rejiquar works

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the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn

31may05

I was out most of the day, diligently working with my partner on a 2006 line (none of that `we need slides in 3 days---what are we submitting?' nonsense when the show deadlines roll around next February...right?) and then celebrating all this virtue with SWIII. Which makes yesterday's post even more apropos, since they currently featuring SW costuming. (The costumes in the movie were luscious, within its smaller scope---fewer ceremonial scenes than in the last one for them to go all-out. I was particularly amused by the erte beaded-strap nightie.) So all I've done to day is archive all the posts to this page older than May 2005. Which go all the way back 2001. Scary.

30may05

Happy Memorial Day. We are, I gather, supposed to commemorate all of those who have fallen in wars; I lost an uncle whom I never knew to the Vietnam war; the other wars I heard about during my childhood---WWII and Korean---did not touch me so closely. So far, neither have our current ones, though there are those I hope the fates will spare; and my condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one.

Comedic relief, so they say, must follow tragedy. Today being a holiday, I'm taking it off, (at least from creating posts---there's those closets, sigh, to do...)but I thought this site, which skewers our society via sewing patterns was funny when I discovered on Drawn; and now my friend Posy's sent me along that way as well. With such public and personal recommendations, it obviously has to be passed along!

29may05

Here a visit and first time experience by a friend takes me down memory lane to reminisce about my own early beadmaking efforts. Which were pretty hideously awful, by the way.

28may05

The dsl is still sorta flaky, which is why these posts are also sorta flaky. But I did finally managed to get the camera to more or less focus on some 2--3mm stringer, so I made a post about the colors I use to make one of my favorite striped canes for florals plus a couple of others thrown in for good measure. Enjoy.

27may05

My friend and fellow Glassact251 member Margaret Sutherland, in addition to making glass beads, works pmc, knits, gardens---and weaves seed beads in a variety of stitches. This piece is just as juicy as the kumquats and minneolas it brings to mind. Yum!

And yes, today is Friday flower blogging, so here's a a picture of some next door lilacs to match the architecture post earlier this week.

26may05

Yesterday I finished up Lois McMaster Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt; then read Tamora Pierce's Trickster Queen. Interestingly enough both books are about politics, in which the gods actually interfere. I very much enjoy Pierce's books, particularly her Protector of the Small Series, but as I recall I read Trickster's Choice right after Bujold's Paladin of Souls, both earlier books in their respective story arcs/universes, and had the same reaction to that pairing as to this: Bujold is the only other author in the sf/f genre to match Heinlein in Hugos for Best Novel for a reason. She says she's doing something completely new for her next novel, and I can hardly wait to see what it is. Oh, how I wish I could get on this woman's advance reader list...

I suppose one reason I like Bujold's recent fantasies, which include what is currently my favorite book by her, The Curse of Chalion, because in setting up a fantasy world she can really dig into some profound theological issues, such as redemption and the nature of God, without having to get into the sticky issues attached to real-world organized religions. And religion's place in the modern world has been a question for me the past several years.

At any rate, if you've never read sf&f, and would like to try a character driven story that also has plenty of action, a dash of romance and not a little bit of humor, not to mention those larger themes, give The Curse of Chalion a try. In my opinion the weakest thing in the whole book is the slightly gothic title (though it does indeed tie in perfectly).

If you want something good for a chuckle, check out this parody of romance novel covers, or, even better enthusiastic reader contributions---which just goes to show how things improve when folks build upon the original. Of course if romance novels are one of your guilty pleasures (as they are mine) these are more than a chuckle---they're screamingly funny. (Yes, there are good romances out there. My favorite, of course, is Pride & Prejudice, but if you want some help separating the current gold from the dross, this site will help you.) My thanks to another quirky collection of `fun things', Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing, which is where I found the cover parody site---Doctorow is a fascinating guy, not least 'cuz he's on the forefront of what is starting to be called the copyfight movement...I'll have a real post tomorrow. Really. Of a guest artist no less.

25may05

Here are those cham towers I promised last week. They had a sense of desolation that for some odd reason makes me think of Barbara Hambley's Sunwolf and Starhawk trilogy, particularly The Witches of Wenshar. At any rate, the architecutre is utterly different from other Vietnamese temples in style and material, and I was fascinated by them.

24may05

In first grade, like many schoolchildren, my favorite color was red. By the time I hit college and color field artist David Tammany put us through our paces in basic color theory (though in fact the class was called 2-D design) I'd learned to appreciate all colors---but if pushed up absolutely against the wall to choose just one, it'd be the complement of red: green.

