Verbal snapshots of the day at Maker Faire 2011

Some few of the very many Cool Things interacted with at Maker Faire this day, in no particular order:

“Here” said Aviva, “it takes six to make a block. Simple geometry puzzle.”

http://bloxes.com/

Geometry pleases me.

Natalie McKean’s scratchboard work and Santa Cruz roots;

http://nataliemckeanart.com/gallery.html

Monsieur Klutz Himself with a nice big booth of fun; as ever, http://klutz.com

The always delightful Kelly of Ceallach dyes, ably assisted by East Bay fiber-maven Brooke, and I’m so happy they’re using Square, because I got into a couple of skeins and 8 oz. of lovely superwash Merino from her solar dyeworks. Mmm Pretties! http://www.ceallachdyes.com/

Some utterly delightful stuff in the Bizaar Bazaar (that was Too Crowded in the middles though I love the tent setup. Came away with a Set o’ Magnets from birdversusbird

Sweet Maria’s Home Coffee Roasting looked interesting, and were selling green coffee beans and doing show-and-tell in the big food tent.

I love the color combinations this jeweler is getting up to: TQBdesigns

Shared kind words about Urban Gardener Mike L (Twitter @CanarsieBK) with the Back to the Roots mushroom kit folks who were there, doing well.

the Spindles and Flyers spinning guild was there in force, Dawn Jacobson plying long draw, Cookie spinning on her gorgeous hand-painted wheel, folks setting up new spinners with CD-and-dowel drop spindles, and showing items made from handspun yarns.

The lovely folks of the Peninsula Quilters Guild were there, with needles busy, and many items to show, and this year's raffle quilt...I won't mind if one of my six tickets is the one chosen. They do lovely work.

So much more to share, so much more than one can see in a day - we didn’t even get over near the model boats area, or the health expo they put in one big building. But better to post these tidbits and say goodnight, than never get to it at all.

Lovely day.Winderful show to make the brain to twinkle, and meet & greet old and new friends!

Some Autumn Gardening Fun: National Heirloom Expo, Sept 13-15

The first National Heirloom Exposition will be taking place Sept 13-15
in Santa Rosa, sponsored by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
http://theheirloomexpo.com/

For anyone interested in heirloom seeds, produce, livestock, and more,
this sounds like a fabulous event -- like an old-fashioned state fair.
There will be exhibits, events, speakers, demos, and vendors.

They are looking for gardeners who want to grow and display heirloom
produce (vegetables/fruits) or products (e.g. eggs, honey, pickles,
preserves, pies, etc.). There's likely to be an heirloom seed exchange.

And heads up, artistic types:
They are also looking for garden and farm-themed art for display.

Exhibitor form:
http://www.theheirloomexpo.com/downloads/heirloom%20expo%20exhibitor%20form.pdf

Philosophy

A great tweet from earlier today:

@GreatDismal: "Dance like nobody's watching. Love like you've never been hurt. Develop software like the end user has your home address."

Gardening Day

Today, we've dug and planted and uprooted, carefully sown some seeds in starter pots and carelessly scattered others to see what happens there...
In the back, against the mostly-south-facing back wall of the garage, are a row of tomatos, started earlier, in a row in their cages:

Rouge d'Irak,  Pink Beefsteak,  Costoluto Genovese, Green Zebra
A scattering of red amaranth plants between these and a little forward
Vervain, various basils, a Ronde de Nice courgette (Zuke), Calendulas moved from a hanging planter;
Yarrow, Thyme, 2 eggplants
Roughly in order from back to front and left to right.

We finally did in the bloody dock - not to be badmouthing the stuff, it's just red-veined. We're steaming the greens and tincturing the serious roots.

We have three big square planter boxes in the front yard, with strawberries and the spring flowers, to which we've added squash, that can leap out and sprawl over the juniper if it likes, 2 tomatillos, a yellow pear tomato for nibbling on as we arrive home; sunflowers, some in the boxes, and the ones that get really tall went into the ground next to the box nearest the front walk border of fortnight lilies.

I'm sort of catching up in logging these things in my journal over at Dave's Garden but I'm not sure anyone can see that log if they're not a member of that venerable website. So perhaps I'll be blogging on the garden more over here, with pictures. I do recommend http://davesgarden.com/ and its $20 nuisance-fee-that-weeds-the-trolls, for the plant files database and the conversation in forums there. It's where we learned about straw-bale planting in a swampy-by-adobe-cob yard we rented for a couple of years: the perfect solution for that place. A raised bed garden you plant directly in to; took plenty o' water by hydroponic-cognate fertilizing (fish juice, yay), and worked amazingly. 

