Softly Softly Catchy Mousey

Mice. They're cute but bastards, chewing through my electricity cables and shitting everywhere. Just look at what they did to the wall behind the fridge (pic on the right). They came in through the airbrick and nibbled their way through what looks like layers of Tescos bags and Jeff Banks wallpaper, which would usually lead to a rant about lazy decorators, but I can't be arsed. Does need redecorating, though, that wallpapers gotta be 20 years old.

We had mice downstairs (Jerry Jingles and family) and some upstairs too (Kevin and family). Jerry Jingles' lot liked coffee and would nibble through that, and Kevin's lot had quite a fondness for painkillers and would regularly make a beeline to all the tasty medication. They had to go, but humanely.

We tried some of those humane mouse-traps you get at B&Q but they mice were too clever for them, they'd nick the bait and leg it from the trap. So we built a thing (pictured left) using an a couple of old paper-towel cardboard roll, some newspaper and a bin. Bait was inserted into the cardboard roll, which was then carefully balanced on one of the worktops Jerry Jingles' lot like to hang out on. A big bin with smooth sides, demi-filled with newspaper, was placed under the roll -- the idea being that Jerry Jingles and co would go down the tube for a tasty snack, then fall in the bin, with the slippery sides preventing them from climbing out.

We set the trap and went off, and returned to find a Jerry Jingles (that's him on the right) in the bin :D Yay! Next step was removing the little gits from the house-- they have to be dumped at least a mile away otherwise they'll find their way home. We transferred them into a container (don't forget to line with old newspaper and put in some airholes), found a safe spot in some woods and left them there, hoping that they wouldn't bump into Mr Owl. Within a couple of weeks, and several trips to the woods later, we were mouse-free \o/ We even managed to lure Kevin away from the tasty drugs!

Hope they're OK in the woods, they annoyed me thoroughly but I still feel horrible about leaving them to fend for themselves in the woods :'(

Frozenfire's Gorgeous Glass

Had some yummy mail t'other week in the form of some glass plugs made by the lovely Frozenfire :)

I got a pair of these peacock and white on cobalt lattacino coil plugs from Frozenfire several years ago in 8mm (pictured left, at the top), and never got round to getting a bigger pair. That it, until I was randomly browsing Etsy and found another pair in my size -- it was like it was meant to be. I quickly snagged them, did an excited little dance, and then started the horrible process of waiting for a package to get here from the States. It only took about 10 days and now they're here, in my ears where they should be.

Absolutely love these plugs, they're not only stunning gorgeous but are wonderfully comfortable as well. They are a tiny bit heavy due to the glass (I generally like them light, as I'm an old fart and am starting to get slightly saggy lobes, despite regular massages) but they're so pretty that it's a trade-off I will happily accept. Will definitely be getting more, and soon.

Got stressed, made stuff, opened an Etsy shop

Not been coping with the stress of bastards very well recently :( I usually make plugs to chill out a bit but they weren't doing it for me for a bit as I was overworked and burning the candle at both ends. It's quietened down now and the job from hell has finished now, so it's all good again. Touch wood.

Anyway, I used to make clay things, rocks and Garden Jedis (pictured below, right) to destress before I made plugs, but the weather was too rubbish to make the Garden Jedis :( Polymer clay doesn't care about weather, so that came out and I made some swirly ear hangies. Made quite a lot of them, in fact, kept quite a lot of those, and am selling the rest on Etsy.

The Big Stompy Bootique Etsy Shop can be found here -- have a look through if you have stretched ears and fancy some swirly ear hangies to wear in through your eyelets :) I'll also be putting some other things on there at some point, like other jewellery and Garden Jedis, maybe some vintage 80s clothing, once I've got rid of the urge to make swirly things while watching the telly.

Broke My Toe, Sulking

Recently, I decided to hang up my high heels, due to concerns over breaking my ankles or something. I'm not very good on high heels anymore, used to be shit-hot but then I married someone with short-man-syndrome and the stillettos had to go :( Rekindled my relationship with them after I got rid of the shortie, but it wasn't the same, as my ankle always hurt (war wound) and they seemed wobbly. Unsturdy. Maybe a bit scary; it was always a bit tense going out in them as I was always worried about the heel coming off or falling over, with some git quipping, "have a nice trip?". Yes, fuck off.

Anyway, heels were retired and boxed up, ready for eBay, when I tripped over a boot. Not a heeled boot, mind, but the flattest one I had, like the one in the piccie. A shite boot. Landed on my toe, it made an unpleasant noise and now I can't walk properly. So I'm sulking and blogging about it, cos I can't do a lot else at the moment :( Isn't irony fun?

