rejiquar works

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the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn

29dec05

For the third post of Giftwrapping...okay, if you've absolutely had it with the whole triviality of gifts-and-giftwrapping, specially when so many have so little to be thankful for, check out this fabulous new blog/website by Carl Buell, Olduvai George. This guy has been painting prehistoric beasties forever (and his casual comments reveal just how awesomely knowledgeable he is), and he recently started a website. And now, he's continuing to add to it, currently doing a series on prehistoric pachyderms, along with fairly detailed info of how he puts his (now)digital images together. He uses photoshop, but I imagine the instructions would translate pretty readily to the Gimp.

I was lucky enough to check this site out when it first started, and recently was reminded of it again, and continue to be impressed. And now, there's pretty clear signs that his instructions will likely evolve (forgive the pun) into full-fledged howtos in the not too distant future---I find people who exude this much joy and happiness in sharing their knowledge such a pleasure---the true spirit of the season, and all that...:)

28dec05

Some poor person at the ISGB emailed me again, begging for some promotional images for the isgb booth in the Rosen show (hey, we're gonna be in the Rosen show---tell all your wholesale jewelry buying friends!:) I was 'spozed to send three days ago (or more---maybe today will be the day I don't fall exhausted into bed by 8) and after watching the scp protocol clunk along endlessly ---like 8 whole minutes---for each of the 24meg tifs, I decided to send along `full-size' jpgs. Then, because I'm a terrible typist, I checked the urls I'd sent to my unsuspecting victim, to see if they were correct, and lo and behold, the entire image loaded right up in Firefox. I was so very impressed.

I see that I have to back up here, to explain my excitement: back in the old days, when there was no dsl, and people (like me) routinely forgot to scale their images, you could click on something and then wait and wait and wait till the image finally loaded and then---oh major annoyance!---you'd see only one corner of a picture too big to fit on your screen. Naturally, I fully expected this to happen with the .jpgs mentioned above, because they weren't scaled for web, but for print---I just wanted to check and make certain I'd transferred the correct picture, had the right url, etc. But, as I said, I saw the whole thing, because Firefox automagically scaled it.

Now, for all I know it's been doing this for months or years, and other browsers offer the same feature, though from what I've heard, I wouldn't count on Exploder. And it sharpens a dilemma: In the past couple of years I've felt that I'd like to post images bigger than 512 pixels wide, knowing inevitably that as bandwidth increases, people will desire greater detail. At the same time, I have vivid memories of a Vietnamese guy whom I tried to show my website---and his connection was so slow we couldn't get the index page---nor any other page for that matter---to load. And that was less than two years ago. In other words, the site is already too image heavy for folks at the lower end of the bandwidth scale.

Besides, what size should I upgrade to? Well, if the browser scales the images to fit the window, really, I'm limited only by the resolution only of my camera. Of course, this means a three-tiered link system---thumbnails, 512 pixel-wide, and full size, and thus more work on my part, but since it would useful to anyone with firefox and the appropriate bandwidth immediately, I guess I'm good to go.

The only problem is that now, I'm gonna have to start framing stuff in the camera properly again. Oh, poor pitiful me, forced back to decent photographic technique. Oh, and the giftwrap post? Well, I was gonna write this long thing about these being the twelve posts of giftwrapping, with some hemming and hawing about whether today was the second or third day, and how those brown gifts shoulda been the 4th day, since there were four of them...but anyway. Here's a post featuring two gifts in many-colored paper. Enjoy.

27dec05

Well, on Christmas it rained, and was again too dark to use natural light without a copystand, and I like my wood floor as a background better than the fake woodgrain of the copystand. (Also I was too lazy to haul it up, not to mention busy, since I had roughly 2-1/2 hours to coax the semi-failed breakfast stollen into rising and baking, photograph all these gifts and wrap 4 more before I had to leave. So instead I hauled the ancient softbox the wizard made many years ago to supplement the light, along with a large mirror to bounce it back. I still ended up lightening and brightening nearly every picture I took.)

But lighting aside, I ended up with enough pictures to make at least a dozen posts on holiday giftwrapping; this post features the ones wrapped with a paper my mother-in-law especially likes. Enjoy.

26dec05

Spent most of the day (I wrote this post the 24th, trying to get ahead a bit:) wrapping and decorating gifts (which I then failed to photograph, because it was so cloudy there wasn't enough light---my studio setup isn't really large enough for most gift wrapping) but with luck I should be able to get them tomorrow morning (so far our days have typically been brightest then.) One of the items I wrapped was this ornament:)

25dec05

Merry Christmas! (or Happy Saturnalia, as the case may be:) As promised, here's the ornament I showed wrapped yesterday.

