Our story begins with Conan and a cone.

I don’t watch a whole lot of TV shows. I don’t have my television set hooked up to anything other than a computer, so unless something is streaming or on a disk or flash drive, I don’t see it. Luckily, I get to watch Conan (the ginger lad with a late-night talk show, not the barbarian) the day after it airs. On a recent show, he had wackadoo pop culturist Charles Phoenix on, and they participated in a little hands-on segment making this: The Astro Weenie Christmas Tree. Phoenix found inspiration in an old, mysterious slide of an old-timey family gathering. Watch!

So not vegan, but easily veganized. Well, I’ve got my cones and party picks, aluminum foil, a couple of strands of battery-powered LEDs (for that special Michele brand of pizazz), and a bunch of ideas for a sweet and savory tree.

Savory ideas:

• pickles
• Tofurky sausage
• jalepeno-stuffed olives
• Sheese cubes
• carrots & radishes
• mini crescent rolls (Pilsbury original crescents are vegan!)

Sweet ideas:

• truffles
• rice krispie treats
• assorted Sweet n Sara marshmallows
• peanut butter fudge
• vegan doughnut holes/minis
• licorice nibs/other squishy candy

With a New Year’s Eve Eve party to go to, I’m pretty excited to have an excuse to make these. Although, any excuse is a good excuse for a kitschy treat. (And yes, I’ll be back to tell ya how it went.)

UPDATE: Well, I tried two new truffle recipes and they both were just a little wrong, one too sweet and the other too soft, but I think I covered pretty well. Luckily, I live a half mile from Food Fight and was able to grab a Sin Dawg, some Sweet N Sara pecan marshmallows, and a bunch of pretty candies. The savory one was much easier. Tom and I built these at the party—I can’t imagine attempting to move these any farther than the distance between the kitchen and the living room!

And here’s a very blurry, low-light photo for you, complete with an impatient grabbyhand.

I just received my order from Bleating Hearts Soap & Candle Co., a friend’s Etsy store.

Everything is so pretty and yummy-smelling. Pictured above are French clay-tea tree oil soap, candy cane peppermint soap, cranberry bliss soap, and fresh spruce and black amber soy candles in coffee mugs. They all came lovingly wrapped and ready to give as gifts. We’re burning the black amber one right now, and the smell is subtle and comforting, not perfumy or overpowering.

But Bleating Hearts? Yes, her soaps are mostly goatmilk, but she does make vegan versions of them all, and the candles are always vegan. She uses different tools and containers to make the vegan versions, and all my soaps were marked with little Vs. Just note in the comments section that you’d like all vegan items when you’re placing an order.

Let’s hear it for the indie handmade market.

Well, right now I have a good friend going through treatment and, being an independent businessguy, he could not afford to insure himself. So we’ve started a benefit site and whatnot for him. We’re arts-n-crafting to raise money—you don’t have to give a crap about Jim or his wonky body or even cancer (whatever, jerk)—if you like any of the stuff, then buy it for what it is—every penny goes to keeping him from seeing collections letters until he’s all fixed up. And if you’d like to donate a crafty bit (do you make soap or candles or magnets using vintage magazine ads?), let me know; if you’re in the Portland area, I’ll come pick it up so you don’t have to pay for shipping.

Here’s what we’ve got available right now (people swear they’re busy crafting away, so new stuff should keep coming in):

This totally handmade (by me) tote features a little birdy singing along with her favorite Scorpions record. The handle (big enough to go over a shoulder) is 2-ply sturdy fabric ribbon. $30 SOLD.

Here are a couple of cross-stitch projects I’ve done. I sold these two already, but I can make more in a matter of days. $15.

And from some folks with more talent than myself are a couple of art pieces. The one on the left (11.5×21.5) is $80 and the one on the right (14.5×14) is $65 SOLD.

A friend had a friend who had t-shirt connex (see, everybody working together!), so these t-shirts were made for the cheap. They’re Hanes and there are five color combos. Check them out here. $20.

Finally, if you’re in Chicago, Reggie’s is hosting a Nuts to Cancer benefit show next Friday, 11/13. Everyone is donating everything, so this should be a big help (maybe pay for a whole day of chemo). Brian Kelly, American Draft, Rollo Tomasi, Blake Zweig, and Buttz to Nuttz will be playing. Tom and I will be flying out and I’ll be bringing vegan cupcakes decorated in a testicular theme (haven’t figured this out yet—that’s my weekend project).

Honestly, you’d be amazed at how great this is working. Jim is completely humbled by it; we keep hearing “ridiculous” from him. If you’ve got someone in your life going through this sucky a situation, let social networking use its power for good. This whole experience has left me maybe a little less cynical about the good people can do. And that’s saying a lot.

So from time to time, I worry about not getting iodine in my diet. I don’t get too much kelp on my plate, you know. And supplements are tricky because you need such low doses that it’s easy to overdo it. For a while I had iodized table salt that I’d use every once in a while, in bread or in my pasta water, just to sneak it in where I didn’t have to taste it. Then I ran out and didn’t buy more.

But today I saw this at the grocery store. It’s iodized sea salt. It may not taste like pink Himalayan or gray Celtic salt, but it does the trick on fried zucchini, as I learned today in my stress-induced binge junkfood eating. Not perfect, but better.

