30jun09

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

For those three (or mebbe less) of my adoring fans who've noticed my two month absence from the intertubes, no, nothing's wrong. At least in the dire sense---everyone's healthy and happy at the rejiquar residence. JDftY' has made it safely home to Nihon, and Gift (who is Thai-Chinese) will be joining us in a little over a month.

Nor can I report that I have been making abfab art in my absence. ---With two exceptions, I've hardly turned on my torch at all since the last posting, and neither have I been indulging in any of the other (visual) media with which I've been known to amuse myself.

I did get an order for splendid tiger heads, which I spent a goodly portion of the last 10 days or so making and I'll be posting that, um, soon. Today's posting comes out of the other instance of torching, in early May, when I went on one of Nancy Sells Puffer's retreats. (She's the area rep for this region of the ISGB.) ---Naturally we all traded, and that's I how got this wonderful kumi from Elemental Mojo.

Oh, so what have I been doing? ...Um. Er. Right.

Uh, writing. That's it, writing. ---Round about a decade ago, I read an entertaining romance novel, and decided to do my own take on the plot, which I thought would be a 40page short story. Some 3 months and 400 odd pages later (more or less) I dragged myself from the abyss, and started living my life again---you know, making dinner, paying bills, cleaning up the chaos into which the household had succumbed. However, it least the result, which still sits in a metaphorical drawer, was an original story, if that lowest of the low of genre fiction (romance). I figured (accurately as it turns out) that I had the obsessive write-twelve-hours-a-day bug out of my system for a good decade, and that's about how long the inoculation lasted.

*This* time, I can't even make that claim. Oh, no. No, I had to write fanfic. Crossover fanfic. Starring a mary sue. That last, by the way, is what really puts akin to being a furry at a sf con (though personally, I don't get the, pardon, animus against furries---too much exposure to Heather Bruton's lovely fur art when she co-edited the Apa, I guess); but take it as read, lowest of the low, which is par for the course---I defended sf book cover illustration to my fine arts teachers, and have been trying to convince people for years that stringing is just as valid as any other form of bead art, not that beads are particularly status-laden in any event.

Needless to say, this one'll probably reside even further back in that dusty electronic drawer, though I think (or hope) it'll only end up being half the length, and then I'll go back to my life, safe from the writing monster for another decade. Except, I've already got an idea for a sequel...ominous. I blame it on slacktivist. Yeah, that's it. It's all Fred's fault, or rather, that of his sf-nal reading & recommending commentariat.

Anyway, art, etsy listings, and all-around rejiquar ranting will return in due course.

06may09

Yesterday I had a lot going on, what with bronzclay and knitting groups---I rode nearly 40 miles! So today I was kinda tired, and didn't get a whole lot done. I did photograph some flowers---not only the spring blooming trees wonderful, we've also been having hazy, soft sunlight---really, it's perfect.

While I wasted the day noodled about the intertubes, I happened across a minor blog controversy having to do with "monetizing" one's blog. The usual way is selling advertising. I'm very, very lucky that I have, in effect, "free" hosting, so I haven't had to resort to this in order to pay for bandwidth. (Not to mention sufficient household income to give me the free time to do this;) Another way is to beg for donations; and one reason I don't tend to respond to these appeals is precisely because I've put my stuff up free: initially it was my way of paying forward the open source folks for the software that makes this site possible.

So begging for donations would be hypocrisy, in my current situation. But that isn't really the point: the point is that if people do donate to your site, you should be properly grateful. Even if you consider it an exchange (which it is) of your services for their money, you should appreciate that.

Thing is, gratitude is sort of like breathing: you absolutely depend on it, but don't really think about it till it's withdrawn. ---I'm reading John Barry's The Great Influenza, which again was recommended on some blog thread or other, and it's quite fascinating---appalling as the contraction of civil liberties was during the last administration, and horrible as McCarthyism was during the 50s, if this book is to be believed, neither had anything on the draconian controls implemented during WWI. I had no idea.

(Also, I had no idea how deadly the flu could be, or how the great pandemic of 1918 was exacerbated by the war; and how hard various world governments have and are working to prevent a repeat of this disaster.) But human nature being what it is, there's nothing like the common cold, let alone influenza, to force people to appreciate how wonderful breathing is. It does me, anyway---this last winter was the first in years that I didn't catch a cold, and I really appreciated it.

Which finally brings me to my main point: for all that I may fail to make it clear, I do indeed appreciate all the folks that read and link to this website, buy my stuff on etsy, write the occasional email telling me they found something useful, or send questions about stuff.

And speaking of monetizing: ---it seems to me I've been neglecting artfire, so the bead in today's post is also listed for sale on that site. Today's etsy feature are my sunny yellow bargains ---buy a bargain set and get free beads! Also, of course, I have some of my big necklaces at Ariana Gallery and, you know, mother's day is coming right up;)

05may09

I haven't photographed the next batch of vaguely steampunk-themed stuff, but as it happens we had a couple of 80 degree days in this neck of the woods last week; and perhaps that's the reason that the redbud and flowering crabapples have bloomed nearly all at once. In any event, this is my very favorite time of year, when the leaves are young and fresh lime green, and the trees are all flowering. And, happy--happy--joy--joy, my little redbud (that I'm seeing out the window right now) has flowers on it for the first time:)

But this lovely period only lasts for a matter of days---really, yesterday and Sunday were probably the peak, and already the petals are falling, though some buds have yet to open. Because on Sunday we didn't leave till fairly late (10:30) and our route didn't really go past so many trees, I rode early yesterday, hoping to capture that combination of light and flower.

And today's post is the result.

Oh, and I have a cute white tiger on etsy.

04may09

I had a busy weekend, what with Penguicon and our local bike group's spring ride---I bailed on the MGST (the bike ride we did for years) and my guild meeting.

This was not, IME, one of the more successful cons I've attended (and I've been attending 'em, on and off, for the last quarter-century) ---in comparison to the truly awesome singing tesla coils last year, this year's hack guest of honor, the candyfab machine, was broken. ---We only went Saturday, since the wizard had to lead (and yours truly to sweep) the bike ride Sunday, and while I was scratching my head wondering what food to bring (since attending the con totally busted our eat-out/entertainment budget for the week), I remembered, oh yeah, consuite---eat a good breakfast, consume a few chips and veggies to keep my blood sugar from crashing, and I'm good to go.

They ran out of food.

And then guarded the chips and snacks till the hot dogs could get cooked. Now I appreciated a real sandwich (veggie even---I'm carnivorous, but prefer to avoid the threat of prion disease when I can) but I was pretty cranky by the time I got to eat it, around 3:30--4. I didn't have full out hysterics, like my mom once did when my dad put her off eating whilest traveling about the French countryside, but I was definitely pissed.

I'm sure the young attendees who came to the con Friday who made the consuite breakfast, lunch and dinner didn't help. And as someone pointed out, the consuite was way too accessible, right there on the first floor, where everyone could easily access the food. But still, the whole business struck me as poor planning. It's not as if detailed guides on how to run a successful sf con aren't out there. Besides that, the con booklet was printed in a tiny, fuzzy type, and was very difficult to use---I missed at least one panel I wanted to see partly because of that. Really, you'd think a bunch of computer geeks could figure out decent typesetting and printing (let alone food!)

Because it's crossover, Penguicon is a little looser in terms of programming---I went to a henna party, my friend Page tried out belly dancing (I did that last year;) ---the f2 generation hung out in the anime room, as they usually do, and I admit to being amused to find Japanese Daughter for the Year watching Japanese anime. Dubbed in English. (I find the cross-cultural cues a little strange in dubbed anime, 'cuz the characters act Japanese but sound American.) JDftY did at least get some liquid nitrogen ice cream, which is a con staple, and yes, they really do make it by pouring liquid nitrogen (which looks like water, actually) into cream & flavorings. Besides looking cool & being suitably geeky, it also only takes about a minute---none of that nonsense of cranking for hours on end!

I also learned the neuroscience behind "Mach bands", which the guy illustrated with a stepped grey scale, which is the black and white version of the same effect you get when you look at a field of saturated red and green side-by-side---you see a vibrating white line. It has to do with the eye's (optic nerve?) edge detection software. This and other effects I learned about in color theory 2D design in college, and though the teacher being a color field artist knew the science behind this stuff, couldn't be bothered to explain it to us, because, he said, his former students didn't care to learn. Well, I did. Turns out this stuff is covered in pysch, which of course I never took because my dad said it wasn't a real science. (Which if it's measuring charges across neurons it most certainly is. But I digress.)

That said, I ran into several old friends (one dates back to when I was a teenager shaking fries at the local fast food joint; another, to my very first ConFusion). It was great seeing Melanie Brooks of Earthenwood at a modding panel, which was so popular we were spilling out of the room. She's revamped her etsy shop and it looks very nice and spiffy.

Given the steampunk theme, costuming was all over the map---besides many fine specimens of brass goggles, I spotted stormtroopers (old style & new, with complementary Darth Vader & Jedi), a pirate, the Tron guy, some corsets (in pink!) as well as some cosplay card captor types (one in eye-blinding yellow), both with very full skirts, and a couple of furries, one cobalt blue, the other emerald green. I didn't know they came in fantasy colors.

