There's more where that came from!

I thought I'd take a minute and add some follow up pictures to the crochet stuff I put up last week. I gave most of this stuff away, so I'm happy to have photographed my first baby steps in crochet.

Mr. Fight was super bummed that his Christmas present didn't show up before Christmas, even though I was a good girl and ordered it on December 4, so I made him a little gift. (He wanted a custom made football scarf from Germany. I guess 3 weeks to make and ship the scarf wasn't cutting it.) He requested a small bag, a "stash bag" one could say. These were totally easy to make. I found the pattern on Ravelry and it comes from Priscilla's Crochet. They are actually eyeglass cases:

This is the One Skein Scarf I made for my momma. The pattern is by Denise Cozzitorto and was published in Stitch'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker:

This is what I made for my little brother. The pattern was a challenge, especially since I wasn't paying close enough attention to counting my stitches. I was watching TV with Mr. Fight and he kept talking and I wanted to say, "Can't you see I'm counting!!!!! I am crocheting on a deadline! I just learned how to do this! I am not a machine!" but I didn't. Instead the reaper is a little wonky. So be it.

It is from the book Creepy Cute Crochet, by Christen Haden:

And lastly, my work in progress. I am making a bag that is big enough to carry files in, a book, a crochet project, whatever. I found this "Easy Peasy Crocheted Bag" on Laughing Purple Goldfish's blog.

Cheers!

I love crochet!

Ok, so I mentioned that I was going to learn how to crochet, well, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I am absloutly nuts about crochet! I freakin' love it.

The first thing I made was basically a raggity rectangle of single crochet that was all lopsided and missing many stitches. I tied it off and threw it in my bag as a reminder of my first crochet baby steps! Then I decided to try out a fresh ball of a yarn and a new stitch. I decided to try double crochet (love!) and I stitched about 14 rows with nice and soft (but nice and cheap) Caron Simply Soft. I then felt comfortable with that stitch and it was looking pretty good, with the same amount of stitches in each row, 14 rows later. Nice. It was on to triple crochet. I did about 7 rows of triple crochet and realized I preferred making the doubles better. However, at this point I had decided that this was to be a scarf, so I had to figure out some kind of plan. I decided to leave my 14 rows of double and 7 rows of triple and start switching back and forth between the two for the length of the scarf. So I did double-triple-double-triple until it was almost as long as I wanted. Then I finished her off with 7 rows of triple and 14 rows of double crochet to make it match the beginning. At this point I could have stopped but I was feeling like the scarf needed a little more "pizzazz". So I broke out the shell stitch with the black Simply Soft! Oh yeah! (Picture me saying that like Peggy Hill.)

Here it is on my desk:

There's no stopping me! Then I did a little circle to learn how to crochet with increasing and decreasing stitches:

Here's another: So I decided to put this to good use and make some Christmas presents for my family since I did take the Handmade pledge this year. (See link button in sidebar.)

I only have one thing left to make, and that's something for my father, which will be a scarf. I made stuff for my little brother and mom that I don't have pictures of yet, but I do have the scarf that I made for my sister. This is based on a design by Mermaiden on Ravelry.

When you roll it up IT LOOKS LIKE SUSHI! Bwahhhhhahahaha!

On the Homefront

Well, things could be better. I haven't posted anything yet about the shit storm that is my personal life, but here's a little taste. I work for peanuts and my husband has been out of work since March. I've been paying to keep up his health insurance since he has expensive medical issues, specifically crippling anxiety and depression (which is why he's currently out of work). I found out last week that Mr. Fight's health insurance got cancelled because I paid the bill too late. Well, I paid the bill too late because my husband doesn't have a job and I'm trying to keep us not homeless and I just did not have the money. Bummer. The real pisser is that all the stuff I have to pay for now without the insurance costs MORE than the money I didn't have to pay for the insurance. Grrr....

On the bright side, normally it's a chore to hide all the gaps in my husband's employment history when I update his resume, but at least this time the economy being in the toilet sort of helps cover his tracks. He's not like some low-life who doesn't want to work, he just has a hard time keeping jobs. He gets all worked up over something or another going on in his life or at home and he wants to call out of work because he's so overwhelmed with whatever. Then he's all freaked out that everyone at work is talking about what a loser he is for calling out, which makes him afraid to go back, so he calls out for a week or more, ultimately ending in him getting canned. That's pretty much the cycle. It's hard.

