My Current Hope-To List

Longtime readers will recognize that I've made some cosmetic changes to the blog in the past few days (let me know what you think of those, btw); well, I was doing some stuff behind the scenes and had cause to look at a bunch of posts from about 2008 or so.

It was kinda cool, but also kinda depressing.

Cool to see some of the projects and ideas I'd had floating around – but depressing to see how many of those are still in stasis, and more so to see that the things that were bugging me about life in 2008 are still bugging me today, in 2011.  I still need a job.  I still am having relationship issues.  I still question my abilities as a mother, and my value to society.

Like I said: depressing.  It's as if I'm the project that is currently in some kind of indefinite holding pattern.

However, that's not what I want this post to be about.  I want it to be about all the nifty ideas that I've had floating around, waiting to be acted on, and on all the sweet projects that actually have come to fruition in the past few years.

So, here is my current "hope-to" list.  It's not a to-do list because those are depressing and frustrating; it's a list of stuff I hope to get to because it would be nifty if I could.

• Hang-gliding; and once upon a time, you could actually take that for PE credit at Indiana University in Bloomington.
• Marionettes, which have interested me ever since I read Pinocchio when I was about six, and the book had this terrific appendix about them, their history, and how to craft papier-mache heads and the proper way to rig the controls.
• Mosaics.  I have #3 to repair and then 9 more to build to finish that monster of a project
• Oil lamps and
• Silk banners – both of these are for our group campsite at Pennsic, but I've taken a class on oil lamps and they're really really cool.  Cost-effective, safer than tiki and lighter-fluid type things, pretty, and crazy easy to make. The banners would involve learning silk-painting, which I could totally see becoming my Next Crazy Project for a few years, you know?
• Hand-crafted books.  I already know how to do a specific type of limp-binding, and I've even built one full of calligraphy already as part of a group project to make a "scroll" (see previous posts about the accuracy of that name) back in 2003.  I keep thinking of crafting a pair of books with favorite poems in them, to gift to a couple friends of ours.  Making the book itself only takes about 90 minutes, if you have all the right supplies.  Prepping the pages, doing the text and illustrations and such, takes considerably longer.
• Decent, regular work in henna bookings.  I could pay my bills with this if I had more consistent business, but that's a big if.  I really enjoy puttin' the pretty on people, though.  Also, that's not really a "project" like the other things on this list.

See, that's my problem with lists:  I start out with "want-to" and start putting in "should" and "need to".  For instance, right now I need to get a job and should start looking.  The house needs de-cluttering, organizing and cleaning.  I should be downstairs getting a load of dishes going.  Blah, blah, bleah, blah.

Anyway.  Watch this space; I hope to get more calligraphy stuff up this evening – but I do have a gig tomorrow that I still need to finish preparing for.

If any of you have ideas for how I could turn this stuff into a regular job, I'm all ears!

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.

End of the season

Well, henna is winding down for the season, at least for us Western folks - there are a couple of big holidays coming up yet in Islam between now and the end of December - but the farmer's market will be closing the week after this, and I don't have anything else lined up just yet.  I'm considering the indoor fall/winter market that is being proposed over in Elmwood Plaza, but I still have several questions for the organizers and they've been slow to respond.

For the record, data entry isn't nearly as fun as putting henna on people, so don't you want to help me out here?  Of course you do.

***

The prairie grass is gone, the clay masquerading as soil has been hacked into a less cratered surface, a couple bags of potting soil have been spread over the top of that - it's pretty much bulb planting time.  The challenge will be to remember to hold a few back for my daughter to plant All By Herself.

I've been up off my behind for the past few days, and it's getting to where it feels good - there's a threshold there, I'm sure other people have noticed, when you've been geting not enough exercise for way too long?  Where the inertia is telling you to go sit down and get some potato chips, and moving is the last thing on your mind, even when you're already up and moving?  Yeah. If you can just suck it up till you're over that hump, it gets way easier.

(Thus Spake The Not-Actually-Exercising Exercise Guru.)

Point being, the stiff muscles just feel like they need to be warmed up now, instead of being put back to bed, and I'm plotting my next moves in the garden eagerly, as opposed to whining that I'll have to get up and get all sweaty and stuff.  However: I went back to bed this morning after seeing the kiddo off to preschool with her daddy, and the next thing I knew it was noon.  I mean, it was good sleep, but jeez.

