New developments

If you've been following the blog recently, you may have gotten used to me updating every couple of days as I work on the "County scroll" that is my latest scribal assignment for the SCA. If that's the case, you've probably also noticed that I haven't updated in a few days. That's because I haven't worked on the scroll since this past weekend... and that is because I got sidetracked by another project that I'm getting more and more excited about.

The Art Museum of Greater Lafayette offers classes to the wider community, and as of yesterday, I've submitted a proposal to present a once-a-month, single-session, three-hour workshop on basic calligraphy and illumination. Their summer session starts in May, and if there's enough demand, I'll be presenting the workshop in May, June, July, and August. I've spent the past week preparing that workshop (instead of gilding), and an additional course which I may teach in the fall, if there is enough demand.

The workshop itself is pretty straightforward; participants will learn the basics of calligraphy and one alphabet, select a quotation they like (I'll be supplying quotes from Walt Whitman, but they can choose anything they want), and write that on a bookmark. Then they'll paint and decorate the first initial of the quote, for an introduction to illumination. The class will be open to anyone ages 13 and up, with a minimum class size of three and a max of ten, so that I can be sure I'm able to devote my attention to everyone who needs it.

Here's an example of the alphabet, and the illumination style we'll be looking at:

And don't worry, we will be using gold paint instead of actual gilding supplies, and high-quality calligraphy markers rather than dip pens or quills. This is an introductory workshop, after all! No grades, no pressure, just hopefully a good time and a little bit of learning.

I'm not a professional, certified teacher; I didn't go to college for an education degree. But I do at least know enough about this topic, and have enough experience with public speaking and demonstrating in multiple disciplines, that I should be able to keep the workshop engaging and accessible for everyone.

I know at least one person who has promised to sign up, which is also exciting! Here's hoping I get more. 

As for the county scroll, I'll be back to that this weekend, no worries. 

Cheers! 

Testing, dropping, picking up

Hello all! Let me explain the post title: 

I'm testing a new app to be able to blog from my phone. Sadly, Google's official blogging app is absolutely useless and they've barely updated it in two years. I expected better, but luckily there are third party apps that people have put actual effort into making work with the Blogger platform. You can still expect lots of typos whenever I'm on my phone, but that's not the app's fault. 

I'm dropping my novel for the time being. I've gotten stalled out at Chapter 16, where it feels like the plot is only finally just beginning. I got hit over the head with another fic idea, and decided to work on that instead, because it was more rewarding. I do hope to return to the novel again this year (hopefully), but for now, well... until I can figure out a plot I'm kinda stuck. 

And finally, I'm picking up on calligraphy again. I've been asked to do four or five new scrolls for people who never received one, some going back as far as the 90s or perhaps even earlier. They're all going to be pretty ambitious, stylistically speaking. I am posting from my phone at the moment and don't have source photos, but I'll be working on two scrolls in the style of the Sforza Black Hours. Another will be written in Irish Gaelic and decorated in a very fancy version of the Mac Durnan Gospels, a 10th century Irish manuscript from Armagh. There is one still on my list whose style is undetermined, because I have to talk to the client to see what she prefers; then the final scroll will be done in the manner of the Eadwine Psalter. 

As I said, I don't have source photos right now, but you can Google any of those manuscript names and get some images to give your an idea of what I'll be up against! I start mockups on the Irish one today.

And all that is in between painting heraldic banners (which I've neglected all winter) and preparing music for the Lafayette Chamber Singers' May concert, featuring all Canadian composers. Busy is better than bored, but even so! This is a lot to have suddenly land in my lap.

Hope you all are well! 

Test post

This is just a test post. I'm hoping to write more soon.

The tiger is a rescue living in comfy conditions in the Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue near Wisconsin Dells, WI. We got to visit the rescue center and see some of the enrichment activities they do there (an entire raw chicken makes a tasty treat for a 500-lb. cat). Beautiful creatures.

Anyway, yeah, look for more calligraphy and henna posts from me soon.

posted from Bloggeroid

I'm writing a novel

Well. I'm sort of writing a novel.

I'm actually still in the world building stages currently and have yet to write my first scene, but I've been given advice suggesting I should start creating “buzz” now. So here I go:

Basically, this started out as a gaming campaign idea, over ten years ago. I've been calling it The Pilgrimage almost that entire time, as far as I can recall. The gaming campaign has since evolved into an idea for a novel, and the more I flesh it out, the more I realize it will likely take more than one book to tell it.