Right now he is looking for a job, but there is really nothing in the paper. He's been looking since August or so. After he got fired this last time in March, I told him to take some time, go to the doctor and try to get a little bit of control back in his life. He's been on every anxiety/depression medication I've ever heard of and none of it seems to help him. What happens is, he feels like shit so he goes to the doctor and they say, "Maybe we should try something else".

Then he has to take the new pills for however long it takes for them to kick in and for him to get used to them. Then he doesn't know how he feels because he can't tell if his body is still getting used to the pills, or the dose isn't right or the combination isn't right. All he knows is that he never feels good. It's not that he wants to feel happy all the time, it's just that he wants to feel not overwhelmed by feelings of being a total failure and obsessing over ever tiny thing that is going bad in his life. I can't imagine how hard it must be for him to be so miserable all the time. I mean, I'm certainly not happy with where I am in life and certainly thought I'd have made something better of myself, but I'm not so consumed by these thoughts that I just can't get up and function. I get up and go to work because someone has to.

He has some breakdown along the way where he can't "suck it up" and look at the big picture. The consequences of his actions aren't what's important to him in that moment, it's not doing whatever the next thing is he would have to do-like go to work or to a family party. He just wants to curl up in a little funk and not leave the house, see people, go to the store, anything. He goes on like this for months until someone (him or the doctor) finally says, "Maybe we should try something else."

I'm here!

I know I haven't posted anything in a short while, but I've been knee deep in craftiness! I'm not equipped to post photos or anything now, but I've been busy trust me. The loom is warped, and after I wove about 3 inches, I broke a warp end. Believe it or not, it's the first one I've ever had break on me. In 3 years of weaving at school, it never happened! So I need to get a t-pin today so I can fix that puppy up. I tried a biggish sewing pin, but it was not strong enough.

My 10 year old niece Breanna came over and made needle felted Christmas ornament with me yesterday, which was fun. Within a few minutes she had broken all but one needle, so after that, I just watched. I can't blame her, though because they are easy to break, especially if you are new to the wonders of "stab art". And I only had 4 to begin with. (I had more but my cats helped me loose them. Yes, I will find them jammed in my foot someday.) When I gave her the last one, I said, "Be careful with that one, or we're going for a ride to the store." And lo and behold, the needle lasted. We used cookie cutters to make the shapes and that worked really well. I've heard that that was an easy way to make flat stuff, but I've never actually done it myself. It works like a charm.

I'm also teaching myself how to crochet, to expand my crafty repertoire! I've heard people say that if you try to do too much (as in different kinds of fiber art), you wind up never finishing anything. But I suppose the same could be said about life in general. I think it would be fun tobe able to use all these different crafty techniques together to make a colossal craft super-item. (Not like I'm the first person to think of that.) So more on crochet 101 later. Stay tuned!

Measuring the warp (is no fun)

There is something to be said for having the right tools for the job. I mentioned I was going to try to improvise a warping board to get started weaving, since my new warping board isn't due to arrive until next week. I took the weaving bench pictured in yesterday's post and I flipped it upside down and stacked cookbooks on the underside of the part you sit on (which is now facing up), so it wouldn't move. At this point I'm thinking how smart I am and that I wasted my money buying the real deal. (Insert belly laugh here. Oh, hindsight!) I then attached a warping peg:

to my entertainment center thing, because it had shelves about the height of the upturned stool legs. (That picture is a stock image, I only had one peg that came with the rigid heddle loom.) I had planned for about 200 warp ends since I was thinking about doing something with spaces in the warp and like I said, I wanted something manageable for my first go on a new loom. I would have preferred I was able to stand upright while warping, but I couldn't get the stool to stay put when I tried to elevate it, so I left it on the carpet and figured I'd bend over to warp. After all-it's only 200 pieces of string, right?

Then I was off!

Skip ahead half an hour. Let's just say this was not an ideal setup in retrospect. I felt like my back was broken and I was only a quarter of the way done. It's funny, I remember hating to measure the warp in school where I had all the right equipment, when I didn't realize how good I had it. Each thing you need to buy for weaving is like, hundreds of dollars and it was all there at my fingertips. This is a weaving I made in school on an 8 harness jack loom:

Here's a bit of a close up:

That weaving has 960 warp ends. I'd have to kill myself if I was using the ol' stool and peg method to measure the warp for something like that.