8mm Glass Plugs For Sale, One Careful Owner

Right, I'm selling these off as they're way too small for me and I'm not stretching me secondaries up to 8mm. Not having a helix punch either, so they've got to go :(

They're all 8mm / 0g pyrex glass -- some of them are double flared, the rest of them are single flared with no o-rings included. They've been cleaned thoroughly (not autoclaved, though you can autoclave these) and haven't been worn for absolutely years, they've just been sitting in a drawer with a look of abandonment and dejection on their beautiful little faces :'(

Let's go through them, shall we?

	1). 8mm / 0g blue dichroic glass plugs PAIR: Unknown maker. Double flared with black flat backs, and a wearable of ~7mm.   £7.50 excluding shipping.
	2). 8mm / 0g black colourfront glass plugs PAIR. Glasswear Studios. Single flared (o-rings not included) with clear domed backs, and a wearable of ~10.5mm. One of the colourfronts has a mark and a couple of scratches on the front, easily fixed with a spot of black nail polish.   £6 excluding shipping.
	3). 8mm / 0g black and white 'feather' glass plugs PAIR. Unknown maker. Double flared with same pattern on the flat backs, and a wearable of ~9mm.   £7.50 excluding shipping.
	4). 8mm / 0g baby blue colourfront glass plugs PAIR.   Glasswear Studios. Single flared (o-rings not included with clear domed backs, and a wearable of ~12mm.  £7.50 excluding shipping.
	5). 8mm / 0g pink and diamond galaxy glass plugs PAIR. Glasswear Studios. Double flared with black flat backs, and a wearable of ~8mm.   £11 excluding shipping.
	6). 8mm / 0g peacock and white lattacino coils on cobalt glass plugs PAIR. Frozenfire. Single flared (no o-rings included) with cobalt domed backs and a wearable of ~10mm.   £11 excluding shipping.
	7). 8mm / 0g purple / green dichroic glass plugs PAIR. Unknown maker. Double flared with silver dichro domed backs, and a wearable of ~8mm.   £10 excluding shipping.
	8). 8mm / 0g embossed star on clear glass plugs PAIR. Unknown maker. Double flared with clear slightly pointy backs, and a wearable of  ~10mm.   £7.50 excluding shipping.

Fancy buying some of these or want some better pictures? Send us an email to plugs (at) bigstompyboot.co.uk, and I'll get you sorted :) Shipping is £2 UK, £4 Rest of the World, and I will combine shipping on these if you wanted more than one pair :)

Fuzzy Clock Has Stolen My Ability To Tell The Time Properly

Fuzzy clocks are brilliant, have got them on my phone, as a clock-radio, time piece in the front room, even on my computer, basically everywhere I can put them. Office, studio, they all have their own fuzzy clock. This is how it has worked for years, and it was glorious, until I looked at an analogue watch today and had to take a minute suss out how to read the fucking time, old-school.

FFS.

This is what age does to you, it steals your skills and replaces them with grey hairs, hot flushes and a yearning to start growing vegetables.

NOTD: OPI Suede Russian Navy with OPI Last Friday Night

One of the problems with my jobs is I either can't wear nail polish, or I can but it gets trashed within five minutes due to the nature of the work :( Why I picked OPI Suede Russian Navy is beyond me, because it has started to chip like crazy. Put it on, have a sip of tea, chip yer polish. Great.

Fixed the chipping problem slightly by putting some OPI Last Friday Night glittery polish over the top -- lovely one is this one, blue and orange glitters with a blue shimmer. Looked good over Russian Navy but ultimately wasn't enough to stop the chipping, as I lost some bits making a cup of coffee. So I later fixed it up and chucked some cheap and cheerful UV topcoat over the top which normally sorts these sort of problems out. However, it was an excercise in failure, as a bit has cheerfully chipped off whilst typing this post.

Bastard.

I don't remember Russian Navy being this bad for chipping but it has been some time since I last wore it and the formula may have gone a bit funny. Damn shame if it has, it's a lovely polish.

Insectoid Spirals Aren't Made Of Awesome Insects

I've had these horn (not insect) Insectoid spirals from Arka for quite a while -- they were originally a present when I had 6mm lobes, and I loved my Insectoids dearly. Then I went up various sizes and found that they wouldn't fit well in earskins/eyelets/whathaveyou and I kept losing the lovely little buggers. This was a very sad thing (not for Arka, though, I always bought replacements from them), and they were regrettably retired into a pretty box, hoping that one day something suitable would turn up.

