free-form pursuits of happiness

Orange Rolls

2011-12-13T18:44:00.004-07:00

Made some orange rolls! nom nom.

Used this recipe for the dough:

¼ cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
3 eggs
½ cup butter [i used less, like maybe 1/3 cup]
¾ cup milk
½ cup sugar [i used brown sugar]
¾ teaspoon salt
4 ½ - 5 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water, set aside for 5 minutes. In a large mixing bowl mix together eggs, sugar, and salt. Set aside. In a small saucepan, melt butter then add milk. Slowly pour into egg mixture mixing all the time. Add yeast mixture and 2 cups flour. Mix until dough is smooth. Add remaining flour 1 cup at a time. Only use needed amount of flour to form a smooth yet sticky dough. DO NOT ADD MORE THAN 5 CUPS OF FLOUR. Cover dough with plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Place in refrigerator overnight.

(from http://simplysogood.blogspot.com/2011/11/orange-rolls.html ... but i wanted to do the rest differently.)

like she says, the dough should not be a stiff as bread dough. much softer and still a little sticky. refrigerating overnight makes it easier to handle.

For the filling, i mixed

a half to a full can of orange juice concentrate or more (from less sweet/sticky to crazy orange madness)
a couple spoonfuls brown sugar
dash of cinnamon
raisins & dried cranberries

Soak overnight to for plump juiciness.

THE NEXT MORNING:
roll out the dough as long and thin as possible. i use powdered sugar instead of flour on the rolling surface for sweet breads to keep the dough soft. spread butter onto it. spread the OJ/raisin filling evenly and roll into a giant log. cut into rolls! i like to make lots of little rolls rather than a few giant ones, but i couldn't even roll it as long and thin as i wanted because i didn't have enough space.
put in a buttered pan with a bit of space around each, and let rise for about 30-45 min.

warning: the OJ filling leaks like crazy.

oh right, before rising you can mix together:

chopped pecans
a spoonful of soft butter
a couple spoonfuls of OJ filling

Sprinkle on top of rolls in pan.

BAKE the rolls for 18-22 min in 350°F.
Made 24 rolls for me, or enough to fill a 9x13 and a 9x9 pan.

If that's not sweet enough for you, there's always FROSTING.

cream cheese
soft butter
powdered sugar
(vanilla) (i didn't have any)
milk if needed

mix to desired consistency. spreading onto warm rolls will make it melt a little which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

VARIATIONS (pick and choose carefully, not all of these go together):

to make the filling easier to work with, you could soak the raisins in just a bit of OJ and leave the rest of the concentrate frozen, to spread on the dough, and then just sprinkle the sugar & spices on top before rolling.
of course the raisins, nuts, glaze etc could all be omitted or substituted with something else. i'm not forcing you to make something you don't like, i'm enabling you to make something you DO like, duh
soak the raisins in rum, brandy, etc
maple flavoring in the frosting
maybe soft caramel on top instead of a glaze
orange zest: i didn't have any but you *should* use it in the filling, glaze, or dough itself
for a wassail-inspired roll, include grated apples in the filling]
berry-based glaze or added to filling: blackberry, cranberry, raspberry, strawberry
full pie style: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice
ginger
anise/fennel
chocolate in the frosting and/or filling if you're a sick, depraved, no-good menace (i think putting chocolate where it isn't necessary is horrible, and a sign of more serious underlying issues)
cardamom
pineapple and coconut in the filling or on top
caraway in the filling or in the dough (rye)
coriander
top with candied orange peel
use orange juice in the dough instead of milk
pomegranate seeds

current projects

2011-09-12T12:16:00.001-06:00

i decided mobile blog posting is easy enough to do it!
so here are some lists!

CURRENTLY WORKING ON:

an emerald green wool capelet, i'm calling it Villanesse because it's meant to have a high, stiff collar (we'll see how that turns out.) i am documenting the pattern as i make it so i can release it later. it's kind of a blank slate style pattern, in that other than the most basic design elements it's all stockinette and could easily be customized with texture patterns or color work\
a lolita-themed Minecraft texture pack! Minecraft is a sweet world-creation type computer game and one of its features is that computery people can modify the game to great extents if desired. a lot of people will design custom skins to change the look of the game so i decided to make a sweet, girly texture pack based on Japanese Lolita fashion.
this sort of counts as a project, i guess. been painting minis for my DnD character. i play a druid who summons animals AND turns into an animal so i have a lot of them! painting minis is a very fun, relaxing, non-serious thing for me, like a grown-up coloring book. not done with the druid herself yet.

NEAR FUTURE PROJECTS:

last night i was going through my yarn stash and devised an idea to bust through a ton of yarn, especially the lots of small balls of similar colors that i have. going to do a hogwarts/ravenclaw blanket in an exciting/frustrating (hah) style that uses lots of colors... it should look like a painting, i hope not yarn vomit anyway. sketched out the basic design. if i knit yhe whole thing as one piece, i'd probably be using over 30 colors at a time. wrestling with that many balls is not enticing so i'm thinking of breaking it into squares like a quilt, to crochet together at the end. will do some test runs to decide if it looks ok enough to be worth the fragmentation.
i have been feeling the need to do some drawing or painting and had this idea back in April for the Rapture scare. Want to do a painting of a Holy Raptor running around scooping up people...during the Rapture scare i came up with the joke loke, what if people misimterpreted rapture for raptor... anyway the painting will have the inscription "Taken up by the Holy Raptor" to help people get it. idk i think it's funny and hope to have it done by October so it's relevent for the next rapture scare date...

PROJECTS ON PAUSE:

ok so this should be in current projects but i guess i'm a bit stuck. Cuyler & I are working on an android game about dinosaurs and i'm supposed to be doing the graphics. i want it to be really good and have been a bit indecisive about the style and stuff. i know i need to just DO SOMETHING and it'll come out easier. been thinking a lot and not doing enough. :P

PAST PROJECTS:
well let's see.. everything that has to do with a wedding i suppose.

my invitations
my dress (specifically skirt, bodice, petticoat, veil)
my mask! we had a masquerade themed reception and made masks out of leather. i found out i freaking love working with leather.

if anyone wants to know more about any of these projects just let me know and i'll see if i can do a more in-depth post about how it's done or whatever.

silly blogger

2011-09-09T09:45:00.001-06:00

blogger has not been overly convenient to post to over the years... it turns out i don't have quite the right lifestyle for sitting down at a computer for the sole purpose of expounding volumes of autobiographical material. i must do it from a smartphone or not at all!!

i do think about stuff i'd want to post on my blog all the time. microblogging via twitter suits my style, except that i can be a bit verbose, and certain subjects require more explication than is appropriate for twitter.

so anyway i am testing the blogger mobile app to see if it's worth sticking with blogger, or finding an easier platform.

also i find myself a bit irritated by the limitations i defined for the subject matter of this blog... can i retcon that and just post whatever i want?

some soup.

2011-05-06T09:57:00.000-06:00

I made some soup that made everyone go crazy so I figured i'd write down how I made it before I forget.

ingredients:

sausage
mushroom
kale
carrot
red onions
white beans
corn
potato
sour cream
olive oil
garlic
bay leaf
basil
oregano
fennel
sea salt
cracked pepper & whole peppercorns

I started up some water to boil the potatoes in a big soup pot.

The sausage was frozen solid so i popped the whole ice block in a saute pan with a bit of water to simmer/thaw. It was about 12 of those little tubular breakfast sausages.

Cut 4 small potatoes into 1" pieces and boiled them. (I like chunky veggies so everything was chopped about that large.)

When the sausages were thawed I drained out the sausage water and chopped then up and sauteed them a bit more (also tried to remove the casings).

When the potatoes were about halfway cooked I added the kale (cut the leaves off 2 large stalks) and the sausage and 1 thinly sliced carrot to the soup pot. at this point it can simmer a little lower than boiling.

In the saute pan (cleaned of sausage gunk) I sauteed very largely diced mushrooms in olive oil with garlic. Used about 8 mushrooms that were at least 3" in diameter and probably about 2 spoonfuls of minced garlic. (from a jar)

Also sauteed 1 1/2 red onion (vidalia). Since there was so much in the pot only about half of all that stuff got sauteed, which was fine, it's really to soak up the olive oil and sear/caramelize a bit.

So then I dumped everything else in the pot; the mushrooms & onions along with tomatoes, corn, and beans.

The tomatoes: I used a quart sized jar of home-canned whole tomatoes. Drained & rinsed, then loosely chopped/crushed. The corn was half a bag of frozen kernels. The beans was 2-3 handfuls of previously cooked white beans. If anyone who ate any remembers other vegetables involved, comment it because I can't remember it all.

At this point everything just needs to heat up together. I really don't like stewing vegetables together for a long time so my soups are usually minimal in cook length.

I tucked about 7 bay leaves into the pot during this simmering stage.

So then I just prepared the seasoning by taking half a carton of sour cream and mixing in basil, oregano, and fennel. mostly basil, VERY light on the fennel. it's the key to what makes the soup surprisingly good but you should not overdo it. total there were probably 30 or less fennel seeds. about twice as much in volume of dried oregano & 4x as much dried basil... which means prolly like a spoonful basil, 1/2 spoonful oregano. So I mixed the herbs into the sour cream and then mixed in a few tablespoons of olive oil.

Then I stirred the seasoned sour cream into the soup. Then I added the salt and pepper to taste, probably turned out to be a couple spoonfuls of salt. I also threw in a few whole peppercorns. I love pepper in soup a lot.

So then it's done. After the point of adding the kale it was probably only on heat for 15 min or less, mostly because of prepping the other stuff.

Everyone loved it. I was winging it with whatever i found that i thought would go good together, so glad it turned out well. No pics cuz we snarfed it. Notably I made this so I could take a bucketful to my sick boyfriend, and he really liked it, and I was secretly worried because I know he has high standards for everything. :) We ate it with rolls. In the future I would probably omit the potatoes, I don't really like potatoes in most soups, but there were potatoes that needed using and there was so much stuff in this soup that it didn't matter. That was also cut the time down a lot.

I think the most important parts of the flavor were the olive oil, fennel/basil combo, black pepper & garlicked mushrooms (tho the garlic doesn't stand out by the end.) It started out inspired by the tuscan soup at Bocata but didn't end out very similar.

2010-06-28T13:25:00.003-06:00

BTW i never posted about my portfolio website. i built it and all that.

www.lysswhit.com

i wanted to stick some tantalizing screenshots in this post but blogger is being an absolute bugger about uploading images today.

a day in the life

2010-06-28T12:24:00.000-06:00

This is kind of what I want my daily life to be like:

8am: wake up fairly early feeling magically refreshed. eat a couple muffins and workout for 30-45 min then shower. (ideal workouts would be fun aerobics like dancing, plus stretching and core building through stuff like yoga and pilates).
9am: a really good, well-rounded breakfast with reading. lots of fresh fruit and water.
10am-5pm: the work day begins. i would either have a job i love or be self-employed to work on my own projects. or have a ~~sugar-daddy~~ "sponsor" paying my bills so i can work on whatever i want. these projects would be all the stuff i like to make and do as outlined throughout this entire blog. if this time was for me to do my own projects i'd probably have to set up a schedule of which things to do on which days.
(1pm: lunch. something simple with lots of fresh vegetables.)
the evenings will be open for attending different group meetings or events each night (amtgard, bel, choir/band practice, gallery stroll etc)
dinner would probably be around 8pm, something simple and healthful and delicious.
in bed by midnight!
weekends would be totally non-commital... as in i don't want any absolute obligations so i can choose to go out of town for events, go camping, have parties or whatever.

so i guess i just want a simple life with the freedom to do the things i love. i'm guessing that's what most people want.

So what's stopping this life from being a reality?

largely my own lack of self-discipline. I'm a total sleep addict. yesterday i slept about 7 hours, went to church, ate lunch, slept for 6-7 more hours(!!!), hung out with some friends at the park, and went back to bed for 9 more hours. WTF! this is unhealthy. i'm sure that if i train my body i can adjust to getting 7-8 hrs of sleep a day and be totally happy with it. i want to be more productive, especially in the summer.
and then i've never been much of a routine-follower. i've never had a regular exercise schedule, or even normal eating habits.

So if i just force myself into following a schedule half of this ideal lifestyle would be taken care of!

the other obstacle is the whole money issue. i need a decent source of income, of course, to pay my bills, but mostly i want a job that fits into the time slot outlined above. i'm sick of night jobs and weekend jobs and inconsistent jobs and "flexible hours" that just mean hardly any work with unpredictable hours. i guess it's time to grow up and join the real world? OTOH i would LOVE to make enough money on my own from all my side projects (plus maybe a fun part time job) but i am clearly lacking the discipline at this point to do that, and it's not a good time for me to experiment with self-employment as i still need to pay rent every month. actually i would love a part-time job that is nearby (to minimize commuting) and fun to go to, that pays enough to cover my basic living expenses but allows me enough free time to work on my own projects as well. i only ask that the hours are regularly scheduled so that i can plan the rest of my life around it. I find i've been wasting a lot of time lately, my most recent job has had unpredictable hours so whole days go by without me accomplishing much because i can't plan around work because i don't know when it will be.

As it stands right now, i'm kind of in-between jobs. i worked at an embroidery shop on contract for a while but the business got bought by another company and apparently my services were no longer required. I've been applying and interviewing for lots of other jobs; real, grown-up, full-time graphic design jobs and design/art/production-related jobs i think i'd enjoy. in the meantime, while waiting to hear back from any of those, i have a lot of free time. so it's perfect for starting to train myself to follow a schedule while i have this kind of freedom, right?

hobbies

2010-02-06T00:31:00.018-07:00

i have a lot of hobbies. In fact i'm kind of a hobby whore (not to be confused with a whore hobbyist or anything of the kind) but the thing is I don't actually spend any time on any of my hobbies.

so imma make some lists because that always seems helpful.

HOBBIES I'VE HAD that i want to do more of

foam fighting
combat
weapon building
designing/making clothes
knitting
sewing
parkour
spy parties/night games
painting/drawing
writing music
papermaking
stencilling/textile printing
various other textile arts
video games
motorcycle riding
social bicycling
going to festivals/faires
singing
playing viola
jewelry making
gardening
dancing
cooking/baking
going to concerts
watching good movies
face painting/costume make up

HOBBIES I WANT TO PICK UP in the near future

bellydancing
fire dancing
stilt walking
paintball
dirt biking
being in a band
(small community theater) acting
DnD
archery
henna

STUFF I WANNA LEARN eventually

metalsmithing
woodworking
how to shoot guns
real swordfighting
something mechanical, i dunno what
how to build a computer
how to manipulate the space/time continuum to my own benefit (otherwise i will never get all this other stuff done)

then there's other other stuff that i consider skills that i want to learn but are not exactly hobbies, like webdesign-related crap, languages, math etc.

did i miss anything? i'm basically only interested in AWESOME stuff so don't say anything stupid like fantasy football or model airplanes.

life goes on and on

2010-01-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

wtf a blog post. long time no write. (3 days shy of 5 months to be nearly exact.)

so been thinking more about stuff. in my last semester here at the U for graphic design, and been trying to come up with ideas for life.

Teach for America was trying to recruit me. a guaranteed full-time job for 2 years and extra $10,000 to pay off my student loans is tempting. the biggest problems is i freakin hate teaching, and i really couldn't teach anything besides art and music, and i wouldn't want to anyway.

before i was considering joining one of those teach english in Japan things because i really want to be in Japan for a few months. but seriously, i don't even speak japanese and.. i dunno. man i really don't want to end up never having gone to japan in my life but i don't know if this is the best time.

i mean really i should be looking for a design job. do i even want to start this whinefest =_= i think that this is probably all i've talked about on this blog for a long time. basically, i dont' imagine most professional graphic design jobs will make me happy, and (as the title of this blog implies) all i really care about is my own personal happiness, screw the rest of the world. hahaha. but srsly i don't intend to waste a great portion of my life doing something i don't enjoy, i've had enough of that already.

Maybe all i wanna do is paint, draw comics and write symphonies.

But i do really love design. in fact today i kind of realized something about my love for design.

it's not really graphic design i love. i love design as an entire concept. this thing i like about design is taking this chaotic mass of content and sorting through it and making something of it. which leads me to believe what i've suspected for a while: i really like informational design. whether it's a simple chart, a technical diagram or an entire system of of direction like a way-finding system (signs, directories, etc) of a building or community, or a website. freakin, taking this hot mess of raw data and deciphering it and organizing it until it's easy for even the most pedestrian among us to understand.. that's freakin awesome. that's power. i think if i can find a way to work with information i will be happy.

so yeah we were all chillin at this design firm today and Randall Smith, a designer of note who is also a bluegrass guitarist, said he has a position open for a designer who is also capable of acting as a developer, like someone who knows flash, php, mysql, etc in addition to being a fullisze, real life graphic designer. the world is full of posers but i think i actually have the capability to be such a person.

oh yeah related tangient. i'm frikkin sick of people obsessing over right brain/left brain division. i don't believe that crap. well, i mean i do believe it but people take it way too seriously, like to the point where it inhibits their ability to do anything outside of what they think a person of their side-brainedness would do. ok look, everyone has functioning on both sides of their brain or else half of us would be robots and half of us would be barbarians. why is it (apparently) so difficult for a lot of people to look at things in inbetweens... not everything has to be ONE or THE OTHER.

so yeah. i think i'm fairly well balanced as far as the strengths of my two brain hemispheres. (i think i take after my dad a lot) anyway i think i could be totally good at coding and stuff, i just haven't taken the time to learn. should i stay in school for the sake of learning computer things? man. i'd have to take so much math. but i secretly like math. i was in a freakin math competition once, bet you didn't know that.

I went into art because i love it.. i went into graphic design because i was trying to be practical. but there's this little bohemian girl inside me going FOLLLOOOWWW YOOOOUUURRR DREEEEAAMMSSSSS and no matter how practical i am, she will not be quelled. if i do "follow my dreams" will i regret not being more practical when i'm dead broke and have nothing to show for my life (...according to popular values that i don't even fully believe in?) or... how can i find a compromise that will leave me happy? I'm the type to find a good blend between two extremes (really... i can't think of any sentiment that more accurately describes me in practically every way) and so far i've been pretty unhappy with the compromises between practical and fun that i've tried to come up with so far.

is the internet the answer? the internet is always the answer.

