19jun08

Somewhere or other I read about somebody's efforts to parse the search methods people use when cruising the web, which I gathered they compared to search algorithms used when searching for something in an unfamiliar city, which ultimately they proposed camed out of our hunting heritage...

But anyway. Via pandagon ---oops, wrong post, ok let's try that again I happened to click on Phoenician during the Time of Roman's blog and on Phoenician's sidebar wandered off to a website for Sexuality and Art (which I've stumbled on before) meandering thence to Terry Moore's site and blog to see what he's up to (I could never bring myself to finish Strangers in Paradise, cuz I wanted Katchoo, Francine and David to become a threesome, and suspected they wouldn't---that David would get forced out) and on the May 13th, 2008 entry he linked (via Neil Gaiman's blog) to what looks like this most excellent site about fountain pens ---again I've explored this subject before, as my brother is very into fountain pens.

These things are horrendously expensive, but the thought of a fine-point flexible nib pen that didn't have to be dipped like my beloved c-104 nibs---yum. Even better, they say they've got something called a flexible callig nib...wow.

Also from the sexuality in art folks, a much cheaper (DIY in fact) mini-palette ---just the sort of thing that would come in handy during my painting vacations, (though I've been getting by with water soluable crayons, supplemented with a few archival ink rollerballs).

Um, there was a point to all this, besides the fact that I wasted an entire morning, but darned if I can remember it now...

The other big art project I did during our trip was braid a cord for a gift for JDftY, who left for home two days ago, and who safely arrived in Kyushu earlier this morning.

14jun08

My father used to say that everyone should be poor at some point in their life, preferably when they're young. We lived in Detroit for many years because that was all we could afford; and the two things I hated the most were the noise and the crime. Our little 800 square foot house was broken into 11 times.

So I really appreciate returning to a house that has not been broken into (or burnt to the ground). Yes, we went on vacation, to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, mostly around the Taquamenon Falls area. Cold weather and abundant rain (as opposed to temps in the 90s and lack of same when we left home) made sometimes too much of a contrast, as at one point I had on 4 sets of clothes, though one pair of pants was wrapped around my head as a turban, and the mosquitoes, at least according to some locals, were the worst they'd seen in a long time.

But on the other hand, I saw lady slippers. Pink lady slippers. I've documented the yellow ones before, during a wisconsin vacation and I plan to post pix of some more I took this time (a slightly different variety) but this is the first time I've documented pink lady slippers and they made the cold and mosquitoes all worthwhile. (Well, mostly).

8jun08

Ok, I lied, just one more post from the series promoting my beads at B&B: this is probably the largest of the objects I'm offering, and thus, I fitting climax, I guess. (And that's probably gonna be it for a week or two---the f2 generation's got out of school and particularly given that JDftY must return home, there's an extra layer of end-of-school insanity. Though hopefully all the boxes will ship today. $300 (or more) to ship extra clothes and some snacks home. Yowch!

Beads, even big ones are so much more portable.

7jun08

This will probably be the last in my series of posts promoting booth #1018 at B&B.

Flaming winged hearts would seem to imply a love so great it's painful, so this series of cartoon strips about the heroic rescues following the 5.12 earthquake in China by an artist who wrote them in English specifically so folks around the world would get a sense of her people as something aside from the folks who provided the local takeout (though our local takeout's dry-fried green beans are very good indeed) seems altogether appropriate.

Though I do wonder what rock I've been living under, to be so completely unaware of this for three friggin' weeks. Mebbe I should add the bbc news site on my browser's home pages...

via Feministe.

6jun08

Today's friday fuglies is again kinda of a weak example of the genre, since I'm trying to, you know, promote my beads for B&B. At the same time I've had a lot of people really like beads that didn't thrill me; and there are a lot of beads out there that grab me but do nothing for other bead compatriots. This comes out of that whole dialog thing that goes on between creators and consumers/audience/recipients---there really isn't a good term for the right side of that equation there. All of the terms either have faintly pejorative aspects (consumer) or are too passive, when in fact art always succeeds because it resonates with its users, in the way that soundbox resonates with a vibrating string. Without the soundbox, the string is very little; and depending on the soundbox, the shape of the sound changes a great deal. So to are ideas changed, amplified, and spread through culture. Artists are vitally important, yes; but its consumers, in a very real sense do in fact incorporate and manipulate the art into its larger cultural context. The Mona Lisa derives a lot of its value from its fame.

This was recently driven home reading a post about what movies you have to see to appreciate other movies in which one commenter (2jun @ 1:11am) noted you not only needed to see, ideally, the entire Star Trek canon but also be up on all the related culture to ``get'' Galaxy Quest (which yes, I saw, and yes, I know enough of the culture to appreciate). I often fantasize about someone hundreds of years in the future reading some current novel laden with these sorts of references explained with annotations ---and wishing, sometimes, for such while reading Jane Austen, or better, Georgette Heyer (and, once her books go to the public domain, I could readily imagine legions of heyer fans doing just that.)

You see a little of this in fan-subbed anime: the subbers often put little explanatory details about Japanese culture or puns that don't obviously translate, etc., to help everyone get the context. I had to do a lot of it for JDftY; judging from her reactions, not to mention some of the weird manga f2tY brings home, the Japanese world-view of Christianity is either absent (as when in the wonderful film Tokyo Godfathers the holiday mall banners welcomed `Satan' instead of 'Santa' ---ouch!) or very skewed.

None of this is new, of course. Artists have been in their way trying to get all people to see themselves as artists, to see art as participatory; and because the right side of the equation is so important, that is why is there must be balance between copyright and fair use: once you release your art into the world to be appreciated, it's no longer solely yours.

So here's to some beads that need more creative minds than mine to make them extra-special.

05jun08

Some more buttons to promote Glassact's booth for Bead&Button.

Finally got a chance to try out that thai recipe site I recommended earlier, with one of our family favorites, the Indian-curry inspired `Massamun curry'. I doubled the recipe (except for the coconut milk), sliced the chicken and potatoes thin so they would cook faster, added an extra tablespoon of store-bought massamun curry paste for more flavor, used dark brown sugar instead of white (and mistook 2T for 2t, oops, and forgot the cashews entirely, waahh!), and added the juice of a lime. ---So, for me, pretty much followed the recipe;)

And it wasn't bad, though still a bit on the bland side. Mebbe more madras curry powder...?

However, I wasn't up for the more authentic version. And even my lame-o version was much better than spaghetti out of a jar. ---One reason I was feeling kinda limp is that yesterday I trekked home from the asian grocery story with 25--30# rice, plus assorted other goodies, and even with a hip strap, it was a bit of a strain. Obviously, I'm no Vietnamese countrywoman, to be toting double my own body weight around, though I was pleasantly surprised to wake up next morning with only slight sensation in my upper abs and triceps (the latter from hoisting up the pack to take strain off my shoulders.) The compressed-spine sensations took me back to my days as a paper carrier, and I truly believe that childhood job is the main reason I've mostly escaped from back pain: it built up the muscles early, not just in my back but front as well.

Moral of this meandering reminisce: those crunches really do help prevent back pain.

Oh yeah, buttons.

4jun08

Rita Stucke happens to be another of my fellow members whose work will be available at the GlassAct booth #1018 at B&B.

03jun08

Today's set of beads is the third product, after winged hearts and buttons ---bigholed beads---that I'm promoting for Bead&Button. My interest in the latter two products have been spurred by my friend Posy, who makes bead-knit purses; she uses a button inside as a sort of focal-point, and the large bead as a slide for the corded handles.

Since the post actually focuses as much on photography as beads, I thought I'd dig some more links out of storage. These are slightly less freezer-burned, dating back only to 10jan08;) ---Another artist friend of mine uses the soft-cube to photograph her work. For a long time I rather disdained this product, because it's marketed as a "quick'n'easy way to get perfect photographs", and I figured the design sacrificed flexibility for reliability and of course perfection as well.

However, after looking at Kristin's light-cube, I concluded the diffuser has some potential for creative product shots. So here's a linkfarm for making (or buying) a lightcube; out of that collection, I found several links most helpful , for making one and then using your new toy.

The latter two are from strobist, a site I've encountered before, and am most extremely impressed by. The underlying philosophy of this photography site is that you do not need to spend $1200 or whatever on fancy lights, but can get amazing effects with handheld flash. ---It's still a several hundred dollar investment to get their recommended stuff even with all the money saving tips (most of that being a good flash and these remote control thingies), and I've kind of been waiting till I upgraded to a real SLR before purchasing a flash for it, as I want something compatible. But someday...

I imagine most serious photographers have already stumbled across this wonderful site already, but if it not, well, consider this yet another I'm saving for me.

Or, you know, beads.

