Zombie Saturday - Dead Snow

Another Zombie movie review, this time about Nazi Zombies in Norway! The movie "Dead Snow" is a little older (from 2008) and not found in the cinemas any more. Still, I can recommend to buy you the DVD/Blue Ray and make a nice evening with some popcorn on the couch while watching it.

Some of the things you can see in it are:

• a lot of stupid young people who suddenly find Zombies around their hut in the Forrest
• a lot of snow and blood. Maybe equally snow and blood.
• Evil Zombie Nazis which never die or stop
• Funny ways to fight a zombie - but even more funny ways to die... ^^
• a surprising end

Week in Review - 30-2013

What did I see?
A bit of Dexter, I'm now in the 5th season and sooooo sad!

What did I listen to?
Metallica. Nothing beats the heat better than The Memory Remains!

What did I ask myself?
Motivation? Where are you? Melted away?


What did I read?
I finished "The Golden Compass" from the "His dark materials" series by Philip Pullman and liked how much more philosophical it is than the movie. Definitively worth reading and not a children's book at all!

What did I work on?
Nothing much. the heat is melting me...

I was happy about...
Progressing in cell culture techniques. I love to learn new stuff.


I was annoyed about...
Being unfocused and the hot weather. I'm simply not built for temperatures beyond 25°C! Oh, and not visiting Amphi. And a broken Router which lead to no Internet for a week. A lot to be annoyed about.



I bought...
Some presents, like DNA earrings or a Mr Frosty.

Missing in action

Sorry for being missing in action, but I currently don't have internet at home. Writing posts on the cellphoe is hard work and formatting is near impossible. I promise I'll be back soon!

Zombie Saturday - World War Z

I thought it might be nice to give you a short review on World War Z as the movie is still in the cinemas and you might like a cold refuge in the cinema with air con during these hot days! If you are in for a movie with zombies, have either a love or hate relationship with Brad Pitt (I don't like him, but he gets beaten up, bitten and terrified, which makes the movie all the better for me...) and are in for a short paced action movie, this is the trailer:

If you read the book, don't expect much of the story to be the same in the movie. Actually, unless you count the zombies, it's more or less just the title. The book is much, much better than the movie! But then again, the book doesn't have air condition! ;)

The story is quickly told: Gerry lane is in Philadelphia with his family and witnesses a Zombie outbreak. He is a trained special force member and gets recruited by the US Navy to find the origin of the disease or better yet a cure. For his service his family can stay on a ship, far away from dangerous, coterminous zombies. Then he travels a lot and behaves rather stupid:

•  He doesn't tell anyone what he found out about zombies
• he makes really strange assumptions that by chance turn out to be true (for example when he sees the people avoided by zombies and "just knows" they are sick)
• He obviously is rather reactive and pain resistant, but still one should rest a bit more after serious injuries

Another thing that really annoyed me is the WHO laboratory. Obviously, neither the director nor the screenwriter have ever been near a laboratory since High School. Real scientists label their little tubes for everyone to read, so you don't have blindly inject whatever looks nice to you into your veins.  Unknown samples are treated with the highest possible danger category, which is certainly not "using gloves and putting it on a normal desk" - to avoid infections! The diseases they talk about (highly infectious bacteriae and virae) are only worked with under extreme conditions - for us human scientists. We have to wear suits that cut us off from the room air and have their own oxygen. Never ever would samples of such dangerous materials lie around in a glass room without a sterile clean bench! And the infectious bacteriae and virae only live in cell cultures which do look a lot different from what they show here or are frozen in liquid nitrogen. Simply put: A laboratory like the one in the movie is a danger for everyone and the WHO would be ashamed to own such a lab!

For everyone who made it through the scientist's rant: The movie ands well and Brad Pitt survives. But still, a nice zombie move with certain flaws!

Victorian Skirt II

Since I sewed the skirt pattern of Burda 7880 quite some times now, the work went relatively quick. Actually, the main time investment was cutting the fabric (I usually add some length for a little train and have to occupy both living room and the hallway at the same time) and sewing on the flowers. Plus I didn't have any decorative over skirt to go with the skirt. Which means that after the skirt, I made an additional apron for the front and a bustle for the back. Call me crazy! ^^

For the apron I used the pattern from Burda again as it might not be historically correct, but doesn't eat much fabric and looks nice. I made the apron from the fake raw silk I also used for Madame Cherié. I added a ruffly border which I bought from a Chinese Ebay seller for less than 1 Euro per Meter!