The future is mine

2009-09-01T16:01:00.000-06:00

In one of my classes we had an assignment in which we were meant to present a plan to obtain our dream design job.
I failed.
Because, even though I've been fighting it, I don't really care to work as a graphic designer forever after this.
Been thinking a lot about my future this summer and I know I've posted about this dilemma before. Finally reaching some sorts of conclusions...
Here are some things I've decided are solid facts about me:

I ~~like~~ love to work with my hands and at the end, have a beautiful, functional, physical finished object.
If I actually care about what I'm doing, I'm a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak. I hate to have any aspect of a project I'm working on outside of my direct influence. I want to do everything myself, if I delegate I want it to be because of deliberate decision and not necessity. (if i don't care i don't put effort in)

For these reasons it's hard for me to see myself working for someone else my whole life. (And even since grade school I've wanted to start my own company.)
I've been going to school for years trying to convince myself that I can be happy doing something practical instead of something I am passionate about. Pretending like fun things are only for hobbies.
Well, screw that.

I've let Practicality win so many battles... But I can see now that Passion will win the war, or I will live and die a prisoner.

{so now the scheming commences... How can I take the plunge into doing what I love, and make it work/get away with it?}

The incredible true story of the Vigilante and the Ice Cream Fair.

2009-08-12T17:37:00.003-06:00

This is the blog post you've all been waiting for. The incredible true story of the Vigilante and the Ice Cream Fair.

The events depicted in this comic are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.

This comic was drawn by my little sister Sarah and stars me! Because it's so action-packed, I will provide a scene-by-scene read-along so you don't miss any of the excitement.

PART ONE

Panel 1—Our brave hero comes to the Ice Cream Fair.

Panel 2—The anticipation of eating all this ice cream... so tantalizing

Panel 3—"Want an ice cream?" the large-armed ice cream scooper asks seductively.

But what's he doing over there? He grabs a mystery bottle and puts the contents on my ice cream cone!

Panel 4—I'm thinking "Yes" but I have to say, "No, I don't. It might slow me down." because I think it "might have poison." This is a very conflicting moment in my life.¹

Panel 5—ICE CREAMED!
Panel 6—"Not me!" I yell as I deftly dodge his sinister ice cream attack. Note: I have changed into my vigilante costume.
Panel 7—Now, it's war.
Panel 8—I charge with full power while shooting the ice cream man with my infamous Goo Gun. GOO! The ice cream man is stunned to be caught in a cocoon of blue goo.
Panel 8—Aha, sucka! "I give up!" cries the ice cream man, as a startled, one-eyed ninja appears in the foreground.
Panel 9— "Nick the Ninja?" I ask dubiously. "Yes," he replies stoicly, while the not-as-large-armed ice cream manager tells the ice cream man, "You're fired! 4 ever" (Their arms are large from all the scooping they do)

PART TWO

Panel 1—continued.
Panel 2—"You were too late." I tell Nick the Ninja. "Yes...." he replies, "But I came." "True," I concede.²
Panels 3 & 4—Nick the Ninja announces our next intentions to the world. "LET'S EAT ICE CREAM!"
Panel 5—OM NOM NOM NOM ICE CREAM
Panel 6—temporary ice cream overdose
Panel 7—We're floating through a magical land of utter ice cream bliss!
Panel 8—and don't forget to visit the gift shop. Yay
Panel 9—ICE CREAM
Panel 10—YA!
Panel 11—"I never will live a week w/out eating 2 servings again." I declare triumphantly.
Panel 12—That night I'm in an ice cream coma, wearing my new ice cream pajamas. My adventurer's goggles are hung up for the time being.
Panel 13—Next day. I'm at work and one of my coworkers can tell I'm a little too happy about life. He asks suspiciously, "You went to the Ice Cream Fair, didn't you?" "Ya!" I reply enthusiastically.
Panel 14—"YES" I reaffirm while spinning gleefully through the air.
Panel 15—"It was great." The end.

Footnotes:
1—Ya know, sometimes that happens. Where you want something really badly but you know that at that moment, you have to refrain because to have that thing right then would be incredibly detrimental to your well-being. But if you do hold off for just a little bit, you can have that thing you wanted as much as you want for the rest of your life! Important life lesson, right there for ya.
2—This is probably more profound than I can even describe. Just think about it. Just... think. I'm not sure you're thinking hard enough, but maybe it will dawn on you in time.

Comic © Sarah Whitney, June 2009

AMTGARD tourney & Craft Lake City

2009-08-09T00:40:00.000-06:00

I have had a craftastic day! well ok, i didn't make anything today, but i got exposed to a wide array of more talented people and it got me really excited.

first i went to my normal AMTGARD stuff that's on saturdays, but what i didn't realize was that today was a tournament, not just of fighting but there were arts & science competitions with garb, weapons, bardics, etc. it was awesome.

Then was Craft Lake City. a craft fair, it was amazing, i only stayed for like 30 minutes because i thought i would explode.

a local stilt & fire performance group (The Dreamland Sideshow) and their sweet costumey clothes

Some Kick-A ceramics, seriously

Flicker Ceramics

(seriously sad i got my finger in that pic considering the lens on my phonecamera is like 3/16th inch wide)

Brynn would love these hair accessories. I do too.
itsthelittlethingsut.etsy.com

This guy, i fell in love with him and his work, i totally freaked out in an embarrassing way, i was gushing so hard. wish i got better pics as he doesn't have any on his website yet.

www.unavakin.com

These games we play

2009-07-25T00:22:00.001-06:00

If you've known me for more than 6 years, you know I love card games, but for what we will refer to as "some reason," I've hardly played any card games for a long time. :(
so I hereby beseech you, my friends, both old & new, to help me remember how to play all my favorite card games we used to play in Jr high & high school.

Gibroni
Speed (California & Florida versions)
BS
Scum

(I have been reacquainted with Egyptian Ratscrew, fortunately)
and if i've forgotten some let me know.

Nerd shirt type combos

2009-07-24T07:14:00.000-06:00

VOTE.

Cloak instructions

2009-07-22T00:14:00.000-06:00

That shimmery night cloak i made a couple weeks ago... Here's the pattern by Redoubt.
She's super good and drafting and sewing and she's selling garb and stuff on Etsy.

The red line is at 17" down from the top. The other horizontal line is at 80" down from the top. Black lines are cutting lines. The fabric below 80" is divided into even triangles for gores (add seam allowance on the gores so the top is flat, not a point). Sew a tuck at the red line about 1" wide. Sew the tuck down against the fabric so that it's flat, but sew along the edge to make the tuck a casing. Fold the fabric in half the long way and make a seam across the top (the edge closer to the tuck). Cut slashes in the body of the cloak where extra fullness is desired (a symmetrical design) and insert the gores. Finish all seams with flat felling. Put a drawstring in the tuck casing. This is at the neckline so everything above the tuck is the hood and below is the body of the cloak.

Panda Bandit

2009-07-20T04:10:00.001-06:00

Today in church i got a cool idea for a hoodie.

So i got out the fabric i was thinking of and saw that I had much too little for that design, the the rectangle ratios of the black and white pieces reminded me of a panda so I knew what I had to do.

I worked on it and it was an interesting experiment in construction because outside of the hood, there are only 2 pieces: the black one and the white one.

since the black strip was so narrow the sleeves ended up way tight. I sacrificed some length to make gores and now they are nice and wide. armpits are high but it's fine.

pandas yeah! they're the best! i sewed buttonholes for this so you know I was serious.

Mini-life crisis

2009-07-13T12:18:00.000-06:00

I'm at a point in my life where I'm kind of reevaluating things and
figuring out what I really want and who I really am.
Some recurring themes in my life are:

How do I decide what to commit to?
How do I know if I'm really passionate about something before I commit to it?
How much weight should I give to Passion, vs. Practicality?
I'm either not disciplined enough to too indecisive to become incredibly great at one thing.
I like too many things!
I always only want to be doing what I'm not currently doing. Or I just haven't found out which thing I really want to be doing.
Nearly everything I'm interested in is in the creative realm, as in creating stuff. (Tangent: Creating kid is not a part of this statement. I like to decide how much control I get to exert in the process of creation and then exert it. There's no control with kids. If I ever decide to have kids it's not going to be like they are my ultimate art project.)

So anyway, I'm really just not digging the idea of being stuck in a
job that I don't really like that much, and sucks up time and
happiness, for the rest of my life.
And none of the things I really like to do carry a very big chance of
me being able to actually make a living off of them.

Stuff I like to do the most:
Paint, draw, and general art-making
Compose music
Design and make clothes and accessories and stuff
Other stuff I like:
being outside
making delicious food
working with plants
webdesign
roleplaying (in some ways)
playing musical instruments & singing
dancing
acting
stop-motion animation & other filmmaking stuff

What I know for sure is that I am a designer in the most fundamental
sense. I like to play God in a way. I like to create stuff, obviously,
but it's about making decisions. Forming, sculpting, molding,
following a process where I decide what I control and what I let
evolve on it's own. So I nurture some growing thing until it perfectly
fulfills the purpose for which it was created. (that's the theory
anyway.) and on top of utility I'm also, of course, concerned with
aesthetics. Whether something is trite and silly or earth-
shattering... Both have a place in this world. Something well-made is
such a source of joy to me.
I guess the only way I could make a living with any of these would be
to throw myself completely into it, tossing all doubt & inhibition
aside. Should I take the plunge? (not without a backup plan or
stabilizer of some kind, right?)
So... I guess I should marry some hot rich guy that can provide
everything for me, allowing me the freedom to just play with all my
silly artistic hobbies everyday for the rest of my life, right? Heh.
(then I have to deal with my hangup of not liking to rely on other
people... I don't think anyone else is truly reliable because no one
cares about the same things as me as much as I do, or just no one
cares about me enough, for me to be able to rely on them as much as I
can rely on myself. This is another issue for another day, I guess.)
But yeah. I really don't have any idea what I should do for the rest
of my life. I've got about 2 years figured out. Until May 2010 I will
be finishing school, working at the Chrony still and I've got to do
that internship so I can graduate. After that I've decided I am going
to go teach English at a university in Japan for a year or two,
because i really want to and I really don't want to get a real job.
After that.... Who knows. Maybe the real Mr. Right will appear and i
can have a perfect life where I do whatever I want on his dollar. But
I'm not going to count on that. I guess I'll get some drudgy design
job that I probably won't like at all, and hope I have enough free
time to have fun outside of work. Or maybe it is possible to make a
living selling my art and clothes and stuff. Or maybe i really am
destined to be a rock star, hahaha :) I'm just gonna keep treading
water for now.

Night of cloak, cloak of night

2009-07-07T22:21:00.000-06:00

Stayed up literally all night making this cloak with Redoubt's
instructions (those of you following me on Twitter got to read all
about it) but I totally finished it! Flat-felling the seams took
forever but most of them look pretty good. The corners on the gores
suck but it's hard to see details with this fabric so I don't really care.

Here's a creepy thing, the hood is so large I can do this to cover my
face, but I can still see out too.

I can and will wear it huge, sparkly shawl-style in public.

Rogue sith t-shirt

2009-07-05T23:54:00.001-06:00

Tshirt design I have been spinning around for a while. This is like
version 17 or so.
Plan is to stencil print it in 3 layers. If I get involved with a
screenprinter I will definitely screenprint this one.
But this may not be the final design... I dunno... I know that those
swirly things are kind of trendy. But that's what I want for this. I
wanted something textural behind/working with the type so it's not
just "a saying on a shirt."

(You know this is the best excuse for doing something you kind of knew
you weren't supposed to do.)

ok wait, so a few days later I decided those swirly things sucked balls and went with some echo text in the bg. I kinda like it but I'm afraid it's lame. Irl I don't think it's worth cutting the stencil for. I think I will just cut the stencils for the large type (2 colors) and count on the texture from the paint process for that extra visual interest I am craving.

Cloak

2009-07-03T19:13:00.002-06:00

While cleaning up I rediscovered this shimmery silver & black fabric I
bought a while ago, even though I thought it was cheesy, you know I
can't resist corny fantasy type stuff.
So I decided it would make a great cloak for my Gray Lady costume.
Also drafting a cloak pattern sounded like more fun than cleaning.
Using the type of rectangular drafting skills I have observed from
Redoubt, I tested this pattern out on paper... Looks like it will work
so I'll do it with this fabric (it's cheap) and if I like it, it might
become my cloak standard :)

edit: redoubt with her far superior rectAngular drafting skillz showed me a better method for this cloak. I will be using techniques from this here paper model for my wontercloak when I get around to making that.

Comics vs. other things

2009-07-01T00:06:00.000-06:00

Drawing comics is hard. So hard! I'm such a pathetic loser!
So there are several things I really like to do: painting & drawing
from life, designing clothes, composing music...
These things are similar in this way: they take a spark of creative
inspiration and then a lot of not-thinking-too-hard-about-it work that
follows a system based on technique or logic.
Example for each:
Painting & drawing from life. You have to get the idea for what to
paint or how to make your subject interesting. Once you've got that
starting spark, you just do it. you know, you sight some lines, block some shapes, whatever. If you have models, photos or a still
life subject or whatever, you look at it for direction. Your subject hides you as you apply your drawing process to it. Yes, it takes
skill to get something to look right but once you learn it it's
basically a system you can rely on to get you through to the end
product.
Designing clothes. Same thing. You get an idea, however it is people
manage to get ideas, and do it. There's all the work of cutting and
sewing or knitting or whatever, but you know what you need to do to
get the end product once you've acquired the skills to do it. So you
go through these processes according to your system. No problem.
Composing music. Same thing again! You somehow get inspiration for a
tune and then you just have to follow steps to get it written; play
it, transcribe it, set up chord structures according to your learned
or intuitive system of how you think music should sound, etc.
Yes, with all these things it's not that easy, it's not exactly
autopilot. The artist is always entering and exiting these states of
reevaluation, making decisions throughout the entire process, it's the
artists' job, the artist's hand makes it's presence known.
But. Comparing that kind of process to drawing comics... For me at
least, at the point I am in comics-drawing-skill.... Comics=hard!
There's no easy, ride-through-it part. Everything is constant be-
present-and-alert hard work. There's thousands of drawings involved in
the making of a comicbook and all of them have to be partially, if not
entirely, invented inside the artist's mind. Sure, you can use some
photo references but seriously, I don't think you can get people to
pose for every single panel. And the need for consistency, it's
killer! Characters and settings both have to remain constant in
appearance, from any angle. Style has to stay consistent too. It's
more than I can bear! The pressure... It's killing me!
Seriously, it doesn't look so hard until you try it. I can draw
practically anything. But comics? They kill me! Seriously!
I also just don't really like my default style.
I know this is all a matter that diligant practice will solve.
Unfortunately, I'm not that great at being disciplined, even for stuff
I really want.
Anyway, that might just me one reason comics are one of the greatest
media for story telling. It's difficult... But I think it will be
worth it. I will draw comics someday! You will see! I dare you to defy
me! I will have my revenge! Oh wait, those last couple were for a
different dramatic ending.
< /whinefest >

Comics

2009-06-22T14:40:00.001-06:00

So I made a goal on solstice that I would finish a (well-drawn) comic
by the end of summer. It might be short but I want it to be something
I'm proud of. Or at least, not embarrassed to be associated with.
While I have some stories floating around, I'm starting fresh with
this and am spending the day formulating some kind of character-driven
dark fantasy story.

Ice cream faire!

2009-06-22T03:31:00.001-06:00

My little sister drew me a 2-page comic about myself as some kind of
ice cream loving superhero. It's basically the best thing I've ever
read. I can't scan it right now :( so I traced my favorite panel into
illustrator to make this exciting promotional piece!

Seriously though, this comic is so full of rock, I hope I can share
the whole thing soon.

2009-06-20T10:36:00.000-06:00

Hair accessories!!

2009-06-18T17:55:00.000-06:00

My sister held a hair-accessory-making party and I made 10 things!

(for now I can only do one pic per post so here they are all together)

Donut necklace

2009-06-07T20:05:00.001-06:00

This is one of my favorite necklaces. I've been trying to sell it at fairs, I may put it in my Etsy shop but if it doesn't sell, I may just keep it for myself :)

Painting's sketch

2009-06-06T10:38:00.001-06:00

So I can't stand to keep a secret. Here's a sketch of what the
painting will be like. And it probably looks better than the painting
will, haha.

New painting

2009-06-05T20:20:00.000-06:00

Started a new painting today. I'm not going to talk much about what it
will look like... It's a mystery to you for now... You people will get
the pleasure of seeing it evolve, hopefully. That was the whole idea
with this blog anyway.

So here's a starting pic. I had already texturized this paper, so the
white blocking is what I've done so far.

I'm actually feeling kind of nervous because I haven't painted for a
while... But i know I have the skills to get it right with enough time.

upsy datey

2009-05-19T21:28:00.002-06:00

I owe the world an update.

The Ren Faire was not the smashing success I envisioned. I learn that the large majority of people simply do not care about quality materials or handmade items. they want things cheap. that was a major disappointment.
I had a lot of fun though and met some really cool people.
I guess I could do a big post about what I learned and tips for next time and all that jazz, but I haven't been thinking that much about it because I have some other serious things on my mind.
One thing in particular is that my husband and I have separated... we all know where that's likely to lead. I don't care to talk about it much here, but just wanted it out and on the record.
Also work just restarted and there are some awkward new people relations going.
And one of my cats is sick! :(

Fortunately it's summer and I can cope with practically anything when the weather is warm! (not that i want to be tested further on that.)
Despite all that crap I am actually pretty happy. My true friends and family are here for me, I'm getting a new start in life and can shed a lot of the bad things that have been dragging me down. My former manager offered me a part-time temporary job that I could certainly use. I've been invited to a lot of girls' nights and parties, it's going to rock. Maybe I'm romanticizing a few things here but, why not? It's summer. I want to have a summer of adventure and fun for once. and now I can hang out with guys in addition to girls, hint hint (well, I should wait for a while to see what happens on that front, but you know.)