02jun08

Aaaannd we're back to hearts for B&B.

I suppose I could put up the links I found for composters yesterday (or even the links for dividing iris and dealing with iris borers that I'll need to find again) but I'll spare you.

Fortunately, I have this handy file called `linkfarm', so that on those occasions when I find cool stuff faster than I can use it, I can save it for later. So today's thawed set of links way back from 20dec07 have to do with temari, the Japanese folk art of thread balls. Yes, I actually managed to make two or three before veering off in my own weird direction, and some day I'll photograph 'em, but in the meantime, many luscious links for temari, plus this site has tutorials for making them.

Enjoy.

01jun08

Today I discovered I'd lost my white & purple iris, and half of my magenta iris, to the stems falling over---partially because of the wind, but mostly, I think, owing to iris borers. (Yechhh!) Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with the late spring garden---spreading all those iris two years ago, when I dug them up & soaked in 1:9 bleach solution to get rid of the prior crop of borers has finally yielded flowers. Plus, the purple columbine, a new phlox and the bleeding hearts are blooming for the first time.

Continuing on the floral theme, here's a shot of a couple of buttons I'm sending off to the B&B show. I'll have some older pieces there as well, and I'm curious to see if anyone goes for them, as they are sort of organic looking.

If real flower gardens rather than glass ones are more your thing, well, I found a couple of useful weed id sites for the upper midwest (the weed I was attempting to ID was curled dock, by the way;) plus one website that I thought kind of interesting, as the author is one of those sheep-to-shawl types, except with gardening and food.

31may08

Continuing on with featuring beads that I'll be selling at GlassAct booth #1018 at Bead&Button, which by the way, is not this weekend---and darn it all, I even checked the website, and I still managed to get confused---but next, here are some more of those winged hearts.

As it happens I offered to pick up some beads from one member in order to schlep 'em over to another member (who is going to B&B) which worked out very nicely, as I got to meet & chat with relatively new member Susan Matych-Hager. She has some nice stuff for the glassact booth, especially her new silver plum series of sets. Also very fun are her colorful orange, yellow, lime and turquoise ``bright and lights'' sets, available either in lots of 5 or 2, perfect for bracelet or earring designs.

Or you can check out a pair of pink pixie winged hearts, which will also be for sale.

28may08

Good morning all (it's 6:30 as I type this;) today I have yet another bead related intro, since as all good bead folk know Bead&Button is this next weekend, and our local lampworking guild, GlassAct has a booth, #1018, at this show. I'll be featuring my winged hearts if not my divine presence:), though that might count as a plus for some people, but even if my stuff doesn't do it for you, there's 16 other members' work to choose from.

So check it out;)

27may08

One of the frustrations of being an artist is not having the concept in your head match what you produce. However, it's part and parcel, and I accept that.

But what really drives me nuts is when I make a sample, figure I know what to expect, and then discover my perfect sample is instead one of a wide variety of outcomes---which again, could be a wonderful opportunity for exploring new avenues. Today's post, concerning some luster beads, is one such example.

Except, this always seems to happen when I've promised somebody-or-other a big batch of whatever-it-isn't, and then I feel really stupid, not to mention frustrated. Production bead-making, is, well, production, which means the consistency has to play a part. Anyone buying hand-made beads expects some variation, but then the question is: how much.

And this is where what my friend Kristin calls `bead dismorphia' comes in. Her definition of it refers to flaws that are minor but look glaringly unacceptable. Another bead artist might easily ignore the flaw, or point out other flaws that seem to be on the same level, and none of which are particularly out-of-the-way. I have this syndrome the worst when I'm finishing off a bead in the flame, rotating it on the mandrel, because that really shows up the bead being even the slightest bit off-center---one of my personal bugaboos. (Just as scum---tiny bubbles---might be another artist's issues.)

In this case, the dismorphia came not so much out of flaws per se, but the variability of the glass, which I haven't worked with all that much, and which I hadn't anticipated. (And why didn't I do the sensible thing and make all these beads ahead of time? Well...because the glass in question costs roughly 10x the other stuff, and I only have one or two rods of each. Not so much margin for error, there. Nevertheless, I still could've made up the entire rod, incorporated the failures into something else and purchased more of this stuff, even though it comes from the other side of the country, made up another batch of beads, failed with those, and gone through two or three more lather-rinse-repeats during the time I've been angsting. Sigh.)

You'd think, after years of making these things, that I'd be able to predict when this problem was likely to bite me (i.e. every time I take on a custom order) but no matter how much I try to get around it---sending photos ahead of time, etc---the poor customer still ends up waiting while I stumble around, attempting to resolve these issues.

Which is why, on the whole, I'm very grateful to my customers, and their patience.

26may08

Yes, we have another rant. If you're not in the mood, today's post is about pink seed bead tests.

***

Happy Memorial Day.

I feel a little odd typing that, because Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, was created to honor fallen veterans; so it seems disrespectful to celebrate what should be a time to remember sacrifices made in our behalf.

On a more literal level, Memorial Day would also seem to be a good time to range through one's own memories; there isn't really a secular `taking stock' type of day in our culture; advent, and particularly Lent would be the ones for Christianity, I suppose. I've always assumed that, for many people, aging is faster on the outside than for one's internal clock: I recall that first wrinkle under my eyes that meant I wasn't 20 any more, that first, incontrovertably silver hair at 33 meant I was rapidly approaching a middle age I still couldn't really encompass; I had to wind it around my finger for its mass to show white and not, perhaps, some random pale blonde, though the latter is what I kept hoping for several more years, until their increasing numbers, still invisible to the casual eye, made it clear I was going grey.

Now that my age shows inarguably on my face, I'm starting to see other signs of passing time. The first was actually years ago, when I saw The Graduate, restored, at the DFT. I was alive, albeit young, when this film came out in '67 (which I chiefly remember for the riots, which meant I had to stay in the back yard, as the tanks rolled down Woodward avenue, three blocks to the north of our house) but didn't see it until some time in the late 80s or early 90s.

The so-modern film techniques mostly failed to impress, as did the storyline, which even then struck me as rather anti-woman. What astounded me was the subtle shift in speech patterns. I'm sure I've mentioned before how fascinated I am by the odd sounding accents in old black and white film; but for the first time I heard a shift in a film made during my lifetime. That change, infinitely more subtle than ever-changing slang typically documented as indicators of changing times that the past was not now, that its assumptions were, however slight, rested upon worldviews that were different.

Well, as it happens JDftY is fond of ghost stories, so long as they're not too scary ( Caspar the Friendly Ghost is her favorite american example of the genre) and she wanted to see Ghostbusters, so I borrowed it from a friend, since I recalled that it was a reasonably decent film, if not one I'd ever hankered to see after the first time. Rewatching it, it became obvious why, given the film's garden-variety sexism---there are no women ghostbusters, or scientiests, or officials; the three speaking roles I recall were the dried-up librarian stereotype at the beginning (though at least she got to be pretty scary), the receptionist who (of course) is treated rudely by Bill Murray, and Sigourney Weaver's character, an orchestra musician whom Murray courts for no reason I could ever understand, excepting perhaps, that she was pretty and unimpressed by him, and thus a challange.

Oh, and the pretty blonde co-ed (really, there's no other term) Murray tries to seduce at the beginning of the film. I'd almost, but not quite, mercifully forgotten her. And of course Gozer the villain takes female form. But in addition to being misogynistic, the film is anti-intellectual (Weaver's fellow cellist is cast as an effete snob; the university administration who kicks the ghostbusters out of their cozy academic haven as unsympathetic hacks) and anti-environmentalist (the EPA official who releases the trouble-making ghosts from the ghostbusters' cage is shown to be hopelessly arrogant and grossly stupid, wading into a situation he doesn't understand).

Back then, I think I just assumed that Ackroyd and Ramis, who played the two rather likeable scientists with whom I identified, had just gotten stuck with the script. Nope. Turns out they wrote it. So, besides the obvious 80s markers (this film came out in '84, so assuming it was made mostly in '83 is now a quarter of a century old) such as Weaver's tightly permed hair, there is a thread of anti-environmentalism and irrationalism, concurrent with changing political times, as the country left behind the echoes of the Great Society, and Carter's ultimately ineffective efforts to get americans to consider gas-sipping cars and solar energy were swept away on a tide of the 80s consumerism and Star Wars.

---

I've gotten a little better at not opening my mouth over time, and I was certainly glad for it yesterday during a bike ride composed of local folk. Up til now, we've always had to go at least one town over to ride with a group, but this little local group is home-grown, and new. After some discussion (a lot of discussion, because I'm used to groups who've had their routes worked out for as much as 30 years and more) we set off, and reached our destination some 30 minutes later, at which point our designated leader informed us that K was now our leader. She, however, didn't seem that interested in coming up with the route back, so we had more discussion about which way to go, till I very nearly volunteered the wizard to lead us back, since he knows the roads, and most of them didn't seem to.

