The Green Lady

*blows off the dust*

Wow, it's been a while. I need to come back here more often.

So, I'm deciding which buttons to retire, and what to replace them with.

Today, I will press more new buttons and redo parts of my display. The old buttons will either go into multi-packs based on series or theme, or else into my "treasure chest of savings" (the bargain box).

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Gearing up for my next round of cons by making more dice jewelry. As of today, I've made 19 new pendants and 8 new pairs of earrings. Woof!

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Gingerbread Scones
(from Simply Scones by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright)

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground ginger
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup unsalted butter, chilled
1 large egg
3 tablespoons molasses
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup golden raisins (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375̊ F. Lightly butter a 10-inch diameter circle in the center of a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and salt. Cut the butter into ½ inch cubes and distribute the cubes over the flour mixture. With a pastry blender or two knives used scissors fashion, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In a small bowl, stir together the egg, molasses, milk and vanilla extract. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine. The dough will be sticky. Stir in the raisins, if using.

With lightly floured hands, pat the dough into an 8 inch diameter circle in the center of the prepared baking sheet. With a serrated knife, cut into eight wedges. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the baking sheet to a wire rack and cool for five minutes. Using a spatula, remove the scones to a wire rack to cool. Recut into wedges if necessary. Serve warm, or store the scones in an airtight container at room temperature.

Variations:

Add more ginger to taste (I found the recipe as written a little “meh,” so I doubled the ginger in the second batch).

Instead of cutting the scones into wedges, line the baking sheet with foil and drop lumps of the dough onto it with a ⅓ measuring cup; this yields about 8 “cookie-shaped” scones. Bake as directed above, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a scone comes out clean.

Add more dried fruit than just the raisins. I added diced dried pears and diced dried apricots to the second batch I made.

Cosplay Snow Festival was awesome! I had a wonderful time and made quite a bit of money besides! I definitely want to come back next year!

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I'm starting a journal for my small business, Black Unicorn Wood. This journal will detail my experiences making and selling geeky accessories at pop-culture conventions.

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*blows off the dust*

I've been preparing for RyuKon (Buffalo, NY) this weekend, Matsuricon (Columbus, OH) next month, and Midoricon (near Toledo, OH) and Queen City Conquest (Buffalo, NY) in September.

I've also discovered a new medium in the form of epoxy resin. I think my technique has improved since I started this - I now have some salable pieces. I've also found a group of like-minded individuals on FB with whom I can share my work and ask questions about it.

C and I are getting ready to attend Otakon (Baltimore, MD) next month. I also have a panel on the schedule for the very first time!

Both the two- and four-legged members of the household are doing well, too.

This past Sunday, March 9, my father lost his battle with lymphoma.

I am sad to have lost him, of course, but also relieved that he is no longer struggling with the disease. I also think he was happy to have gone at home, in his own bedroom, instead of in hospital.

The folks at hospice have been wonderful through all this; they were very compassionate and took great care of him. Thank you to the members of the team - Barbara, Adela, Michelle and Derek. You helped all of us very much.

A side note - Sunday would have been my paternal grandmother's 100th birthday.

On a personal level, in a sort of roundabout way, my father was the inspiration for my small business. He introduced me to Star Trek (the original series, natch) when I was small, took me and my sister to our first viewings of a number of science fiction films (I still remember him asking us "Do you want to go to the past or the future?" on one summer afternoon - it turned out he would have taken us to see either Raiders of the Lost Ark or the then-current Trek movie. We chose Raiders, btw), and took us to our very first convention (a one-day event in Niagara Falls, NY). Now, years later, here I am selling at sci-fi and anime conventions. Thanks, Dad. :)

"I will not say goodbye. Instead, I'll say Sayonara. For sayonara doesn't mean goodbye; it means we'll meet again, sometime, somewhere." -my father.

After more than a year of just wanting kibble, Kerrigan has decided she likes canned food again. This is a good thing, because Dr. H wants her to have it more often.

C and I are theorizing that they may have changed the formulation of the liquid calcitriol; we were mixing that into her food when she decided she didn't like the "gooshyfood." Now that she gets her calcitriol as a treat, she apparently enjoys the "unadulterated" canned food.

We've been supplementing her dry with a heaping teaspoon of canned, and she's been happily chowing down on it. Yesterday, she didn't want to eat much dry, but devoured the canned in record time.

On the advice of lostsatyr, I've begun using some of the myriad "cute kitty" pictures I've taken over the years, paired with witty captions, on buttons.

So I have a new line, and people get to look at cute pictures of my cats. What's not to like? :)