Summer!

2009-05-04T01:22:00.005-06:00

School's over, so no more angry posts for a while :)

(haha the color got messed up and i don't even care)

The Ren Faire is only a few days away!! D=
Come geek out with me, you know you wanna! it's $6 if you're wearing a costume, $12 without.
It's fun, there's lots of entertainment, and not very many snobs at all.
Also, I can't speak for the others in my shop, but I will probably give a discount to any of my friends who show up and want to buy one of my items (it has to be something I made, I can't give a discount on someone else's stuff.)
it's two weekends long so you know you don't have an excuse not to go. (except if you actually aren't nerdy enough, then I don't know why you're reading my blog or why I even know you.)

after the ren faire, I dunno what I'm going to do with my life. I have been putting all my energy into school and the faire for like, 10 months now. I guess I will have to concentrate hard on finding an internship for school. and maybe actually get something done with my band. and start working on next year's ren faire stuff? and should I throw a Harry Potter party again? I don't really want to be in charge of it this year. someone else do it and I'll just help.

I've temporarily closed my Etsy shops until after the Ren Faire so that I can sell things there and reorganize the shops after. Hopefully I'll have lots of new stuff, but actually not too much because it'll be whatever doesn't sell at the faire.

On another note, I can now take credit cards for stuff, in case anyone is inclined to give me money. I should try to do more freelance stuff, I guess.

DI Day

2009-04-30T20:21:00.000-06:00

Stuff I liked at DI today (the one on 700 S. between State St. and 200 E.... and this was right at closing)

Almost bought this but didn't... and will probably regret it (or go back tomorrow for it?)

Cute!

bought this one, last minute decision.

i thought it would be a cute, pared-down semi-lolita-type dress (it looks better IRL) but the previous owner sloppily added her own darts in the back and it was too tight for me to get on :(

I don't know much about electirc guitars but i thought this was a nice looking bass. $50

bought these silly toe socks!

also bought this yarn and good-looking coat pattern.

the dresses were all $4-$5.. i really do think i will go back for one of the black ones.
I'm always on the look out for a nice cocktail-type dress but i can't ever find any that meet my requirements... but i will buy cute little dresses to wear as tops if they are too short for me to wear as a dress.

paranoise

2009-04-26T02:29:00.000-06:00

the other day in class i was semi talking to these two guys about our assignment for our other class, which i had missed 2 days in a row because: A) I hate it and B) i was feeling really sick that week. (for real.) kind of off to the side one of these guys said to the other, "should we tell her?" and the other guy looked at me and said "no" and they also said some things like, "it'd be funny" or "it's too soon."

obviously i have no idea what they were talking about and it could be something totally unrelated to me, but that kind of thing makes me paranoid. (i have the feeling that the teacher for the earlier class i missed said something about me...)

stuff to make your house more awesome

2009-04-24T22:23:00.003-06:00

i love browsing Etsy...ok, there's a lot of ways i could finish that sentence. or just leaving it there would work.
but what i wanted to say is, i love browsing Etsy for really finely made, handcrafted housewares that are awesome and i could never make myself, especially in metal, wood, and ceramics. :)
a few years ago i did a trade with some historical reenactors, i made them historically passable canvas bags and they gave me AWESOME THINGS! among the awesome things were: tin mugs, a wrought iron candlestick, an iron spoon, a wooden spoon, and a horn bowl.
I love that kind of thing and there's surprisingly little to be found on Etsy. but once in a while i stumble upon a true artisan of their craft and it makes me excruxiatingly happy inside.

Here are some recent favorites:

Makye77's Natural Selection Studio

Unbefreakinlievable, eh? I really love the pieces that accentuate the wood's natural characteristics, but the fully finished pieces are gorgeous as well.

Hardwick Housewares Medieval Wares & Handforged Copper

I just love copper. And I've been looking for a functional (stove safe) tea kettle for ages, I think this is the only one on Etsy.

Eager Creations

An earlier find of mine, beautiful bowls in a range from rough to finished.

Twisted River Clayworks

I just like this style. A lot of the pottery on Etsy is kitschy (and some of the other stuff in this shop is, I'm not gonna fake like it isn't) but I think these are really nice.

Note: you can always check out more stuff I like on etsy by peeking at my recent favs over in the sidebar—>

Note#2: I haven't bought anything from the artists listed here. But this is the kind of thing I'll be looking for to fill my own house with someday.

moving right along

2009-04-23T13:56:00.001-06:00

it's "finals" time at school which just means i'm procrastinating more serious projects than usual and the deadlines loom ever drearier. Finally the weather is nice outside, and that makes all this sitting around staring at computers in air conditioned rooms even worse.
projects:

a website design (not a functioning, oh, except that the teacher secretly told a couple people he would like THEM to make a functioning website—in the space of 5 days—and if others of us don't, we'll be severely marked down even though it wasn't part of the assignment. I HATE THIS)
a smegging idiotic "process book" for all of the projects in that class this yar which i should have been working on all along but haven't been... i want to do it in the form of a blog so i can change the dates to pretend like i've been doing it all semester, if i can find enough content to post. (i shouldn't post such derogatory stuff about that particular class and teacher in public. but it's too late, he already dislikes me anyway.)
a "way-finding system" presentation for signs and directories in the art building. i like this project but i'm not sure how to present it. :P
a portfolio CD and booklet... :\

SO those are all due next wednesday.

IN OTHER NEWS. sent in the application and payment for the URFFF, the powers that be allowed us to apply like, a week after the final deadline. PHEW!

working out administrative details myself, like how to get things set up and staffed and blah blah blah. i don't even know if we are going about this in any kind of right way. i don't htink we will be able to take credit cards, which i've heard would increase sales by 20-70% if we did, but this thing is seriously in the middle of nowhere. no power, no internet, and no going home in between. but some of our stuff is pretty expensive and i know people are more likely to buy more stuff with cards. AAHH credit cards are so complicated! :( i seriously don't know anything about this business crap, i'm totally faking it! i'm in over my head! someone bail me out!

well, better get to work on my homework. I just need to get through this one week at a time and suddenly everything will be over.

A More Natural Me, pt. 2: A personal problem

2009-04-22T22:00:00.000-06:00

(What better day than Earth day to post the next section of "A More Natural Me," which I have put off for a couple weeks?)

I have stalled on writing this post because it really is quite personal, and I'm never sure how many details to indulge. But here we go. Boys and the more fastidious of girls be warned: this post is about MENSTRUATION.

This is one of the first areas in my life that I decided to goo all-natural of my own accord. That time of month is unpleasant enough, but there were other things I didn't like. I didn't like how much waste was created. I didn't like how pads felt. The only time I tried to use a tampon I instantly became very sick (maybe TSS.)
When I moved out of my parent's house I suddenly didn't want to be responsible for buying my own "feminine hygiene products," so I started to research alternatives. Women have been around for a lot longer than factory-produced maxi pads so I figured they were using something else before that. I found out there's a whole museum dedicated to historical menstruation (freakin weird, but not exactly surprising.)
So anyway, I decided to make my own cloth pads, by buying washclothes of a different color than what I would use at home and folding them into 6ths or 8ths. (I also sewed a mark into the corners of them so they are more identifiable.) If I was really hippy I would use organic, unbleached cotton, but even dyed cotton has less harmful chemicals than commercially produced pads. I mean, do you really want those things close to or in the most absorbent part of your body? (I don't.)
Later I read some zines about this subject that go into detail about how bad conventional ladies' hygiene products are for you. I don't remember which they were but there is a lot of info out there about that kind of thing if you want to do research.
I've been using the same set of cloths for about 5 years and it doesn't require any more washing and drying than I'd do with my regular laundry.
Now that I'm older and... everything, I am planning to try out something like these: The Moon Cup or The Keeper. I would chose the Keeper because it's natural material, but I don't know if I'm allergic to latex :\ (How do you find out?)

I encourage all ladies who want an alternative to tampons to look into these solutions. Better for the earth and better for you, too!

Upcoming in the series of "A More Natural Me"

~~1. Goals & Beliefs~~
~~2. A Personal Problem~~
3. Keeping Clean
4. Such a Pretty Little Thing
5. Household Chores
6. Serious Business
7. Wear it Right
8. Gnome Sweet Home

Renaissance Faire Update

2009-04-19T12:37:00.006-06:00

The name of our shop is Faire Sisters.

Here are a few samples of items we'd like to sell at the URFFF this year:

(click any image to view larger.)

Garb
Mostly based on early period/medieval and viking styles.
All of this clothing are made with wool, linen, silk, or cotton—historically accurate fabrics only, no synthetic materials!

Accessories including:

Belts made by the tablet weaving technique

Armwarmers, Legwarmers, wrist cuffs, spats, etc

Hats (and hoods!) in historical and fantasy styles

Hair accesories... including circlets

Jewelry

Metal chains made by the technique Norse wire weaving

Wire knit bracelets and necklaces

Beaded jewelry (including Viking bead strands) using stone, glass, wood and bone beads on hemp, leather, or wire

Textile-based jewelry such as Celtic knot rings and plaited adornments

Misc.

Miniature plush unicorn and phoenix toys

Handmade paper

Art prints of original fantasy artwork

Quotecard tags with quotes from Renaissance figures

Other stuff that I don't have pictures of right now:

Hand-cut feather quills
Pennywhistles (not handmade)
Cast metal rings and pendants
Medieval recipe books

There's a lot more of everything within these categories! Everything is handmade or original designs/artwork (except the pennywhistles, those are just great to have around at any time.)

Artisans:

Myself
Camilla
Brynn
a few things here and there by other members of our family

We know and can demonstrate the following historical fiber techniques:

Tablet weaving
Pin weaving
Norse wire weaving
Drop spindle spinning
Knitting
Lucet weaving
Naalbinding
Plaiting & braiding

We will have an online shop running at fairesisters.etsy.com but probably not until after the Renaissance Festival as we're hoping to sell a lot of our stock there first :)

Dangerous idea

2009-04-12T21:22:00.001-06:00

This quote has been sitting around one of m classrooms, probably for the current students of a class I had last year about stretching your creative muscles. and ya know, it's true. really, really, really, really true.

if you don't believe it you haven't experienced the hindsights one has after executing the only idea they entertained. because you don't push yourself hard enough. and you may not know it, but that means your ideas are mediocre. sorry.

I know because I do it all the time, and regret it about 5 minutes after turning in the project.

nerds

2009-04-04T02:15:00.002-06:00

A long time ago I got this album called "Old Nerdy Bastards" of remixed songs by nerdy bands (most of them hip hop style).
I'm listening to it tonight and I set it to play straight though in order, not shuffle (as i prefer when listening to one specific album.) But for some reason this one song, Nerd Lust (Peeved Remix) by Schaffer the Darklord, is playing every other song, it just keeps moving down the list, freakin weird. but since i've listened to it so much now, i really wanted to get the lyrics and found out that there are no transcriptions of the lyrics anywhere on the whole internet! that i can find! so I've got to do it myself.

for your reading pleasure. (the best i could do)

NERD LUST (Peeved Remix)
Schaffer the Darklord

La-la-la-ladies and gentlemen
lend me your ears
i love every last one of you, I want to be clear
it doesn't necessarily mean that i'm some fetishist freak
but if i have to pick a favorite it would have to be geeks

oh those nerdy girls
those oh so perty girls
those wordy girls, they'll love a joke
only if it's dirty girls
those flirty girls
the blue jeans and t-shirty girls
I've heard that nerdy girls
are pearls of the world.

I see you in every venue, city and state
you're off and awfully awkward, baby
i can relate
when i play "Cat People" live and in your town
you're the one in the crowd
howling "meow meow meow!"

tell me about your kitties
do they fill you with laughter?
and which cartoon characters
did you name them after?
your house is full of stacks of DVDs and CDs
you've seen Star Wars even more times than me

like me, you find summer a bummer
you've been bummed since the finale of
Six Feet Under
another number bombed hard at my show
but you got it
you've got a closet full of skeletons
you bought at Hot Topic

Can I ride your bike? I like ringing the bell
I know you'll dance to hip hop if you're drunk as hell
I know that on a date no one will talk about sports
and if you do have a thong on, it's under boxer shorts

How many Smiths tunes can you recite?
And which of your blogs do you most frequently write?
Which Sci-Fi languages can you understand?
And which instrument did you play in your high school band?

In so many ways, our similarities are eerie
We share so many paranoid conspiracy theories
We're watching Twin Peaks
You know all the characters' names
quoting Aqua Teen and playing video games

I couldn't care less about your height or your size
if your IQ's high and you've got four eyes
12-sided dice, elf dies and I'm lovin' it
you're hot not in spite of being a geek, but because of it

Nerds, nerds, I love those nerds
Shallow, vapid model types are for the birds
now lemme see you shake it, (c'mon) shake your inhaler baby
freaks and geeks, you make me crazy

Nerds, nerds, I love those nerds
Smug, aloof hipster types are for the birds
now lemme see you shake it, (c'mon) shake your inhaler baby
freaks and geeks, make me so crazy

(Yeah girl, I was uh, I was thinking about coming over later, with a box of white wine, and a bottle of grape snapple, and I made this portrait of you. Out of Legos.)

you're looking goodie in a dirty hoodie
let me see
is that an "Ask me about my SAT" pin
on your backpack strap? That speaks to me.
You pass hours, Dungeon Master powers, D and D

Your new animated avatar looks hot, wait
I got great big goosebumps
I made your Top 8
Great great, I left a dozen comments
all of them flattering
like, "When we kiss, girl, it's like
Magic: the Gathering."

Come a little closer, girl,
no need to be frightened
I'm not gonna bite, I'm just a little near-sighted.
You are too, ooh, this ain't gonna hurt,
I wanna see your silhouette in your Strong Bad shirt.

our glasses click when we nuzzle
organic milk we both guzzle
a couple hot nerds pouring over
crossword puzzles

filling letters wearing sweaters
in any weather, forever
feel the books of The Lord of the Rings were better

You and me, girl, are going to have some fun
We'll play Simpsons chess then watch Season 1
Hours of Risk, tsk, we'll quit when we're done
and with the sun comes a Daily Show rerun

I brought my high school yearbook,
you wanna see
what I looked like back in 1993?
I was skinny and pasty and I had terrible hair
and still do. You too? Do you still have high school nightmares?

Were you a loner, dark and brooding
cruising through school anonymous?
Or were you on debate team, hanging with the drama kids?
Did you take shop? Did the jocks call you Tom?
Did you ever dream of blowing up a bomb at the prom?

Nerds, nerds, I love those nerds
Shallow, vapid model types are for the birds
now lemme see you shake it, (c'mon) shake your inhaler baby
freaks and geeks, you make me crazy

Nerds, nerds, I love those nerds
Smug, aloof hipster types are for the birds
now lemme see you shake it, (ooh) shake your inhaler baby
freaks and geeks, make me so crazy

I've loved every last nerdy girl that's been in my life
so much in fact I even made one my wife
and my wife's name is also "STD"
which stand for "Schaffer the Doctor" cuz she's a PhD.

I love you dorks, I love you geeks,
oh how I love you nerds, oh
Although for this last verse I didn't write words
so I'll go, "Meow meow meow, meow meow meow,
meow meow Meow meow meow meow," girl
meow meow meow meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow
Meow meow meow (meow meow meow, meow meow meow, meow meow meow)

i was thinking about starting a meme where you copy the lyrics of the song and then highlight all the lines that apply to you or you agree with, as a way of calibrating nerd points. how painful would that be, hahaha. surprisingly no mention of Star trek (except an implication in the sci-fi language part).

the afore mentioned album was a free download for a while and includes gems such as remixes of the following songs:

Red Hair
Felix Felicis
Halloween at Hogwarts
This Arboreal Coil
Code Monkey

and then some other ones that have to do with robots. I don't know if the album is still out available, but i'm sure someone could think of some way to somehow get some kind of copy to someone else.

A More Natural Me, pt. 1: Goals & beliefs

2009-04-02T17:32:00.003-06:00

I have been stewing some thoughts in my head for a long time. I think about stuff like what's healthy for me and for the environment, and what are my responsibilities to implement things I believe in, and just what do I believe in?

A lot of my beliefs about health and the environment were strongly influenced by the book Cradle to Cradle, which discusses the difference between natural and synthetic materials and how mixing them together is bad for the environment, and that a lot of synthetic things are bad for the environment and the people who use them.

Natural things that are pure, with nothing synthetic mixed in, biodegrade back into the earth, no problem. And the humans evolved in a natural world, making our bodies vulnerable to a lot of synthetic compounds that they have no natural guards against.

Also, for some reason (can't imagine why) I'm scared of getting cancer. I don't have a lot of scientific studies to recite to but I have a good feeling that, the more our bodies are exposed to unnatural toxins or synthetic chemicals and stuff like that, the more susceptible we are to certain diseases.

There's other stuff I believe in too, like supporting a local economy or supporting small businesses. and preserving the natural integrity of plant life. And not supporting the oil industry. (I'm not talking about vegetable oil, which is a good thing.)

So I've decided to transform my lifestyle a little. or a lot. Call me a hippy if you want, but I seriously want to change my life to be based in a more natural philosophy. Some things I can start now (and have.) Somethings I don't have control of now but maybe someday will.

Upcoming in the series of "A More Natural Me"

~~1. Goals & Beliefs~~
2. A Personal Problem
3. Keeping Clean
4. Such a Pretty Little Thing
5. Household Chores
6. Serious Business
7. Wear it Right
8. Gnome Sweet Home

Unicorn Digital Painting

2009-03-21T01:49:00.000-06:00

I'm just going to keep adding on WIP images of the piece I'm working on here and moving it up each day I post...
2-26-09:

2-28-09:

3-14-09:

3-17-09:

I'm not feeling too confident about the horse/unicorn yet. :\

3-20-09: I worked on it a lot today.