As it turns out, I'm glad I didn't, or rather, didn't try very hard, because the problem wasn't so much that no-one knew how to get back, but because aside from the two of us, the other four were in their 20s, and, as one fellow explained to me, they had this idea that everyone would take turns leading, and that they wanted to make the ride such that folks who'd never done it before could join midstream, and that last week they'd kinda split into several groups owing to poor communication, which was really the problem...without posting a map ahead of time? I enquired.

Oh yes.

I couldn't help thinking, awww, how sweet. Because, the thing is, I've been in on the forming of at least two organizations, and once a group gets very big, say over 4--5 people, you need a leader, or it takes forever to get anything done. It's tough to get folks to show up at meetings even when they are at the same day and time every month, and the same place, so getting them to meet up mid-stream on a random route struck me as wildly optimistic, at best. Yet I also found the naivete endearing; and it was clear to me that either they'll streamline the process, or the group won't last. The passage of years had changed my world-view, made me realize that their scheme wasn't gonna happen, at least not as currently envisioned.

(In any event, the wizard ended up leading them [most of the way] home.)

Which kind of brings me to Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Little Brother. Basically, it's about a high school kid who, while attempting to save an injured friend, becomes a prisoner of Homeland Security, and his ensuing efforts to combat the government. ---Various and assorted folks have, for example, compared Spider Robinson to Robert Heinlein, on whom I cut my sfnal teeth (after I graduated from James Blish's Star Trek adaptations), and whose juveniles are still a gold standard for many old-school sf readers.

It came to me, as I was reading Little Brother, that it reminded me to my introduction to real science fiction, all those years ago as a ninth grader in an all-girls Catholic high-school (for which I paid the tuition myself, and which required sex education and world religions), reading Heinleins. Heinlein's juveniles were hardly just entertaining yarns for teenagers; they had---have---strong political themes, (with which I don't necessarily agree; but see, the thing is, they started me thinking about this stuff) and one could spend a lot of time drawing parallels between Red Planet and Little Brother.

The big difference, of course, is that the average teenaged kid is not going to have to cope with Martian technology; whereas Little Brother is basically a series of useable privacy howtos wrapped in a story, which nevertheless had me weeping at my monitor. I recall being numbly afraid during my high-school and college years of the atomic bomb, of wondering whether I would travel across a desolate landscape, selling myself for food (this being about the worst fate besides death that I could imagine). Time passes; now we have new fears, and our stories reflect this. Heinlein was honored for putting realistic science in his novels; Doctorow takes this one step further, practically putting hyperlinks in the story for you to do the stuff the protagonist does yourself. (And I 'spose I ought to get off my ass and put my public key on this website somewhere...)

Memorial Day is supposed to honor our war dead. We tend to think of wars as conflicts involving uniforms and government-issued weapons, but it seems to me that the civilians who never asked to have wars fought on their soil, the prisoners held in secret prisons that used to be symbol of evil communism but now is just business as usual in the USA---they are ones who need to be remembered.

And, it seems to me we can best do that by standing up for the ideals on which our country was founded, for our rights---to privacy, to freedom, for dissent. So that those who have and who are suffering on our behalf do not have their lives spent in vain.

It does seem that the tide is slowly turning; that there is hope. For that, I guess, I can offer a "happy" Memorial Day.

Oh, and I picked this post because pink (and maybe light green) seem to me to represent hope, and these tests of pink seed beads showed a hope, or truth, that I didn't, in fact, expect.

20may08

Well, my ornamental onions and chives are about to open, the new purple phlox and the lungwort I rescued are going strong (as are the white violets); iris opened up last week (and in time to mix with some of my purple tulips, yay), and the peonies this weekend, so a floral post seems only appropriate.

15may08

I owe the wizard for the fun link of the day, a way-cool victorian laptop mod. I've always thought we ought to do these mods together, as it seems to me we have good overlapping skills for them. I mean, jewelry for computers! (Ever since I saw "jewelry for books" I've been all about loading up my living space, as opposed to my person, with ornament.)

Perhaps someday. In the meantime, another small, technical achievement.

14may08

Well, I haven't been very productive this week. Monday I went to court to accompany a friend in a small claims case. I happen to know both litigants, as they've both been part of my community for over 10---probably closer to 15---years, and both either currently or in the past belonged to professional organizations of which I'm a founding member. One of them is my friend. The other...well.

When I was younger I really did make an effort to meet all my obligations, and truly do what I said I was going to. After I had children, and just sort of drifted into flake-O land, and never really recovered. In the process, I lost of some the uptight, anal parts of my personality; but my oldest friend says I also became more pleasant to be around.

But the fact of the matter is that I know I've failed to redeem my word. Most of the time, my rather flexible memory has faded from view the various promises I've made, but I know enough to realize that I've angered and saddened some people who were counting on me to do what I said. There's the fella on the LMB mailing list to whom I promised a green blown ornament. I've long lost since lost his address, (not to mention not having blown anything in the last three years. Oops, that was a stupid promise to make.) There were some free books, also from that list, for which I never made proper thank-yous. There a bunch of very pretty white dichro beads from a Northern Lights white bead exchange, sitting in my drawer. I'm no longer sure who they're from or who they go to, but I screwed up on that one, for sure.

Probably the worst were my wedding gifts. It took me years to write thanks for some of those. In all the cases cited, poor record-keeping, or if you like a poor underlying structure (ah, if only I'd known it was the custom for bridesmaids to keep track of the incoming addresses, cuz Page is naturally talented at this sort of thing) was what did me in; but I expect that other failings have tripped other folks up. And of course, those are only the examples which I remember, or were aware; there's any number of sins we commit as artlessly as people crushing ants underfoot. One might not mean to, but the ants are just as dead.

Indian (Hindi) culture has a very beautiful custom whereat, you ask every one you've wronged over the past year to forgive you, to wipe the slate clean. I think it's a good one, because I believe that common fantasy trope of evil redounding on the magician who casts it comes out of reality: imposing evil and cruelty on others, however much it hurts them, also lessens you. ---I now have three names on my list of people for whom I feel justified in giving the cut direct, and it worries me, because it seems to me that as I get older, I should also be getting wiser; but the frequency, as plotted, seems to be increasing. That's a little worrisome.

Yet, there's also the problem of letting bad folks roam free because good people won't speak up. I suppose I should count my blessings, in that I do not believe any of these folks are particularly evil. Misguided, selfish, and lacking somewhat in empathy, perhaps. Well, we all rationalize---she deserved it, he's unpleasant, they're not like us---but I do sometimes wonder: at what point do petty unpleasantnesses cross over to becoming actively harmful to the community, at which you speak up to protect everyone else?

So, no, I don't wish any of the people attached to those three names active harm. I hope they'll become better and more loving (though in the meantime, I don't wish to associate with 'em). And, yes, today's post is related, if not in an obvious way.

9may08

So f2tE wanted to go see Iron Man, and I shamelessly rationalized er justified it because JDftY hadn't seen any American style movies in a real theatre. I even bought popcorn, amazing the natural children. I hadn't heard a great deal about this film, except that women didn't have much of a role (there were two with speaking roles---of more than one line, anyway) and that it decent, and that someone thought it was ironical that a weapons manufacturer decided to reform the world by ...turning himself into a giant weapon.

Er, perhaps I was giving the filmmakers too much credit, but I think that was kind of the point. The movie worked for me on a variety of levels. As a purely comic-book narrative in which the rather heartless rich man is redeemed and then works to transform himself, the increasingly more functional outer shell representing concurrent inner discovery, the film works just great.

And yes, the heart theme does indeed reappear throughout the film and my favorite scene involved the only major female character giving him a new one [the first time around] even though the modern appetite of filmmakers for making such things as gooey and gross as possible meant I had to close my eyes during a lot of it. Yeah, PG-13 is just a bit much for wusses like me;)

---Really, if only this film had only come before JDftY's Odysseus paper was due, it would've been very nearly the perfect pop culture foil to the greek hero because there are so many similarities, starting with the fact that both are characterized (literally) as royalty; both are cast as warriors whose braggadocio and hubris results in their being stripped of their empires, and must reclaim their thrones; both are helped and hampered by sorceress/temptress female characters; and I think both illustrate the pop culture of their times.

For those of who haven't read The Odyssey, Odysseus basically gets himself into trouble not so much when he craftily blinds and escapes from the maneating cyclops Polyphemus, but when he rejects Polyphemus' offer of truce and taunts him instead as he sails (or more technically rows) away. So then Polyphemus instead promises to sic his dad the sea god Poseidon on the boastful Odysseus (which you would think would get a sailor to sit up and take notice, but no) and the giant makes on good on his threat---Odysseus doesn't get home until he makes nice with the sea god.

