(Instead of) Writing Wednesday: Sunset

Instead of inflicting another boring grammar or pet peeve article on you all, and because I'm not feeling particularly moved to write about anything specific (or maybe just because I'm lazy) here's a gorgeous sunset out my window Monday evening.

Goals and Such

I don't really like New Year's resolutions. I always figure if you want to do something, resolve to do it right there and then. Don't save up all your promises-of-things-you'll-do for one big day. That seems like a recipe for failure to me (though there can be success in failure, too). However, this arbitrary counting of time we call a year (OK, not entirely arbitrary, but how many people really think about what it is we base the length of a year on?) can be useful for stopping to take stock.

Last year, I didn't do as well as I hoped with my goals. I had planned to have a lot more writing done and available for people to read, but I got derailed pretty early on, and I'm not even sure why. I did manage to write (or finish) three novels (two shortish YAs and one somewhat longer adult novel), so really that's not so bad. And I drew some dragons, made some books, got a die-cutter and expanded my card-making repertoire.

But this year, I'm not going to focus on what I didn't get done last year. Well, I am, sort of, but not really. Actually, I'm going to work on some much older things in addition to trying to write more new things.

Old Things to Work On

(Note that I didn't say "Old Things to Finish." I hope to finish them, but if I don't, that's OK. At least I will have more done than I did before).

This Blog. I'm going to aim for a regular weekly post again this year. This is the first one. I won't give myself any soft of word count goal. Just one post a week, even if it's just a picture or a favourite quote.

My Comic. A million years ago, I started an urban fantasy comic -- a webcomic in the sense that I intended to first make it available on the web, though except for lettering, it's all drawn the old-fashioned way and ultimately I want it in print. I worked on it off and on over the years, a little here, a little there. It takes me a really really long time to draw.

Then, in 2004, just before I moved to Nova Scotia, I decided to re-draw everything I had already done to fix it. And I did. Every week a new page, and I even kept going after I finished re-drawing. I made it to the middle of issue 3 (around 50-something pages) and then, for reasons I no longer recall, I stopped. I even still had a few more pages planned out.

So now, ten years later, I'm going to have another go at it. I still love my characters, and it's still a story I want to get to the end of. But I'm not going to re-draw it again, even though it's old art and I might be able to draw it better (and looking back, I really shouldn't have bothered re-drawing it last time; I should have put the energy into making new pages). If I still have all my old files, and I can figure out WordPress well enough to make it do what I need, I might even have the first page up today. I'm going to start from the very beginning, one page a week to start, and while old pages are going up, I'll work on new ones. We'll see how far I get this time. I'd like to at least get to the end of the current storyline.

My Serials. I've have two serial novels on JukePop Serials, both of which have been neglected, due to the mysterious derailment of 2013. One of them -- the one I write as Calliope Strange -- is actually finished. I just haven't posted it all. For that one, I'll put up at least one chapter a week until it's done. The other one, Reindeer Girl, is not finished, but it will be. It was meant to be a way of finishing a book I started a while back, and a way to get me writing regularly. It can still be those things. Maybe I'll manage once a week, but if I can at least get going on it again, however slowly, I'll be pleased.

Other. I'm sure there are other old things I'll revisit through the year, but for now, these will do.

New Things Ahead

Dragons. This isn't entirely new, of course, as it's something I started working on on 2013, but this year I want to make it a major focus. A couple of days ago, I made a Scrivener file for it so I can start working on the text, and yesterday I had another stab at a dragon illustration that's been kicking my butt. I still didn't get it, but I got closer. This is my fun thing, the thing I'm making entirely for myself, but I'll share it, and maybe others will like it, too.

Fiction. There are always too many novels in my head, but this year I'd like to see if I can write one or two more Others novels (as Nic Silver). There are two more I know I need to write for sure. One is what happens to Evgeny while Su is in Germany, and the other is the continuation of Su's quest to find out what happened to her little sister. Also, I'd like to get working on the next Kentaurs novel, which I had intended to write over the summer. And eventually, though perhaps not this year, we'll have to find out what the heck is going to happen to Dubhghall and Maddy after the events of Dark Stranger.

Publishing. I need to get White Raven Press back on track, starting with a new website. I have a handful of novels and collections to get into print, and one to put up digital. Maybe two, but Deer Mouse is an experiment in submitting to a traditional publisher, so I'll have to wait till I hear back.