Patience proved to be a virtue, as Insectoid salvation arrived in the form of some iron wood eyelets from Wildcat. They're 16mm (my current size) but the aperture is just big enough for the Insectoids to fit pretty comfortably. They did initially pop out if I shook my head or something, but this was easily sorted by putting a 6mm o-ring on smooth part of the spiral. Now they're nice and secure, I can go out without worrying about them falling out and disappearing down the front of my top, and I'm just generally chuffed I can wear them again.

I Like The Noise It Makes

I'm an occasional bass player, but was unable to play properly for a quite a while :( My bass amp was well rumbly and I didn't want to annoy the neighbours with it as they're nice (old neighbours were arsehats), so I had to resort to quiet strumming whilst watching the telly. It was pointless trying to play along to music as I could barely hear me bass, just a gentle twang, it was an awful state of affairs that needed sorting quick sharpish.

Then, one day in the not-so-distant past, I found the Vox amPlug Bass Guitar Headphone Amp and swiftly purchased it. And I'm glad I did, it's awesome! Just plug the little amp into the bass (some need a cable, more on that in a bit), then plug some headphones into the little amp, turn it on and play \m/ And, yay, thanks to the wonders of adjustable volume and gain I could actually hear my bass LOUD. This was very pleasing. Even more pleasing was that I could plug my mp3 player into the aux socket, pop some music on and play along at a complimentary volume while the husband watched Eastenders.

Only moans I have about it are that there can be a bit of a hiss when the batteries start to run low, and, as mentioned earlier, you may need a cable to plug it in. It plugs in fine on my old P-Bass (pictured right, left), but I have to use a male-to-female adapter cable for my SR300 bass (pictured right, right), which is a bit of a pain if your cables quickly tangle themselves into a frenzy of their own accord.

My lovely little headphone bass amp came from Gear4Music and has made my life that little more complete and my fingers that little more sore. I am a happy bunny.

I Could Marry This Smoking Juice

I've been craving a good, chocolate e-juice to puff away on for a while, but my search had been fruitless (or chocolateless, in this case). I found a fair few 'chocolate' flavours about, most of which tasted like some sort of delicate choco-flowery thing with a hint of perfume, not the OMG CHOCOLATE taste that was needed. Once had one that smelt absolutely gorgeous, but when I tried it, it tasted of an early 1990's Avon fragrance, even after a year of airing, mixing and stewing. It wasn't impressive, and I had given up on ever having a good chocolate puff, when I came across Halo Belgian Cocoa.

I'm glad that it came into my life, as it's fucking gorgeous. It's very chocolatey, and is reminiscent of the chocolate puddings that you used to get in Gateway (old supermarket that turned into Somerfield). Only thing about the flavour is it's so strong that anything else you put in afterwards will taste of chocolate, but this is easily sorted by giving it it's own tank :) It deserves it, it's yummy. It also mixes nicely with various other flavours (have been enjoying the Belgian Cocoa with banana lately, raspberry is nice too). 

Halo Belgian Cocoa is a wee bit on the expensive side compared to others, but it's well worth it if you need a good chocolate, plus it saves me money as it has replaced my Galaxy bar habit. It's available from various internet shops but if you're in the UK then may I recommend Vapetime? Very good, quick service, which is always nice when there's chocolate involved \o/

Need Another Ear Stabbing

Going to bring this blog back to life by moaning about how I definitely need another ear stabbing in me right ear (pictured on the left, cos that's how I roll. 'Scuse the hair, it's hot and fuzzy). I like my piercings to be divisible by three, which isn't the case at the moment, so I need one more. However, I just can't decide what to get so I'm going to write a really boring post about my indecision.

An industrial would be AWESOME, but I can't be arsed to heal it. Not only that, but my ear isn't quite right for it anyway as it's got a sticky-out bit where the centre of the industrial would sit. Migration would be a definite thing. This would piss me off, as I hate retiring piercings. Bollocks.

Daiths are nice enough, but it would annoy the fuck out of me if it didn't line up perfectly central to the two conch piercings. Dem balls are fiddly as well, they will fall to the bathroom floor and get lost under the bath when I try to put the wee bastards on, because that is what they do. Then I may cry.

There's also a helix punch at maybe 6-8mm, but no-one does them round here and I'm not sure I want a big hole at the top of my ear when I'm 60.  :( I do, however, have some very nice 8mm glass pieces that'll look nice up there. Hmmmm ...

And then there's the tragus -- a tragus would also be pretty cool, but then I'd feel compelled to have one on the other side, which would ruin my divisible by three thing, unless I have EVERYTHING done.

Fuck it, can't decide, might have everything done. ALL THE PIERCINGS!