Yarina Webster is a weaver in a small town on the edge of the Barrens in the Solar Hierchy of Kadri. Life in Kadri more or less revolves around the Solar Hierarchy and its tenets, observing festivals and attending service and what have you. It is expected that everyone will go on pilgrimage to the capital of Kadri at least once in their lifetimes. Yarina, though, was always a sickly child, and still has good and bad days now that she's grown. So she’s put off making the pilgrimage until her childhood best friend, Velian, now a priest, comes and cajoles her into making the journey with him.

On the way there, their little group of travelers is attacked by the Misbegotten, monsters that aren't supposed to exist outside of fairy tales. When the survivors try to report what happened, the Solar Hierarchy, eager to cover up the attack, sentences Yarina and the other pilgrims to death for heresy. Velian either smuggles them out, or is able to get their sentence commuted, I haven't decided which yet, but either way they end up in the Barrens, the dead wasteland that surrounded Kadri on all sides. There they meet Shan, a fellow exile who almost certainly can't be trusted, who tells them that the only way they'll survive is to make it to the Storm Wall, a mythical, magical boundary that provides the only source of water for the entire Barrens.

What follows is a tale of adventure, exile, betrayal, and trust, that tests not only their faith, but everything Shan, Velian, and Yarina thought they ever knew. There will be magic, and gods, new lands not seen in centuries, and old tales not heard in just as long.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I've been world building for this story for the past several days, trying to pin down character arcs, paint the broad strokes of a plot, and map all the places they'll go. At some point, though, I'll have to stop fretting over these details and actually get to putting words on the page.

So, does this sound like something you would be interested in hearing more about? If it is, drop me a comment!

And of course, if you're willing, I'd love it if you could show your support for my work by buying me a "coffee" on ko-fi.com. No obligation, though! It's just sort of a tip jar for people who have said they want to thank me with more than just kudos and comments.

Hope you're having a great week!

A little bit of ancient history

Okay, not really. But I've spent the past few days going back and organizing my photos from my phone so that it would be easier for me to post here, and going back through old blog posts to see what all I've talked about, and I discovered so many things that I never told you or showed you! Holy goldfish, it's been a lot.

I mean, in 2015, I taught myself how to weave. I'm still pretty terrible at it, but I enjoy it when I can motivate myself to dress the loom. Weaving is like sewing, or like cooking or painting a room: they call it "painting", but 90% of your time is spent preparing to paint, not actually painting. With weaving, most of your time is spent putting the string onto the loom and making sure you don't have any tangles in it, and that the pattern is set into the loom (I'm trying to avoid technical talk here), before you can actually sit down and do any real weaving. But yeah. I learned weaving, and there are no pics or posts or even a tag on this blog for it. For shame!

In 2016, I participated in a project called "Calf to Codex". If you're a knitter, you may have heard the phrase "Sheep to Sweater" or "Sheep to Shawl". It's where someone starts with the raw wool, cards it, spins it into yarn, dyes it, then knits it, start to finish, every step of the process. Calf to Codex was like that. People took donated animal skins (actually mostly deer, but "deer to codex" doesn't have the same ring to it) and turned them into parchment; the organizer collected poems and songs pertinent to the SCA Middle Kingdom's history and origins (because of course this was an SCA project, no one else is quite that insane); we used ink made from a period recipe and goose quills for pens, hand-ground pigments and binders for paint, genuine gold leaf for the gilding and period binders to stick it to the page. Then the pages were gathered and stitched together using linen thread that was spun from flax grown by SCA gardeners; the silk thread used for the decorative stitching at top and bottom was gathered from an SCA silkworm expert who grew the caterpillars herself; the cover was made from hand-planed oak boards covered with leather that was no only hand-tooled, the guy who did it, built his own leather-working tools from wood and brass.

The idea was to show that we have the skill sets and craft know-how within the SCA to set up an industry like this, or at least to recreate it, from start to finish. Between flax growers, chicken farmers (two of the paint binders were egg yolk and egg white which came from period breeds of chickens, because, again, we're insane that way), the silkworm lady, parchment makers, various poets and minstrels, calligraphers, illuminators, the bookbinding team, and the leather-worker, we totaled about 75 people on a project that took five years to complete. It's beautiful, though. A little smelly, because the parchment makers were still perfecting their craft--but the end result should last a few hundred years and is an excellent example of just what we're capable of when we put our minds to it.

