Making scarves, thinking about lichen

"Lichen are symbiotic associations of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont also known as the phycobiont) that can produce food for the lichen from sunlight." from Wikipedia



Lichen print from Ernst Haeckel's excellent book.


Textural, shape-y scarves or other accessories made up in felt!

I'm preparing for a craft show that I'm doing with my friend this Sunday. I've made up some new scarves from pretty wool fabric and felted wool balls. It's always difficult to figure out what to bring to a show and I always feel pressured to create something new at the last moment! I have a touch of insomnia from worrying over it and that's before thinking about the display! There's no guarantee that I'll sell anything! Ack the worry! I'm also antsy about having given up on my website and therefore having business cards that point people to nowhere!

Visitors and goings on

Illustration class is going well - I think. Typically, I have become sort of the teachers pet. This, combined with my natural inability to make with the small talk and endear people to me in a quick fashion (i.e. make friends), I feel more alienated from my classmates than ever! Oh well. I do like to draw! I'm pounding the 9 heads fashion figure proportions into my brain, hoping it will feel like second nature soon, knowing that I will abandon this silly unrealistic style in the end.

Capsule Festival is October 19th and I'm helping Debby with her Rebe booth and bringing along some of my own things. I never feel prepared enough for a show! I hope to have a decent amount of product to bring along and plan a pretty display.

My parents are visiting today for a week and I am trying to figure out where to take them. Alcatraz, Napa, and lots of food-ing? I'll probably let them loose in Chinatown tomorrow while I work and go to class.

Raquel is also coming to stay with me for awhile while she waits for a house in Santa Cruz to clear out. She's bringing her cat and I am extremely excited!

It's been a slow start to the morning but here comes the rest of the day.

Things in Motion

To encourage myself to draw more often I have signed up for a fashion illustration class at SF City College. Residency non-qualification headache resulting in my paying 10 times the regular credit rate aside, the class is going well. I enjoy having the bit of structure that a class provides and it is nice to draw in a roomful of people who are doing the same. I am practicing about 3 nights a week and just bought myself the most expensive set of pretty markers at a good discount!

Having one class to concentrate on is a nice change of pace from a full-time school schedule. It allows me to spend much more extra time outside the classroom preparing for and practicing on assignments and exercises. Being able to focus on developing one skill at a time is very satisfying. I feel like I can finally give my full attention to working toward this specific goal.

Next semester I hope to take the next level of the class. I am also interested in taking a cooking class but I don't want to overload my schedule as I am already working a full time job. It will be nice to pay the regular resident credit fees next time around!

Hopefully I can get some sketches up soon.

Neglect

It's been another half year since I last posted! It's amazing how many, how often, and for how long things can fall by the wayside.

I've been living in San Francisco for 7 months now. As usual, the initial sparkle, excitement, and difficulty of moving to a new city has worn off or been resolved. Things have fallen into a routine. Exhausted and bored by workdays, I spend my days off worrying how I should best spend my free time and end up doing nothing (and feeling guilty about it). So futile!

I have a habit of lamenting over "the things I did wrong" which, again, is futile, wasted energy and words. So here comes things I want to do more of or restart or refocus on or something instead of the "what I didn't do sooner, more often, better" lament lament lament!

1) keep a more consistent running routine.
Running is an amazing way to start the day. I feel accomplished when I start with a run and the day always seems to turn out right on mornings when I exercise. Maybe it's the adrenalin high. After all, I don't drink coffee so a morning with adrenaline is a great alternative to a caffeine-induced quick start.

2) draw more often, with less self-consciousness.
It's all practice and practice can only lead to improvement, so why not? Time to be less worried about perfect.

3) craft a little every day.
Grandiflora is still something I want to make more real. Growing a pile of stock/inventory/units (repetitive work like making yo-yos and rolling beads) to make other things out of is ok when I feel too pressured to invent something new and falter. It will probably clear my head.

4) take care of a living thing.
What I really want is a dog or cat. What I will probably get is a plant. I haven't decided what yet but I think having a living thing to take care of will be an encouraging day to day activity.

It's time to do the laundry, wash the dishes, and maybe take a walk.
Here's to a good rest of the day.

Make Sure To Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair

Well since the last time I made a post here I've moved to San Francisco, wrangled myself two jobs, and fixed my laptop! Things change.

I'm working a full time job with an hour commute each way. By the time I get home I'm pretty exhausted and haven't been committing much time to craft or my Etsy shop. Since I have so much time during my commute to and from work maybe I should come up with a project to do. Maybe a knitting or crochet project that involves making something similar over and over again? Like i like lemons: the olive plan 2008 at the blog I Like Lemons.

