Monday, January 28, 2008

Gritty Kitty: Flynn Hair (w/ stylish sweatband)

Flynn was originally intended to be a preppy 1970s tennis pro hair style, until Dis checked it out and gave me suggestions to modern it up a bit.

It has 9 color band on white and 9 color band on black textures.
You can pick it up at my main store in Koreshan for now, and my satellite stores this weekend.

Would you like to be kept abreast of new Gritty Kitty releases and get freebies as soon as they are released? Then join the Gritty Kitty group in SL.

Don't have the group space but still want to know about releases first? Then check out my blog: http://rustedsprocket.blogspot.com

I usually lag a day or two with the forums or this blog. So if you need to know when things are released immediately, see above.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Ratty Valentines!


I like Valentines Day. I think it's the combination of food, sex and presents. For this year I made valentine sets. These include:
1 new rat butt attachment for the mouth
1 wearable gift box with rat peeking out
1 Shoulder pet rat.

THE SHOULDER PET IS ANIMATED. When you click on him he squeaks and rubs his face. There is a demo out at my main store in Koreshan. The rats are wicked cute.

Everything is transferable so you can give it out as a gift.


Friday, January 18, 2008

It's story time!

Gather round children as I tell you a tale about Curious George's adventure in the Gossip Girl Sim. No... not the monkey.

One afternoon when the sun was hanging low in the sky, George decided to go for a walk. He put on his trench coat, pulled up his knee socks and ventured out into the mild winter weather. He was wandering the park having a good ol' puff on his pipe when he game across a young lady.

"Oh em gee, like don't you know second hand smoke kills!" exclaimed the young lady.

"What?" creaked George in his old man voice. He was terribly hard of hearing.

"I SAID, You're going to get cancer!" exclaimed the young lady again, feeling very important.


George nodded and smiled. George grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled it open.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" exclaimed the young lady.

"BLARGGG GURGGLE BLEERG" exclaimed the horrid monster, once hidden under George's trench coat.

"You are correct, I'm not wearing pants!" George smiled, under the assumption she'd just came by to politely inform him of his wardrobe mistake.
"You're going to get Cancer" and "you're not wearing pants, sir" sound awfully alike.

The young girl ran and ran and ran and never looked back.

George buttoned up his coat and repacked his pipe, whistling contently to himself.

The non climatic End.


George avatar with shape, hat and skin can be picked up @
D3volution! Skins, HaT MecHaNiC, Muir (25, 167, 54)

The monster flasher trenchcoat can be found @
OmniPotent - animations, Memussi (66, 242, 54)

They really look best together.

Monday, January 14, 2008

abura19: Anime Skins for the Badass male

Another find from yesterday was Abura19, a store that specialized in male anime skins. For L$498, you get 3 skins, 3 sets of eyes, a shape and some sort of sumo diaper thing (fundoshi?)

The skins actually do look as awesome as the vendor ad. because of the drawn quality of them, you look like a 2d character in a 3d world. Kind of like cell shaded video games.
You get regular, angry and bloody as skin options. Though regular looks pretty angry.




If you are the creative sort, with the right poses and accessories and the ability to take good snapshots you could easily make your own comics with this skin that actually look like really well drawn manga of sorts!
(The female skin to the right is from "::. ANNE(^-^)ROSE .::" HQ, Awenhai (2, 233, 24)" )



These skins are perfect for cosplay too!

<-- pretend that's a Ryu from Street Fighter Outfit. BUBBLES!!!! I mean uh, Shriuken!!! Abura19, sugamo (118, 164, 22)

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Curio Obscura

Vroooooom......
So Chic and I were 'sploring in a japanese sim when he found a vendor for the above witch broom. To quote Fade, it is the Ghost Rider of witches brooms. The creator writes:
"Rile the Skies aboard this Wearable effect of sculpted gleaming chrome and wood! Appears in a puff when you fly, leaves a trail of fire and smoke behind you!

The BroomCycle is not a traditional "vehicle". To use the BroomCycle, simply WEAR it. When you fly, the BroomCycle will appear in a puff of white smoke. Then simply fly as you normally would. When you're flying along, fire and smoke will spew from the six exhaust pipes. When you want to disembark, simply stop flying and the BroomCycle will disappear in another puff of smoke."

Intrigued, we went to the main store, Curio Obscura, to check out what else the creator had made. She doesn't have a lot of stuff, but what she does have is fantastic.

Chicanery and I bought got the steampunk version of an Inspector Gadget helicopter hat. You get black, brown, pink, red and white. All are scripted to have copter parts pop out when you start flying. To the left you can see Chicanery landing and the copter parts getting pulled back into the top of the hat. He's wearing the black version.

On the right is me in the hat normal. It's a nice sculpted top hat, very classy. I tinted to a different color brown to match my jacket. The creator writes:



"The Topter Hat features SmartScale for easier rescaling for people of different heights. You can't change the size of individual parts of the Topter Hat because that would break the animation but, if you resize the hat as a whole, all of the animation will scale to match. In addition, some scaling of the handlebars will happen automatically depending on how tall you are."

