Sunday, October 31, 2010

Halloween 2010


Brains, witch broom cookies, chocolate spiders, and Halloween Pie!


This is my Halloween Decorations Table -- Jack, Creepy Tree, Eyeball, Coffin, and Fuzzy Bat get to enjoy the living room once a year.




All of these pictures are out of focus because I accidentally had the camera set on macro the entire weekend. Why I didn't think to check the setting after having significant trouble getting it to auto-focus, I don't know.



While shopping for something entirely different, I bought a brain mould. The first brain I made was marshmallow -- definitely the sturdier of the two. The second, gelatin like the mould's box suggested. In a regular climate, the gelatin brain would have survived longer. Both brains looked gross and awesome!



Halloween Pie was an orange-dyed milktart with a variety of candy and chocolate shapes. I bought a LOT of chocolate and candy moulds for Halloween, and only got to use a few. I did discover semi-sweet chocolate does not set the same way as candy melts or white chocolate, and cracked a mould getting one dark skull out.



Chocolate spiders started vanishing quickly:



I also tried to make bones out of meringue. As with all of my previous meringue experiments, they pretty much failed. The brain-bite cupcakes were a decent success, I think. I made half of them dirty pink and the other half greenish for zombie brains.



The bones didn't look too bad stacked up in a pile, but they were very difficult to pull off the parchment paper and most were gooey, not stiff. On the bottom right, the corner of the pretzels that became witch broom cookies. On the top left, brain mould box.



I also made pumpkin chili, which was delicious!



Happy Hauntings!
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Friday, October 8, 2010

Mischief the Fuzzbutt


Mischief the Fuzzbutt, a ferret memorial


A friend of mine lost one of her ferrets shortly after a move. I quickly located and purchased an awesome pattern for an amigurimi ferret from Planet June: Ferret Pattern. Eyelash yarn, or fuzzy yarn, is not as easy to find these days in all the colors of the rainbow (specifically, tan), so I acquired the body color from her mom in regular acrylic. After figuring out how to modify the pattern to look more like Mischief, I got to crocheting. Longer face, slightly longer body, and mostly blue eyes. My reference was my memory and one picture from Facebook. For my first amigurimi animal ever, I think Mischief turned out rather well =)

I have since discovered there is a brushing technique to get acrylic to look kind-of fuzzy. Might look into this in the near future.

Happy Fall!
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