My daughter assisted me with some of the illumination. I did calligraphy and illumination, and also took a course on medieval music notation, to write the first song of the book out as music rather than only lyrics. I also got to write a translation of a period book curse: basically, "Don't steal this book OR ELSE".

So that was 2016.

In 2017, I made scrolls, including several to meet our then-king's demand (request) to help get us caught up on a number of overdue awards that had been missed due to a glitch in our award recommendation database. I also got to see one of my close friends from years ago elevated to the highest honor we have for arts, the Order of the Laurel, and got to make her scroll for her. There are, of course, many pictures.

Throughout the past two or three years, I've been doing henna, but recently joined an online "club" for henna artists and discovered that, wow, my skills are not what I thought they were. My confidence in that area is a little shaky, but then, as one of the phenomenal artists said to me, it's not a race. We're not competing with one another. We're all making henna and adding beauty to the world. If I worked 40 hours a week on henna the way a lot of these ladies do, I'd definitely be more skilled than I am presently. As it is, I get about eight hours of practice in, once a month, for five months out of the year. And people still like my work! So instead of being ashamed, I should maybe consider just practicing and using up old henna.

But yeah. I've been busy, I just haven't had much motivation to show it here. There's a blogging app on my phone that works okay, but not great, and getting all those photos organized was definitely an obstacle to posting anything here. However, I hope to post a little at a time over the next few weeks and get caught up to present day, and maybe motivate myself to get something else started again; I'm looking at getting back to my mosaics here in the winter months, or starting a new weaving project. We'll see what happens.

Let me know what you're interested in seeing, and I'll try to post that first!

Where have I been?

Oh dear.

I've been busy, or tired, or just generally neglectful. But I have at least been making art and writing stories, and once the holidays are over perhaps I will get back into the habit of posting here regularly. That's a good New Year's resolution to make, isn't it?

Some highlights:

• A Laurel scroll (very high award in the SCA) for an old friend of mine, well deserved and long overdue.
• Taking up a challenge and producing eight or nine other scrolls as part of a massive effort to get overdue awards to people. If I remember right, nearly 200 people produced something like 600 scrolls in 20 weeks.
• Writing even more fan fiction, including the completion of my first series, which includes two novels and three novellas, as well as a collection of deleted scenes.
• Plenty of henna at various street festivals in town.
• Plenty of singing for the Lafayette Chamber Singers.

But yes, I'm feeling a bit tired and it's been hard to motivate to blog about all the stuff I've been up to. Sorry for leaving my readers hanging (all two of you). Facebook and Tumblr are probably to blame as well, heh.

In other news, I'm setting up a Ko-fi page, sort of like a tip jar for online creators. If you like what I've done for you, and if you're the sort of person who might buy me a coffee if we were in person, consider dropping by my Ko-fi page instead.

Hope you have a great holiday season no matter what you celebrate (or if you celebrate), and I'll do my best to get you some pretty pictures soon.

Cheers!

New calligraphy project

I'm trying to blog from my phone for the first time, so let's see if this works.



This is a text mockup for a backlog scroll I'm working on. The award is for badassery on the battlefield, and this recipient is so badass he was actually given the award twice. So the text is over 200 words long.



I use graph paper and work really small scale to get a feel for the overall layout of the piece. The are also some doodles here of what will become the main artwork of the piece, a big honkin' battle scene that will run across the bottom of the scroll.



And this is the actual scroll, with all the boring bits taken care of. Precise measurements never seem to work on this paper, maybe because I'm praying for exact 90 degree angles and they don't have any. The paper is certainly good enough for artwork, but sometimes you need to do a little engineering first, and my perfectionism days this paper needs tighter tolerances. (Or, more likely, I need to get better at measuring things.)

Calligraphy will begin after lunch.

Music! Henna! Links!

