ONTD TREK MEETUP WAS AWESOME.
More photos, fanart, recipe for nerdiest cookies ever later. Fans are such lovely people.
Now I sleep. *flops*



PS. I can't find my snorkle and I leave for Mexico on Tuesday- diving without a mask kind of defeats the purpose. Did I lend it to anybody? It's cerulean colored with a clear seal. :D

This Saturday, beginning at 2pm, there will be a hair pampering/movie watching/chocolate drenched unvalentines shindig at my place!

We are using black cat red cat bridal Jamila henna, and it's excellent stuff! Katie has been kind enough to purchase it ahead of time, and all she wants is for the rest of us to bring auxiliary supplies. We should totally shower her in kittens. And, you know, supplies.

If you would like a henna/cassia rinse and have not claimed an item, we still need:
One box clear gelatin, one box heavy duty saranwrap
One container each of powdered paprika and cardamom
One tarp and one bag of cotton balls (better still is the chunky string of cotton batting they sell at most beauty shops for hair dyeing. Sally's, for instance, had the stuff we used at my 21st.)

The following people have claimed ingredients and are good to go:
oui_je_danse (Merlot, assorted spices.)
4ti3k4t35 (Henna, lemon juice.)
itsychick (Gloves, merlot, assorted spices.)

Blatant repost:

Unless you're buying organic fair trade gold encrusted pope blessed supplies, it shouldn't cost more than ten bucks. :) If you'd like our seamstresses to whip you up an expendable yukata to flounce in while the henna stews, you also need to bring two sheets. (at least one large enough to fold in half and cover you neck to ankles and wrist to wrist.)

There'll be hair dying, hair dusting, nerdy movies and dinner. People bringing spices and liquids need to be there at 2 so we can get the henna stewing.

PS. CAN SOMEONE POINT JESSE THIS WAY, PLEASE? I'M NEVER ONLINE WHEN SHE IS, AND I DOUBT SHE'LL SEE THIS OTHERWISE.


See you soon!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, aesc and beadattitude wrote an adorable Atlantis/Pygmalion fusion. Greek myths make me a happy bunny, so I did some sketching and then, er, let it sink to the bottom of my to-do stack like a stone. Today, it emerges from the depths! So to speak.

Warning for the modest, John has no fig-leaf!


( On to the art! )

Mostly harvested from the wreckage of a dear, dear, coral/hand carved Japanese ornament choker I made in high school. New additions are beads from shopping at the flea market in Italy with the inestimable pick_up_styx, and chunky black coral from a touristy shark necklace in my junk drawer.

( Picture! )

For the moment it's just threaded on waxed string, when I'm done messing with it I'll put it on higher tensile flex wire. Should have bought more turquoise while abroad! Even at the then-killer exchange rate it was gorgeously cheap. (This 1/4 palm size piece was 1.5 euro. Three. Bucks. *drools*)

PS. This is kind of hilarious. ♥

Practically nobody here watches Merlin, but you should, because it's ridiculously campy and adorable. A fun mix of candyfloss, subtext and fairytale. For a bonus, there are chicks with swords and cute boys.

Also adorable? greensilver's genderbent fic A Step To The Left. Chick Merlin done with a good dose of humor and not a hint of sue. It sparked some doodling, and the results are ( here )

:)

PS. STITCH AND BITCH HAS MOVED LOCATIONS. So if you're planning to show and oui_je_danse or I have not gotten to you, drop us a line and we'll give you the new directions!

Writing my very first grant application.
Which is driving me ever so slightly mad.
I can throw down a budget and a page of project specs like nobody's business, I've helped choose grants before so I've got some idea of how to put it together, but wow. I am an extremely junior artist who has only ever been published twice and won a single very minor award. I have a great idea and some wonderful people to work with but I'm very, very inexperienced and it's kind of heartbreaking to know you can plan down to the last grain of sand, put months into your work samples, and sacrifice your very best goat, and chances are it still won't ever see funding.