Painting. Last year I bought some exciting new art supplies, and promptly had no time to play with them. So this year, that's what I'll do. Play. Learn some things. I have a selection of casein paints, and I've already prepped a whole pile of boards to paint on. Maybe something will come of it, or maybe I'll just have fun. Either is good.

Craft. My goals here are just to keep on making stuff, and make more of an effort to market and get work into stores. I hope to do more hand-papermaking, so likely I'll have more cards printed on my own paper, and probably more linocuts rather than polymer letterpress. But again, we'll see how it goes. Also, I plan to play around with more 3D sculptures using die-cut elements. My first batch of dragons came out well, and were well-received. Also, they were great fun to design.

Photography. Some of you may know I studied photography (as well as printmaking, design, and book arts) in art school. I haven't done a lot of photo recently, asked from snaps to sort of visually journal things I see. I have some ideas for projects tumbling around in my head, but I just upgraded my iPhone, and I got a set of Olloclip macro lenses for Christmas (I had their 3-in-1 macro/wide angle/fish eye for my old phone, and will probably pick up the one for my current phone eventually), so I think I'm going to focus on shooting iPhone pictures. No pressure on myself to make great pictures, just something fun. And if they start turning out well, maybe I'll get more serious.

More…

I'm sure there were more things I was going to say, but I've gone on way longer than I meant to, so I'll stop. Basically, I plan to have fun this year, and finish more things -- some old, some new. The only way I can fail is if I stop writing/drawing/crafting completely, and that's pretty unlikely.

Plotting to Commit Artists' Bookery

I'm having one of those jittery days when I can't quite sit still at the computer for too long, which means I have do do something. Make something. So that book cover I'm working on in Photoshop and Illustrator will have to wait a bit.

I've decided to tackle a couple of my Ideas from earlier in the year, which I hadn't started on because I don't have all the bits I need. I've adapted them so I do have all the bits, and I'm going to start on prototypes as soon as I finish this blog entry. When I started writing this post, I had planned to combine the two Ideas into one, but in the process, I've decided to do them as two separate things again. (So I've just re-written a bunch of this post).

Idea One: If you've been reading this blog long, you may remember some posts I did a year ago with photographs of some of the moths that are attracted to my porch light (here's one here, if you want to refresh your memory). Well, we have lots of moths again this year--including a few I didn't see last year--and that has me all excited again. So I'm going to make an edition (possibly an open one, so I can make them as I feel like it, instead of all at once) of little albums. Sort of like mini photo albums. Then I'll print out the moths--maybe as close to life-size as I can manage, or maybe just at a size I like--cut each one out carefully by hand, and mount it like a specimen in the album.

I've done a little bit with moths and specimens before, so this fits with my previous work. (Such as this moth intaglio print here, the discards of which I've been cutting up and mounting in hand-built Riker mounts to look like real specimens, sort of--pics of that soon, once I have some more made (and there's another project to work on . . .).)

Idea Two: I drink a lot of tea, and one of the places I buy really good tea packages it in round tins with a plastic window on top. I thought they looked a bit like portholes, and so I came up with the idea of "specimen journals." They'll be little round leather and fancy paper books that fit inside the tea tin. It'll have a sea-related "specimen" mounted on the front cover (maybe something cut from copper, maybe a hand-drawing, maybe real shell fragments, or maybe something else). The tin will have faux rivets added around the lid to make it look more like a porthole, and it'll be lined in paper to match the book, or maybe velvet. I only have a couple of these tins, but I keep drinking tea, so soon I'll have more.

I also had ideas of expanding this into books cased in hand-built wooden boxes with round windows, with other sorts of specimens on the covers. I even bought a few clock glasses to use as windows, but of course, I don't have the materials to built the boxes, so those will have to wait.

So that's what I'll be up to today. We'll see how far I get.

Books Without Moths

I was going to continue with more pictures and blathering about my book moth print, but I think I'll save that for when I have some other things done with them that I have planned . . .

Instead, here are some little books I've made lately. As you may or may not know, I write for Handmade News and I've been doing a sort of Bookbinding 101, working through structures from simple to more complex. The last several tutorials have been on variations of the pamphlet binding, which is a surprisingly versatile structure.

