Pigments and a green salt from wine

June 17th, 2006

I do find the chemistry and history of pigments to be utterly fascinating.
This compilation provides an interesting summary of preparations, although the liberal number of skulls and crossed bones does make one aware of the beautiful danger of heavy metals.

I found the page while trying to figure out why the wine stopper, with a metallic tip, was accumulating a green salt when left for an extended time over red wine. I would have thought the stopper had stainless steel at the end, so the thought that I’m producing verdigris seems unlikely. Nickel or chrome plate seems plausible, but it’s hard to believe something like Annabergite, a green nickel mineral could be forming so quickly. I suppose i need help from a chemist of everyday things or an alchemist.

Posted in Today's Log | Comments Off

Clothing Design

June 16th, 2006

It’s been some years since i sewed, and a good many years since the clothes were particularly tailored. A Nancy’s Notions email alerted me to the existence of Pattern Masterâ„¢ Boutique, and the whole realm of clothing design software. Cool! And I quickly found a 2002 overview of products. The Cochenille products run on a Mac. They have a graphing program for crochet, and the garment designer will help with sewn *and* knitted garments. I’ve sent a query about adapting it to crochet garment design.

Could this distract me from playing with GIS? Probably not.

…Later that day i received this response from Sonia at Cochenille:

Because a stitch is a stitch if it’s crocheted or knitted – it works just
fine for both. Depending on how much designing you are going to do – you may
want to look at the possibility of buying both Garment Designer and Stitch
Painter.

Once you design the silhouette in Garment Designer and give it your gauge -
you can then generate a pixel-per-stitch graphic and import it into Stitch
Painter Gold and then design with color or knit and crochet symbols.

*tempt*tempt*tempt*

Posted in Crochet and Knitting, Tools and techniques | Comments Off

Artistamps Season

June 10th, 2006

I’ve sent out two more MA2006.02.01.xx: to Deni and to the Paint Rock River Valley Postal Authority (whose artistamps i’ve received this spring).

The returns are coming in fast:

On Wednesday, i received Dr Arcane’s artistic license.

On Thursday, a mailbox full! Cascadia Artpost’s celebration of the past year’s creations, Carla Cryptic’s observation of dual anniversaries, Pine Cone Island’s collection, and Peggy’s card.

And On Friday, postcards from Inka Isles and Ballynafae!

(Reports so far that mine have been received by Isle of Rand and Arnoldia/Pondidia.)

Posted in From the Mailbox, LMAO submissions, Today's Log | Comments Off

What’s up?

June 7th, 2006

From the Mailbox

On Monday, I received a wonderful shipment of yarn and roving from Brown Sheep Wool Company via Eliza of Modern Gypsy. I’ll get the yarn logged in the yarn palette sooner or later: three bundles of washable wool in some natural colors that i can make critter dolls out of for drooly babies. And the incredibly soft wonderful dreamy roving (wow, i can understand the spinning addiction now) is to stuff the dolls.

Yesterday, i received a return on the collage packs: Penster made two red and black ATC in response. She mailed them in a fun decorated envelope — hmm, little grey kitties? And “Proudly Made in Canada” — and a neat ATC envelope. I’m not sure what template she used, but this one looks useful.

I bet cereal bag liners would make good material for such envelopes!

Diddling

On Saturday i ended up making a candle from candle ends (which had been sitting around my desk for well over a year). I used a soda bottle as a mold, and it worked out nicely. There are the odd feet to consider , but they’re fine for my purposes. (I’ll probably keep this candle in the hearth.)

Yesterday I came home to a Levenger catalog and noted again the little 3×5 card file folders. More than a dollar each. I cut down a purple file folder to two 3×5 file folders. I have a corner rounder, but the diameter of the rounder is a little large. While i was using the cutter, i finished cutting down the 8×5 cards to more 3×5 s.

That meant i had a stack of 2×5 left over. I decided to perforate the tops of the cards with the cutter and bind them into little notebooks, using the left over file folder material as the cover.

I could swear i’d linked to a perfect binding tutorial, but i can’t find it this morning. Last night i didn’t consult the tutorial but my memory of it. I used inappropriate glue, too. I don’t think i could sell or give these away, knowing that the glue will likely not hold up under wear. It serves to keep the strips around in a convenient form. An experiment. We’ll see where it leads.

Mail Art

I did get my 7th anniversary artistamp mailing out the door on the right day, after almost forgetting. Sixteen out of the twenty MA2006.02.01.xx have been posted. I made extra to send to other mail artists or friends and faily, and i’ll continue with that. I continue to be appalled i forgot to give the stamps a denomination, and that i had such a terrible misspelling. Argh.

Posted in From the Mailbox, LMAO submissions, Today's Log | Comments Off

Blackspot V2.0

June 4th, 2006

I would have never thought i was obsessed about shoes — but the blog proves me wrong. I have my first pair of recycled tire tread shoes, blackspots, through Christine’s affiliation with adbusters.org. The shoes are apparently designed by John Fluevog of fluevog.com. (Christine and I actually have matching fetishy pairs of heels from Fluevog.)

