was great! I was rather surprised at this - I had decided that all continental beach towns were tawdry, over-inflated tourist traps with no more soul than a Simpson-Grierson lawyer. It turns out that if you can forget that these places are meant to have anything to do with what we Kiwis think of as a beach, they can actually be quite cool in their own way.

I am now in Paris, for the third time, and I have a cold! I don't seem to have much luck here - I've had bad weather or a cold both times (the weather is lovely this time, touch wood)! Still, it hasn't lost its charm and I am enjoying it, and am looking forward to seeing the catacombs and the (inside of) the Louvre this time.

After Paris I catch the eurostar back to London for my final weekend in London. I'm going out with Jamie on the Saturday, and possibly having drinks with all the people I've met in London on Friday or Sunday evening. I leave on Monday, in the evening thank god, so at least I don't have to rush. A week in Brisbane, and then... home!

Dreaming Spires

The air in Cambridge is rarer than in other parts of the country. It seems to be thinned out by its being spread across generations of be-spired buildings and their inhabitants, whom one can imagine all still inhabit the place, just a step to the side...

Poetic pretensions aside, it was a great day out. Tony and I got on the bike nice and early... well, sort of early... and rode up in the brilliant sunshine. Lunch was had at a place which didn't serve chips with everything (they exist! Wow!), which had a great view of the road for watching people, and deciding which were tourists, who went to the University, and which of the old mad homeless men were tenured professors.

The King's College Chapel

After lunch we went to see King's College Chapel. This "Chapel" (read: private Cathedral) was pretty amazing, but doesn't stand out as the coolest one I've seen. The way out took us in to the grounds proper, where we wandered the paths - they actually have "keep off the grass" signs! - and watched punters pass on the river Cam.

The Grounds of King's College

People punting on the Backs, as seen from the King's College grounds

Avoiding touts, we made our way down the crowded streets to where the punts start. We got in to a boat with ten other people and proceeded to be poled up and down the river by a very dextrous young man, who regaled us with tales of the colleges, and the odd gem detailing reasons why Cambridge is better than "the Other Place".Our punt, with the Cambridge "Bridge of Sighs". It connects some of the student accomodation to the exam halls.

After our punt, we went to a pub called the Eagle for a quick cooling orange-and-lemonade before the long ride back to London. A sign near our seat proclaimed that the table next to ours is where DNA was discovered and officially announced. It said that the two professors who came up with the idea ate dinner there together six nights a week. Presumambly the other night their mothers cooked for them. And so ended my enlightening day in Cambridge.

EDIT: Also, I have just added some more photos to the posts from "Ogle Castle" and up. Enjoy!

Lake District

It is the stuff of poetry - striding across windy moors, over purple heather and scrub, climbing scree slopes and finally coming out above a vast, moody lake, the view of which inspired Wordsworth, Keats, and... some other dudes.

Unfortunately, it all remained in the poetry. It rained, horribly, and the only views we got were of mist-shrouded valleys which Andy swore had lakes in them. We tried to get out to do some striding, but were blown directly back in to the car before we had even properly made it out of the car park. We huddled in the car to eat our picnic, then resigned ourselves to driving the lakes rather than walking them.

In the Battle of Peugot vs. Road, Road won.

Luckily, Cockermouth (the little town we were staying in) has almost as many pubs as people, and two breweries, so time spent indoors was by no means wasted. I have now been indoctrinated in the ways of the British warm flat beer, which they call ale. I kind of like it. It isn't the kind of thing you'd drink at home, of course, but in an old pub with blackened beams and a fireplace, while the wind howls outside and rain lashes against the window panes (and this is in summer!), you just can't drink cold beer - it is too cold!

I'm back in London now, and going to try to see as much as I can before I go to Cardiff for a bit of Welsh next week. Twenty-eight days until I'm home!

Again we confirm that forward planning is a good thing, and winging it brings its own 'rewards'

Well, my last posts have all been a bit brief and uninformative, so I thought it was time I got something up telling you where in the world I am, and what I've been up to. Not much, to be honest. Hence the short posts.

I got back from my Cornwall trip with Tony and hung out with him for a couple of days. Then, to save some money (this is the only reason, honest. I'm not a geek.) I went to stay with my friend Jamie in Kilburn, and played Oblivion all day every day for a week. I knew that wouldn't make a very good blog post. "Today I killed seven goblins, twelve mudcrabs, three slaughterfish, four bandits, and was killed by a troll. I hadn't saved so I took out my frustrations on Jamie's toilet." Fascinating stuff.

On the Sunday I had to go out to get some more blue dye because almost all of the colour had gone - it was starting to look a bit of an ectoplasm-green kind of colour. I met Antona, Andy and Tony on the way there for lunch, and then (because I found that the hair place in Camden was closed, and I decided that I might as well see some sun) I went out to a festival with them afterward. That was pretty much all I did that week, apart from going out again the next day on a slightly more successful mission to get dye, hence the second pic of me with blue hair.

On Wednesday, after a full seven days of Oblivion (in which I got maybe a sixth through the main quest - waah!) I left for Northumberland. Newcastle was exactly like the place you would imagine Geordies to come from: loud, brash, full of grotty cheap bars and strip clubs, but friendlier than anywhere else in the whole world. I found Ogle Castle, as I sort-of described in the previous post, and then moved on.

A main road in Newcastle. This is the pretty part of the city.

I had heard from some friends I made on my Contiki trip - hi Val, hi Matt! - who are living in Glasgow, and I decided it would be cool to go out with them once more before I left. Newcastle is kind-of almost in the neighbourhood, so I told them I was coming up for the weekend and that they would have to entertain me. I did, and they did, and it was great! Drunken pictionary... always good!Val and Matt (his trousers are ripped, he doesn't have three legs) hanging out in their tenement.

Unfortunately, when I had booked my ticket to Newcastle I hadn't really planned it all that well... or, to be honest, at all! What I should have done was gone to Glasgow first, stayed there four days including the weekend, then to Newcastle, and from there to Cockermouth (yes, laugh, go on) where I am meeting Antona and Andy and Tony for a few days in the Lakes District. What I did was just book my ticket from London straight to Newcastle, so I then had to rush getting to my castle (which, because I was only there for one day, involved taxi-ing - £££! -rather than the one-a-day public transport). I then spent the weekend in Glasgow, which was highly enjoyable but which left me a week away from meeting Antona and co., but too close by to justify going back down to London...

The only good thing about Newcastle - easy access to Hadrian's Wall. It's just not five days' worth of fun.

As a stop-gap I decided to book myself in to a place sort of on the way, because there looked like there wasn't too much to do in Cockermouth. Carlisle looked like the biggest place which was in the right area, so I booked there. I am now in my... fourth? fifth day? I am so confused. Anyway, Carlisle is BOOORING! I am going a bit mad here. Luckily I only have today and tomorrow left, so I can probably fill those with something. There is a castle I haven't been in to yet which I plan to do after lunch, and a museum which should occupy me for the rest of tomorrow before Antona comes to rescue me from the ignominious fate of getting stuck in Carlisle for longer than I have to.