This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

Damn, I was just going to go have wild irresponsible sex with everyone i could find.

Instead i shall admire the octopus :3

Awwwww <3

...*suddenly has a Jumpstart 5th Grade flashback*

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Hot dang schazer those are badass. What're they made of?

It's crochet! Like knitting, but with one single hook instead of two needles. The yarn's cheap and nasty orange chenille - it kind of looks like either really soft pipe cleaners or thinly-cut strips of old towel.

The sparkle comes from little bits of plastic interspersed through the yarn, which served to make the yarn utterly unsuitable for any sane person to make into clothing, but perfect for a little octopus. The eyes are olive-green safety eyes with an oval pupil. I rather like them, but would probably save them for special occasions/octopi.

All it needs is a name, now (actually, the dude on the right in this photo who I made forever ago also needs one). I will take Eagle Timer suggestions on that, methinks.

That is the best thing ever.

I don't understand crochet, i'd so steal my mom's yarn if i did.

Crochet is fun to learn if you have a patient teacher who doesn't mind you getting completely tangled in wool like i did last Saturday. Unfamiliar hand positions abound. D:

All i got names-wise is Squid Pro Quo :v

Bobtopus! Bobtopus!!

Stephan L'Pod.

He's french.

Crochet is fun to learn if you have a patient teacher who doesn't mind you getting completely tangled in wool like i did last Saturday. Unfamiliar hand positions abound. D:

Or you could be like me and just kind of wing it.

And then you end up making gloves as gorgeous and usable this one.



The fingers are like twice the length they should be, and most of them are also not wide enough.

I didn't even bother making the other one.


All in all it was good practice I guess...

Well yes I could do that. But I'm not really ready to lose most of my fingers due to obstructed blood flow at this point of my life.

Nameopuses:

Cal

Otto

Lord Squishypants

Lamar

Seth

Baron von Blop

Vanessa

Lady Vanessa Squishypants

Lord Gingerwiggles!

Random Number Gods decree that tealquoise is Lady Vanessa Squishypants, sparkly and orangulous is Lord Gingerwiggles.

Clearly I'm going to have an aristocracy theme throughout.

Also Epamy that glove is fabulous. I don't think there's a better adjective in my current vocabulary that better-describes it.

I keep telling you, Mike, meth consumption and culinary arts have next to no practical overlap!

Best way to melt gummy bears: impale them on a toothpick and hold them over a candle.

This is for individual consumption, of course.

Put a hook through a gummy worm

Cast into volcano

Also Epamy that glove is fabulous. I don't think there's a better adjective in my current vocabulary that better-describes it.

If you call the glove fabulous, I'd like to know what word you find to describe this lovely Finger Cover*.



According to the user's claims, it fits way better than the glove, and didn't take a single measurement! I'm not sure what that says about my measuring ability.

*Not actually designed to cover fingers.

Nice indescribable mass of yarn!

If you call the glove fabulous, I'd like to know what word you find to describe this lovely Finger Cover.

grape pride

That clearly has use as an aphrodisiac

Hang that shit on my rearview mirror and I'll wake up in the morning with the women from axe commercials hanging off my car

Why do you have your eyes blanked out when your face is in your avatar? Unless I'm wrong about that.

Why do you have your eyes blanked out when your face is in your avatar? Unless I'm wrong about that.

You are wrong about that

Those just a bitchin pair of shades

Wow, so that was a pretty fucking great school trip. We went up the coast about four hours to Kaikoura, which is a tourist hub for marine wildlife viewing/eating/etc because of a hugeass sea trench that comes rather close to New Zealand's coast. Tours to go and see whales and dolphins are a pretty big drawcard, but seeing as I was on a behavioural ecology trip I was studying seal behaviour.

The place itself is a pretty beautiful part of the country; the Pacific stretches out on one side, while steep, sizeable bush-covered slopes would've met them at the beach before a road and railway line were presumably dynamited out. The road itself hugs the coastline, goes through a few tunnels, and has periodic signs warning you that seals can shelter on the road during rough weather.

I was parked about thirty more minutes up the coast from Kaikoura township, at a reasonably large fur seal colony for seven-ish hours on Saturday. The weather was close to perfect, and it was breeding season so the coast was covered in pups. Popular consensus as to their appearance ranged from "fat otters" to "moles with flippers on" to "gangsters in sleeping bags". Some of the bigger male seal-dudes looked rather like bears, mostly because of the colour, size, little ears, and the stunning resemblance to a rock. The pups were reasonably agile on land (unlike "true seals", fur seals can flip their tailfins around so they're easier to walk on, like a sea lion does).

One fat bastard who was sleeping right beneath the observation point sat up maybe three times the entire day to have a scratch. He did not otherwise budge from his spot.

The best bit was Ohau Stream, a small river which opens up to the sea a short way up the coast from the Ohau Point colony. I'd heard that seal pups swim up the river and play at the foot of a waterfall upstream, but the one time I'd had a look a few years back I didn't have any luck. It must've been bad timing, because this time there were a dozen or pups splashing about in a pool at the very start of the track, with more further upstream. They don't appear to be doing this for survival reasons, either - they don't have any natural predators on their coastal colonies, and they still haven't been weaned at this time of year. Once pups have grown a bit, mother seals will head back out to see for longer periods of time, letting the pups wander the coast unattended. With no obvious parental prompting, they'll wander up this forested valley just for the hell of it.

I was chilling at aforementioned embankment for a while, slapping sandflies while watching the seals play with a yellow leaf I'd dropped upriver. They might've been about the right size to stuff in a sleeping bag case, maybe a bit smaller than that. One of them slid up onto the bank, waddled up to me, and had a good sniff of my shoe. Not a single fuck was given by any of them to the humans who watched them, and this one probably only stopped its frolicking about due to curiosity. Either that, or my shoe smelt good. I dunno.

I even managed to get some work done, have a significantly less-begrudging attitude toward New Zealand mammals, and now have another report to write up in addition to the three other things I've got due soon. I also had a good late night romp on the finest school playground to ever escape OSH censure, so all in all a pretty great way to spend a weekend.