I also used my very first decorative stitch on a garment! (See? It totally made sense to buy the more expensive sewing machine with all the additional stitches I never use! ;) )

The back bustle was made without any pattern. I just made a huge half circle out of the remaining fabric and rushed this by hand. The waistband was machine sewn again, but the machine ruffles were too small for my liking and waistband. Again, I used the ruffly border to pull the whole outfit together:

And finally, I added those d*mned Kanzashis again (are you sick of them yet?!). I hot-glued them to leftover pieces of fabric and added safety pins at the back. Now I can use the flowery pieces to drape the bustle!

Now keep your fingers crossed that I can buy an Amphi ticket tomorrow at the venue so I have an occasion to wear this outfit! Maybe I should start planning a little earlier next time?! ^^

Week in Review - 29/2013

What did I see?
This week, I visited the cinema to see "World War Z". If you never read the book, the movie is fine. A lot of Zombies, a lot of people making horrible mistakes and get eaten afterwards. But the book is so much better, if you read it you should not expect the storyline to be the same!

What did I listen to?
The Star Trek Theme

What did I ask myself?
Will I ever underestimate any symptoms again? I should learn from my mistakes!


What did I read?
I read "The Golden Compass" from the "His dark materials" series by Philip Pullman, but I'm not done yet.

What did I work on?
A little skirt and decoration. And a bunch of Kanzashis! ^^

I was happy about...
Looking forward to this weekend with a hens night and Amphi!


I was annoyed about...
Being sick. I don't like this!



I bought...
Nothing, but my sandals are lost in the mail which annoys me a lot!

Victorian skirt

Yesterday I felt a bit better than the day before and felt able to do a little sewing. And by a little sewing I meant: Cut and sew a Victorian skirt. I originally planned to visit the Amphi festival next weekend, but I'm not sure if my health would be to happy about the stress that a festival always brings. On the other hand, if I'll go, I want to wear appropriate outfits! ^^

So anyway, I was bored out of my mind and decided to sew a skirt. I had this fabric for quite some time now, I bought it back together with the green satin for the 1860's crinoline. The colour is a very deep wine and it looks great with my hair. I had seven meters, which I thought enough for skirt and over skirt.

The pattern was based on the Burda pattern 7880 but very much adapted. I added a little train and a ruffle border which I hemmed and ruffled with the new serger. Also, in the Kanzashi making frenzy, I added some of the prettier flowers to the border between skirt and ruffle:

Kanzashi making

The recent kanzashi making frenzy (Fräulein Nachtschatten started out, then Nachtkatze joined and presented a mouth watering head dress) infected me as well. I'm on sick leave and not supposed to do anything besides being in bed/on the couch and you can not imagine how boring TV and Internet grow after a while... I definitively read as well, but I had to reorder books as I'm running out of new material! As I wanted to do something easy which you can do while watching reruns of old series, kanzashi seemed like a good idea.

There are a bunch of tutorials out there in the Internet; I used this German on that Fräulein Nachtschatten linked to: Tutorial. Making round flowers out of square pieces of fabric seems counter intuitive, but it works! I definitively had a learning curve, but just look at these nice final flowers!

Bedazzle my shazzle

I don't know if you remember the Bedazzler which is/was a product to fix rhinestones or studs in clothes. The tool even had a really funny appearance in "Malcolm in the Middle" where Louis looses her mind and just bedazzles everything in reach! I loved watching those commercials, although my style is rather sleek and not blingy...

Anyway, when my mum showed me her rhinestone motives (to iron on, not as fancy as the Bedazzler ^^), I asked her for the motives I liked best. This weekend while I was sick at home, I couldn't do large projects, but simply ironing on some rhinestones was fine! So I took a simple sleeveless shirt and the iron and got started!

The motive I chose was glittery wings in grey rhinestones. The rhinestones are fixed on a clear foil. This made placement really easy!

I simply ironed the bling on and let it cool down for about 5 minutes (as requested by the manufacturer's handbook). I could then remove the foil and had bling wings!

Sunday Sweet - Lemon cake

Sometimes I feel that all I ever make is lemon cake... But since both my boyfriend and me are sick, I thought that making his favourite would cheer him up a bit. And it doesn't hurt that the cake is really delicious!

Zombie Saturday - Zombie Adds

Week in Review 28/2013

What did I see?
I saw "Brave" for the first time yesterday and thought that it is really a nice movie! I liked the little independent main character Merida and both my boyfriend and I laughed heartily...

