Midna Plushie

So, I finally finished my latest plushie. Ellen, Nicole, and Crystal came over Monday and I did most of it then. But I finished her these last two days. For once, I actually timed how long it took. Between 6 and 7 hours.
I stitched the turquoise lines in, but some of them ended up kind of sloppy.
I might make her Fused Shadow helmet eventually.
I love how she turned out. ^-^

Dominic's Song

Currently suffering from Tiny Chicken Disease. If you don't know what that is, then here ya go.

Anyway, I hope it goes away soon.
Continuing on the Nerdfighters thread, I wore my giraffe shirt shirt to school today, and it introduced me to two fellow Nerdfighters at my college. First time it happened, and it happened twice in one day. So, that was fun.
So, I've been working on writing a song for Katani's story. Cause one of his friends, Dominic, is a singer. And they make him sing a song for them, so I've been thinking about it for a while. I was stuck on the second line for several days, and then today his song just came pouring out. So now I got the lyrics pretty much down, though I might tweak them. And I have a general idea for the melody too.
This is the second song I've written for a story. I wonder if it sounds as awesome as I was hoping it would. I need to get a really awesome guy singer to sing it...

Pokéventure Complete

Oh well. I wanted to post today but I couldn't really think of anything. But I guess it warrants mention that 2 days ago I finished the last round of the Pokéventure contest on deviantart. One of the other contestants (who did my favorite entry) introduced the characters from a bunch of other entries in his comic. He put my Ponyta, Polaris, in several of them also. ^-^
I'll link to that one, I suppose.
Here's his first page. And here's where Polaris appears. I returned the favor by including other characters (including his) in my last chapter as well. It's kinda fun to have other people's Pokémon in there, actually.
Oh, yeah. Here's the first chapter of my entry just because.

The End of the WORLD... Or at Least Summer

So, yeah. School started on Thursday. So much stuff I didn't finish.
Anyway, Jenny came over tonight and I showed her how to make a plushie. I made her a base for Yellow a while ago, so she finally got to make her. I'm giong to try to make a Midna plushie. I started making the pattern this evening. She's going to be very hard.
Week before last, Lauren came to visit. She was my friend in middle school, but I haven't seen her in 7 years since she moved to Pennsylvania right before high school. We've kept in touch, and it was good to see her again. She's very different than the people I hang out with now. We had a lot of fun.
One more thing from the program I did this summer.
Seems recently all these people have been claiming that the apocalypse is coming. Like for 2000, and 6-6-6 or something, and then one a few months ago, and there's supposed to be one in 2012. I never believed any of them, but at the program, someone I trust talked about cycles of the world. About how every few thousand years or something the planet goes through dramatic shifts. And that some society-changing thing might be happening soon.
Which got me thinking about the massive problems facing out planet. About how we rely so heavily on the diminishing fossil fuels and about how out population is so out of control and we don't take care of our resources and we destroy habitats and fragile systems.
And a scary as it seems, it seems inevitable that things are going to change dramatically in the next few decades.
How will they change?
I want to be a writer. If things really change, writers really won't have any use. Same with people who do creative amazing stuff for a living.
A while ago I actually started planning a post-apocalyptic (or post-society) story. The classes I'm taking me now are going to help me build up that society. I 'll write more about that in a later post.
I suppose it could easily all change in my lifetime. Sigh. What can I do to help...

