Lace trimmed scarves

Ruffly umbrella
I want to do this. When I get an umbrella that isn't plastic. Isn't it the cutest?

Button brooches
Yay, something to do with the buttons in the button tin. Even though I don't have any really pretty shank buttons. (Unless kitties count.)

Not a specific tutorial link, but a blog's tag for 'dolls' and awesomely cheap ways to make clothing and accessories for dolls. (The dolls the posts are written for are American Girl style dolls, but dolls are dolls, right?)

And that is it.

ETA: Except this is a rather fascinating photo. You can see a fake tooth!
Also, 'x-ray kissing' sounds like the name of a band.

My feet are still recovering from this last week in the bistro at course. Spending four days in which 6-7 hours were spent on my feet has convinced me that I really do not want to do restaurant work.

Firstly, have an actual link.
Yet another reason why kissing is good for you.
If science is not wrong and you are female and plan to have kids some time.

Then have some videos.

( First is Lil' Cthulu, which is absolutely adorable. And the thing I was talking about at Jenny's birthday. )

( Second is a really weird, but hilarious video on how to make a McNuggetini )

( Thirdly is... a remix of John Barrowman dancing set to Beyonce's 'Single Ladies'. About two thirds of the way through, there is something resembling an Irish dance step. )

In RL news, today/Monday I am front-of-housing. For dinner. *dies*
Also, never have a barbeque with twelve chefs. Too many chefs, while not spoiling the broth, does make it rather awkward as everyone wants to do something and actually knows how to do it, but there isn't enough things to do.

I could swear that the title of this book is also the name of a song that I had. Except it’s not.
Anyway, it’s from the first shiny new batch of novelisations set after season two. (I don’t think they’re going to do post-CoE, mostly because… these look to be tiring enough, what would it be like with an even more reduced cast?) And… I think I already see a pattern. Jack is Jack and tries to solve everything on his own, because he doesn’t want his precious people™ to die. Gwen is ~helpful~, or at least tries to be. And Ianto is left being the person everything happens to. No. Seriously. In Almost Perfect he was the one body-swapped and in all the other ones, it appears as if he’s the one who falls sick/is in a coma/picked on because he’s still, somehow, the teaboy.
I’d almost forgive this if, you know, everyone got vaguely decent attention and characterisation paid to them, like the other novelisations did. The authors loved Owen and sometimes Jack and the stories would be based around them and would be so much better for it.
Except this book and Almost Perfect try to concentrate on all three of them at once and T3 ends up having all the charisma and interest of a slug. The story itself is affected too, which is the really horrible bit. They kind of bumble along in a Simpsons’-like manner, the beginning only marginally related to the end.

Anyway, going back to the pattern. Ianto, of course, gets treated according to this pattern. Well, perhaps not quite as woobieish as falling sick, but Gwen does volunteer him to sing and put himself in the line of danger. Because, as everyone knows, all Welsh are good singers. *can only name two off the top of her head, which is not any great number* Although, earlier, he does admit to having done some singing before.
BUT Gwen does that weird trying to be helpful but just ends up being awkward and I never thought I’d see that characterisation of her outside of fanfic.
I’ve already mentioned the horrible characterisation, haven’t I?
I do have to admit though, all the sequences where Ianto does sing makes me smile and snigger. I know the not eating dairy (or having red wine or coffee) and the Italian terms because of all my friends who are musically inclined and sing.

( But there are funny things... )

( ...and OT3 moments... )

( ...and luckily the bad characterisation doesn't affect Rhys and Gwen's relationship... )

( ...but it does to the one-shot character, for a certain value of 'bad characterisation'. )


( Also of issue is the end. )

But the book adverts in the back for upcoming novelisations and info books is fun. One of the Victorian members has been unfrozen and everyone has to follow the 1901 edition of the Torchwood handbook. I’m hoping this means Gwen in a dress.
There’s also a short story collection ‘Consequences’ which looks really interesting. It’s not so much about Torchwood, but, as you may guess, the consequences of their actions. I so, so, so want to read/get that.