This first photo is, of course, just a plain little pamphlet with a cardstock cover. That's where I started the series, so people could first learn the pamphlet stitch. Learn that, and you can make your own chapbooks.

These next two are variations with fold-over covers. The green one underneath folds right around to hide the stitching and close the book, while the cream one only folds around to close, leaving the stitching exposed. I decided to sew it with ribbon instead of thread, for decorative effect, and essentially sewed it inside-out so the knot ended up on the outside, again for decoration. The green one is actually one I made in intro bookbinding class years ago with Susan Mills. The cream one I made based on the green one, but simplifying the cover to use less paper. Personally, I prefer the green one. I've done other versions of this little book, including these:















Then, after the softcover variations, I moved on to hardcover. Basically, a hardcover pamphlet is a pamphlet-stitched bunch of pages in a case. It's simple to make, and will be a good way to move into sewn bindings.

In these, I had a little fun. I actually only included a plain cloth or paper cover in the tutorial, but I wanted to illustrate how easy it is to dress it up. I had a bunch of scrapbooking stickers lying around, so I used them on the covers of the cream and brown book and the little black one. I also used scrapbooking paper with writing and travel themes for the endpapers. The one with the fish is one I made in Susan Mills' class, where everyone in the class made a set of pages, and we exchanged them and each bound our own book. My pages had a coelacanth print in blue acrylic paint. I had a set of pages left over, so I cut out the fish and glued him on the cover. All of these books are for sale, incidentally, except the fish (and the green one in the second photo), so if you see something you want, let me know.

Finally, the tutorial I wrote today (which will be posted on Friday) has a variation of endpapers, and I showed them how to make a cover with cloth spine and corners and paper covers. I went with a monochrome colour scheme, which I really like (and I get to use coloured paper for the pages, which I love to do).

The brightness of the purple cloth and the darkness of the paper are exaggerated a bit due to shooting outside on a rainy day (that really does weird things to the intensity of colours), but it's not exaggerated as much as you might think. Anyway, I'm really pleased with this little book, and the ones in the last photo, so I think I may make more of them for my Etsy shop. They go together pretty quickly, but the rich materials make them look most delicious. I'd want to buy one, if I weren't the one making them.

50 Books and 2010 Goals

Some of you may remember a few years back when I picked up a challenge (I no longer recall who the originator of the challenge was, or where online I found it) to read 50 books in the year and blog about it. That first year, I was single and working entirely from home, and I ended up expanding the challenge to 50 fiction, 50 non-fiction, and 50 graphic novels, and still beating it easily.

So this year I've decided to change things (though I'm not single anymore, and often drive for more than an hour to get to the printshop, which will cut down on my free time). I'll still aim for reading 50 books (and maybe, if it goes well, for 50 fiction, non-fiction and comics). But this year, I'm going to try to bind 50 books.


While I don't count books I've already started in my reading 50 books challenge, I think I will include books started in my binding 50 books challenge, as incentive for me to finish the projects I've started and not finished over the past couple of years. So yeah, this year I aim to bind (at least) 50 books, and I'll blog them here.

And as for 2010 goals, I don't usually make actual New Year's Resolutions, but I do like to start the year with some general goals. This year, besides the 50 books thing, my goals are:

• take White Raven Ink seriously as a business, including registering the name, working on marketing, developing product, getting the website finsihed, etc
  
• finish, or at least get a bunch more done, Fey: Drawing Borders
  
• seriously get back into writing fiction (and maybe even finish White Foxes, Full Moon), including submitting stories and further exploring the possibilities of POD, and writing The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring as an illustrated serial novel
  
• work on illustration, including furthering my skills in Photoshop and Illustrator--one of the projects I'll be doing is full-colour Photoshop illos for Aeryn
  
• work on organizing and cataloging my backlog of photographs
  
• get a portfolio together for Viewpoint Gallery and apply for membership
  
• apply for at least one show
  
• become more active online (one selected sites) in order to network and market my work
  
• make some time to play video games for fun (and not just for work)

Well, I think that's enough for now. Like I said, they're fairly general goals, but that makes them more feasible. 2009 was a pretty good year for me professionally (plus I bought a house!); I'd like 2010 to be even better.


