Christine finished her cross stitch ornament, and Kimberly brought a gift of cross stitch. Photos when i have a suitable gallery maker package. (And that may mean porting cthumb to the Mac — so that i can continue tihe the existing galleries!)

And while we were out of town he pet sitter turned off the iMac — thus turning off the home blog and the image galleries.

administrivia, crochet

I’ve kept at a little crochet, mainly the blanket ground (CR2006.05) and the scarf (CR2006.02). I’ve scanned in some fun mail-art received, but have not got it up anywhere. Indeed. The home server where i had been collecting my images, is having a fan or drive problem that sounds too much like my pager for me to sleep through. It was off all last night and we’ll try vacuuming it out as first repair. (A couple of weeks ago the weekend was spent backing up the data.)

Shoes and sandal ideas: http://www.hollowtop.com/sandals.htm — describes using a tire for a sole. I’ve fantasized about crocheting shoes, and essentially imagined making the sole as the hollowtop author described — painting something waterproof on the bottom. (My solution would have not been as sustainable, admittedly.) But tire treads! My sister pointed out one could recover blown out tires for the purpose. It appears it would be possible to buy something suitable, too.

administrivia, ideas, recycle, rising waters

24 inches by 7 doesn’t make a nice scarf.

I think i want something like 60 x 6. I’d need two more spools, but the quilting store downtown didn’t seem to have a deep selection of this impulse purchase viscose.

So, when we were at the dentist’s office in chi-chi Laurel Heights, i took the lunch break to walk down to Elaine Magnin Needlepoint. (I was actually walking to Three Bags Full, thinking it to be a yarn shop, but it’s a sweater shop.) I ended up buying 22 skeins of DMC #3 pearl cotton ($1.35). Each is roughly 5 g, 15 m (16.4 y). So, roughly 360 yds. The viscose is 136 yds. I think this is my equivalent of two more spools, more or less.

A: 7 green (954)
B: 7 gold-yellow (677)
C: 4 purple (209)
D: 4 gold (676)

What i’m thinking is starting with N*6 stitches wide (to get close to 5.5″), where N is likely 5.

1. In Y6: ch N*6+2
2. In Y6: sc N*6+2
3. In Y6: chain up 3 (counts as 1st stitch) & fasten loop. Fasten in A and tc 3. Skip 3. Fasten in B and tc3. Skip 3. Fasten in C and tc 3. Skip 3. Fasten in A’ and tc 3. Skip 3. Fasten in B’ and tc 3. Skip 3. Fasten in D and tc 3. Skip 3.
4. In Y6: ch or sc across &

1.  ooooooooooooo...o
2.  +++++++++++++...+
3.  8TTT   TTT   ...
4.  o+++ooo+++ooo...F
5.  +++++++++++++...+
6.  8   TTT   TTT...
4'. oooo+++ooo+++...F
5'. +++++++++++++...+

It’s going to take forever but it will be gorgeous.

crochet,instructions

Crochet

⊗ CR2006.02: I’m now past the I got past the hard part of the scarf — the diamond inset pattern — and i’m back to dc stitches. This bit weighs 0.5 oz out of a 50g spool.

⊗ CR2006.04: I’m decided to share the Friday morning progress scan with Laura, as she’ll visit in March and see it then, anyhow. No holding out on a completed surprise. She promply posted it in her new baby blog.

Photography

⊗ Finished Roll2006.01 out at salt pond A2W. We biked out carrying the tripod in my bike bag, stopping once to try and shoot a green winged teal. I didn’t identify it, but asked birders further down the creek. I should recognize them by now; we keep seeing them at the Crittendon bridge and down stream. Christine took the last few shots on the roll, including the moon shot.

Painting

On the 14th of FirstMonth i put acrylic to my first canvas. Christine had “bought” them for me for my birthday in 2005, but i didn’t go pick them out at Flax until last fall. The under-painting was done with a roller and bubble wrap sometime with a simple palette of black & white, with dabs of red, green, and stainless steel. (I suppose i should document which pigments i have on hand so i know WHICH red it was.)

Saturday evening I was going to do another layer, but i may have finished it. I added yellow to this palette, not Hansa but another. The green shoots remind me of a meditation/vision i had about joy a couple of years ago, so i’m calling the painting Joy. (Or Paint2006.01) I need to paint the edges of the canvas, and i ponder painting some of the forms again so the color is more opaque.

While Christine likes the textures of the bubble wrap and the stainless steel thick media, i think i’d choose to do that last next time. there are places the texture ended up where i wish it was flat.

I’l post photos of the paintings from Flickr.