Building houses

A long-delayed post from the program I as at this summer.
One day of the program, we learned to build a house. Though not the kind of house you're thinking of. It's made of a material called cobb, rather like adobe. It's a mud-like mixture of sand, clay, straw, and water. You blend it all up (with your feet). Part of the house was already made. The earth beneath had been prepared beforehand, with a trench dug beneath where the walls would be built (in a large circle). The clay in the soil goes directly into the cobb to build the house. Then the ditch is filled with gravel to allow water to drain out. The floor is spread with gravel too (though it's gonna be covered with a different mud mix later).
The cobb wall is made incredibly thick. You make big balls of cobb and sort of smooth them into the wall. There's a certain pattern to it. It's hard to explain. But it was very cool. Everyone said how neat it is to feel the earth in your hands (or under your feet), and those who'd built houses with wood say this is so much better.
And it's incredibly cheap to make a room out of cobb. Plus you can do it in one summer, and then add more rooms every year. And they're really earthquake-resistant. Unlike wood beams, which pull apart, a cobb building just wobbles. It might crack a tiny bit, but it's easy to patch up.
Awesome house, right? Guess what? They're illegal to build.
What the frack!!!!!
Even with a permit, you're not allowed to make this kind of house in America!
The real reason is because if everyone made cheap houses of cobb, no one would be buying their lumber. Gee. What a tragedy.
Another reason our government can be so stupid. We should petition for cobb houses to be made legal.
Speakign of stupid rules, I hate youtube. They took another of my Ling videos off and say if I put up one more video that breaks copyright, they're gonna deactivate my account. Jeez! Those were the only videos I had up that were worth anything! Everyone else does stuff like that! It's not like I make any money off of them! So I had to take them all off. Not there's nothing good up there anyway. Grumble. I don't want to lose my account cause I have lots of cool favorites that I don't want to have to track down again.
So... pictures.





I haven't played in the mud in ages. I don't know if I ever really did, actually. But it was fun. I kinda wanted to have a mud fight, though I kind of didn't want to.
However, I did get to lob gobs of cobb at people (gently, so they could catch them).

Chibi Practice

Bleh. First day of class today.
Some day I'll write something interesting on the blog. I promise. -_-
Anyway, here's a couple pictures.
So, I send Fern to a bunch of universes to do cool stuff and help people. I thought it would be a good thing if Fern learned how to use swords for emergency purposes. She's fair at archery, but only okay with swords. But she learns some of her sword stuff from Kenshin. Yeah, I know what your thinking. Kenshin doesn't teach. Actually, he just doesn't teach his style. But he does give Yahiko some basic sword lessons. So, he teaches Fern the basics. She's not good enough to do his style anyway.
But as Fern was learning swordsmanship from kenshin, she picked up a couple other habits from him.

Also about two weeks ago, I finally discovered Fern's animal totem. A clouded leopard. So now that's her official tail. And her bird totem is a sort of golden eagle, hence the gold wings.
Then Crystal gave Nicole and I some chibi pointers. So I did a bunch of chibi fern pictures. ^-^ I like doing it. I should do more. And I got a ton more ideas of pictures of Fern, so I'll get around to those eventually too.




One final note. Someone actually requested a picture on my blog. From one of the dragon books I mentioned ages ago. The picture was along the crease though, so this was the best I could do without killing the binding. Sorry that it's not perfect.
So, you who requested the picture, leave another comment if you get this! Just so I know you found it.

Reein is adorable

So, a little while ago, I paid for a chibi pic of one of my characters. I figured Reein would look most adorable in the style, so I went with him. I just got him today!
So, this is the artist that drew him, and this is where the picture is currently located.

^-^
He's soo cute and fluffy!
It's the best $2.13 I've spent in a long long time.

Free Time

So, things have been crazy around here. I have some posts I want to make about the program that I got home from last week, and I will get to them eventually... though I wanted to do them last week. -_-
You know, it used to bug me when people said they had no free time to read or write, or do stuff like that. That always bugged me. I always said to myself, "if there's something you really want to do, then MAKE time to do it!"
And now my summer vacation is almost over, and it's been so busy that I've hardly gotten any of my planned projects done. I hardly have any time, and I despise myself for thinking it. >_< And I HAVE made time to do the stuff I want, but not as much time as I wanted to. Sigh. I'm trying not to neglect my blog either.
Hey guys! Keep posting! Help me out!
But that is important. Make sure to make time to do what's important. Like you should never give up reading. Always have at least one book going, even if you're slow to get through it.
I really want to finish Katani's story (And I have to finish a Final Fantasy game Crystal lent me, since I've never played FF before. Zack is funny.)
Lots of stuff to do for mom, and we've had some family stuff planned, and we've still been helping out at my grandparents house a lot. Their hot water heater burst. One of the seams split, or something. It's a good thing it happened when we were there. We managed to suction out some of the water and bucket out the rest. I guess they have good guardian spirits for the heater to have broken while we were there to help.
Dad and I chopped some wood for them last week, and I've been stacking their wood in their woodshed. Grandma said my wood piles are beautiful. But.. I just thought that's how you were supposed to stack wood. (Like, I had to go to the dentist and orthodontist within the last few weeks, and they both said I have beautiful teeth. Which makes me think... do they say that to everyone who had braces?) Anyway, Grandma said that some of her neighbors want me to do their wood pile for them.
-_-
Actually, that's kind of cool. Stacking wood is rather meditative. I never would have thought of earning money that way... Just gotta make sure that the wood pile hasn't been sitting around so long that black widows have made their homes in it. O_O

