2011 ornament

Back in the late 70s, we used to make Christmas ornaments as a girl scouts fundraiser. They were made from old Christmas cards, cut into circles which were then folded into triangles. The triangles were stapled together along the 3 edges, and 25 of these made a ball ornament. The bigger the original circle cutouts, the bigger the resulting ball. And of course there would be glitter on all the edges (to conceal the staples). We made huge ones and also little ones.

I hadn't made those in a long time, but decided to make another style of ornament from the 2011 cards. We don't get so many cards any more (since we don't send any...ahem). But there were enough cards with the right size images to make this. I used 4 cottage cheese container lids as the substrates, gel medium as the glue to cover the lids with scraps of decorative paper. With the plastic lids, I didn't need to worry about grain and I could use any little bit of paper scrap I had! Yippee! Wrapped gold ribbon around each of the segments and put one coat of GAC 500 over the decorative paper. The card cutouts were then collaged on after that. This is followed by gold paint along the edges...but of course!

The top shot is a star, from the Scarlet Star Studios.

Here are shots of a few of the segments. This is a snowflake from my mom.



Some Christmas stockings from a friend's mom.



From the famous Michael5000. Although I must say that, since he only spent 3.5 cents on this card, the paper is rather thin and weak, and it's not keeping the 2 halves open very well, against the push of the neighboring cards, which are clearly made of more stout stock. (OK, he might've said that he spent 35 cents on the card, but of course, I can no longer tell because the card is now cut up and glued to the ornament.) I even had to give it a little help by attaching another small piece of paper; but alas, it didn't help much.



And from a college friend and his wife.

What we did on our month-long vacation

Lets see, Central Oregon for a few days, NY/CT/RI for a week, plus shorter day trips around OR & WA. Back East, saw the NY Botanical Gardens (thanks to Dr. Russ's recommendations), the Cloisters (it's just about my most favorite place in the world), the Frick Collection, the American Museum of Natural History (a close 2nd favorite), the Breakers, the 'summer cottage' of the Vanderbilts, and drove up to Albany to visit some friends. It was not an action packed trip, which was just fine for us.

I also managed to work on a new business card. I'm just about out of my gocco-printed cards and haven't had time to print any more, so I finally just had them printed at psprint.com, which I can recommend (and it was REALLY reasonably priced). They did the postcards for the Relay Replay show at JWSC back in December and I was really happy with them. The actual card is a bit darker, but here is the design. I used a detail from my last painting for the background:

And I thought this day would never arrive!

I installed the Relay/Replay show today!

I still need to do the labels, which I'll do tomorrow. I still have 8 'Sheilas' left to bind (haha, dr. russ..) I also hope to get a photo tomorrow. It's a hard space to photograph though. It's a glass covered case with overhead lights. I'll see what it looks like. Then I took the rest of the afternoon off and went on a gallery walk. I haven't done that in a LONG time. Most notable was the Manufactured exhibit at Contemporary Craft, definitely worth seeing. I ordered the catalog too (even though it was kind of pricey). Pack Rats should especially take note of this exhibit!

In the mean time, I finished one leg warmer. Exhibit A:



Aren't the buttons cute?! In real life, it's less blue and more gray-purply.

If at first you don't succeed...

You just gotta try it again, at 5 o'clock in the morning!

My nieces (and sister) were supposed to have left yesterday morning. We dutifully reported in at the airport 2 hours before their flight, only to find out that the flight to SFO was so delayed that there was no way they could make their connecting flight to TPE. Given that the choices were A. staying at my place for another night or B. staying at the airport in San Francisco, they chose option A. They were rebooked for an earlier flight out of PDX this morning, and we were up at 5am. Which makes one wonder, why I'm still up writing this?

Because I'm got more eye exploding pictures!

Needing to find something for the kids to do for another day (when all their toys have been carefully packed away), I remembered that I hadn't taken them on the trail in our neighborhood greenbelt (which connects all the way to Tryon Creek Park). So while their mother napped, the 3 of us went on an advanture.