So when all was said and done, I gave up on my crappy method of warping. I. was. over. it. I had 58 measly warp ends, but if I space them out a lot and use a super chunky weft, I'll be able to make something around 2 feet wide.

I'm picturing a rag rug made with cut up jersey fabric. Honestly, it's just to get some practice, so it's okay if it wasn't the weaving I was planning on making. When that warping board gets here, it's ON!

I must have been good in a past life.

I must be sending out good weaving vibes into the world! I mentioned in an earlier post that I was fortunate enough to receive a Ashford rigid heddle loom over the summer. Here it is hanging on my wall:

I've woven a bit more on the RH since this picture was taken. Not much more, but a bit.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Are you ready? I'm serious, this rules.

I got a loom! A real one! A great big real loom! Holla!

The person who gave it to me is one of the most wonderful people I have ever met and now I will never ever forget her. I never, never thought I would have a loom, not at least until I had excessive amounts of disposable income to spend on a large piece of equipment like this. So thank you and I'll love you forever.

This is a picture of it in my tiny bedroom. When my husband saw it he thought I was insane in the membrane. I was joking that we could throw our bed out to make more room for it.

It is a Gallinger loom, which was sold at The Mannings in East Berlin, PA, but it was sold there before it was called the Mannings. Back then it was Gallinger Creative Crafts, until the business was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Manning in the 1960s.

(Please excuse the fact that there is nothing on the walls in my bedroom, I had to move major pieces of furniture around to get the loom in, so I took everything down so I could get it in position and figure out where I want the warping board to go. I typically enjoy having more flair on display.)

Oh and in regards to my attempt to make a ghetto warping board out of nails in my wall-no dice. The nails just kept falling out of the wall and were all greasy and disgusting and would probably ruin any warp that touched them. So I'm over that. I'm sure I could have made one, but I don't really own any tools, so I'd have to buy everything besides a hammer. When taking into consideration the amount of time and materials it would take to make my own, I decided to buy this one off Ebay:

I found this one for $29.99 at The Knit Store, which is a great deal. It should be here early next week. However since I can't wait to start weaving on my new baby, I'm going to improvise tonight with an overturned table and a dowel clamped the appropriate distance away. We'll see how that goes. I'm only going to use about 200 warp ends for my first weaving since I want a chance to get used to the loom and learn how it works before I try a complicated pattern.

Now for some close-ups of the loom! Keep in mind this loom came out of a garage, so it's a bit dusty. I promise to clean it and oil it all up. So don't hold that against me. This is a close up of the treadles and tie ups. I know 4 harness looms typically have 6 treadles, but this one is a little different. Each extra wide harness is tied up individually, so you have to treadle accordingly.


While acquiring the loom is certainly most of the battle, I still had a bunch of stuff I need to buy before I could actually start making something. First, I needed a bench! The ones they sell online are between $200-$400, which is ridiculous. I found this thing that used to be a table, I think, at the thrift store for $12. Sure it was too tall and wobbly, but nothing my handy hubby can't fix with our trusty hammer. ( I told you we had no tools.) Actually that's a lie. Our truly handy friend Mike brought us a saw thing. It looked like a drill, but it was a saw. Then the handy hubby fixed the wobbles. And yes, that's dusty too. It's a work in progress.

You can see that the bench has a little space underneath, so I can keep warp there! LOVE IT! Freakin' adorable. And look-I bought warp!! I love new supplies!! I had to buy a new reed and heddle hook-which in retrospect I think I used the heddle hook for everything and not the reed hook. I guess I figured I got the big ticket item for free, so I could spend $100 or so on other shit that I need to go with it. I bought grey, black, pink and white warp, which should give me enough variety to get started. I also found that pink and brown ball of jersey material at an antique store. (It's on the far right.) That would be cute for a rug, but there isn't that much, so I don't know how big of a rug it would make.

So, there you have it. Needless to say, I'm beside myself. I cannot wait to get going! Yay weaving!

Holiday gift ideas!

Buy something from my friend Lindsay. She rules and her shit is rad and can be purchased at Without a Pulse.