Also, I'm going to pick up photography again and get better by just doing. And I have a goal to get into the Mission Indie-Mart - a sale event featuring local artists located right here in San Francisco.

Oh and you know that song "if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair..."? Since I have come to SF I figure I should create some flowers to wear in my hair. Something new to sell in my Etsy shop perhaps? Perhaps!

That's all for now!

Pixels

From About.com for your (and my) information.

----------
Digital Focus: All About Pixels and Resolution
Photo quality and jaggies, plus how many pixels is enough?

Dave Johnson
Feature: Digital Photo Basics--Pixels and Resolution

For years, digital camera makers have been chasing a fixed target: the quality of traditional photographs. Since digital cameras create pictures made from pixels--lots and lots of more-or-less square picture elements--the trick has been to reach a point where digital cameras can capture enough pixels to duplicate the effect of film. Are we there yet? Kind of.

One of the first questions new digital photographers often ask me is "What's the resolution of a 35mm picture in pixels?" Unfortunately, that's a really hard question to answer. Film is essentially thin plastic covered by a soup filled with millions of grains of silver halide. A 35mm picture doesn't have pixels. When you enlarge a film-based photo past its optimum size, you don't see square blocks like you do in digital photos: You see soft-edged, fuzzy grains.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that 35mm resolution varies dramatically based on the kind of film (for example, slides are sharper than prints), the ISO (the lower ISO rating, the smaller the grains), and even the lighting conditions and exposure (optimum lighting yields sharper pictures than badly exposed or long-exposure shots).

With all those variables, can the question even be answered? Sure, as long as you don't mind a big range of options. Typically, 35mm photography generates pictures that have the equivalent of between 6 megapixels and 20 megapixels. A megapixel, the standard by which digital cameras are sold, is a million pixels--so a 1280-by-960-pixel image is 1 megapixel.

So we're there! The bottom line is that many increasingly affordable digital cameras in the 5 or 6 megapixel range can give you essentially the same quality that you get with a point-and-shoot 35mm film camera loaded with 400 ISO print film.
How Many Pixels Do I Need?

That said, there's still a bigger question: What resolution do you need? The real question is this: What do you intend to do with the photo after you take it? If it's headed for e-mail, the Web, or a slide-show application, then you only need a megapixel or less. If you want to send the photo to your ink jet photo-quality printer, then you'll need about 200 or 250 pixels for every inch you want to print. An 8-by-10-inch print, then, should measure about 2000 by 2500 pixels. You can send a smaller image to the printer, but if you skimp on pixels you'll probably see jaggies in the final print.

Don't read those guidelines and think that I'm recommending you shoot your pictures in lower resolutions. Sure, your digital camera has a variety of resolution settings, but I suggest that you set your camera to its highest resolution and leave it there. Why? Because that way you can crop your photos and still have enough resolution for sharp-looking prints.

Think of your image editor as a sort of after-the-fact zoom lens. With megapixels to spare, you can inspect your photo on the PC and cut away the extraneous, the distracting, and the unneeded. You're left with a tight, impressive photo that you can print or process however you like. If you throttle down the camera's resolution to begin with, the image will have only enough pixels to print sharply if you don't do anything to the image. Cut away half the picture to eliminate a distracting object on one side of the scene, though, and now you'll have to "stretch" the image to print it at the same size. The result is that your image will look jagged, blocky, and blurry. Remember: In digital photography, more pixels are always better than less.
----------

Making

I've been making new things! I bought some wool sweaters from the thrift store and tried some mechanical resist techniques I learned in my surface resist class. The wool fulled well into felt except that some sweaters labeled 100% wool mysteriously retained all their knit texture. Misleadingly labeled fiber content anyone?









I came up with a series of scarves called Polyp in bib or collar style. I kind of sculpturally arrange them around my neck and secure with a felt button pin (a wool circle I turned into a biscuit - the backside of a yo yo). They're very warm and surprisingly soft and un-itchy.





These nest/pod pins I made with these weird plastic grassy parts are really exciting! I think the bright green and deep burgundy colors look amazing together and the contrasting textures are really fun.





I also made a whole bunch of cloth boxes to keep odds and ends in from vintage linen napkins, pillow cases, and old linen wall calendars. They've been perfect for corralling the stones and acorns I used as mechanical resists. I also like to keep one near my sewing machine as a small trash bin to keep my workspace tidy and keep thread and odds and ends off the floor.

Available now or soon in my etsy shop - Grandiflora. Check it out!