What did I listen to?
Samsas Traum - F.M.N.F. - Nikotin und Meskalin (not safe for work and not safe for younger ears! But German...)

What did I ask myself?
Might that be sour muscles because I was being a beast at the gym? I better hope so!


What did I read?
I finished 3 books this week: A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin (I'm so sad that I'll have to wait forever for the next novel!), "Haunting Violet" by Alyxandra Harvey (which I won in Gaiety Girl's blog and really liked! If you are interested in Victorian times and spooky mystery stories, I can recommend this to you!) and "The Monstrumologist" by Rick Yancey (Loved it! It is creepy and fascinating and horrible and intensely tense. Go read it, if you liked Lovecraft or Stoker!).

I didn't have much time to read! But I'm about 50% done according to my Kindle...

What did I work on?
Nothing.

I was happy about...
Seeing the Monsters of Liedermaching tonight in Bochum (Bochum total, a free festival)! And finally finishing some projects.


I was annoyed about...
The evenings on the couch that were not necessary. But well, otherwise the week went fine!



I bought...
Sandals, because my old ones look rather torn by now.

Visiting the zoo in Duisburg

Two weeks ago on Sunday, the boyfriend and I made use of the RuhrTopKarte again and visited the zoo in Duisburg for free. The zoo offers a lot of animals you don't see in zoos very often like dolphins (although I'd like them to stop breeding them or freeing the animals into the ocean) or Koalas (although I'm not happy that the eucalyptus tree branches have to be flown here every week). Zoos are always a bit problematic for me, as I don't like that the animals are held captive. On the other hand, (illegal) hunters and destruction of the natural habitats probably doesn't make animals happier than being bored in a (large and intelligently designed) cage...

On a happier note, we watched the dolphins doing their training which the do in a pretty large aquarium and seemingly enjoyed as they did a lot of extra jumps when the trainer was focusing on one animal. There was also a young dolphin called David who was still learning the commands and always did the same thing when he did not recognize what was asked of him... He was really cute! Again, I'm not quite sure if I'm happy about breeding dolphins in captivity and keeping them in a basin that can never be as large as the ocean. But at least they had training sessions three to four times a day, so they will probably not be bored!

We also saw the aforementioned Koalas and kangaroos, which were really cute. I don't remember if I ever saw live Koalas before, but I was a little afraid that I would see something (warning, the following link shows the most scary Koala ever!) like this! But the Koalas were cute and fluffy, if a bit slow:

After Australia, we visited Africa with Elephants, Giraffes, vultures and monkeys. The Liszt monkeys had a little baby which was only 3 weeks old:

 

We also saw some South-American animals including a river dolphin (who looked quite tattered and sad, but her partner died some weeks ago and she will most likely not live for long as she is 30 years old), Toucans, Tapirs and Coati mundis...

It was a really cool and exciting day, I loved seeing all these animals and the weather was really good, too. By the way, all pictures were taken by my boyfriend and I have to say that he really improved his skills with the DSLR camera! 

Extraschicht 2013

On Saturday another great event was in the Ruhr area, the annual Extraschicht (~ additional shift, a play on the shifts that mine workers had to do here while extracting coal from the mines). As we were on the Holi festival, we didn't want to pay twice and enter into the Extraschicht as well. But we went to see the fireworks in the Landschaftspark Duisburg, which were spectacular:

Holi festival of colours

This weekend was full of action, I hardly had some minutes of rest... On Saturday, me and the boyfriend visited the Holi festival of colours! Originally, this is a spring celebration in India where people "christen" each other with coloured powders or liquids. So when we booked the tickets, we were looking forward to a lot of colour! The only problematic thing was that we were expected to wear white. Since we are both rather goth, we didn't have much white clothes and went shopping before hands. This is how I looked before:

This was the colour powder we got (we bought ours with the ticket for 25 Euros and got 5 packages of colour):

The area was really simple, some sellers of food and drinks, a centre stage and a lot of grass. Several DJs were playing electronic music, we liked Moquai best...

And this is how it looked when everyone was throwing colour powder in the air:

 

I looked relatively harmless after the party, but this was just because I was not sweating so much and was not sprinkled with water. That made the colours really intense...

It was really funny running around like a little child and throwing colour at each other! I'd do it again in a heartbeat... ;)

Sunday sweet - Chocolate covered strawberries

Today I present something here that is so easy I won't post any recipe. It also only takes two ingredients:

Chocolate covered strawberries! Really delicious and just the right food for a hot Sunday Afternoon...