So, as part of my involvement in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), I have finally gotten back to singing in our local chapter's choir, the Rivenstar Madrigali.  Recently one of our members recorded one of our rehearsals.  As my friend and fellow soprano Katya said, "Not bad for a take-all-comers casual choir," and I agree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhXwGMH6giU

If you want to play Spot The Blogger, I'm the only one there who didn't have this piece memorized, as the others had been rehearsing it for months and I only rejoined in January.

As a self-professed choir snob, it's been hard for me sometimes to just let go of the expectations about what I think we "should" be doing (based on years in college-level choirs with conductor/instructors who demanded a very, very high level of focus, discipline, attention to detail, skill, and all the rest that goes with taking choir for a grade), and allow myself to enjoy all the things that we are doing.  We're singing, and we're enjoying the sound, and you know what?  That's something to be grateful for all by itself.

**

Next Wednesday kicks off my fourth season with the Sagamore West Farmer's Market!  Today I finally got my contract and booth fee delivered to the right people!  They were already full!  They were only merciful about letting me in because I'd achieved "permanent" status!  I'm using up my lifetime quota of exclamation points with this paragraph!  Woo-hoo!

**

Next Wednesday, a couple hours before the market kicks off, I'll be at Sunspot Market giving a talk as part of Sunspot's "Food For Thought" program.  Basically they serve lunch and invite a speaker to come be all educational and stuff, and I get to talk a little about the history and culture of henna, then give people free samples before dashing up the street to set up my booth.  They have a little flier that they put up for each month's speakers, and when I stopped in to buy supplies today, I saw that they were gracious enough to give me a really nice blurb.  Felt nice to see, you know?

If you're local, I'd love to see you there, and if you can't make it, well, the market really is only a few blocks away.

Cheers!

PS - Ladysmith Black Mambazo. That is all.

Couple brief announcements

Okay, first, the farmer's market season starts next week if you can believe it.  I almost can't, which is probably why I still haven't actually gotten my signed contract and booth fee in to the right people so that I have official permission to show up.  Yes, I plan to fix that tomorrow.

**

Before that, though, there is a bellydance seminar called Mirage Caravan, with workshops and performances taking place this weekend, to benefit the Ehlers-Danlos National Foundation.  Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is a very weird and rare thing that affects the collagen in a person's body.  Sometimes this means that their skin can't hold together and tears easily. Sometimes it means that organs won't hold together, and a sudden sneeze or laugh can actually break things inside and kill the person.  And sometimes it means that the person's cartilage is extremely loose, such that they can go to sleep and wake up in the morning with dislocated ribs.  That last version is the kind that the event's organizer lives with, and she tells me that it's the least serious of the three, but still quite painful and inconvenient on the better days.  I didn't know that a person actually could dislocate their sternum, but apparently if your cartilage is loose enough, you can.

I will be slingin' the henna at a social a couple days before the event, so local performers can get all prettied up in time to allow the designs to darken to their peak color on Friday or Saturday.  I'll also be vending on Saturday, and slingin' again at an after-party to be held Sunday.

I have high hopes for my credit card bill this month.  And yes, there's a whole soapbox there about how I don't like having to think in such a mercenary fashion about something I enjoy, but there it is.  It's a debate that has raged among artists especially, that I have seen at least, for some time - how ought one feel about charging money for something that is inherently rewarding just to do?  But that's not an announcement and I am genuinely trying to stick to the damn topic for once (heh), so let's save it for later.

**

Finally, I know I keep promising to post pictures of the calligraphy project that I did recently.  I spent today scanning some of the background and prep-work pages - sketches, text mockups, things like that - so that I could include them when I go to describe the process.  Unfortunately, by the time I finished everything it was (is) nearly 11pm and I'm tired.  Trust me, if you don't do a blog of your own, or write elsewhere, putting all this together takes time.  I've put a couple hours into posts before now when they were especially image-heavy, and I assure you, this one will be one of those.

Tomorrow.  Really.  I mean it.  After I turn my contract in to the farmer's market people at City Hall.

**

Finally, I still need a job, and I still hate the job search process.  I'm just tossing the thought onto the waves of the Internet Ocean and letting it drift where it will.  And no, that isn't the ONLY thing I'm doing to find work.  Sheesh.

Later!

Progress on the THING

This is the most ambitious calligraphy project I've done ever, and that's saying something.  I hereby christen it the Thing; everything I work on is usually called a Thing for at least a little while, what can I say?

Anyway.