This last image is at 100% (at least the full-size version is). Everything looks good until I zoom in and realize everything still has soft edges and looks out of focus. i still need to bring the lips up but every time i try i mess it up really bad. :\ eventually I'll get there. the other eye is probably the last thing i will do (before the BG i guess.)

Sustainability web design

2009-03-20T23:26:00.003-06:00

I designed and built a small and simple website (with 4 pages!) for class, check it out. It's about ways that print designers can be more environmentally friendly, but the same concepts work for anything. It's based on the Cradle to Cradle philosophy.

I did all the html and css myself, the only thing I let Dreamweaver do for me was the code for the image map (the linked icons on the top banner.)
A lot of designers ignore the code... and that's about standards. I mean, if you're gonna get onto the internet of nettyness, you've got to have some well-formed code.

fantasy fashions

2009-03-19T14:50:00.009-06:00

Time for another update on what I'm working on for the Ren Faire.

Celtic knot hair pins—I made this heart one and think it's pretty rad, so i'll be making more in different styles.. except i need to buy more cord :( better sticks should be made, too... this is two toothpicks glued together and wrapped in sparkly yarn, but a nice carved wooden stick would be better. i could do that with a good knife.

Fantasy wristers—woven ribbon arm warmerish things... i should make some without fringe and/or lacing. These two are "witch" and "fairy" (or "mermaid").

Fairy Falls—these are actually very old but i never mentioned them before. the idea is that you add these cute and/or sparkly knitted curls to your hair... :\ I'm not sure about them.

Circlets—everyone else is making much better circlets than me but here's a pretty little princess ribbon and tulle plaited circlet and one knit with wire & beads. it used to be a lot uglier. i think it's ok but maybe i will add some big centerpiece jewel.

Plaited adornments—necklaces and bracelets braided with ribbon and beads. basically here to be cheap and quick. (smeggin iphone can't focus on closeups... also i think i had actually too much light.)

decorative witch hat—this used to suck but i spruced it up and like it fairly well now. it's on the small side, meant to perch on top of your head, i guess.

scoggins & hoggins—armwarmers, legwarmers, cuffs & spats. I made these two pairs of wool, the orange ones i call pumpkin puff cuffs!
tendril wire knit necklace—or it could be a bracelet, but for a necklace i would have to attach ribbon or something on the ends, but i think that would be better than a bracelet.

Phoenix Chick—poor little guy isn't very photogenic, but it's pretty cute IRL.

wire knit choker necklace—i like this one a lot.

wire knit bracelet—it has tiny pearl like seed beads which you can't see from here.

OK, so even when i feel like i've done a lot it seems to boil down to not very much. with the Ren Fair less than two months away, here's what we've got to do:

get enough tents for the allowed space
Take decent photos of products
Apply for vending space.
finish & print business cards
finish outside shop sign
finish & print merch labels & price tags
make & find display implements (particularly, jewelry trees)
figure out our catalog/inventory system so that everyone gets paid correctly
figure out if accepting credit cards is possible/worth it
make or obtain a wig form
get prints of the artwork i want to sell, and packaging for them (this could mean clear bags, foam core and corner thingies or tubes with sticker labels or both.)
finishing touches—a lot of the jewelry still needs clasps, etc.
get boxes and bags appropriate for packaging all the different merchandise.

Okay, and then there's still making more stuff. I really have no idea if i will make & sell enough stuff to even pay off what i've invested in this endeavor, but here's what i want to add to my stock by the time it happens:

9 baby unicorns
9 phoenix chicks
5 pairs of knit legwarmers
4 pairs of knit armwarmers
4 pairs of knit decorative cuffs
3 pairs of woven arm corsets
3 full-size witch hats
3 wool berets
7 celtic knot hair pins
6 woven, plaited or knotted necklaces or bracelets
3 wire knit crowns or tiaras
3 wire knit necklaces
3 wire knit bracelets
i think i'll sell my handmade paper and hand-cut quills that are already made, but i could make more, especially of the quills if i get better feathers.
I think I've already made a bunch of fairy hair accessories like flowers and leafs, i just need to find and finish them.
art prints: 3 different pieces of art each with 1 very large sized print, 2 large prints, 4 medium prints, 4 medium small and 4 small. (exact sizes TBD)
t-shirts: i have considered printing some shirts with fantasy themed stencil art but i don't know if i would be allowed to sell it. but i could just spend a day and bust out like 20 or more shirts (esp with help) and then just sell them on Etsy if the ren people reject them.
hand-painted ceramics: i've been buying blank plates, mugs, etc all year hoping to use them with my porcelaine markers so i would like to do Shakespeare quotes or medieval drawings. i could do these fast i think.
quotecards: another quick and easy, i already made about a million little cards/tags with a da Vinci quote (you may remember it as a homework assignment from last semester) so why not bust out a couple others with Shakespeare and Michelangelo quotes?

considering i haven't even made that much stuff in the whole year, i'm pretty sure this isn't possible, especially with school, but i'm going for it. this is much different than my original list of stuff i wanted to make (mostly these are all a lot faster and smaller.) gotta get something done and if we decide to do it next year i'll be much better prepared, because during this last year i spent a lot of time on non-URFFF projects (btw, URFFF stands for Utah Renaissance Faire & Fantasy Festival) and this next year i'll probably only be dong URFFF and Etsy projects outside of school. and like, birthday presents.

enough blogging. time for action! well, i have to work on school projects today but if i get it done i'll be doing ren faire stuff once more.

Lorax Scrubs

2009-03-18T01:17:00.000-06:00

For my sister's birthday i printed a scrub top with the Lorax and some trees. She's a nurse and has the same birthday as Dr. Seuss. I think she once said that the Lorax was her fav but i dont' know for sure, i hope it wasn't actually her least fav.

Giveaway Extravaganza

2009-03-14T15:47:00.005-06:00

~~I tried this before on my last blog but no one even commented :(~~
~~Here goes for another try...~~

~~The first THREE people to respond to this post will get something made by me!~~
~~My choice.~~
~~For you.~~
~~This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:~~
~~1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!~~
~~2- What I create will be just for you.~~
~~3- It'll be done this year. (might be a little while)~~
4- You have no clue what it's going to be.It may be a story. It may be a joke book, autographed picture of myself, or a little invention of my own! I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows?
~~5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. Believe me... it may blow your mind.~~
~~The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 3 people who do the same on your blog.~~
~~The first 3 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did, win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!~~
~~Sounds like fun, right? So, let's play!~~

additional criteria for myself: to hang onto my only shred of integrity, if i was already planning to give you something at some point this year (such as for your birthday or christmas) THIS GIFT will be IN ADDITION to those gifts and not affiliated with any holiday.

OK, the winners are Esther, Jill & Brynn! Watch for their prizes thorughout the year, I have no idea when I'll make them but probably within the next couple months so i don't forget :D

Digital vs Traditional and more musings about art

2009-03-10T01:50:00.003-06:00

So it turns out I like digital painting with a tablet. A lot. I can see myself doing a lot of it in the next few years and here's why:

It is similar to my favorite traditional media in the ways I like. Like charcoal and oil painting, I can follow the same process of give and take, push and pull,sketch/refine, a painstaking, tedious, and repetitive process that I enjoy immensely. This way of working is very flexible and forgiving and I like watching the way these unshapely blobs of color are chipped into and added onto until a form appears. Because I can follow this process in the same way digitally as traditionally, it feels the same mentally.
Space, time, convenience. When painting with oils, I pretty much have to paint for three hours straight; otherwise of isn't worth the setup, and cleanup time... And the travel time because I can't paint at home! (and i can't paint for longer than that out of sheer exhaustion.) With a tablet I can just pick it up and work for as much spare time as I have, which isn't a lot but it's better than not painting at all.
And I don't need any more space or supplies than what I already have (after buying the tablet.)

I am certainly not giving up traditional painting forever, because it has things that digital doesn't, which are still important to me:

Physicality. The most obvious drawback to digital. I enjoy the physical texture of paint, both how it looks at the end and how it feels to apply. I like the different ways of holding brushes and standing up to work (not all the time but sometimes.) getting messy is fun. Having a finished piece made of real stuff with real smells and tactility is satisfying.
Ritual. Is it as important if it's so easy? even though it may be inconvenient, there's something to be said for the peipheral processes necessary in traditional painting and drawing.
Eye & mind development in good form. I think that the basic artist skills one learns in drawing are incredibly valuable to take care of and keep in shape. I don't know how to explain the processes I mean to someone who hasn't had formal training (or just doesn't have the brain to do it), but they are important skills that digital painting offers shortcuts around. (discussed below.) In a way I think that learning these things is also an important way for aspiring artists to "pay their dues" and could get bitter about people skipping that step, but, I also think that people who take shortcuts and don't bother to learn properly first are probably lacking in a lot of areas, making them not great artists anyway. (this discussion can go off on a huge tangent. relevant to this conversation, I just want to stress that having good tools does not make someone a good artist.)
Worth of a finished item. This isn't that important to me but it's something to consider. in the fine art world a painting is worth a lot more than a print.
Style versatility. frankly, a lot of painting styles were born out of the qualities of paint itself, and can never be duplicated digitally without looking stupid.

But working with computers has benefits that real paint doesn't... the shortcuts:

Image manipulation. this can be dangerous for one's artistic integrity, (but is there really such a thing?) but it makes things so fast and easy. and for a commercial artist (which I am far more likely to me than a fine artist) that's a big deal. so I paint the eye and later decide it's too small... i can make it bigger without repainting the whole thing. my (traditional) teachers encourage us to not "finish" any one part of the image before all the rest just to avoid finishing something wrong and having to redo it. with technology I can ignore their advice. oh, the hair is too dark? lemme just dodge that sucker. simple, no repainting required. I have done both of those things so far.
The Ease of Tracing. Wut-whoa, this just screams "no-talent hacks, come and get me!" At the same time it's a huge time-saver. I know how to copy something I'm looking at into a drawing correctly (paid my dues), but I'm willing to get a day's worth of work ahead if I can. but i'll also still be doing life drawings and stuff so I don't lose the ability.
Color picking. It's easier to pick a color out of a palette than to mix a color on one. and if the color's not quite right, it's easier to just chose another one than to try to mix in more red or add a whole tube of white.

Again I want to point out that all the things you can bypass with the shortcuts of digital painting are very important skills that any self-respecting artist should discipline themselves into learning because without that training, your work will probably stay shallow and amateurish. I don't know exact terms for these skills as they are kind of abstract, but I'm talking about a fine-tuned sense of color & color theory, the ability to SEE and render 3d objects in 2d, sighting, and the push and pull of bringing an image into focus by working up general shapes, manipulating edges between colors or forms... etc etc. people who have experienced these struggles and victories should know exactly what I'm talking about. people who haven't ... well i've just received such a great education, and I know it's not really fair to judge people who are different than me. I guess all that matters in this life is that you do what you love. but that doesn't mean I can't be discriminating about what artwork I like, but it also doesn't mean I dislike anyone in a personal way because of how they do their artwork. so.. yeah.

ANYWAY, I would like to propose a system of terminology so that we are all on the same page when discussing digital artwork. I got this idea when an argument ensued on an Etsy forum.

Painting• I feel safe about referring to digital work that emulate paintings as paintings because I categorize piece of art based on the method more than the material. some people in aforementioned argument were uptight about how it's not painting, I guess because they are stuck in the idea that paintings require paint. art these days isn't about strict departmentalization (although, does that make me a hypocrite for making up these definitions? I find these types of dilemmas stimulating.)

Photo Manipulation• In aforementioned argument, a lot of people insisted that digital artwork that was based on a photo should be classified as photo manipulation. This is one of those times where i feel completely confident in standing up and saying, I am right, you are wrong. it is not photo manipulation. I think that a lot of people in the Etsy forums are maybe a little older, or at least didn't grow up thoroughly entrenched in a digital lifestyle. art on the internet has been a huge percent of my life, so i think i'm kind of an expert by default. photo manipulations are basically just that. they don't even have to be digital. you (well maybe not you, but some talented person) can do photomanips in a real life darkroom. graphic designers have been doing photomanips for as long as photos were reproducible... in a way photomanips have been around since the victorian times... fairies, anyone? (those silly victorians.) one could generalize photo manipulations to be any photograph-based artwork in which the artist purposefully changed something to create an effect that is not true to life, or the original photo. for the sake of this argument i'm going to say photo manipulations are artwork in which several photos are used to create one image. NOT paintings that used a photo as an image source. ok, so the artist who started the aforementioned conversation was someone who just traces/paints over a photo in a way I find less than satisfying, (not that there's anything wrong with doing what you love) but I still assert that it's not a photo manipulation, because the photo is gone by the end of the process. besides, everyone knows that artists of all kinds often use photos as reference, either just to get started, or to copy in whole into a painting or drawing style.

i can't think of anymore terms right now.

But anyway, the argument of "if digital art is really art" is totally invalid and not even worthy of comment. the argument of whether digital or traditional is better is equally invalid but i think i should point out that, neither one is better or worse, people who think one way or the other are probably just closed minded and uneducated (as am i for making such a generalization, of course.) well, a person can have an opinion that they prefer one or the other, themselves, but i don't think they can/should argue that one is absolutely better than the other, for the whole world, the end. why am i even trying to analyze this kind of argument? it's ludicrous. "better" has different criteria for everyone anyway. the only argument worth addressing is whether a particular piece is "art" or not, or "good art" or not, and that is an argument no one can ever win because (cue magic twinkles) the answer is inside each of us. and the philosophical discussion about what is art will go on forever. as it should.

man, this is such a long entry, and i swear i only said like half of what i was thinking. thanks for reading.

EDIT: kay, i came off as really snobby throughout some of this post (which i probably am, but hopefully not THAT bad.) I'm not sure how to clarify everything, but most of the qualities i talked about apply more to people trying to be "fine artists" than commericial artists or hobbyists. also for the record, i mentioned that some things can't be replicated digitally because of the nature of paint, it's worth mentioning that is goes both ways. there are things, and not necessarily bad things, that are possible digitally that can't be done traditionally. They are two different beasts with similar heads.

stuff i like right now

2009-03-09T01:38:00.004-06:00

my sister's boyfriend wearing a Hufflepuff shisrt i made:

in other news, i am LOVING the Ludo EP Broken Bride. my love for it feels similar to my love for Dr. Horrible, so you know it's gotta be good. I realized that I'm an unabashed fan of powerpop, but their album You're Awful, I Love You can get a little too airheaded for even me. but this EP rocks. the musical style/influence between songs are a little more varied, but the whole thing follows a story line, which i like. it's not blatantly obvious or trite though. it doesn't hurt that it's got this tragic love story/fantasy theme, haha. (i dont' know what my problem is but i love it when one of the romantic interests dies, not that i want it to happen to me IRL.) Like with a film score some musical themes are carried subtley throughout different tracks. i love that crap.

another new thing i love with a frightening giddiness is Alice and the Pirates, a line of pirate/punk/loli clothes by Baby the Stars Shine Bright, one of my fav sweet lolita brands from Japan. eeeeek, just don't bother translating the prices :( i wish i would devote more time to making clothes, i swear i would have THE BEST wardrobe. so time-consuming! looking at those jackets makes me want to cry.... (also it just played the "I fought reptilian monsters" part of "Part II The Lamb and the Dragon"... the E word i've sworn not to say is banging at the door of my lips, but i can't let it out. you know what i mean though.) (still feel like crying in that overwhelming happy/sad way.. it's all too beautiful...) (it's probably too late at night for me to act reasonable in any sense.) (now the crying feeling is mixed with wanting to puke, and pass out. i've haven't been drinking though. i don't need to.) (it's a good thing i can't afford any of those clothes because if faced with the challenge of trying to decide which one to buy, i would probably freak out and die.)

T-shirt tutorial

2009-03-07T00:46:00.006-07:00

So you want to learn more about how I print my t-shirts, eh? Actually, I want everyone to understand how much work goes into my method of printing t-shirts. It's not fast and easy like screenprinting. I talked about it a little before, but here's a video because videos are better.

It's not as fast as I make it look—the whole video is sped up around 400%-500%. It's not as easy as I make it look—I'm just getting good at demonstrating tedious, painstaking processes with the style and finesse of a superhero. and it's not as simple as it looks—as evident in the last step, most t-shirts require more than one stencil, so multiply this video by 2-10... and then there's designing the stencil in the first place, a step omitted from this video and not something I could teach to anyone, because it requires both getting the idea and rendering it.

But I still love doing it, because it's another way for me to create something and I developed this method from the ground up, and it only requires the kinds of things i already have and always have. I don't think there's anyone out there doing this the same way (well, before I put the video up. NOW there probably is.)

P.S. This is my 100th post. this is the first video tutorial I have posted although I have wanted to do some for a long time, so here's hoping it's a good sign for the future of this blog.
P.P.S. Credits and Colophon: Zed filmed for me. I cut the vid. Typefaces used are weights of Belwe and Helvetica (i only just realized they kinda rhyme). Song used is the Section Quartet cover of the Muse song New Born, which I think kind of musically describes the frantic drive i sometimes feel to create things but also the feeling inside of completeness it brings me.

Tablet

2009-02-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

i got a tablet! it arrived yesterday so i decided to try some "digital painting" today. i dunno what to say about it yet. i will probably write a huge long compare/contrast of traditional vs digital later when i've thought more about it.
my painting & drawing teachers say to build up the whole thing at once, but i'm not, even though i know they are right.
also, i am using a photo for reference, but i'm not just tracing it and using the same colors.

I decided to keep track of all my WIP images for this painting project in another post that I will add to every few days, so watch for that to see how this painting is built up.

Happiness

2009-02-18T21:52:00.003-07:00

The name of this blog is Free-form pursuits of happiness, but I haven't been very happy lately or written happy posts. When I got up this morning and saw angry-face wrinkles etched into my forehead I realized I need to change something before they become permanent. I don't know what exactly I can do to be happier with my life but I suspect it has something to do with organization, simplification and an attitude adjustment.