Audio Books

So, it seems like there's hundreds of books I want to read, but I'm not reading as fast as I sometimes do. So, I stopped by this nice library bear my aunt's house and went inside. They had a great collection of audio books, and I thought, "I could listen to a bunch of books as I do other stuff!"
I have the Harry potter audio books (which I listened to all the time when books 1-4 were out), but I'd never really listened to any others.
I've read the first Eragon book, and I started the second one, but didn't finish it. So, that's what I'm listening to now.
I guess I'll get through more books now.

O_O

There's so many things I want to post about, but I'm currently running around during my "end of summer panic."
I get home from my vacation, and Mom says "Well, you've only got about 2 weeks of school left" (1 week now).
O_O
Nooo! It can't end!
So, I'll do a short post, and try to get my others done later.
I decided to take part in a John Green birthday calendar. So I need to upload the picture somewhere. It's a photo I took about a month ago. And The thing was just something I wrote for the occasion.
Anyway, here it is.

Parkour

So Tara's away for the next week and a half or so, and she asked me to post on the blog. I dont really know what to post about but I guess I'll do one on parkour.

I've been doing some training for parkour (haven't kept up with it though). In any case, parkour is a more efficient version of free running. For those of you who dont know what either of them are. Parkour and free running are when you find the most efficient (in the case of parkour) or the most 'fancy' (for free running) way of getting over obstacles.

Here's a guy from Latvia doing some parkour He's on the extreme end of parkour, I'm still way at the beginning. I'm not even as good as this dog from Ukraine.

First things first, what to wear. Comfortable clothes, something you can move in. And sneakers, something with traction and grip. Converse arent such a good idea for this. Long pants, no jeans. Long pants are essential to minimize scrapes. T-shirts are fine, just nothing excessively baggy or it'll just get in the way.

Anyway, there's a lot of things you can do to train. But first make sure you stretch. Stretch every muscle so you dont hurt yourself. Make sure you work your neck, arms, shoulder, hips, thighs, calves, everything. Dont forget wrists and ankles, super important. For wrists and ankles start by rotating them in both directions. Wrist stretches are hard to explain without being there, but for ankles write your name with your foot a few times, then switch feet.

Building up stamina is an important part of...well anything. I personally have zero stamina, if not negative stamina. So before training do a quick ten minute jog or so. Up and down stairs is also good.

After that do jumps. I'm not saying start jumping from buildings, just small jumps. Find a short ledge, maybe ankle height. If not that's fine, just do small jumps. Our bodies have three cushions of protection when we jump, the first is our feet, the next is ankles, then knees. So land on the balls of your feet, both feet. Make sure that you use dont over exert yourself. Also try to land as softly/quietly as possible. This will make your jumps lighter and lessen the impact with which you hit the ground.

Jump up and down from your ledge or back and forth from two spots. Then when you feel comfortable try jumping to different points. Set markers for yourself. This is called precision jumping. It's used to practice well...precision, so you'll be able to jump on top of poles or something if need be.

Oh another important thing about jumping, down be afraid to use your arms for extra momentum. And also jump feet first. You dont want to jump head first because your feet wont make the jump, and then you'll have nothing to land on. If it helps, think of moving with your center/waist. So move your whole lower torso first and the rest will follow.

Another type of jumping is distance jumping. Set a starting point. You can run up to the starting point and jump, or just jump from the starting point. Try to jump as far as you can. Keep increasing the distance and soon you'll be able to jump pretty far.

After you're done with your training, stretch. Do the same stretches you did at the beginning if not more. Have a cool down period and thank the people you trained with.

This is by no means a perfect guide and I'm not very good nor aware of everything you need to do to learn parkour. But dont go watching youtube videos and trying to copy them. Maybe next time I'll post something on swords or staffs or spears or maybe bubbles. i dunno :D