cameraman, swing the focus, in case I lost my train of thought

This is both a lovely gesture for Hurricane Sandy victims, and a marvelously easy make-ahead holiday gift (since we are steadily closing in on Winter Solstice activities). The only thing I'll add--behind mentioning that the entire blog is a joy to read--is that this recipe can easily be made vegan-friendly.

How? By substituting flax seed for the egg. Bob's Red Mill, as well as many other health food stores, carries both whole flax seeds, and flax seed meal. If you're not sure you'll use that much flax seed meal before it goes rancid (ground meal lasts about a month, whole seeds keep around a year), then just get a package of whole flax seeds and a coffee or spice grinder. Grinders retail for anywhere between five and fifty dollars, overall, and trust me--a five-buck grinder will do just as good a job as a fifty-buck grinder.

Then just add one Tablespoon of ground flax to 3 Tablespoons of lukewarm water, stir, let sit for a minute or two, and you have a vegan egg. This will work for both recipes requiring whole eggs, and recipes requiring egg whites.

(Also, according to another blog, you can use ground flax to replace flour in baked goods, to lower the carb content. I did not know that.)

Another easy holiday craft--and this one's a favorite of my cousin, as it happens--is the tied, no-sewing-required, fleece blanket. What you'll need besides two large enough/long enough pieces of fleece? A ruler and sharp scissors.

No, really, that's it. Between 1 1/3 and 2 yards will make a baby-size quilt, or a lap quilt; go larger if you need to, the process is the same. I can assure you they're very warm (Miss Neome got given one two years ago; she still uses it, and occasionally I steal it from her and use it, so yes, warm and snuggly indeed!) and generally colorful, home-brightening gifts.

What else has crossed the dash this morning...Oh! Kickstarter things!

The Morbid Anatomy Anthology is now fully funded! Also, Lindsay Porter's felted 80's kitsch projects are now half-funded, with over a month to go. And--my personal favorite--the "tweedpunk" game, Sir, You Are Being Hunted is fully funded and will become a reality!

And Qarl Linden's mesh deformer project still needs makers of mesh objects to send him products for testing. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help him do this!

Also, found by random happenstance today, there's a certain web address that used to lead to a protest/petition site that sent signed petitions directly to the Lindens. Now, five years later, it's a Japanese site that seems to be selling crab online:

If such people send him the finest crab, etc. according to the special day, you will be more special day that day.
If you use the mail order of crab, the Internet You are a good idea.
By using the Internet, it is possible to examine a lot of delicious crab can be.

But, being as it's badly translated from Japanese, it's hard to tell.

Reuters today noted an intense drop in stock prices for NCSoft. They went from ₩213,000.00 to ₩174,000.00, a loss of ₩7,500.00, or 4% of their total profits. Gosh, maybe they shouldn't have cut down City of Heroes where it stood. They might have been better off.

...Jerks.