For now, a list of things that make me happy:

World Foods black jelly beans (only this brand... the flavor is so incredible)
Hood Pumpkin Eggnog & Spotted Dog Pumpkin ice cream (the only brands i've tried that actually taste like & use real pumpkin)
My cats (so soft, warm and snuggly!)
Futurama & Red Dwarf
the hot hot summer sun
biking in the city without carrying anything or going anywhere on my special most comfortable bike, especially down hills
being outside (if i'm warm enough)
making stuff! (obviously. but especially when something turns out well.)
dark fairy tales and tragic love stories
theater (i've been thinking about this a lot, i really miss the theater. i don't know if i'm any good at acting or anything but i wish i was involved again.)
really great music (according to my own opinion which is mostly Enter the Haggis, Nightwish-cough-OLD-nightwish, Blind Guardian, The Vincent Black Shadow, Muse, Dragonforce, Puffy Ami Yumi, old ska, some other ska, Beatles, ... and just fun stuff like select 80s hits or other classic rock ... i'm sure there are glaring omissions but yeah.)
Dancing ...to music i like to dance to
Baking and eating delicious foods
sleeping outdoors when it's warm enough
seeing good art at gallery stroll
hanging out with certain friends of mine
drawing with charcoal & painting with oils (not on the same piece)
going to an Enter the Haggis concert! (so i only did it once... just remembering it makes me all warm and glowy.)
being comfortable enough with people to get away with making inappropriate jokes
thrift store shopping
seeing the pretty colors in my hair after i dye it in some ridiculous way
seeing pretty colors in the sky as it changes
heck, just colors in general
getting messy while doing art or making something
harry potter (i try not to get too fangirly because i want to look cool, but it's probably much too late for that)

i probably should stop there, since i didn't set a number limit i could (hopefully) go on for a while.

now... the list of Mythical Solutions (or... "i think my life would be perfect if only these things could happen.")

getting enough sleep
my stuff is always in the right place when I need it
my apartment is and stays clean
~~I have a pet unicorn~~ (jk lololololololllll)
i have more time to do the things i like more than the things i'm obligated to do (which is literally not even possible)
no more needing to wake up before 9 ever again!
it's summer all the time!

Magically, I think that's about it. While those are major things, most of them are things I could work on to fix myself, and if i'm nice enough to Zed he would probably help too! It would take a lot of planning in advance and organization, and i get so overwhelmed with stuff i can't keep up.. but i think it's possible for me to be at peace with my life if I work on:

planning ahead so i am not doing things last minute and am getting enough sleep.
spending time productively, working on necessary stuff like cleaning & organizing but also stuff I WANT to do instead of being so tired and pissed off I just screw around on the internet in all my spare time.
can't control the influence other people can have on my schedule, but I could try to regulate my routines better.
and the thing about the sun and temperature... i can only try to survive until it changes on it's own :(
EDIT: i forgot the biggest factor for why i'm always in a bad mood... i forget to eat. so yeah, i actually have to set an alarm on my phone to remind me to get something to eat before it's too late, because for some reason i don't feel hunger until it's like, in the emergency stages and i turn into a monster. (people who think they are fat always say, wow, i wish I had that problem! but seriously, it's not good. not only am I super rude to the people closest to me, but it's really unhealthy to eat so little and what i do eat is usually not that great so i'm not really losing weight for in great shape or anything from it.) also since i don't realize how hungry i am i don't usually eat enough to last me very long, or i only start feelign hungry after i've already eaten as much i thought woudl be enough.. and then i'm super pissed because i feel more starvign than before and i dotn' have any more food :( so i guess that's another part of the whole planning ahead thing.

"Sorry for the delay"

2009-02-16T19:36:00.003-07:00

It seems like every time in the past 6 or more months that I give something to someone that I made for them (that they asked for), I have to preface it with "Sorry for the delay." There's even stuff I said I would do over winter break that I still haven't finished (which I feel really bad about.) and it's even worse when it's something that they are paying for, or maybe it's even worse when it's something I'm doing for a good cause.
Anyway, I really am super busy with school and work and can barely keep up with making birthday presents for people who deserve it in time (and I'm doing t-shirts for everyone this year so far, which are kind of time consuming but a lot faster than knitting or sewing.) So on my Etsy shop I declared that I am not open to custom orders right now, and if i told anyone out there I'd do somethign for them, I really want to apologize. I will do it eventually if you are ok with waiting. School comes first.
Also I haven't made nearly as much for the Ren Faire as I should have by now. :( It's seriously pathetic, I can only hope that by the time it happens I will have made enough stuff to earn back the cost of having a shop there at all.

More logo redos

2009-02-16T01:06:00.005-07:00

OK, so here are the logos again.. this time I will get feedback from my teacher and classmates which could be good or bad.

p.s. i made 6 saltcycle t-shirts: http://www.saltcycle.com/merch and taught zed how to make some.

waste of time

2009-02-11T15:23:00.001-07:00

so my teacher decides that we all need to explore our logos in six more sketches to e due in a week, without even seeing our work so far (also i admit i partially didn't understand what was due—but i blame him for that too because he's so smegging vague!)
so staying up til 3 after a midnight-ended work shift to perfect some lame logo and going to school at 8 am to get it all printed nice (plus a "lost file" fiasco at the copy center), all for naught. are you getting why i hate this class/strongly dislike this teacher? plus everything he says, he rambles so much (more than me) so he takes at least 3 times as long to say what he wants, which means a 3 hour class is wasted on less than an hour of vague, ambiguous information. :(

camping logo

2009-02-11T02:40:00.003-07:00

Thanks to everyone who gave me input on the logo.... i decided to go with this:

we'll see how my teacher takes it tomorrow :\

logo help... opinions please

2009-02-09T21:40:00.020-07:00

i was supposed to do 60 sketches to be reviewed in class today to decide which one to finalize for the logo dueWednesday. I did not do the sketches, nor did I go to class today. Now I have drawn 13 and here are the decent ones:

(these are based off ideas formulated with 120 rough sketches last week)

So.. as people who have no connection to this project, what do you think... what has the most potential for a logo.. and which name is better, "Roots Experience" or Roots Escape" ??

background:
each of us in class is creating a hypothetical travel company for which to design a logo, style guide, website, and whatever else. this is the project for the whole semester. my travel co. is actually a camping company that owns a large about of undeveloped land/wilderness, let's say at this point in the Rockies or somethings, theoretically they would buy land in different states/areas as the company grows. anyway you schedule a "vacation" with them which is basically you go and camp, hike, or backpack on their land. near the front of the property is a large cabin/inn with training classes and stuff, and closer to the front are civilized camp sites, and the farther you get into the property the more wild and natural it is, so you choose your level of camping comfort/naturalism. but everyone who camps there is equipped with some GPS/walkie talkie type thing in case they get lost or in danger, because there's trained rangers and medical staff to help. i think the company would also provide shuttles from nearby major cities to the site.

so the key words for the feel of the company are:
wilderness
escape
survival
backpacking
harmony
strength
outdoors
earthy
camping
adventure
safety

it's geared to attract people who like getting dirty in the mountains by themselves and think it's important to respect the earth. (the more civilized parts are for people with kids who want to teach them about camping safety or whatever)

Last minutes

2009-02-08T20:58:00.002-07:00

One of my friends died today in a car crash. It's kind of weird and hasn't really sunk in. We weren't like super close or anything but we talked online a lot and I styled her blog a couple months ago. We were pretty good friends in high school too. She just moved back to to SLC less than a month ago and i kept "meaning to" see if she needed help moving or contacting her to hang out or whatever... but the all-important school and work got in the way every time.
So it's sad. Since I didn't see or talk to her on a regular basis it's not like there will be an obvious absence in my life. but when i think about it, it sucks. same thing with when my cousin died... Lots of people I know have died but no one that I was really close to (so far, it's only a matter of time, of course.) But when I think about it, yeah. it sucks.
So, I'm tired of being like, when people die, all "oh, i wish i had been a better friend! I really liked her! i don't think she knew, blah blah" and feeling like i'm wasting my life on less important things than relationships, and doing stuff I like.
But I did tell her that I appreciated talking to her and I gave her the blog stylings as a gift, so I guess it's ok. I'd rather she was still alive, but I did what I could.

Ren Faire jewelry

2009-02-08T14:28:00.002-07:00

So remember that Ren Faire thing I'm doing, right? A lot of my family members are in on it now. On Saturday we made some stuff in addition to having band practice... here's some crappy phone photos of what I made:

a simple choker necklace with a pretty gold piece and turquoise beads on hemp.

another choker necklace knit with hemp and adorned with green glass (or stone, but i think glass) beads.

a wire knit bracelet with glass beads on it.. i like this kind of loosely-spun web look but I don't know if other people will get it.

hemp & bone bead necklace... sorry veggers. dead animals went into the making of this piece.

2-strand stone & seed bead necklace (on wire).. in one of my fav color schemes of purple, green and orange.

stone bead & hemp necklace.

stone & bone beads provided by Redoubt.

I got a bunch of the glass beads through a trade with StitchedForYou on Etsy, and she also sent me these adorable earrings:

It's a little glass pink elephant!! I basically wear earrings less than once a year but have recently wanted to get back into them... and this is now the only complete pair I own. i'll be getting more though. I am feeling the need for a style morph that includes more jewelry.

So I think we will be having Ren Prep every Saturday. and finally be getting stuff done.

speaking of which does anyone know where I can get one of those carbon-copy reciept notepads like they use at small restaurants to write down the bill?

Etsy front page

2009-02-04T21:05:00.001-07:00

An image of my handmade paper was on the front page of Etsy today!!

(found while browsing etsy on my phone, hence tiny screenshot.)

Unfortunately, none of my handmade paper was actually given the honor of display in the associated gift guide, so no one who may have wanted to see and/or buy my paper would know where to find it. THANKS A LOT ETSY. My image was good enough for a banner, but my product was not actually good enough to recommend?

If anyone is interested that paper can be found here and a lot more like it in my shop.

Class Doodles

2009-02-02T14:25:00.005-07:00

In the early morning I'm not so much a functioning human being as I am a gelatinous mutant coconut string.
I don't really like the teacher who makes me get up so early (for other reasons too.)

To both stay awake and fend off homicidal urges I have to draw or write incessantly. Usually the same thing over and over because there's no firing neurons to help me think of anything different.

throughout class I start to cobble together something akin to brain power.

even though I can't comprehend what's being said, some words and phrases stick in my head long enough to be made into silly notebook doodles.

or i try to stimulate my brain by copying things i see around me.

by the end of class i'm awake enough to feel hungry enough to eat enough to go back to sleep… alas, I am on campus for around 16 hours straight on days like this (meaning Mondays and Wednesdays), with only a couple scattered hours off for eating, with unfortunately no naptime.

(when i stay up the whole night before to do my homework it's especially bad, and then i find out that i wore a sweater to school that my cat peed on while i was in the other room doing my homework all night. good thing i have a knight on shiny bicycle to save me over and over...)

Artists are among you

2009-01-31T11:34:00.004-07:00

Some button designs for class:

We're making buttons to sell at the student art show this spring.
I want to do a whole series of "artists are among you" things. I'm going to see if I can buy some button supplies and make extras to sell. (we're keifing the button maker that the student government owns but never uses, suckas!)

I like them, i dunno if the styles are too disparate for them to work as a set (disparate is an appropriate word, right?) but I think the typography takes care of that.

and all i did was layer some textures with an image (photoshop fun time!)

I have noticed that I'm enjoying some of my school projects more because I'm doing what I like and what I want more, and my work isn't getting ripped apart so bad in class either. I think because I had a very selfish winter break where I only did things I like for myself the whole time I have at last gotten into the groove I've been trying to find for a while, and it's helping. yay!

except for one thing... a certain class with a certain teacher.. but that's a post for another day.

about my hand-printed T-shirts

2009-01-25T20:53:00.004-07:00

I print t-shirts.

Most people screenprint, but not me. No no, that would far too easy and versatile. I've got to do it in a way that's difficult and limits design options.
Because I'm cool in that way and you will never understand it. Also because I don't own screenprinting equipment but I have everything I need for this.

So my method is stenciling. When I was in art club in high school (I didn't take any art classes because I filled my electives with music and theater, but I joined the after-school art club) they taught us a new art thing each week and one time they taught us screenprinting, or at least what i believed to be screenprinting for several years afterwards. We used normal screenprinting screens, but instead of exposing an image onto the screen with that photo emulsion stuff, we cut our designs out of contact paper and applied the stencil to the screen and squeegeed the ink through that. SO that's the history and basis of my method.

Here's how I do it today:

First I make the design, whether I draw it by hand or design it on the computer.

I use a few different stencil materials, depending on the design and intended use. The requirements for stencil material are that it doesn't tear easily, but is easy to cut, and can be adhered to the t-shirt easily without leaving residue (or is heavy enough to all lay flat on the t-shirt—the point is that it not allow paint to get underneath.) Most of what I use are different types of paper.

So I trace the design onto the stencil material (or print it out on the stencil material from my computer) and cut it out by hand. (I don't want to list all the types of stencils I use because .. I'm paranoid I guess.)
Yes, I hand-cut the stencils. I use scissor or exacto blades, depending on the size & complexity of the design. It's pretty tedious sometimes, but because of my training in the first year of graphic design school, I think that spending hours hunched over a project, perfecting minute details by hand is a perfectly acceptable thing to do all weekend.

so once everything is cut out I can apply it to the t-shirt. placement is a little tricky as it's kind of hard to visualize the spacing and stuff with those stencil blocks around the design. some designs it doesn't matter, those are nice.

Ok, so now I get to apply the paint! I use different tools depending on the look I want, but usually sponge brushes of some kind. I have to be careful because the stencil can still lift a little, or if the paint is watery it seeps underneath. this can take a long time depending on the design. and if I mess up now, IT'S OVER.

once it's fairly dry I can take the stencil off and finally see it!

I made this t-shirt for my dad's birthday, he's a big Lord of the Rings fan and this Treebeard quote fits him pretty well.

Nearly Done

2009-01-07T14:56:00.006-07:00

Some stuff I've made recently but not mentioned:

.. and more. I will never be up to date with what i'm making on my blog. :\

School started a while ago, so i'm keeping busy again. The thing i like the least about obligations is that whenI have free time for them, I feel too burnt out and tired to accomplish anything else... i guess it's a classic tale.
Here's some stuff I did for school!

they are buttons for the student art show. the first one (which seems to have gotten messed up in the process of saving jpg) is according to the marketing strategy, the second one is me doing what i want to.

Sharing Time Announcement

2009-01-05T17:11:00.001-07:00

Today I have procured 4 wigs. They are meant to be integrated with one's natural hair. I got red, blue, purple, and green (my 4 favorite colors for hair, of course.) Obviously I can't wear all of them all of the time (actually, maybe i could, but i don't think i will) so, if anyone needs to borrow one for anything just let me know. and that actually goes for all of my costume supplies, they are sad being shoved in a closet for years.

It's kind of hard to "install" by myself, but you get the point.

I look weird with long hair, having never had it, but I think I'll try growing it out for a while.
(I'm using the purple wig this coming Halloween to be Leela.)

p.s. i changed my mind about the lyrics contest, that's just dumb.

I Have Borne a Unicorn

2008-12-30T12:24:00.001-07:00

See, I'm getting stuff done:

Isn't it adorable? kinda looks like a seal though... a narwhal... seahorse.. I still haven't perfected a formula for knitting 4-legged animals with as few seams as possible (because i know perfectly well how to sew them but would rather knit in the round). The elephant i did over the summer was good but apparently I couldn't remember how I did it. NONETHELESS, it's a good little unicorn and more are coming since I did this in a few hours. it's 3 in. high, 5 in. long (body and head, 7.5 including horn and tail.) It's charging you.. with love.

I also made this beret a few days ago. it's two-toned and oversize, so deal with it.

ALSO cleaned my art area a few days ago, utilizing the new organizer things I (asked for and) got for Christmas. It may look like a horrifying disaster to the untrained eye, but I assure you, this is the best it's ever looked and ever will.

And in doing so found some entertaining tidbits from the past:
Here's a picture of some notes I took during my History of Graphic Design class last year.

It was a very important lesson because that day I learned the name of the bluegrass band my teacher is in, even though he wanted it to be a secret, and I decided that he has a crush on Paula Scher, also I discovered that microphones and ice cream cones not only rhyme, but look the same. and on the back page I drew some distorted fiddles which are probably more valuable than all the notes I took about design in the 60s.

and a bad pic of a drawing i did on a critique day that exemplifies how I feel on critique days.

LYRICS of the MOMENT
Respect and love and freedom
is what we all need
it could have beenyou or me
Little girl, she didn't sign up for this
Little boy, he didn't sign up to be a Squib
We've got to open up our hearts with love
get rid of all the old prejudice

Oh, I've just got the most excellent idea. actually it's an old, battered, recyled idea.. people who can guess the song and band of the lyrics in my posts get prizes... but i trust you not to cheat, people.

Ren Faire List

2008-12-29T12:22:00.002-07:00

Long-time followers of my blog probably already know this, but to recap: The Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival is in May, and last year I went, saw what an excessive, themed shopping extravaganza it was, and vowed to get in on the booty-collectin' the next year. This means a lot of hard work making stuff to sell, which I haven't been too great at so far, BUT i have here a couple lists to help me.

STUFF TO MAKE:
Fairy hair accessories: falls & bands
Hats: pointed witch hats, berets, and some historically accurate styles
Possibly some sweaters, capelets, scarves and hoods
Small dragon & unicorn plushies
scoggins & hoggins (historic leg & arm warmers)
jewelry: celtic braids, leafs

STUFF TO DO:
make those things
take product photos
get a 20x20' frame tent
send in merchant application
get tables, dress forms, hat stands, easels, and whatever else i can for display
make historically presentable shop signs
figure out how I can take credit cards at a store in the middle of no where

That's not too bad. I think i can make a few of each item in time (some are already made or partially made.) It's the tent and display items I'm mostly worried about, but i think people i know might be able to help me out. for a barter? a unicorn plushie to everyone who lets me borrow something, maybe ;)

should i make an emoticon set to match my blog? that would be cool.

