"Vintage" Birdcage ATCs

These are some Artist Trading Cards I made for a swap-bot swap. I like doing ATCs, they are like an assigned sketch topic but fun.

2012 Planner

 I've made a planner for next year. This is the front. For an epigraph I put in some Latin.

 It's made from a National Geographic book called Hawaii. I picked it for the gold embossing on teal, but I was reading snippets as I cut it apart and they were very interesting, and mostly about sharks.

I left centimeter wide strips of the original pages and glued printer paper in between them. These pages feel nice to turn through. I want to have it heavily, heavily illustrated but I am out of practice so the illustrations so far are a bit timid. You can see they do not fill up the space allotted them.

My hope is that through a year of filling it up with goals and adventures it will become a little time capsule of 2012.

Harry Potter Christmas Ornaments

I joined a craft swap to exchange handmade Harry Potter Christmas ornaments, and once I got started I thought of a family we've known forever who are big HP fans and I made a few nice ornaments for them as well. 

 The snitch has wings of cut paper and I haven't invented how to send it through the mail without destroying them, especially because the gold ball is solid epoxy resin and comparatively heavy. I invented the gold, it is from mixing an acrylic color called Interference Orange (translucent white with glimmer that flashes orange/green) with Burnt Umber (dark brown). I hoped it would turn out light shiny brown, and instead it made a perfect candy bronze. There are heaps of mixable acrylic mediums that I've just steered away from because I don't feel I have time to learn to control them, but this small success is encouraging.

I signed up for the swap hoping my partner would want a little Weasley Sweater, and she didn't seem to, so I made one anyway for our friends the Tersignis. Both sweaters I have knit have been this scale, although I have knit several swaths of fabric meant to be sweater fronts. 

It's so rewarding to make things that a ton of talented people have already designed, I can just sit down and turn them out and they're charming. I noticed the same thing when I made my TARDIS, which still no one in VT has visited. I hope they are all snowed in. 

Christmas Cards!

I meant to send my Christmas cards out on Saturday but the Post Office was closed and I only had Liberty Bell stamps, which are a bit grave really. So I had my cards for an extra day, and I made them extra good. 

 I drew simple messages and hid them under the postage.

 I used my dip pen to put some festive illustrations on the backs of the envelopes.

I had to free up my double pointed needles to cast on a tiny sweater ornament, so I finally finished up these socks from last year and they're on their way to my Nana. 

I found an advent calendar for a dollar at Trader Joe's, so I put a couple dollars' postage on it and sent it on its way, heavily inked in silver.

a new word

a new word catches my eye. I perk up, sound it out. pulchritudinous. I want to collect it, but it's so ugly. I expect the writer hasn't selected it for its clarity. Maybe I will just find out, doesn't mean I'll use it. pulchritudinous. I can spell it, at least.
It means having beauty, from the latin pulchritudo. Oh, latin, you are no good at this.

Letterboxing in Golden Gate Park

I had a really nice day of letterboxing in Golden Gate Park. First we found the Tribute to the Japan Earthquake series, and then we found the Stow Lake Microbox series. We had to hunt pretty thoroughly for the Andy Goldsworthy sculpture outside the De Young that was the starting point of the Tribute clue. The De Young is my favorite art museum. It was closed today but there is loads to look at in the Garden of Enchantment. 

The Tribute Letterboxes are sited around the tea garden, although none are inside. Admission to the Hagiwara Tea Garden is free for three hours a week-- 9 to 10am M/W/F-- and neither of us had ever been so it was a treat. There were water features, bridges (wooden and stone), pagodas^ and sculpted gates. I amused myself by picking out bits of the Japanese text on the plaques everywhere and trying to take pictures from from anywhere but the prescribed vantage points.

 This bridge seems unusual, you can climb either side like a ladder, and it's very high up.

 After we finished the Tribute series, we went to nearby Stow Lake. These were super well carved and cleverly hidden. In the end we'd made nearly two circuits of the lake, all on a generous paved path.

I am excited to exhaust the rest of the Park's letterboxes over a number of daytrips and then spend a day carving on-site and planting a box and devising a clue.

A Visit to Daiso

In the past I've made a trip across the bay just to go to Ichiban Kan and Daiso, two dollar stores in SF Japan town. I happened to be nearby today so I stopped in to look at the bento supplies. I'm being extra double frugal until I find work, so it felt weird to buy anything. However, I knew exactly what supplies I'm lacking and put back a bunch of cute, cheap things that weren't as useful. I bought a bit of food and some bento gear, and spent less than my budget. I still feel like $19 gone from my no longer periodically replenished savings is a bit of a tragedy.

 So, I am cheering myself up by replying to job postings. False! I am cheering myself up by a game I invented wherein I stop spending money entirely until I read all the Japanese info on the packages of the stuff I bought. Things from the Japan Town dollar stores are very thoroughly packaged. With this game I am getting more value from my purchases, by learning, and also taking a break from buying things. I threw away some of the packaging already, so there are five interesting looking pieces to read. This is from a little panda bear that is small enough to ride in a bento and dispense dry seasonings.