Photos: Top - Copper Manuscript of the Hill People of Frisland. Copper-covered coptic stitch book with Japanese paper pages, hand-done calligraphy and illustrations. Photo and art by Niko.

Bottom - Sneak-preview back cover of an in-progress POD book project (and possible gallery show) called Taxonomy gastronomica (Silvester). Photos and design by Niko.

Moving to the Country

I meant to have a nice detailed blog about the house--I even took a bunch of pictures--but since we have less than two weeks now to finish packing everything and get it to the house, and I'm working on a print job (meaning I have to be back and forth to the printshop), and the usual writing work, I haven't had time. Plus when I have had a moment free, we've been at the house, where there is no internet yet. So you'll just have to wait for the big house post. In the meantime, here's the outside.



It doesn't look like much, but oh do we have plans. It's solid, and that's the main thing (well, except for that deck, which needs jacking up and new boards). What we really fell in love with was the property--four acres of trees and meadow. And a cave.



It's a small cave in the gypsum bedrock, but a cave nontheless. Water trickles out of it, and cool air even in the heat of summer. And I met this lovely fellow there:



Naturally, I didn't get too close. I was close enough, though, that I learned porcupines talk to themselves as they trundle along.

Rockhounding in Scots Bay

Not this past weekend, which was a combination of working Saturday because Friday was a day off and watching Hurricane Bill blow past (with probably a few too many "look, sweetie, you're causing three metre storm surge" type comments directed at the boy), but the weekend before, we continued our Nova Scotia explorations with a rockhounding trip to Scots Bay, and a lazing-on-the-beach trip to Brule.

To get to Scots Bay from Halifax, you have to drive through the lovely Annapolis Valley, where they grow all sorts of crops and make my favorite hot day beverage, Stutz Cider. (Actually, Merridale Cider is better, but it's waaaay expensive and you can't get it here.) From the Valley to Scots Bay, you have to drive over a mountain, or what passes for a mountain in Nova Scotia. Just before you go over the top, there's a fantastic view, appropriately called "The Lookoff":


We hadn't been to this part of NS before, and actually drove right through Scots Bay without seeing the sign for the beach. We did find the start of the Cape Split hiking trail (that's for another day, perhaps), and a really tall pier. As planned, we arrived as the tide was still on its way out, so the boats were waaaay down below.


I'm not sure you can quite get the idea of how high above the ground the pier was, but let's just say that Bill wouldn't get too close to the edge.


At the beach itself, there was one of the tiniest Provincial Parks I've ever seen with a couple of picnic tables and outhouses, then a rickety high-arched wooden bridge over a stream to the beach.


Closer to shore, the beach was all water-smooth rocks varying from tiny pebbles to head-sized cobbles. There was all that's left of the Scots Bay Wharf, from shipbuilding days (for more on the archaeology of Scots Bay, go here).


Farther out to sea, and only revealed at low tide, the beach was an amazing red sand/mud. So before settling down to the serious business of picking up rocks, we headed straight out to sea to dabble our toes. I couldn't tell how far out the mud went, but there were people splashing in the shallows much farther out than we were. Because of the shallow water, it was quite warm, but there was an awful lot of red silt suspended in there. I could only imagine how that would feel seeping into every crevice, so I wasn't too crushed that I hadn't brought my bathing suit.


After wandering back in from the mudflats, Bill settled down to watch the water and take more photos, while I got down to rockhounding. Due to its location in relation to the various sources of rocks and the prevailing tides, Scots Bay Beach has a little bit of just about everything you could hope to find along the Fundy Shore. I didn't find any fossils or amethysts, but I did get some very nice agates (though quite small), and quite a bit of pink and white jasper. And some grey stuff that I haven't identified yet, because I seem to have left all my rock books in BC and the websites I've looked at are mostly focused on the spectacular.


Of course, I also picked up a lot of rather ordinary-looking specimens that had interesting aspects, like some greyish cobbles with little deposits of quartz crystals, and this greenish coarse rock with specks and spots of the loveliest glowing white and green stuff. My favorite piece is a small cobble of ordinary coarse grey with a thin (ca 8mm) band of translucent yellow and grey agate through it.