Both the Greek and American hero-characters use also trickery, which the Greeks admired greatly, but the Romans rather despised, preferring straightforward battle, a value also held dear, particularly by the patriarchal warrior elements, in American culture. But even the Greek tale culminates in a huge battle (the slaughter of the suitors of Odysseus' wife, Penelope, whose own use of clever trickery, both on them and him really endeared her to me;) and I'm hardly giving anything away in an American action-hero film to tell you there's a climactic battle at the end. Where the stories diverge is in the source of their cultural anxieties---the Greek gods, if I understood correctly embodied a physical sense of place and nature, and like the storms the king of the gods represented, were inherently capricious, and though Americans ought to be worrying about the environment and what it's going to do to us, that's not a focus of this movie.

What it does have, of course, are a great many special effects, and I will admit the final costume design was luscious. This being the origin story, they spend a fair amount of the time over developing the suit, and the hero is conveniently into fancy cars (that being shorthand for princedom amongst the film's target demographic, and also the reason he uses his garage to build the thing) so there's plenty of cars and gadgets which I dutifully enjoyed, though beautifully muscled males are considerably higher up on my drool scale, as it were;) Stark is a very bright man, but he still makes some boneheaded (and funny) goofs, providing a lot of slapstick. I try never ever to talk during films, but I couldn't help myself this time: as Stark tested his new gadget, the word my cyclist self spit out involuntarily was `helmet'. And sho' nuff...

The film also worked for me as political commentary, not so much in that it actively subverted current US narratives about war (though it did, some) but as encapsulation of them. In some ways, I read the main character Tony Stark as embodiment of the American character---loud, often irritatingly boastful, somewhat snarky, too often wrongheaded and slow to learn better but basically good at heart.

People tend to think of comic book characters as simply weird and wacky inventions of their creators, but in fact they can and do have philosophical underpinnings. The fantastic four, for example, represented the classical four elements, and it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that Iron Man was created during the Viet Nam war, making him an ideal substrate for commentary on current US guilts and fears with regard to our various military endeavors. Any future historian attempting to document current social attitudes will have no difficulties figuring out our current national anxieties using this film. ---We went to a matinee, so had much of the theatre to ourselves, and I think I rather shocked the woman in front of me with this observation after the lights came up. f2tE correctly predicted that I'd like Pepper Potts, but Raza the terrorist had for me the both the most dynamic and problematic characterization.

And though I'd really love to see an effective woman superhero, at least the love interest was a) smart and b) not actually carried off by the baddie (looking at you, Superman/Batman/Spiderman) though of course she gets threatened (another apt comparison between this story and The Odyssey) Thus, we feminists have been agitating against this narrative for, oh, three thousand years now. But even despite the paucity of female narratives in the film JDftY enjoyed it, and as a special bonus, she can lord it over all her stay-at-home friends when she returns to Japan, since I gather it's not gonna be released there till September.

So yeah, for your standard american special effects blockbuster squarely aimed at the 18--25 yo male market, this was quite a decent example of the genre. Though if you're aiming for your kinder gentler side, well, I have some more of those french beaded flowers, which share with the iron man superhero, besides bright coloration, more weight for their size than you might expect.

8may08

So my latest excuse for not posting (besides, you know, actually spending my time making the stuff) has to do with some controversies in the feminist blogosphere. It doesn't really matter what the current fucque-up du blogue du jour (de jure? ---I originally typed du jure, a sort of cross-language eggcorn, since I know almost no latin and less french...) is, as the initimable Twisty puts it; these controversies, of varying heat, seem to flare up every few months, and don't, as far as I can tell, ever seem to get much better. They all basically turn on (failing to apply) the golden rule, that most christian of themes embodied in the parable of the master, servant and servant's servant, the one where the guy begs to have his huge debt forgiven, and is, but then goes and stomps on the person below hir for a pittance in response to the generosity shown hir.

Though at least this time around, I did find one interesting post about creative commons and appropriation, not least because beadmakers are notorious for complaining about other beadmakers, or the chinese, or whoever, that stole their idea. (Blergh.) Even less pleasant have been the squabbles over white beadworkers appropriating First American beadwork, forex Huichol wax-impress bead covered sculptures or peyote stitch. (My take: techniques belong to everyone, but iconography, at minimum, should be used respectfully. And yes, that puts us squarely into many shades of gray.) Needless to say, I happen to find this sort of thing extremely dispiriting, though sometimes irony of the worst pontificators screwing up lifts me a bit out of the pit, for thus are the biters bit (and my essentially mean-dog and doggerel nature revealed.)

Well, of course, if solving the world's ills were easy, people of goodwill would have fixed things right up millennia ago, when we first came down out of the trees and developed language. It's to be hoped that, over time, the world slowly is becoming a better place, for more people, but as the fights get closer to home, they inevitably hurt more.

***

Art ought to flow out of one's beliefs, one's dreams, one's desires---not be an escape from one's fears or a refuge from one's hurts. And yet, the latter seems far more common. Now, expressing one's pain or rage with the world, that's all right; and lest you think beads can't be painful or political, well, you've only to look at the work of Joyce Scott to know that's hogwash.

But I haven't quite figured that part out yet.

So in the meantime, I've been working on a more manageable problem, the french beaded flowers, and today's post explores some technical issues.

Oh, an one other problem which seems to me more manageable or at least one for which I could potentially have a tiny but potentially measurable impact: the open source boob controversy at Penguicon. The folks in charge of next year's Penguicon are kinda hoping the whole thing goes away, which seeing as it really only blew up online, after the con, because of some guy's (always a guy, sigh) blog post, despite the con's official stance on this stuff ("no means no" clearly printed in the con program booklet, which I think a big improvement on the one I saw when I first started doing cons, eep, 20 years ago: `15 gets you 20'), an attitude for which I can't entirely blame them. I mean, it's gotta be incredibly frustrating to have a great con that goes off really well (my basic impression) and then have something completely out of your control blow up in the sf/feminist blogosphere.

And the reason I know this is more-or-less the official line is because Matt Arnold, who is con-chair for next year, told me so at a local Ubuntu release party. In fact I think just about everybody at this ubuntu release party had attended Penguicon:) He seemed like a nice fella (I'm trying real hard not to write `nice young man' here---I'm not that old, darn it all!) but said he'd have a table at Wiscon (which in itself says something to me about Penguicon's feminist underpinnings) for Penguicon . So's y'all can email to the big cheese at the link above, or take your concerns to him direct:)

Or read about wire gauges in french beaded flowers.

25apr08

Today's post is a bit of a fraud in a number of ways: it's not really Friday, the bead's not really fugly, and the commentary I have about Penguicon is not fun (fugly being your `fun ugly' beads, hmmm?)

So the whole `open source boob project' at Penguicon has been racing around, mostly at LiveJournal, I gather, to the point where it showed up at pandagon, and, that, as it happens is actually something I feel I can weigh in on, as I attended Penguicon. Like a lot of people (ahem, women) who attended this con, I never encountered any of this, and neither did my real, live actual child, as opposed to the hypothetical children a lot of people have been batting around as a reason for making this project more private. To be fair, said child either accompanied me, or hung out in the anime room (and, btw, was the driving force for us attending;)

In fact, like Tamora Pierce, one of the Guests of Honor, and among other things, a co-founder of sheroes, and very much in the feminist sf camp---her entire oevre is basically `you go girl' sword & sworcery fantasy featuring girl and young women protagonists---so, yes, my feelings were also `I had a wonderful time at Penguicon 6. How many people will remember that as the con of the two singing Tesla coils, (check, made my first evah youtube video) and the comics artists drawing all over that guy's skull, (check, in fact I have a pic of xkcd drawing on this guy) and the Tron guy (check, and he looks really cool wandering around at night when the circuits light up) and the Ox delivering goodies from Acme? (check, f2tY was wild to get ribbons, and the first came from this guy---not to mention Tamora Pierce herself, who, despite being late to a panel, signed a book because I was on my way out and couldn't catch her later, making f2tE very happy indeed) Or will they remember it as the con where guys were grabbing girls' tits?' Not to mention Eric Raymond's wife, who had free dark chocolate tastings, with properly geeky evaluation sheets, and one female taster who actually knew what she was doing, as opposed to the rest of us, who were just yumming down, or Peter Salus' funny unix story at the copyfight panel, or the even more fruitful discussion my friend Melanie and I had about copying, inspiration, and growth as it affects bead artists during the hour and a half wait to get the singing tesla coils going Friday night.