This is at the head of the trail (and it's actually a lot, owned by someone, but not yet built). Somebody had put this swing up, and these two had a jolly good time:



The little one generally doesn't like to pose for photos, so when I asked to take a picture on the trail, this was what I got:



When I said, "give me a smile," she started wiggling around and smiling like crazy. This was probably the only time in my life when I had wished I had a video camera:





And believe it or not, I actually got some work done today. Mostly catching up on Portland Open Studios stuff, which I've neglected these last 5 weeks. Still have a lot more to do, but I've gotten started at least.

MiT, 6th senior days 6 & 7

But first, the cute niece story —

They both needed to have their bangs trimmed, so I did the deed this morning, out on the front deck. Afterwards, they asked if the deck needed to be swept. I said the birds will use the hairs to build nests.

Off we went to our respective events for the day, me with my 6th senior and they shopping at Bridgeport. I picked them up late in the afternoon.

When we returned, there was a beautiful little bird's nest sitting on the chair on the front deck.

"The birds built the hairs into a nest!" They were pretty excited.

As it turned out, the neighbor (the one that brought me the mummified mouse) was out pruning and found the nest. And of course he brought it for us.

It was a pretty magical moment while it lasted.

OK, my 6th senior. Of the people I've worked with, she's probably the most affected by dementia, but also the most driven to create. For the most part, she can not remember anything about the gocco process, other than that she has to press down. And often, while we're printing, after each print, she asks why the print itself does not look like the screen (where the inks have spread)

She was a printmaker (intaglio), and I've been perplexed/confused/frustrated by some of her desires and requests in terms of what she wants to do. I finally figured out this week that at least one of the issues is that she doesn't get plate tone with silkscreen, and she wants/expects plate tone. In intaglio, you get this beautiful soft plate tone, in addition to the dark lines where the plate has been etched. Unfortunately, you're just not going to get that with silkscreen, or with the gocco.

So I've focused on trying to get her to create multi-layered prints, to get a richer and more complex tone. I'm also trying different ways of generating image. We've used some of her collages as starting points, we've tossed various things I've brought on the copier; and this week, I had her draw and collage specifically to create a gocco screen. Initially, she had resisted drawing while we worked together, but this week, she was willing to that. Probably because I did not offer her another option this week, I just asked her to draw something that we could use.

I found out from the activities coordinator that she had wanted to drop out (she thought the process 'childish'), but her son convinced her to continue. I feel a little bit like I'm walking on eggshells, not sure how to work with her, so each week I try some different ways to create images. I just feel like the other shoe is going to drop any time and she's going to quit.

San Juan Island weekend

OK, get ready to have your eyes EXPLODE due to the tremendous cuteness you're about to witness.

Niece #2, being fascinated by a wind chime:



Nieces #1 and #2 stuffing straws into a scarecrow they're building:



Niece #1 belly dancing with auntie:



The lavender farm:

The New Normal

The Good Kitty, after 2 days of flee-n-hide, on the 3rd day chose a new tactic—stay-n-fight. After making a few gestures of biting them (although she never bit down so I guess that's more like snapping at them), the 3 of them have settled on a truce of sorts—pet the kitty for a little bit, but not too much.

She (the kitty) might even make a pretty good babysitter. We were all sitting on the deck the other day. One of the kids started going down the stairs, something that we don't allow the kitty to do, and the kitty started growling at the kid! The kid came back up on the deck. After a little while, the kid headed down the stairs again, and once again, the kitty growled! A herding kitty?

Among the various activities we've been enjoying with the kids was a trip to an alpaca farm. Exhibit A:



Now that the nieces have been here for over a week, the herd-of-mustangs-on-a-stampede feels quite normal now.

I left my heart...

...in San Francisco. Only sort of.

