My Pinky car arrived last week, which of course set off a whole storm of "OMG Pinky!" which has continued into this week as well. I learned that Sylvanian Families furniture is apparently the perfect size for Pinkys, unfortunately my furniture has gone walkabout. The SF house is still in the attic, though, all it needs is a new bar on one of the windows (and maybe some new glass for two of the windows).

So now I'm on Amazon lusting after Calico Critters furniture. Argh.

Saturday, partially spurred on by my need for tiny accessories, the boy and I headed to Mitsuwa Marketplace. This was my first trip on my own, on the shuttle bus. I went a little crazy on the snacks. Bought rice crackers, caramel corn (because of the awesome bag), miso dressing, onigiri, wheat cake, whole mess load of chocolate. The candy shelves were a bit desolate, guess we need to get there way early to get some of the good stuff. Also, the toy section was disappointing. Even though I wasn't looking for ReMent, the current selection was bleh. I did, however, get a mini Kuromi gashapon machine. I'd love to get my hands on more of these mini machines, as they can be stacked just like the real machines.

Okay, so someone had the brilliant idea of having a street fair on Eighth Avenue, starting at 42nd Street. Yes, brilliant, let's force all traffic to redirect onto one of the most traffic-prone streets in New York City! And let's do it right near to the freakin' tunnel into New Jersey! And let's do near one of the busiest bus terminals in the country! BRILLIANT!

No, not brilliant. It shouldn't take us two hours to get back into the city. But it did. I hate you, stupidly situated Eighth Avenue Street Fair.

Sunday was watching stuff, and I played with Fimo. And then my oven burned said Femo, leading my mother to get super pissy. My second try went better, and I now have a braid-type hairpiece. It just needs to be painted, since I used the white/clear Femo and it's bubbly and brown now.

I'm sad, bored, tired but not sleepy, stressed at work, my room is hot, and I think I got the proportions wrong on my last batch of liquid plastic.

So uh, who's going to see Pirates, and when? And is anyone up for a Coney Island run this Saturday?

Looks like learning how to cast could be very, very expensive. I finally managed to make a mold without damaging the part, and now I'm trying to figure out how to get the liquid plastic working. It's very watery and dries quickly, so the mold has to be airtight. Which mine wasn't, so I have half a Pinky hair.

I'll post pics and stuff once I have something to actually show. And does anyone want chunks of purple rubber? I'm sure there's some use for it out there...

Started my foray into the wonderful world of casting. Will keep you updated. All I can say at this point is that I have an excess amount of purple rubber now. And yes, I already thought of the condoms angle. We all know it's a stupid idea, but it's what we think of.

Poking around Yahoo Auctions Japan reveals quite a market of people who buy sets just to sell the parts off individually, like Bricklink does for LEGO. Too bad I didn't see the part I need... and I don't read Japanese.

I find myself at this strange juncture. Am I collector, or a modder? Because I've already realized I might not be able to make new parts without damaging the ones I already have. I suppose I could buy extras, but some of those extras would be really expensive...

Eh, while I'm mulling all this over, check out some custom Pinky figures:

* http://pinkycompe.hp.infoseek.co.jp/compe01/free/free34.html
* http://pinkycompe.hp.infoseek.co.jp/compe01/free/free17.html
* http://pinkycompe.hp.infoseek.co.jp/compe01/kadai/kadai08.html
* http://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/90042063 (Eeeeeee!!!)

Ahhh... I think I ate too much Pocky. When will I learn that Pocky is not real food? But is so tasty!

Feeling crafty lately. Not scheming crafty, but creative crafty. There's so many things I want to make. I even had an idea for a cosplay — won't say what it is now, want to look into it first before getting too ambitious. But I'll do it at Otakon, if anything. I don't do panels or anything official there anyway.

Want to start making Pinky:st parts. I'll need liquid rubber or silicone for the molds, and liquid plastic for the casts themselves. I don't see anything on the Pearl Paint site... I wonder if they'll have different supplies in the actual store. Anyone know any good hobby shops that sell that kind of stuff?

And uh, corneredangel: Eeeeeeeeee!

Yesterday registered for Second Life (finally). It's amazing on so many levels, including the fact that every blog and news site out there is creaming themselves over it, even though it has less than 300K users and only maybe 1K on at a time. But if you ever read Snow Crash — remember the way cyberspace or whatever it was called in that worked? Second Life is exactly like that. I made myself a dress, really simple. Eventually I want to figure out how to make really cool things, but for now I'm just exploring. Spent an hour just typing in random words into the teleport feature and seeing where I end up. "Candy Land" is disappointingly enough, just a beach house.