So, yes, absolutely, this sort of thing needs to be raked over the coals not least because, um, no, boobs, like beads, are not what is known in the Open Source world as non-rivalrous. And yes, I think it's great that people (and I do mean people, cuz I've seen a few men with some very good comments) are speaking up.

But as I started digging down into the welter of posts, and mind you, I've mebbe read 5%, at best, I began to realize that this story was complicated in ways that Amanda at Pandagon didn't explore, but, I think, would, especially after reading a post by a woman who is very deeply plugged into the science fiction con/renfaire/SCA/computer nerd communiti(es), which she calls the nerd underground.

A number of folks have pointed out that this was actually started by women (often with the rather obnoxious idea that made it perfectly ok), but the whole thing blew up after the con was done and over because of obnoxious, sexist posts by some guy named ferret (and since I've no particular need to read more of that, I haven't read 'em and I'm not linking to 'em, but they're easy enough to find via the various links above, and there's a pretty good consensus that he screwed up, bigtime.

Plenty of people have suggested that this ferret guy trolls for attention, and uses misogyny to get it. (Whatta surprise.) And though I haven't been to Pennsic (nor any other sca event) for over two decades, and never really got into the rennie culture, and am only a computer geek by association with the wizard, ConFusion, where this evidently started, was my start in beads and the sf community, both of which are still dear to my heart (this basically being a bead website, and the reason I didn't post anything Thursday was cuz the latest Bujold came in and yes it was excellent, thank you). So, yeah, I'm dismayed.

That is, what might've been a perfectly valid attempt to increase people's comfort zone for touching, and perhaps connecting, blew up very quickly. ---Marcotte was concerned that young women, unsure of themselves, would feel empowerfulled (not at all the same thing as empowered) and pressured into this---and in this, she's right on target. But I couldn't help thinking, that, once again somebody's female hope got perverted by male oppression: I was going to write desires, but it's not the desires that are the problem, but the expectation they should be fulfilled.

And that's why I'm angry and dismayed. The sf&f community is one of the places where I have, and I think a lot of other people have felt a little more free to be themselves---to vociferously defend their opinions that a 20 year old book had a horribly misogynist ending and have the guy who loved it as his fave fantasy novel nod and acknowledge that, to wear a mess of beads and fused glass as a badgeholder and be outshone by the ribbon-ribbon (meta-ribbon) decorations that would easily rival those texas mum things, to laugh in sheer enjoyment as people made music with lightning.

Well, this is very much a rough draft, and I hate that it doesn't really hang together properly---but I promised the wizard a bike ride this morning, JDftY (and thus I) has a another movie to watch for her paper comparing death, ghosts, and spirit in American and Japanese pop culture as represented by Star Wars, Ghost in the Shell, and The Matrix to that in The Odyssey (yeah, my sneaky method of getting JDftY to watch some of my faves) due this Monday, I said I'd help somebody with a photography lesson, and, oh yeah...bead practice. So as not to make mistakes like this one.

23apr08

Ah, spring is sprung; so the glass is flung.

I do wish people wouldn't break bottles and throw trash on the streets---two issues that are either less of a problem or less noticeable, when snow covers the ground. On a somewhat more encouraging note, I've found what looks to be a promising thai recipe site while looking for a satay recipe---not because I wanted to learn how to make it, but because I had some and wanted ideas on how to use it!

Anyway. I have lots of posts piling up, but that, it's to be hoped, is a good thing. Today continues the peachy posts as promised last time.

17apr08

Now that I've gotten past April 15, and at least some of the heavy duty paperwork that's been dominating my life for the last week or so, I've got a little time to practice teeny tiny beadmaking, plus get back to the french beaded flowers. Oh, and post a buncha links I wanna keep track of. (Which perhaps somebody, somewhere, might also enjoy. But if not, well, this is the throwaway part of the post anyhow.)

I thought this Clinton versus Obama reimagined as a rather famous Sandman dialog was teh cute, and I say this as a (leaning towards) Clinton supporter. Political ads for the sf&f & graphic novel readers, yay! Via The Angry Black Woman's blog. (She's also a science fiction writer, way cool 'cuz I always enjoy watching my interests, in this case feminism and sf, cross.)

There's no getting around the fact that Obama has the best grass-roots promos, though. But for sheer `Attack of the Killer Tomatoes' USA classic awfullness so bad it's good, it's hard to beat that raining McCain one, which actually makes me proud that this country can still produce this sort of quirky, and obviously heartfelt, stuff. It's also a reminder that things are never as simple and obvious as they seem---the lead singer is black, and a woman, neither of which is what I'd consider a traditional republican demographic.

In the same way, you'd (or at least I'd) expect folks in the transgender community to all be progressives, and online, it seems they are. But the only transwoman I actually know, to talk to, is a diehard republican. Just as the only earth-is-6000-years-old fundementalists I actually know are just about the sweetest, most welcoming folks in my acquaintance---they'd have to be, to put up the assorted homeless friends, and put up with the decidedly not-homeless, and definitely agnostic-child-of-athiest-parents friend of their daughter on any number of weekends, aka f2tE. In a similar vein, the only Jehovah's Witness I actually knew to talk to was a convert even, yet she loved beaded jewelry and generously loaned me a small fortune in hard-to-find childbirth books. And never ever tried to convert me. Not behaviors you do for people you hate, or even look down on with pity. Nothing like actually meeting all those Others to discover they're human beings.

Continuing on with the sf & graphic novel theme, here's Barry/Ampersand's list of fave graphic novels...and his own Hereville which I think is well worth the time---it and Girl Genius are really the only ongoing online graphic stories I follow, Kevin&Kell being more of a newspaper style strip, and xkcd not really being sf&f, though it certainly has major geek quota. And yes, speaking of crossovers, we're planning on attending Penguicon this weekend at which that last author, as well as Vernor Vinge and Tamora Pierce are GoHs. Should be fun, though we'll probably only manage Saturday.

Finally to round out my link collection, the commentariat at IBTP has a lotta suggestions for radfem reading, some of which, particularly the sf-related stuff (i.e. Ursula K. LeGuin [mostly everything], Margaret Atwood, [Handmaid's Tale, and I hated it, but not because it wasn't superb] and Joanna Russ [How to Stop Women's Writing--or some such--applies to artists too, and is still relevent, sigh, 2--3 decades out]) I've actually read, and some other stuff I want to read. Twisty herself is great fun, and of course a feminist, but not at all a fun feminist.

Ok, french beaded flowers. Enjoy.

12apr08

Well, things have certainly gotten rather cluttered while the local server was down. I've started to clean up the glassbead directory, (which is that button to your right), putting odds and ends into newly created Color is Messy and 2007 glass beads, as well as updating the abstracts directory. So nothing entirely new, but a lot of stuff from the past year that might now be much easier to find.

11apr08

Once again, only time for something quick.

And as it happens, I've been wanting to do a weekly feature: Friday Fuglies! ---Don't that sound just lovely? No? Given my past efforts to, say, do Wednesday travel blogging (I still have well over half my Viet Nam directories to go through and post) and the like, or even some of the local architecture I've shot, it'll probably be a pretty sporadic series, but I figure I need something to compete with the all the cute kitties and doggies and babies.

Well, here they are, all my beady babies only a mother could love.

10apr08

Today's nearly over, and I'm tired ( and I have to get up early tomorrow, ugh), so another short and sweet post, of the beads I ought to be making if only my non-bead life didn't keep getting in the way (as it has pretty much nearly all this week...and tomorrow looks to be shot too, sigh.)

But I shall make beads!

09apr08

I divided the wirewrapping directory into two parts and updated the text for the wirewrap index. Also updated the wirewrap summary for the adornment index ---there's a lot of such cleanup I need to do. Oh, and fixed that 2108 date from yesterday:) So no fancy posts today.

And indeed, while doing research for another post, I came across an utterly simple something I've been meaning to post for a very long time. Almost two years, in fact.

08apr08

The last couple of days I've actually been practicing some of the slightly more advanced traditional french-beaded techniques, e.g. split basics. For a flower that would require some 25 odd florets, for a piece that, all told, has well over a hundred components. After that, frames of various sorts (i.e. extra supporting wires, or ribs) and some more practice of the conical shape, poorly demonstrated in the fantasy flower.

And I do have some, um, oh yeah, beads to make.

However, once I get through some of this other stuff, I'd like to get back to practicing these fantasy leaves, as I feel they're quite promising.

Something else to pursue in my copious free time is coming up with something cool to do with the various metal tea tins that have been piling up (we drink a lot of tea in this household) and I admit the fancy cylindrical cans are a selling point (even though my tea, genmai cha, just comes in the usual cellophane packs or cardboard boxes). I know at some point in the past I collected a bunch of links to altered altoids---and now that I have my home server, it shouldn't be too hard to find those links again, but in the meantime, here's another for the collection...