We had some issues getting ours to work right away, but if you reset the scripts they tend to work or sometimes they just fix themselves.




I also picked up a cog brain. You get 3 different colors, silver, copper, and black, each with 3 styles and particle smoke. All the cogs move and teetertottery things teeter totter.

Also at Curio Obscura you can find, steam punk extendo legs, a copper clockwork girl skin, a victorian clockwork girl dress and a bunch of very cool sculpted witch hats that look like they are out of a Studio Ghibli film.




Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Tagine for Dummies

I love exotic foods and places and nothing says exotic to me like the culturally rich country of Morocco. Morocco has one of the most diverse culinary cook books of the world. It is defiantly worth picking up a Moroccan cookbook from your local bookstore. So! You can't talk about Moroccan food without talking about the wonderful culinary tool called the Tagine (or Tajine).

What is a tagine? It is a diverse earthenware (or ceramic) pot used to slow cook. It looks like this:

Tagine also refers to the food cooked inside of this dish. This is usually lamb or poultry with fruits, vegetables, and spices. Kind of like a stew. As exotic as it may look, its actually easy to use in a modern American kitchen. You can use them in the oven or, with the assistance of a heat disperser, right on the stove top. Don't limit yourself just to typical tagine fare either. I've used mine to make some tasty home made 'brick oven' pizza, as well as steaming vegetables and more.

So this is one of my favorite recipes for a Tagine of Lamb. Don't be afraid of lamb. And don't worry if you don't have a tagine. A soup pot works fine too. Its really tasty if done correctly. Also, lamb shoulder is a lot cheaper and works great for slow cooking recipes like this. If you hate lamb you can substitute chicken or beef. Also this is a quick cook recipe. Traditional tagine recipes take hours to simmer just as a heads up for future tagine exploring! :)


Tools:
Tagine (or soup pot)
Large pot
Knife

Ingredients:

Marinade
3 pounds lamb shoulder, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
4 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, chopped fine
15 peeled garlic cloves, lightly crushed
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Tagine
2 1/4 pounds Yukon gold creamer potatoes (small), halved
1 1/2 pounds medium-sized carrots peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups red wine
7 1/2 cups chicken stock (if using canned use low sodium)
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, about 3-inches long
2 cups spring onions, root and stem trimmed
2 tablespoons Italian parsley leaves, chopped fine
1 tablespoon lemon zest

Box of Instant couscous

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Toss the lamb with the rosemary, garlic, oil, and the vinegar and let marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

While the lamb is marinating, blanch the potatoes and carrots. In well-salted boiling water cook the potatoes for 5 or 6 minutes then transfer with a skimmer to a platter or sheet tray. Cook the carrots for 2 or 3 minutes and reserve with the potatoes.

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan on medium-high heat until the oil begins to smoke. While the oil is heating, remove the lamb from the marinade and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the lamb with the flour and toss to coat. Shake excess flour from the meat and add half to the pan in a single layer so as to sear the meat on all sides, about 2 minutes on each side. Remove to a plate. Repeat with remaining lamb.

Carefully place the potatoes and carrots in the pan used for the lamb. (The olive oil will have lots of flavor from the lamb.) Season with salt and pepper and saute until lightly caramelized, about 4 minutes. Stir from time to time and regulate the heat so the vegetables do not caramelize too much on one side. Transfer to a platter or large plate so that they can be spread out in a single layer.

Pour off and discard the residual oil in the pan. With the pan still on medium heat, deglaze with the wine and reduce by half then add the stock. Bring to a simmer and reduce again by half. Add the seared lamb to the pan and gently toss to incorporate with the pan sauce. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, to taste.

In a large pot or your tagine, add the lamb, wine and broth mixture and rosemary. Cover then place in the pre-heated oven for 45 minutes.

Add the potatoes, carrots and spring onions to the stew. Mix carefully to incorporate. Add a little stock or water, if necessary, to keep the stew moistened. Continue to cook in the oven, covered, until the meat and vegetables are tender, about 10 more minutes.

At this point you want to cook the couscous according to the directions on the package.

Stir in the parsley and lemon zest. Taste and add salt and fresh ground pepper if needed. Serve directly from the baking dish.

A good Rioja wine has been paired with Lamb Tagine for ages. Very good together. Another recommendation would be a nice Cabernet Sauvignon. This matches well with lamb and is a crowd pleaser.


Monday, January 7, 2008

New Hair @ Gritty Kitty: TSO


Tso is a two toned uh.. um *coughs and looks off to the side* mullet. There is one full black one, but all the rest have a color on the top and a different color on the back/bottom. I have a little guide on the poster so you know what you are getting.

You can find this at my main store in Koreshan, and my satellites at the block and harajukubox.