But steampunk was the order of the day. The nice thing about it is that if you want to do lace and pink, you can, provided you throw in some brown & brass. Or you can goth it up with the always proper black, of course. Unfortunately we were too tired to stay for the masquerade, which, from the hints we saw as we were leaving, looked to be splendid.

For a complete change of venue, on Sunday, as I said, we went on a bike ride. Oh well, they too had hot dogs, so that was one thing in common;) The weather was perfect, and all the spring flowering trees are in glorious bloom---redbud, crabapple, bradford pear, dogwood. Thus, continuing on with my free bead (1 lg or 2 sm) with bargain sets, I'm featuring the pink one today..

And if the pink side of things doesn't appeal, well, here's this pseudo-steampunk bead.

01may09

Yesterday I was supposed to be making pink vessels and practicing tiger heads, and both seemed too hard, which gives you some idea of just how low my energy levels were. Having successfully made another daisy stamp, similar to one I recently featured ---except soldered brazed, instead of just thrown together with some wire and a bead, and using hex instead of round tubing, I was inspired to continue on with that, about which I'll post in due course, but in the meantime I made the happy discovery that some of the burrs my dentist had given me were 3/32 shanks; oh frabjous, this mean I could put them into the quick-change hand-piece.

Which kind of inspired me to go thru all the various odds and ends I've acquired over the years for the foredom. I have the standard handpiece, of course, but it's ever so much quicker to use the quick-change, which also has the advantage of being slimmer and more bendy.

Anyway.

Instead of making beads, I futzed around for much of today organizing my metalworking tools, discarding most of the non 3/32 parts, and just generally tidying up a bit. So, no new etsy or artfire listings, but since I'm offering a bonus on my bargain sets---buy any bargain set and get an extra free bead!, I'm featuring this turquoise bargain set today:)

And speaking of sets, I've got quite a pile of fridayfuglies this week.

30apr09

Today's post is another in the occasional series of "how I develop my `ideas'" ---usually, in small increments, by working in series. I've developed this theme before, so there's nothing thrillingly new, but I think the beads are cute, especially if you like florals. One of them is also the etsy and artfire listing for the day.

Speaking of etsy, a couple of other points: I've put all my bargain sets on sale; that is (since I don't know how to do discounts) I'm offering an additional bead (or two, depending on how fancy) free with every set. I'll do my best to match requests, so ask away:) Also, etsy & burda sponsored this very nice ribbon rose tutorial so, since we're doing florals today, I thought I'd throw that in:)

Enjoy.

29apr09

I love my 10x loupe.

Why, you ask? Well, because my casing skills still aren't all there yet, and sometimes I have a difficult time telling whether a discontinuity in a bead is just where two colors of transparent glass squashed up against each other (possibly, oh horrors, squashing a bubble between them) or it is a crack. The former is deprecated, of course (at least if there's bubble trapped in there), but the latter makes the bead unsellable. Even quite well known bead-makers can screw up---I'll never forget seeing a little crack in a $400 bead. I didn't have the heart to tell the owner, (and I don't think I even noticed it till I started making beads myself)---and so I have a real fear of selling a cracked bead.

Hence the loupe. (And man, do bubbles and scum show up well using one of those...!)

Anyway, sorry about no posting yesterday, but I was busy, you know, actually making the stuff. I made what I thought were two good tiger heads, putting one on artfire, and replacing the so-so one I had on etsy with this much better one. Both tigers are nearly the same size---about 32mm---and they're starting to show some nice consistancy.

(See, the thing is, it often takes me longer to make a listing for a bead, than the bead itself; so I can get to the point where I'm reliably repeating things, well, hey, that cost will go down.) ---I actually made more than just tigers, yesterday, and so I hope to have some fun stuff up later this week. And I certainly am gathering a nice collection of fridayfuglies.

In the meantime, in the interests of making a quick'n'easy post, I'm showcasing one of Anita Spencer's beautiful florals.

27apr09

So following off some comment or other at a rather interesting article about authoritarian versus `logical consequences' parenting styles by Sara Robinson, I took this test to see how thinky I am. Turns out, by their lights, not all that much.

By the end of the test, I was really getting to understand why wizard hates these things. It asked, for example, whether I liked to look at charts of stuff such as sports scores or the stock market, to which the answer, of course, is no, since both those things bore me to tears, even though the latter is of considerable importance to my retirement plans. It asked if I were good at maps. Well...I have vivid memories of navigating my mom thru St. Louis when I was twelve, but don't feel my map reading abilities are all that great---for one thing I can never remember more than one turn at a time.

And I suck at math and am lousy at three dimensional thinking, so no, I'm not good at visualizing engines (why not something less gendered, such as gardening, which is popular with both sexes and has a time component as well, especially if you do a three-season garden?) Also, I have a difficult time focusing on problems for hours at a time: the wizard works that way, but I get fatigued. For this same reason I sometimes like activities that are mindless, especially when I'm tired. Of course, then you can get into the whole mindless/meditation debate...

I couldn't help wondering why the person who designed the questionnaire didn't phrase the questions in more general ways: I remember there was one about pattern, but I think even for that one I wasn't able to answer unequivocally, and I adore patterns. And why were there no questions about the sort of thinking one has to do to keep track of a lot of small tasks at once---ferex, my mom worked very hard to get all of her menu on the table at the same time (without the convenience of microwaves, or warming drawers or any of that nonsense, something I never appreciated till I started cooking myself.)

In fact, I spent much of a bike ride thinking about this stupid test; but really, I could've saved myself a whole lot of effort and angst by looking up the wikipedia page of the author. If the test on this site is any indication of the way the guy writes his queries, no wonder he thinks women are all emotional and men are prone to autism. The sad thing is, then other researchers use these tests. And of course if you're from some other class or culture than the white waspy one, the results would be even more skewed.

Really, somebody that smart ought to know better.

And speaking of long term problems: yes, I know the indices for textiles are a mess, and yes, eventually I'll figure out how to fix them, though I think the wizard may have to look at the perl scripts (I'm mediocre in many ways, but an absolute genius at crashing software.)

Meanwhile, photography problems are a little doable (since wizard is outta town); in particular, how to photograph my stuff in an appealing way. Sounds simple, but it ain't---I've been wrestling with this conundrum since approximately 1988, and one of the big reasons I've gotten so much better is that the costs, in terms of time and especially money have dropped to a fraction of what they were---now, instead of spending $20, a hour round trip to the lab and three hours or more to get roughly 9--13 [bracketed] images back, I simply trot upstairs to my computer and spend three minutes uploading the card for as many, basically, as I care to take. ---And even imperfect images can be rescued much more readily with post-processing (aka photo editing).

I have enormous respect for the pioneers who strike out in the dark, enduring years of frustrations and failures before they can achieve some level of success. But it takes deep reserves---either of cussedness or cash---to preservere under those circumstances; and for a variety of reasons, I usually feel compelled to give up before then. (But then the siren song of whateveritis calls me back, and I try again...)

So, having discovered that the pix I shot of the second wall hanging were not doing it on etsy, I thought about the problems in my images, and tried again: today post's documents more of my adventures with this piece (yeah, the post & etsy listing are the same item. Really.

25apr09

Thought I'd get in one last plug for glassact's free demos at Ariana gallery, which continue thru Sunday the 26th of April. The gallery had a delightful opening for us Friday night, with fresh strawberries, cheese (including brie!) and wine (which alas, since I was driving, I had to pass.) I thought they did a splendid job of mounting my pieces which are rather awkwardly long and involved---anyway, they looked great, and I appreciated the effort. So, of course, I forgot to bring them any business cards. I was luckly enough to be in same showcase as my friend Kristin, and next door to Joy and Denise, who was demoing her inimitable monkeys when I got there. They had a great setup---the put the demonstrators on a platform by the window, so passersby could see us playing with fire.

Other glassact members I spotted included Susan Matych-Hager, Candy Orow, Pat Venalek, and Karen Sirkowski, whose name, unfortunately, I'm almost certainly misspelling. Other member work being featured included that of Don Miller's marbles, (who of course teaches lampworking at UM-Dearborn), Marc Vandenburg's figures, and beadwork of Margaret Sutherland, and Kathleen Robinson. The gallery was also featuring work by Lisa Walsh of Abednego Beads, including some of her raked stars.

Despite being up rather late last night from the gallery opening, I woke up early enough (more or less) to go on the sunrise ride. Didn't see any deer, though I was happy the skunk dashing across the next-door neighbor's front lawn was uninterested in me as I rode off...

Enjoy.

24apr09

There's another wall hanging in the series featured yesterday, but today's friday fugly, and since I'm featuring all the fugly, misbegotten, lopsided tiger heads I've made, just to show that I'm not totally hopeless today's etsy feature is a decent tiger head.