***

Let's see, running through my "tag" list... I was flattered to get an email asking for information and tips on putting together some mosaics that a friend wants to make for her own garden.

A few days ago, my daughter and I modified her school "scarecrow" project and made princesses (you glue paper shapes to the edge of a paper plate that has a face on it).  We used the paper I bought ages ago for origami, and every time I use the phone downstairs the book I have with so many bazillion origami patterns in it is now staring at me from its spot on the shelf.

Darling daughter's closet and dresser have a lot more room in them now that the stuff she's outgrown is out of the way...

I finished outlining the leaves in the ongoing epic embroidery project and discovered that using the dark green was a bad idea.  So I got to rip all that out and I'm now doing it over in black. Sigh.

***

And that's all I can think of for the time being.   Cheers, y'all!

New residents, new opportunities

Yeah, okay, this has nothing to do with my creative endeavors, but everything to do with beauty, so...

Our housing addition has a pond. I don't know how far I can go to call it a habitat, since they mow down to the water's edge and treat the water to counteract all the lawn chemicals that wash in and cause algae blooms, but still. Pond, fish, frogs, and drop-in visits from ducks, geese, and about every other year a family of muskrats takes up residence in one of the culverts and starts undermining the bank.

Well, we also get great blue herons, one of my favorite birds. Last year a really HUGE one got his foot caught in a muskrat trap - I know this because I was the one who noticed he'd been in the same spot all day, and got close enough to confirm how badly he was stuck.

This year it's either a different heron, or he was immature last year and has come into his full color this year, because he is spectacular. All the pictures you see with the shiny white head, black streak across the eye, kind of shaggy feathers on the throat and chest?... This particular bird looks like he has a sideline modeling for the Audobon calendar.

Yesterday and today, for the first time, I've seen a kingfisher in the area. Yesterday he was on a wire about a mile off, along the route I drive to take the kiddo to preschool. This morning he was sitting on the culvert at the pond. Yes, the same one that the muskrats like so well.

I'm going to miss the house swallows this year, though; they were living in a mailbox just across the street from the pond, and for some reason the homeowner wasn't too happy about that. Barn swallows are this really rich midnight blue with orange chest and bellies; house swallows are an equally rich deep teal-green, with white chest and bellies. I'd never seen them before last year, but in the fall the guy took down his mailbox and replaced it with something harder for birds to set up housekeeping in.

***

At the event where I taught the henna class, I also proved once again that I needed a chaperone anytime there is colored thread around. But they were five skeins for a dollar, and how can you pass up a deal like that?

Things are actually progressing with the embroidery thing. I'm outlining the lady's wimple and veil right now. You might recall a griffin I mentioned doing in Bayeux stitch; I gave it to a friend of mine whose "kingdom" emblem is a gryphon, and she said it would probably end up being part of the front panel for an early-period gown. Cool. Probably I should ask her to send me a picture of it, since I never thought to take one.

***

When you're clinically depressed, it's too easy to fall into the trap of struggling to be "happy" as the opposite of "sad." Thing is, happiness comes in moments and snippets. A guy I know describes it as the butterfly landing on your shoulder - beautiful, but impossible to try and keep around. What is better, according to my counselor and my college memories, is the idea of "peace" as the opposite of "suffering". So I've been checking in with myself yesterday and today, asking what feels peaceful to me, what brings me contentment, that kind of thing.

Or, as a great many sources of wisdom like to say, "Pain is; suffering is optional." Another way it gets phrased is, of course, "shit happens"... it's how you handle the shit that determines, oh, pretty much everything.

***

Had an email out of the blue (heh - out of the ether (I'm so clever)) from a guy who wants to host a web domain and site for me, for free, simply because he likes to assist artists and the arts. Sadly, I keep finding myself trying to examine the horse's teeth, just because it's been awhile since something like this has dropped into my lap without conscious effort on my part. All I did was leave some business cards somewhere and the guy found one.

Also, I have no freaking idea what domain name to pick. Just my name isn't very catchy, nor does it describe what I do... but like this blog, I do a lot more than just henna, even if that's the only art I'm making money with at the moment.

Hmmmm... suggestions welcome, both serious and otherwise.

***

Anyone know how to repair a stepping stone that has cracked into four pieces, just from having a three-year-old walk on it? This was the one I discovered had poorly mixed concrete, and was crumbling around the edges and all that.

