On Being Busy

or The Lack of Blogging

Hello people of the internets!
You may have noticed that there was a distinct lack of blog for quite some time. This is a condition I hope to remedy (for a time at least - you never can tell). In the meantime, let me tell you a bit about what I've been doing...

#1. I found a better product for my shop: Using my mad painting skills, enamel paint, and old unwanted cups I have created Major Teacup, the mustached mug, among other things. This has been pretty successful for me, and I've been starting to attend craft fairs and shows and pay taxes (note to self: pay taxes on stuff).

Mr. Goggles

#2. I got a job: It's a minimum wage job (at the time I was very excited about the prospect of money) at a fabric store (don't get me started on the prospect of fabric ;). It's work. I'm looking for better.

#3. A significant other: I met a guy at a Steampunk convention. That was almost a year ago, and he continues to be awesome. He also continues to live in San Francisco while I maintain in Gilroy. I now split the time between the two and am looking for a new car xP

#4. The Monterey Bay Aquarium: You will still find me there every other Sunday talking to people about sea creatures and telling them to pet the cucumber.

Those are my main occupations, and outside of them, I basically have no life. Since I work retail, my hours and days are constantly changing. I work on cups and Etsy before or after work, and I spend the rest of my time in SF (where I will also work on cups and Etsy stuff). Getting to the post office is always interesting. We also attend numerous Steampunk events around the bay area - the next one hopefully being the Edwardian ball (there will be pictures to post assuming I ever buy the tickets :P).

I will leave you here with a petition to sign and a cartoon to watch:
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
http://theoatmeal.com/sopa

It seems that as I have decided to once again join the internet community, our government has decided to censor it XP

De Young

More museum adventures.

This time from the De Young:
The De Young has a small yet beautiful selection of turn of the century ceramics - which are also very difficult to photograph nicely XP
This first piece is from the Weller Pottery Studio by Jacques Sicard in Ohio around 1905-ish. It looks like some kind of Raku or luster going on. I don't know how he did it, but I want to learn o=










The De Young Museum also has a nice collection of Native American pottery including this awesome Pueblo piece. It was made in 1950 in New Mexico by Rose Chino.

Wherever I go, I must find the things with the creepy crawlies. In this case, it's a bug on this Hopi Pueblo jar made by Jean Sahmie in the '40s. The crazy stairs are pretty awesome too.






Finally, the De Young has a 9th floor lookout tower thing you can go to (complete with yet another gift shop XP). We went there and lounged on their bizarre triangle benches. If they had been more comfortable, I would have taken a nap. Instead, I took some pictures. You can see the entrance and domed roof of the Cal Academy of Science, and the city of San Francisco in the background.

















It was a long day, but a nice trip all together :)

Legion

As promised, pictures form my SF Museum adventures o=

First off is the Legion of Honor:
This guy looks like a Minoan piece to me. The label only says South Italian from around 335BC. I like it because it has crazy sea creatures, and is that an eyeball in the center? I think so :D







The next piece also has a lot of critters. It is from the fancy porcelain room at the Legion by a man named Bernard Palissy in 1500s France. He liked to make casts from dead critters to make his decorations, and he liked natural things as you can see by this platter. It has oak leaves, fern leaves, grape, acorns, shells, a snake and a lizard probably cast from the real thing. The colors are a little bit blotchy, but I must say, I love this guy XD.




The porcelain room had a lot of what I'd call bug-wear. That is to say many of the plates, cups, and dishes were decorated by some sort of insect. This tureen was the granddaddy of them all however. It was made in Chantilly around 1735-1745 of a low fire porcelain (called soft paste porcelain). Not only does it have the awesomeness to be a three dimensional pumpkin with vine handles and a pomegranate finial, it is also covered in different types of insects. Epic.

































I felt that a note must be made about this painting. It is wonderfully executed with watercolor and graphite on paper, but the subject matter is also enjoyable. It is called Love and Its (His) Counterfeits and was painted in 1904. You've got a line of characters with their various riches, tales, and vanities in front of a woman's door. Her expression is priceless - a silent "good grief" to all this hullabaloo. It is at this point I found the painting was indeed made by a woman, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, who lived from 1872-1945, and I felt a general sense of kinship :B

It seems that blogger has eaten my other photos as well as being dumb in regards to post editing (it is not logical! D:<), so I'll leave the De Young museum for later XP

Something Tiny...

I have just ventured to the presently wet and cold land of San Francisco. I visited the Legion of Honor this afternoon, and the De Young museum this evening along with Mama-san and my ceramics class. I hope to have some pictures up soonish, but I'm knackered at the moment - so much so that I did not stick around to see You Say Party! We Say Die! It is a loss I will have to bear XP


Anyway, I stumbled upon a little book full of pictures of little people. It is by an artist named Slinkachu (a bazaar Pokemon perhaps?). Slinkachu sets up fantastical little scenes composed of tiny people in large cities. They are small and unnoticable to the unwary passer by making them all the more compelling. My particular favorites are the one with the Cheetos, the one with the bee, and the snails. Enjoy :D


Special Bonus Observations!
-Parking at the Legion of Honor sucks, apparently always.
-Parking at the De Young is pretty nice, you can pay for the garage, but there's lots of free street parking if you're okay with walking a little.

-Food at the Legion of Honor is pretty good. Mama-san and I split a large fancy sandwich and had tea for about $10 apiece (I think less actually).
-Food at the De Young is delicious, but in small portions (just like Arnold Rimmer???). I ordered the ravioli for dinner, and I got three, on a lovely bed of chard. I ate a lot of French fries to make up the rest of the meal...