Cross your fingers, folks. And hope the state of Washington feels generous.

Okay, to anyone I missed, Stitch and Bitch is THIS SATURDAY AT THREE. I will make cranberry coffee cake and something with veg/protein that can be served over rice. (Curry? Stir fry? Only sparse weekend groceries will tell!) We have Sarah to heckle for tales of her travels, and a choice of: The Princess Bride, Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Transformers, Singing in the Rain, The Emperor's New Groove, Mulan, Stardust, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Mummy, Harry Potter, Juno, Constantine, any Indiana Jones film and whatever floats home from the rental shop in the next day or so. Or, we could sit around and gossip while I sew chicken feathers to book cloth. Choose your poison, bitches.

In other awesome news, Ilana hosted a fun new year's bash in which we all played amusing party games and while daddy dearest watched in extreme apathy from the Barnes' corner chair. Bad dad, no champagne for you. Three cheers for irritating party poppers and ridiculous games!

PS. FINALLY got my vacation photos! Will link as soon as uploaded. Spain was pretty. Italy was prettier, but I did not have a camera. :(

In one of those weird family logic things, we delayed Christmas dinner until tonight. (I think the reasoning was something like 'Then Aunty K can come! But Aunty K is crazy! If Aunty K comes she will shriek at us about her past lives and have fits of rabid hypochondria and revisionist history all over the living room. What's that, Aunty K is deathly afraid of traveling in snow? Excellent. Let's put off holiday dinner anyway. Who's for Indian take out?') Tonight, we did the turkey and cranberries thing with family, friends of parents and the inestimable 4ti3k4t35. After, her dad drove his ENORMOUS TRUCK through the snow so we could look for sale prices on a PS3, (4ti3k4t35,) and a bag of black chicken feathers, (me. Don't ask.)
We ended up getting egg shapers. *coughs* Our shopping-fu is weak, but we had fun, and are full of glorious amounts of spicy turkey and pie. <3

My favorite things this year: A little Nikon camera! My old school B&W monstrosity is archaic enough that when I take it to the arboretum, the other photographers go 'Oh WOW, I haven't seen those since I was covering politics in the late 70's!' ...as I struggle with the trunk it's lenses live in. Now I don't have to fuss with film OR lenses! Or even settings, if I'm feeling lazy and ambivalent. This probably makes me a bad photographer, but I'm so grateful not to have to blow money on film it's not even funny. It is blue and shiny and I have named it Zack. ♥
Also, an A&C card I'm totally planning to blow on print supplies. For now, it's kind of nice just to set it on the night stand and moon at it. It's so orange! And powerful! AND TINY.

Got to my email after days of radio silence, and holy crap, someone nominated And I Have Known for the McShep awards! Thank you so much! I'm embarrassingly excited by this. <3

I finally got InDesign to bend to my will, dug out my old master pages and am zooming along. Good thing too, because 4ti3k4t35 requested a Mascotverse compendium.
Do you know how prolific Coyo is? That woman is a library in and of herself. The sucker is six hundred pages long. I'm two thirds of the way through formatting it and I'm pretty sure I've consumed all the coffee in the house. (We buy in other countries and then keep it in crates in the freezer until we need to grind more beans. I have emptied the freezer, people.) On the bright side, found a ream of lovely cream colored linen paper to print it on. On the slightly less bright side, I'm out of PVA glue and we're buried in snow, so I'll be binding it with wheat paste. KATIE, IF YOU EVER GET THIS THING WET, IT'S GOING TO GROW FUR AND POSSIBLY ALSO LIMBS. RIGHT BEFORE IT DISSOLVES INTO CREAM OF WHEAT. DO. NOT. TAKE IT TO THE BATH. It will eat your face

PS. Drawing chocobos is wicked fun. Heee.

PPS. My favorite printshop on capitol hill says they'll run it for me for 30$, on paper even better than the stuff I've got, and ignore the fact that it's fannish porn. SEATTLE IS FULL OF AWESOME PEOPLE.