Like these crocheted Sushi Coasters:


Or for the rollergirl in your life, a "Talk Derby to Me" necklace, shrinky dink style!

This is Lindsay looking a little like a sad Care Bear. Cheer her up and buy something already!

The Medium is the Message.

I'm on a shopping high! I just purchased two new Shepard Fairey prints and I am super happy. If you aren't familiar with his work, you should check out his website OBEY GIANT. You've probably seen it somewhere in the last twenty years:

Or you may be familiar with one of his most recent works:

While working in New Hope, PA in 2001 I purchased a Shepard Fairey print during a show of his work at Tin Man Alley, thanks to proprietor and curator Jonathan LeVine. Tin Man Alley has since moved to NYC and is now the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. So here is the print I bought in 2001 and have treasured ever since:

That one is a joint work between Frank Kozik and Shepard Fairey.

Frank Kozik is a well-known artist who specializes in concert posters. He and Shepard Fairey collaborated on a print in 2000 for their joint art show "Fuck Kozik and Giant" which took place on October 5, 2000 at Dept Inc. in Osaka, Japan.

This is it in my living room, shown off especially well by my awesome photography skills!

The other print I bought at Tin Man Alley was this one by Frank Kozik. I love this one. I think it rules. The glare on this photo, does not rule. But you get the idea. It's awesome. She's blind and in a wheel chair and this kid's giving her the ultimate F you! Take this spider AND this skull. Damn. That shit's harsh.

So I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat wondering which two new prints I bought! Here's the first one:

Awesome!

And here's the second one. I figured I needed an Andre. I like this ripped up one.

All the prints purchased from OBEY GIANT are signed and numbered too, which is cool.
Yay!!

Getting my weave on.

Over the summer I was fortunate enough to receive a wonderful brand new 36" Ashford rigid heddle loom.

While I was picking up my Art Ed. Certification (my major in college was Fine Art/Sculpture) I picked up roughly the equivalent of a minor in weaving. In school we used 4 and 8 harness looms and what I loved best about weaving was creating pattern. I think it is so wild how you can manipulate the threads to make such beautiful and intricate designs. I love how all over the world and pretty much throughout time, weaving has stayed the same. Sure there are crazy industrial looms that are bigger than my apartment, but for the most part weaving still is what it always was. I remember this one time I had to visit The Daniel Boone Homestead on a college field trip and Daniel Boone's father was a weaver.

When we walked in the door there was a loom set up in the middle of the home and it was warped and partially woven with what was apparently a leftover project from Daniel Boone's father. (Or so they said.) Well, I wanted to just sit down and finish it for old Mr. Boone! I thought it was such a trip that this loom looked exactly like the loom I was using in school almost 300 years later.

Back to the rigid heddle. Like I said I loved pattern weaving and though I am extremely grateful for the rigid heddle, I do know it is a loom with real limitations as it only has the equivalent of two harnesses. That said I am eager to see what this baby can do! The loom was already warped when I received it, with a natural colored warp about 16" wide and who knows how many yards long, because I'm not undoing it to measure. Even though I have grander plans for this loom than what it is currently set up for, I know what a real bitch it is to warp a loom, I refuse to take off this warp and let all that tedious hard work go to waste. So I see a table runner or place mats in my future! I've woven about 6" or so, just messing around using a variety of pink, green and tan fabrics and it looks cute, but I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with it. Small wall hanging of some sort? Perhaps.

However, due to my minuscule apartment's previous life as an old timey post office and not a residence, I have almost no storage space. There is one small closet that my husband uses and another closet which is supposed to be for linens in the bathroom. Well my clothes take priority over some towels, so I keep my clothing in the bathroom! So the loom had no home. My handy husband put 2 hooks on the wall in our bedroom and VOILA! the loom is hanging on the wall. The hooks from Home Depot are the kind with 2 hooks on each hook (like for a coat and hat), so I have the loom resting on the top hooks and the shuttles rest perfectly on the bottom hooks. Nice! Also when there is a project on the loom, it looks lovely as decoration! Whenever I finish whatever I'm making, I'll post the pictures.