I'll keep a few of the rocks as-is, but most of them will go in the tumbler. The larger ones will have to be broken up, I think. As for what I'm going to do with them, some will go into a jar of pretty rocks, some will be sent to friends and relatives, and some will be used in my work. I'm thinking of incorporating polished stones into wooden book covers, and maybe wire-wrapping some smaller ones to use with the book jewelry. Maybe.

I did wish I had my rock hammer with me, as I seem to have completely lost the knack of busting open rocks with other rocks. Once upon a time, I knew how to flintknap and, though I was never particularly good at it, I could at least get a rock to break so I could see what it looked like inside. I'll have to work on that, and maybe get Mum to dig though my stuff in BC and send me my rock hammer.


Sunday we headed out to Brule, which is on the North Shore of the province. I didn't take any photos because I didn't want the sand to get into the camera lens. I'll have to charge up the little point-and-shoot for occasions such as this, because when I wandered back away from the shore, there was a really pretty saltmarsh complete with fishing heron. The beach was a little on the crowded side, though much less so than one closer to Halifax would have been. We sat on the sand for a while, then wandered along in the water, carefully stepping over the multitude of hermit crabs scuttling along the sandy bottom.

On Monday we had to run an errand all the way out in Pictou, but it was a quick run and not a siteseeing trip, so no photos or much of anything to talk about.

I'm a Columnist! About Books!

Yes siree, I am now officially a columnist at Handmade News, in the "Inspiration" department. I'm writing a column about books and paper called Leaf by Leaf. I sort of borrowed the name from Joe's company, Leaf by Leaf Book and Paper Conservation. After spending more than a week trying to come up with a good column title and not being able to come up with anything that didn't sound stupid, and after almost going with "Bookish," I chose Leaf by Leaf partly because the word "leaf" can refer to both a single sheet of paper and a page in a book, partly because it sounds nice, and partly as a tribute to Joe, who has been a fantastic teacher.

My first article is called "Hi, I'm Niko and I'm a Bibliophile," and it introduces me and the ideas I have for the column. Next week I'll have something on how to get started when you really want to make a book but have never done it before.

In other news, the boy and I have continued our exploration of Nova Scotia. Last weekend we drove down the Southern Shore as far as Kejimkujik Park Seaside Annex. Because we meandered along and stopped a few times along the way, we didn't really have time to get out and hike, but we took the highway on the return trip and it's only about an hour and forty-five minutes, so next time we'll drive straight there and spend the day exploring the park.

I took an awful lot of photographs, but didn't really end up with very many I liked. Sometimes it happens that way, I guess, but it was a bit disappointing, considering the fantastic scenery. Maybe I just need to pay more attention to framing pictures, instead of snapping everything that looks pretty.

Interestingly, most of the pictures I end up liking are close-ups. I rarely like the wide-angle landscape shots. Whether that's because I take more time composing the closer-up shots than I do the landscapes, or whether it's because that's just the kind of photograph I happen to like, I don't know.

Anyway. That was Saturday. On Sunday, we went up to Truro to spend some time in Victoria Park, and I didn't end up taking a single photograph, though I carried the camera around. We also wandered around the town (or city--I think it's actually a city) and had lunch. We peered in the windows of a couple of Real Estate places and found some interesting-looking houses. Yesterday we went back up and tried again to find one in particular--a cottage, really, but two bedrooms on four acres--that we had tried to find last week. This time the office was open, so we went in and got directions.

It's definitely a cottage sort of property, but it might work fine as a year-round house, too. It's rural, but about half an hour's drive from supermarkets and such, and actually only forty-five minutes from where we live now in Halifax. Also, the price is very good. Whether we'll take the plunge and make an offer, I don't know. We didn't get to see inside the place, but hope to get back on Monday to do that. We'd have to get my mom to co-sign the mortgage, too. But it sure would be nice to be paying into our own place instead of paying rent every month.

I took a couple of photos, but haven't uploaded them yet, but the listing is here.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, I'm definitely busy, even though my bank account doesn't show it. I'm expecting an avalanche of cash any day now. Hah hah.

The Democracy 250 project wrapped up last week. The final book (the one that needed some pages re-ordered) was picked up on Thursday, and I was there to get my photo taken for posterity. I'll post that when I get a copy of it. In the meantime, here's the last book (the unnumbered proof copy):


And here's what it looks like on the inside:


I particularly like that page because of the crazy porcupine.