23apr09

Today's textile is once again appearing for the first time on both etsy and the site. Discovered that etsy would not let me list absolutely every type of material in fine detail, so for that level of excrutiating completeness, check out the post.

On other fronts, I found some fun links meandering off some drawn post or other---one is about a favorite traveling/vacation sketch tool; I never did locate the specific link about a matching traveling palette, but nevertheless thought winsor and newton's site was useful and informative.

Winsor&Newton is, of course, considered to be the cadillac of artist's colors, though since our local craft stores only seem to carry their cheaper line, how would I know? (And now that our in-town art supply store, which opened 25 years ago when I was a student, has closed, the closest real art supply is next town over. Bummer.) Particularly since a fair amount of painting I've done---say to decorate the studio---is with ordinary ole housepaint, and compared to that any artist quality paint is gonna nice.

(In fact, I usually use water soluable crayons and occasionally colored pencils when I'm out in the field; and acrylics when I'm at home...so I haven't done watercolors in years much as I love'em. But now, having [re]discovered, courtesy of that winsor and newton site that you're not supposed to thin acrylics down to washes, perhaps I'll see if I can't resurrect all those dried out tubes of paint...)

Or I could get busy and continue on with this series of wall hangings, since I'm supposed to be doing a show of them at the local coffee house. In just over 5 weeks. Eek.

21apr09

For the three people who wondered if I had given up writing rants entirely in favor of shilling my crap beads, textiles & other, er, wonderful---that's the word I want; or should I use splendid instead? Nah...--- creations, the answer is: no. I can tell there's been a change, so yes, I'm self-censoring some, but I hope to figure out a good balance. (There is, after all, such a thing as TMI, and I'm sadly prone. Eeewwwww!)

Turns out yesterday was pot-smoking day. It was pouring rain here, so despite the fact I wandered thru campus, I didn't see many people, smoking or otherwise. Unlike, say, gay marriage, which has been getting a lot of attention lately, it seems to me that legalizing pot has flown under the radar pretty much since I encountered the first person to make this case---the fella who co-sponsored our Friday DFT movie nights; and that was before the advent of the f2 generation, i.e. something on the order of two decades ago. His argument, which he took from a documentary, (iirc) was that since booze was a WASP drug, it was ok; but pot was the choice of Mexican-Americans, and therefore denigrated. I had of course heard that black men were punished far more harshly than white for drug use, but this was the first time I'd really encountered the idea that the drugs themselves would be differentiated by underlying racism, and that interested me.

However, whilest the wizard was working for a government contractor, and for whom any illicit drug use was a huge no-no, I never discussed my views publicly, let alone made much of an effort to pursue lampworking products that cater to that community. (He had the same job for about 20 years; and only recently switched.) My feelings about pot are much the same as those about tobacco: both make me nauseated and headachey, and I don't want to encounter either one in a building. Nor outside one, really. My experience with this drug is pretty well limited to my housemate's use during college, a quarter century ago: I lived in a house not far from campus, and when she smoked the stuff, that was my cue to go outside for a walk, cuz the place was so drafty it would drift thru the entire buildling. Lucky for me she wasn't a heavy user!

My feelings about legalization probably date roughly from that period: one of the few aspects of the liberatarianism I picked up from reading F. Paul Wilson (whom I pretty sure I first encountered in either the SFBC, or Marshall Tymn's library) and, later, Vernor Vinge's sf, that I've still retained.

This despite the fact that legalization is likely to affect my life in mildly negative ways---for one, I'd probably encounter more smoke, and I detest it. A far bigger problem is that, currently, pot paraphernalia tends to be handmade and pipe-makers are responsible for driving the colored boro glass industry in this country---an interesting factoid Doug Remschneider discovered, and reminisced at lampworking class I recently took from him.

Evidently, years ago back when he was making & selling beads on a production basis (he's since switched to teaching and selling artisan glass-rods in coe96), when he called Glass Alchemy, offering to purchase some big lot of glass monthly? yearly? and wanting a fat discount, Henry Grimmett responded that the pipemakers bought that same quantity every week. Week after week.

Beads, being more socially acceptable, are perhaps more visible, but particularly for hard glass, pipes are the item that actually sell. (And really, during the one boro class I took, way back when with Tim Drier and Doni Hatz, the most advanced student was a pipe-maker, and he told us stories of his multi-artist studio going thru 2500 pounds of liquid oxygen, or some outrageous amount, every week, which should've been a clue. He was also the first white person I ever saw in dreads, and I thought them very cool.)

Now, I vividly recall Loren Stump explaining that one of the reasons he went to lampworking was that after Home Depot and their competitors started carrying stained/leaded glass doors and the like, the bottom just fell out of the market for artisan made ones. ---I have no doubt that if pot were legalized, and you could wander into your local Target (oh they of copying artist designs with no shame), or worse Wal-mart's (forget any pretensions of artistry or even quality) that the bottom will drop out of the pipe market, and quite apart from my sadness over any glass artist losing their customer base, I predict it would have an overall negative impact on the lampworking industry as a whole.

But even though I'm not personally keen on the stuff at all, I still think it should be legal. But perhaps the comments on the referral site kind of explain why this issue has gotten so little traction---they seem remarkably negative for such a progressive site. I think, to use a favorite bujoldian phrase, that it's a failure of imagination: it's easy to see the negatives, but more difficult to see the positives.

(I enjoy little thought experiments of this type. Ferex: if we went to a more sustainable lifestyle, and our income was cut in half, or more, obviously we'd be poorer. Or would we? What if that money was collectively spent on only recyclable packaging that had deposits, and was made of corn or something else that rotted, like the traditional palm leaves that foodstuffs are wrapped in Viet Nam? Less litter. If we all had to use public transportation, and there were strong sound and light pollution laws, and some percentage had to be spent on growing gardens, even food-type gardens in street boulevards, etc, which would also serve as traffic calmers...would that be worth it? Tax breaks to install a green roof and natural cooling instead of A/C, which doesn't smell as good and makes me feel cut off? More public art, and less of the soulless eyesores that is [insert your local area of strip malls and featureless office buildings here]? Sure, I'd be in a tiny house, but if there was a local, cheap studio I could use with other artists---yeah, I'd have to worry about folks abusing the tools, but otoh I be exposed to all those ideas...)

---But no-one is going to run hir life perfectly, and as I get older, I begin to understand the appeal of mercy over justice, the goal of maximum good for maximum number---that is, there is always going to be a certain amount of failure, of parasitism, stuff that any one person sees as waste and corruption. Where does one draw the line? (I'm thinking of those calculus equations, where you try to get the best outcome amongst a number of parameters.) Or, put succinctly, one person's passion is another's waste and corruption. Past a certain point, much as it might grind, it makes more sense just to tolerate the parasites, let alone 'ur doin' it rong'---because the costs of controlling those behaviors is too great. Prosecuting pot users definitely strikes me as falling into that category.

Oh, and I spent much of yesterday setting up a facebook account and friending (if that's the proper term) various and sundry glass bead making folks I already know in real life. When I get a little better handle on it, I'll add it to my artfire hub:) Sigh. This post is still a mess, and I've wasted 3 hours on it. Back to the commercials, which at least are easy to churn out!

Today's etsy listing is another in the earthtone series. If you'd like to read more about them, I did make a brief post about them, though it discusses photography more than beadmaking manufacture (and frankly I think the image is underexposed---I've definitely gotten fond of higher-key pix since posting regularly to etsy and artfire.)

And finally, continuing on with the dyed and stamped pants---I actually sewed these as well, so it's a good thing I aggressively decorated 'em, cuz my sewing is pretty rocky.

So enjoy, and stay dry:)

20apr09

Sorry about missing Friday---I made the first four posts on Monday, and obviously should've done something for Friday, too. This week I'm thinking of doing textile related posts, and today's is a pair of cotton pants I altered.

Ariana Gallery is going to be featuring lampwork by my guild, Glassact starting this Friday, April 24 and running through May 23rd---we'll demoing lampwork that evening, and also during the weekend. The schedule isn't finalized, but I'm hoping to have a slot on Friday. They'll have some of my pieces on display, including one of my personal faves Polychrome Sea Creature, and the Garden Fantasy Necklace; it's an absolutely gorgeous space, with a feast for the senses---check it out!

And of course, since it's spring, my etsy listing for the day is a set of brown and cream dotties, more than a bit reminiscent of fallen autumn leaves (which to be fair I've been raking out of the garden during spring cleanup, not to mention today's rain and damp trees have something of that subdued color scheme going on, so I'm not totally out of line.)

16apr09

Extending the scylla-inspired spring color theme, today's etsy and artfire feature is a chiming blue abstract, a bead I've documented on this site before, and yes, I'm still offering a small discount for the artfire listing. I love making these beads, and now that the weather has warmed up and I can crank up my ventilation to deal with the powdered glass (i.e. dust), I'd be happy to make lots of 'em, in any color you'd care for ---just lemme know!

As for the pysanky, well, one of the styli needed minor repairs. So I tested it, plus a wax removal method, on this organic brown egg. This is the cheat-sheet summary of tutorial info scattered in the rest of the posts.