I'm back from a week-long trip to Old Gold Mountain. Although really only 5 days in the city, with 1 day there and 1 day back. And that was five days of museums and galleries, and nothing else. And I only hit the galleries downtown, none in the other neighborhoods.

So let's see, here's the list — SFMoMA (the Frida Kahlo show opened the day I left), de Young (the Chihuly show opened the day I left), the Asian Art Museum (the big Power & Glory of the Ming exhibit won't open until June 27). So I've missed all the big summer blockbusters! None the less, the exhibits were all wonderful. Now that I'm looking at the Asian Art Museum's web site again, I see an exhibit in October that I'd love to see — Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.

Of the galleries, I probably hit 35 or more of them. Just in the downtown area. Some of these buildings house 5 floors of galleries, with 3-5 galleries per floor. I was pretty organized — I got a gallery guide, visited their web sites and chose the ones I wanted to see. But I would get there and discover that, right in the same building, there are 12 other galleries. Well, heck, I might as well see those too. And there were quite a few that were not in the guide that I was happy to have visited. I ended up buying a print; and there's another one that I'm still thinking about. Both are pigment inkjet reproductions, so not original prints.

There are lots more that I could write about, but now that I'm back, I'm caught up in the everyday things again. There's yard work to do, housework, and yikes, an appt with the personal trainer tomorrow (and of course, I've done nothing for the last 10 days). Besides my studio work, that is. After our very wet May and June (so far), the weeds have completely taken over. I wish I can blame that on my week long absence, but it was already very bad before I left.

MiT, book for 2nd senior, day 1 & 2

Finally got back to the studio today and did some work on the book.

This first image was from a few days ago—the map mockup. These are 9 of the 10 prints that my Rock Star senior made over the 4 week period that we were meeting. Based on this one attempt, I concluded that the map had to be much bigger for it to make sense as a map, and would be too cumbersome to deal with, both to print and for the viewer.



One of the other options was to treat each print as a 'letter'. So here's a modified concertina, held together with a 'piano hinge'. Each page is an envelope that holds a print that's attached to each of the concertina folds.



Opened up to one of the pages. On the left, the back of an envelope; on the right, the front of the envelope. I drew a little stamp on there; not sure that's what I'll do. I am going to print either the outside of the envelopes or the inside of the envelopes, or maybe both, just not sure which or what yet.



One of the envelopes opened up. This is all made from scrap paper and prints that had been rejected. So this one has an old print on it. And I kind of like having a dark print on the inside. I think it sets off her print nicely.



The piano hinge pin is removed and the concertina is opened up. Again, this is an rejected print, but here's probably where I'll be printing an image of a night sky with lots of stars, or maybe fireworks.

The concertina would be the same height as the envelopes; my scrap paper is just a little short.



I'm using a piece of cardboard for the hinge pin in the mockup, but I was thinking maybe using a glow stick or one of those fiber optic wands. I searched around for some options, but they all look pretty ugly, unfortunately, so maybe not. I also looked for some really thin candles, and they might work. I'll be putting words on the inside of the concertina, and maybe on the envelopes too, so the idea of the candles can be worked into the book.

Woohoo! I found out tonight that they're going to pay me for the Portland Open Studios web site work! What a wonderful surprise! And it's not a pittance either.

OK, on to the 7 facts about me tag that I responded to yesterday but did not propagate. So I'm playing along and tagging these fine citizens of the blog slog:

1. The Yarn Princess...she's probably got lots of weird little facts to tell, if you can read Chinese.

2. The Life and Times of Michael5000, who will hopefully regale us all with some of the lessor known weird facts about him.

3. And Sundry, who tagged me with my very first tag a bit ago, and now I get to return the favor.

4, 5. Hey, this one is good for two! Sven & gl at The Scarlet Letters!

6. And The Muse, who writes so beautifully, I'm sure that if she had extra pinkie toenails and wrote about them, it would still sound like poetry.

7. Chicken Hat tells all.

The usual rules apply...to play or not to play, that is the question, but I won't call you poop-heads if you don't.