O Blah

Oh allergy pollen season is upon us, sing whack fol the diddle hack-cough wah.
Getting somewhere with the sample test weaving, thinking towards clothing textile weaving.


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Location:Home-Under-Blankies

Book: Treadled Togs by Kerry Evans

Treadled Togs: A Pattern Book of Loom-Fashion Clothing by Kerry Evans

My rating: 3 of 5 stars





View all my reviews


Several patterns for handwoven clothing of the author's design; photo-illustrated. 

More of the weekend at Monterey

Great time in Monterey last weekend, continued for completeness - we stayed in the cosy and quiet Holiday Inn Express on the lagoon in Seaside, all of 3 miles from the Aquarium on Del Monte road; of course spending the extra $100 plus saved by not staying right on Cannery Row on yarn. Naturally!

There's a new yarn shop in town, the Twisted Stitch, at 400 Foam, and we like it, and the owner, Dawn, very much. She's got a great start on a collaborative project, a kelp forest knit / crocheted, etc. which gives rise to a great idea: how cool tubular cardweaving would be for making kelp, where you could at once weave both stems and leaves, attached and floating.  Seeing a nutibracht right *there* on a kelp frond at the upper window of the kelp forest tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium doesn't hurt the imagination a bit, either.

Well, the dude in the ice cream and Beatles memorabelia shoppe in Pacific Grove is as out there as ever, and serving up the best ice cream ditto likewise. The rain stopped long enough for us to have a little stroll out at Lover's Point, and interact with a little ground squirrel and smell the after-rain astonishment of alyssum.

Member evening at the Aquarium included behind-the-scenes areas, show-and-tell with the docents, lots of families, which is always delightful to see. Sunday morning we came back again, to enjoy the views of our favorites again and spend a little quieter time enjoying the otters who are, face it, preternaturally cute.

So now it's time for me to figure out how to get photos up on this thing, so I can get to posting about the fiber arts goodness that's currently on the loom...

New yarny goodness

What a wonderful, whirlwind weekend! Combining late Lise birthday, Anniversaryishness, and really-really celebrating having Both Days of a weekend off at the Same Time (!) I took Lise off to Monterey for the weekend.

There was a special member night event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so we took our time, and finally stopped in to 'splore Purlescence Yarns. Delightful encounters with the store owners, astonishment that we haven't already known one another for decades or lifetimes, chat about the Nova Albion Steampunk Expo at the Hilton attached to the Santa Clara Convention Ctr (yes, where Stitches West is, and CNCH 2010 was); perhaps we'd wander back on Sunday in time to prowl the vendor halls, which as it turns out, we did. Purlescence Yarns do spinning, some weaving support, are Schacht dealers (yay!) And have a splendidly Stuffed storefront just off El Camino, with tools and batts and roving and YARN and scrumptipus samples, and happy customers knitting in comfy chairs and…you get the idea. This LYS is thriving, well-deservedly. Yum.

Well provisioned with fiber, we hungrily stumbled upon a local independent barbeque joint, H Butler's BBQ and treated ourselves to some of the. Best. Q. I've had in a long while. Okay, the brisket was a little dry, but the ribs, and sliced pork Lise had, could not have been more perfectly done.

We drove on through the steadily pouring rain (day 13, slides closing off Big Sur, Capitola flash flooded, wet), took the early Del Monte exit in Seaside and played talking billboards through town, & checked in at ye Holiday Inn Express 3 miles & $100 less than the one 3 blocks from the aquarium, happily.

Prowling onward, we next 'splored over to the new Twisted Stitch at 400 Foam St, yes four count them blocks from the aquarium, yay, where Dawn has some great design ideas and a splendid beginning to a knitted/crocheted kelp forest going. Wouldn't it be interesting to weave some kelp, though!

I'm up to about 4:30 on Saturday, and willcontinue this rambling post later.

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Location:Purlescence

Learning about hemstitching

Today I warped onto the Beka 20" rigid heddle loom at 5 epi in Harrisville Designs New England Shetland for what'll be a weft-faced woven bag. Now as I go to start the weaving, I'm thinking about my ends, whether I'll seam the bag with the weaving folded as a U or sideways to the direction of my weaving; whether and where I'll put designs, along with the color changes I'll be playing with (a dark and a medium blue with varietaged blues, all in that indigo-flavored "that blue" hue family).