Enjoy.

15apr09

Continuing on with spring celebrations, I have another floral made with the Cattwalk long emerald press (hence, "emerald" in the description: not the color of the base glass, so much as the shape, a rectangle with cut-off corners). Because I can make this bead consistently, I'm featuring it on both etsy and their competition, artfire (albeit with slightly different thumbnails for each---which do you like better?) and for a dollar cheaper on artfire, for a couple of reasons: 1) I like etsy, don't get me wrong, but it's much faster to create listings in artfire---savings passed on to you and 2) I'm wanting to create a little more of a sales and feedback history on artfire. ---But if you're comfortable with etsy, by all means, use that:)

And if beads aren't your thing, well, the pysanky posts continue.

Though these pysanky were made in 2008, I didn't get around to posting 'em till Easter 09: I probably figured I'd save 'em till just before Easter 09, when folks are looking for samples. I'm eternally late, c'est la vie. But since these posts are as much as for my benefit, and they're easier to find on the site than buried in the thousands of poorly documented images I took, I decided to put the post up late. It'll still be there in 2010, when people are again wanting easter egg howtos, right?

Right:)

14apr09

One of the pluses of living in the US midwest is that we get four seasons, and I like holidays that traditionally mark their changing. And unlike Christmas, I actually appreciate Easter falling after the Equinox, especially if the sometimes long-enough-after means the weather is actually likely to be warm and springy [here], good for outdoor activities like walks, easter egg hunts, and bunny parachuting, all of which we engaged in Sunday.

So, like feminists who are happy to shed awkward surnames when they get married, I'm pleased to delay synchronize my spring holiday celebrations with the Christian ones, reserving the heathern parts--- flowers, eggs, bunnies & chocolate---I enjoy, and leaving the properly religious ones to their sphere, of course.

Looking thru my files, I see didn't post any egg dying posts in 2007 or 2008---the former, evidently, because we didn't dye eggs. Hooray for JDftY, since introducing our exchange students to this custom caused us to resurrect it. (Now I just need to make another stylus, so we have one for each kid.)

And as for 2008, I expect I was feeling all picky about posting 'em before Easter. Well, having just established that Easter happens well after spring technically starts (spring being technically what I'm celebrating here), with that objection out of the way, here are the eggs I colored this year.

Alas, they look a lot like the ones I posted in 2006. Oh well.

This being one of the rare times I'm organized, & already gotten the 2008pysanky post written, I can safely promise it for tomorrow:) And, of course, if you're done with Easter (but not spring-y florals) well, today's etsy feature is this pretty oblong floral ---seeing as the flowers on the bead are in purples, blues and yellows of spring bulbs:)

13apr09

Trusting all of you who celebrated Easter yesterday enjoyed it---we certainly had splendid weather. 'Long about Easter morning, I decided to make easter bunny beads for the f2 generation, 'cuz I'm so good at planning ahead. They came out reasonably well, but obviously there isn't going to be much of a market for 'em till next Easter.

So, in the interest of featuring animal beads, I have some tigers. Since the tiger head I posted the other day sold, so I made two more: a button and a side-drill bead.

Cute, huh?

Fri Apr 10 01:57:36 2009

Ok, I know today is supposed to be a fridayfugly, but since I only did fridayfuglies for the past two weeks, I'm taking a break. You know you'd rather see some of my boner trades anyway---today I feature some of Pat Venaleck's wonderful pastels (interestingly enough, she talks about "delicate color" on her web page. Also has a sketch of a beadmaker buried hip-deep in beads---obviously, she's even more of a production bead maker than I am (not that that's actually so difficult;)

Speaking of delicate color, I'm featuring a designer-sized pillow-pressed springy light green on etsy. I have the same style of floral bead on Artfire, a mint green with pink flowers, but in two versions of a three hole focals ---the curvy one shown, and another more pointed version. I've featured this style of bead before---when I first made them, and again when I featured 'em in a finished piece: they're great for tassel-style necklaces.

In this context, 3hole beads are basically side drill rectangles with one side opened up, so's you can drop a fringe, tassel, etc downward. This opens up (pardon the pun) all kinds of design possibilities:) However, if that doesn't thrill you, just relax and enjoy Pat's beautiful beads.

09apr09

Continuing on with yesterday's cooking theme, this morning I baked. Your typical foodie, if I'm channeling correctly, celebrates the freshest, first-quality ingredients with excellent prep. I, on the other hand, look in the fridge, and celebrate that, at last, I can incorporate that bowl of slowly-drying instant oatmeal some kid or other made a week ago and never ate, the quarter cup of sugar the wizard saved from the bottom of the economy-size bag of no-brand sugar frosted flakes, the too-sweet dried montmorency cherries, that heel of sandwich bread no-one's gonna eat into decent tasting muffins. `Bad' food into good, yay. (Though if I truly want to recreate the local coffee-shop's muffins, I think I'm gonna have to use a lot more oil. Oh how I love the grease, sigh...)

Yeah, I know, I'm weird. But you can see why I love the settlement cookbook, that collection of immigrant recipes that includes scads of tips on using up old bread, soured milk, and the like, from which my mom recovered a part of our Deutsch heritage with stollen, and like the lapping waves mentioned yesterday, is also indubitably part of my childhood. Those folks didn't have money or food to waste, and I love the old tips and recipes my copy retains.

There isn't really any graceful way to connect my blathering about muffins to today's main post, and also etsy listing, a tiger head, to the topic of muffins, excepting that they're both brown.

Though if you're more interested in making tiger heads than purchasing 'em, Joy's gonna be teaching her technique. If you'd like to learn more check out her site.

08apr09

We're down two family members, which meant I had to cook (at least if I didn't want the produce in the fridge to rot) so I made saag paneer, and I don't think I've quite found the recipe I want. But one of the joys of the internet are all the foodies posting, in loving detail, their various adventures. I found three versions, one Indian and a couple of foodies, one tea and cookies and the other called coconut and lime. How could I go wrong with blogs named after tea-and-cookies, or coconut-and-lime? since I love both combos so much:)

I'd say first and third are easiest, the middle one gorgeously photographed, and with an interesting discussion in the comments about the ways foodies and non-foodies approach meal. If I couldn't be a visual artist, I could become a foodie, and I certainly love good food; but I haven't the patience to spend all day in the kitchen. Much rather be beading instead. Speaking of which, today's post is a sort-of bead trade post: there's a lot of beads in it made by my fellow guild members, though I saved out my favorite:) And speaking of favorite beads, this hollow with cylindrically-shaped spots and gold leaf is beautifully photographed. It's always nice to find nice stuff by other hollow bead makers.

Today's etsy feature continues the lentil series.

07apr09

Well, poking around my boner trades, I discovered some other trades, that I swear I photographed...can't find the pix. On the other hand, I found a lot of "lost" trades ---and with the studio cleanup, some are even on display, instead of sitting in baggies, in a box in the basement. So I'm making progress.

But, you know, in the interests of actually conducting the business, I thought I ought to put some stuff up for sale. I actually photographed the group shot way back in march, but finally got off my buns and did the etsy shots today. I admit, it helps that I have someone I want to show these beads to.

Anyway. Today's featured etsy items are three hollow pressed focals, in red, that lovely crayola yellow-orange, and lemon yellow---you can read about the entire series in today's post.

And, returning to the subject of trades & boner finds, one of the things I got that I thought really cool was petoskey beads---well, today's etsy find are another set of stone beads, some really lovely faceted fire agate ---love the giraffe-y patterns.

03apr09

Well, I see that once again reality stands in bleak contrast to my good intentions. It's been nearly a month since my promise of new posts and etsy listings (which didn't happen---oh, wait, I did manage one. So I wrote, "Some day, I'll learn" ---but honestly, if I hadn't figured out how to manage my time amongst all the ooh-pretty-shiny things that call to me by now, how likely is it?

All I can do is beg your indulgence.

Spring, not to mention the fact that the wizard is once again amongst the ranks of the employed, has brought hope and renewed energy, like sap rising in trees; I'm almost done tidying up the studio, which has taken up much of three days, so far. It got pretty bad while I was so focused on "building up the business" (and then, after I finally cleaned the sticky patches that particularly were driving me crazy, what but some child would drop a new sticky patch less than 24 hours later---ah, offspring, gotta love'm...)

Via, um, alas? here's a link to seeing the best art noveau architecture in Prague, land of Mucha; or, you can enjoy the next (and, it's to be hoped, the last) installment in my saga of check glass fuglies.

And I have a whole bunch of posts of my various bead trades from Boner coming up. Honest. Oh, wait...

06mar09

I promised my accountant I would most sincerely have the paperwork for my taxes by monday, so I've been kinda busy with that (corp taxes are due a month earlier, which is a good thing, because the recordkeeping, if not finances themselves, are so entwined that I turn it all in at once; which means our household taxes are done in plenty of time. Hurray.)