But that's still a bit of a cheat, you see, because when I think green, I think of the multitudes of hues plants proffer us; such a bounty. And it is not the standard, cool and sweet kelly green that entrances me, but a sour lime green, acidified with yellow, and quite often made bitter with a bit of brown: I had and have no quarrel with the orange and avocado of the 70s; it was the brown that did that wretched color combination in. At any rate, others seem to share my love of odd, sharp greens---even to the point of mixing luscious purples in with them. And I was lucky enough to come across such a treasure, during exactly the right time.

23may05

A couple of weeks ago I went to Toledo, for a meeting by a nascent glass beadmaking group. Despite its nickname of Glass Town, Toledo hasn't had one till now, which seems sort of strange when there are two glass bead groups in the tri-county area; I say this because I think ultimately, Toledo has a lot to do with the overall popularity of the glass movement here.

The highlight of the meeting was a demo by Tink Martin, a self-supporting artist of two decades or more, (she's in the process of changing her company name from Black Swamp Glassworks to Tink Martin Glass) who was recently profiled in the ISGB's national newsletter. She demonstrated one of her elegant vessels. The post is a writeup of my efforts to duplicate this feat; though to get the full flavor you'll have to study from the source, a relaxed and funny lampworker.

22may05

Gee, two bead posts in a row...maybe I'll do kumi or something tomorrow. Once again I was feeling rotten (this time from a cold) with requisite headache, so I decided to make more easy little beads, and practice my pointy end petals while I was at it. Then, because the beads were so lame, I added a little howto information about how to make petals---by no means exhaustive, and as the post is in GlassBeads that's where it's going to stay.

21may05

One of my neighbors told a coworker about this site, who, after checking it out, told my neighbor she didn't think ``there was very much about beads''. Not enough beads!?! My goodness, and here I've been scratching my head, trying to come up with posts on a variety of other topics because I figured too much about beads would bore people. (And to be fair, if the woman was looking for beadwork the there isn't so much of that being added since I've shifted the focus to beadmaking. Though I do in fact have a beadwork projects going, and they'll get posted. As they get finished. Sometimes even before then...) So here's a beady post. And I've got a cute idea for a once-a-week posting month long series on beads and inspiration, which I'll start just as soon as I get the photography done.

20may05

Some gold and purple flowers, many in square format, from my back yard---since this collection of bulbs plopped in a glorified compost pile, padded out with shots of weeds really oughtn't be dignified with the term `garden'.

19may05

The 2nd annual Ann Arbor Book Fair is coming up this Saturday with tons of cool stuff to see and do---I admit to being particularly interested in that narrative form that combines art and word balloons, that used to be called comic books, then graphic novels, and now is starting to be called `sequential art'---why they can't just call it manga and be done?---so I thought I'd show this post about the highlight of last year's festival for me to help promote what I consider to be one of Ann Arbor's gems.

18may05

Today is Wednesday, so here's a post about a wonderful temple decorated with pottery shard mosaic that I saw on the way to Nha Trang from Dalat during my 2004 Vietnam bicycle tour.

17may05

Hmm. DSL seems to be working again, so here's the Tuesday architecture post---just a tad late---of two examples of a charming detail you don't see very often on modern houses: the eyebrow dormer.

15may05

Connection came up just long enough to transfer the files referenced below and discover the thumbnails are a mess. And that it's going to take some major fiddling around to fix them. But at least I should be able to start posting again tomorrow...

14may05

Well, since I can't post anything, I spent some time tidying up the Miscellaneous and associated directories. The random posts to this page on these topics should now be fairly easy to find.

13may05

Ack. Our DSL is down. This will teach me to make promises I can't keep. (I've been taking plenty of flower pix, though...) Shame on SBC. This is the second time in three months they've screwed up.

12may05

Michigan's springs are sweet for only a very short period indeed; but today's rant, you might say, is long and bitter. Regularly scheduled happy things like beads, bugs and flowers will return tomorrow.

11may05

I went flipping thru my Vietnam pix the other, day thinking perhaps I should resurrect this series...I stopped doing it because I took lousy notes and couldn't identify very much. But at a year's distance, I've decided the pix are appealing even without proper (or worse, mis-remembered) commentary.

So now, at least for awhile, we can have Wednesday travel blogging...and there's always all those pix of Michigan barns after I run out of Vietnam stuff. Speaking of which, I can at least say this post is set in the lovely, if-for-no-other-reason-than-delightfully-cool-temps city of Dalat.

10may05

Seems like forever that I've been meaning to start posting pix of some of the wonderful local architecture. The entry of a week ago touched on this, so perhaps in addition to Friday flower blogging we can have Tuesday Architecture blogging ---anything for a break from all those beads, right?

09may05

Realized a few days ago that the stripey post, below, was linked to the wrong file. So I added another picture to the page that was supposed to be shown and fixed the directory that was actually shown---so now even that old link will take you where you need to go.