New Layout

2008-12-29T00:32:00.005-07:00

still gotta tweak some stuff, mostly in the sidebar. but here's another thing to cross off my to-do list: new blog template.
also recently designed the blogs of rebalene.blogspot.com & adriannie.blogspot.com, fun stuff :)

EDIT--> to do list to touch up this layout:
~~redo header graphic as hi-quality jpg~~
~~redo bullets on sidebar as purple & png~~
~~redo green bullets for lists as png~~
~~adjust placement of header graphic, & gray footer bullets~~
~~change color of 3 comments/post a comment text~~
~~change color of sidebar separation border~~
~~adjust width of sidebar wrapper~~
~~touch-up top left corner of BG tile~~
~~change sidebar link colors~~
~~remove height specification on block quotes~~
~~make a new butterfly post-start bullet to replace green dot~~
and i've been thinking of putting a playlist in the music section, what's everyone's favorite playlist gadget?

Organic Home

2008-12-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

While wandering through parks in Virginia last month we stumbled across this strange heap o' leaves:

Upon closer inspection we discovered that it was hollow inside. The whole thing was like a house for elves, held up by a large "backbone" branch, with piles of smaller branches heaped over it to make roofs and walls. There were a few door openings and even windows. But they were both just holes.

It was way cool. Little hallways between rooms which branched off each other organically. This picture is from the side, on the right side is the "back door" which opens onto the bank of a little stream.

A shot through a window to the front door.

I seriously want to make a house like this but human sized. (This was big enough to crawl into.) I love how it just grows outwards and of course, the fact that it's made out of sticks. I reminds me of hobbit holes and these "onion" houses I read about in a book by a earth-progressive architect (NOT this one, although that is pretty sweet, I wish I could remember the name of the architect or book), except those are both underground. Also reminds me of the beginning stages of this underground house: http://www.simondale.net/house/

Ok, I think I already established that i like small homes, but did I mention that I'm also obsessed with earth-sheltered houses? Just so ya know.

Flying

2008-12-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

Speaking of the trip I took last month, I've never mentioned it before.

I took a trip last month. It was to Washington, D.C. and vicinity.

Here are some obligatory airplane photos:

Note: I took 3 different airlines and just trust me, never fly US Airways.

We went to the zoo, 3 or 4 different art museums, and natural history (all Smithsonian.)
Most importantly we went to an Enter the Haggis show in Virginia. Yeah, that was basically why we even went.

STUFF TO DO

2008-12-24T01:32:00.007-07:00

I had such wonderful plans for this winter break, but I've squandered most of my free time so far blogging.
So without further ado I hereby present to myself:

A List of V. Important Tasks to Accomplish Before School Starts Again

~~Print a lot of t-shirts. (this requires finding or buying more freezer paper or other stencil material.)~~
~~Reba's Blog~~
~~Annie's Blog~~
Etsy Updates (including putting up all the t-shirts so my store can be fairly well stocked as I ignore it for the next 4 months)
Ren Faire projects (which deserves a list of its own!)
Vague internet projects
Perhaps I ought to do something on DA... or maybe just neglect it some more
~~Re-style my own blog~~
Organize my secret wrock charity project
~~finish cleaning and organizing my art area~~
~~organize the bathroom better~~ (barely but enough to count)
Come up with a plan for next semester
Do stuff for work like organizing files, figuring out schedules and if i have to hire anyone, hire people, etc.
~~pick up some shifts at the library~~
~~finish registering for my classes (I LOST MY COURSE NUMBERS AHHHHH!!!)~~
organize iTunes
finish recording my band's first song
finish writing more songs
Wendy's logo
do something arty and crafty! geez

Gift Season

2008-12-23T23:29:00.003-07:00

have some post-modern gift wrapping...
(ok, i admit it, i think that everything is postmodern if it's not obviously one thing or if it's a mix of lots of things)
the gifts are wrapped in old artschool projects and precariously stacked, tied down with cute little ribbons. awww..
but i'm feeling some Gifter's Worry®... are my presents good enough? plentiful enough? expensive enough? this must be the first time in ages that i have actually bought all my family's presents instead of making stuff, because i was way too busy at school this semester. (If you look closely you may recongize some tags that were a part of my final typography project. I'm actually giving away graphic design homework as gifts. It's sickening.) so while wrapping everything i'm wavering between, is this good enough? to Eh, this is fine. but mostly the former, and I'm sitting htere thinking about whether it's possible to print a t-shirt for everyone before Christmas (technically yes but probably not worth the effort).... and it's sad because once the presents are wrapped, I pretty much can't remember what's in all of them so I really have doubts as to whether they are good gifts. I just know I didn't make any of them so I'm not feeling any Gifter's Pride®.
OH WELL.
They're probably fine and I have a back-up plan that ~~makes me look good with minimal amount of effort~~ can allow me to show my family how much I love them... but I can't say it yet, it's a Christmas Secret!™
Also they got tons of AWESOME CRAP I MADE® at my party over the summer, that should hold them over for like, a whole nother year. It was truly Christmas in July, except it was actually August and it was actually a Harry Potter party (better than Christmas, unless you have a Harry-Potter-themed Christmas, I guess that would be a good option for someone who isn't religious).

( i have another thing to admit, I don't know the difference in purpose between ® and ™.)

Blue Fairy Sweater

2008-12-22T23:39:00.001-07:00

I've been working on this sweater on and off for ages, as a side/for-myself project.

After months of neglect (I honestly have no idea when I started it) I decided it'd be great to take on my trip last month and picked it back up.

Then I realized I had no idea what I had been doing on it. It was knit about to the waist (from the top) and although I had written a pattern/plan, I wasn't sure where I was and it looked like I hadn't done any shaping for the waist. The idea of a lacy, gently wafting belly curtain of a sweater wasn't appealing so I ripped out about 7 inches of knitting (and it was like 39 inches around at the time, which is why I knew I had to do it.) I got a lot re-done on my trip. Since I had done the original knitting so long ago, it wasn't painful to undo and re-do it.

So here it is once I got back to the point where I ripped it out before. It's longer than the first time because it's also thinner. And good thing because as I would come to find out in the future, I would barely have enough yarn to make it long enough.
(This pic was taken a week ago.)

A photo of the original design. and some pattern starting.

The pattern. Free to anyone who can actually read it.

So here it is... THE FUTURE. It went really fast and I finished the body of the sweater tonight, and by finished I mean, got halfway through the ending lace design and realized I was nearly out of yarn and decided to cast off right away. Before I started the sweater I split the gigantic ball of yarn I was going to use into three manageable balls, a big one for the body and two smaller ones for sleeves. The sleeve ones are still being saved for the sleeves, obviously, but if there is extra I may unravel the bottom a little and finish the lace panels. But it's actually a really good length so I'm ok with it. And I was planning on using any extra for a hood if there's enough.

Anyway here's a crappy webcam, crappily photoshopped picture:

I like it without the sleeves but I will still be putting them on later.

I guess Zed really likes it because he insisted on taking my photo even though I'm a big dork. When I totally finish I will have a decent photo shoot.

Dragon print t-shirt

2008-12-21T14:09:00.001-07:00

This is one of the t-shirts I printed for my Harry Potter party and
gave to my youngest sister. She was wearing it when I visited
a while ago. (See, it's green outside. I forgot to publish this post before. This post is 2 months old.)
It's always nice when you see people wearing or using the
stuff you made for them.

Pages from my fashion sketchbook

2008-12-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

I have had this sketchbook for 2 years now... it's sole purpose is for me to sketch clothing ideas and work out fashion design problems. So... here are some pages, I dunno why. Crappy photos taken with my phone! (crappiness designed to protect my ideas)

Trying to figure out how to fix this shirt that I, really, started in high school or maybe even jr. high and still haven't finished because the torso was too short. I don't have any of the fabric used in it anymore, so I think I finally decided to cut off some from the sleeves and add it to the bottom. (as well as add side shaping) I think I cut off the sleeves and stopped there (possibly deterred by darts and most certainly by machine trouble.)

Lots of notes and ideas on the potentials of a wraparound dress.

Sizing guidelines for wraparound dresses and tops.

Strange scribbles relating to built-in sleeves.

In which I am convinced I am a fashion genius, though I'm not really sure why... This is a design for a schmancy knit wraparound top with lace and ruffles.

I have spent a lot of time pondering a wool capelet but have yet to execute it. I don't think I would use a construction method so complex.

Cute hair pins, I should really make these. but my cursed sewing machine prevents me. Actually, I guess I should fess up. I'm the one that's cursed, not my machine. It's happened to every machine I use. :( (Sewing machine maintenance lessons = a really good present to get me)

A fairly good idea for a scarf, belt or headband, or even choker necklace, but i-cord can be so tedious. Similar ideas for a blanket roam around my brain. I have a little "French knitting" spool that makes i-cord (if I can find the microscopic crochet hook that comes with it) but that's equally tedious, just easier to do in tight places.
(Note: I tried to do a braided version of this and it was horrible. HORRIBLE. I threw it away. But I think a knitted one would work better.)

Notes from last year's Ren Faire. I'm still planning to set up shop with my sister if she's still in on it at the next Faire but I need to get producing.
(I really did see the biggest rack known to womankind there. I guess it's a good excuse to show it off once a year, if you've got it and are into that kind of thing.)

Trying to figure out how to top the formal dress I modified for the Masquerade ball last summer. What I finally did was okay (did I blog about it? i was planning to.) I was watching a lot of Utena at the time and the puffy sleeved one at the bottom always reminds me that I never finished all the episodes.

Some notes on things other people wore that I want to ~~shamelessly rip off~~ use as influences.

Something I'm inexplicably obsessed with is home floorplans (even as a child) and I'm always trying to design floorplans for smallish, convenient homes with all the stuff I like included. So this got into my fashion notebook somehow.
Stuff I like in this homeplan: Bedrooms where most of the room is closet space for clothes, bathrooms where the sink, toilet, and bath areas are separate, room for a grand piano, kitchen/dining/living room as an open and shared space, multiple levels to establish room boundaries, a close connection to the outdoors or an outdoor living space, a fireplace, extra rooms for working or studio space, and it's not excessively large. I also really like the walkthrough closet area between the front door and kitchen: it's a place to put your coat (and hat, scarf gloves, etc), do the laundry, and keep food storage; and of course you always want to head towards the kitchen the second you get home (at least i do), so it's a shortcut through which you can shed your extraneous items.
I'm sure my proportions are way off as I didn't use a measurement grid but I estimate this floorplan's footprint (the interior) to be about 1350 square feet. Add a second floor and that's more space than I would ever need for working and living. I like large, complicated buildings, of course, but when it comes down to it, I wouldn't want to live in one.

Email Newsletter

2008-12-15T03:15:00.000-07:00

here is the html newsletter which is the final project in my publication design class.
I haven't seen anyone elses so I don't know if I"m getting totally shown up but I think it's pretty good. And hopefully the cleanliness of my code and my obvious superior coding talents themselves will help my grade.
two problems: the links are the wrong color because to have the html inside this post I can't include the body tag, in which is kept a link color attribute. but this color is okay, so even though i could mess with stuff to force the links to be the right color, i don't feel like bothering. at any rate it seems as though it will only use whatever link color it specified in the email program anyways. AND. getting the tables to play along nicely all the time. for those of you who don't know, html emails have to be coded like it's 1996, using the kinds of tags and organization that are currently deprecated on the real internet, so don't be all like "tables? ur doin it wrong." and inter-browser relations seem to be at an all-time low when dealing with tables. (i specifically decided to set the cell padding to 0 because safari adds the padding amount to the outside of the table instead of subtracting it from the inside so none of the tables lines up if viewing in safari, i hate safari. I hope i don't get points taken off because the text is close the the table edge, but i don't think it really looks bad.

Problems? Click to view this newsletter in your browser.

INTRODUCING WALBAUM

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flashback

2008-12-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time concentrating on making good typographic illustrations to go with my last final project, an email newsletter announcing a "new" typeface. so i've been messing around and reverted to an assignment we did over a year ago... one of the first things i did in the graphic design program: making motifs and patterns with letterforms.

So I made this motif:

and from it emerged these patterns:

(haha screenshot)

I don't know why, but this is just so much more fun.

The motif is made of two 2s and two Zs in the typeface Walbaum.

2008-12-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

I found out what I did wrong in my javascript lesson last week. it's the stupidest mistake in the digital universe. I was totally correct on all my theory, but in the code I put the variables for the first menu twice instead of one set for the first menu and one for the second menu. D'OH. so i thought it wasn't working but it was really just switching the same image with itself. ugh... that's what I get for doing it in the middle of the night, I'm sure earlier I would have been alert enough to look through the code for simple mistakes and see that.

Sorry for all the depressing posts. I'm really fine... just been under a lot of pressure this semester. you can tell because I dye my hair more when I'm stressed out, I think I dyed it seven or eight times in the past 4 months, the latest being about 3 days ago. The thing about the green dye i've been using is it fades super fast, I've only washed my hair once since I dyed it and what was kelly green is pretty much just aqua now, which i'm ok with because that's what I planned for.

BUT, I got my final typography assignment in and I think it turned out alright.

The last time I talked about this assignment I was choosing typefaces. Then I missed class, messed around, felt really clueless, and went to class 2 days before it was due to be told that I pretty much needed to do the whole thing over because what I had really sucked (and, it really did.) So i spent every spare second of the remaining time redoing it, and it's definitely better. I'm ok with it. I made 24 of these pleated cards, 2 of each of 12 different designs. the typography is the same on all of them, just different BG textures. I was reluctant to change the typefaces I chose but am really happy I did because it's better this way. (maybe i will take better, non-webcam pics but I will probably forget.) If you know me, you just might be on the receiving end of one of these cards because the point of the assignment was to make them as gifts, also all of us spent so much time on school i doubt anyone in the class has had time to go shopping or make other gifts for anyone.

design barf

2008-12-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

I'm depressed about my graphic design classes again. :( I really feel like i have not learned much or improved this entire time. and seeing what other people do that looks so much better to me.. so depressing. Maybe what I'm doing is good and I just can't see it. I don't know.

On the other hand I feel like I'm doing pretty well on my last assignment, which is an email newsletter. I don't know, I think it's just a mindset thing, but I feel better doing web design. probably because of all the stress related with getting good prints done and putting the whole thing together, it's a nightmare and I always get a million points off for doing it badly, and a big part of the issue is just having enough money and time to print it a thousand times until you get it right (I usually don't.) I like making stuff but I always suck at that stuff.

Uh-oh... I'm about to say my true feelings out loud...

I hate school.

I'm not even sure I like graphic design anymore.

I want to be able to get paid for doing whatever I want someday. Probably everyone does.

Also, I really, desparately need an Assistant Production Manager for the Chrony next semester and on. A U student who can and wants to make graphics and do page layout. it's really a pretty easy and enjoyable job, but I only want someone who is actually capable of designing graphics well. And isn't going to bail in the middle of the semester. No Chads allowed.

Magic

2008-12-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

I bought James C. Christensen's book "Men and Angels" yesterday.

It's the biggest and most expensive book I own. I bought it with my scholarship fund and justified the expense because he's been an artistic inspiration to me my whole life—well, at least since elementary school where I saw his painting "Once Upon a Time" nearly everyday in the secretary's office. (which I fully believed was titled "The Storyteller" until a few seconds ago.)

He was there (this was at Literary Luminaries at the library) and signed it for me :)

So now you all know what you don't have to get me for Christmas, although I wouldn't want anyone to spend that much money on a book for me! (It was... over $80.)

long rant about javascripting

2008-12-05T23:34:00.000-07:00

Dear invisible online class professors,
Re: Lesson 11
I have no idea how to associate the images with the chosen menu item.
I think I made the lists of indexA and indexB = (whatever number menu
item was chosen) to correspond with the numbers of the images in the
image array, but I don't know how to write a code that choses the image
by the index number.

if (document.arranger.a[1].selected)
{
indexA = 1;
}

if "arranger" menu 'a' item '1' is selected (which is called Upper Right to the end user), the
value of some variable I made up called "indexA" should also be '1'.

1 also happens to be the array number of the upper right image! wow! but...
what am I supposed to do to about it... because it doesn't seem like i can
write a code that says to do stuff with image[indexA] instead of image[1]
(so that the chosen image always corresponds with the selected menu item and i don't have to re-write the code for every possible permutation)

yeah, i am really not getting this. I've been a little lost on the last few javascript lessons I've had and they keep throwing random unexplained stuff in that I don't get at all... then today's lesson was surprisingly simple... until I'm doing the assignment for it and I have no idea how to do this thing because it wasn't covered adequately in the lesson or any lesson!

There's really no way i can explain what i'm supposed to be doing with this lesson (considering I barely understand it myself, or don't) so i don't expect any readers to even see what problem i'm having, much less be able to help. but i'm seriously pissed about this assignment so i'm going to try to talk myself through it.

basically there's a page with 4 pictures arranged in a 2x2 square, and two drop-down menus, and a button that says switch. you choose from the two menus which two images you want to switch. (the options on both menus are upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right.) when you click the switch button it magically switches the two images you chose from the two menus (obviously if you chose the same thing in both menu nothing switches.)

so inside the coding.... well when there's multiple options in a group that can be used for java script events, it's called an array, and the things in it are automatically numbered starting with 0. so, the four images are an array, numbered 0-3, and the menu options for the menus are each an array of 4 items, each also numbered 0-3. (I don't know if i'm getting all the terminology right). it so happens that the menu item's numbers match up with the image's numbers for what position they are in, because that's the order the menu items (which are a list of the image positions) were put in. I think that lining-up is a key but I can't figure out how to use it.

The javascript event is executed when the switch button is clicked. it grabs the information of which menu items were selected and switches the corresponding images. I need to write the code for this.

They suggested we start by making a couple variables that have no purpose as far as i can tell other than to store a number, depending on which item in the menu is selected. so that's two variables, one for each menu, and they suggested we call them indexA and indexB, which confused me really badly for a while because i thought that maybe index was some special thing, but i guess it is just an arbitrary name. Incidentally the numbers to be stored in the variables of indexA and indexB are the same as the number of the menu item that is selected. So I wrote the script so that when item 0 of menu A is selected, indexA = 0, and when someone changes the selection to item 1, indexA = 1, and so on, and the same again for menu B and indexB. so obviously these stored numbers in the indexes are the key to associating the images with the meu items, right? ...right??

