Self Portrait Thursday.... on Friday

Eh. I'm always a day late and a dollar short. This is a who's sillier looking contest I'm having with Beth. I think she'll win. I of course look totally dignified even with mallet poised. My dust mask is perfectly intact and as yet unsullied, my eyes full of... mmm... detail enhancing lenses, my bench... empty but.... ah... inspiration heavy! You can note the grace in the dangling rubber thingie, Brahms is playing on the dorky headphones (maybe sometimes... like in my dreams), and the perfect I-am-so-in-control glance I spare the camera (from my diligent poising.)

Ah Beth. I'll cede the silly contest to you. *hehehehehehe...*

Rings and Things...

This is an update on some stuff. The two rings are the "Sleep Patterns" ring and the "Cluster Pod" ring. (I went with GirlSavage's name of it.) (I highly recommend visiting Girl's blog... she's got some incredibly cute ferret pictures posted.) The Cluster Pod I'm just going to size on a request basis. Its too much of a mess to clean up after casting to try and sell much of! And I'm still sleeping on the other...

Trash and What You End Up Doing

This mask, of sorts... is probably not finished. I used to make masks... of sorts... and hang them on the wall for respite and reflection and perspective then rework. Now, why I am making a paper mache mask at this moment I only realized the other day. It started with pulling out some stuff I hadn't even looked at in a while and thinking hmmmm. And fixing up an old piece for hanging... drawing a troll... and then came the mask. It took 4 or 5 days of such messing around before I realized... its 'cause I have another jewelry model making job (working for someone else, part time.) This is exactly what I did last time I worked as a jewelry model maker. I did other stuff. I'd come home and just could not sit at the bench. Well. The "vacation" is over tomorrow!

Along the sides of the mask you see those small plastic things? A few years ago I used to go landscape painting in a cemetery nearby. I'm not a very good painter... but landscape painting is a way of going for a walk and looking around really really well. Its nice and fun. This cemetery is beside a river and there is where I collected a bunch of those little bitty plastic things. Some plant up river was dumping, or had dumped, all this trash in the river. In a way the small bits of color looked pretty among the shore line's residue... If you didn't think about the environment, that is. I figured some day I'd find a use for them.

UPDATE! what can I say. The saga goes on... though I'm promising myself no more messing around for a while!

The Good, the Bad, the Hopelessly Brewed.....

I don't watch the New England Patriots games at home.... I have no T.V. and no interest in figuring out on-line possibilities. I watch the games in a bar. To me, the noise of football games and bars do well together. Tonight I was down to my 3rd choice of venue... the Olympics striking out the first (and best) place... the 2nd was closed (?), and the third was a reintroduction to the way bars usually are. One screen showed the struggling Pats (!), and I sat there next to an older guy that had a voice in search of a dysfunctional hearing aide. By the end of the night, need I say, he'd bought me a beer and I gave him my opinion of Cassell (second string QB.)

The first part of the night I tried plugging up my targeted ear as I watched the Bradyless New England Pats.... why should Brady(QB) not being there affect the defense? But then things got down to why I like(d) to watch pre-season football games. Football seems to be a mix of personnel, management, and coaching. Preseason brings out the personnel part of it. You get to see the subs. And usually I have rookies I'm rooting for... though the ones I'm rooting for this year seem to have already made it. Particularly Mayo and Crable. But watching the Bradyless Pats was a beer inducing phenomenon.

Or I used to speak up for preseason games in that way. Now? Right now... nope. I don't want to go to that bar again. Football players aren't getting a game check for the preseason games... though they risk injury in those games. And rumor has it Brady will not play in the preseason. Whether this is due to Brady... or coach Belichick copping an attitude who knows. The owner Kraft is supposedly lobbying for a restructuring of the preseason. So. My guess is Brady's sore foot is Belichick's kicking ass. Or maybe he's saving Brady's shoulder for the season. Or maybe Brady will have a sore foot all season long. LOL! Well. As long as they start kicking some ass!

