Tag Archives: hiiiiii!

good life choices, hey world. here i am., more for mer!, twitter

In which you’re seeing too much of the intern, and cuddly Cthulhus!

more for mer!Hi. It’s the intern. Again. So, I’m pretty much a fixture here.

Yay for that.

Anyways, in 10 days, it’ll be Mer’s birthday! Whee! Plan your celebrations, guys, because when Mer birthdays, she birthdays HARD. With that, I must introduce another crafter extraordinaire, who is near and dear to my heart. Her name is Ruth. She makes crocheted Cthulhus, at her site, Cthulhu Chick.

Banner links to her Etsy page.

What is a Cthulhu, you may ask? According to HP Lovecraft, its creator, in the 1928 horror story The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu is “represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”

Ick. Often drawn something like this.

Ick.

But! When Ruth makes them?

They

Are

Freakin' Adorable!!!

I know what you’re thinking. Yes. They are the cutest thing that you will ever see. And not only are they this cute, but they are snuggly and awesome, too! I should know – I have one.

This is my Cthulhu. His name is Zane. He is as awesome as you think he is.

So now that you’ve seen what she does, this presents a prime opportunity for her to introduce herself to you. This is what Ruth has to say for herself.

The Master of Cthulhus herself.

Hi, I’m Ruth! I’m 25, studying for a Master’s in Library and Information Science with an undergraduate degree in English Literature. I’ve been working in libraries since I was 16 and I read an awful lot.

I’ve been crafting in some form or another since I was 6 or 7 and my mom introduced me to crocheting. I wasn’t very good at it until I got older. In fact, I rarely crocheted until the last year or so.

Then in 2009 I went on a Neil Gaiman kick.

I realized that to understand some of what Neil had written, I should really get around to reading Lovecraft. I knew a little bit about Lovecraft & Cthulhu before, but hadn’t really studied it. Fortunately, a few months before I decided to do this, Chris Lackey & Chad Fife had started the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast.

I read most of the stories on my own, but I then discovered and listened to the podcast. It’s helped me read the less appetizing stories (Lovecraft wasn’t exactly the best writer ever and also wrote some disturbingly racist stuff) and formed a general sense of camaraderie.

What got me started on the Cthulhus was wanting a plush Cthulhu. Some people in my family, including me, have a mental issue where we can’t touch velvet/plush/corduroy/etc without our brains freaking out (think fingernails on a chalkboard). So I had to find an alternative and ran across the crocheting pattern. I bought a few eyes, made a couple for me, started giving them to friends… then I got hooked, and eventually started selling them.

After that, she went into detail about the process of Cthulhu-crafting, what I imagined to be a long and arduous process, fraught with misadventure and sanity-bending turmoil. Turns out? Not so much.

I make several varieties of Cthulhu, but in my mind I divide them into 2 categories – commission & regular. They normally get done the same way, but I always preempt regular Cthulhus (to be listed when they’re done) with commissions.

I normally work on Cthulhus:

1) In the morning on my commute when I get a seat on the train

2) At lunch after I’ve eaten

3) On my commute home

4) While watching tv or reading or listening to audiobooks in the evening

5) In the car when I’m not driving.

I have various versions of my Cthulhu-kit I’ll pack… the bag with eyes, a bag with stuffing if I think I’ll get to that point, & my scissors, of course.

Cthulhu-crafting actually sounds pretty fun.
And then, since it is a tradition, I asked Ruth a bunch of nonsense questions, and hey! She even answered some.
—
Who *is* on first?

I thought Who was on second….

How many licks does it take to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop?

British spelling, eh? As for how many licks, I’m like Cthulhu… when the stars are right I just gobble the whole thing down.

Why is a duck when it’s spinning?

What do I look like, a typewriter?

Favorite dinosaur?

Well, since Cthulhu & Shub-Niggurath are actually more like aliens than dinosaurs, so I’m going to go with apatosaurus. I thought it’d be cool to ride one.

Favorite superpower?

As a librarian-in-training I’d rather like to know everything, be my own Adbul Al-Hazred (“all has read”) — Lovecraft’s fictitious writer of the fabled Necronomicon — but now I’ve learned that all one has to know is how to find everything. So I’d go with the ability to… ugh, either  to be invisible or to step outside time, I’m not sure which is more useful. I just think it’d be nice to be able to have a break now & then.