24dec05

Since today is Christmas eve, I thought a wrapped gift would be entirely appropriate---especially as I've spent most of the day wrapping and decorating gifts! Tomorrow, I'll show the contents:)

22dec05

We are in a much better mood today. This rather lame ornament does illustrate one of the realities of working glass, though: the fact that transparent yellows, oranges and reds are colorless in high heat, and must be `struck' in cooler heat (usually just above the annealing temperature) for the color to show.

21dec05

Today is the winter Solstice, which I've been wanting to celebrate for awhile, though this is the first year I've managed it---I'm always behind, and trying to get ready for Christmas, 3--4 days later, has always been hard enough. But the Winter Solstice is really a better fit: first off, it means (hip, hip hurrah!) the days are getting longer again. Also, it's the original winter holiday, without the religious connotations with which I've become increasingly uncomfortable (and to judge from the meaner-spirited things I've heard it appears that some segments of the Christian cohort is less comfortable sharing their holiday with the likes of agnostics like me.)

Well, holiday trees are pagan, but since the pagans were long since stamped out, I figure I can enjoy this custom any way I please. And one of the ways I please is by making ornaments---suitable as homemade gifts for celebrants of solstice and christmas alike. Here is the first in a series.

19dec05

I found my good tripod mount and took a whole bunch of pix today, so there should be some glass-related posts coming your way for the next several days. This is a not very good howto on tessellated beads, because it lacks process shots---still haven't worked out how to photograph myself when working---but it does feature a halfway decent shot of a half-way decent set of beads. (I said there would be posts. I didn't say they would be earth-shattering.)

10dec05

It was painful, but I did it: I made a new directory, called Food---for all those so-wonderful recipes I've come up with, right? No, I'm not a foodie. But cooking is an art as much as anything, and even I have, after making thousands of muffins and cookies, become reasonably competent at it. This German Holiday Bread, Stollen, has been a Christmas morning staple in my family for decades, so this recipe my variation is as much for my benefit (and for that of any interested family members) as anyone else.

09dec05

In honor of the six inches or so of snow we got last night, I dug this picture from last January out of storage. I admit when taking it I was thinking of humor for the website. Well, never let it be said I don't have the odd idiosyncrasy, here or there. (Or maybe perversities would be a better term.)

08dec05

A while back I featured a new stocking; just for kicks, here's how I wrapped it

07dec05

The last of the antique curliQ series. This bead is made with one of the many, many bullseyes red strips I had lying around, and decorated with their lovely 1mm black stringer. (For some reason I've never been comfortable pulling stringer. Always seems like a dreadful waste of time.) This from a woman who makes her own frits... I think it made a very nice garnet bead. Another bead in that series yielded a handsome necklace as well as another closeup of a antique garnet curliQ.

I've also updated the glass bead index page to not only reflect these posts, but one on another variant of antique posted last May though you'll need to scroll down a ways to see it.

Oh, and since I went to the trouble of writing a letter to Col. Trostel of the Colorado State Patrol about their decision to ban bicycle rides of more than 2500 riders, I figured I might as well post it, with some extra ranting thrown in for good measure, of course:)

05dec05

The most difficult to make (because it's pig) but best looking (IMHO) of the series, because the muddy looking, poor-quality glass looks more authentically old, besides showing the pixie dust better are the bronze curliQ antiques.

Also cleaned up the local index page to show all the bike rides I've posted this year. This was way more complicated than it sounds.

04dec05

Yet another antique curliQ, this time in luscious lime green, (I love lime green, can't you tell?)

In other news, someone wrote me asking about small bead techniques, and, as so many times before, I've discovered my site isn't really organized to answer that question. Well, that's why designing relational databases is so difficult, I guess. At any rate, I have a new organizational page in the HowtoString section, though there's still really only the one post worth mentioning. A couple of the others do make clear just how many beads I can pile on for a project, and collects some (deservedly) obscure posts for my own benefit.

02dec05

I guess winter has come early to Michigan this year: the ground is actually white, and it still seems like November. So this bead, a heavily frosted white cobalt curliQ antique, fits right in.