I'd really rather not redo the mosaic from scratch, nor "recycle" the thing by chipping each piece of glass out of the broken sections to rebuild into another stone. Even though that probably would be both faster and the wiser course to take. That damn thing took me about a year to finally finish; I really don't want to dork with it anymore if I can help it.

***

I think I'm on an upswing emotionally; I can tell I'm improving when my brain starts providing me with song lyrics without my asking. Today it was "Beer Run" while at the cashier, paying with a $10 and getting back a $5. If you've never heard the song, try to imagine a nice hillbilly twang and someone going "yee-ha" in the background. It doesn't have a banjo, but it should.

B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Run,
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beeeer, Ru-un,
All we need is a ten and a fiver
A car and a key and a so-ber dri-ver
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Runnnn.

Not sure who wrote it, but it plays on Bob and Tom every now and again, so I guess it qualifies as their contribution to American culture.

I will continue to agree with Steve Martin's (very old) assertion that it is impossible to remain unhappy when a banjo is playing. 'Course, at the time I'm sure he'd never heard Bela Fleck playing BACH on banjo... which would only serve to confirm, reinforce, and utterly and competely prove the point.

Two weeks away from the blog makes for a lot to talk about...

Stupid weather. Farmer's Market season is nearly over, which is good, because apparently my ability to gauge whether or not I should set foot outdoors has vanished utterly. I get deluged, stay home on a perfect day, get deluged again, then get my little pop-up sun shade nearly blown over again the week after that.

This coming Wednesday, the 29th, will be the last day for the market. We vendors are being encouraged to dress up and offer candy for Halloween.

It's been a really fun season, and a learning experience all around. I've certainly enjoyed getting my clinically-depressed self out of the house and talking with people, to say nothing of the fun involved in decorating people with little fiddly designs. I've gotten to know some of the other vendors as well, and I really like the way we all seem to look out for one another, whether it's by discounting the price of snacks or helping each other with setup (or packing up in a rainstorm). If you do anything crafty or garden-y at all, I really encourage you to look into applying for booth space for next season. The fee is ridiculously cheap, and the experience is worth every penny.

***

With the close of the season, I was beginning to think I'd have to put the henna away till springtime, but it turns out that the local health-food place is once again interested in having me come out on a weekly basis. This makes me very happy for a number of reasons, not least of which is the guaranteed income from all the store employees looking for their weekly "fix" of henna.

If you're in town, I'll be at Nature's Pharm over in Lafayette, near the mall in the K-Mart plaza, every Friday from noon till roughly 5pm. And I will definitely still be taking bookings from anyone who wants to add some henna to their next birthday party, shower, ladies' night, or whatever.

***

I haven't posted in the past two weeks because I have been troubled, and hoping for some good news to write rather than the worrisome stuff. Bear in mind, most of my life is operating as well as it always does, so there aren't any tragedies keeping me from the keyboard. No... I'm a little miffed and concerned because this most recent mosaic turned out very strangely. It seems that I didn't mix up the dry bag of concrete before scooping out what I needed for each stepping stone, and this most recent stone ended up getting more sand than cement. It's very crumbly and chalky, and I have a real worry that the whole thing will disintegrate if I set it out in the rain.

This sucks all the more because the actual image looks terrific, and was a pain in the ass to finish (see multiple previous posts), so I REALLY don't want to re-do the whole thing if it can be avoided. Suggestions so far have included applying a coat of concrete sealer, rubbing off the weak stuff till I find the strong bits in the center (assuming there are any), or just chipping the whole thing off of the image and re-casting the concrete.

Anyway, I've been unhappy about the mosaic and haven't been doing anything to fix it, so I didn't want to say anything.

***

I also haven't posted because of guilt - why this should stop me, when I've had a lifetime of dealing with guilt trips, is beyond me, but let's not ponder too deeply. I'm feeling GUILTY because I had a commenter ask about the plates I had painted for our wedding anniversary, and wondering where the photos were that I'd promised to upload.

Sigh. Moments like these only serve to enhance my conviction that I am basically unemployable.

However, I do finally have a pitcha for those of you who just couldn't stand the wait... I'm including my imaginary friends and the voices in my head in the list of people who make up my fan base, 'cause it sounds more impressive that way.


Yes, I know it isn't perfectly symmetrical, yes I know the red is a little too pink. I did the entire thing freehand, using only the width of the paintbrushes to regulate the sizes of the lines, so all told, I think it actually turned out pretty well. The plates came out better than the bowls, which I regarded as practice pieces anyway.

***

Last but not least, I have made quite a bit of progress on the Laughable Embroidery Project. The front of it is actually looking pretty good, while the back is a mess and the fabric itself is still stitched into the embroidery hoop. Whatever, it will make a lovely bookmark when it's done. Probably a quilted bookmark, since the extra threads hanging off the back make a pretty good padding already.

If I weren't feeling lazy, I'd have photos for you, and maybe even a link to the online sources I'm using for instruction and inspiration... but I don't. Besides, the voices in my head already know what the embroidery looks like, so posting images for them would just be redundant.

Until next time -

The secret to remaining young is to pick an age you like, and stick with it.

And now, something different

The weather didn't look trustworthy. I chose not to go to the farmer's market. The weather proceeded to get all sunny and gorgeous.

Farmer's market is about done for the season anyway - so now it's time for me to either put the henna away till spring, or start advertising for bookings, birthday parties and that kind of thing.

I've never liked marketing... maybe I'm just lazy.

***

Speaking of lazy, the mosaic is still waiting for me to get it into the mold and pour the cement. I'll get there, maybe even today.

***

I've mentioned before that I come up with the absolute dippiest songs to sing to my kid (and how thrilled I am that she seems to be starting to do the same thing). Well, I do have one song I put together that I can actually proud of - not that I have any shame whatsoever about singing the other little things - and I wanted to write the lyrics down before I forget them. I don't sing it to her often anymore, partly because she doesn't usually have the patience for a slow waltzing lullaby right now.

Anyway, um, here.

Evening has come, the day is done
Look all around, the light has gone
Th' wind in the trees now sighs and yawns,
"Hush little one, the day is done."

Evening has come, it's time to sleep
Sun's going down, her bed to seek
Stars in the sky all seem to speak:
"Hush little one, it's time to sleep."

Evening has come, now rest your head
Rivers and streams flow to their beds
The whispering waves on th' shore have said,
"Hish little one, now rest your head."

Evening has come, it's time to rest
Rabbits and deer have found their nests
Till morning comes, I'll love you best -
Hush little one, it's time to rest.

(c) 2007, so don't go takin' credit for words you didn't write, or you'll make the little babies cry.

Thought for the day

I occasionally follow the online writing diary of professional author (ie, published and making money at it) Holly Lisle. She has a lot of free advice for aspiring writers, quite a bit of which applies really well to life in general.

She has a paid course that she is running right now, that comes with little movies and lessons and such, and to tease those of us with no money, she often posts portions of those movies on her writing diary. Currently, she's talking about Middles - that part of the novel where you're past the first love and excitement of the Beginning, not yet at the rush and excitement of the Ending, but slogging through all that stuff in between - that point where sometimes you wonder if you really have any clue what you're doing. What if you're lost?

Here is one of the things she has to say about that:

Getting Lost Is An Art
- when you are lost, you find what you weren't looking for, but needed all the same
- you learn who you are
- you discover adventure
- you become creative because you have to be
- you invent new skills
- you meet entirely new worlds

Well. When you put it that way, it makes you kinda wonder why we're NOT all out there, winging it and hoping everything comes out okay, or even just hoping that something cool comes out in the surrounding mess.

People keep talking about how talented they believe I am. I'm flattered, but I never quite know what to say. Yes, I have a reasonably steady hand, and a reasonably good eye for composition, but all the rest comes down to two factors:
1. Training - I trust my pencil or my paints or my henna to behave in certain ways, just because I've used them enough to get the hang of them; and
2. A willingness to wing it. *grin*

Seriously, I know nothing about wire sculpture. I've never made one, ever. The thing where I keep talking about building a physical representation of my family tree? I have no clue whether it would even work - but I'm willing to give it a shot, because the idea looks so cool, here inside my head.

Mosaics? Dude, I'm using a stepping stone mold from the craft store, and a cookie sheet with modeling clay on it to build the actual design. I can spend for-freakin'-ever on the designs because I'm not working with wet cement until the very end.

I can say something similar about almost everything I've ever done since graduating college, and a few things I did while I was still a student. I get this cool idea in my head and I decide to see if I can make it real. I mostly have no idea what I'm doing, right up until the point where I realize I've done something so many times that I do actually get it.

Lately, I've decided to get lost in embroidery. I so totally suck at this that I'm cracking myself up - I've already sewed the thing into the embroidery hoop because I wasn't paying attention. But I'm using cotton, not silk, on muslin, not linen, and yellow thread instead of actual gold, and I'm making a bookmark instead of the front and back of a medieval almoner's purse. So, you know, who cares if I screw it up?

When you wing it, you learn things. Or, to re-use my favorite travel quote, "if you know where you're going, it's not an adventure!"

And I guess that's my summation of Holly's really nifty thought.

Finally!

I have finished Step Two of getting the mosaic ready to go. Here are all the steps, if you're curious:

0. Get a picture, pick the colors you want in your tiles, figure out how many you'll need, blah blah blah.

1.Nip your tiles down from 3/4" to 3/8" size - the smaller size give you more detail (and you didn't have to pay extra for actual 3/8" tiles). This part can take amonth or so, because it's boring and your hand gets tired after a while, so you can't just do it all in a day.

2. Place the tiles on your temporary ground. This part took me, for this mosaic, close to a year. The red took the longest and ticked me off the most, but I've already explained why elsewhere.

3. Prep the tiles for casting. The technique I use guarantees a really smooth surface; to do it, I lay duct tape over the entire image, peel it off my ground (modeling clay), and then lay it face down in my mold.

4. Mix and pour the cement! Then you wait a couple days for it to dry and set, and that's it - finished stone.

Steps 3 and 4 together can take a couple hours, tops, not including the waiting part once you've poured the cement. Step Two is where the biggest, royalist pain in the tuckus shows up, but it's where all the gorgeousness and fun come from, too, so as long as the tiles are cooperating.

And I know you're looking for a picture, so here are the tiles on their temp ground, just waiting for me to attack them with duct tape.



This is the third in an intended series of twelve stepping stones, each with a medieval-ish motif. Once they're complete, they are meant to go around the outside of a campfire pit, to look cool and to help catch sparks. At the rate I'm going, they should all be complete by the time my daughter graduates.

Quick notes

So yeah, it's kinda chilly to be sitting out in the wind for three hours today, so I won't be at the Farmer's Market.

Instead, I'll be here, attempting to Finish The Damn Mosaic, and to start an embroidery experiment - any embroidery with me pretty much qualifies as an experiment, given how long it's been since I held a needle and thread in my hands. It's been nine years since I laid a finger on our sewing machine - literally - and longer than that since I've tried doing anything by hand.

Some call me creative. Some call me crazy. I'm in the middle of calling myself an idiot. It's not as if I don't have *enough* art things going on...

How to complete a project that mostly annoys you

So, the mosaic. Red tiles that won't permit themselves to be trimmed to any reasonable shape. Not enough square-ish shapes, way too many Massachusetts-shapes.

Have you ever set a jigsaw puzzle out on your dining room table and just left it there for a few days? Before long, the whole family is compulsively pausing whenever they walk past, to put just one piece in and then go on about their business.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing with the mosaic, more or less. It's still in my project space rather than anywhere public enough that the Monkey might notice it, and of course progress is somewhere between "glacial" and "creeping along", but I've decided not to worry about that. Slow progress is better than none.

***

When I was in college, I managed to arrange things so that I was singing at least three times a week; one year, I was in five separate musical things (four choirs and a voice lesson), so I was singing daily. I loved it. Unfortunately, once you get out of college, singing opportunities are much fewer, and usually constitute one rehearsal a week if you're lucky.

Feh.

Since having a child, I have begun singing again almost daily, and have discovered previously untapped depths of talent in musical composition and creation of lyrics... oh, who are we kidding. "Depths" refers to how far I will sink to create something singable for my kid, regardless of the dippiness of the words. (The "Belly Bongos" song comes immediately to mind... followed by the Sweet Potato Boogie and Sha-Poopie, which refers to exactly what you think it does.)

I am thrilled to report that my kid seems to be developing this ability as well. Every preschooler will sing anything you put in front of them, and I imagine most of them will blur the words together from various songs as long as they all sound like "Twinkle Twinkle". But MY kid has recently begun adding her own words to tunes she knows, without being taught, and I'm so excited I could just pop.

***

Never put me anywhere near a clearance book bin, even in the grocery store, even when I'm exchanging a thing of white sugar for a thing of brown. There was a craft book. I was good and I didn't buy it (sometimes virtue doesn't show, because it's measured by what you don't do), but of course I looked through it.

The chapter on crafting clocks and mobiles (no idea why they're the same chapter, but whatever), had a whole bunch of mobile projects that were built essentially from lots of small bent-wire sculptures hooked together. Which got me thinking yet again about this idea I've had percolating for awhile now, involving my family tree and roughly a quarter-mile or so of copper wire.

See, it's like this: My ancestry in the US goes back eight, possibly nine generations. Back in the very early 1800s, there were one or two intermarriages in different branches of the family, which makes a two-dimensional representation look really screwy - and I mean really screwy. So I had the idea a couple years back to try a three-dimensional representation instead. A mobile was my first thought, but that wouldn't quite work either, since the intermarriage links would keep some part of the mobile from being able to move freely. Also, nine generations of family means I'd about need a cathedral to hang it from.

On the other hand, a freestanding tree sculpture, limited to just my direct lineage, could actually work. The trunk would indicate the direct line of descent from the first US generation to the present. Side branches, coming off the trunk at equally-spaced intervals, represent the other offspring at each generation, ie the siblings of whoever the direct ancestor is. To keep things from getting crazy, the branches wouldn't have any "sub-branches" to represent their descendants. Instead, metal leaves would be attached to the branch, stamped with names and dates for the individuals in that generation. Small furled buds would represent the tragic number of would-be ancestors who did not survive past childhood.

Thing is, you'd need not just one leaf per person, you would need one wire as well; the idea is to have the trunk start out really thick at the base, with wires coming out of the trunk and becoming branches at each generation. That way the trunk would get more slender as you go up through the generations, just as in a real tree, and at the very top there would be only one or two branches with leaves, representing the current generation - either two leaves for my generation (me and my brother), or just one for the latest generation in the lineage, my daughter.

Either way you look at it, that's a lot of wire. How do you find something pliable tnough to shape like that, but strong enough to support the weight of all the other wires and leaves and such around it?

***

That's the first time I've actually set out this idea in writing, despite having doodles of it in my notebooks and the image in my head for, oh, probably two years or so now. It occurred to me recently that I could make trees for each of the original branches of the family, and the intermarriages could be covered with intertwining branches from two of the trees; but I'm not sure I'm ready to build even one tree, much less an entire grove of them. Current records from the late 18th century to the present, with all the ancestors and their spouses listed, is somewhere near a thousand people; possibly more than that.

Too bad my brain just refuses to let this one go.

Too. Much. Fun.

Went to my first booking yesterday, a bridal shower for a poor young woman who has something like FOUR showers planned by all her various friends and family. The hostess for this one wanted to give her something different... so she got me. AND three bellydancers from our local troupe, AND lessons, AND music to take with them in case they want to perform at their wedding reception.



Heh. My own wedding alternated 80s music with 16th century country dances... I wouldn't have minded bellydance, although not much would have shown up thanks to the hoop skirt in my gown.

There were something like eight or nine ladies there all told, and they all got henna, some of which I'm happy with, some of which I'm REALLY happy with.



Special thanks to Catherine Cartwrighte Jones of The Henna Page for the copyrighted-yet-free patterns which I made use of for over half my clients yesterday. I especially liked how these two came out:





The hostess was happy enough that she sent me home with leftover cake! On the other hand, that may have been because I showed her a picture of my daughter, who really is cute enough to cause that kind of reaction.

***

In the meantime, my next booking isn't until Globalfest on August 30th, and that isn't a "booking" so much as an event. I'm still looking forward to it, though.

Now, if only I didn't get paranoid about the wind every week, out at the Farmer's Market... my sun-shade took a hit a few weeks back from a hard gust, and now parts are being held together with duct tape, and I can't help but get a little twitchy whenever I set up.

***

Mosaic progress is actually happening. Slowly. Stupid red Massachusettses.

To reassure my adoring fans...

Yeah. Assuming I a: have fans at all, b: number of fans > 1, c: actually adore me.

Anyway. I wasn't at the farmer's market yesterday because I wasn't feeling well. I'm much better today, just a bit tired. Note to self: don't eat there on a day you need to go somewhere.

***

I did, however, make more progress on the mosaic, and now I remember why I stopped.

Basically, the red tiles that I'm using must have come from a different manufacturer than all my other tiles, because instead of having these straight lines across the back (really easy to trim to shape), they have some kind of waffle pattern, and there's no guarantee what kind of shape you're going to end up with. I have a number of pieces that look like Massachusetts, which would be fine except I was going for squares...!

If you're curious, red, yellow, and orange tend to cost much more than other glass mosaic tiles, because of the pigments used.

Also if you're curious, I got mine from wonderfully nice people in New Jersey who operate Mosaic Glass Tile Enterprise. I never realized there were so many different KINDS of glass tiles available to the people who make kitchen backsplashes or, y'know, restrooms in shopping malls and theaters.

Whee!

Global-fest, Global-fest, oh global Global-fest
Global Fest!
*pop*
Ba-dum bum bum...

Saturday August 30, Morton Community Center!
I really want to attend this, and the coordinator really wants to have me!

BUT, I'm not officially booked quite yet - all that is pending feedback from a planning committee.

Hopefully I'll be allowed to charge a *little* bit of money while I'm there. If it looks like I won't have any chance to at least earn lunch money, I'll probably end up heading to an event up near Chicago instead. That won't be a henna thing, that will be a chance to see friends I haven't visited with in close to a year.

Excited!

***

I managed to add about five red tiles to the mosaic that has been sitting unfinished on my project table since about November. Yes yes, and you should see the state of my flower beds and the pile of clean-yet-not-put-away laundry, too.

***

On that note, there's a nifty book out titled Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, that has me all curious and intrigued. I plan to check it out of the library as soon as it comes back in. Basically, the idea is that your personality affects everything from what you like to wear to how you like to decorate, and to a trained eye that means we leave clues about ourselves all over the place. The book sort of explains those clues, and how they can be "read back" to find out about the personality who left them.

Right now, my house isn't saying anything too flattering, but I'm working on it. I'm just thrilled to finally have my CD collection alphabetized, and to have started consolidating all the books we own into one big stack so I can start sorting them as well.

***

I am a nerd.

Most people who make origami go for flowers or little birds and things, right? I am learning how to make flat, regular polygons (octagons, pentagons, all those), which I then will be able to join together to make three-dimensional shapes like cubes, pyramids, dodecahedrons, and other crazy things.

My brain is enjoying a trip back to Geometry-land for the first time since, oh, 11th grade.

I am SUCH a nerd.

This, that, and the other

The Mosey Down Main Street was roughly two weeks ago now, and I still haven't put up photos. Oh, naughty me. The problem is that I have about a zillion pictures of the clients I worked on through the evening, and I loved just about every design I did. The whole atmosphere was terrific. I had a blast, and made double the money I've earned at any prior gig. I figured I'd have to wrap up once things got dark, but it turns out I was perfectly placed to take advantage of the light from the storefront behind me, and the streetlight across the way. The event ran till midnight, and I finally decided I was done around 11pm.

***

My family and I spent the holiday weekend with my parents, along with my brother and his family, getting ourselves drenched, waterlogged, bruised (I whacked my elbow HARD exiting one of the water slides), and thoroughly exhausted playing around at Splash Universe up in Shipshewana. Bigtime Amish community, world-famous flea market... and a water park. *shrug* Okay.

One unexpected highlight of the weekend was when my mother mentioned that the books she had ordered for my birthday present had finally come in, after being on backorder for three weeks. I had forgotten all about the backorder, so receiving books out of the blue like that was terrific. Even more so, since they were both how-to books for making other books, by Cheryl Moote. The first is titled Simply Bound: Beginnings in Bookbinding, and the second, Sleight of Binding, has more fun stuff, like "books" with hidden pages, pockets, jacob's ladders, and so on.

Of course, I started playing with these as soon as I got home, and of course, got interested first in the origami Chinese Sewing Kit. It's a series of (kinda) simple origami boxes that are stacked and glued in such a way that the whole thing is very compact, but opens to reveal layers upon layers of storage for needles, buttons, etc. Except Cheryl Moote uses it as a nifty book/journal/greeting gift kind of thing; you can hide messages in each of the boxes, pressed flowers, stamps, tiny drawings, whatever. So it turns into a kind of treasure packet.

Most of the things in these books are not really related to origami at all... but between the Chinese Sewing Kit and the meander-books, I've gotten interested, again, in playing with paper. In 8th grade or so, I learned how to fold an origami horse (me, horse-crazy? nahhhh....), and of course the notorious "cootie catcher" fortune teller. Now with the scrapbooking industry being what it is, gorgeous paper is everywhere, and there is quite a lot of info out there for "scrappers" to make origami additions to their pages, along with popup engineering and who knows what else. I'm heroically resisting getting into scrapbooking - like I need something else to spend money on - but the origami and the pop-up stuff fascinates me.

***

I mentioned something called a meander-book. Meanders are booklets made of zig-zag folded paper (aka "accordion folds") that unfold in crazy directions, rather than just in a straight line. Since they go all over the place, they're great for representing a little trip, or a story about traveling, or - this was my inspiration - "cumulative folktales".

It sounds fancy, but you already know what cumulative stories are:

This is the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt....

Or, here's another one:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to meeee...

Cumulative tales exist all around the world, and they're a lot of fun. I got the idea of creating a meander book and using the text of some cumulative story or other. As you unfold a meander, the pages don't disappear the way they do in regular books, so page two will show you page one as well.

Weeeellll, I made a test meander out of a piece of construction paper, and it has a total of 32 "sheets", which I suppose could turn out to provide 64 discreet pages to work with, depending on how the thing unfolds. Me being me, I got to thinking about what sort of cumulative story would be long enough to fit in a meander like that... and then I ended up making one up myself. "The House That Jack Built" has a total of ten elements in it (Jack, rat, cat, dog, cow, maiden, man, judge/priest, cock/rooster, and farmer). Mine has something like 22.

Yes, I know. You have my permission to just sit back and shake your head at me. I'm doing the same thing myself.

***

One of these days, I'll sit down and finish the red portion of my mosaic, and then it will be ready to cast - and I promise I'll take a picture once it's done. For today, however, it's going to be all about the data entry, and about getting some display henna back on my skin in time for the Farmer's Market tomorrow. You'd be amazed at what four hours of splashing around will do to that top layer of skin...

Cheers!

Is "kick ass" a marketing term?

So, as I described last time, on Friday I was booked to set up outside the entrance to a local health food/herbal place and do henna; I think this counts as my first booking. This pleases me. *grin*

Anyway, I set up in the shade I mention this because I got a reflected sunburn anyway), put out my tip jar, and hung out. Pretty much everyone I worked on was either an employee or a friend/offspring of an employee, but since I did somewhere around ten designs (I lost track) and actually walked away with some cash in the tip jar, I didn't mind.

Even better was the part where the store staff said they loved having me, and wanted me to come back next Friday. They'd prefer Saturdays since they get more traffic then (yay!), but my weekends are not good this entire month. Maybe in June we can set something up, which would rock.

One of the employees (we'll call her "Jennifer") looks to become my first regular customer; she was so excited that I was coming that she dressed up for the occasion, took one look at my sketches and the work on my hands, and said, "free rein!" She did take photos, and she did promise to email them to me, which is good, because I was really happy with just about every design I did. And I was ecstatic with the one I did for her.

Lately, for no good reason I've been obsessed with Arabian/Persian-rug type patterns instead of the Indian stuff I've been learning. I'd had an idea that morning for a pattern that I wanted to incorporate somehow, and Jennifer seemed to be the person to try it with. It turned out approximately ten times better than I had anticipated. We both freaked out with joy; and then she worked the cash register for the next several hours, so lots of customers got to see it and also freak out with joy. Assuming I get those photos soon, I will definitely add that one to my blog for y'all.

***

I never intended for this blog to become strictly about henna; things just seem to be working beautifully in that aspect of my life, and I'm willing to run with it as far as I possibly can. I do intend to sit down this week and complete the unfinished mosaic that's been sitting on my table for way, way too long now. Of course, I'm doing that to free up space for my cutting mat, so I can make more henna cones... but let's not go there right now, let's just discuss the mosaic!

***

And now, my daughter would like to say something.
f/ bb.b.vh/.n h.n h/mmjl kl;l/'/h.hy 'vly pyg/ttrtkk6t

Well, here we are.

So this is what blogging feels like.

Let's see. I've published a booklet about mosaics, I'm a calligrapher, I built what is probably still the only medieval European-style kite in the Midwest, I occasionally become obsessed with tying friendship bracelets, and I might be getting into applying henna decoration in the near future.

Not much of a cook, though.

Almost the only thing all my pursuits have in common is that I like detail work. Hence, the name of this blog - "little fiddly bits" are the details on the edges of illuminated calligraphy, the tricksy pieces of a mosaic, or the twirly intricate parts of a henna design.

Enjoy my musings, rants, tales of my latest exploits, or whatever. Welcome, and thanks for stopping by.