I started this post last night, with a mild rant about the mystery shopper website with whom Michaels has contracted to run their contest; the site rejected my inputs, it claimed, because of a 30 minute time-out. I didn't spend anything like that filling out this form, so it seemed pretty obvious that there was a glitch in the software, probably because it was inadequately tested on browsers besides explorer.

I was angry because my greed and stupidity had been shown up (do I really need a $500/mo gift card to Michaels for a year? No. And my chances of winning, given that they're running this contest till the end of 2009? Infinitestimal. ) And, I didn't even get to satisfy my rationalization, informing Michaels corporate HQ of the particularly nice interaction I had with the clerk who rang up my sale. And, to be fair (fairness being the underlying theme of today's post, after all;) I was annoyed at the perceived discrimination against me, a non evil empire microsoft user.

By evening, my fury had dissipated to mild irritation, and by this morning, it seemed silly even to mention it; I am fortunate in that I haven't the stamina, in most cases, to hold a grudge. Which leads me to a far more interesting topic than my petty interactions with the local big-box craft store: hell as an [eternal] punishment.

Slactivist's Left Behind Fridays are without question the high point of my internet week, and I've mentioned them before. Fred's ruminations about hell are extra, so to speak. In the first of this pair, he speculates about the existance of hell, and in the second, about whether hell, as a concept even ought to exist---I mean, talk about your holding a grudge!

Fred's commenters pretty quickly dismissed an eternal hell as the impossible creation of a loving god, because an infinite punishment for finite deeds makes no sense, any more than holding on to volcanic anger over petty slights makes no sense---it's just not worth it. So, in less than 40 comments, the slactivist commentariat concluded that everyone would be forgiven: that mercy over justice is the only sane response of an infinite deity. ---This is one of the reasons I love reading this blog, which has become my defacto "spiritual guidance" (ugh!): because my personality tends towards the judgemental, the mean, and the selfish, and I want to be good person.

---I myself was never so much concerned with hell as a child because only really bad people went there: I became agnostic, and then atheist, because I couldn't conceive of heaven, the flip side of Fred's discussion, with those who suffer in this world being rewarded. As a child with a rather melancholy personality, the idea of going to a permanently happy place was very comforting. The realization that there was no energy to support my soul, the very idea of a soul that would last forever after I was dead simply because I'd lived a tiny human span didn't (and still doesn't) make sense.

That said, Fred and I do (perhaps) have one major disagreement: I do not see "that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice". I find the universe incandescently beautiful, but ultimately uncaring---neither cruel nor kind, but indifferent to the concerns of humans, or indeed anything said to be living, let alone conscious. If there be justice and mercy, it is because we ourselves pursue it and no other reason; thus, I've always felt it critically important to live one's life well since the pain and suffering, particularly unknowing, that I inflict on others cannot, ultimately, be fixed, and so it behooves me to inflict as little damage as I can.

(Well, that didn't quite finish on the happy note I was looking for...but it's lovely and warm and spring-y, and today's friday fuglies reflect this very well.) Sorry there's no new etsy listings, (evil taxes! even more evil procrastination!) but I should have some next week.

Honest!

20feb09

Today's post is not exactly a friday fugly, though some fuglinesses certainly abound in this, my second pair of socks.

Obviously I'm still bit by the knitting bug. I expect as soon as I warm up, gardening will rear its muddy head, since I like to start in on the weeds as soon as the ground thaws. (This has the disadvantage of ripping out a lot of little seedlings of things I want, but my enthusiasm for weeding is expontially greater in the spring when weeds are few and small, and I've been indoors all winter. By July, the weeds are huge, it's hot, and I'm getting kinda tired of the whole thing.)

Knitting is a great reason to appreciate the seasons, cuz it gets cold enough that one really appreciates handwarmers, thick color worked socks, and the like. I suppose lacy socks made of wool-cotton/linen/bamboo blends are fun enough, but it was the idea of wearing those scandinavian color-worked socks and mittens that really called to me. Why, it just occurred to me last night that even my mother, who lives in a region where it snows 3m and more a year, and loves winter there because she has all these x-c skiing opportunities, would enjoy a well made pair of handknit socks to ski in---it's so exactly the sort place to wear that sort of ornamental outdoor woolwork. At last, a gift she'd actually want...!

(My mother is notoriously hard to make stuff for, because she's uber-practical and loathes clutter. My parents' idea of a well-decorated wall is one free of all ornament save paint, and perhaps sunshine (though to be sure, I love that too, especially from multipIe angles.) I did once manage to make a couple of watercolors she liked, more or less, and basically foisted my favorite xmas stocking of all time upon her, which she only took cuz every other member of the family had one; but adornment in general, and jewelry, especially bead jewelry in particular, ain't her thing. Very frustrating, you know, wanting to honor the woman who bore you and loved you enough to rear you and listen to you drone on and on and on and not be able to make stuff for...best of all, besides the fact that her feet are shaped like mine, socks wear out---this means, I can keep giving them to her. Ah bliss...)

Anyway.

So, since spring still has not provided me with any crocus yet, here's another pixie dust lentil with similar flowers on etsy

...or, if you need a soporific you can read about my various textile adventures in mossy green, documented at agonizing levels of detail. Without, alas, the kind of humor that makes Stephanie Pearl-McPhee so popular.

13feb09

Today's fridayfugly is short and sweet, but I have lots of odds and ends to discuss. First and foremost, a bunch of new items on artfire organic, freeform focals with ruffled edges and curving shapes, decorated with pearlescent pixie dust, that I'm calling my sea creature series. These beads are on not listed in my etsy shop, so if you haven't had a chance to check out the new venue, take a look.

Color Joy heard about the rumor of turkish socks at our knitting group, and so showed up to check 'em out. She certainly had a much greater appreciation for their construction than I did, though even I could tell they put heels together differently. And yes, the yarn they use is indeed hairy and very hard. Beautiful patterns and wonderful color combos, quite different than is typical for american tastes. Since she markets her patterns on etsy, she can be my featured etsy find:) ---I love her chippy sock pattern, and she has a tested legwarmer pattern. I tried making a legwarmer years ago, and it was such a dismal failure I gave up knitting for about 10 years. She also brought some of her own fabulous samples, including some Andean? Peruvian? hats with a whopping 39st/in. Absolutely amazing craft.

Speaking of tight dense stitches, this gentleman's intriguing blog discusses a knitting technique for ultra-tight stitches suitable once used for sailor's sweaters---ganseys that were extremely warm and water repellent. Oh and socks suitable for winter hiking/biking/...and freezing cold studios: the reason I got (back) into knitting in the first place.

His articles explain the mechanics of leverage, why this technique was fast (not to mention reducing repetitive strain!) include basic tutorials for recreating these tools, and discusses the impact of classism on why this technique of supported knitting nearly died out. Needless to say, I was fascinated on about five different levels:)

Hm, what else? Well, I missed the chance to wish everyone a happy darwin day yesterday, and probably will flub valentine's tomorrow---but here's hoping your february is going along well. After a week of doing without the wizard managed last night to acquire and successfully transport home a fridge, which this morning he installed---a project that proved to be a lot less straightforward than he would've preferred, as it involved someone pulling on his shoulders every time he needed to tilt the dolly, not to mention the application of routers and sawsalls to the cabinet above its final resting place. But we have a freezer again, yay. (Yes, after weeks of 0 type temps, we would have a week-long thaw the day after the old one died. i'm so glad this didn't happen in August.)

09feb09

I do not seem to be catching up, here:)

However, today's post and featured etsy item are both about my latest French beaded flower, in blue. I'm really quite excited about this new technique, which was the subject of the last post. Speaking of french-beaded, today's featured etsy sellers are Bead Flora and Forever Flowers, both of whom produce beautiful French beaded flowers in the traditional style.

I'm also continuing to play with the dual colored light, as for this etsy listing a couple of days ago---I really like this bead, particularly the interplay between the reddish-purple glass and blue pixie hilite, which I echo in the bluish sunshine versus the warmer photoflood.

05feb09

I love going away to workshops, conferences and retreats, but it sure takes me a long time to get back on track again. Sorry about that! But there have been some changes going on---note the new links for my etsy and artfire shops! The rss feed is also working better, except that I haven't quite gotten down how to update it (and yes, I have to do this manually:) But I think this stuff is very fun.

Part of the reason I've been so busy is that I've also been testing presses for GlassAct's next meeting---we'll have about 20 of 'em for folks to try. One of the great things about belong to a group like this is that we can feature these "try and buy" meetings---everyone who signs up gets to try our assortment of Catt Walk presses, and take one home for $50, considerably less than the list price.

However, there is a learning curve, so Cindi and I are testing 'em, so's we can offer samples and tips, come March. Today's etsy offerings feature some early efforts with the 1-1/2 in lentil press, and I'm having so much fun doing crisp florals on such big beads. Somebody at the retreat said that folks like designer beads with their focals, and since it's not like I don't have hundreds of those lying around, I made these up in sets---very pretty. More fun to photograph too. ---Speaking of which, since I had the tripod and camera upstairs to photograph some of the jewelry on a model yesterday (another project that's been in the works forever) I dragged the lightcube upstairs today and positioned it next to the window, with the photoflood on the other side. I thought the slightly different colors of light might make for some interesting fill. Today's pix were shot this way, and I quite liked the effect.