Did poke into the American Apparel store, though, which was just... creepy.

(Oh, if you decide to sign up for Second Life, mention my user name because I get a bonus for anyone I refer - my user name is "Kalita Coalcliff")

My aunts need a sewing machine, so my mother's been harassing me for months to buy them one. Driven by the need for things to be sewn, I'm finally looking to see what's available.

You know, I can go shopping for say, a digital camera, and there will be a long table of all different kinds of specs and a long list of features, and I know exactly what's what and I can choose. But sewing machines? I have no idea what half this shit means.

(All I know is that this thing is probably smarter than me.)

I'm kinda tempted to get a little one for myself, if only so I can hem my own damn pants and possibly experiment with costuming and shirt making. This wouldn't be the first time I've ever considered it, so maybe it would be a good investment.

Another thought, based on the fact that I'm looking at communities like tshirt_surgery. Annoyed at the fact that they say things like, "it was a guy's t-shirt so I cut the collar and blah blah blah..." I don't really see t-shirts as a "guy" clothing anymore, they seem to me more unisex. The other thing that annoys me is that apparently the way to make t-shirts "better" is to turn it into a) a tank top, b) a halter top, or c) a tube top. Especially the last one there. It just seems so... lazy (and stereotypically girlish). And yeah, I know I can't sew, I shouldn't talk, but still, it doesn't feel like an improvement.

(Though I have to admit, some of the stuff here is pretty hot. I want to make dresses like that.)

Brazilian sushi last night with everyone at Shiki. Ordered one of the special brazilian-style rolls, and then had all-you-can-eat. Didn't even order that much - just four rolls. But I couldn't finish it. In the past, five rolls total shouldn't have been such a problem. But like I said, I think my stomach is shrinking, plus, damn, those rolls were big. And heavy on the rice. I can't do all-you-can-eat anymore, even though this place wasn't as strict as say, Yuka, about leftovers.

The other result of all this is that I probably won't be eating sushi for a very long time. Felt very ill the rest of the evening. My only consolation is that I ate more than corneredangel (and that's even after considering that people took stuff off both his plate and mine), but I guess that's not that big an accomplishment considering he was sick.

Communication skills are poor in this group. I thought last night was the "official" group going to this sushi place, but it was really a gathering for meowa (and they just happened to go to this sushi place), who've I've never actually met before. So things were a bit confused and I felt slightly intrusive. But it's all good, because I got to meet her and see Kimmy.

I'm glad everyone liked the play-doh sculpture, the response was more positive than I expected. I don't know whether I will do more - it's tempting to make another color katamari and try out different objects, but I don't want to be repetitive. And because it's come up a few times, the original sculpt was intended to be done in-scale, which is why I didn't attach anything larger (especially since I want it to be accurate since you can still see the katamari).

There are a total of 15 pictures uploaded of the "Doh-macy", only 8 were displayed here. You can see the other 7 (but they're really not all that different) by looking at my scrapbook.

Ah, bad puns, you are my friend.

So today at work I had the bestest idea ever™! Headed to Toys 'R' Us straight after work to pick up el cheapo materials to implement my crazy plan, and spent about an hour doing my best to fashion genius out of non-toxic modeling compound.

Is there anyone else who looks at Play-Doh and hears Bart's voice in their head saying, "Come on Dad, it's non-toxic..."? Happens every time I play with this stuff.

So anyway, it turned out better than it should have, not as good as it could have, and my hands smell funny.



( Because more is better! )

... shall be the one true king of England. Um... America. New York. Brooklyn. Flatlands. Ralph Avenue. My room.

Today I trumped off to Staples to buy display boards and spray adhesive, which I will need for my Desktop Publishing product on Thursday. Designing business stationery. Woo, exciting.

It occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea to do an inventory of all the art supplies in my room, mostly because I might have stuff I didn't even know about, or because my room is really a mess, or because some of this shit was damn expensive. Like my acrylics.

My brushes are in good shape, but the tubes of paint appear to have sealed themselves shut. I don't blame them - I haven't used them in three years. They're lonely.

I have four different sets of colored pencils. Four different companies at that (Prang, Crayola, Design Spectracolor, and Eberhard Faber col-erase). The oldest set is fourteen years old.

God, I feel old.

In my junk drawer I found several of those large erasers, the big block ones that never really worked all that well and were hard to grasp. At least I think it's an eraser, it seems to have petrified.

Amusingly enough, I also found an unused 6H lead pencil from the drafting kit we got sophomore year at Stuy. As if that weren't weird enough, then I found several pencils with over-sized lead that I believe date back to kindergarten. They were unsharpened.

I won't even get started on the crayon collection.