Yeah, I got this one and Border Princes out at the same time. I went to go and pick up one about Ianto have to join a men’s choir a few weeks after. (Why yes, some of the summaries of these are so loltastic I HAVE to reserve them.)
Anyway, this is possibly one of my favourite novelisations. Everyone is decently characterised and Rhys gets involved. Not as much as say… Meat or Almost Perfect, although Almost Perfect does reference this particular novelisation in a kind of parallel/in joke kind of way, but Rhys does come startlingly close to Torchwood. And this book is set pre-Cyberwoman so it’s all the more fun and ‘yay!’ because FIRST SEASON INTERACTION.
It also seems to fit into canon fairly consistently as well.
Well, nothing contradicts it, it doesn’t contradict anything else and doesn’t have too close a resemblance to any episodes. I have noticed that the novels tend to like having people being affected by aliens and that sometimes this means they take chunks out of other humans but… not too similar to any episodes. ;)

Since I have so many book marks in this though, I won’t bother with telling you exactly why I like this novel so much because it’ll be evident in my commentary. (Which is completely out of order.)

( And so I start )

And... that's it. Late I know but I'll post up the choir boy YATN installment next.

Usually I find it amusing when I rather accidentally stumble across something. This time I'm just kind of staring at the screen.

Firstly, I started off browsing some webcomics. Khaos Komix (even though the art style is messy... damn the story is compelling) was my start point and I got waylaid by Honeydew Syndrome (gorgeous art) and ended up reading Incubus Tales. (Not Safe For Work At ALL.) Perhaps a few others as well, but none memorable enough to link.

Anyway, one comic that kept up popping up in the links section of these webcomics was Crowfeathers, which, after looking at a few pages, I decided was not for me and decided to look at the non-comic pages to see if there was anything interesting.
The about page was rather interesting and in the music section there were two songs I know, one I didn't and couldn't be bothered to look up and one that sounded familiar.
So I looked that one up, got a load of hits for Cyndi Lauper, went to the Wikipedia disambiguation page and found out it rang a bell because I had probably looked it up while browsing stuff about the Prom(menade)s and because it's a tune used in a work by one of my ancestors.

Not that I really paid much attention to what was written about The Beggar's Opera and how it seems to be a pivotal piece in musical theatre history and a work of satire.
John Gay seems very witty though, so perhaps I should take more of an interest in my ancestor and read some of his poetry.

Rambling aside, 'All through the Night' is a rather pretty tune, if predictable, and quite nice with lyrics as well if it isn't a chorus version.

( Music under here )

(I swear, some countries have INSTANTLY identifiable sounds in their music. Doesn't the above just SCREAM 'BRITISH ISLES!' at you? Or at the very least 'THE COMMONWEALTH!'? I mean, I thought it was just New Zealand mainstream pop that it happened with, but apparently not...)

Also, I've also surmised, by virtue of jumping around to Discworld to check on the new TV adaption and then jumping to Neverwhere, that series like Midsomer Murders and Silent Witness and all sorts of those running serials are the life blood of British actors.
And I shouldn't get all excited because of the very same reason that one actor has appeared in Neverwhere, The Vicar of Dibley, My Family, Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders, Waking the Dead, Doctor Who and Torchwood. Because most of those roles were for only one episode.

http://jacobella.com/

What it is a site for those dorky baby/pet print sets. However, that has to be one of the most unfortunate website name/website design combination I have ever come across. (The site owner gives a little blurb about why it's named 'jacobella' but really, the name and header had me going D: for a moment as to why a Twilight-related site was linked to in a fairly serious craft blog.)


Anyway... I passed my assessment on Monday. 84% or so. So yay!
Next week is fairly messed up schedule wise though. Two days 2:00pm to 8:00pm and two days 8:00am to 2:00pm.
Then the week after that is a mixture of production kitchen and front of house. Fun.


In slightly more exciting news, Neil Gaiman is coming to New Zealand!
TO WELLINGTON!
Here's the link to the event details.
I shall have to see if I can make it at all, but either way, I'm still excited a FAVOURITE author is coming to New Zealand, to WELLINGTON even.

In yet more fandom related news, I'm right now composing a enquiry feedback form thing for TVNZ as they still haven't aired Torchwood: CoE three months after it's airdate in the UK and about seven months after they said they would when I sent my first feedback form to them.

( This is my query... and I'll let you know when I get a response. )

( Yes, I know I am being rather persistent in hounding them... )

Assessment tomorrow. Thus, I need you to wish me luck.
It's my final assessment for this part of the course... it's at eight tomorrow morning.

Two salads; one compound, one simple. Two sandwiches; one cold, one hot. Two types of canapes; 3 with toasted bases and 3 with pumpernickel bases.
And somewhere we need to use the microwave.