*you know I bet that's it. Brady will have a sore foot all season long. Belichick got tired of reporting Brady's sore shoulder and wants to expand the possibilities. Or maybe he got a kick out of how reported Brady's ankle was before the Super Bowl. I want to buy the book some day. But those 2 guys? they'll never write it.

Go Pats!

Peace is a Happy Troll

*text will be added when I get around to it. Or not.*

New Pretties

Here's some pretties I made for a client. I wanted to show them off and haven't gotten a flickr account... yet! I just... how many passwords and accounts does one life need? Someday that's how the obituaries will read: Ms Shoeworthy died, known on MySpace as Vapor Shine, Facebook as Ephemeral Lady, on Flickr as 2 D Dame, on the Bloggoshpere as Emma Posting, on Etsy as Hope Listing, and with the Boston Herald Sports Comments Section as Ima Still Mad. The government knew her as Ms Taxable, the banks as Hiya Risk and the assorted job attempts as Better-Luck-Next-Time, LOL! The three active e-mail services knew her as CyberSal, AnnieInternet, and T, respectively. Cause of death was identity overload. Unfortunately there will be no burial... a body was never found.


I'm not real happy with the photos... of course. But they were fun! It is the chinese woman symbol. I carved it out of wax, its been molded and this is a 14k yellow gold casting. The pendant is teeeeeeenie! But cute. Cute can be teenie too.

Politics

The absorbing politics of sport, I hasten to qualify. I appreciate Brett Farve. Having watched him for less than maybe 2 quarters his entire humoungous career.... I can appreciate him with a clear and biased conscience. You see... nothing has buried New England's Spygate quite as efficiently as this Bacholerette episode. Every day I click on Yahoo's NFL and the New England Patriots aren't on the front smear. Yes they have decent odds of going 16-0 again. (I would plead clemency... from the base of my dirty fingernails and never-was-in-fashion T-shirt. Patriots? You do that again and you WILL owe me a beer. Kraft, listen up.) And they even have the best odds of winning the Super Bowl. (Last I looked... and I quickly averted my eyes.)

But I'm excited... in a quiet let's-just-sneak-up-on-them-this-time type mode.

I enjoy watching the pre-season games. Though, this being Red Sox nation also, its sometimes difficult in a bar this time of year. Last year I was psyched... I had my rookies to root for... hoping they made the team.... I wowed at the new offensive weapons and would wonder if Moss could really be that good. This year is different. I do have rookies I am rooting for. But more... I hope the team does well. I hope... that... ya know... maybe there's still some of those 19-0 T-shirts available in South America. And I could do with a free beer. A new shirt? Last year's model is fine.

And to start the pre-season... To start a season that recognizes the glory of not worrying about, for a few hours (hahahaha) every week, life details like war and work and automobile repair. To not worry about the much more violent politics of the political kind, healthcare reform and environmental challenges. To instead focus on the fine art of fandom... and its related beer consumption. Here is a video (I switched videos after looking at some of the comments! perhaps it will help explain football a bit! lol!)

Politics

The important politics of sketch books, I should specify. Wikipedia, "Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions." And the first photo demonstrates why I can use the term group. My invaluable assistant, Ms Bird, has the pencil under control though not yet filed under a work bench.

I've never asked how others manage their sketch books. My impression is some folks can be organized with their sketches... and I think that's nice. I'm not. I have (I think) 6 working sketch books that go back years... what happens is. I'm thinking about something... so I start sketching but need another page. If I turn the page I won't be able to refer back to what I was doing... and if I tear out a page I'll lose it. So I open another sketch book. (I tend to open them to some random blank page.) I've thought about starting a file of loose sketches... but. How crazy can you get, really. This morning after flipping though a couple of sketch books looking for a few blank pages to stumble about in, I decided a new one needs to be added to the mix.

Here's an important bunch of sketches I made recently.... ;)