You know, setting lead type is time consuming as fuck, but at least with physical presses there isn't some arbitrary software designer that waltzes in, makes my furniture look like bath ducks and hides it in the teapot, just to screw with my head.

In short: With the jump to InDesign CS4, exactly enough changes were made that all my lovely education is useless. I'm going to have to put together each page, letter by letter, and then smash the printer with a stick until it spits out proper signatures. You should all receive your Christmas gifts in approximately a century. *facepalms* My print prof once told me that this was a pursuit for the masochistic and the OCD. She really wasn't kidding.

On the bright side, there was a sale on acid free daveyboard. <3 I can now make covers for everything in the 'to finish' box, and a library besides.

Stitch and bitch is a pass this week, between the holidays and the weather, but snow and ice allowing, how does next week look for people?

Went to orientation at the Vera Project today. THEY HAVE A SILKSCREENING LAB, GUYS. WHERE I CAN DROP IN. AND SILK SCREEN. *FLAILS* I get to make concert posters and once they're sure I don't blow things up, teach/manage lab. Also, helping put on concerts! I've got something like thirty sketches and a T-shirt design for Katie and now I can actually *make things* with them. So awesome. Getting to use art to contribute to the community? A+

Also, skulked around Easy Street records and picked up some Mountain Goats, because they (he? whichever,) are awesome, and put out the Satanic Messiah EP for free and how can you not support that? =D Also, it's very difficult not to buy a CD with a song on it titled 'Lovecraft in Brooklyn'. And now, sleep, because tromping around downtown all day makes me dizzy with exhaustion.

For any Sitch and Bitch folks that I've missed: We're on for Two(ish) tomorrow. I have to run down to the arts center and do the 'HI, I'VE NEVER KILLED KITTENS, HAND TO GOD, AND ALSO, I KNOW HOW TO USE A PAINTBRUSH' paperwork beforehand, so if anyone gets here before I do I'm REALLY SORRY, and probably also on the bus.

In the food department, We have banana bread, tea, and everything for scones of awesome except, you know, cranberries. *facepalms* So, BRING NIBBLIES, or we will be forced to go grocery shopping and then 'yall will have to watch me nance about in an apron and it will be very tragic. Also, if anyone has cranberries they want to bring, I'll shower you with scones thirty minutes after you show up. <3

PS. SARAH IS MADE OF AWESOME AND REMINDED ME TO SCHEDULE THINGS. WE SHOULD SHOWER HER IN CHOCOLATE AND SMUTFIC.


PPS. Knitting with size six needles is insanely tiny. What the hell was I thinking? This scarf is made of frustration and bitterness.

Back from the black of space! *grins* This city has a lovely explosion of arts organizations and doing volunteer work for them has been fantastic. I'm leaning towards the Vera Project, when I'm done with the arts center and all the Christmas bashes. (Gage is putting on an UNBELIEVABLE Christmas drawing jam, so if any of you have even the *remotest* artistic inclination you should totally come with me. There is food and amazingness and models from Teatro Zinzani, folks. It's quite literally a circus of awesome and art.)

Also awesome? Got hired to do my first bit of design work this week. Let's hear it for getting paid to muck about in photoshop. *cheers*

HEY, ALL YOU STITCH N' BITCH GIRLS! Janine can only come if it's Tuesday. Does it work for people to move to Tuesday this time, or should we keep it on Fri/Sat and mope until next month when she can come? THOUGHTS? LOCATION IDEAS? Because we can totally keep doing this in my livingroom, but there are some nifty tea houses in town, and it might be fun to test their chairs. <3

I've just written 236 pages of abstracted Arabic calligraphy on transparent vellum, then folded the lot into signatures, tape sewn it with aqua colored silk thread and given it a clear plastic cover. In theory, this represents (in some fashion) Borges' Book of Sand. Final project is FINITO.

I'ma sleep now, and then drink a loooooooooooot of coffee so I'll be awake when Katie gets here tomorrow today later.