Possibly. The tutor taking us does not like the microwave.

ARGH.
*flails and panics*

So. Not dead. Nor a zombie, but hey, it's Halloween and I thought it'd be fun to use that as a subject title.
I've just been very, very busy.

This weekend is, thankfully, mostly free, but the second weekend of October was my birthday, the weekend after that was DubDub's birthday party and the weekend after that was my mum's.

Couple with the fact this week I had my first proper driving lesson, that MONDAY is the last assessment for the diploma part of my course (and yeah... we need to do a lot. INCLUDING CANAPES, the most fiddly thing ever. Even if they are pretty.)

Uh... I also have some other things hanging over my head, like correspondance work that I should be doing and finishing and putting up fic and... just writing in general; sewing, although it's mostly altering, not crafty stuff :(
I should also make some ginger choc chip cookies sometime again.
A couple more birthdays coming up too...

Why does life have to be so full? *is doing displacement activities with Facebook games and crossover fanfiction*

( Which reminds me, I found some gems of crossovers and regular non-crossovered fanfiction! )

Also, I have new pyjamas (I do not look good in pyjama SHORTS but eee, new pyjamas!) and have Unseen Academicals and the new Audrey Niffenegger book to read. *is excited*
Oh and there may be a few secrets popping up on fandom_secrets that are very obviously me. If you pay attention to these entries that is.

So... Neil Gaiman tweeted about this BBC Audiobooks America (I was all "Bebecaw-what?" for a moment before I realised it was BBC America. Which I find odd in itself, because America was all "Noooo! They be taking away our libertiez!" three hundred or so years ago but now some are going "Fuck yeah! Britain!" and slurping the culture up.) round-robin audiobook writing thing on Twitter. Not interested as I live on the other side of the world and thus TIME ZONES are my enemy, but I found it amusing I went 'Fuck no' at the Torchwood radio plays in the sidebar but went 'Oooh! Shiny' at the H2G2 one.

Unfortunately, I then looked over at my flist and saw a Bya/Ren fic being posted to at least three comms I follow and the Torchwood!No and Bleach slash combined and Renji's now bothering Ianto while Jack is befuddled by this person who is wholly focused on their paperwork and is TOTALLY SILENT AND IGNORING THE RENJI.

Slightly better than zombie pastry chefs but hey.

So, teachingbooks.net has this section on author name pronunciation. Neil Gaiman links to it occasionally, presumably because people always pronounce his name wrong. He linked to it again today, which is why I ended up going through their extensive list and clicking on all the authors I knew/authors who had interesting names. Some authors have some very interesting stories, some have vaugely embarrassing ones. Some are downright hilarious.

Like this one.

...Wynne-Jones is a hyphenated name. That means there's a little DASH between the Wynne and the Jones. That's because the Welsh people have very few names. There's just Wynne, and Jones, and Gwyn and about three others. So they add them together and make Wynne-Jones and Gwyn-Jones and Wynne-Evans and Evan-Jones and... like that.

But it's hilarious because the CHINESE are totally doing this too, having only a pool of about 16 last names (which makes for a VERY confusing phone book) so they've decided that it's okay to hyphenate names.

And a few other places with very small pools of last names and all the people who decide that both partners will take each other's name when they get married.

I'm so glad my last entry made everyone smile.
But bleck, tomorrow is back in the kitchen after a week out of it, we had a four day weekend because it turns out they didn't need Thursday as much as the other days to teach us about costing.
AND I'm going to see the World of Wearable arts tonight, which will be fun and astounding and great experience but... I hate it when my life is full like this.

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

I am made of many people, of many things, of tiny shards that make me who I am. I am so much greater than the sum of those fragments, yet those who are a part of me are even greater than I am.

So thank you everyone, everything, that I love and have made a little part of me. Thank you, even if it has hurt, even if we have forgotten each other.

I've been feeling this sentiment all day, and over all 'the whole world is wonderful' even though it's been rainy and I've just been blobbing and doing nothing much.

*hugs* I love you all.

Wait.

( THERE BE SPOILERS )

*sobs* Tsubasa and HOLiC are finishing... Tsubasa very soon and HOLiC by the end of the year...
It's the end of an era. They're my first and second manga series that I've read and kept up to date with that are now FINISHING. (FMA doesn't count, really, as I'm about 15 chapters behind currently and probably won't catch up until it's finished.)

I may possibly be more broken up about the fact they're finishing than say, Yuuko and Watanuki's decision.