If you’ve never done this, it’s easy but time-consuming, since you need to double-fold and iron the sides in before sewing.

I just got an order from Vegan Essentials (had another 10%-off newsletter so I stocked up on dry cat food and tried some new things, including soy curls, so stay tuned) and thought I’d share Merry Hempsters with y’all. They’re located in Eugene, Oregon, and have a ton of vegan hemp products. Tom’s been using the lip balm for a while and we’ve had the tattoo balm even longer, and we couldn’t be happier with them. I just got the analgesic and salve so I can’t report on them, but I can’t wait to get cut or scraped or get my muscles in a tizz.
UPDATE: Tom used the cut & scrape salve on a knuckle cut that kept ripping open, as knuckle cuts are wont to do, and he said it kept the area hydrated and stretchy so it could heal. Nice. 

We’d gotten the unscented lotion (comes in a bottle, not a tube) and can’t find it anywhere. The Merry Hempster’s website only sells by the case, but the wholesale prices are pretty inviting. I wouldn’t want a dozen tubes of muscle rub, but I could see myself going through six bottles of lotion before the end of time.

And let me take this opportunity (again) to remind America how dumb it is not to allow farmers to grow this very useful plant simply because it looks too much like its illegal kin. Companies must import it—that’s right, legal to own but illegal to grow. Got that?

 And here’s my last weekend’s project: a frame from Tank Girl: The Gifting #1. (Call me a geek if it makes you feel better.) I had a big ol’ spare piece of plywood and a projector and I loved the image out of context, just her and the word “adjust.” But the text fit well on this particular piece of plywood and perhaps inspired me to give notice at my job. (Anybody hiring?)

Today, my good buddy, is that very day.

Looks pretty good for something headed to the oven, eh?  Unfortunately, this is how the Hotlips Pizza vegan “foccacia” (I prefer focaccia) showed up, expecting to be eaten as is. You’ll have to imagine the undercooked crust (dough) underneath the vegetables.

Tom called to order and had two questions. Easy questions. What comes on it? And are there nuts in the pesto? We’ve got a short answer for you regarding the pesto: The cilantro pesto is nut-free. For the “what’s on it” question, Tom got a long, drawn-out answer that started with “whatever’s fresh,” involved “the squash isn’t looking so good,” and turned into a possibly very stoned pizza associate turning the tables and asking Tom what he wanted on it. Hunger mounting, we ordered for delivery, not really caring what was on it, as long as it was nut-free.

Maybe 20 minutes later we got a call. Yay! They’re here. Nope. The computer ate our order and they had to start over. Then more like 10 minutes later they were here, pizza in tow. I don’t need to tell you it takes longer than that to cook bread and vegetables. (Check the photo again if you need convincing.)

Lemonade out of lemons: After 10 more minutes in a hot, hot oven it was pretty tasty.

And this has nothing to do with food, but I spent 10 hours making this and since it lives in my bathroom pretty much nobody will ever see it so here:

It’s a shower curtain! This is really only four different fabrics, but they’re all reversible and they all had borders because they’re sari fabrics (all polyester and nylon). You can’t see the classy gold lace trim here, but believe me, it’s way classy. It’s another “Sweatshop Michele” moment, because while I can be super stoked that I got all this half-off fabric and made something this lush for less than $50 (and have a ton of leftover fabric), I failed to pay myself for 10 hours of back-wrecking labor.

There comes a time in any relationship between person and bag when the person has to evaluate the bag’s quality of life. This is where I recently found myself, my aging bag growing exponentially older by the day. It was a good bag, from Brooklyn Industries (represent), and we’d been together for probably four years or so. 

So it was online shopping time. Avoiding leather and suede yet finding something more waterproof and work-friendly than hemp or jute was tough. I also need an adjustable strap so I can shorten it when I’m riding my bike. I tried Brooklyn Industries and the one I wanted was $84. I don’t want to spend $84 right now. And most of them are not exactly waterproof—I’ve had a couple of their bags and they’ve all had the same weak points in the rain. I then checked out Queen Bee, a local studio. The one I was interested in was $82—again with the money—and it also lacked the pockets I’m so fond of.

So I asked myself if there was anything preventing me from making my own damn bag. I made a pattern using my old bag as a jumping-off point, enlarging it a bit so I could fit a letter-size folder in the main compartment. I made a pocket in the back, one on each side (big enough for my phone or sunglasses), a zippered one on the front flap (the zipper’s covered by the diagonal trim in the left photo), and finally, one under the front flap, on the front of the main compartment.

For the material, I found a vinyl remnant for $2.50 and used some old fabric scraps for the trim. That plus a zipper, heavy-duty thread, and seatbelt webbing and hardware from StrapWorks came to about $15. If you don’t count the $500 in labor I didn’t pay myself, that’s a mighty fine cheap-ass bag.

A tip for those of you who attempt a project like this and are apparently as dumb as me: For those parts you have to do by hand, use a thimble. They’re not just for grandmas. You won’t have to use the screw head in your scissors or the inside of your nail to push the needle through multiple layers of vinyl and fabric, and the job’ll go much faster. I learned this about halfway through. My gift to you.