08may05

I got a new camera a few days ago, and this little post includes my very first picture taken with it. RAW decoding, digital slides and other goodies should now be a part of my not-too-distant future. Yippee.

07may05

I couldn't come up with any good ideas (or didn't want to make the beads I should've been making) before leaving on what was supposed be a selling-beads road trip. So I made these basic---some would say boring---beads instead, and have rather a fondness for them.

And if your response to the above was `blah' rather than `classic', Paul Graham has written any number of entertaining essays. (His site's gorgeous, too.) April's is about the connection between business, PR firms and the media, which sounds boring as all get out, but actually I found fascinating. And if that doesn't float your artistic boat, check out his classic essay about hackers and painters ---the point of which the wizard, back when he was courting me, made years ago. To distract me, while my butt was killing me on PALM. Musta worked, too...;)

06may05

In mid April I took a road trip to sell beads, visit friends and attend a wedding. My first stop was to visit a college buddy who lives in Chicago, so Friday flower blogging as some water and bug pictures as a bonus.

05may05

Even just two or three minutes of effort can dress up a gift.

But, you say, you're sick of the quickNeasy that so permeates our culture? Check out chez pim, who not only posts authentic thai recipes and methodology, but, getting back to that quickNeasy thing, also gives to us folks who aspire only to get a reasonably nutritious meal on the table several nights a week that at least three-quarters of the household will eat encouragement such as store bought curry paste ... will be just fine... throw in a few 2-inch pieces of lemongrass (smashed a little) and a handful of lime leaves into the pot in addition to detailed instructions for making the curries from scratch, by hand. (This recipe is surprisingly easy, btw. Really.)

If you don't adore thai, (or the occasional snarky comment:) as I do, check out her links to many other serious foodie blogs (of which I've barely scratched the surface), incorporated on this wonderful page of rice recipes from around the world: these folk are extraordinarily knowledgeable and generous, so I was delighted to see the creative commons licensing so often.

Food (and to a lesser extent) wine enthusiasts are (it seems to me) one of the few segments of our society allowed to revel in the hedonistic aspect of their passions; gardeners will sometimes talk about the tactile pleaures of good tilth, and certainly sports (or even beadmaking) has a physical component that occasionally touches the sublime (though it's often mixed with pain and frustration.)

The other obvious candidate, sex, no doubt has its practitioners of all sorts of arcane techniques and collectors of fun and beautiful toys (I've seen a few on the Wetcanvas Glass Forum now and then) but our society is so hedged with (forgive the pun) kinks on this topic that it's difficult for one to even discuss it, particularly in purely sensual terms. (Your local `family-friendly' newspaper may publish food recipes, and reviews of food-prep tools for example, but can you imagine parallel articles on intercourse? And why not...?)

04may05

Finally got around to shooting the backside of my first march creativity bead exercise variation, (whew, what a mouthful!) and creating a page for it. There are links to the previous 4 files also.

I've also cleaned up the HowtoGlassBeads Directory a bit, and updated the shops list since my road trip---I now have beads for sale in at Lady Bug Beads in MO. If you live in the St. Louis area perhaps you've spotted the ladybug dotted VW bug, which is has got to be the cutest promotional gimmick I've encountered in quite a while. My thanks to Pattee Goodman-Baker, former GLBG guild prez and kind friend, who encouraged me to contact them. Both the TX shops currently carrying my stuff, Nova Beads and Creations and Beadaholique, have lots of new goodies for you to check out. (The other two are evidently defunct. C'est la vie!)

03may05

More ruminations, this time coming out of the Metro Grand Spring Tour, a bike ride which, like the redbud that accompanies it, just seems to say `spring'.

(As you see, I'm playing with putting little pictures in these entries, and haven't quite got it down---for one thing, I'm using `deprecated' commands [cuz I haven't a clue how to implement the css] and even those are kinda shaky. But no doubt things will improve with time:)

02may05

Some so-so showNtell beads serve as a springboard for ruminations concerning the state of the glass beadmaking world. If you can imagine nothing less exciting than that, then check out Janel Jacobson's netsuke, a wonderful discovery I made while researching (ahem, two little searches on google to make sure I was using a term correctly) the above post: small carvings of little creatures whose exquisite simplicity do more to capture the glory and fragility of the natural world than any polemic ever could.

And if you're going, wait a minute, I don't remember that picture being there earlier today---well, you're right. It wasn't. But since I'd (mistakenly) gone to the effort to make the crop, I decided to use it. And this gives me the opportunity to let you know I've cleaned up the GlassBeads Directory a bit.

01may05

Happy May Day. Today's post comes out of my number one frustration when buying pretty spring-colored seed beads like ivories and celadon greens: dyed coatings.