Tag: studio

New Echeveria Kit in Development

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ec01_color_113016Experimenting with color for a new echeveria kit for the shop. This is two shades of green and an orange on white stock.

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Shaping with a fine point stylus.

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Trying out construction techniques and build sequences. This succulent is wonderfully small, just a half-inch (13 mm) in diameter.

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The first issue of my newsletter, Cut, Fold + Make, goes out tonight! Look for it in your inbox on the first of each month. Included is a free pattern to make these iconic, and very versatile little paper houses.

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And possibly most exciting of all the things: this just arrived. Let’s get started.

 

 

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First light, and we’re continuing to enjoy some much-needed rain here in Northern California. There’s bustle going on downstairs in the studio, but it’s uninteresting compared to Scarlett, sleeping off an early morning foray into the great suburban outdoors.

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In that respect, her explorations are not that different to my own, except I’m neither five months old nor a cat. No matter how much I wish.

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Still. She approaches her new domain with seemingly equal amounts of enthusiasm and caution.

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I want to be like Scarlett. Especially the perfect nap part.

Defense

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It’s come to this. I bought a stack of dollar-store foamcore and built this fortress to repel the kitten’s perpetual investigations. It looks ridiculous. Hoping the sloping top will deter her from lounging on the roof as she would do when the build was merely shrouded.

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Of course, when I lifted the stronghold to work on the build… “Hey, what’s that cracking sound?”

As Paula Poundstone recounted, I can’t have nice things.

November

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For no particular reason, I’m ready to move on to November. I woke this morning directly from a dream to this view of rapidly moving clouds and shadows cast on the ocean. This (next) month’s splash screen caption is a lyric from the band Real Estate’s 2014 song “Had to Hear”. (The full line being, “I don’t need the horizon to tell me where the sky ends —
It’s a subtle landscape where I come from.”) It’s not a great photo, but totally captures my mood, as enhanced by the song. You’re welcome.

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Tonight in Wood Skills adult ed class at at Westmoor High School, I noticed this display on one of the machines. We just don’t see enough graphic design as clean and untroubled as this any more. When I reached up to touch the opening between 200 and 300, the metal cleanly sliced my finger tip open. Powermatic!

Do-overs

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Last night after woods class, I was all excited to finish the Argo Wool Works samples wall chart. I had designed it and punched quarter-inch circles from all the wool felt colors I had earlier in the day.

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After gluing them on, I realized they were just too big :(

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Today I re-worked the chart and punched out another batch of eighth-inch samples. I would have considered 3/16-inch, but that punch is somewhere I cannot find :/

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As I mentioned, I’ve had to cover the build with a carefully folded and tucked sheet secured with binder clips, to prevent Scarlett from demolishing it. Alas, her super-burrowing powers have proven superior to my defense effort. This is her wondering why I’m using my big voice?

Equivalents

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Wonderful poster from 1938, hanging in woodshop class. In case, for instance, you needed to know at a glance the decimal equivalent of 43/64. I’m especially fond of the way numeral two is drawn, graceful as a swan.

Chop wood

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www.nancyland.com

What is the sound of a digital clock ticking away the minutes to a deadline? Like the buzz of tinnitus? Or water drops in a still, clear pool? Here’s what it looks like: total bedhead me chopping tiny firewood and kindling and stacking it in place. I’m not freaking out. Well maybe just a little, for how weird the back of my hair looks. Onward!