My next project is to make a ghetto warping board. I found sweet plans online thanks to In the Woodshop.org. Now if you follow the instructions on his website, you would no doubt have a very well designed warping board. I however, do not have a wood shop, or friends that I know of with a wood shop that are dying to make me a warping board. So this girl's going to IMPROVISE! I am going to bastardize the following plan and recreate it with 4" nails in my wall, using the plan below to provide me with the proper measurements and placement of the pegs (or nails).

I'll let you know what happens. I figure I've got some time to work on it, since I still have to finish my table/runner/wall hanging/place mats before I need to warp anything. That is-unless the weaving gods smile on me again and I have something new to warp! We'll see!!

Farmland Adventure! (or Washing Wool, part Un)

Okay fiber lovers, get excited! As promised, here is photo documentation of my woolly weekend with Amy! First things first, Amy's house is beautiful! So cute. Here's a view from the backyard:

While I was there Amy showed me the great assortment of naturally dyed wool roving she just received from Wool Farm Crafts.

She was making some really nice Christmas ornaments and I liked them a lot. I've been thinking about felting a nativity scene and seeing the ornaments convinced me to make my Christmas gifts this year.

After I admired Amy's digs and took the grand tour, we got down to business. Here's one of the two bags of wool that Chris and Amy sheared:


So we have plenty of raw material to work with! As you can see there is some sticks and leaves and junk in the wool. Luckily Amy had the good sense to not save the wool from around the butt. There was honestly tons of wool, so it would seem cruel to have to use the poopy stuff. Next we got started picking the big stuff out.

After we picked the wool sort of clean, we put it in lingerie bags, which we got 3 for a dollar at the dollar store. You can see the bag on the ground. After we filled our 9 bags, which in retrospect, we should have bought more bags, we were off to the laundry room. (As we were doing this I was reminded of the John Waters movie "Pecker" with Eddie Furlong and Christina Ricci. Christina Ricci works at a laundromat and at one point she catches a lady trying to use Rit dye in the machine. Ricci goes OFF on the lady and I was imagining the same scenario, but with dirty wool! Ha!)

After we filled the washer and added the soap, we poked at the bags with wooden spoons to help jostle some of the dirt and debris free. We took the bags out, emptied the washer to get rid of the filthy farm water, then refilled with new clean water and did this until the water ran fairly clear. We probably filled the washer 3 or 4 times.

Next we took our clean bags out to the garage to sort out the clean wool. You can see we each have a little funky pile next to us and then a bigger pile of wool that's been picked further of sticks, et cetera.

The next step is carding the wool, getting all the fibers lined up in the same direction, getting the knots out and any final stubborn sticks and leaves. Amy and I do not own carders, but we are looking into buying some, maybe off EBay. Here's what it looks like:

That nice lady from Oaxaca, Mexico is carding wool. The things in her hands are the carders. You can see they look a little like dog brushes. So Amy and I tried, you guessed it-dog brushes! It worked okay, but they were smaller so it would just take longer. You can see the lady has the basket of nasty-ish (but clean) wool and she is making nice fluffy organized wool!

Now by this time my husband was calling, wondering if I was ever coming home, so the photos end here. We plan on making a regular thing of this, so when Amy and I have nice bats of wool roving, I'll post the pictures. Here's a little nugget of cleaned wool, so you can see how far it came from the first picture of the wool straight off the sheep!

So there you have it. Washing Wool, part Un. It was a lot of work, but not too much, especially if you have good company to share the work with. Once we get it all carded, I'll post Washing Wool, part Deux.


Full directions on how to wash fleece are available at Gleason's Fine Woolies. Please consider making them a donation for this service.

Mah brain hurts.

So I've been busy once again fooling around with the ol' blog layout. I guess I should start working on some, um, CONTENT, for this thing, not just add buttons and links all day. I must say that I am in no way technically minded. I got an iPod for Christmas like four years ago and I can count on one hand the amount of times I used it. I couldn't deal with all the downloading and the instruction booklet seemed all mumbo-jumbo-y to me. So I finally pawned it for like $10. Whatever. Give me NPR. I can tune a radio.
That's more my speed.