07apr08

Another gorgeous day, during which I spent the time doing errands, gardening, and beadwork, as opposed to merely pages about beadwork. Though my local server is back up, so yay, yay, yay, posts can be tested at home before exposing my horrid editing skills to the world. Today's post is pretty simple, just some seed bead tests. Don't know about you, but if I've put hours and hours and hours into a project that then should go for hundreds of bucks, I don't want it full of seed beads that are going to lose their color.

Also, while hunting around shipwreck beads (which carries one of my very favoritist czech flower bead) and fusion beads website, mostly to research crystals in case the local GLW show didn't have many (which it didn't) I found the best chart I've seen to date of swarovski colors. Also I discovered that one can a) buy austrian crystal 5000 in 3mm, b) 5301 in 2-1/2mm, and c) faceted CZ rondelles. In peridot green. Be still my beating heart. Jeez, what's next, synthetic ruby, emerald and diamond beads?

Enjoy.

06apr08

Three days ago I found a yellow crocus in my garden, and the snowdrops down the street are nodding away, as they have been for the past several days. Today, I finally started clearing away all the old rubbish (aka `winter interest') finding a number of small green shoots amongst all the dead stuff (and, of course, the usual winter crop of dandelions and crabgrass, which happily grows roots all winter long, or so it seems....) A few early purple crocus have joined the earlier yellow ones. Yay, spring.

My friend Devon, who got me involved in the hope bracelet project recently sent me a national link for arts advocacy. In a similar vein, though only of interest to washtenaw county, MI, artists, (working or living therein) the a2 area arts-alliance is doing a 2 minute online census to count artists. They ask you, optionally, to guess how many of us exist, an answer for which I haven't a clue. Anybody who makes art of any kind qualifies as an artist, my kind of definition.

So to continue with that theme, here is another exploration using beads and wires with french beading influence.

05apr08

I've always regretted missing Octavia Butler's lecture at Marygrove College; well, now they're bringing in another great science fiction writer, Samuel R. Delany, on Friday April 11. It's been years since I read Babel-17, which I thought was really cool. Alas, I couldn't get into his best known book, Dhalgren, and it seemed like he kind of dropped out of sight besides. Well, he's been writing all along, and his presentation is free and open to the public.

Guess I'd better cracking on Dhalgren, then.

Or I suppose I could continue workingon these french beaded thingies.

04apr08

So today I have some more heavy duty linky goodness, this time courtesy of my friend Melanie Brooks Lucaks of Earthenwood---she was one of the people to whom I chatted at the last boner, and she had a new steampunk line of links and mini-tiles which she thought that I, as a sf&f enthusiast, would enjoy. She's incorporating these into finished pieces with a lot of cool brass doo-dads, particularly those from the wholesale site vintaj, which retails their line at fusion beads. I myself have used brass goodies, just not in my work (yet. Though I keep meaning to. Or too. Really.) ---Those little round decorative thingies around the rivets in my hood are zinnia stampings from fancifuls.

Well, as it happens, I do like her stuff, and when she told me she had a series of posts about creating them, I promised to look at it. She even emailed me a index page for them, and lo and behold, this morning, I finally started in. (How many months later? Always behind the curve, le sigh.) It's quite a large series, with some 10--15 posts, plus tons of offsite links---one reason it's taken me so long to get to it, because I knew there was a lot to cover. ---I should note, I haven't actually read or seen all that much in the steampunk genre. I've read The Difference Engine, which I always thought the embodiment of the genre; The Diamond Age; I found the rather obscure Baker Street comic Honour Among Punks (which features a female punk Sherlock Holmes, way cool) that I was lucky enough to find at a local library. I was never able to get through Stephenson's Baroque Cycle---I stopped dead at a paragraph-long list of terms for penis. Bleh. Cryptonomicon was sort of cute, though.

I have seen Metropolis and Steamboy, both of which Melanie cites as references. Interestingly enough I took quite different ideas from them, particularly the latter. Steamboy was a gorgeous film that irritated me on several levels. One is the female characters---there are only two that I can recall at all, the irritating, spoilt Scarlett, and the protagonist's mother, who shows a bit of gumption at one point, but is basically just mommy. There were no scientist or inventor women at all in the film, which centers around the conflicts between the protagonist, his father and grandfather, and their varying views on technology.

The thing is, the technology is standing in for science, and they're not the same. Science---the scientific method---is a way of looking at, and thinking about the world, just as art is. It's a very powerful one, which is why technology has ramped up so quickly the last 200 years or so, once the fruits of the age of Enlightenment (or more properly Reason) started trickling down, or perhaps I should say, out into general society. But it aggravates me to no end to blame science for technology's ills, which struck me as the underlying theme of the film. But even `technology's ills' is a poor characterization, for technology merely amplifies human behavior. It doesn't create it.

We do not have to pollute the earth or turn people into cogs in the great machine (the scene from Metropolis that Melanie clipped for her blog was actually more reminiscent of the great Diego Rivera mural Detroit Industry than what I think of as steampunk, and of course the mural and the film are roughly contemporaneous) or any of the other cruelties we humans perpetrate on the earth and each other that so often get blamed on technology. Those come out of human failings---greed, I would've said, and at base below that, fear.

Of course, I could've just enjoyed the film's gorgeous visuals, the way Melanie did, and been inspired by them. There are times when I feel a) really old-school and b) preachy and this is one of them---all I have is a lot of text and a few links and the occasional image, whereas Melanie has combined process images, songs, film clips, links to other blogs and all sorts of other cool stuff to narrate her creation of these `stones and bits' as she calls them.

Now that's real multi-media and using the power of the web as an artist, and I'm very deeply impressed.

Um, so what about my creative process? Well, I actually have been playing with those frenched beaded flowers, and today's link is the first at all successful attempt of a beloved variation.

01apr08

I recently took a workshop through glassact, and one of the bennies was this pretty little macrame board. Definitely falls into the "gee, why didn't I think of that?" category.

And gee, while I was reading a post on Echidne's site about losing readers (number one reason: not posting regularly. Wouldn't know anything about that...) I noticed that coturnix, whom I think often makes interesting comments, has a blog under the seed scienceblog umbrella, which in turn has a link to gorgeous hi-res scans of one of the original Audobon's Birds. Yum!

So you must check out today's absolutely, soul-shatteringly important post...oh wait, April Fool. Happy April Fool's;) ---And the post, while not earth-shattering, is at least springy, which after our record snowfall for the winter, is a pretty enticing thought.

31mar08

Today's piece was a custom order that I've never really managed to photograph as well as I'd like---this is the second go-round. Dark, transparent beads such as garnet or dark ame are just plain difficult to photograph easily---shoot 'em on white, and they look black because of the contrasty background, shoot 'em on black and the color disappears into the background being reflected through 'em...

But I have lots and lots of links I want to post before I forget 'em, so today's offering is more about the intro than the main event. Life works out that way sometimes. ---One of my other friends has huge spools of copper wire at her house, mostly very fine, but one of 28ga and we had a bead get-together for the first time in months. I was inspired to finish up a french beaded flower project, a little white flower done in the so-called basic technique.

French beaded flowers have interested me for a long time, not least because I thought the technique could be adapted to make beaded dragons, sort the way Laura Butler made her wonderful pipecleaner animals: she wrapped the pipecleaners around an a 3 dimensional armature, much in the same way the strand of beaded wire is wrapped about a petal or leaf midrib. I got as far as making a black and white beaded zebra, many years ago after seeing Laura demo her technique (quite likely at ConFusion '95) but never really pursued it.

My interest sparked again in 2001/2002, first when Arlene Baker came to lecture at the Great Lakes Beadworkers' Guild, and at which I purchased her Beads In Bloom which I would still recommend as the best introduction to the technique---it has excellent and thorough instructions, nice galleries of both vintage and modern pieces, and enough patterns to get you started, and is readily available. The beaded flower chandelier is to die for, and I'd very much like to figure out how the bead-edging in the leaves was done: it's not the Victorian (aka Russian or English, or, in woven beading terms, ladder stitch) technique; nor is it purely the French technique...I'm thinking that perhaps it's related to ganutell, a similar appraoch to make artificial flowers that uses thread-fine-gauge wire twisted fiber. ---Or maybe one of those scandinavian techniques in which fine (30--34ga) wire is threaded through beads...?

The second inspiration came from the article in the Feb/Mar 01 Beadwork magazine about a French beaded flower artist named Mario Rivoli. Rivoli works in a much more coloristically intuitive manner, using many color mixes, as opposed to pre-hanked solid-color beads, or even the premixed or two-color mixes you occasionally see, to make his wonderful flowers. I couldn't find any samples of his work online, though.