I'm pulling out various works and looking at hemstitching, because even if I put the weft-ends into a seam on the side of this bag, messing about with interesting hem stitching has a great appeal to me.

Some of my sources, and idea-frothing comes from:

Finishing Touches for the Handweaver by Virginia M. West, which has all kinds of ideas in a deceptively slim volume, and the most different kinds of hemstitching patterns and applications I've seen in one place. Excellent resource for the rigid heddle weaver.


The Weaver's Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom by Jane Patrick, an excellent workbook for exploring all manner of topics, and has a few different hemstitching patterns. Jane covers all the basics and then goes on beyond.

Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving and Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom both by Betty Linn Davenport, has all the good basics for weaving on the RHFL, including some thoughts on finishig touches.

The one that's newer to me today is the Virginia West, and I'm delighted to poke through this work - I think I might need to do a sampler that's just variations on hemstitching techniques, since lookee there, here are so many ideas!


A note on links: I'm as likely to point you to a library listing as a where to get it link when I mention books; not being affiliated with any of the above, I've gone with a different source for each work linked above. Have fun exploring those sources and further descriptions of the works mentioned, too.

Adding connectivity

Funny how one tool disappointing can lead you to picking up a much better—ditching Twitter's own app for iPhone on an upgrade that broke the UI, I've picked up this little app that'll also allow me to post to my refreshed blogger account.
There's some basic html functionality and photos through Picasa, neatly integrated. Someone in the design stream of all this must be old enough to remember how much we all did with PCs in the 1970s & '80s, and how much bigger than that these wee smartphones are. Good.
I'm looking forward to exploring with it. Now to see how the Twitter interface actually works, and do we want that on?
I'll likely go back to EchoFon for just following/conversing on T.

- BlogPress from my iPhone (The sig goes. Tags to add later, and that's fine.)

Gratitudes

Some things I'm grateful for and about:

• Lise, my sweet wife, collaborator, co-dreamer/gardener/cook/practical manifestor of all that we do; She With Whom.
• The sacred work I get to do: editing dissertations - sure, parts of the practical work are tedious, what production work isn't? and the final product, helping folks perfect their distilled years of work and study into a beautifully published academic work, getting to go hands-on and citation/reference deep into the underpinnings of them, along with that small bit of edit-coaching towards the end of the whole process, is a sacred midwifery that fills my heart.
• The fun work I get to do: customer service at REI, part time for the past three years at this point; great company and companionship in the workplace, delightful stuff, service, and stewardship; the balance of getting out from behind the computer keyboard several days a week and additional encouragement to get further outside and play, is good in so many ways. 
• Fiber arts folks - from the myriad little opportunities to demonstrate the love of weaving, to getting to study and learn with others who share this fascination, from hobby to vocation levels.
• Spinning and spinners - same as above, specifically to the turning of fluff into yarn, yarn, yarn. 
• Music - and those dancers who call me to play for the dance, even though that hasn't been the lifebreath of my attention quite as much in the last few years, it's Still there, and Still really matters. It was good to play for Gridlock at this year's Midwinter Day of Dance, and it'll be fun to re-connect with folks and play for the spring Ale, if that's the happening thing (invite came, cleared my calendar, need to follow-up and pay my share for the weekend dance camp part of it all); and the workshop Norton's Guard did for Pantheacon was a lot of fun - we had six sets up!
• Twitter, Facebook, LJ, emails, and we'll see about rekindling this blog, for keeping connections flowing with dear hearts
• In a microcosm, Barbara Shapiro and her excellent work in developing the idea of a Greener Indigo into various sized classes, a four-week section I just completed through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and the joy of dyeing with indigo in a non-toxic dyebath;
• For the napkin/serviette exchange being run in 2011 by Su Butler, for which I have a warp on the Norwood now, no matter that it took five busy weeks to brave the time to just get it all warped up, threaded, through the reed and tied up (with! no twisted threads, ta-da), and started weaving today!

Some editing thoughts

It's Spring, and that means technical editing clients and their dissertations in for format, citation//reference check, and last-eyes review and polishing on the way to finalizing and turning in to the school for publication.

I've been doign this level of editing for a decade now, and haven't blogged about it a whole lot—which means I have a lot of saved links that'd likely be Useful Someday. I may as well plunk some of them up, and here's this handy old blog sitting around being not-used-much.