As you can imagine, my barely existing technical skills can be quite the handicap in this here digital age. For the roller derby, I am the keeper of the Myspace-juvenile, yes, but a great way to get promotional information out en masse-and that has been good for me to learn compooter skills on. However, despite my tendancies to glaze over when it comes to this complicated code stuff, I do want to have as "fancy" a blog as I can muster. That plain template looked WEAK! And I think it's super fun to have fancy page and pick all the colors and whatnot. Getting the computer to make all that stuff happen, is not. I now think graphic/web designers must be some of the smartest, most focused people on earth. So with my minimal html knowledge, I have done my best to add jazzy features to this page. I managed to get the elusive 3rd column! That nearly killed me. I also managed to add the "Grab a button" thingy. That also was a a total bee-otch to figure out, so please grab a button! In conclusion, I am very proud of myself. Enough about that. On to more exciting things.

On Friday last week, my friend and co-worker Amy had me come over to have some felty fun! She and her husband have the good fortune to live on a great big peice of land, which I want to call a farm, but I think a farm needs crops, no? It's farm-like at the very least. She has sheep! And goats! And horseys! Thrifty fiber lovers that we are, we decided to clean some of the wool that Amy and Chris sheared off the sheep earlier this fall to help us feed our need to felt stuff. We thought this would be an economical way to have enough natural colored roving to use as a core material, and save the expensive pretty stuff for the outer layers. We may dye some too, so that will give us even more options. I do like the natural sheep colors too, so we'll see what we do with it.

In any case, I don't have the images to upload right now, so consider this a big tease and I'll post the photos of my Farmland Adventure as soon as I can.
I do have this picture of my cats, though:

Sweet!

As you know, I like felting, weaving and wooly things in general. I tried wet felting for the first time this summer and here's the result:

The brown parts on the pineapple looked better before the wet felting, as they were more spread out into little diamond shapes, but all in all I'm pretty happy with it. I ended up with a pretty good square, which as a beginner was something I had to pay careful attention to, so as not to end up with a wonky rhombus.

Pineapples are one of my "things". I'm fixated. I don't know why. Yes, they are delicious, but it's more than that. Anyway, I tend to collect all things Pinapple. I even got a pineapple tattoo! (Thanks to Casey Corklic.)

That's my arm.

Fish don't fry in the kitchen.

So I haven't posted anything since Sunday, but I've had a pretty full week! I'm moving my desk at work into an actual office, which is exciting. I'm also getting some new responsibilities, which is good too, since I really like working at the museum. Moving on up!

You win some...

Alright, bad news. We lost the game! It's not a big deal, the other team was really good. They had less players than us, but all the girls they had were pretty amazing. Hard hitters, big girls that were hard to take down, endurance and good offense. It's not so bad to get beaten by a strong team. Makes me want to work harder. It was a close game, we lost by about 12 points I think. (Derby is kind of like basketball, in how high the scores can go. If we lost by 12 points in say, soccer, I might feel worse right now.) Anyway, enough of that. There's always next time.





On another note, some people asked me to put up some pictures of the things I have made out of felt. I left my camera battery charger on my desk at work, so could only turn on my camera and take one picture before it died. So here's a little lady I made. It's not suposed to be offensive, so don't take it that way. It actually started out of my love for the Ancient Fern brown color. I made the body out of a toothpaste green, then covered it with the nice colors. I haven't finished the arms yet, so you can see the light green coming through. The picture is a little blurry because I was trying to take it quick before the battery went.






Want to hear a sad story? Cats like to eat felted stuff. Something about the sheepy smell drives them wild. After my abbreviated photo shoot-disaster struck! I forgot the god damn little lady on the couch and Bubsy mauled her overnight. (Pardon my french.) I was able to get the camera to turn on for one more photo.
The aftermath:






Can you see how she's all fuzzy now? She used to be smooth and firmly packed. Now she's all nubby! She had a rough night. She's fixable though. She did, however, have two felting needles stuck in back last night, which are not there now. I can't wait to find a 3" barbed needle (or two) jammed in my foot.

The culprit:



Penelope does not approve:




Here's us in happier times:



We were on a derby trip to play a bout out in Ohio and we stopped at this gross barbeque place on the way. All the food had names like "The Pittsburger" and there was no real indication of what any of the food was going to be. So I ordered the Pittsburger, which turned out to be a pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and french fries on top. It was a disgusting mess. Later I saw a lady who worked there sweep out the oven with a broom. Like a broom that you clean the floor with. My friend Bonnie ordered some "Ragin' Cajun" sandwhich that turned out to be a two foot chicken hoagie. Ahhhh...good times.