Chocolate Coated Crochet Hooks

So,
My parents go to this conference, and my little brother signs a paper saying he's the babysitter so my parents can get reimbursed for what they payed him. They didn't even ask me, because I detest babysitting and would have charged $10/hour/child. What this babysitting arrangement basically ends up meaning is that for three days, if the children are going to eat, I have to cook. If the children are fighting, I have to discipline. If the children are dirty, I have to make sure they clean themselves. If it's late at night, I have to make the children put on their jammies and go to bed... while the official babysitter-man goes out with his friends.
I wouldn't have bothered covering for him if the children had been a few years older and capable of caring for themselves, but they are not. They would probably have eaten a block of cheese (and nothing else), stayed up to all hours, and greeted the parents when they got home with faces blackened with dirt and bruises from beating on each other, the house torn into shreds just in time for the gajillions of guests who are around this Sunday.
To pay me for being so good and taking care of things even though I didn't agree to, my parents bought me five new skeins of yarn, four of which are colors I already have. I'm not sure why, maybe they thought to the projects I've done and figured I would need more of the same colors I already use?
But now what do I do? I really appreciate the gesture. I like yarn. I'm just not sure if they will be offended if I ask for the receipt and exchange the four duplicate skeins with colors I don't already have.
I have a feeling they will be, but DANGIT, I really want to get some use out of my reward for caring for their vile spawn for three days.

It's been a while, a productive while, since I posted. I have a backlog of blog.
So here goes.
Let's start with something cute. The alien family. They came to earth to explore it's rich viral biodiversity with some friends they are expecting to arrive any day. They chose to stay in my town because it's high in the mountains and their beacon equipment will more easily guide their friends in, then they plan to travel to the New York City underground, and the polar ice caps to observe viruses in action.
... it takes all kinds, I guess.

Exploringaliens

Schoolgirl

Let's clean that out of our mouths with the infamous BLUE MONKEY! yes, I finished it! And it's cute.

Blue Monkey of DOOM

I also made a baby, with three blankets and a bottle, for my little cousin.

SlugBaby

My alien family's friends showed up, and they were amused to pose for a picture taken with my quaint little camera. I thought their pet, picked up on a planet on the way, was very cute.

PurpleFamily

Purpleportrair

Jordan

5 comments

This is Jordan. I have been working on her for about a month, off and on. Just the other day I bought the blond yarn for her hair and her ribbons and was able to finish her. She is about 10 1/2" tall, and stands easily on her own two feet. I think the weight of her skirt helps balance her evenly, right now she's on top of the piano, observing everything out of her gorgeous eyes, courtesy of Suncatcher Eyes.
She was made without a pattern, I just eyeballed everything.

Posted Soon: Mother's day Sweater, Jake (ami)
In Progress: the infamous Blue Monkey
On my Mind: School-girl Ami with pigtails

Doesn't mean it's going to be cute

DSCF0460

So,
Here are a few things I should have posted a while ago. First is the black dress I crocheted weeks ago, the first picture is it in the March 08' Crochet! magazine, the second is how it turned out. The lacy skirt part is much much shorter than in the picture, I don't know why.

The second object is a key chain I made for my Mother, she kept loosing her key for work, so I made her a fish to keep hold of it for her.
It took me just a few hours to make the fish from scrap yarn, it was a fun little project.

Now, back to the endless sweater-crocheting. I'll never get that thing done.

DSCF0435

This is Sylvia, before we cleaned her. You can click on her picture to see her bigger.
We cleaned roughly a bushel of organic matter and dirt out of her casing, (the man who collected her died 11 years ago, and who knows how long he'd had her out laying under a cedar tree), but she runs.
My Sylvia purrs, she hums, she sings.
The wires of the whisk we found for her are rusted, but the attachment is fine. I think it would be possible to take the whisk part off and get someone to weld a dough hook to it, which I would probably have to design myself because the bowl is narrower and deeper than other (more modern) mixers.
There are other problems too, if you have ever used a similar mixer you know that there's a lever on the other side that lifts the bowl, it was stuck, so we pulled Sylvia's lid off, only to discover that the lever's mechanism hits the motor on the way up and down. Clearly something is wrong, but we don't know how to fix that problem without making the entire machine stop working.
What I wouldn't give for an instruction or repair manual for my Sylvia.

So, I got a mixer, a big one.
Made in '64 by Triumph, she has only one bowl and the flat beater, her dough hook is missing. I didn't think that was a big deal until I tried to find a replacement online and realized that pieces for this kind of mixer don't exist anymore.
I don't even know if she works anymore, she's been out in the weather for a couple years and her chord is all rotted but she isn't rusted, she looks like she's built to last.
Having this mixer makes as many problems as it solves.

Before I got this Baker opportunity, The plan was that he would find a job in California and I would come live with him. He stopped applying to California so he could be with me when I got this opportunity, but then he was hired to an excellent job he'd applied to before.
Decision.
Is it more important to me to follow my years-long dream of owning a bakery, or to be with him?
Do I have the resources to make this bakery work without his help?
Will I survive not seeing him at all this year? Will I be able to continue functioning?
I have been trying so hard the last few months, but I'm starting to break down. My family is wonderful, but they have never known and understood me the way he has. They cannot fulfill me the way he can.
I WANT to do this bakery. I NEED to be with him.

Bread Mixer, ecuador

Last Sunday, my plans for the summer fell into my lap. I will be baking bread and selling it near Bryce Canyon, UT.
If I can get a bread mixer.
I didn't think it was going to be a big deal, but then I realized the industrial-sized bread mixers cost from $1000-$9000, with shipping costing between $400-$1500, which is a problem because I'm broke, and my business partner Livi is broke, and the little brother I'm going to borrow cash from only has a thousand dollars.
I was complaining of such to my big brother William, when he recalled a home-made trough dough mixer he saw in Ecuador when we were children. He even remembered that my father had drawn a sketch of it in his notebook, which is more than my father remembered. So we went looking through his piles of 20 years worth of pocket notebooks, seeking out the late-90s ones and flipping through them in search of a bread mixer sketch.
see image at (upper) right, click to make bigger ------->
My father says he must have expected to remember what the thing looked like, because he isn't sure how it all goes together from the drawing, but my brother William thinks he could make it.
It would cost a lot to have made if we bought all the parts new, but if we salvage most of the parts we would only have to buy the stainless steel sheeting for the trough, and the stainless steel welding-stuff. My father already has a 1hp motor laying around, so this thing might work and only cost a few hundred $, plus labor.
I was trying to find some plans for a homemade bread dough mixer online, but it seems that the sort of people who make a homemade bread mixer aren't the sort of people who put things online. However, if I do end up having a homemade industrial bread mixer, I will put it online so nobody else need suffer from lack of directions.

I was missing you, and I googled your pseudonym, and I found your livejournal, and I cried.
I hope that isnt creepy.
I wish I knew why you wont write to me anymore. I can guess though.
I know I hurt you.
I wish I had been in a position to be with you. We were well matched.
I still miss you, your unusual humor, talking about books, singing, wantonly slashing movie and book characters.
I hope you know that you are the most beautiful woman I ever met.
You are one of the best friends I ever had, and I'm sorry I started what could only end badly.
I loved you, and I miss you.
Please talk to me. Even if you tell me you never want to hear from me again, I would rather hear that than nothing.
-Hanna