Each book also had a custom-built box lined with soft felt. The boxes are not nearly as "deluxe" as the books, since they're meant to be functional rather than amazingly gorgeous. The design was kept simple--just plain black cloth with the title blocked on the front. Because of their large size, though, they had to be made sturdy.


With thick felt lining, they're quite cushy and should keep the books safe. Note that the lint and bits of white stuff gets masking-taped off before the books actually go inside. I just snapped my photo before they were quite ready to go.

Once I was done being photographed, Bill picked me up and we spent a couple of hours meandering around Point Pleasant Park. Because it was a weekday, the park was quiet and lovely. We got in some nature viewing:

And some exploration of historic sites. There are the remains of something like seven fortifications at Point Pleasant, and pretty much all of them are crumbling into the sea. They put chainlink fences up in a vain attempt to keep people out, but then don't maintain the fences when they fall down. It would be nice if there were at least a few interpretive panels so visitors know what they're looking at. I live here, and I still had to look online to find any information at all.


In some places, water seeping through from above has created cave-like deposits on the walls and especially places with overhangs. There were tiny stalactites which are actually quite lovely, but which can't be good for the integrity of the structures.


And of course, there are many, many rusty things poking out of the ground and lying on the ground and suspended in crumbling structures above the ground. And I do so love to photograph rusty things . . .

Teensy Tiny Bookses

Well, so much for a good night's sleep. I've obviously got too many things on my mind. Oh well, after a full day's work with books, I might actually sleep tonight. Especially as several of the things I'm anxious about should be more or less resolved after today. Or maybe after tomorrow. Blarg.

Anyway. Way back when I had only been making books a short time, I used to make miniature book earrings and necklaces. They weren't too bad, but I wasn't really that good at bookbinding yet. Then I didn't make any for a long time. When I started at the printshop, one of the things we sold was tiny book jewelry that Joe made, which was naturally much nicer that the stuff I used to make. And because Joe had neither the time or the inclination to keep making them, I took over.



Since, then, I've added a few changes of my own. I accidentally cut a bunch of leather too small last time I was assembling the bits to make a batch, but decided I liked the smaller size, at least for the earrings. I might go back to the larger ones for necklaces after this batch. Then, because I have a big stash of glass and wood and horn and bone beads (I had some metal ones, too, but can't find them), I decided to fancy them up a little.



Obviously, I still need to work on the photography. I'm trying to decide if I want to do them as proper product shots on white, or if I prefer the more organic in-context shots. Or I guess I could do both. It would be nice to have an actual space where I can set up a product photo table, instead of shooting on my desk or on the back porch. No wonder the photos are iffy. Also a macro lens would help. The lens I have isn't too bad, but close-in shots work best when I stand back and zoom in, which means more light.

Joe also used to teach a continuing studies class on book jewelry, which he no longer has time for, since NSCAD has him teaching two credit classes and at least one other con ed class a semester. So he suggested I could teach the workshop, but that I could have it in his studio, thus avoiding having to give NSCAD a cut. That'll happen in the fall, probably closer to the holidays, to tempt people to take the class in order to make a gift for someone. Or something.

Anyway, book earrings are for sale on my Etsy and ArtFire shops. Necklaces will follow as soon as I find clasps I can live with.

Comic Book Madness

Well, so far I've managed to spend most of the weekend fiddling around with comics, doing a bit of scanning, some organizing of my Webcomics Nation site, and lots of button, banner and logo making.


Also, as you may have guessed from the "a bit of scanning" comment above, I now have a working scanner. Futureshop had that scanner I've been wanting marked down--about $100 less than the original price, which makes it almost $200 less than the new price. And I had a FS gift card (thanks, Dad!). So I splurged. And now I can get to work on some photo projects as well as comics (and explain that weird grocery list I posted way back when). It's very exciting. I haven't actually scanned any photos yet, but I'll start soon. I need to have an application for the grad show in by mid-February, so I need to get at least that one image finished by then (that is to say, scanned and cleaned up and looking fabulous).

What I have been doing with the scanner is making some images for my new comic series, which will debut on Webcomics Nation tomorrow!! My aim is to do weekly updates, but I don't have a big store of completed pages like I do for Fey, so I don't know how long I can keep that up. The drawings are smaller than Fey drawings, though, and I seem to be able to do a two-page spread in about the same time as it would take me to do a single page of Fey, so there may be hope for the weekly schedule.

