photo archiving

I've been gradually archiving photos from my childhood into digital format. Already some of the paper photos have discoloured; I figure digitizing them will keep them accessible for longer.

The photo above is of my brother. When I see photos like this, I find myself wondering what Jim would think of all the technology developments of recent years; a great deal has happened since he and Diane died in '93, and he was always a technonerdboy. And then I wonder what my nieces and nephews will think of this decade when they're my age.

Some years ago, my brother-in-law joked to his daughter (my niece was around 6 or 7, I think): "You sound like a broken record." Her reply: "What's a record?"

:-D

Jeff and I have many, many boxes of photos that we haven't looked at in years. We're going to pick a weekend this winter where we'll go through all the boxes and ruthlessly purge, archiving the rest in photo albums. We plan to digitize a bunch. I've always found it INCREDIBLY difficult to throw out photos, especially photos of people I know I'll never see again.

Sometimes I'll go through an old photo album because I need a good cry (does that make sense to anyone?) or revisit a happy event, or because I'm looking for good blackmail material. ;-) I love how photos can capture a moment so perfectly...I often find photos better than videos for this sort of thing. I also like looking at other people's photos because they say a lot about the photographer in the choice of subjects and moments.

Photo below: In Algonquin Park, I think. My sister Ruth is standing. I'm sitting on the rock beside my brother, pointing something out. Mom's probably getting out a snack or picnic lunch. My Dad took this photo.



Rand and Erin arrive today for a weekend visit, yay!

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Patricia Storms: creative dynamo

Finished arranging The Chocolate Song for Urban Tapestry last night. Unfortunately this meant I had to miss yet another Irish music session at the Tranzac; I have yet to be able to attend a session this season. :-( BUT it does mean I'm able to send Eva and Crystal their parts this week, yay!

Illustration by Patricia Storms, from her blog.

Yesterday afternoon, I got together with Patricia Storms, a cartoonist, illustrator and designer whom I first "met" through her Booklust blog but then in person at the National Cartoonists Society Christmas party in Toronto. We've been meaning to get together for a coffee for ages, but never got around to it until now.

Not surprisingly, we talked lots about books, illustration, publishing and writing. Patricia's enthusiasm and sense of humour are infectious. She has several book projects on the go and they all sound fantastic! Do check out her online portfolio and her blog.

I forgot to take a photo of her yesterday, so here's one from last year:



In yesterday's Blathering, I posted some links to some mesmerizing YouTube videos. The first focused mainly on some Rube Goldberg devices that appeared on the Japanese children's educational tv show, PythagoraSwitch or rather, "Pitagora Suitchi." I didn't know all this info until several people posted about it in my LJ after I asked about the meaning of a repeated jingle at the end of each segment.

From Dave Goulden, for example:
"I have to listen to that damn tune daily. What's more fun is Otousan suitchi. A homemade cardboard switch box with five Japanese letters on it. The child 'throws' each 'switch' in turn and his/her father performs a charade-type action that begins with that letter. I won't tell you if I've participated in that."

I was curious about Otousan Suitchi, and found an example on YouTube at the beginning of a subtitled PythagorasSwitch show. Hee hee...I can SO see Dave G. doing this. The little girl in this segment is darned cute, too.

Urban Tapestry practice tonight, then Rand and Erin arrive tomorrow!

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Impaled Strangled Jaundiced Under-nourished Mutant Duck-Snowmen With Spotty Skin

Above: Will Write For Chocolate has been updated.

There was a time in my life when I was actually semi-competent at handcrafts. I made little Fimo characters, felt ornaments, handmade paper, wreaths braided from herbs and other plants I had grown and harvested myself. When Jeff and I got engaged, I created our wedding invitations and programs myself, using watercolour paints and calligraphy.

Earlier this year, I volunteered to organize a Christmas Ornament Exchange on LJ. I thought I could make some more of my cute little Fimo characters. Except I had underestimated the toll that tendinitis had taken on my Fimo-manipulating tendons...I ended up making my snowmen ornaments much smaller than I intended, and the paperclip hangers look way too big in comparison. The Fimo carrot noses I put on looked like duck bills instead. The Fimo cracked a bit in places when I baked it because I hadn't kneaded the dough enough. And then the glaze I put on turned yellow in patches.

