(no subject)

Many things, most of which I don't have time to talk about before work beckons. *sigh* I have a limited amount of computer time these days, as opposed to the 8-hours-plus of the halcyon (nothing to do with kingfishers) days of yore, and therefore some things have to go. I don't want this to be one of the things that goes, but given the choice between writing emails to people who want and deserve to hear from me (not that you don't, dear readers, but they have first dibs) and updating my LJ with a discussion of third-string porn from the mid 1970's, I think we all know what's going to win out. For the slow of thinking, note that the porn from the 1970's is still sitting on the couch awaiting my discussion of it while not_your_real and ksleet got handcrafted email last night. The antique porn will wait until I have time. (It's funny. It's got Marilyn Chambers. It's got an article that claims to be an orgy handbook. Third-rate porn does not age well. On the plus side, the women look pretty much like regular people.)

I also watched more Buffy (Two episodes. I'm rationing.), mixed up dough for cookies, and did a swatch for the felting project. I don't like the swatch, which could be EITHER that I didn't felt it long enough or that I knit it too loosely to start with. I am not willing to consider the option that it is failing to felt to spite me. It's 100% wool. If sufficiently motivated, it will felt. (Technically speaking, applying the hot-water-and-agitation thing to made wool cloth is fulling and not felting but I didn't think anyone would understand me if I said "fulling". It's not the sort of thing that comes up every day for people not involved in fiber arts.) I think I'm going to try another swatch with different sized needles to see if that makes a fabric I like better. Yes, yes, if I were the sort of person who followed directions, I would not have to do this swatching and experimenting. I'm not that sort of person. Another swatch. Different sized needles. I believe I need sixes. Circular sixes. WalMart has these, as long as I can tolerate cheesy aluminum circulars instead of high-tech nickel-plated Addi Turbos or spiffy bamboo Clovers. Cheesy aluminum. Right, then.

(no subject)

Apparently the cookie recipe (sand tarts, by request) makes more than sixty cookies. I thought it made sixty cookies but I was wrong. It makes more than that. I ate about ten in the process of making them and there are still more than six dozen (72 cookies, for the slow-of-math) remaining. I will be mailing off fifty, which is what I promised to mail off -- after all, the good book told us that thou shalt not muzzle the ox what treadeth out the very very thin (Six to the inch! Go me!) crispity lemon-butter cookies, or words to that effect.

You're gonna look like an ox, you keep wolfing down butter cookies like that...

The last time I mailed these off, reports from the field were that they arrived in pieces. I do not want these to arrive in pieces. I know that they still taste the same and I suspect that the person getting them will not complain, but... dang. Broken cookies. Right now they're anal-retentively identical (no mean feat with so-thin-you-can-see-light-through-them butter cookies that burn in seconds), a balm for the souls of people like me. I don't WANT them broken.

As a concession to the demands of shipping, I made round ones this time instead of spade-shaped ones. The world didn't end, because this diversion from what was proper only took place in pursuit of the greater good of unbroken cookies. Also, I will revise my packing technique to see if I can get some of the cookies to arrive in an unbroken state. At xmas, my mother reported that the moravian spice cookies emerged from the shipping experience whole and undamaged even though the sand tarts were pretty beaten up. I bet the moravians use some kind of superior cookie polymers that resist shattering.

Anyway, that's why no vintage porn this evening. I was baking cookies instead.