Ars · sine · scienta · nihil · est

 Alrighty, here are some of the crafty bits that I did for the Claire and James farewell party. I started off by telling them to meet us in a secluded spot at Clark Kerr (one of the dorms at U.C. Berkeley, it used to be a hospital, I believe). When they showed up, they found a goat ready for sacrificing.

"Baaaaaah... don't huuuuuuuurt meeeeeeeeee."





He was made using this tutorial (vaguely), and I had to do it twice because the first time I waited too long between the first layer and the second, and the balloon shrank. :( It took about three days to complete, the last day being the day of the party, so I had to hastily set up a hair dryer to make everything dry faster.

Little did Claire and James know what awaited them.. but we did, so while I was finishing up the pinata, Rob and Jonathan constructed a "ceremonial robe" for them from garbage bags (very little help from me on that, and they did freaking awesome).

Here's Claire in it:





And James:


And,  of course, a ritual blinding was necessary (with a green scarf, naturally):


We didn't really wind up using it, but the sleeves had ties on them (i.e. they were constructed from the top of the garbage bag).

Aaaaaand finally, the sacrificing begins!


Wait.. wait.. what's this? Oh my god is that blood?!


Sadly, no, it's just red food coloring in water. We couldn't find any recipes for non-staining fake blood (in fact, we found some sites that said no such thing existed). That's when the idea for the sacrificial robe was hatched. :> It had pretty much the desired effect--including Claire (who was the first one to burst one of the little blood baggies) said "Augghh.. it's wet!"

The carcass also contained homemade butterscotch and homemade caramels, sealed in little ziploc baggies. Unfortunately, after we cleaned up the innards and took them home, we stupidly left them on the kitchen floor for the rest of the evening. Now there are two pink stains to commemorate the goat's death.

At home, there were many other delights in store. Dinner consisted of Formless Spawn Spaghetti (Claire and James are vegetarian, so there's not very much I can make for them). I made alfredo sauce and dyed it green. :> There were also Deep (Fried) Ones, which were just store-bought mozzarella sticks, since deep frying my own would have been a total pain in the arse. Dessert was a delicious chocolate cake in the shape of Cthulhu. It's the only real cake-shaping I've ever done, and I'm so proud of him. The tentacles were much more curvy before I frosted it, though. :/



The rest of the night consisted of punch drinking, a hastily created version of Do You Worship Cthulhu?, candles (both real and battery-powered), and a not-particularly-themed game of eight player Cranium. Sadly, the night was too short and we were a bit too sauced to play any Arkham Horror. I also wanted to try a "Pin the Tail on the Formless Spawn" game, but I ran out of time and didn't have paper large enough in the end.

Overall, I think it turned out pretty awesome, and the Cthulhu game was way more fun than it had any right to be.

 I forget that a lot of the things I do are kind of crafty, even if I don't think about it at the time. I haven't really been getting things from my list done, but I've been doing lots of other things. Claire and James have officially left Berkeley. :( They'll be in Santa Rosa (about 1.5 hours away) for a couple weeks, but we'll be lucky to see them once in that time. Of course, a going away party was completely necessary. Pictures to come soon; I need to cull the herd.

The day before the party, I frosted this cake. It was supposed to be a Fourth of July cake, but my marshmallow fondant came out retarded for some reason, so it had just been sitting in my nifty little cake holder. I finally gave up, whipped up a quick batch of incredibly delicious cream cheese frosting, and made this little baby while playing board games. Sadly, the picture doesn't do it justice. I wasn't planning on taking a picture until Claire insisted she wouldn't cut the cake until there was photographic evidence that it existed.. and of her looking insane with the giant knife.

Argh, I didn't get any good pictures of those dresses. I realized I only needed three outfits, so I wound up making the cards dress and two skirts--the crazy blue-green one and a pink one that I got fabric for last minute.

Buuuuut I do have some pictures of other things! James commented on a little crochet octopus I had sitting on my desk, so I said I could make him one. However, I thought the the cthulhu pattern found here might be more appealing to him. Of course, it was. :> So I made two, because I have a ridiculous amount of green yarn and I couldn't decide.

 
  

They are now happily sitting in their new home with Claire and James, soon to be off across the country. They are almost certainly the most difficult thing I've crocheted. The wings took me the longest to figure out, but once I did I was so proud. :>