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November 21st, 2009
09:23 pm - Rats and Candy
( cut for photos )
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/yawn.gif) tired
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November 19th, 2009
05:57 pm - Vituperousness and depression charting
Since it's prominent enough to annoy me, it's prominent enough to journal for next year. ( Read more... )
Current Mood: blah
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November 12th, 2009
05:31 pm - Augh!
So, when I moved into this apartment, I carefully stored my matboard and cutter in my closet, behind my dresser trunk and everything else. I put the cutting heads into a bag with their blades, so they wouldn't get lost. I currently haven't the faintest idea where that bag is. I've been searching for it all day, and have been through pretty much all parts of the apartment. Without packing up, I'm not sure I can find them.
This causes some real problems for doing a show tomorrow. After all, as much as I hate mat cutting, it's a world less expensive than buying precuts. And most of the pieces I wanted to take aren't standard, either. Even the standard ones want a margin just a tiny bit smaller than the one on a standard mat. There's a Dick Blick five miles from the con, which could provide precuts, but it'd be expensive and the end result would be suboptimal. Argh!
I am trying to decide what to do, now. I may give one more search for the heads, though the only place I can think to look involves moving furniture and a lot of other things. I may be stuck taking old art, which is disappointing. I can see huge numbers of things wrong with all my older pieces, and the brain monkeys are convinced that no one will want to buy them. After all, they've been passed up for this long, no?
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) samadi brought me chocolate, which makes her a goddess. I'm also trying to figure out what I'm going to wear. I could go in everyday stuff, but that's kinda dull, though brightly colored. This is an excuse to wear my victoriana, after all. If only it didn't take so much effort.
Geh.
- Also, I'm unlikely to be able to finish the Pygmalion. If I'd been able to find the mat cutter and cut everything while there was still daylight, yeah, I probably could have speed painted until I fell over. But there's another big shiny thing what won't be going. I spose I could take it and work on it there. However, it's big and has boobies, and the con crowd, like the SCA, has recently gotten much more "Think of the children!"
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/annoyed.gif) frustrated
Current Music: Gorathorn - Der Ietzte Ritt der Rohirrim
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November 11th, 2009
10:34 pm - Art and mood charting
Working on a piece that's a little too hard for me again. We'll see if I can accomplish what I'd like, or if I mess it up halfway through. It's like juggling rats. So far, so good, but they're so -squirmy-! And I know I'm going to drop one any minute now.
Sleep schedule is rotating back - I'm going to bed anywhere between 9 and 11 most nights, though I was up till 11:30 last night. This seems absurdly early, but it's enabling wakeup times around 8 to 8:30, so it's worth it. The extra sunlight is making a difference.
Of course, after dark I'm prone to lunatic beliefs, severe self doubt and big, dramatic cases of the hacks. So far I've not done too much that I oughtn't. Tonight hasn't been bad. I'm trying to get this painting done before the con, and I had a brief manic period that allowed for a lot of painting. Perhaps I must simply keep myself busy. Having time to kill seems to be a real problem.
Must do laundry before the con and hopefully tidy a bit. Housework has been terrible, and I've been eating so much boxed stuff. There's breakfast cereal in my house now. How bizarre is that? Daily monitoring is now required to make sure I eat a non-starchy, non-allium vegetable instead of living on shredded wheat, bagels and potatoes with egg. Caffeine intake is unnecessarily high. But - writing work is getting done and I've done more art in the past month and a half than I did in most of the previous year, so it's not entirely a loss.
Progress art up on the other journal again.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/sad.gif) drained
Current Music: Corvus Corax - Fortuna
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November 10th, 2009
11:26 pm - Putting art where it goes
There's a progress pic up over at http://gracedpalmer.livejournal.com , where it ought to be for once, for those of you who are interested but don't yet have that journal friended.
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Depeche Mode - Agent Orange [*]
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November 6th, 2009
12:07 pm - Rats Plus Angst!
Don't worry, the two aren't related. I completed a minor project last night, which had been waiting around for about six months, since the first time I flaked on it. So, of course, I hate most of it and went into the Art Angst Spiral. I've pulled out of the despair section (mostly) and have entered the grim "guess you'd better get to work" portion instead.
Let's see if it'll last through this day's quota of nonfic writing to become either fiction or visual art. At the moment, yanno, I'm a failure, and merely mediocre at everything, and I ought to have specialized and become really good at something, so as to be marketable. Also, I should be less of a flake. (No, I don't need anyone to come talk me down off anything. This is just a case of the hacks. They happen, usually immediately following completion of a project).