The hint for the rest of the assignment says this:
Now your function is able to determine the indexes (indexA and indexB) of the two images (which are stored in the array document.images) that need to be swapped. The third block should be the code that actually swaps them. This code should deal only with indexA, indexB, and the images; it shouldn't refer to either menu.

so yeah, the indexes of the two images that need to be swapped... this is why i'm confused by the index thing, maybe it is something special? how do i make the indexA and indexB BE the indexes for the images? because my function is only determining what number to store in the variables, depending on what menu item is selected, NOT what the indexes of the images are, because my function has no idea that the variables storing numbers need to be related to the images in any way!

so I'm not sure how to write the code for switching the images. even if i straight-up knew which images to switch (like if they didn't depend on a end-user-chosen variable), i would still not exactly know how to do it, even though there are a couple of examples available in the lesson.. for one thing i just don't feel confident enough in the language of javascript to know how to write it correctly without copying something.

i realize that the array numbers for the images are not for the specific image, just for the location it's sitting in. I still don't know what i can do with it, though.

in other examples another variable is made to "hold" the first image that's being switched so that it can replace the second image... like: hold the first image. make the second image the new first image. make the held first image the new second image. because if you hadn't held the original first image it would make the new second image the old second image because that's the new first image and you be saying make the new second image the first image (which has already been replaced by the original second image.) and you'd have image2 twice and image1 lost forever.

I think the problem i'm stuck on is i can't figure out how to say which image slots to move things to because i don't think i can just say document.images[indexA].src—the images in an array are referenced by document.images[0].src or whatever their number is. i don't think i can put a variable in that spot. except that the teacher puts parameters in that spot in his not-explained example.. there must be something i really don't get about parameters, I don't know. it is killing me here. the example one doesn't make any sense because some things are brought up out of nowhere and never referenced again. why do they exist? where do they go?

so i've written out everything i can about this problem, hoping for an epiphany, and i'm still stuck.

everytime i do my homework for this class, it's like my mind is being totally blown. I can feel it expanding when i actually learn and understand something. that probably sounds stupid to people who do it a lot but i can't had to focus so much on this kind of left-brain engineering stuff for years. seriously, i have not taken a math class for 6 years, or science for 4 or 5, and it wasn't anything very challenging. My dad's a computer programmer and all the creative types see more of that in me than right-brained-ness but i've been focusing on art for a long time. music is sort of middle ground but not very difficult (at least what i'm doing in it) so... yeah. anyway. mind implosion eminent.

EDIT @ 1:15 am: OK, i gave up. i submitted my lame attempt that obviously wasn't right because it didn't work, but i'm hoping to get partial credit on it. I have gotten 100% on everything else, including the midterm exam (except i also missed 2 assignments.)
i saved what i did and will compare it to the real solution in a few days to see what i was supposed to figure out. it better not be something like, "oh, DUH, i can't believe i didn't realize it!" I hope it is something like, "I can't believe he expected us to figure that out! there was nothing like that in the lesson! how was i supposed to magically know that was even possible!?!?!" so that how i'm feeling right now is justified.

Just one of those faces, I guess

2008-11-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

It's not an uncommon occurrence for me to run across someone who looks horribly familiar. I'm not talking about people I vaguely remember from high school or summer camp (although that happens a lot). I'm talking about people who look like ME. And I'm not talking about people I'm related to.
Observe:

http://www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-goth-kids.htm

Except she's actually proclaiming goth and not fakin' like I always do.

And there have been a lot more in the past that look even more like me, but I can't find them now.. but i'll post them if I do.
It's so weird because it's not like you can do a search for "people that look like me."

Taking flight

2008-11-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

New typography project, and this one is going to be way better than every other one. (it better be because it's the final project of the semester). It has to do with quotes so I need to choose the perfect typeface for my chosen quote by da Vinci: "Once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."

So first I typed out the quote and went through the list of installed fonts to find good ones. I had kind of a feeling I was going for... a little bit hand-drawn, old-style serif faces, possibly a script.
so these are the first ones I chose:

After considering them I narrowed it down to these 5:

The other 4, while nice, were lacking a special something something that I require.

Then I decided to look at the word "flight" close-up as it's the most important word of the quote:
Bembo Infant: the ligature is okay, but makes the spacing of the rest of the letters look off, and I'd really prefer a double-decker "g" for this (okay, the correct term is "double-story"). there are other things about the face that I really like and they just aren't in this word. I'll consider it as a secondary face should I need one.
Poliphilus: This is the first font I thought of for this quote because it does have a sort of imperfect hand-drawn look to it—slightly waverng lines and strokes of uncertain thickness... I usually don't like it but it was just what I was looking for this time. the "fl" ligature is nice, and it has the "g" i like.
Athenaeum: I sort of wanted to kick out this font because it's overall look is kind of .. something I can't take seriously, but this word alone is so sweet... the way the "fl" ligature looks is my favorite, I guess because the crossbar doesn't go all the way to the "l", and that bald, open "g" is just cool.
Quill: this face also has the hand-drawn-ish qualities I like, of course as a script face this one is more calligraphic. I originally envisioned this type of "f" for the quote. it has the single-story "g" but i'm okay with it this time because it's nicely styled.
Slanted Antique Roman: this is the schmanciest I could get with scripts. the fat bottom bowl on the g is attractive. it's a nice face but overall I prefer Quill if I'm going to use a script in this project.

So, I will definitely be using Bembo Infant for something different in the future, but for this project I'd like to see if I can get Poliphilus and Quill to work together—Quill does make a nice italic variant for Poliphilus:

I will play with these things a little more.

Triforce armwarmers

2008-11-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

After about a thousand false starts I'm finally gaining some headway
on what was supposed to be a quick & easy (and now late) birthday present.

Here's my incredibly well-thought-out and finely tuned chart for the
triforce. (sweet, my iPhone recognizes the word triforce.)
This is how my charts for intarsia and fair isle are usually made.

A few hours later...

(upside down because i don't know if I can rotate them on my phone before sending.)

da da da DAHH!!!

See, that wasn't so bad, now, was it. It's amazing what you can get done once you just get started.

Critiques

2008-11-17T18:26:00.001-07:00

It's project-turn-in/critique day and as usual my scarf is starting to look appealingly like a noose. It's not that people say rude things and tear me down, to the contrary, everybody quite politely follows the rule of "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
And they don't have to say anything. Seeing my inadequate, pathetic project next to those of the rest of the class is enough to tell me that I need serious help.
I know part of of is I don't give myself enough time to thoroughly work out the design problems.
I know part of it is that I don't see(k out) enough inspiring imagery from which to get ideas.
And I don't keep track of my ideas. And I don't get good feedback during the process phases. I procrastinate too much. I don't brainstorm enough. I'm not open-minded enough. I worry too much.

I'm afraid I will never be a true graphic designer—that I am and always will be nothing more than a "production artist." And I think it is my fear of failure that is holding me back from doing really good work.

don't do it

2008-11-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I wish I could tell what's better on my own. I can tell if other people's designs are good but my own stuff I'm totally blind too, it's so annoying.

Last minute messing around.
(some of these were done by Zed, I won't say which)

And I decided to turn this one in:

because the caps remind me of Jenny Holzer's truisms, and the italics make the caps seem like a
stage whisper.

same thing every time

2008-11-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

We recently had to come up with a list of "mantras" about typography that we believe in, then find/ take a photo relating to or describing one of the mantras, then make a poster of it with the mantra in it.

1.
REJECTED. reading flow confusing. text unnecessarily large.

2.
REJECTED. Overkill.

3.
Better, I think. more subtle and lets the image speak for itself.
It's what I have so far, we'll see if anything better happens before Wednesday.

These images are going to be printed at 24x16 inches, and the type size on the last one is 18 pt, which is 1/4 inch tall.

I chose Helvetica because it is what everyone uses all the time, although, incidentally, the type on the door signs is Arial, the cheap Microsoft rip-off of Helvetica. which is even better (in that disgusting way.)

I don't feel like it's phenomenal, but maybe it's good enough to not get me kicked off the show (ever since being forced to watch a couple episodes of Project Runway I have been looking at graphic design school as a competitive reality show.) The photo doesn't look like anything special, but that is sort of the point. I find the dull-headed repitition amusing, and it takes a moment of discovery for people to realize it once they look at the photo... the problem is it looks too boring for most people to get to that point. :\

Fantasy Hollywood

2008-11-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

Two movies I would like to see that don't exist (yet):

Helena Bonham Carter, Bernadette Peters, Angelica Huston, and Cate Blanchett playing two rival sets of sisters in witchcraft.

Rival mad scientist brothers & father played by Chris Masterson, Neil Patrick Harris and Dominique Pinon.

I wouldn't call it "typecasting" so much as I just can't gt enough of some people in certain roles. (let's face it, 45 minutes isn't nearly enough, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, if you know what I mean.)

If movies based on these ideas get made, I don't even want credit, I just want to see it happen.

Finishing Touches

2008-10-29T16:08:00.000-06:00

Here's some final stages of a recent design project... we were redesigning a two-page spread from recent NYT sunday magazines.

After a lot of messing around I got to this point. I could tell the end was near but it didn't seem right yet. I wanted color but the application of color so far was bleh.

I was thinking of "punk" stuff and thought about cut & paste zines, label makers and tape and jacket patches... diy, cut-out stuff... and that's how I decided to use these color fields. having them semi-transparent was my first reflex because of the color that was already in the words debutante and model.

After the critique in class I made some other decisions, they suggested that the color fields be solid to make the text easier to read. I also made some of the body copy bigger and less leaded. But I think that straight up these colors are too pastel.

Better? but how would those colors print?

nothing is ever finished, some things just get cut off at deadline.

Plan B

2008-10-28T01:23:00.000-06:00

You might not know it by looking at me—depending on what day you look at me—but I am actually really into fashion, and, specifically, fashion design.

A clothing designer is one of the first things that I remember wanting to be "when I grow up" that I had thought of all on my own. No one suggested it to me—and how could they? I was an extremely awkward girl wearing extremely unfashionable clothes for what is now a good half of my life (actually, it was a pretty bad half.) That'd be like telling some kid with a debilitating physical disorder that they should try out for professional football. But at least I knew my clothes were horrible, I was just too pipsqueaky to think I had any control over my clothes at that point (such confidence would come with puberty.) I also thought that I had a better idea of what good fashion was than all of those "popular" 6th grade girls, and I was probably right, even if I couldn't do anything about it. So my desire to become a clothes designer stayed sealed up and silent for fear of mockery and outrage. I did, however, attempt to teach myself to sew around that time, which was a good start.

Fast forward to the present. Now I'm a little better at sewing, but I'm also dang good at knitting, and most importantly I understand how to create 3-dimensional forms with textiles. Maybe even more important than that is that I have ideas, good ideas. Many varied and unusual ideas. I have ideas that no one else has had, or if someone has, they haven't executed it nearly as well as I could, and do, when I finally get around to making something of it. I have marketable products floating around in my head that I know would sell really well if I could just get them to materialize. It's not that I have trouble making things. Anyone who knows me should know that I love making things, and I'm usually good at doing the things I love to do. No no, the problem is getting myself to actually start. There's these things called time, see, and priorities. Being a fashion designer is just a ridiculous, whacked out dream of an insecure 11 year old. There's no room for that kind of tomfoolery in my life! If I'm going to make a living in the arts, it's got to be with something useful, like graphic design! The arts are plain poppycock anyway!

So there's my plan B. I wish I could invest the time and money it would take really do it, to really start up a clothing line and have that be my full-time job and actually live on it, but seriously. How many people actually get that chance? (Without being independently wealthy through some other means like a money marriage or living on the royalties of your father's famous Christmas song.)

Or, I suppose it's about making that chance, taking that chance. Of course my opportunity to do so is never going to just appear, I'm responsible for creating my fate. But realistically speaking I'm going to have to hold down a steady, reliable job for the rest of my life in order to make enough money for living and my hobbies, and because of that they will stay as hobbies for the rest of my life.

Well, I dunno, there are probably a lot of people, who are more similar to me than I'd like to acknowledge, who go for it. It takes a heckuvalotta work but people start their own businesses all the time. And people's own businesses fail all the time, which I guess is why I'm afraid to go all the way... There's that security, if making stuff is my hobby and selling it is just for fun, there's really no "fail" to be had because I'm not really marketing or advertising or putting more money into than I can get out. I guess if Plan B became Plan A, I would need a new Plan B, probably what is Plan A right now. Another thing that's holding me back is that I'd have to hire people and make them work like slaves (they'd be paid, but probably only barely), because I am going to send prototypes to China to be mass-produced in factories by children for pennies.

So, when I say to myself, "Why, Mrs. Bailey, you are an utter genius," I say it with a heavy heart and a tear in my eye. And this isn't even the only great thing I want to do with my life. I think that I'm supposed to accomplish something earth-shattering, so I feel like I'm just wasting my time, but I don't have any direction anyways. And maybe I'll live 'til I'm one hundred and be able to spend 20 years doing this and 20 years doing that, but maybe I won't. I can say that if I knew I didn't have much time left, I'd wish that so far I'd done more things I enjoy doing and less things that I hate but feel required to do.

Major and Minor ramblings

2008-10-20T11:30:00.000-06:00

I think my band is finally starting to get serious. Well, we got pretty serious right before school started because we finally got the additional member we wanted, but then we didn't have a single practice in the entire first half of the semester because we were all so busy. Fortunately, most of us don't have to work on Saturdays anymore so I think we might have weekly practices again.
We've set some goals for the upcoming year. One of them is to play at this fighters' practice/minstrel meeting SCA thing that I don't fully understand, as soon as we have 4 or 5 songs down well enough to have a small performance. The other goal, and this one was my idea, is that NEXT HALLOWEEN we are going to have a full-fledged wizard rock concert of UNCONTROLLABLY IMMENSE AWESOMENESS. We'll get other bands from around here and totally wrock out. I think it will be free, but then there's the really fun part... making and selling merch.
Merch ideas:
Merlin's Pants t-shirts
CDs
logo buttons
purple shorts/pants with silver stars (hereafter known as Merlin style pants)
pygmy puff pins wearing Merlin style pants
logo or pants patches

So anyway, that also means we have a lot of work to do in the realm of writing (that would be mostly my work), practicing and recording songs. And I have been working on writing, I've got the basic string parts for the chorus of The Grey Lady and the Baron done, and am messing with the verses. I laid out the chord structure for Goodbye Muggle World and passed it off to our pianist who is going to try to write her own part (forcing her to learn theory will pay off in the long run.) Other than that we still have Myrtle's Song for Draco and Poor Winky in the practice stages, and a couple songs which have melodies but nothing else yet.

As the band's composer, I am working mostly on instinct. I have a pretty strong musical background with some amount of training, but that basically means I know what sounds good/right when I hear it and have some idea of how to get to it. But I have never properly learned how to write "popular" music, or at least music in a popular format (ya know, verse chorus, verse bridge chorus kind of stuff.) Of course I listen to popular styles of music (and I'm not saying, "the kind all the cool kids listen to," I mean as a format. I listen to really great popular style music that most people haven't heard of but is better than what they listen to and they'll never know it, end tangient.) but since i listen to such GOOD music I sometimes get sucked in and forget to pay attention to structural things, even when I'm purposefully trying to. haha. so. Then when I'm writing stuff, I'm like, ok, this is a repeated section. should the instruments all play the same thing as last time? that would make my job easy (copy, paste) but I have a sneaking suspicion there should be some kind of variation between sections so the song sounds like it's actually progressing. In classical music repeated sections often are simply repeated note for note, but because the format is usually so much longer, it's more like "coming home" than redundant. also in some cases there will be an additional part (like a soloist) that only comes in on the second time around or something. And I have noticed that like, on the second repeat of a chorus maybe there's a special guitar thing going on over the top or something like that (in the specific example in my mind it's bagpipes) in some pop songs. but are all the other instruments doing the same thing as before? I'd have to listen to it a lot more times to know for sure.
Basically what I'm saying here is I have a feeling I don't really know what I'm doing. But ths songs I've got so far are pretty good, so I'll just keep trucking along. But really. I don't know anything about being a rock star.

I do know I'd like to stick in some more suspensions and deceptive cadences... yes, they are as awesome as they sound. (i was playing around with this one song that is like, all suspensions...)

Finished: Witch Hat!!

2008-10-16T21:10:00.000-06:00

After figuring out I was doing the brim wrong and that's why it sucked so bad, I have finally finished the witch hat, and the customer it was for bought it, although if she'd decided not to I would have sold it for twice as much.

I'm sort of missing Halloween this year, this hat, while Halloweenish, has taken nearly all my concentration outside of school since school started, so I've barely thought about a costume. I've tried listening to my special Halloween playlist to get me in the mood, but I listen to that music all year round, so I guess it's true what they say about filet mignon... I guess I haven't been outside enough to enjoy the crunchy, dead leaves or crisper air, and it already snowed once here so I'm already into the winter dumps (although the past couple of days have been upper-60's, super nice.)
So maybe I'll recycle a past costume and concentrate on making winter necessities and Ren Faire stock for a while. Also I plan on doing a lot of t-shirt printing.

I have a lot of website projects coming up that I need to concentrate on as well. No shortage of distractions in my world :)

Witch hat

2008-10-09T13:51:00.000-06:00

This is the witch hat commission I've been working on for way too long. The brim is painfully wide and once again let me say how much I HATE the Denise interchangables. I really need regular circulars in size 5 to finish this (which I don't have). I was hoping to finish by this weekend. I dunno if I will. :(

Clothes List

2008-10-03T11:34:00.000-06:00

List time! I need to organize my thoughts on what I want to make in the upcoming years... because that's how long it will take for me to get to them..