The shoes seem OK, although my feet react to them as “toe prisons.” I am mildly annoyed that they come pre distressed, with some sort of fake mud brush over the hemp fabric.

If anyone in your life needs a pair of hightops, look into the blackspots.

Posted in Today's Log | Comments Off

More Mail Art

June 1st, 2006

[Unknown date. Posting with a date in early June 2006, but should research a little more. -- JEB 2007-01-02]

Saturday, two more envelopes arrived: V eye, eye looking out from Fern Post Office’s envelope and the celebration of the triple six date of the seventh anniversary.

Monday was remarkable: nothing in the mailbox but a magazine for Christine and a real estate broker flyer. Hrmph.

By Wednesday, we’d only received Loon Islands post, with (i must note the postal stamp) the oddly perf’ed Canadian stamp, and an interesting introduction to Winggo Nuttella III. Yet the week was so busy, i’ve forgotten when the API’s block of four arrived with the elegantly framed 7 and the dice.

Both the Thursday and Friday post were picked up on the same day: Jenny Groat’s dancing celebration, bufoman’s lovely graphic 7, and seven of vintage stamps, and Glitz Kat’s seven sets of seven.

- What a great idea the bonus ATCs are (but I don’t think I’ll tear them off)

Posted in From the Mailbox, Today's Log | Comments Off

Letter on the occasion of AML’s Seventh Anniversary

May 29th, 2006

Included in MA2006.02.01

Dear Mailart Friends,
This Grey Cat has been [making] artistamps for not quite a year now. Last summer I surprised myself with the joy of creating, and I haven’t stopped since. I find I am often a lurker in online venues, and I do tend to spread myself a little thin. I am unlikely to make a name for myself in any “circle” because I often wander off and try something new. At the turn of the year, i became delighted with crochet, and now I’m about to venture into the digital mapping world to learn GIS and how to use a GPS. And, oh, yes, I became a streamkeeper in October!
This coming Artistamp year brings a great deal of uncertainty: the company I work for is merging with a much larger one and I will be out, sometime. It’s likely I’ll be there through the end of 2006, but what will I be doing for AML anniversary number eight?

Posted in Today's Log | Comments Off

MA2006.02.01 twenty trifolds and an artistamp

May 29th, 2006

I’d signed up for the seventh anniversary mailing of the Artistamp Mailing List at Yahoo some time back. The design for the stamp and the mailing have been brewing in the back of my mind over the past couple months — but the mailing date fast approaches. So yesterday afternoon, once i was finished with obsessing over GIS data and software and GPS, i created the stamp design. I printed out twenty on cotton rag paper and on to our regular printer paper, before i realized that i had forgotten to put a denomination on the stamp.

The trifolds have a hand doodled and scanned design, augmented with images of GreyBeard and Mr M that have been used on artistamps. I’ve made a set of cork leaf stamps to add color to a doodled tree, and i made a cancel stamp from a champaign cork, a circled 7. I’ll print out an additional set of meyer lemon stamps for the “bonus” ATC, and i wrote a brief letter.

I suppose I’ll be addressing them over the week — and I made a few additional to send out to a few mail artists to whom i “owe” mail.

Posted in LMAO submissions, Today's Log | Comments Off

From the Mailbox

May 26th, 2006

A notice about the exhibition mailparavion/avionparmail, with note of the online catalog. I’m tickled to see that my name listed; colorflymail went out late.

Of course, the image links [of mine, for this blog] are still broken. Must fix the image server [that is, my image server, which is, as of 2006-06-14 still broken]. *sigh*

I also received my first return on the collage packs i sent out, a lovely blue butterfly chunky book page (and postage) from emelengy. I hope the supplies fuel more winged flights of her imagination.

Posted in From the Mailbox, Today's Log | 1 Comment »

Quick Check In For the Weekend

May 21st, 2006

I made yarn from plastic bags and old clothes. It was rather time consuming — especially the cutting up the jersey and then rolling the strips up into balls — but i think i feel good about it.

I also made collage packs so i could close my collage box (but i forgot the silk scraps – sigh).

Finally, i started a LMAO.

So all of that felt creative — finding cool way to package the collage packs in some cases, matching colors, etc — but none of it really made me feel accomplished.

I’ve started another crochet project with the recycled jersey yarn (CR2006.08): a rag rug for the bathroom using Sylvian Circles from Kooler’s Encyclopedia of Crochet. I couldn’t get the eightfold symmetry to fit, but instead have a sixfold symmetric pattern.

So it goes.

(One of the folks taking a collage pack has an interesting project at : http://websites4ever.com/members/world/mkshatto/Touch.shtml. I’ll have to check in next week….

Posted in Crochet and Knitting, Today's Log | Comments Off

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »