Category Archives: administrivia

Progress and etc.

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I picked up crocheting again this summer: I have a project I started in early 2000 and put aside a month or two later that I am finally going to finish off. And because I set up an account on Ravelry a while back, when I went there to see if anyone else was using that old pattern (yes), I fell down a rabbithole or two of crochet patterns and found several that look like fun, so I’ve got one of those in progress, too. (Did you know there are some REALLY AMAZING complex-looking textured doilies out there?? There are!)

I also dug out a sewing project I started in a class 8 or 9 years ago and got almost finished with and then . . . Well.

It’s still not done, but it’s closer to done than it was a month ago! I’ll get there! It’s just that I have never sewed anything like this and I’ve gotten to a part of the pattern I’m nervous about so I’m procrastinating, besides which there are other exciting things to do, like crocheting and the internet and pretty much everything else.

And I put the Etsy store back up, hoping maybe this time around I can sell this stuff and no longer have it in boxes, and then remembered that I’d done some digital art once upon a time, and maybe I should post about that some, too, and one thing lead to another and I set up a Threadless store which also has a new design in it, because suddenly I had more ideas, and I am now in a rush to get more of them made.

The crocheting is probably going to get abandoned again until I get some of digital art urges under control. That’s ok, the shawl’s been waiting almost 20 years it can wait another week to get edged and blocked and etc.

Together Festival; new art; oil paint is Bad News; probably some other things, too

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NEWSY THINGS

I will be vending at the Together Festival on April 7 from 11-5. The festival itself runs from April 2-8. If you came to the Burner Bazaar in December and liked what you saw, you should come check this out, too!

And I submitted an application for this year’s CSArt program, run by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. I won’t know for a while whether I’ve even made it through the first round of selections. It’s a really fantastic program, and I hope I get in. If I don’t, well, the proposal I submitted is something I’d like to try out anyway; it’s nice to have another art concept lurking around for days when I get bored with the same old business.

ARTY THINGS

Speaking of lurking concepts, I’ve had this one skulking about in my head for months and months, and I finally took the time to track down some reference images I could use to create the silhouette and cracked pattern:

silhouette of a raven in flight on a shattered heart

"Raven heart" needs a better title.

References used: Raven 13, by EquineStockImages, and Broken by devradiopooh (that link no longer works but it did as of 5 days ago). I have a couple other variations over on deviantART.

One of the ways I pay attention in meetings is to doodle in my sketchbook. It’s a good way to come up with new ideas and work out a million zillion variations before trying them in wire. Here’s one of them in wire now:

Variation on the tooth theme. These are rather large, but very light.

GRIPEY THINGS

OH MY GOD OIL PAINT!!!

So on the advice of several people who sell paint for a living, I bought some Serious Oil-based Paint for painting the Dig Box. And I put on a first coat, and I waited for it to dry so I could apply a second coat, because the first coat wasn’t completely covering the original paint. The cans of paint say “Dries to the touch in 3-4 hours. To apply a second coat, allow to dry overnight.”

And the next morning I checked on it, and it was NOT EVEN DRY TO THE TOUCH!!! In fact, where I touched it, the paint wrinkled up.

That was Friday morning.

Today, Monday, I came in to sand the damn thing and put on coat #2.

GUESS WHAT.

The surface is now dry to the touch, but it’ll still wrinkle up, which means NO SANDING, unless you want to immediately gunk up the sandpaper beyond salvation.

So I spent almost two hours scraping paint off the damn box, so that it might someday dry enough that I can sand ALL THE OIL PAINT OFF and go for spray paint. Or maybe latex, because that was also an option for super-duper, resistant-to-weather paint, and I should have gone with that from the start.

So. Oil paint. I have almost 2 quarts I will not be finishing off. One in a lovely dark green, the other in the wrong shade of pale blue.

Anyone want it? The paint store claims it’s awesome!!

Now with crossposting!

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This blog will now automagically crosspost to:

My account (feathersmith) on Dreamwidth from which it will even more magically be crossposted to my account (feathersmith) on Livejournal.

If you’ve been reading via the syndicated feed on LJ, I recommend adding feathersmith to your flist, because if you comment on the syndicated post, I will probably never see it. Also, the syndicated posts eventually expire, but posts made in an actual journal do not.