-If they can charge money for it, they will.
-However, the student rate of $6 for both museums is quite good.

-Legion of Honor actually has some very nice stuff. There's a room of fancy porcelain dishes and tea sets (many with bugs on them). A hall with various Greek, Minoan, and Egyptian pottery, and many nice paintings and sculpture. We checked out their impressionist wing which was interesting (though lacking the Goya they mention on their map D: ) and swung through the Rodin sculpture areas among others. I was disappointed that their Cartier exhibition cost so much. I opted to save my money this time XP
-De Young has quite a bit more stuff than the Legion, but I generally felt like there was less stuff of interest to me (of course, since their map was so crappy, maybe I just didn't see it?). They do have a very nice Amish Quilt exhibition up (for free!). I want to make a quilt now :3 They have some excellent ceramics of the more modern variety as well as some lovely Native American pots (some of which depicted bugs). They also have a large ethnic selection of art (that's specific isn't it?) as well as a 9th floor lookout, and live music on Friday nights. After a full day of museum hopping and a minuscule dinner, I found it rather loud, but still enjoyable. Finally, I didn't see the King Tut exhibit because it was beyond my budget. I do plan to see the Impressionist exhibit in June.

Something Amazing!

The average everyday plant-like crinoid not only walks about, it swims!

Crinoidea is the fancy name for feather stars and sea lilies. They look very plant or coral like but are actually relatives of the starfish. They tend to have feathery arms in multiples of five, and they sit on stalks (in sea lilies) or have little feet called cirri (in feather stars). Feather stars can walk around on their cirri, or they can swim about using their ten arms (it's crazy!). Check out the videos for more.

An informational video by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A good overview of the Crinoid order. It finishes with a breathtaking shot of a swimming feather star.



For those of you with ADD, here's the short version:



Bonus song: Help I'm Alive by Metric. It's what I'm listening to while I type :B

@.@!

Soooo tired...

I've had a fun time these last two weeks. I caught a nasty case of the flu which I then made worse by visiting Davis last weekend. I crashed this last week (figuratively speaking), but still attended a birthday party this weekend and went to my aquarium shift this afternoon/evening. In conclusion, I'm completely wiped. I still have three night classes to go before Thursday however, so goodness knows what condition I'll be in later :P

In the meantime, I'm in the process of listing a couple of new scarves on my Etsy.
Check 'em out here:

ACEO! ACEO! ACEO!

I discovered the wide world of art trading cards, little pieces of art.

Just My Size:
I was bopping about the wilds of Etsy and came across This little guy by DeadPanAlley. At first I thought to myself that it was a cute little painting, but I realized that I never really investigated the term ACEO (Art Cards, editions and originals) which are the bought and sold versions of artist trading cards (rather than the traded between artist versions). The more I thought about it, the more I enjoyed the idea of tiny little works. I very often like to work in tiny, so I finally found myself a piece of paper to cut up and tried my hand using my usual medium, pen and ink.




You can see my lovely pictures taken on top of the ancient laptop I am using. The first attempt featuring Squidbot and a jellyfish is a bit disjointed... I didn't really have a plan going in.

The second attempt entitled "What's this doing here?!" is for a friend's birthday and is a much more solid work.

The third piece called "Don't Sink Your Boat," after the Flogging Molly song (not usually a big fan, but I love this song) is a little rough on the left, but is overall what I imagined.

Finally, the last piece, and my favorite is called "My Heart Sinks Like a Stone..." after the line in the Airborn Toxic Event song ("and my heart sinks like a stone, a stone, a stone"). I've envisioned this picture just about every time I've listened to the song, but never had the courage or fortitude to draw it. That's why these little art cards are so awesome. I don't have to commit to a whole piece and have it go south after hours of work, and yet it is still a valid piece of art. Having done these smaller versions successfully, I might go on to make some bigger ones, but for the moment, I'm having fun making little guys :D






In Other News:
My car insurance wasn't as messed up as I thought it was Yay! I didn't have to drive to Capitola. Instead, I got sick! Very sick. I had a fever and a swollen throat and aching ears. I feel better now, though still crappy XP

In Still Other News, From the TV:
Mens short program in figure skating was pretty cool. There were still a lot of tumbles, but I felt that they were less numerous than in pairs and more often because someone was trying to be too tricky. One of the issues I have with how skating is judged is the point system which puts an over emphasis on doing tricks instead of doing everything. In the pairs, it felt like if the skaters did enough tricks, they could still flub a great deal and get high placings. I think the men's competition is a little more balanced, but still skewed with the second place skater, America's Lysacek, barely behind the Russian skater, Plushenko. Plushenko did a quad jump. Lysacek didn't, but outskated Plushenko in all other aspects... is a quad really worth that much?

I'd also like to make mention of Johnny Weir. A bit of an odd duck to be sure, but an awesome skater. He has the habit of not starting his jumps how the judges think skaters should, so he's only in sixth (is it really that important?) despite a very well done routine. I think he deserves higher standing. I also enjoyed the two Japanese skaters, especially the younger one, Oda, and the Swiss skater, Lambiel, who did an awesome version of the William Tell Overture (classic XD). Unfortunately he missed some of his jumps, so he's probably not going to medal XP

In other news Lindsey Vonn kicked ass in women's downhill. She impressed me by crossing the finish line basically on one ski. She had injured herself previously and apparently had a great deal of pain though she still won gold. Nice.

Finally, I watched Shaun White on the halfpipe for the first time today. My goodness that man can fly. Those people are crazy @.@