CURRENTLY WORKING ON
Vermorlian's witch hat: this is seriously taking so long I can't even believe it. It's depressing and I feel really bad because the last witch hat I made went rather quickly and I didn't think it would take so long for this one. It's really pretty though. I used a complicated fair-isle pattern, which slowed me down a bit, and I had to order online & dye yarn for it at the beginning, which slowed me down a lot because that took up the last two weeks before school started, which is when I could have gotten most of the work done on it. I'm finally a couple inches into the brim, but unfortunately the brim seems to be the longest part! because of so many increases to make it circular, each round is exponentially (? probably, but i don't remember math that well by now) longer. :( Here's a math problem for ya: i started with 100 stitches and add one stitch every 8 stitches on every row. I need the brim to be 8 inches long, there are 6 rows per inch. how many stitches will be on my final row?
Also, I'm using Denise interchangeable circular needles. I strongly recommend everyone NOT to buy this brand, they have been a total nightmare. I feel really bad that my mom paid $50 for a set for me for Christmas, but I didn't hear anything bad about them before I got them. the cable has broken off of the needle tips in the middle of my knitting at least 5 times each time I sit down to work on this thing. so yeah, having to pick up 10 or more dropped stitches in a row, in the middle, every 5 minutes, yeah, that slows me down a lot too. it doesn't do it as much on loose gauge projects, but it doesn't matter as much on those because it's easier to pick up stitches in looser gauges. but the hat is really tight, especially the brim so it can stick straight out on it's own. so do i have to go buy a size 5 circular needle, because, i can only go shopping like once every 2 weeks. so that's not much of an option. I'm pretty mad, yeah.

I am also working on a sweater for myself. I thought this yarn was cursed because everything i tried to make with it was a disaster, but this is working out nicely. it's very loosely knit, a nice break from the painfully tight-gauged hat. i work on it on Sundays because I try not to work on stuff I'm selling on Sundays, long story... i might just work on the hat on Sundays until it's done though, i need to finish it so bad. The sweater is a really pretty design I thought up, so we'll see how it turns out.

FUTURE
SOON:
I need to be perpetually working on little doodads for the Ren Faire next year, like those corny headbands with all the ribbons and flowers coming off, but a beautifully knit version, and period style hats, pillows, and maybe stockings (IF I'M NUTS) and possibly a cloak or two, although I was mostly thinking of doing accessory type stuff. I've made a few good things so far.
More leg warmers, arm warmers, mittens, cowls, and basically everything of which I need plenty to survive winter.
i want to make a giant shawl/little blanket that is in a chunky, lovely grey yarn with enormous, complicated cables all over it. I had a good idea before, I hope i drew it in my fashion notebook, but I remember the idea being sparked by something I saw in some Celtic Knits book so I'll look into it.
LATER:
I have been putting off a capelet forever, it's going to be bright green and beautiful. no set design for it though, I think that's my problem. I want cables but I dunno what exactly.
I had another idea for the Ren Faire but I think it is too complicated and will take too long (also probably not historically accurate, but most of the stuff i'm making probably isn't, from what I saw last year they don't seem to be too strict.) I love those long tunics with the really deep arm openings (er, some people know what I'm talking about), and I imagined a very long, very slim, very deep-pitted knit version that was all lace patterns. I mean, the arm openings would go halfway down the thigh! But that's just crazy talk.

SEWING:
Boy, would I love it if my sewing machine was working! (and my sewing area cleaned up...) I've done a bunch of sketches in my fashion notebook that I'm dying to make real, but they will be on hold indefinitely...
some variations of a wrap-around dress or shirts inspired by a retro pattern
some variations of a long-pitted tunic shirt inspired by redoubtredux (i steal all your ideas when it comes to sewing, i dunno why considering you are way better)
some more wrap pants
more warm things...

also i have something about a hoodie in the back of my head but I can't remember what I was planning for it... hope I drew it down.

(may post pics of my current projects later.)

even more about paper

2008-10-02T11:35:00.000-06:00

The, uh... paper screen... needs work. It takes a few minutes to couch and I wasn't expecting... Captain Cold-Pressed threw a deckle at my head.

Actually the problem was mostly that the fabric used for the screen holds water more than repels it so it was really difficult to couch the paper off with one lift. The paper kept sticking to the screen, in other words. Also larger paper is just more difficult in general. It was fine without a deckle, though.

I got a few good pieces out of it (they are pressing for a few weeks) but let's just say their edges are a little more ragged than normal because when the edges stuck to the screen and tore, i just tore off the whole edge to make it even.

It'll be really cute though, it's pink with glitter and metallic confetti :)

More Paper on its way

2008-09-27T18:48:00.000-06:00

I didnt' get much cleaning and homework done today like I wanted to, but I did make myself a new paper screen.

*note: it is a goth-punk screen.

I made it from a plastic picture frame and piece of meshy fabric (i think it was actually from a graduation gown).. I thought I had another of the same frame to use as a deckle, but now I can't find it. ah well, I've made paper without a deckle before (and surprisingly, it still has what's known as a deckled edge.) Bonus: the live area of the screen is 10x13, so I can make decent-sized pieces now, sweet.

I got in the mood and also started making "paper pulp pancakes," which are basically what they sound like... pre-made pulp to be released in water and made into paper at a later date. But since I made the screen I think I'll make some pieces now.

I failed again.

2008-09-12T22:24:00.000-06:00

I tried to make fudge again. Candy making is both a science and an art, so I educated myself. I read a bunch of articles about fudge-making written by chemistry professors and everything—I was ready.

According to my research, perfectly creamy fudge is achieved by dissolving a large about of sugar into cream at a high temperature, for a certain amount of time which determines how hard and brittle (or not) it will be later. Then letting it sit and cool down to room temperature—during this time it must not be disturbed or sugar crystals might form and make it grainy. After it's cooled down it must be beat all at once, which forces all the sugar to crystallize all at once, which keeps the granulization to a minimum so it stays creamy, but takes it out of its volatile state and puts it into a deliciously edible state.

Ok, so I got the theory. I'm pretty good with theory. The real test: putting it into practice.

I couldn't find any recipes that actually incorporated the scientific instructions I had read and come to believe, except one, which was for plain old chocolate-only fudge. I don't actually LIKE chocolate enough to want to make plain old only-chocolate fudge (seriously) and I wasn't sure at what point I was supposed to add the rest of the ingredients, but I figured it was after the cool-down part. (This is probably all very funny to you experienced candy makers.) Also none of the recipes had the same combo of ingredients as I wanted to use, which was mainly whipping cream and marshmallow creme.

I started out on a good note: I tested my thermometer to see how off it was or how off the altitude was. Water boiled at 202 so I figured I'd just go to 10 degrees less on all the temperatures.

So I started to dissolve all the sugar into the whipping cream and let it boil... it boiled at 218. According to the recipe I was vaguely following it was supposed to be heated to 240—or 230 by my thermometer, but I was a little confused because the fudge-help articles I'd read were all really confusing about thermometer accuracy and high altitude, was i supposed to take off an extra 10 degrees? I started to freak out as it stayed at 218 for several minutes and as far as I knew once something is boiling, that's as hot as it can even get, right? and then I couldn't remember if it was supposed to boil for a certain amount of time or just be removed from the heat once it hits a certain temperature, and was I supposed to mix in all my flavorings then? I ended up turning off the heat and dumping a bunch of chocolate shavings (dark, semi-sweet and white), pecans, vanilla extract, marshmallow creme and orange juice concentrate on top (I was going for orange chocolate.) And I let it sit for a while. After I gathered up some courage and thought maybe it was cool enough I went in for the beating, but was surprised to find that under my floating heap of flavors it was totally pure liquid. not set up or "glossy" in any way. I stirred it up and poured it into a lined pan anyway.

The next day it was still liquid.

But I had a back-up plan. It tasted REALLY good. I did not fail in the flavor category. I thought it would be the perfect base for ice cream, and I have made ice cream with great success before, so I dissolved the faux-fudge into more cream (because it was grainy, after all that effort) and put it in the fridge for the following week because I can only do stuff like this on the weekends because I am seriously not at home, at all, during the week, ever, except to sleep.

Over the week, my poor lonely husband took advantage of the delicious pot of cold chocolate soup in the fridge and ate some. I don't blame him at all. But I'm thinking that the cream separated a little and what he ate contained a lot of the delicious fat.

So when I got the chance to make the ice cream today, the mixture was pretty watery and I didn't have any more cream or anything, so I mixed in a little milk and yogurt hoping it would help. and I started up the ice cream machine.

You know how I can't ever remember that junk about stuff mixed with water and changing boiling/freezing points and stuff? There are two things I understand related to that concept: that salt makes ice melt, and that sugar makes ice cream stay softer/not freeze so hard. That's all I need to know for making ice cream. (and surviving Utah winters.) So ice cream, when mixed in a container surrounded by ice being melted by salt, is frozen because the ice wants to melt because of the salt, but needs some source of heat to actually melt, so it sucks all heat out of the ice cream canister, which freezes the ice cream. (the constant churning stops the formation of ice crystals so it's creamy and not grainy... so much the same as fudge yet so much the opposite.)

But I was out of rock salt. I'd never used anything but rock salt for freezing the ice cream. One time my parents were like, "We tried to make ice cream but we didn't have rock salt so we tried a lot of table salt and it never froze," and I was like, "Yeah, man, you gotta use rock salt" but now here I was with not a grain of rock salt in sight but a couple of cartons of epsom salt. Having not actually used the epsom salt (it's for soothing baths, the kind I don't have time for), I figured it was about the same thing, but soon realized that it is actually even finer and more powdery than table salt (like with powdered sugar and granulated sugar, except that no wonderful Swedish cookies should be made with epsom salt.) Nonetheless I gave it a shot. after nearly an hour of churning, I checked on my "ice cream." The mixture was still as watery as the final resting place of the Titanic, but, unfortunately, not nearly as cold.

I figured my only remaining option was to do it the very old-fashioned, but lower-quality way. I put it in the freezer, and sat down to blog about it. Every hour or so I'll take it out and mix it with my egg-beater to hopefully keep it creamy, if it even freezes at all. I'll go check on it right now.

It has been several hours and the chocolate soup shows no sign of reformation. Am I doomed to never enjoy a handmade treat from my own kitchen again?

At least I'm good at making french fries. Seriously, seriously good. Maybe a little too good.

Zoe Loves updated

2008-08-18T11:37:00.000-06:00

I revised the style of my Zoe Loves catablog (catalog + blog, har har). I'm not sure if that concept is clear to most of the world. I started it because I wanted a sort of portfolio site for my crafty endeavors, different from this blog because this blog is about process more than product, and different than my Deviantart page because I only wanted specific items on display, not everything. So yeah, I guess it's basically a portfolio for craft things instead of art. It's not a shop because most of the items shown are not for sale. I wanted to be able to show people, "Hey, I can make these things" so that people would commission me. Yeah, that's basically it.
I redesigned it to match my Etsy shop, so it's pretty cute, and I added a huge Etsy mini to the bottom of every page so that it'd be really easy for people to get to my Etsy shop if they did want to buy stuff (ya know... just in case). The content is not all completely up-to-date, but I think there is enough for now.
I'm pretty sure that no one has ever bothered to look at that "catablog" before, do go check it out :)

I am learning a lot about CSS. I think soon I will try to build a Blogger layout myself from scratch instead of editing other people's layouts, and then I'll do a whole, separate page somewhere else. I'm taking some kind of internet class next semester (they are so vague in the titles and descriptions) so I hope I learn more about everything like CSS and Java, etc.

Another reason Perception equals Reality

2008-08-13T14:16:00.001-06:00

I try not to complain too often, but I'm a little bummed out about something... It's my monitor. I just don't know what to do. The monitor of the computer I usually use at home is super nice, and that's the problem. The contrast and brightness are really high all of the time, but in a good way, and everything looks really good on it. Too good to be true, one might say. So I'm sitting there editing photos and scans and I'm like, "This looks great! My picture is now perfect," only to get on a different computer later or print it out and see that actually, what I thought was pure white was really medium grey, or covered in dirty speckles, or just that everything is darker overall. I have tried to lower the contrast and brightness but it's either not making a big difference or someone keeps changing it back (or it automatically reverts back?) I actually really like how it looks in general, especially for watching movies and stuff, but I know it's bad because for presentation purposes I need to know what my images actually look like to everyone else. Today I got on my Etsy store using my laptop and saw how truly hideous most of my photos really are... (and then downloaded the images and readjusted them) ...and my laptop is still brighter than most other people's monitors, so the pictures might still be hideous to everyone else. I will have to check my store while I'm at work, where we have the most notoriously dark and depressing monitors I've ever seen. If my photos look good there, I can be sure they will look good anywhere.
To cope with this problem I've started a new technique while editing images in photoshop. I will make an all-black layer and look through it at varying degress of opacity to see if the extra darkness reveals blemishes that my naked eye cannot see. It works a little but not perfectly and I don't always remember to do it. I need to get better at reading histograms, or something. I mean, the histogram could tell me the truth about the image data that my monitor is hiding, except I have to know what the ideal level balance, etc. would be for the image i'm working on and I'm not sure how to do that. At the newspaper I work at there are guidelines like, that the "black" areas of a photos need to be at 70% or higher on the histogram to look like black when printed, but not everything is so straightforward in the world of image processing.

So when someone else sees a photo representation of my work, that is all they know of it. Their perception of my art is their reality of my art, so I want it to look as good as possible.

*cough*takingbetterphotosinthefirstplacemighthelp*cough*

2008-08-08T16:45:00.000-06:00

For my Harry Potter party (now over, but I can't guarantee I won't mention it a couple more times) I had planned to make some food. Of course we all saw how badly I failed at the fudge. I'd been thinking about Cockroach Clusters and decided at first to make cookies with lots of stuff in them to be cockroachy but as the day drew near I simplified and made these:

For the benefit of the general populace I call them Trilo Bites, for reasons that I hope are obvious, but they are really just very delicious (vegan) oatmeal cookies--the recipe of which is found here--with dried cherries and slivered almonds arranged on top. I suggest you do what I didn't and buy the almonds pre-slivered because slivering them oneself not as easy as one might think.

They weren't very banana-y and I left out the cinnamon but added extra vanilla (that was kind of an accident. You know when it's getting near the end of the bottle...) Still, I gotta say these are really fabulous cookies, and better than the non-vegan ones too.

I have to force myself not to say anything about a healthy snack and cute science lesson for the kids, but there's enough sugar in these that I won't.

Also the best thing about vegan cookies is that you can eat all the dough you want without having to ignore any annoying warnings about food poisoning flashing in the back of your head.

2008-07-29T11:25:00.000-06:00

I'm kind of a fan of instructional comics (as drawn by Ellen Forney* and the like). So, since I haven't done much else in the way of comics this summer (except read and buy them), I thought I would show you all the pamphlet I drew about how to play this kid's party game "Don't Eat Pete."

And now you now.
p.s. I say this is a kid's party game, but in actuality I play it at all my parties. :)

*note... Ellen Forney's work is considered controversial at best. Her tamer comics include "How to be a Fabulous Fag Hag" and "How to be a Successful Call Girl." Just to warn you before you click the link.

The Candy Fail

2008-07-26T23:45:00.000-06:00

I've been working on a million things to prepare for my Potter Day Party. But I'm only going to talk about one. Candy.
Besides the $50 worth of candy I've bought so far, I'm planning to make candy too. Or at least I was before tonight. I was all jazzed up to make like 11 different kinds of fudge, because fudge is awesome, but I haven't made any kind of candy for a long time, so I gave it a test run tonight. I'm familiar with candy making concepts as I've done it before (but not for years) and my favorite no-bake cookies use the concept of boiling sugar different lengths of time for different results. Longer=harder. umm, maybe forget I said that but anyway. I decided to test out this good-looking coconut fudge recipe (bonus: it's vegan. Even though there will probably only be one vegan person at the party I just wanna make sure I've got some options.)
So let's see, candy = liquid + fat + sugar + flavor... and the recipe had coconut milk (the most delicious liquid fat for sweets), brown sugar, and shredded coconut. I'm a coconut lover so I had everything. and then the recipe said, boil the milk and sugar for 12-15 minutes. how easy could it get? But after one minute I was like, "It's only been one minute? I'm dying here!" (I had to stir it constantly and I don't have any long spoons... also it's 90 degrees without the stove on). After 5 minutes I was like, "This looks pretty caramelly. I better check it." dropped it in the ice water and... OH HAI IT'S BRITTLE NOW.
I'm like, uhh.. the good thing about candy is that if you cook it too long you just have another KIND of candy, right? but I'm not so sure that's true unless "crappy burnt-up crumbles" counts. :(

So now I know. I'm going to try like a couple more test runs with significantly lower boiling times (is it because of the high altitude? I can never keep track of how that junk works, my mind is too full of equations about stitches per inch and whatnot.) If nothing turns out I suppose I can give up on the candy and make some Scottish meat pies (...those can't go wrong, right?)
or maybe Scottish raisin bars. Hogwarts is in Scotland, I'm totally justified here.

Etsy

2008-07-03T23:25:00.000-06:00

I started an Etsy shop. Only one thing listed so far... but if you've liked what you've seen in this blog, or my DeviantArt page, or Zoe Loves, then fell free to stroll over to my shop sometime to see what's for sale. I think Etsy will be the only place online that I'll sell things (besides my deviantart print shop, and I will take commissions here for at Zoe Loves.) IRL I'll be selling stff at next year's Ren Faire, and I haven't tried back at that boutique Frosty Darling, but maybe there someday (given up for now.)

Gallery Stroll

2008-06-20T18:21:00.001-06:00

Gallery Stroll, the 3rd Friday of each month, is upon us again. I haven't been for several months now. I love Gallery Stroll. Apparently more than everyone else I know.
It's not very fun to go alone, but it's even LESS fun to go with someone who doesn't actually like it. I can't find anyone to go with me. Some people say they want to, but they end up totally bored and I feel either like they're trying to rush me out, or I'm dragging them around.
Gallery Stroll is still my top priority every 3rd Friday. If I have to go alone, so be it. But there's got to be someone among my friends who enjoys this kind of thing... right? Anyone? Bueller?