Smok

 Last week I started and (kind of) finished this lovely dragon from Lucy Ravenscar's blog
 I found her previous free dragon on craftster last year but I frogged the project because I chose cotton and somehow the body was little and the legs were huge :/, so this year I saw she updated the pattern so I gave it a try... and here he is, still eyeless/earless... for some reason I just don't get how to finish the ears, it looks so simple but I think I'm just over thinking the deal.
 I decided to crochet claws instead of embroidering, I think it gaves the leg more balance. I looked up images of dragon's legs and images of other's people dragon designs, but they are either embroidered, too complicated or for sale so, not what I'm looking for now lol.
 I just somehow repeated the spike pattern in a smaller size, it doesn't look like... dragon claws, more like duck feet but oh well, everything cannot look always real (I actually have a ... problem with this, I should crochet a pink elephant or a purple pig with wings to get a bit out of my "realistic box" :p)

 

 Anyways back to the claws, I did this:

Hope this make sense. 
I found the middle st (where I wanted the bigger claw to be) in the 3rd row of the leg, and in the 3rd st to the right I worked:
Small claw: {ch 2, sc into 2nd ch from hook, ss into next base st},
Bigger claw: {ch 3, sc into 2nd ch from hook, hdc into 3rd ch from hook, skip a base st (middle st), ss in next base st},
And again small claw: {ch 2, sc into 2nd ch from hook, ss into next base st and fo}

I worked with a 5mm hook to make the claws of the back legs (same I used to crochet the whole thing, body, wings, etc) and changed to a 3 mm hook to make the claws of the front legs.

I like how they look now, I think the dragon looks cuter with these claws, and of course it will be cuter with ears and eyes :p

{scratch my belly, please :3}

Empanadas

Resulta que quedo de hace unas semanas en el congelador una bandeja con 4 bifes de cuadril enormes, y con mi hermano ayer no teniamos ganas de comer carne al plato asi que... salieron las empanadas cortadas a cuchillo! // I happened to have a few steaks on the freezer and my brother and I didn't feel like, eating plain steak(?) so we just decided to make empanadas which turns out to be very simple.

• Mi hermano se encargo de descongelar y cortar la carne en cubitos, corto dos cebollas  y puso todo en una olla a cocinar junto con una pizca de una especia que nos encanta: Garam Masala. // My brother diced the meat and two onions and put them to cook in a pot together with a little pinch of our favorite spice: Garam Masala.
• Cuando estaba todo cocido y enfriandose, puse agua a hervir, cuando hirviò , puse dos huevos (y me quede un poco corta al final) y espere que hirvieran 10 minutos, los pele y corte en cubitos. // When the meat and onions were cooked and cooling (it's very important that the stuffing is cold to .. stuff) I put water to boil, and once it boiled, I put two eggs to cook for 10 minutes then I peeled and diced them.
• Despues a armar las empanadas con un poco de carne (estaba cortada muy grande pero bueno), huevo, a hacer el repulgue, pintar con huevo batido, y al horno! // Then I put a bit of the stuffing in the dough along with a piece of egg, folded the dough, closed it, painted with beaten egg (beaten? lol) and then I just put the empanadas in the oven to cook.

No salieron jugosas como las verdaderas empanadas cortadas a cuchillo porque la carne no tenia grasa, igual salieron ricas, aunque tenia un poquito de mas la especia que es un poco invasiva, tiene mucho perfume.

Why is Monday so hard in Polish?

 I'll probably never know the answer but I was stunned when I saw this on my new Spanish-Polish book:

Why?, the first day is supposed to be the easier one! lol


Latin: dies lunae
Spanish: lunes
Portuguese: segunda (well, this doesn't follow the Latin root but it does make sense with the following days; Tuesday= terça [which literally means "third"]; Wednesday = quarta [fourth]; Thursday = quinta [fifth] and so on.
French: lundi
Italian: lunedi
English: Monday
German: Montag
Polish: poniedziałek !!! :/ it'd not be so dramatic if the word moon wouldn't be so different księżyc.


Nie rozumiem, co znaczy?


Edit:  Now I know! thanks to Google Translate I started to check how to say Monday in other languages, tried Dutch and it's Maandag then Swedish and still German alike, Måndag then I thought about going east and it is then when I found out! Ponedelʹnik in Russian and then Slovak and Slovenian are similar, so this image of an old post came to mind, of course! i was looking at the wrong branch and now I know, days of the week in Polish come from Slavic!