So yeah, look for it tomorrow.



(Typefaces in both logos are from the fabulous Scriptorium. (Except the text that says "Fey"--that's all me.) Yes, I even paid for them.)

Fey!

I'm finally getting around to posting comics online again, but I need a new scanner. My old one works just fine, but in an attempt to get the plug-in working with CS4, I discovered that I'm not sure it was ever working on this machine at all, and the drivers won't install. Not even the newest ones downloaded direct from Canon. Sigh.

So in the meantime, I'm moving Fey over to Webcomicsnation. You'll find all my stuff at http://www.webcomicsnation.com/feynico/ eventually. If you were hoping for new pages, sorry. For now I'm going to be reposting old pages once a week. When I get to the end of them, I'll hopefully have lots of new pages and a new scanner. I will finish this series eventually. I'm also working on a completely new series called The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring. I'm very excited about it. But again, nothing until a new scanner.

The scanner I have my eye on in the Epson Perfection v700 Photo (or the v750-M Pro, except it costs significantly more). Yes, it's very pricey (and I just noticed the price is $100 more than it was when I looked a few weeks ago--I thought the prices on tech were supposed to go down, not up), and it can't even scan anything bigger than 8 1/2 x 11, but it *can* scan negatives all the way up to 8 x 10. I have a crapload of medium format and 4 x 5 negs I want to scan and work with digitally, at least to put them on deviantArt and create a digital portfolio. So. I'll be looking for ways of making a bit of extra cash so I can buy this thing, starting with finally getting some stuff up for sale on Etsy. You'll find me at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6315023, but there's nothing there yet. First, I have to organize and photograph and acquire a postal scale to figure out how much it will cost to mail things.

Anyway, more soon.

Weirdest Grocery Order Ever

Before anyone asks, yes, I am still alive, just monumentally busy with final projects. It's my last semester, so everything comes down to this. In a few weeks, I'll be done and back to regular blogging, emailing, and posting of comics (ooh, and I have a new comic I'll be unveiling).

In the meantime, here's what I just brought home from the grocery store:

• President's Choice "Green" toilet paper
• pickled sweet onions
• tangy dill mini pickles
• canned bean sprouts
• canned giant escargot
• spicy pepper and herb olive oil (with a big giant pepper in the bottle)
• sundried tomatoes in olive oil
• canned sour cherries
• canned asparagus tips
• canned peach halves
• small decorative glass jar
• frozen mussels in shell
• frozen raw shrimp (unpeeled)
• frozen chicken giblets and hearts
• frozen smoked kippers
• frozen whole squid
• fresh mackerel fillets
• fresh beef kidney

This is definitely the weirdest assortment of things I've brought home, and anyone who knows me much at all knows I have a habit of bringing home weird things. But it's all in the name of science. Or art. Or something.

I promise I'll post again and explain it all. Except the toilet paper. I think you can figure that one out yourselves.

Self-Portrait in Bill's Glasses

My favourite photograph so far this summer.

Time to Read

So school is out for summer, and my one summer course is over (digital photo, which was excellent thanks to a really great teacher, even if he did only give me a B in lighting last year). Here's my favourite of the photos I did for my final project (an attempt to recreate the Happy Family photos I remember from growing up in the 70s):



I'm actually considering putting that one on the wall, even though I don't especially like having pictures of myself up. Here's another, that isn't as successful in terms of colour, but which works really well otherwise.



I love the one raised eyebrow thing.

But I began this post with a mention of school being done, and it is, until September. Which means I have a little more time. Time to play videogames, and time to read. Recently I've started to get that feeling I sometimes get, that I need to finish all the books I started before I start any more (except I just started a new one yesterday, completely violating my good intentions). So I'm going to concentrate on finishing unfinished books and see if I can't get them all out of the way by the time summer's over. Then I can start accumulating partly-finished books all over again. Whee!

There's never any one reason I don't make it all the way through a book. Sometimes it requires more brain power that I can give it at the time, so it gets put aside for when I have more leisure. Sometimes it's simply the wrong size to easily read on the bus or in bed or in the tub. Sometimes I lose interest, read something else in the meantime and then don't ever get back. Here are the things I've got in progress at the moment:

• Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi: It's subtitled "The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya" and is essentially a history of non-western science. I've been reading this one on and off whenever I don't need too much brain for other things. It's a pretty good read and I'm well over halfway through. It's not going to be a problem to finish now that I have no school for a while.