Later, when the labs are open and I can get to ze scanner, doodles of a robot ballerina, an Agrop and Iroh and Teyla having tea. Because abstracted calligraphy is only fun for the first ten pages.

Parents are visiting tomorrow, which on the one hand? I miss people who know who I am. People with whom I don't have to do the bubbly 'HI, I'M AN ART MAJOR AND I SPEAK SPANISH AND I CAN WRITE A COHERENT ESSAY AND QUOTE FIREFLY AND COOK AND BEAD AND KNIT AND YESTERDAY, I SAVED A KITTEN!' dance. (No lie, Siamese, cute as a button.) Or, you know, put up with smokers and pretentious asshats and men who think they know what feminism is, and that is histrionic. And I really miss my mom. Pathetic, I know, but you know what? I do. She taught me to make pie, and loved me even when I was struggling and angry and uncomfortable with myself, and she read harry potter aloud to us even when we stole the book and read ahead in the towel closet.

On the other, visiting parents means cleaning everything within an inch of it's life, plus having Conversations. You know, the uppercase C kind where you pretend to be flawlessly happy and put together because anything else only makes it longer and more horrifying and starts tangents like 'Why aren't you dating that nice boy with the hair again?' and unsubtle hints that you know, if this whole higher education starving artist thing goes to crap, I can always be a secretary for uncle whatsisface. Prying questions about my love life and bank account? Not my favorite.

On the bright side, dinner in town at an honest to god, does not serve tofu restaurant. SCORE.

...I should not be this nervous about a day with my folks. *facepalms*

Having a Stargate Atlantis marathon as I stitch bindings. YAY, slashy space show of questionable quality!!! ♥
Not that I'm complaining? But the writers for season five have a serious fetish for splaying Jason Momoa like some kind of fancy wall hanging. Between the rock slides and the uh, ship tentacles? (whatever *those* were,) and the wraith wall of... torture, he's spending every other episode plastered to the nearest vertical surface. HI RONON, YOU'RE PRETTY. I'm apparently that shallow, and also two.

Showed Theo Constantine last night, and, er, unintentionally scarred her for life. *facepalms* NOTE TO SELF- ASK PEOPLE IF THEY POSSESS CATHOLIC UPBRINGINGS AND QUEASY CONSTITUTIONS BEFORE LENDING THAT ONE OUT. It is agreed, however, that Shia is adorable, Reeves wooden but pleasing eyecandy and Rachel Weiss nine kinds of awesome.

PS. Never realized how much almost kissing was in that movie until I watched it with someone who was actually paying attention to the romance arc. How improved would favorite TV would be by the Constantine method of transition? 'Crap, exposition's done with, time for a ten seconds of REALLY unplatonic breathing eachother's carbon dioxide!' Rodney, for instance, would have a much more interesting almost personal life. Bones would- oh wait, never mind.

So, in an incredibly shitty piece of timing, I've got a major project deadline Monday, I'm curled up on my mattress with a heating pad, a costco jug of ibuprofen, and a case of screaming nausea, and I can't seem to get my big bang illustration to work. Not that it would matter even if the thing was *flawless*, as the campus oversize scanner is broken, summer staff can't be buggered to fix it, and every digital camera seems to have migrated North for the summer.
Also, BIG FREAKING PROJECT BY MONDAY. I have ONE DAY of lab time to assemble a full scale artist's book that illustrates the 'soul and essence' of the literature prompt I was given, and it's a third of the final grade. Currently, I can't be five minutes away from my heating pad and pills without fits of agony. Fun.

I'll be over here, Razoring dictionaries into cityscapes and then making them boxes that look like books. For the next 24 hours. lak;sndfawioef motherfrakking college dean who made Steve teach a ten week class in half the time. HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE. I live in lab, yeah, but a girl needs to eat and have PMS days and see sunlight on occasion.

