Oreos and toboggans

Oreos are evil. I don't know what they put in them, but it is a powerfully addictive substance. Doublestuff Oreos in particular are liable to cause me to turn from a rational human being into a desperate Oreo junkie. Why oh why were they on sale? Next time, I will walk away from the cookie aisle in the grocery store, and buy more broccoli instead. The photo above is courtesy of a google image search which I have modified in the style of one of my favourite sites, Om Nom Nom Nom.

So there you have the Oreos. But what about toboggans? Well, I have my first commissioned knitting request (it's like I'm a Real Designer now!) and one of the suggested items for me to knit was a toboggan. Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear toboggan, I think of a sled that children use to go down a hill, and the mental picture of knitting one of these to WEAR, well that's just absurd. It turns out that in certain US dialects, the word toboggan actually refers to a knitted hat. So here I go, knitting a toboggan!

Also on the knitting front I have finally, after attempt #3, completed the Dream in Color Shrug for my lovely sister-in-law. She has been waiting quite patiently for her Christmas present, and it's finally done! More details plus pictures to come next post.

Since it's been a while since we've had a post about anime, I'd like to briefly review Casshern Sins. I'm not going to link you to the anidb entry, because it's fairly spoilerish. This is a series that is just wrapping up, and has been one of the best of this past season. It follows the story of a robot named Casshern who wakes up with no memories, but apparently has been responsible for the ruin of the world. It follows his journey as he tries to find out who he is, what has happened to the world, and what he must do. It's a very bleak post-apocalyptic setting, yet some of the landscapes are truly gorgeous and the characters are very vivid. The episodic nature of it is somewhat reminiscent of Mushishi, where not every episode is a feel-good happy ending, but more of a realistic look at how people deal with hardship and find meaning in their lives. It's much more action-packed than Mushishi though, since Casshern was essentially created to be a killing machine, and puts his talents to use fighting off the scores of other robots trying to kill him.

After watching episode 19 I opened up my photoshop (the likelihood of me opening photoshop increases proportionally to the amount of homework I have) to make myself a new forum signature and avatar. I made them as a tribute to Lyuze, one of the recurring characters in the series. I dismissed her in my mind after the first couple episodes as just another angsty side-character, but they've really done some great character development with her and she's become one of my favourites. If you're wondering about the 'KitKat', that's my other online alias (I've mostly switched over to Arzu these days but on my anime forum it would just be weird to change the name I've had there for so long).