• The Lungfish, the Dodo and the Unicorn by Willy Ley: Another subtitled book; this time "An Excursion into Romantic Zoology." It's a fun book about fantastic beasts that are either not real, real but extinct, or really really for real but seemingly improbable. It was published in 1948 and just seems to work better in small doses, which is why I haven't finished it yet. I guess I've been craving something I can consume in big chunks. Mmmmmm . . . books . . .


• Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht: I'd only just begun this when I moved, so I never really had a chance to get into it before I had to set it aside. Looks like it'll be a good read, though.


• This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson: A novel about nautical exploration and discovery, in which Charles Darwin is a character. I'm enjoying it immensely, but it fits in the category of "too big to comfortably read anywhere but sitting upright in a chair," though I have made valiant attempts to read it in bed. It's going to require evenings of tea and sitting it the ugly salmon-coloured granny rocker to finish, but they'll be good evenings.


• Tom Sawyer by Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain: I love Twain, but I'm finding it hard to get into Tom. I don't remember Huckleberry Finn being this obviously written for children. I will forge on, though, because the writing is marvelous, and I have a copy of Tom Sawyer Abroad on the shelf that I want to get at soon.


• The Confusion by Neal Stephenson: This is the second book in the Baroque Cycle, and baroque it certainly is. Phew! Really great writing, but very very dense, and not as well-sprinkled with humorous bits as the first book. I'll take me a while to slog my way to the end, but I know it's going to have been worth it (how's that for a convoluted verb tense?).


• Codex: by Lev Grossman. Woo! I love books about books, and this novel is proving to be just the easy read I needed, without being too lightweight. I acquired it through BookMooch, which a recommend highly if you have books you don't need but don't really want to dispose of. BookMooch lets you send books off to appreciative other book folks and use the points you thereby accumulate to mooch new books off other people. It makes it so much easier for me to part with books (always a hard thing, even if I know I'll never read them again), knowing who they're going to, and being able to get books in the mail in return. I love mail. Especially when it has books in it.

Well, this post is getting long, so I'll leave it at that. I think there are a few more partly-finished books lurking on the shelves, but I'll deal with the ones listed first, then go in search of others.

Worst Grade Ever

Last week when I started school I also picked up my grades from last semester and got, as I rather expected I might, my worst grade so far at NSCAD (though not quite my worst grade ever in university, I think). So anyway, here are my grades from Fall 07:

• AHIS 3200 History of Photography: A+
  
• PHOT2500 Lighting Workshop: B
  
• PRTM2100 Relief Printmaking: A
  
• PRTM3106 Intermediate Lithography: A
  

That gives me a GPA of 3.86 for the semester, and 3.95 so far for this degree. Not too bad, I guess.

Exterminate!

I got a cell phone recently. It's very shiny. Also, it has bluetooth. My Macbook also has bluetooth. Hmm . . . I thought, I bet I could make them talk to each other. Last night I managed to figure out how, though I couldn't think of anything useful to do with the ability. I've also been trying to figure out how to make my own ringtones. This phone can use mp3 ringtones, but you can't just transfer from a computer. Well, you can, and you can then listen to them, but you can't set them as ringtones. Some investigation online revealed sites that will convert mp3s to ringtone files and send them to you on your phone. But the file I wanted to use was already an mp3. Hey, I thought, what if I use bluetooth to send the file? Alas, it just saved it on the phone's memory card (sold separately ;) ). So I took the memory card out and re-sent the file. This time when I selected "store" it gave me the option to set the file as a ringtone. Yay! Now whenever someone phones me there will be Daleks exclaiming, "Exterminate! Exterminate!" Now I just need some people to phone me . . .

And here's a blurry cellphone photo of a weird thing I saw on the way home from my coffee date (drank a London Fog, had good conversation, saw cool photos):



Hmm . . . I don't know why that's sideways. It's not sideways on the phone and it's not sideways in Photoshop. Oh well, you'll just have to tilt your head. It's a snowbank on the side of the road with a big pile of shiny icecubes on top. It was very surreal in the weird night light.