In rat news, I adopted a baby from the shelter about a week ago. He's my dominant-gene rat - standard coat agouti top-eared, or about as wild-type as a domestic rat can be. He's also half the sizeof my biggest older boy, shiny, friendly, and incredibly hyperactive. I have named him Aeneas, as he's a later, unrelated addition to Paris and Hector. Right now I have all three of them out, and have discovered that three rats constitutes a swarm. I have Lap: the Scampering. Photos if I ever remember to take and upload them.
Back to work!
Current Mood: twitchy
Current Music: Schandmaul - Drachentoter
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November 2nd, 2009
09:41 am - Woohoo - Hair Length
We now officially have thigh length. Only in the technical sense - the longest ends are maybe a handswidth below my bottom - but still! And it's not actually significantly less convenient.
Next target - knee?
Up early because they stole my sunlight yesterday and I'm going to have to do something to stay sane.
Current Mood: tired
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October 28th, 2009
10:56 am - Some Improvement
Dunno if I'm quite ready to take over the world, but I'm greatly improved from last night. This morning I am merely groggy, not jumpy and strange. Hooray for chocolate, lots of sleep, and an Octavia Butler novel.
Now I need to write about skin cancer.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/wideeyed.gif) awake
Current Music: Russian swing on last.fm
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October 27th, 2009
10:03 pm - For Posterity
Depression charting under cut. ( Read more... )
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/blank.gif) blah
Current Music: Abney Park - Child King
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October 26th, 2009
09:27 pm - Ok, Important safety tip time
Do not bake an eggplant without poking a hole in it. Really.
Now how am I going to get the eggplant off my ceiling?
Also, ow.
Current Mood: irritated
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12:34 am - The inking, the inking!
It's late and I'm covered in paint, but it's done. Did you know that right around the five to seven hour mark is when you start staring at the painting and thinking "are we there yet?"
( The Imperial Exams Frown On Innovation )
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: turkish pop
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October 23rd, 2009
07:41 pm - Jiang Yun and his fabulous mechanical dragon
Partially finished
( More steampunk stuff )
Current Mood: weird
Current Music: Blind Guardian - Nightfall
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02:50 pm - Samhain
For many years now, I've had a Samhain dinner/ritual on Halloween proper. Well, I'm not going to do that this year. I'm making this post so that no one feels like I'm shunning them or that they're the cause. Many things are combining (small, extremely messy apartment, recent large and stressful event, lack of planning on my part) to make a formal dinner difficult this year. So I'm just going to skip it, have a ritual on my own, and stick to just cooking that pumpkin I got from the CSA and stuffing it into people at random.
If I'm disappointing anybody who was looking forward to it, you have my apologies. But it's really a sty in here! Have a great Halloween, nonetheless.
Current Mood: wired
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October 20th, 2009
01:12 pm - Today is A Very Hard Day
I wasn't going to write about it, but then I remember that depression charting remains a priority. I'm moving slowly, doing that edge of tears thing, and having a lot of motivation troubles. I'm stressed out because of various personal stuff and the fact that I haven't gotten my apartment clean yet, BUT that wouldn't be bothering me nearly as much if I weren't wonky today. Hopefully this nasty phase will cease soon, because all I really want to do is crawl into a hole with something passive (book, video game, etc) and not come out.
At least I'm getting through the work, albeit slowly. I have to call a client soon, however, and that's stressing me out a lot. I hate telephones so much.
Current Mood: anxious
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October 19th, 2009
01:01 am - And then another one happened
Still working on stuff that's pretty easy for me - small pieces, ink linework, watercolor, etc. However, they're fun, and it's nice to have done two things in one day, when I usually finish nothing. Of course, I've stayed up too late for someone who's not slept much this weekend, and am very groggy. But here's more art.
( Brass Wings II )
Current Mood: exanimate
Current Music: Leonard Cohen - Humbled in Love
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October 18th, 2009
08:57 pm - Well within my comfort zone
Actually painted something today. It's been a long time, no? And yes, I'm being lazy and posting it in this journal and not the other one, because more of you read this one anyhow.
( Brass Wings )
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Leonard Cohen - Winter Lady
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05:20 pm - In unrelated news
When I lean back in my computer chair, the slapping sound is my hair hitting the floor. Well, hello unexpected length.
Current Location: Tyr- The Wild Rover
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12:29 pm - Griffin's Needle Aftermath
Oh, we are not eighteen anymore. Five of us (myself, samadi, jmpierce, ladydrake and her boyfriend Cris, who does not have an lj to the best of my knowledge) all went to Griffin's Needle this weekend. This is a costuming deathmarch SCA event about an hour and a half away. Sewing started at 10 pm Friday night, and stopped at 6 pm Saturday evening. The goal is to make a whole outfit from the skin out (underwear on out) in this time period.