Not much else to report, except that, sure enough, the claim on the box of the film Milwaukee, Minnesota that if you liked Fargo you'd like this film too worked for me. It's not nearly as slick---for me, it's always the greenish indoor lighting that gives away low-budget films, and this film, with 2/3 of the footage shot for just 100K, is definitely on that scale---but the story and acting are great, and both movies share, in addition to quirky, dark storylines, gutsy female protagonists, a setting very much in keeping with our current weather (though Detroit, thank goodness, doesn't get as cold as the Twin Cities. Brr!)

01dec05

As I was riding to Ann Arbor today, I reflected how dreary, grey and cold the weather seemed. In fact, it's not that bad (around freezing) and the `winter' hues---greys, tans, browns---can be infinitely subtle and rewarding. The secret for me is simply to get outside every day, no matter how cloudy: this is how I beat the winter blahs (very important, considering winter won't even officially start for another 3 weeks).

After getting outside every day, the next best thing is to appreciate Michigan's dramatic turn of seasons---and here's a post celebrating the glorious fall color from just three weeks past.

30nov05

Oooh, that was so much fun, I decided to do it again: I fixed the fuschia filenames for the curliQ antiques. In fact, there are is a whole series of these pages on antique curliQs that I made earlier this year (8jun) but didn't quite finish, and thus, never posted. So, instead of spending what is probably the last day above freezing this year diligently planting those seedlings I ordered, I tidied up the series. (Oh, and yes, the trees got planted, though I was digging in the dark, by the end.)

Well! Finding these almost-finished posts was just like discovering money in the couch cushions---they'll keep me going for the next week, easy:)

27nov05

Lazy programmers reuse bits of code. But why stop at bits, when the lazy giftwrapper can reuse the whole kit and caboodle, with of course the addition of a couple of bows and ribbons? So what if the resulting mess looks horridly overdone? It's fun! It's easy! It's the appalling purple redux wrap!

25nov05

I never really did straighten out my concentrator problems, but I'm back to making beads---even buttons...which one day I'll photograph and put on the site.

In the meantime, I am getting better at lighting stuff on the copystand to make `straight-down' pix, so here's a new stocking photographed using the technique, just in time for the start of the winter holiday season. (In fact, even we went shopping today, though only for groceries and miscellaney, at Meijers, and had not one but two scanner errors.

The guy at the returns counter wasn't thrilled to be giving me ten bucks but since Michigan law dictates 10x the difference in price, if overcharged, or $5 [whichever is less] per item for scanner errors, he was obligated, and I'm profoundly grateful I didn't have to argue. Meijer's may not be perfect, but even on a quick trip to pick up a quart of milk and some toe warmers, we managed to spend $87. And we'll be coming back.

Hoping you had a nice Thanksgiving & Black Friday too...:)

16oct05

I have been busy, busy, busy, planting bulbs (since they did so well last year---that means this time around, having spent oodles, they really will all be mouse food, right?) moving stuff around, even putting in beds. But from a pictorial point of view my garden is pretty much finished for the year, except for these wonderful zinnias which, despite wind knocking them over and mildew coating their leaves, are still blooming. ---In fact, I'm kinda waiting for frost to kill them, so I can move the bulbs and perennials into the spaces where I planted them, early this summer, to fill in the many bare spots.

And if ratty zinnias don't thrill you, this Botany site of the day has some absolutely stunning floral images, including luscious edible ornamentals, photography tips not to mention a great deal of botanical info about each item. And, as a bonus, I note the site points to Tom Volk's Fungi Page, including his wonderful Fungus of the Month (don't let the hideous design of the site or the drabness of the fungus of the month index page fool you---click on the links for lots of yummy pix, plus detailed info on the subjects depicted.)

I've stumbled across Volk's site before, but I owe the Tangled Bank science carnivals for the Botany of the Day find. (These carnivals---I've seen 'em for philosophy, too, are sort of like online apas, that is, collections of cool articles collated by an editor, who is different for each edition. They're all over the map, and range from silly to serious, quite technical to easily read by the lay person. Well worth of bit of your web-surfing time budget:)

25sep05

Pix of some autumn wildflowers and a ride to Chelsea, a dedication to Charlotte Marcotte. Dig deeper for tedious ruminations on Katrina which does include a link to some cool---and free!---fonts.

09sep05

Yet another peripherally related Gathering post, as I had the opportunity to choose these two fabulous beads by Kim Fields there.

08sep05

We celebrated Labor Day by biking to, and hiking in, one of southeastern Michigan's hidden treasures: Maybury State Park.