Today I gave up on the vellum - it's just too damaged for me to cut a large enough piece out of it (though I can and will cut smaller sections out for other projects) - broke out the Bristol board and the ruler and pencils. This one is large enough I also broke out the T-square (the ruler is longer) and because of the design, I even got to use my compass.  I like my compass.  I've done ridiculous geometric marvels with the compass before.  Today I just drew a dozen circles in various strategic locations.

You wouldn't think that just getting guidelines down would take a couple hours, but it does. Either I'm precise and fussy, or just slow, or both, but it took at least two hours. Some of that was ruling the lines for the margins, quite a bit was involved with the first initial of the piece, and surprisingly, not very much time at all was needed to get the guidelines down for the text.  The finished piece, not counting margins, will measure 12x14 inches.  Of that, only a 5.75 inch square will be devoted to wordy stuff.  Yes, I know.  Don't give me that look, my husband already did and I was immune to it then, too. Just trust me.
 
Tomorrow I'll put the text down (whee!) and finish drawing in the knotwork on the letter T and animals on the initial I.  And then there will be gesso... and probably also the first stages of hand-polishing gemstones.  I've never done that before either, so I want to start as soon as possible.
 
And that's the Thing.  Pictures will follow after the piece is given to its intended recipient.  It's an award certificate, basically, and in our society, these things are very hush-hush, "state secrets" so that we don't spoil the surprise.  In other words you don't get to see it till they do.
 
My fingers have had a few days to recover from Death Grip Calligraphy (it's a beginner's mistake but I still make it whenever I've gotten out of practice), so while I now feel able to do the lettering without pain, I'm concerned I'll have somehow lost my comfort with the alphabet style.  Feh.  Second-guessing gets me nothing, especially when I have tomorrow to fret over it and tonight to sleep.
 
G'night, people who may actually be reading! (Thanks again, Barbara Sher Who Is Awesome.)

Facebook

For those who are curious, I've been on Facebook a lot lately.  I used to avoid it in favor of Twitter, but then this gaming thing came up and the character-creation thing and so on and so on.  I've been posting short tidbits about the calligraphy project over there, if anyone is interested.

It's Facebook.com/heather.bungardjanney if anyone who comes here is curious to know about what is over there.  Frankly, the blog just doesn't get that many visitors as far as I've been able to tell; that and I put a constraint on myself to leave my personal life out of this arena and try to keep it dedicated to creative pursuits.  I don't know that ranting about politics would get me any more henna customers, after all. So I haven't had a whole lot that I wanted to post about, in recent months.

Lately, though, I've had things I wanted to say that have nothing to do with marketing henna.  I've had rants, and musings, and whatnots (I hereby declare "whatnot" to be a category of ideas), and I've been keeping myself from posting them here.  I have this odd dilemma going on, in that I've wanted an audience to hear what I have to say, but - if this makes sense - I didn't want my friends and family to know they were mine.

It isn't that I'm ashamed of my ideas.  I'm just a: not in the mood to argue my opinions, b: not in the mood to be judged by family or disagreed with by friends, and c: maaayybe, interested in just presenting the ideas on their own without "me" attached to them.  That last is less crucial than the other two reasons, but it still holds some weight in my head - a thought coming from a random schmuck is received differently than if it came from the President, or your best friend, or someone you're fighting with, or someone you adore.  I dunno - maybe that does mean I'm ashamed of my ideas a little bit, or at least, unwilling to be seen in the same room as them.  Mostly I want to rant about Stupid Freaking Daylight Saving Time and not have to argue with people who think it's just awesome.

You ever have that happen?  You want an audience, but you don't want them to know your name? What would you talk about if you could be completely anonymous?

***

In other news, calligraphy, and oh by the way one of my uncles is dying of cancer and will probably be gone by the end of the week.  And Barbara Sher Who Is Awesome (if that isn't her full name, it ought to be), popped over and commented on my last post and told me I'm "nourishing," so now I feel like maybe I should say something more often.  Even when I don't know that I have anything to say.

Hm. Maybe I should write more for the Internet and less for "is my mom going to see this?"... but again, marketing.  Trying to get henna bookings.  Doesn't go well with my latest philosophy on porn.  Or politics.  Or whining about relationships.  Or, well, whining about much of anything, really.

