Summer ritual begins

About once a week in the summer, I use a mud masque. This is a thing, because it's humid here in the summer and that seems to bring out the oil in my face, and also my face feels....icky....when it's hot and humid.

And I admit: face masques are one of the very specific things I will "waste" money on. My current favorite is a L'Oreal one that has algae in it.

It's blue:

"Get me, I'm a Smurf"

Most of the rest of today was working on the birb quilt. I am very close to having ALL the blocks (including the 14 half-blocks) done. I also cut the binding for the quilt that needs to be bound, and, in the course of sorting stuff, I ran across a few big pieces of fabric (two different Pony fabrics and one of the Fluffy Unicorn from Despicable Me) that I bought for pillowcases a while back. I pulled it out and got a new (clean) copy of the Burrito Pillowcase pattern (instructions are at All People Quilt - it's a .pdf so I can't give a direct link).

I also read through some of the accumulated magazines I had got - I still have the most recent "Victoria" and "Better Homes and Gardens" to read, but the other ones, I can cull out the couple of things (a recipe or two) that I want and pitch them.

Also, the new "Eating Well" had instructions for grilling whole carrots and serving them up in a bun like a hot dog and I felt very oddly like there was a little thin spot in the membrane between here and Equestria, because that's how the My Little Pony world does "hot dogs" (Ponies being vegetarians and all. Though I have heard that in this world, carrots are really not that great for horses and you don't want to feed them too many....)

(In general, I object to food-tarted-up-to-seem-like-less-healthful-food-that-it-is-replacing. It has a "peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining" quality, or it seems like lying. I mean, I like black-bean "burgers" but I like them on their own merits (because I like black beans, and they are a convenient way to eat black beans) but I don't think they're an exact substitute for hamburgers. And especially, given things like food intolerances (which I have to carrots), you really need to TELL the person exactly what you're serving, not go "Oh, hot dogs *shifty eyes*"

Though with the carrot dogs it is pretty darn obvious what you're getting; the bigger problem is doing stuff like grinding the food up and "hiding" it. )