Also, this week's Bleach? Those wolves look AWESOME.
And Starrk is breaking my heart with that gorgeous face of his. Yay for begining to like a character just as he gets stabbed!

ETA: Watanuki's glare-y face? The hottest thing ever. Even more so than that semi-stoned colour picture. (Which, now, looking back on it, seems really relevant to current circumstances...)

So, we have about twelve tutors for my course. We do have a tutor assigned as our group tutor, but so far that seems to mean that we get them even less often than anyone else.
And so far, we’ve only had around eight of them in the kitchen and in theory. Maybe. It’s trouble enough keeping track of them and I can only remember my three favourites and my group’s tutor. It doesn’t help about five of them are from England, three from Scotland and I have no idea where the other four are from. ACCENTS MEAN NOTHING.
But I’m getting off track.

Monday was our first day back in kitchen after three weeks of theory. We got a shiny new tutor. Who is almost literally shiny. He likes pots being clean after we use them. (We spent half an hour in clean up scrubbing black gunge off the pans…)
He’s also the ‘truffle tree guy’, one of the few non-British tutors (a New Zealander actually :o), one of the tutors who wears one of the stick-y up paper hats because it makes them look taller and who also bears a resemblance to James Marsters.

Well, not exactly. The cheekbones aren’t painful to look at and there’s something off with the forehead/cheekbone ratio that if you actually pay attention means there’s only a little resemblance. But still, the resemblance is there and I lol at it. Because, you know. It’s hard not to when one of your cooking tutors looks like a pop culture actor.
He is also named Trevor.


( By the way, our theory classes are still teaching us how to cook humans. )

( Although I find it slightly annoying that we're being taught classical French cookery yet TOMATOES feature prominently... )


( DRAGONS. )

( Here, have some completely unrelated sketches and doodles I've been doing in theory. )

Yes, the fact that it’s the first book in a series is important. Otherwise, if you read through and finish it like I did without knowing that fact, you may feel inclined to be annoyed at the book for having too much back story, character building and world building and not enough plot.
Because that is what a good six sevenths of this book is, world and character building. Okay, the AU colonial America setting (with magic!) is shiny and definitely interesting and the characters aren’t half cool either but I wouldn’t have been fretting over whether plot was going to show up in the next couple of pages if the ‘book one’ had been plastered a bit more over the book. (It only appears on the spine and the title page, not on the cover or blurb.)
If it weren’t for the fact the writing was very comfortable to read (and feels like home) and that the magic system was very interesting, I may have chucked the book once I had gotten halfway through. Which would’ve been only a couple of hours after I picked it up, because reading it was very fun and the pages flew past. (Although some of the flying was in anticipation of plot…)

And so, I’ve done my whinging about there wasn’t enough plot and the pacing wasn’t what I was expecting and I can talk a bit more about what it’s about. So, possible spoilers ahead, especially for those who want to read this.

( Not that there's much of them... )

That shouldcover it. No, seriously, most of the book is world building and if I did go any further, it'd be boring and way too spoilery.
It was a fun read, except keep in mind it’s the first book in a series and the pacing won’t disappoint you too much.

This is one hell of a weird novelisation. And another one that should probably be shelved in the “not canon” part of Torchwood media. Because, basically, it’s Adam 1.0. There’s a mysterious sixth member of the team who apparently has been there since forever and we play along with that until it’s revealed that he’s actually an alien.
Except there’s not retcon at the end and there isn’t any Jack!angst or goggleboy!flashbacks. Except there is a temporary split up between Gwen and Rhys and kind of makes it seem she really sleeps around in the first season if you do shelve this under “canon Torchwood media”.
Also, there were several odd phrasings that totally threw me off. Or maybe it was poor characterisation. IDK, especially as there was one scene where Ianto was playing basketball with Owen. Which is pretty blink, what? As is Tosh accompanying Jack on most of the excursions.

Not to speak of the other plot threads either. I know a lot of shows like using rather contrived Chekov’s guns, but… the two big alien tech threads have very little to do with the greater plot aside from ‘oh noes, the team is in danger!’. Then the plot thread that did relate to the main one was rather weak. Although it was kind of fun pointing and shouting loudly when very obvious hints were dropped.
But er, anyway, comments on little bits that happened in the book which I haven’t already mentioned.

( It’s set pre-Cyberwoman, so Jack’s all srz, which is kind of painful, yet hilarious. )