Gah.  It's 11:21 and I'm rambling, because I feel like I should. Bedtime would be wiser.

Placeholder Post. What?

I've not been feeling motivated to write anything lately.  It's been kinda depressing, actually, but at least I've managed to keep some projects in the air, even if I haven't been in any sort of mood to write about them.

The embroidery project – remember that one, from so long ago? – yeah,  it's been almost two years and I'm in the home stretch, finally.  Filling in the blue background and probably 3/4 done with that.  I need to get pictures up soon so you can see where I embroidered graph paper on the fabric.  I wanted a checkerboard pattern, I needed a guide, I stitched lines in place to use – and they are graph paper.

This may be a new level of obsessive for me.

***

The painting project on the milk canister is finished, and I have photos for that as well, and simply need to upload them.

***

And finally, since cold weather is coming and I want something that will keep me from getting cabin fever during the months spent indoors (well, okay, I should say "will permit me to focus my cabin fever maniacal leanings and use my powers for Good"), I've gotten back to my mosaic project. 

Remember that one? I'm casting stepping stones, planning to use them around an outdoor fire pit or something, with  each one looking as medieval and awesome as I can pull off given my level of expertise (low) and nitpicky tendencies (high).  The third stone didn't set right when I cast it – the mortar mix was off – and it broke into pieces when I tried to show it off at my kid's preschool. 

Yeah, that kinda sucked.

It's been probably two years, and now I'm getting around to the repair work that I knew I'd need to take care of eventually.  I get to basically play archeologist and lift each glass tile out of the stepping stone block, which involves chipping and scraping at the mortar around each and every one of those fiddly little pieces of hand-nipped glass, sharp edges and all.  Then I get to clean off the dust and bits of mortar still stuck to it, and place it on my work board as close to its original position as possible.

My work board is a cookie sheet with modeling clay rolled out on it to the exact size and shape of my stepping stone mold.  I can press stones into it, pull them out, rearrange, and all that good stuff as much as I want without having to worry about anything becoming permanent before I'm ready for it.  Once all the pieces are in place the way I want them, I lay strips of duct tape over the entire image and carefully peel it out of the clay.  After that it's just mix up some cement and go.  Once the stone has set for a couple of days, I can pull the duct tape off and the image stays where it belongs, and looks awesome.

The funniest part is that this is the exact method that the ancient Romans and such used – only the tools have been updated.  Instead of modeling clay they used quicklime, which is basically mortar that you deliberately mix wrong so it won't set; and instead of duct tape they used several layers of  fabric soaked in glue.  Apart from that, though, the process is identical.

And yes, I need to get some photos up of that, too.  Beloved child will be five in December and she's taken the most recent batch of pictures for me.  Did a good job, too!

***

So yeah. I've been working a sucky day job, but I've also been pursuing some projects, which are the only things keeping me from going nuts at the day job.  I have pictures, I just don't have a lot of motivation to upload them right now.  Not to whine overmuch, but it is hard to muster up the energy when I'm not sure more than two people actually read these posts anyway.  If I don't have an audience, writing for myself is still valuable, but I don't need photo evidence of what I'm doing – I have my memory, for as long as that lasts.

Just a quickie

For now, I'll just tell you that the weather is lookin' fine and I will be at the Farmer's Market later today. Last week was a record-breaker for me in terms of customers, and I'm hoping that this week will continue the trend.


There's a lot of other stuff I could write about, but it's going to take awhile to rant about losing my (apparently seasonal) job after only a month, publish an anti-resume, and so forth.

Sigh.

***

Speaking of getting lots of customers to draw on, this month's Mosey Down Main Street will be this Saturday, and weather permitting I will be there and waiting for you.  Yes, you.

Henna days are here again…

Hello all!  It's been awhile; I hope you're all well and content with life.

The Sagamore West Farmer's Market kicks off this coming Wednesday, May 5, and I will be there and open for business every Wednesday between then and October 27, as long as the weather cooperates.  For this Wednesday only, the first client of the season will get their design for free, up to a $10 value, so come early and remind me why I love the farmer's market so much.  (I don't just go for the cookies, you know.)

The first Mosey Down Main Street of the season will be on Saturday, May 8, and I will be on hand for that as well, beginning roughly 5pm.  "The Mosey" takes place on the second Saturday of each month, with the exception of Labor Day weekend, and I plan to be on hand for all of them.