And a big thank you to Bravegrrl who featured on of my heart mini-wall-hangings in her reCreate treasury ---so far I've had one bead, one textile and one piece of jewelry featured, which is pretty sweet. Speaking of which, today's post is about my latest french beaded flower and what could be sweeter than that? (Though as much as I'm looking forward to spring, since our refrigerator died today, I have yet another reason to appreciate that freezing cold Michigan weather! Yep, our foodstuffs are variously sitting out on the deck or in the garage...)

28jan09

As you might guess, I've been really busy.

Last weekend I went on Glassact's annual retreat, and once again we stayed at the fabulous Kalamazoo House B&B, which this year the guild took the precaution of reserving entirely, which meant we could (and did) take over the common areas with beading, boozing, and and more beading. (We drank what looked to my eyes a lot of wine, but 6 or 8 oz was enough to do me for the weekend, so mebbe that's not saying much...)

Finances limited me to just one class, Denise's bronzclay workshop, but two things combined to make it go really well for me: one, bronzclay is (relatively speaking) cheap; and two, being an alloy, it oxidizes readily, meaning it doesn't keep, so I had every reason to use it up with (again, for me) wild abandon. I was pretty happy with my pieces, and particularly need to thank fellow beadmaker (and roomie!) Augusta Simmons for the loan of her fabulous Isis stamp, which made a very nice Egyptian themed pendant---pix soon, I promise!

I was lucky enough to see some of the pieces coming out of the felting and Bethany Adams' sculptural flower class; and also hear a bit Candy Orow's glass ring and Sheila Morley's stringer control workshops

I also signed up for Artfire, which was one of the things I learned networking this weekend. Like etsy it's an online shop for artists, and works in a similar way. Right now they're offering a flat $7/mo fee, so I figured I'd give it a shot. For the most part, the listing process is easier, because it's all one screen. The only part that's tedious is having to rewrite the shipping notes every time---I'd prefer to have that, like shipping profiles, elsewhere---and if they can let us do profiles, so that we can tailor the message to the items (I have both glass and textiles listed), that would be helpful.

The editing process is not as pretty, since you get to see the various html formatting, but I'm used to that, and willing (more than willing) to sacrifice a bit of clarity behind the scenes for greater speed. I also like that I can be loading up the next image file while the present one is transferring---scrolling all over to find image file names and waiting for them are two of my top peeves with etsy listings, the third being having wade thru all four screens of entries every time I want to edit my text (usually the thing I want to fix).

Interestingly enough, the artfire people have broken the "about the piece" into two parts, which I was already doing in effect on etsy (the specifications, and then the paras discussing inspiration, working methods, or whatever else I could come up with to give the piece its own little story.) Not so interestingly, they seem to be losing my paragraph breaks.

Kristin Perkins (who by the way has totally upgraded her logo, which looks really nice) has actually mentioned artfire to me before, but didn't like it because it didn't have the same cleanliness of look---well, when I first looked at it Monday afternoon, it did look pretty ragged---all the images---logos, photos, etc--- were highly compressed, and it wasn't pretty. This morning, it looks much sharper. Don't know if they start compressing when reaching the limits of their bandwidth, (which would make sense because of the flat-fee model) or whether they were suffering some other sort of glitch, but if that's the case, the lower-res images might encourage folks with flexibility to shop during off-peak times, so to speak.

They have pages documenting their bugs, plans for the future, and so on, which I suppose etsy does too, but I got a kick out of the "we're just starting and still in beta" which also characterizes ravelry...I like looking behind the scenes a bit, I guess.

In any event, it was certainly easier than setting up eBay auctions, which is the other big to-do item for my online list. And oh yes, today's post and today's etsy listings feature the same item, some gravity swirl hearts as well as some fun scrollwork hearts. The wizard, as you see, as created some fun new functionality for the site, so now I can provide a teensy little thumbnail for my etsy links, which I think is way cool.

Enjoy.

21jan09

So I went to this knitting group again last night, and was once again deeply impressed by the friendliness the group, even though most of the people were different. A hint for small (under, say, 15 or so people) groups wishing to be inclusive: when the newbie shows up, do a round of introductions. When two more show up, go thru the intros again. ---Sure they won't remember (my goal is to add one new name a week;) but it sure makes 'em feel welcome.

I learned about this group because one of the folks we ride with is friends with a knitter who in turn invited me; and who asked, so, "have you and L. had a discussion about what is art and what is craft, yet?"

No, I replied. I said (rather more disjointedly than I'm typing this) that I felt that it was kind of a useless dichotomy: to me, the art of a thing is its conception and the craft its execution. Poorly designed art is bad; poorly made art is bad. Lo and behold, L. showed up, and knowing he's no shrinking flower, I told him much what I told her: good art can be made in any medium (even black velvet paintings---I remember, long ago, on my paper route, a customer showing me these paintings of african dancers, using National Geographic magazine photos as a reference, that she made on black velvet. Stunning. Unlike the schlock typical of the time, they were small, elegant, and I recall her particularly explaining how she used touches of white [or nearly so---it's been over thirty years after all] to add punch to work. Another artist famous for this technique that comes to mind is, um, Rembrandt...).

Moreover, there's nothing inherently wrong with series, which is the technical arty term we use for "cranking out dozens or hundreds of something-or-other". But those birdhouses, he complained, with the license plate covers...! Even those, I countered, could be beautiful, and in fact I've seen beautiful birdhouses and stunning art made from recycled pressed metal---in fact, just today etsy was featuring an artist who specializes in this sort of thing, has been published in 25 books, because as an sucessful artist she wrote a tutorial for applying to galleries.

Asian artists are famous for practicing the same image or character over and over; and frankly, for me, a lot of the pleasure in production beadmaking comes out of that same striving for perfection. So it's not medium; nor quantity; and certainly not functionality (in my view it's harder to make functional pieces, aka craft, because of the additional constraint of useability) that fails a piece out of the "art" category.

For some reason, people tend to divide art not into good and bad, but into art and non-art. Yet as a rule no-one argues if a car is an automobile, or not, only whether it's a good car, or not, for some value of good. But art is like everything else in the world; there's a little of the great, a fair amount of the good, and much that is truly terrible. Yet only in the arts are some kinds allowed to be art, whereas others must be craft. (And guess which ones traditionally dominated by women fall into?) ---I think this sort of gatekeeping is snobbery, not a helpful distinction.

Oddly enough, not only did my friend think poorly of production art, he didn't hold any too well with custom orders---how can you make something art, if you're volunteering to "make whatever you like"? (His friend and I laughed later that night when another knitter looked at some of my beads, and said, can you do this [head bead] in another color? and I replied, Sure, whatever you like)

It's not selling out, because, I said, custom orders are all about collaboration---your customer's vision, sure, but tempered by your own, for a synergy that quite often can be more than the sum of its parts. I enjoy the challange of incorporating another person's ideas into my own. Obviously, if they try to micromanage, that doesn't leave me much turning room, but that's a surprisingly rare problem. More often than not, the opposite difficulty of extracting enough information to understand what the other person is envisioning is the hurdle.

And what does that have to do with today's post? Well, I've been corresponding with a bead lover who likes a particular series of orangey pink pixie-dottie beads, made from some odd-lot pink lauscha. Odd-lot glass, by its very nature, is not reproducible, so I thought I ought to explore some other options for making beads she would like, which, were I really lucky, would lead to new products that lots of customers would like.

---And, I must have done something right, because the beads sold before I got a chance to finish this post about them! But I enjoyed 'em so much, I'm gonna make some more:)

After repeat business is always a good thing:) And though these particular beads are on their way to a way warmer fate, you can still read about 'em.

19jan09

Did I mention it was cold? Today, I went to dip some mandrels longer, to make focals, and discovered the big jar of super-easy release (zippy type) was frozen solid. So, ok, I went back to the almost-out krag mud, which is similar (and which I think I actually slightly prefer); but what a shock (though I guess it shouldn't've been) to discover a big chunk of ice encasing half or more of the pins in the pin polisher bowl.

Whoopsie! The unseasonable cold (last Friday, when I managed to freeze my eyelashes, was in fact a record) combined with the storage cabinet's backing up to the unheated garage, resulted in frozen pins. ---I pulled the ice out of the bowl, immersed it in water, and nuked it, steel pins and all, for about 40 seconds. That released a lot of them, and stirring and scraping---kind of the way we cook frozen chunks of hamburger---freed the rest. But it was kind of amusing, in a mildly aggravating way.

Eventually, I did get my latest batch of beads (mostly) cleaned, photographed and posted---today is another in which the post and etsy offerings match: six teal pixie focals, a smooth bicone, a plumper version, a pointy bicone with one row of dots a relatively small but very curvy vessel with dots top and bottom, a very puffy vessel with three rows of dots, and a large dramatic vessel, also with three rows of dots.

Enjoy.