Bought my very first stabbity awl today. It's very stabbity. I nearly gored myself in the leg on the way home. Also purchased VERY fancy thread in a variety of greeny blues, glue, paper and bookboard. Waiting on the rest of it until I figure out what the heck is going on. (Way to go professor H, 'hey kids, go out and buy all these specialized supplies, but I'm not going to tell you in what amounts, or what for, or what's going to end up being part of the cover and what's actually bookmaker-speak for 'the ugly paper we use to stiffen the spine.' Smart. Good thing we all adore him or we might be peevish about it. ;P

Adventures in college cooking:
1) Veg curry tastes *much* better with a brick of tofu and the only slightly satanic undairy cream they sell at the campus corner store in it. (THEY SELL THREE KINDS OF TOFU THERE. Also produce grown on campus. And every weird Asian snack you can imagine. Bless you and your crunchy granola ways, Evergreen.)

2) If you come by at the end of the day, arms full of art supplies and a ridiculous grin on your face, the people at the organic produce stand outside the student activity hall will give you free vegetables. No shit. The lettuce is *awesome*

Tomorrow I have no classes, no scheduled field trips, no laundry, no cooking, no dorm duties, I am going to take my little box of curry, veg and rice, a flask of coffee and my stabbity awl and have some FUN in the lab. They have oversize plates! And inks I can just walk in and USE, free of charge! and glass topped everything, I can mix colors anywhere I damn please.

Bookbinding requires some fairly specialized materials, especially if you don't want the piece to become a yellow, crumbling horror before you graduate. Around here, the *only* way to get your hands on them is through the garage of a little old lady out in Lacey who runs a specialty mail order service. So today, Carlos and I venture forth to stock up on silk thread, awls, glue and fancy paper! Money drain, oooooh yes, but ridiculously fun, the paper is supposed to be *amazing* and her supplies top of the line. I'm just itching to get shopping.

The new roommates seem nice enough, promisingly nerdy and pretty laid back, if uh, a little terrifying in the kitchen hygiene department. *winces* Fortunately, packing my own kitchen means that's less an issue and more an amusing spectacle. (How high will the stale bread tower get today? Film at 11!) Also really REALLY glad I swung by the farmer's market on my way here, because while Evergreen supposedly has it's very own grocery shop complete with campus grown organic produce and pale bricks of tofu, it's been closed due to 'technical difficulties' since I've arrived. Without my little bunches of cilantro and arugula I'd be eating entirely out of cans. Yum.

And finally, having LOADS of fun with 24 hour lab access and my SGA big bang prompt. *glee* I think it's going to be another print based collage thing. We'll see how the last batch of silkspan combines and hey, I might be done by Monday. =D

Scrambling to pack my things and get ready to move, which today meant choosing which comfort novels to take and stocking the cupboards. (Animal Dreams, Sunshine, Good Omens, Finder, War for the Oaks and Splashdance Silver. Dithering over six others. I can always find a library, right? RIGHT? They have a not utterly barren one in Olympia, yes?)
My style of cooking falls neatly into three categories: Indian, Thai and PIE. All of which require egregious amounts of spices. I had NO IDEA how expensive spices were. I'd been looking at prices in Spain thinking 'oh, that's not so bad' and forgetting that a) those prices were in euro and b) they actually use ethnic spices over there, so things like ground cardamom aren't priced at a major organ per thimbleful. I'm going to have to be very sparing with my sauces. Euro or not, it still would have been cheaper to buy from the crazy guy at the fair and sneak them home in my socks.

On the upside, seven months of necessities seem to be fitting into four boxes and a garment bag. Huzzah. Tomorrow, a glorious day of crafts fair, movie and friends. Just as soon as I load my bedding into my trunk.

PS. The car? Decided that because we haven't touched it in two weeks it would spend most of the way there stalling like a mofo. *whimpers* (Thankfully, Buster was back in full form by the time we hit the central market lot.) Just because I can change the oil and put on the spare tire does NOT mean I am comfortable with the thing. Gah.