Over the next few weeks, I will be updating my henna brochures.  There will be a total of four: The first answers those questions I get asked most often when I'm at my booth, and the second provides booking information for private appointments, parties, and so on.  Brochures 3 and 4 are still being written, and will go into detail about caring for your finished henna design and about how to recognize the difference between safe, natural henna and chemical dyes like PPD "black henna".

I more or less dropped off the face of the Internet for a few months, even though I did have a couple of bookings between January and now, so I'll also have some photos forthcoming from those events.  Thanks as always are due to my clients for graciously providing their images to share.

I hope to see you soon!

Best,
Heather

OctoberFest, here I come!

Well, everyone, it looks like things are coming together for this weekend's OctoberFest, Saturday from 10am onward, in downtown Main Street of good old Lafayette.  I've got a fresh batch of henna, new business cards on order (pray they arrive Friday so I'll have them in time), and I even figured out how to put walls on this pop-up shelter, in case of rotten weather.

Good thing, too, since it looks like we'll have beautiful weather for the next ten days except for Saturday.  I'll have to see about bringing along the camp space heater - safe for in tents, and I promise you, very effective at bringing the toasty warm goodness.

Now I just need to sit down for a marathon session of rolling cellophane cones, for to fill with henna glop (it's a technical term), for to bring to the festival, for to hopefully use all up on eager and willing customers.

Hope to see folks there!  I'll be located closer to 6th Street, between the antique booths and the kid-friendly stage.  It seemed like a smarter spot to be than in between the fire truck display and the car show, farther up the hill.

Cheers!

Do You Love Bollywood?

Farmer's Market was pretty quiet today as far as henna was concerned, although I did manage to convince a number of people to hold still while I sketched Indian-inspired designs off their dresses, shirts, and handbags.  I'm perfectly fine with the current fashion trends giving me new patterns to try out, thanks!

While I didn't actually apply a lot of henna, I did get invited to the fundraising auction for our local Unitarian Universalist Church, this Friday September 25 from 5:30 to 10:30.  The theme for the evening is "We Love Bollywood", and the event will feature Indian music and cuisine prior to the actual auction. If you're in the area, you might want to swing by and check it out.

Cheers!

The usual

I've signed up for OctoberFest, to be held on Saturday, October 3. This is their third year running an event that drew 3,000 people in its first year, and 10,000 last year. I'm hoping to sling quite a bit of henna while I'm there.

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Speaking of henna, Global Fest was a success even with the scheduling conflicts - a home football game, the last Mosey of the season, and the Lay Flats music festival all on the same day made for smaller crowds than last year, but I still topped $250 in henna sales.

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Embroidery - the stupid trees are finally done! I'm working in a color that isn't brown or gray! Wa-hoo!

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Geocaching: in which one uses one's GPS (or iPhone with a GPS function) to find hidden "treasure boxes". The family had our first successful find today, and the three-year-old loved it. Of course, now she's holding a non-violent protest against the institution of napping, but we did have fun right up until that point. She declared that we had to follow her down the trail because she was the "know where we're going girl".

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Gardening at this point involves not quite watering or weeding as much as I ought, while planning the seed purchases for next spring and plotting a faster way to heat up water to scald the prairie grass to death. It's effective, targeted exactly on the plants I want to destroy and nothing else, and non-toxic. Apart from annoying the earthworms, this has to be the single best weed-killing method I've ever seen.

***

I'm sleepy. My kid is not. I should be used to this by now.

Still here, still ... here...

In case any readers were wondering if this blog was still updated - it is; I just have been have some problems with motivation lately, and haven't felt like I was doing anything to really crow about.

I've gotten some good henna fun in at the Farmer's Market, the downtown Mosey Down Main Street, and most recently at my kid's preschool/daycare, where I slapped some henna down on about 40-45 kids plus their teachers, while trying to provide about 30 seconds' worth of education. I've been able to make credit card payments for a change, which is making me happy. The data entry is so hard to keep myself motivated to do, even with the post-it note on my monitor telling me how much I still owe on the card.

Within the next week or two, I'm going to be creating a kind of brochure that I will keep available here on the blog for potential customers to look over - just check out the categories section, where it will be labeled as conspicuously as I can make it.