What is your opinion on Nathan Fillion?

Mal Reynolds is my captain. And Edward James Olmos is my admiral.

Everyone loves Nathan Fillion. It’s a fact.

In case you missed the links earlier, here they are

Ruth as Cthulhuchick’s Twitter

Ruth as Cthulhuchick’s Website

Ruth as Cthulhuchick’s Etsy

And finally…

Neil Gaiman, author of books such as Coraline and American Gods, Amanda Palmer, of the Dresden Dolls, and one of Ruth's Cthulhus.

Ruth is amazing; buy her Cthulhus.

Until next time.

Standard
hey world. here i am., twitter, Uncategorized

In which Meredith is lazy and her intern kind of panics.

Hello, all you happy peppy people of Mer’s readership! It’s me, Mer’s intern. I’m back… don’t be mad. I’m entertaining too. I’m from Canada, it’s a given.

As you probably know, Mer has been covered in headaches for almost a full month now. As of the last week, she’s also been doped out of her skull on painkillers. And while you might be congratulating her, NO. Don’t. It, from what I can tell through her barely concious rambles, sucks harder than a vacuum cleaner attached to a black hole. She is not enjoying it. But I’m not ashamed to say that I am.

First of all, this cocktail of narcotics has reduced Mer’s long-term memory to zero. This has given me psychic powers, pertaining to Gatorade flavours(orange, in case you wanted to send her some), topics of future blogs, and her reccomended dosage. I am like unto a god to doped-up Mer, what with the mind-reading and the future-knowing.

Second of all, her voice goes up by at least an octave, and she loses the ability to type words. As we know from countless televisions shows and, in some cases, our drunken uncles (drunkles?), incoherence is funny. So that’s #2.

Anyways, Mer and I were talking. Actually, I can show you exactly what slightly-doped-up-Mer looks like. Here:

Mer: apparently
today’s outing
took way more energy than i thought
went to macy’s with kazz
90 minutes, maybe
so much loud and smelly and bright and talking and owwwwww
but!
did it!
am proud!
verrrr silly thing to be proud of
me: yay
it is cool
Mer: but am now so full of pineappole and meds
going back to sleep
She sleeps a lot now. Lazy-head. Anyways, minute(s) later:
Mer: wait
just realized
is another night
want to post?
me: me?
Mer: yes
me: …yes.
Mer: the floor is alllll yours, babe
I was trapped, kind of.
This tiny conversation led me to this. This post thing. I’m really hoping that I don’t have to do this often. I can feel Mer’s viewership going down.
For those of you who read to the end of this barely structured… thing, I’m really hoping you stick around, because I’m almost done, and this was not good.
…escape!
Standard
I thought this was supposed to be easy?, not about my hair, twitter, Uncategorized

In which *I* take over Mer’s blog

Hi there, Mer’s readers!

You may not actually know me, but I’m Daniel. I’m from the Internet, specifically Canada, and I’m Meredith’s intern.

A few weeks ago, she tweeted something along the lines of “I can’t do work give meh interns plz.” Because I’m the nicest guy ever, I let her know I was interested. That was essentially it. I figured that nothing would actually happen, and that it was a fun title. Ha ha. NO. I was wrong.

On October 6th, 13 days ago, she assembled her interns (me), and gave me some work to do. If you haven’t been following this blog for 13 days, then let me refresh your memory.

There are a lot of links in that post. I found a lot of those links. It was not undifficult. My fingers hurt. What’s more? I was on my phone! It was brutal. But a glutton for punishment I am, so the next day, the cycle repeated. And the next. And the next.

It’s been 13 days, and I’ve helped a lot.

I’ve found pictures of her hair. I’ve found pictures of her car. I’ve given her full post ideas. I made her an angel!

This took me a while. I'm not good at image editing.

But really, I’m grateful. I’m not busy often, and helping someone blog is actually really satisfiying. This must be what success feels like.

I’m actually a really big fan of menial labour, so this type of research assistance feels right at home. I used to carry maps at art festivals. This doesn’t feels so different, except less moving.

Oh, boss-lady told me not to call it menial labour. I’m a big fan of being a “writing/research assistant”

Hm. I guess if she wants to call it that. She’s the boss.

–

And since Mer gets a lot more views on her blog than I do mine, here’s mine! I update weekly. And my Twitter!

Standard