We decided to make some garb for me. I feel a little guilty about this, because I got a lot of stuff out of it, but no one else wanted to have it made for them. We could just as easily have made ladydrake's purple and green Florentine, for instance. But anyhow - the goal was a full early 16th century German woman's costume, tradesman class, from the Augsburg area.
We were not a total success. There are issues with the bodice pattern, and we had to get really creative with piecing because my fabric shrank more than it should have. There was enough to get the job done, if I had not borked the patterning. Let this be said: you should not make your test dress in linen/rayon if the finished pieces are going to be in light wool and very firm silk twill.
There will need to be some interesting re-piecing to get the shoulders and arms of the overdress to work, and I'm not totally happy with the undergown, either. This is no one's fault but mine, however. I did the patterning and cutting. Everyone else did lots and lots of hand stitching, and their work is beautiful. It's just that the result isn't quite the shape I expected it to be. The accessories (linen stockings, hemd, and wulsthaube) are beautiful. When I regain my brains, I hope to take photos of them.
I was worried about my documentation, because I don't know how to write it. I took the approach of treating it like a paper from school, which left me feeling like it wasn't terribly good, since my logic isn't spelled out as clearly as it should be and could be questioned as faulty, my citations are a little schizophrenic, and I made some blanket assertions I didn't back up with a cite.
Apparently, I should not have been worried. We entered as intermediate or advanced, were placed in advanced by the person running the event, and all three of our judges told us that we entered the wrong category and should have entered as Pyxis (an authenticity-oriented category that discourages sewing machines and modern shortcuts.) Also, I have been requested to send copies of the documentation to two of them.
I'll probably clean it up before it goes out - some parts of it were written the day before the event, and I'm really rather embarrassed by those. Perhaps I will be able to clean it up enough to web it? I feel a little weird about that, because most of it's not original work - it's heavily based on things I've read online on others' websites and journals, and on the German Ren group, but I can't remember who said what. I don't want to look like I'm taking credit!
The rules weren't too clear, so it looked like people in that category were required to make all accessories, including footwear, and we have no leatherworkers, so it seemed inappropriate. This was apparently incorrect. The point is moot, beacuse I've inadvertantly exhausted all my friends, so we shan't be back (I'd be willing to go again, perhaps in several years, but this is not really a "do it alone" event. I don't sew -that- fast!)
So yeah, mixed feelings in the end. I had a good time. Everyone with me was really good. The reaction to our efforts was strongly approving. But I feel like I really fell short and messed up in a lot of places that I should not have. All the mistakes can be fixed (to one degree or another) but they should not have been made in the first place, were I competent.
No pictures were taken - we were too busy and distracted. If any appear online later (there was an official photographer, but our end result wasn't all that impressive, so it probably didn't get photoed) I'll link them.
Also, I really wish that costuming events didn't require improv presentations. I'm a competent seamstress, but I never want to enter anything I make in a con show (and this event was problematic at the end, too) because they make you give a speech and be an actor to boot. samadi and ladydrake were really the only thing that saved me.
Today, I will not get much done, though I do need to put some attention to the cleaning of the apartment, since it's trashed. I may spend most of the day poking my new nonfunctional tiredness. So far we've discovered that while I'm well-slept, interesting parts of me hurt, I'm still subject to mood swings (sorry about last night, guys - but it's not like I was the only one who was frustrated, confused, and hair-trigger) and my motivation is made of slowness. Let's see what new damage sleep dep hath caused!
If I am very good, I will start on some art in prep for Windycon. Since my monitor went kerput, art has mostly fallen by the wayside (I was being lazy and doing all my practice onscreen). I must try to get going again, so that I can be like a real person. Of course, if I'm working on convention art, I'll still be shirking my sketchbook. I now have a 23" Samsung. It is a widescreen, which makes me feel like I've been cheated of the top quarter of my monitor, but it is at least almost as tall as the old one. No more turning on the computer and hoping that you get more than a blinky flicker.
Eventually, I may reply to all the emails I've been ignoring. I've been a very poor correspondent.
Ok, time to get off this before I go back into wondering why I have hobbies in the first place. That goes nowhere good. I should work up some clockwork animals, instead.
Current Mood: all of them
Current Music: hum of refrigerator and grinding of rats
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October 2nd, 2009
October 1st, 2009
08:23 pm - Argh!
Shiny new monitor arrived. It is huge. It tries to eat me. It also has a full line of dead pixels down the right side of the screen. So, back it must go.
The old one has been more cooperative of late, returning to its usual five or so tries to get it to stay on, instead of sitting there and blinking at me.
*grump*
Current Mood: irritated
Current Music: rain, computer fan, rats chewing
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