What I intend : I'll post a link and annotate—I don't know that my clients will necessarily find and use this, or if it's of general writerly interest, I imagine that'll grow over time. Let's see what happens next. 

So, I like the look of the new Blogger, Google's been doing some tidy things around here. I will still keep my LiveJournal, since that really is a community of friends, but let's see what this could become.

LIfe is good and busy!

Winter into Spring dissertation editing rush season has been good this year.

Art shows coming up: SparkanZoo on Saturday April 23, at 12 Galaxies in SF, a sweet little show right around the corner at 21st and Mission.

PaganFest May 7, sharing a booth with Patty; I'll bring the silks, knits, and silver, and artbooth, she'll bring the amber, chairs and chocolate.

Sounds like working Reva's booth at Novato Ren Faire this summer is a go; I'll go do stakeout for her in late June and bring Grant the UffDa bumper sticker I scored for him at Ingebretsen's while in Mpls the other week.

Still mainly keeping a livejournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/rutemple

Fell in love with a reference aggregating tool, Wikindx, and set up a multi-user version of it on my website, [since removed again].

Love flickr.com for fun: http://flickr.com/rtds/

Poking about with geek-tools and tagging at http://del.icio.us/RuTemple

What's new with you?

Been a long time since I posted here: most of my musing is over at RuTemple at livejournal.com these days.

Still: no reason not to continue journaling here.

It's time to find more income: pronto. I'm stuck in a rut and it needs to change.
the editing is wonderful but sparse
the arts biz more than pays for itself but doesn't really help pay the rent.
ebay sales in the last week paid for a biz web domain and dinner at the local taqueria - all o' that's great, but again:
it's not enough to make up my fair share of the bills, much less the dream ahead dreams (house, retirement fund, things like that).

so

plotting and planning commence.

Up through card 08 - Strength - out in the mail today, or tommorow if I miss the post.

so who'm I keeping this blog for?
it's too dark in here. bah.

a recent response to someone about art swaps and not counting beans about what one is getting (the mails delay and sometimes fail to deliver all postcard art; most on the list are into it for the making and sending of lovelies and the sharing...and some folks get overwhelmed and don't get theirs out on time. while remembering that life trumps work and work trumps your volunteer activities, I'm all for busting guilt in the chops with a broad
backand of grace, and weeding it out by the roots with the fertile rain
of goodies, because goodness and gifties, like all love, are not about
being barter situations...

Kitty has been to the vet and back, for general checkup and lookover.
She's a fine, fit sixteen year old Lady, and loves (a) the untreated-wood sawdust pellet litter and (b) getting a taste of canned food once a day and we love that she only eats half as much and shits half as much of the good dry food as she had of the darned Friskies. That had to be hard on a cat.

Kitty

Lots of happy kitty petting last evening; she likes being stroked and talked to and loved; I think the touch is getting through with the Welcome more than anything else. Isabella's bonding with me, as the one who has taken her out of an unhappy household situation, and how amazing at the age of 16 long years as a kitty to have a New Life!

It's good...

Well, the kitty came out last night and tasted a mouthful of food, looking up and around for potential predators (I think she's nearly feral, she was booted outside so much) - she'd take a mouthful and retreat to where she could dash for the safety of her UnderCouch Cave if needed; getting a little braver as she went...
She enjoyed more petting, but retreated under the bed again at night-time.
This morning she had used the litterbox (whew!), and the food was clean gone, so I added more to her bowl - somehow I don't think she's going to do the post-starvation glut, which pleases and comforts me...

work is busy days and that's a happy Ruth

I hadn't published how the paper marbling went!
I pulled about 18 sheets of letter sized light-blue paper; using liquitex acrylics thinned with water and oxgall (Dharma had shipped by USPS instead of UPS and had NO tracking info and NO confirmation of shipping, the second of their usual 2-email order processing system. It arrived later the next week...) - clue #1 - the USPS is still SLOW from San Rafael to the City; and it's best to choose UPS from Dharma.
t'other part is that it's best to see if one small goodie can be found in town... too bad Daniel Smith was out of it; I could have gotten all at once and that would have been a Happy Thing.
onward...

The pages turned out well, I liked them all except for the first.

I was playing with the size as it gelled up; that's something that will come with time and practice. Given sizing made ahead of time, this is a two-hour project for what I have room to lay out drying, and requires the whole kitchen table clear.
The baking sheet is a good working 'bin' for the size.