 Anyways, I've been with some health problems lately that put me under the weather for a while... but I'm ok now just trying to get back to normal, at least I'm not feeling depressed anymore, so that's good.
  I've abandoned this blog and I'm not proud of it, but it wouldn't be fair if I write depressing stuff here, it's not my goal so, I'll try to keep posting stuff, I have done so many things related to crafting and stuff, I just have to take pics and organize them, all this time I've thought about posting them but I'm perfectionist (and also a procrastinator :woops:)


So if anyone is reading this, have a good jueves/Donnerstag/Thursday or Thor's day (nice!) or like Polish say: Czwartek!


Be happy.

Nice purples but I want GRAY

I had this design for a top for a while and finally I decided to make the pattern in the weekend, cut the pieces and the next step was to dye a couple of pieces of the garment, I had this sort of white cotton ribbon for a few years, it was part of another project that I'm still not sure about but anyway... I wanted to dye the ribbon gray... the color of the jersey fabric I had cut for the body... but oh surprise, the simple step become the hardest one, I didn't know dying gray was such a pain!

No tengo muchas ganas de traducir todo pero para hacerla mas corta, capaz que a alguien le sirva, estoy haciendo una remera con modal gris y quise agregarle unas tiras de puntilla de algodon, pero antes las tenia que teñir del mismo tono gris o parecido, un paso muy simple... pero no tanto, estos son los resultados:

Here is my experiment:

• In n°1 I dyed the ribbon with pearl gray dye... it became lilac.// La tira n° 1 esta teñina con anilina gris perla... se puso lila.
• In n°2 I dyed n°1 with the double of pearl gray dye... and it became purple, which is not a big loss because I happen to have almost the same tone in jersey fabric in my stash so a project with this purple ribbon may come up in the future.// A la n°2 le puse el doble de anilina gris perla y se puso violeta oscuro.
• In n°3, the camera can't take it well but it's lavender which I got mixing dark gray and black dye. // En la n°3 no se nota tanto por la camara pero teñi la tira con una mezcla de anilina gris oscuro y negro y me dio un color lavanda.
• N° 4 is tinted with black dye... turned dark purple... still purple. And I started to freak out, how is it possible that you get purple dyeing a white fabric with gray dye?!, so I looked it up on the mighty internet, and I found this and they are right, when I was washing one of the containers I saw some magenta tint in it, it made total sense, before looking it up I thought about adding yellow to the purples, but oh well, I went to buy green dye and tried again from scratch. // La n°4 está teñida con anilina negra... se puso violeta más oscuro que la tira n°2 y ahi es cuando ya no aguante más y me puse a buscar en internet la razon por la que cuando teñis algo de gris se pone lila, no encontre nada convincente en español pero encontré esto en inglés, basicamente hablan de que la anilina negra tiene tintes rojos y es por eso que se pone violeta la mezcla cuando se diluye y para opacar el rojo, se usa verde porque es el opuesto entonces empecé de cero de nuevo.
• 5 is a mix of pearl gray and nile green in equal parts, it turned out a really nice gray-greenish color, it wasn't total gray but I liked the tone. Before trying this, my gut told me my jersey fabric looked kinda green next to the purples for some reason. // La tira 5 está teñida con una mezcla de gris perla y verde nilo en cantidades iguales con poca agua, me gusto el color, un poco verde pero esta a tono de la tela que tengo.
• N°6 is n°4 dyed with the mix of n°5 and turned out to be less greenish. // La n°6 es un pedazo de la tira n°4 teñida con la mezcla del n°5 y el color fue un poco menos verdoso.
• And finally n°7 is n°5 dye mix but diluted in more water... water makes a big difference, so that's my tone, I let that strip in the dye half the time recommended so the final tone will be darker, I like the way it looks with the jersey, so the final strips are dyeing in that mix now and I will have to wait to see what happens. // Y por último la n°7 es la mezcla del n°5 pero diluida en más agua... yo ni sabia pero la cantidad de agua es muy importante, Ahora me doy cuenta que capaz que las primeras salieron violetas porque estaban muy diluidas las mezclas de anilina pero igual, me gusta este tono final aunque está muy claro porque no lo deje teñir mucho tiempo, el tono final va a ser más oscuro. Para finalizar, si tu gris queda violeta... agregale verde!

Conclusion: to get gray, add green!

The elasticity dilemma

ugh, I need a form.

And I found out they are cheap, well cheaper than I thought, it's what I spend in the supermarket every week... but I live far from where they are so the shipping almost double their price, ugh.