16jan09

Man, it's cold! Our local coffee shop features free tea as an incentive for its "Friday bike-to-work day", and since I had an etsy sale to ship, I actually did "bike to work" ---the post office is conveniently located a block away. Our thermometer said -13, and the local airport was reporting -16F/-27C, with windchills of -37F/-38C respectively.

My eyelashes froze on the way there.

Today's post is not a fridayfugly (though no doubt some people would find today's offering...unattractive) cuz it's left over from Wednesday. That's right, I've been struggling for two days to write the intro. I think I'm just gonna have to admit it's never going to be right, and move on. And there is some cause for celebration: this is one of those rare posts that match my etsy offerings, first and second in a series of machine embroidered mini-wall hangings with a heart theme.

Besides, the sun is shining, and it's a gorgeous day:)

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I have both a distractable and sometimes obsessive nature (odd as that sounds.) Two days ago I was obsessed with examining and measuring 4 pair of needles I ordered from knitpicks...first, I noticed that roughly 25% of the very points were significantly smaller (or pointier) than the rest. (Well, actually, first I noticed one tip had small pits in the plating.) Then I inspected the points. Then I figured, what the hey, and dug out my micrometer. (If I'm reading it correctly---not guaranteed---the needles, in a sample of 4, appear to vary about 1/1000 of in or so---never did manage the math to convert the decimal inch sizes to metric, so I can't speak to accuracy---consistency is more important, after all...)

I had a feeling that knitting would prove to be all too enticing, which is one of the reasons I've resisted getting into it for so long. It's not as if I need another medium to play in, especially when I really did ought to be practicing mini-hollows, and crisp florals, not to mention sculptural, and boro tubing work...

I've meandered through a lot of media over the years, but have managed to stick with glass for over a decade, because, like knitting, there's so much learn. And I've resisted knitting because I've have plenty---more than enough---to learn in the media in which I've already sunk a lotta years of my life. It doesn't help that i'm easily distractible (see above) and like a lot of people, get discouraged in the mucky middle, when learning something is no longer fresh and new, but haven't achieved effortless mastery either---i'm just frustratingly stuck on a flat, seemingly endless plateau, facility often out of reach, the ripples or earthquakes of sudden insight still hidden from me, beyond in the misty horizons of a distance that can't be measured or known more precisely than "at some hope in the future."

Drawing, beads and embroidery all date to my childhood, but only the last lends itself equally well to representational imagery, color and texture. So why, besides a distractible nature, have I detoured into crafts such scrimshaw, metalwork, and lampworking? ---I had a metals teacher at Henry Ford Community college who told me she'd finally gotten really good at jewelry---understood all the metals, had served her time as a bench jeweler, knew how to set stones---but that it was paper that really called to her. And now, she said to me, I'd have to throw all that metal mastery away. Painful indeed, but I told her: if paper is your love, do it. The aesthetics learned while doing metal won't be wasted; you'd be surprised how much you can salvage, I soothed, (speaking from bittersweet experience.)

My father, towards the end of his life, said he regretted none of his decisions, that his life was well-spent. I couldn't say the same then, and still can't. I look back on my history, and still regret, am still striving to accept the decisions I've made---that I'm making right now, for that matter. Part of that acceptance, I think, is understanding them. Why do I make the choices I do?

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Via Feministe a blogger named gwen makes the interesting observation that "competitive jump-roping has not attained social recognition as an athletic endeavor. Some sociologists argue that physical activities that predominantly attract women tend to be defined as something other than sports simply because we associate athletics with men, not women....whether or not competitive jump-roping should be seen as a sport... you might use this video as a starting point for a discussion about why we define some activities as sports but not others, and how gender might play into this."

Those kinds of limitations affect women artists, as well as women athletes. I love scrimshaw, metalworking and lampworking, don't get me wrong. I took them up because they interested me. But I stayed with them, in part, because they were traditionally (if not currently) "male" media that had currency with art fair jurors and others in a way that beading and especially embroidery did not, and, frankly, still do not. But the attraction for beads and threads---in the form of knitting and, oh yes, today's post on machine embroidered wall hangings keep drawing me back. Someday, I'll find my road.

I just wish it wasn't so damned winding.

12jan09

My regular email addy seems (pretty much) to be working again; but the http://rejiquar.com version of the site still doesn't resolve correctly; take a few extra seconds to put the www in there, and you're good to go. It will all get fixed. Eventually.

(Eventually seems to be the story of my life, mostly because I get bored so easily that I'm constantly switching from project to project---usually when I hit that last 10%-is-the-hardest/boring barrier.) At any rate, I featured five new etsy items, including this sunshine yellow abstract winged heart.

I did in fact write a post about this series and this item in particular. I guess I can feature all my old heart bead posts, hmmm...? Even better, OhFaro, who has a lot of vintage jewelry of the oooh!shiny&sparkly variety, has featured that selfsame yellow and violet abstract winged heart in her gorgeous heart treasury---I just love the way she's mixed her palette---rich golds, coppers, gold pinks and warm reds.

As I said, you can read about winged abstract hearts; or, since we got about 8 inches of snow over the weekend, today's post features something in white, a loomwoven beaded belt.

08jan09

I gather the issues with rejiquar's server (imaginatively called "name server 2":) aren't quite fixed yet---so, if my usual email addie isn't working, you could use rejiquar at gmail dot com (regularize the formatting), since I signed up for that yesterday (and yes it works, I tested. Interestingly enough, gmail doesn't have any problems sending email to sylvus at rejiquar dot com, and a paypal notification finally wandered in, a day or two late...)

Today's etsy treat is a hollow boro bead I made in Doug Remschneider's class, and I really have to thank my fellow guild members, here: a couple of them had other commitments and couldn't attend, and so generously let me take their spots instead. Glassact is a great group. Anyway, the class was very interesting, as it centered on using heat (and time!) to strike colors, especially in the silver and copper (ruby) palettes, a long time interest of mine. This bead came about because Mr. Remschneider was rather dubious about the whole mandrel wound boro thing, so I made a couple. The first was awful, and collapsed, which was not completely surprising, since it's been years since I made one in boro. The second, which admittedly has rather um, organic ends, was this charming bead which I duly decorated with a wind of "dougie pink" (more like purple, but I think I used the more saturated recipe). Somebody suggested pressing it, so I swiped borrowed Carol Sheppherd's big lentil press, which I think was a nice effect.

Now that the Epiphany (what a lovely word) has past and the twelve days of Christmas are done, I expect I'll post the stockings that didn't make it in this time next year; but I figure I can wrap up the sea series with this little sub-index.

07jan09

I finally got my cream colored swatch properly blocked, which makes taking photos of buttons a good deal easier with it. ---So today's etsy items are two more buttons in the aqua/rootbear/cherry series, one with twistie and one without.

Also while finishing up the second in an embroidered wall-hanging series (which I hope to feature soon, both on the site and etsy) I decided while I was at the sewing machine to make myself a drawstring bag to carry my sock knitting in, which is today's featured post.

Carrying on with the pink theme, my featured etsy item just has to be these heart earrings of Kristin's---of all the ones I photographed they were my favorite, and they showed up on the row before mine in the 15 second listings, which meant my lowly button got to share space with my etsy mentor.

Finally, some people seem to be emailing me without problems, others can't even access the site. Le sigh. Otoh, the wizard has finally created an RSS feed for it, how cool is that?

06jan09

A couple of days ago I encountered a thread about the 'necessities' of life. I've never forgotten the story when some guy asked an old woman what she thought were luxuries---a fridge? a stove? a washer and dryer? hot and cold water...?---and she replied running water, which really pointed out how far civilization has progressed, even in the last century or so. Once people were similarly reminded that potable water, adequate food, shelter and clothing are the real necessities and what they were really discussing on this post were "tools I feel I need to function well in this society" I found the conversation got more interesting since no-one disputes the necessity of clean air, water, and adequate food and shelter (I most sincerely hope). I found the contrasts between them (mostly single, without children) and us---they just had to have their ipods, but could easily live without microwaves and dishwashers---striking.

We, on the other hand, are a household of five who slurp tea pretty much constantly. If we had no microwave, I'd probably go back to drinking plain water, which wouldn't be all bad, but I figure the anti-oxidants in the genmaicha (green tea with roasted brown rice) are good for me. In fact I've lived without all the "necessities" ---car, cell phone, high-speed internet connection, ipod, dishwasher, microwave, tv, washer and dryer---though not regularly since college; of course, part of it's simply that I'm a generation older.

(The other part is that huge blackout we had several years ago. That's when I really noticed the fridge, or rather, lack thereof. Of all the appliances we use in the kitchen, that's the one I probably most take for granted, and the one, along with the cooktop, that I'd strip down to. Interestingly enough, people can do without refrigerators, and a lot of stuff, such as mayo, doesn't necessarily have to be refrigerated. My brother, who lived on a boat, read up on various ways to do without, or make do with very minimal refrigerated storage, and one of the tricks was to tip a mayo jar on its side, dip out some into a dish---with a sterling spoon, I assume, since the silver kills germs. You then pitch the unused stuff at the end of the meal, which makes you wonder if one of the source of the old-fashion etiquette that required folks to dish stuff out of containers into dishes for meals was this very reason. There are evidently lots of other tricks folks who live on boats/go camping/etc share---this info is still out there, contrary to those who say all the old ways are gone. They're not; they're just not common knowledge anymore, another reason I love the internet.)