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Completely unrelated to anything, I have a new imaginary friend. I say "imaginary friend" because it sounds so much nicer than "stalker-like obsession"... see, my imaginary friend looks and sounds JUST like Robert Downey, Jr., though I'm willing to bet that the imaginary version and the actual living breathing guy don't have all that much else in common.

Has anyone else noticed the trailer for the Sherlock Holmes movie, coming out Christmas Day, which just happens to star Downey in the lead role? Complete coincidence, I swear. Also, it's cruel to tease me with a movie I really want to see, that is more than six months away - which it was, when the trailer first came out. Big meanieheads, anyway.

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I want to take a brief moment to put in a plug for Uniquely Yours pottery and glass studio, over on the east side of town. I'd been doing a lot of stuff over at All Fired Up before the shop changed ownership, and now I find that Uniquely Yours has the more nifty atmosphere; they have a few things you can do there that All Fired Up doesn't offer (so far as I know), plus a little kids area where you can chuck the little ones if they're not interested in painting with you. They'll even play DVDs for the kids if you bring something in.

Anyway, the kid and I have been in there now and checked it out, and I have a piece on display, which should surprise no one. I love to paint the stuff, my ego enjoys having it on display, and this way I don't have to bring it home into my already-cluttered house. Wins all around.

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That's it for the time being; I have an appointment for later this evening to sling some more henna, and as long as the weather holds I'll be at the Farmer's Market tomorrow and every Wednesday. Hope to see you all there, especially my growing base of regular customers - you all make me happy every time I see you.

Cheers!

Henna days are here again

In brief:

Mosey Down Main Street was a success as always - this time I had a goal to earn enough to cover my booth fees for the west-side Farmer's Market season, and I met it with lunch money to spare.  I'll be at every Mosey with decent weather, so far as I know, and I'm working right now with TAF to see about getting included in the Gallery Walks, and possibly even the Taste of Tippecanoe.

As for the Farmer's Market, I got the contract approved yesterday within ten minutes of submitting it, so it looks like I will be setting up tomorrow.  Looking forward to seeing people there!

Also, I got a phone call from the organizer of Global Fest, and as soon as she introduced herself I said, "Hi there, I'm in!"  But she was still talking, so I had to wait for her to actually reach the part where she, y'know, asked me if I wanted to be part of the festival again this year.  Then I repeated myself.  Heh.  Mutual happiness all around.

I'm sleepy, and have other things to take care of, but I wanted to at least post this much.  For those of you who would like more frequent updates, please consider "following" and/or subscribing to my Twitter account.

Cheers, and see you tomorrow.

Between projects

*sigh*

I have this aimless drifty feeling going on, again. I don't like it. It's depressing.

Potential things I could/should be working on:

1. Next mosaic in the series - this would be #4 of twelve, and it's only taken me two or three years to get the first three done...
2. Embroidery belt favor and/or purse. The style I intend to use would mean about three or four hundred hours if I were to make a purse, but if you've followed this blog for any length of time, you realize that this is just another draw for me. I need help, people.
3. Finish a calligraphy thing I found while working on the other big one. This would just need a bit of finishing detail and then to be mailed off to California.
4. Lucet cords to lace up Amelia's new dresses. Lucet is actually really easy; if I didn't get motion sick in the car, I'd work on it during the drive down to visit the in-laws in South Carolina.
5. Clean things. Around the house. Like a responsible adult.
6. Get a job. *headdesk* Prove that I am not, in fact, an unemployable blot upon society.

*sigh* Why doesn't chocolate therapy work for things like poverty?

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Also, it's now been fourteen or fifteen days since I finished work on the big calligraphy thing, and my thumb is still a little sensitive, and the skin there and on my fingertip is starting to peel. I was expecting that, having overdone it on a project before.

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Holidays. I like celebrating stuff, I guess... but the disruption to my routine throws me for a loop much, much more than it ever did when I was younger. It feels sometimes like I don't really recover my balance again until March. I guess that officially means I'm unstable - heh, as if I needed that confirmed or anything.

Do I sound depressed? (um, yes.) Is that likely to help me market my leet mad henna-slinging skeelz? (um, no.)

I'll be over here with my head on the desk. I've at least learned not to pound it against the keyboard - the dents in my forehead make me look silly.