Squandered my 4 'free' days...

Well, it's the end of my 4 day period where I had no appts, and I was going to get soooo much done...

Needless to say, reality didn't quite work out that way. Although I did have a few things that I'd forgotten to put on the calendar, so it wasn't a totally free 4 days. But either way, definitely nothing was accomplished in the studio today, this being full of the usual Sunday things.

So I'm free to respond to the tag from Amanda Watson-Will...7 facts about me! This tag has rules:

1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
2 Post the rules on your blog.
3. Post 7 facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag 7 people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

Drum roll please...

1. I have an extra toenail on each of my pinkie toes. When I was little, I was told that this was a Mongol trait, so I always figured Ghengis to be kin, since something like 90% of Mongolian males can trace their genes to the great Khan. A while ago, I googled it and turned up nothing. I googled it again recently and discovered a whole lot of conversations going on about it. Turns out, Cantonese claim it to be a Cantonese trait; Hakkas claim it to be a Hakka trait; and seems like every other Han Chinese claims it to be the indicator that you're a 'true Han.' And even some Norwegians have it. So my dreams of Ghengis kinship seems to have been very well dashed. Either that, or he's pretty much single 'handedly', ahem, populated much of Asia and some of Europe too.

2. I belong to the Haplogroup D. Now isn't that just fascinating?! This is the group that came out of Africa, went into the Middle East, through Central Asia, Siberia, and then into the Americas. The weird thing is, when you look at the map of human migration on the National Geographics Genographics site , this group is NOT, I repeat NOT shown as having gone into East Asia at all. And yet, the oral presentation says that many East Asians belong to this group. So I wonder why they don't draw the line as branching down into East Asia, and only as having gone into the Americas? Huh?

3. I'm bilingual...I speak both Emacs and Vi! And both Chinese and English too. Only I speak Chinese like a 15 year old in 1975.

4. I'm a belly dancer. I even performed once, way, way, way, way back in 1986, or maybe it was 1987. It was so stressful that I never did it again. Now I just dance for the fun of it. I even started violin lessons hoping to eventually play in a Middle Eastern band, but I've been too busy to play much in the last couple of years.

5. My first career aspiration, when I was 5, was to be an opera singer. European opera, not Peking opera.

6. This one is really about my cat: she knows her name, and comes when she's called (by her name, but not 'kitty kitty'). Sometimes when she's curled up next to my head, we play this game—I call out different names in sequence, and when I say her name, she whips my head with her tail! Occasionally, a name is close enough that she gets confused, but otherwise, she's pretty much dead on!

7. The last one. I've squandered 6 of them, so I better make this one a good one. Oh, The Pressure! Oh right, I was planning to include this one but forgot—I'm an Emmy winner, sort of. It was a technical Emmy, and they are really awarded to the product. So I was part of the engineering team that designed the product, which won a technical Emmy back in 1988. In 1992, another one of my projects was nominated, but didn't win.

So now I'm supposed to tag 7 people...this is like a pyramid scheme, isn't it? I'm not sure that I know 7 people with blogs, and they've probably all done this one already. And it's getting late, so I'll do that tomorrow.

2008 Sock Mending Party!

No work was accomplished today because it was the 2008 Sock Mending Party —

2 coats
1 sock creature
several pairs of pants
and many, many socks were repaired.

In addition, a white coat arrived, well, white, and left with green circles on it; some embroidery was completed; and a quilt was on its way to being finished.

Chicken hat had a great time, as did the rest of us.

The cello was brought out and we had live music as we mended.

What a great way to start 2008! And now I'm off to laze around and read.

Now for something completely different...

Yes, a whole extra entry just for the now famous chicken hats from Liv and Lotus.

The hat itself:



And the chicken with the head:



I have permission from Hat Maker Herself that I may embellish it. So, the chicken might get fancied up...but then again, I might be all talk and no action.