Suddenly losing a working refrigerator is no joke, but I think if I had to pick just one, I'd pick the computer/high-speed internet. (Along with my digital camera, an item that didn't even make the list.) Could I get along without it? Certainly. But it's been such a blessing. F2tE, at half a generation younger than the 20--30 somethings, claims sie can't do without the ipod as the posters on pandagon, and for much the same reasons---to tune out the rest of the world while traveling.

As much as the mass-transit folks may celebrate bus (and for the purposes of this conversation, plane) travel, they don't really seem to want to interact with their fellow passengers, despite the many stories about meeting interesting people that way. I suppose I'm no better, in that I've been struggling to find the perfect "travel craft" for decades---I've tried drawing, embroidery, beaded crochet tubes, kumi on a disk, and, most recently, sock knitting.

So, speaking of socks, if extremely stylized ones, I have another stocking post. And though today's etsy listing isn't precisely new---I featured similar beads almost exactly a year ago on Page's etsy site---still, I think this dusty pink spot-n-steak set is very nice. I particularly like the new photo I took with the caliper of it; it's a little truer to the color, and I did that narrower depth of field and sharp angle that a lot of sophisticated etsy vintage-style sellers like to use (hopefully people won't think these beads were machine made, though!)

Today's etsy find is the sea fairies' jewelbox lovely aqua and amethyst earrings. Like Emily Gray this artist does a lot high end wire-worked jewelry with tiny faceted gemstrones and pearls. Yum.

Or you could check out this stocking, though I don't think felted sheep would be very tasty:)

02jan09

The wizard had to switch rejiquar's server to a new IP address yesterday---so if you've been wondering where the site was, well, now that you're seeing it, that means its new addie has propagated thru to your neck of the intertubes.

So, lessee, we did a 12:30am ride on New Year's to get one in the first hour of the new year; a 11am walk, then a noon ride; and today the weekly ride-to-work (except we were the only ones who showed up, but since I had an etsy package to ship, I actually rode to work!) Two of the kids want to do more riding in '09, so I took 'em to the library. Oh, and to their auntie's house yesterday and granma's today for belated xmas celebrations.

Needless to say, I didn't clean up the studio and get those heart/pink themed beads sorted into sets and photographed---so we have buttons instead. Yeesh my swatch is bad---I need to knit a better one. Right after I finish the easy pair of socks I'm working on now, based on one of Cat Bordi's patterns, the "Ode to Eames" I promised my teacher, plus the various projects I need to help the kids with, as f2tE claims interest too...see, one nice thing about cold weather is that woolen objects, like socks, are very useful:)

Speaking of knitting, two quickie reviews: it doesn't take long to figure out that skacel's addi turbos are the premium circular knitting needle. These are the brand Posy had me purchase to make my first pair of socks, and I have to say, they held up to the incredible abuse I heaped upon them as a very (very very) tense beginning knitter.

Alas, I lost one! And we're kinda broke right now (yeah, if you know anyone who needs a senior perl programmer who has a facility for solving challanging problems, especially in the Washtenaw county area, do please lemme know, as the wizard's looking for such a job) so I tried out knitpick's brand. Teach doesn't care for 'em, but I do for a number of reasons. Besides being half or less the cost, I went ahead and substituted 24" with the longer metal parts for the 16"ers I got the first time, so that all (half) of a sock's stitches would fit on at once which I prefer as I'm still lousy at moving stitches along knitting needles; I like the sharper points; the purple cable of course pleases my color sense; and I really like the smoother join.

That last was the selling point. That way the stitches would catch on the junction between the cable and metal on the addi turbos made me nuts. (Yeah, I also tried the $6 JoAnne dpns. On toe-up socks. Bleh. And concluded that besides all the cool new sock yarns, the development of sock knitting on circs is one reason it's taken off.)

Which brings me to Cat Bordi's book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I found the amazon reviews of this book kinda interesting, as they tended to fall into love it or hate it. If you want a get-up-n-go Giant Treasury of Sock Patterns this is not the book for you---it does have about 20 patterns in it, including 3 or 4 that I actually want to make. But the reason I'm so excited about it is that it has algorithms for designing socks in it. The author was sitting under a tree one day and realized the increases necessary to get a sock over your heel didn't have to be added in the two traditional places.

After a lot of experimentation, she came up with 8 new methods of doing these increases, with "master" (or pe'raps they oughter be "mistress") patterns. Far and away my fave is "Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks" a "sky architecture" pattern with a cuff and sort of diamond pattern of linen stitch over the front and instep of the sock. (Interestingly enough, only the adult version excites; the child's version fails utterly to catch my interest, which just goes to show that I've a ways to go before I can divorce a basic concept from its execution.)

Unfortunately, like so many sock patterns, it requires two sizes of needles, so until the latest batch come in, I'm doing simpler versions (and given that I still have such a poor concept of purling that my 1x1 rib cuff ended up having plaited purls) which to be frank are more sensible for someone with my beginner skill level. But I'm so excited to have a book with so much info on sock design. I was looking for a book with a wide range of heels, toes and other construction techniques.

This book isn't exhaustive in that regard, but it has a nice selection, and moreover the instructions are extremely clear, such that even a clueless beginner like myself could figure out lifted increases and judy's magic cast-on. It also has extensive charts to aid the reader in adapting the various architectures to any gauge from 4-1/2 -- 9-1/2 st/in and from baby to large adult feet, as well as a discussion (and mathematical formulae) for adjusting the patterns to narrow or wide feet or legs.

To be sure, I'm still looking for my treasury of heels and toes, and I have to say the cover is so bland I very nearly didn't sign the book out. But if you like the idea of designing your own patterns and want some new approaches, this book is wonderful. I will be purchasing my own copy---and can't wait for the next in the series, in which the author plans to expand from toe up and cuff-down to starting in the middle.

Keeping with the knitting theme, today's offerings are buttons (all displayed on a rather rocky swatch I made) ---a large button with two winds of twistie border, a pair of buttons, and finally, a singleton with one wind of twistie, all in a cherry red, root-beer, and aqua color scheme.

And I'm very pleased and honored to feature Monarchdancer's very spring-y pink/coral/sweet&sour green treasury, which includes my garden fantasy necklace. All of the items are lovely, but this textile was just stunning. ---I had no idea what it was until I clicked on it, and I haven't had a waist of 22--25" since I was about 10, but it reminded me of Candace Kling's wonderful Artful Ribbon, which someday I'll have to pick up...

Oh. Stockings. Yeah.

00jan09

Oh, and some housekeeping: links to the posts, in reverse chronological order, for 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, and up thru 2003. This isn't by any means ideal, as these files were created for my convenience, to look stuff up on the local server: they're really too big for the web. But until I get my archiving issues straightened out, I figure they're better than nothing. See also this index thru the 3Q 2006 for something a little more bandwidth friendly.

31dec08

Wishing you all a Happy New Year! (One thing I really like about this holiday is that it's pretty universal:) Yes, I realize not everybody's new year starts Jan 1, but I think just about everyone recognizes a new year.

Anyway. Nothing like wanting the December etsy directory images to actually get posted in December to get me throwing those things out there. So we have three more pink focals---one color is messy cotton candy pink, one utterly simple bicone pixie, and one rather fun focal that has subtle strips of color in it.

We're planning on doing a midnite ride, so's I have to get to bed soon to rest up for it, so no featured etsy artist today---but I do have another of my stocking posts.

29dec08

Wishing everyone a belated happy holidays. Can't say as I've been doing much---we got up early (the wizard, JDftY', and I) to watch the sunrise on the solstice, and as every year since we started this custom, it's been too cloudy to see; though at least we had sunshine later on that day---much the same with xmas, which was beautiful; the three of us went on a walk, admiring the pale blue skies, the sun on snow, and quacking mallards on the river. (Alas, we didn't think to bring food for them.)

I meant to post some of the stockings I've been making over the years in 2007 (or even 2006), for the twelve days of christmas, but didn't really manage it. In honor of all the snow and freezing rain, fog, and assorted other precipitation we've been getting for the holidays (and I do appreciate a white xmas, just not a half inch of ice on the roads and sidewalks: hurrah, once again, for studded bike tires, or I wouldn't've been able to get around at all) I figured I'd start out with one featuring a beach, one of three sea-themed stockings I was lucky to make all-at-once, for a family.

Today's etsy offering, being a rose colored vessel, also looks forward, albeit not as far (yes, our local craft stores had the valentine's day stuff out the day before xmas---eeek!); and today's etsy artist, in honor of the f2 generation's return, is offering those same hello-kitty cute skulls with bows that the kids, especially the younger, find sooooo endearing.

Enjoy.