French beaded flowers are traditionally made with seed beads, but I thought it would be really cool to mix small czech and semi-precious, and, as I learned how to make beads, lampwork, into the patterns. But I'm still just trying to learn the basic techniques. Ever so slowly, however, I'm getting better.

I have three victorian beaded flower books. As I've said, the Baker is my favorite, is readily available and certainly has the highest production values. I also have Daleen Kelly's Millennium Collection, which has more patterns, though the photography ranges from good to sometimes out of focus. This book is now out of print, but you can order it on disk. I particularly like her patterns for hydrangea and liatris, and if spiky flowers are your thing, you might want to check out Miyumi Nishi's free pattern for lavender, a similarly shaped flower. Finally I have Helen McCall's French Beaded Flowers I: A Guide for Beginners, which really is more of a large booklet. It doesn't have the range of the Kelly, but does have decent enough instructions in technique to get you started.

Of course, looking online before blowing a bunch of money on books is even better; so here's a howto for a hyacinth done in the victorian method; Jo Spijkers-van der Lee has a nice gallery of beaded miniature trees which I find a good deal more attractive than those hideous gemstone trees that used to be so popular---either because these are the efforts of a particular artist and show that passion, or because my tolerance for kitsch has risen---and what I consider an excellent tutorial for making one by Kimberly Chapman (whom I think I knew already from her discworld cake? And, she has a howto for a homemade bead-spinner as well... My, what a small world!)

Since I already have books on French beaded flowers, I didn't look for tutorials, but here are some samples---my favorite for inspiration is Rosemary Kurtz, which has a lot of nice large sharp images, and if that's not enough she also sells patterns for same online; I like these red-hot poker flowers by Chami (I think---it's a Japanese site), Donna's flowers strike me as reasonably priced if you just want to buy (or drool;) but the three must-see sites in my not-at-all humble opinion are this one (which has tutorials, including the one cited above), Caren Cohen's site and finally, Diana Neamtu's beaded flower site, which is the companion to her ganutell blog, which ultimately I found to be the most useful overall on this topic. Alas and alack, most of these sites are no longer active---judging from the yahoo board on ganutell, interest peaked around 2005. Fortunately, storage is cheap, and so despite a lot dead links here and there, much is still available. (I love the internet. No matter how tiny or obscure your craft is, there's likely to be some info about it on the internet. The downside, of course, is that I'll never master all the ways inventive folk have found to put thread, wire, and beads and other stuff, together.) At any rate the ganutell site is that of Maria Kerr.

Ganutell is a sister technique to molla, the spiral wire edged method to making flowers (somewhat similar to making stocking flowers, which I think was recently documented in Craft Magazine---but since I don't wear stockings...;) If you'd like to try basic ganutell, Loretta's Custom Stitchery offers one of two howtos for making the special thread and wire fiber used to make these flowers that I found (the other is buried in one of those useful sites above, somewhere), which are constructed using methods similar to french beaded flowers. And since my friend has (at a guess) thousands of feet of 30-34 ga wire, I could make a lot of ganutell. ---At some point, though, I suppose I'll have to purchase wire for beaded flowers, floss and wire flowers (the generic term for ganutell and molla, evidently), and the consensus seems to be that parawire is the place to order.

Of course if beads and [beadalon]wire are not your thing, there's always these cool vintage building signs from the latest carnival of the cities, (via Pharyngula)

01mar08

I thought I was done with snow and winter when I departed for Kalamazoo to participate in glassact's winter retreat---little did I know, more than a month later, the stuff would still be coming down like nobody's business. Now I'm really ready to be done with winter, though to be fair, it has been warming up. I realize that for certain parts of the world single digit (Farenheit) temperatures are balmy, at least for winter, but I vastly prefer the just-below-freezing 20s.

And in fact, the stuff's pretty coming down, especially when I have a lovely tidied studio to watch it in. And yes, new etsy postings are back. Today's offering, a pastel curliQ heart on a pretty ribbon , harkens back to this series.

Enjoy.

29feb08

This post almost got done in time before I left, two five weekends ago, for our local guild's local retreat in charming Kalamazoo. And what a lovely time it was, too---I hoped to enjoy myself, but hadn't expected it to be as wonderful as it was.

A lot of that has to do with the timing, which is deliberate: we schedule this towards the end of January precisely to deal with the post-christmas blahs, the fact that folks are tired of the cold and the dark and the snow and the sleet and freezing rain...

But alas, this post moldered for the next month: I spent a week after I came back playing with the stuff I learned and finishing off a few UFOs; the week after that almost finishing up my 2007 finances...the week after that, um, dealing with family issues, and last week being sick with a cold. (Not that anyone besides me cares about that, but I thought if I wrote down whenever I got one on the website, eventually I'd figure out how many of those detestable things I caught every year.)

Now, finally I'm doing better, and have lots of goodies to post, and have totally and completely and mercifully forgotten whatever great philosophical crap I was gonna write about before I left. But, to start, here's that last post in the heart series, for everyone out there whose valentine's day was dull, whose spring bulbs have yet to make their appearance, or who is just a little heartsore for whatever reason, and needing or even just wanting a little loving-kindness in their lives.

Take care all.

23jan08

I guess those stocking images must be from 2007 (what a surprise)...at any rate, I'm continuing with the heart theme. Given how cold it is out, heartwarming beads would be a plus, no?

But if cold and ice is your thing, check out our cobalt blue and sterling hammered link bracelet on Etsy.

22jan08

I've always found it a little interesting what people in general and artists in particular prioritize. Some go for color, others texture (those are my faves;) some for shape, or line, or overall design. It fascinates me, for example, that people who make really precise beads can have very messy studios, covered with rods and stringer, and bits and pieces...whereas folks who like the organic look might have ultra-tidy tables. I have my little rituals like everyone, and if I'm not under time pressure, I really feel much better if I have 5, or 10 or sometimes even 30 minutes to tidy up my table, putting away glass from prior sessions, wiping all the frit, pixie dust, shattered rod ends, etc away so that, ideally, I start with a completely bare table. Then I make these lumpy abstract things that look like they just got dug out of the ground.

This is not peculiar to my lampworking technique, but rather, a holdover from bead-stringing: I use so many kinds of beads (and COEs of glass) that it simply gets too confusing without these periodic cleanups. If I only used a few different components, mebbe the mess wouldn't bother me so much.

At any rate, it's become pretty obvious that habits I often admire in others---and vice versa, that friends or peers admire in me---are not so much virtues as compulsions. I am compelled to tidy up, compelled to make the same bead over and over (to a point) trying to get it right, compelled to complicate my life with 50 or a 100 different kinds of beads in a piece. Sometimes these compulsions cause real problems, but ultimately, I think a lot of art comes out of people's absolute necessity to cope with some quirk or kink or all-out furious need.

Perhaps the virtue is simply believing that assuaging those kinks is worthwhile. And following up on the love and desire theme, today's post is about hearts and today's etsy posts feature those selfsame hearts, cute little pendants we're offering in red, fuschia and a sort of coral pinkish red.

Enjoy.

16jan08

Yesterday I visited my friend Bethany Adams to do felting together. She mistakenly thought I knew all about it because of the Frankenstein coat, which is made of felted panels from old sweaters and suits. Oh no I explained, I just threw this stuff in the washer with hot water---I didn't really know anything.

We had a great visit, and now I have lots of topics to put in these little intros, as well as some very sweet top drilled hearts (finally figured out something semi-workable for a hollow bead) some new (or semi-new) photography tips, etc. So much fun stuff to write about and not nearly enough time to do it in.

But getting back to that coat, it's what I wear to keep from freezing while making beads, and it's based on the Folkwear ([not folkware---ah, my very own eggcorn]) or folkways) Tibetan panel coat pattern (#118), and Bethany suggested at the last moment that I bring that to embellish---oh what a blast! The back of the coat has some very ugly grey felt from an admittedly extremely warm sweater that I'd tried some lame decoration on before---but needlefelting brightly colored roving onto it was the perfect technique. Mostly I did Kristins Perkins-esque bullseyes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what she thinks of them;)

I don't think Bethany figured I would remain that fascinated by the dry felting for that long, but there's nothing like working on a project specially interesting to you, and to see that coat getting dressed up was so much fun...anyway, the point: we finished off with a brief easy wet felting project, felted soap, which is today's post.

But if that strikes you as absolutely silly, well, allow me to direct you to our latest etsy offerings---elegant sparkle gold earrings (again, in the hammered link series) some white pixie dangle ears with gold-washed and sterling bali that shows why Page shall forever be in my book the Queen of Bling, (what we called glitz in my day) plus two 5 beads sets made with that rich opaque Kugler glass in our very favoritist of color combos, purple and green.

