It's the middle of July now and my garden is in full swing. (Though I did get started later than I wanted to since we had a snowstorm once a week from mid-March to the end of April. That's not typical of my climate.)
The first of my sunflowers are starting to bloom and I like the deep orange color of the petals. I seeded a number of different varieties of sunflower in that bed, along with marigolds for a ground cover. I hope to end up with a wall of sunflowers of a variety of different heights and colors. As a nice plus, the ground cover of marigolds I planted are not only very pretty, but they give this corner of the yard a very nice smell.
Watched tomatoes never ripen. Apparently.
The San Marzano seedlings I started last winter all died (I think they didn't get enough light), so I'm growing the Big Boy tomatoes that I bought from the grocery store instead.
I planted three vines, and have plenty of tomatoes growing, but nothing ripe yet. I have a feeling that in a couple of weeks, I'll have more tomatoes than I know what to do with.
In the bed...
Out of the bed...
... and in the yard. And still growing.
And squash ate my yard! This monster vine is a volunteer. I've got a few little squashes (squish?) growing on it so far, but I've gotten lots of squash blossoms off of it; they are very tasty stuffed with cream cheese and fried.
Other than some chilies in pots and some basil, that's pretty much it for this year. I've discovered from all of this that I really like gardening. Next year, I think I'll be nice to my friendly neighbourhood pollinators and plant a lot more flowers (and between my vegetables). Also planting climbing plants such as peas or cucumbers would be a good way to get more use out of my available space. Finally I'm not ready to give up on starting heirlooms from seeds and next year I want to try growing Cherokee Purple tomatoes and more San Marzanoes.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
The finished stuffed toad and Nikita (not stuffed).
After being inspired by a stuffed frog I saw on Pinterest, I made this toad.
First I drew a frog shaped template and traced that onto scraps of fabric left from my cat-bat project. I cut out two frog shaped pieces out, sewed them together and filled with rice. Add some buttons for eyes and stitch on some warts from left over fleece and it's all done.
And as you can see, it's been given the cat seal of approval!
What would you get if Ultraman was redone by in Hong Kong by the Shaw Brothers? You'd get Super Inframan of course!
When the evil Demon Princess breaks free from the center of the Earth where she had been imprisoned since the ice age, she immediately declares to the world her intention to conquer the Earth.
When she sends her demons and her army of Skeleton Men to attack the Science Headquarters (Yes, you read that right. It's a big metal dome with lots of blinking lights, exactly the kind of place you'd expect Kirk, Spock and McCoy to beam into along with an ill-fated red shirted ensign- in other words, it's a Science Headquarters), it falls to Rayma (played by Danny Lee) and the science patrol to stop them.
The Evil Demon Princess and her blond wig.
Now the Science Patrol may be motorcycle riding kung fu experts dressed in silver jumpsuits that would make Evel Knievel jealous, but these monster are just too much for them to handle. That's when their boss, Professor Liu Ying De breaks out his secret weapon: he transforms Rayma into the kung fu cyborg superhero, Inframan. As Inframan, Rayma wastes no time battling the Demon Princess's minions, starting with the Plant Monster and the Spider Monster.
The Professor goes boating with Drill Mutant and a skeleton man.
For a while Inframan seems to have the demons on the run. That is until they steal Inframan's blue prints and kidnap the Professor and his daughter in order to lure Inframan into a trap. Inframan and the Science patrol go the Demon Princess's lair for the final battle with her and her minions, but will they survive?
If you love Shaw Brothers movies and Superhero movies, find a copy of this movie and watch it. This movie is pure fun and has surprisingly good special effects for a low budget movie from the mid 70s that looks like a power ranger episode. If you need more convincing watch one of these clips:
So I found Typealyzer, site that analyzes a web page and attempts to predict their Myers-Briggs Type Indicator from the writing. It sounds fascinating to me so I thought I'd try it out on my blog.
I especially like the picture the site uses with the description:
While I do recognize some of those traits in myself, however the algorithm works it is going to be heavily influenced by content of the blog. In other words, I've written thus far mostly about cult movies and craft projects and in the process written the phrase "totally awesome" more often than any human being over 14 should be allowed to. If I wrote a bunch of articles about differential calculus or linguistics, I doubt the Typealyzer would assign the same type.
I would add that I did have a Myers-Briggs test administered to me about ten years ago. It came back ISFP, but I've lived a lot (and switched genders) since then, so I suppose it's plausible I'd score differently if I took a test again.
No, I haven't forgotten abandoned crafting in favor of inflicting my reviews of obscure movies on the world. In fact, I am up to my eyeballs in my current project:
Okay, it's not quite up to my eyeballs exactly, but still, I got of work ahead of me. I am making a rag rug from a stack of old clothes (and one full sized bed sheet) that were in too bad a shape to toss in the big yellow clothes donation box around the corner from my house.
So I cut my big pile of old clothes (and one full sized bed sheet) one inch wide strips and braided them into one long multicoloured rope. Then I took started to coil it into a strip and stitch it into a rug. Did I mention that I am hand stitching all this? Well, I am because I don't have a sewing machine.
That's what I've got so far, and it took most of a roll of thread to get that done. I'll do an update on this project when I this finished (it may take me a little while).
The Simians have returned and they still want Earth for their new home. Unfortunately, like the last time (Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla). Godzilla stands in their way. Their solution? They pose as human and put together a project to build a new Mechagodzilla with which to battle Godzilla (the previous one was destroyed by Godzilla, and the beginning of the movie has a recap of that battle).
Now, the more astute of you may be asking,"But that sounds kinda like their last evil world domination plot?" Apparently also recognizing this flaw in their plans, the Simian's leader, Mugal (Goro Mutusumi) enlists the help of mad scientist, Dr. Shinzo Mafune (Akihko Hirata) and his cyborg daughter, Katsura Mafune.
Dr Mafune has a normally peaceful giant aquatic dinosaur, the Titanosaurus, under his mind control. Dr Mafune shares the Simans' goal of destroying humanity and loans them the use of his Titanosaurus. Actually he seems to be more eager to destroy humanity than the Simians as he unleashes Titanosaurus on Yokosuka. And at this point we can ignore the actions of the non-kaiju characters and enjoy the carnage as Godzilla battles Mechagodzilla and the Titanosaurus in Yokosuka and the Japanese country side.
This movie was the last of Toho's Showa era Godzilla movies, they wouldn't make another one until 1984 when they rebooted the series with The Return of Godzilla. It was also the last movie directed by Ishiro Honda, who directed not only the original Godzilla in 1954, but a series of interesting tokusatsu films from the 50's through the 70's.
I'd recommend this movie to any Godzilla fan, and if you wanna see more in this vein, I'd suggest also watching Destroy All Monsters, and King Kong Escapes.