Surfing

⊗ A Craftster forum reference to my ATC
⊗ Craftster Magazine Bowls. Cool.
⊗ Silicon Valley Arts Site, reminding me it might be about time to look into more tickets for a performance at The Pear. The Merc also reports on South First Fridays:

The monthly event, dubbed South First Fridays, kicks off tonight. Three venues — Anno Domini//the second coming of Art & Design; MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana; and the Museum of Quilts and Textiles — have agreed to stay open until midnight in hopes of drawing art lovers to the strip. The fourth, The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, will remain open until 10 p.m.

I also keep track of calls separately last year. This made sense as a way to keep on top of responsibilities. I’ll do the same this year. There will be a project ID if the call is for something other than a coded project and it requires a commitment to participate (Most nervousness projects will be ID’ed).

Mail Art

This year, all mail art will be catalogued with “MA2006.[Code].[Sequence].[Edition]”

“Code” will be used occasionally for particular projects, particularly multi-month projects or themed development that may go through different formats. Code is not required.

“Sequence” enumerates projects in the year unless otherwise defined by the presence of a “Code.”

“Edition” is a alphabetic mark to distinguish replicated versions and may be also noted as a proof.

I’m not sure how to track image elements that become aspects of other works or small works that then get folded into other works. I think about the colorfly combination i came up with late last summer: The postcard required a artistamp that then was used elsewhere. I used variations of the image duplicated on different media for ATC and greeting notes. Would i have had the sense to code all of the pieces colorfly at the beginning? Maybe.

Mail Art Coded Projects

BayATC: revisit of the series i clumsily started in 2004 with a digital photo of the Stevens Creek transition zone and notes about observations of the creek area. Here, “sequence” will be replaced with the date in “yy-mm-dd” form.

CBTI: See Chunky Books Monthly Tip-In Swap & this blog entry. Here, “sequence” will be replaced with the three letter standard abbreviation for the month, and “edition” will number 1-5 of the unique pages.

MCM: photo series. Here, “sequence” will be replaced with the date in “yy-mm-dd” form. There may be edition numbers.

OAP: See Omnibus Artistamps Project at Yahoo Groups. & this blog entry. [Update: 2006-04-15 The project organizer has had some misfortune and is not able to continue work at this time.] Here, “sequence” will be replaced with the three letter standard abbreviation for the month, and “edition” will number any variations of use of the image with the first edition the one submitted to the omnibus project. I can’t imagine having any more time for any other commemorative stamp designs this year, but i may do another set of definitives in the summer and retire the Mr M series.

Other Mail Art Projects

MA2006.01: photocopychunky: sponsored by Nicci. RSS feed 2006-02-13. Never committed to participation although i did do a little starting work.
MA2006.02: 7th Anniversary of Artistamp Mailing List (AML). Post the fourty or so mailings on June 5. Signed up with eepy on 2006-04-29
MA2006.03: Artist Stamp Deco for Rebecca at Nervousness 2006-04-30 “The deco is going out MONDAY MAY 1, 2006.” Eraserquee first. 2006-04-30
MA2006.04: Américas Altered Datebook

Crochet

CR2006.01: bag
CR2006.02: viscose scarf for Christine
CR2006.03: cat afghan
CR2006.04: baby blanket burp cloth
CR2006.05: baby blanket
CR2006.06: plastic bag tote
CR2006.07: Pauline, an Amigurumi Dude.
CR2006.07: rag rug

* Cool jewelry findings called “screen findings” on which one can bead. See a href=”http://www.ornamentea.com/ornShop/screens.html”>the vendor Ornamentea. I can imagine Christine doing cross stitch on these!

* picked up Roll2005.04 from Wolf camera and dropped off Roll2005.06.

* Received the Artistamp Album from renmeleon (LMAO2005.07)

* Started Christine’s scarf in the viscose. (CR2006.02)

* Did some crochet at Friday’s debriefing coffee

* Attached the metal crochet round (Crochet060106wire) to a photo to make a MA2006.CBTI page (MA2006.CBTI.Mar.01 ? I don’t think i’ll do February….)

* Responded to email from Bubble and Squeek (finally)

* Purchased more yarn, Y6 & Y7, spools of multicolored viscose

* Worked up a swatch of the Fiesta viscose [060206: this informs CR2006.02]

* Updated some of my galleries

* Worked on the the migration of this blog and all the grey-cat.com universe to a new host, first time changing in five years or so. Ooof.

Interesting art websites:
* Red Letters: somewhat like PostSecret
* Tokyo Mars’ Teeny Theaters — Gurdonark praised her work today (Saturday)
* Crocheted fiberglass: Fabulous!