Enjoy.

11jan08

To your right, a shot of our local river, taken while I was running, or rather, walking errands. (I've started some more substantive posts, or at least started thinking about them, or perhaps even taken pictures for them, but I really did have to spend the last two days putting away xmas decors & tidying this pigpen of a place up. Well, ok, yesterday I spent a coupla hours reading some tutorials on an excellent photography blog, but more on that later...This afternoon's effort yielded a living room, foyer and dining room that were almost presentable. I hate to think how long real housekeeping chores, like entering all my 2007 receipts from March on, will take. Yech. I'd so much rather make beads.)

I also had a very nice visit with our local guild's prezzy-elect---I'm teaching a kumi workshop for the guild's winter retreat, and she does beaded kumi. Looks an awful lot like three-bead beaded crochet, except it's faster. Up to now I haven't much cared for beads incorporated into braids, but I'm thinking I perhaps should reconsider. At any rate, Cindi's offered to drop in on my class and talk about this completely different approach. And a bonus, she brought her Japanese son, and also another Japanese exchange student, with whom JDftY had a nice visit, whilest f2tE and Son discovered they both detest math and love anime. And finally finished translating my thank-you note to JDftY's natural parents for the lovely gifts they gave us.

Today's etsy offering is also glittery and shiny, a wonderful long pair of dangly earrings with 23karat gold leaf beads, accented by some very fun bali teardrops of brushed vermeil---gold leaf over sterling silver.

9jan08

With the sun relatively low in the sky, and the grass green from the rain---and still relatively warm temps---the weather very much seemed like something from the waning days of Autumn. (Of course, it's winter. And the picture for today's garden post was actually taken just before Fall started.)

The inspiration was courtesy of my screensaver, which randomly pulls images from my photography directory: I happened to spot this pic cycling thru yesterday, or perhaps the day before, and thought a shot of these dark pink mums would be a good choice.

Particularly as today's etsy feature, a bracelet in the hammered silver link series, is also pink, albeit a light springish pink---but hey, in etsy terms, we are behind with the valentine's day stuff.

08jan08

I live in one of those midwestern states that has the saying, `if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes'...so after the cold and snow, now we have warmth and rain, so much of the former that I opened the doorwall to listen to the latter during my little morning stretches. From a gardening (and especially a fruit farming) point of view, this is terrible, because stuff buds prematurely and freezing cold (scheduled to return tonight) kills it all, meaning no hydrangea flowers for me, and not so many cherries for the farmers.

But since it was so warm I could open up the studio, I took the opportunity to do some more Thompson enamel tests on the Color is Messy samples I got last year, (because I crank the ventilation all the way up when working with ground powdered glass.) In fact, it was so pleasant in there that I finished up some other odds and ends, like the BE sample strands I mentioned yesterday. The odd lot one of which I present today.

Or if listening to me blather about weird bullseye doesn't do it for you, our etsy listings for today celebrate the out-of-season springy weather---some mint green earrings the color of new leaves in the hammered link series, and a strand of 5 designer beads in earth browns (for, you know, the mud. Or other joys spring brings to us. It's times like this I'm so glad I don't have a dog, even though I love 'em;)

07jan08

Like a lot of parents I'm absolutely thrilled the kids are back in school. I was speaking to another artist, who felt guilty about this. Guilty? Guilty!? My mother used to positively celebrate when we went off, so's she could get stuff done. Which is pretty much my attitude. Even when the kids mostly amuse themselves around here, I still don't get nearly as much done as when I'm alone (besides being introverted enough to need the house to myself part of the time.)

It's all too easy to forget that the mommy mostly (or, in the case of one sister in law, very nearly solely) in charge of the kiddies is a historical aberration: mosta the time the kids are passed around, with a whole community of adults to keep an eye on them (and they did a lot more wandering around on their own, as well: had to, just to finish their chores).

Given the dangers of living in tiny, tight-knit communities, I don't really want to return, at least not exclusively, to that model. But I don't think it's good for either the parents or the kids to be in each other's pockets all the time, any more than it is for marrieds; and I can safely say, the happiest of the f2 generation is definitely the one who gets out the most from under the parental eye.

That said, I basically live in a small town, and I like it a lot. The difference is that my neighbors don't know absolutely every detail of my life, nor do I feel horribly constrained to act in a way I'm not. Balance and moderation is all.

In the glasstechnical department, I finally got around to restringing my Bullseye sample strand, and it's gotten so long I cut it into 2, transparents and opaques, as well as making one of their limited edition colors. While I was cruising around the intertubes trying to discover the actual name of some unmarked colors I learned that the way the company often comes up with these colors is that when they get to the end of a run, they combine different lots they think will go together and pull them out into rods. Definitely a policy after my own heart. Also that they're planning on adding one of the new experimental colors, yellow ochre (which I consider to be part of that sour mossy/avocado green range that is perhaps my favorite color) to the regular palette, yum. Perhaps, someday I'll have pix of all this. Posted even. In the meantime, today's etsy goodies are another lot of those kugler spot and streak dusty pink hollows and a pair of page's ethereal white pixie earrings. Or if you're wanting more saturated color, well, you can check out this holly stocking.

6jan08

So last year, I foolishly figured my xmas would be utterly laid back and easy, with one little stocking to make (which btw hasn't been started yet---ok, I cut out the felt, and the iconography, the velveteen rabbit, was something I actually determined last year---but that's it) but that was before I took on JDftY (and once again discovered just how dreadfully slow a tutor I am. Also, for all you folks who think those "dirty foreigners can't be bothered to learn English"---it's hard. This kid's studied English in Japanese schools for ten years, has a cute little electronic dictionary, the support of two sets of parents, and intensive, daily tutoring if she needs it. And the time to study for hours and hours a day. And it's still hard.

Now imagine you're poor, without a dictionary to translate in and out of your own language, maybe not even able to write in your native language, and the necessity to earn a living at absolutely crappy wages piled on top...the county I live in has a tutoring program for people wanting to learn English. With a six month waiting list for tutors. Folks coming here are happy to learn English, it gets them ahead. What they don't want to do is give up their own language to do it, and why should they? To be bilingual is a good thing. But learning language is hard.)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, which was that last year I made a bunch of stockings and was this year going to feature them during the 12 days of xmas. Except, owing to the little tutoring thing, and much much more, the little accident thing, I didn't manage much posting in December. So here we are on the 12th day of xmas, Epiphany (which like St. Patrick's Day has a special personal meaning for me:) and the stocking that really started what I felt was the beginning of my own style. Except, then I took a decade or so to finish it. But you can read about that in the post.

In the etsy world, Valentine's Day is the big deal right now. I have to say, when I went shopping for jingle bells about a week or so before xmas, the wizard joked that I'd probably find Valentine's day stuff in the store, and sho'nuff, there it was as I walked thru the door of Jo-Anne's. Scary. But pink doesn't have to equal Valentines. We attempted to make daifuku, which is rice cake (mochi) wrapped around sweet bean paste (and a traditional Japanese New Year's treat) and which is often colored pink, especially if the mochi is wrapped about ichigo (strawberries). Sorry I said, no strawberries right now. But we colored our treats pink anyway, managing that part perfectly. ---Alas, the only thing besides, more or less, taste that we managed, since mochi was sticky, gloppy, and never hardened at all---we had the ugliest and lumpiest looking daifuku in the state, I'm sure.

So, in celebration of things pink, here's today's etsy offering, some pink spot and streak beads. I've made these spot'n'streads in several colors, and will try to blog about them shortly, as I think they're rather interesting.

Or you can read about old embroidery.

05jan08

Happy New Year, everybody. Now I'm only 4 days late, instead of a month behind, right?

Last year I promised a 12 days of stockings, because I'm old fashioned, and like the idea of celebrating the winter holiday starting with the big day (or really, a couple of days after---in my perfect world, I'd shove the whole calendar a week forward, so that the winter solstice fell around the 28th, instead of the 21st, right between the big two for most other folks'---instead of doing so little for my favored big day because I'm too busy getting ready for xmas). But as I explained in my last post, all of December has been catchup for me, and here it is the 11th day of xmas.

C'est la vie. I did at least get two new etsy posts up, a mixed white bracelet and a lovely long dangly pair of aqua earrings, both in our new `hammered ring' series. These are pretty sweet, so I need to do a post about 'em---problem is, etsy wants images in 1000 pixel square format, and of course, my setup is geared to 512 wide, with height proportional to the subject matter. Le sigh.

So putting off that problem to another day, here's what I promised, the latest in my series of xmas stockings, this one made for JDftY.

Oh, and some housekeeping: links to the posts, in reverse chronological order, for 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.