Ugh. :-(

So I've christened these horrific creations my Impaled Strangled Jaundiced Under-nourished Mutant Duck-Snowmen With Spotty Skin. Hopefully the catchy name will help make up for the lack of innate cuteness and craftmanship:



I was amused by my friend Craig, who posted the following on the Flickr page with the above photo: "These are cuter than anything! I'd cover a ton of trees in these! Seriously! Can I order some? Can you make more?"

Nope. Never. These will remain one-of-a-kind. The world will be a better place for not having more Impaled Strangled Jaundiced Under-nourished Mutant Duck-Snowmen With Spotty Skin, believe me. I'm sending them to 11 people plus one for the Interfilk auction at OVFF next year (thanks to Melissa Glasser for volunteering to collect these Interfilk ornaments).


As for other crafts: well, I've always been terrible at needlecraft, mostly from lack of patience. The only thing I ever successfully crocheted in my life was a small baby blanket for my niece Sara, using granny squares, and that ended up being more of a large knotty handkerchief than an actual blanket. But I proudly sewed on a cloth label that said "Made With Love From Your Aunt."

I was going to post about the wonderful ornaments I've received so far from the Christmas Ornament Exchange Group in this Blathering, but it's been agreed that it would be better to keep them a surprise for now while people are still receiving them in the mail. Please do check the Ornamentalia LJ group closer to Christmas, when I'm sure photos will start appearing.

Instead, I'm going to highlight the skill of a few needlecraft-savvy friends.

Like Beckett, who sewed this Jedi Knight outfit for one of her sons for Halloween this year. And if you haven't visited her Flickr sketchbook, please do!

Like Allison's cross-stitch pieces. Check out her Woodland Santa and Tapestry pieces, for example, and the cross-stitch she made for me (photo above and to the right).

Like Margaret, Quilter Extraordinaire, who organizes the creation of the GAfilk Quilt each year. She quilted me this ornament to hang from my office tree:



Like Julie, who knit these cool hand-warmers.

Like Judith, whose beading prowess has progressed exponentially since a beading workshop with Kathleen Sloan. Here's a cool Minas Tirith beading piece she did a while back.

Like Bev (my friend Craig's mom), who does AMAZING quilting art pieces. Check out the detail on her Killarney Lighthouse piece.

Fun links

These ones are from Jeff...

This Amateur Gourmet post is lots of fun, combining food and comics and storytelling. I might use Comic Life to try this in Blatherings sometime.

Incredible Little Mech Sculpture: Holy cow. This little mechanical guy was created by Netherlands artist, Mark Ho. It's constructed of 920 homemade parts (101 of these parts are in each hand), made from bronze and stainless steel. You can find more info about Mark here.



And then if you really want to be distracted from work, check out these mesmerizing videos:

Video 1 (could someone please translate that sung Japanese phrase for me? I can't get it out of my head...)
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

Flying dreams

Above: 20 minute doodle in Corel Painter IX using the Chalk, Digital Watercolour and Croquil brushes. It started out as a flying picture, but started falling instead. At least it's not as obviously a freefall as this similar illustration I did last year.

I had trouble sleeping last night and am pretty tired today. I started thinking about dreams this morning. Does anyone out there still have flying dreams? Y'know, the dreams where you learn to fly or you're able to fly? I used to have those all the time when I was a child. Occasionally they'd end with me plummeting to the ground (and waking up), but the flying made the fall worth it.

Does the fact that I don't dream about flying anymore mean something? More often, I tend to have stressful dreams...I'm either running from someone or something, I'm late or have forgotten something important, or exaggerating something that's been stressing me in waking life. Or stupid, boring dreams: shopping in a grocery store, inane conversations, etc.

When I was a teenager, I remember being fascinated by the whole dreaming process and researched it extensively. I remember being able to train myself to dream about something specifically by focusing on it just as I drifted off to sleep. I'm not sure if I'd be able to do that now (I fall asleep VERY quickly after going to bed) but I'm going to give it a shot.

I want to dream about flying again.

Busy week. Nearly finished my novel revisions, but I also have a number of illustrations due for a client by the end of the week.

Comic I recently did for Inkygirl:




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Urban Tapestry practice

Allison, Jodi and I got together for an Urban Tapestry practice this weekend at my place. It was an intensive session; we were all dead tired by the end but happy with what we'd accomplished, including putting together some new songs we had never performed together before, including:

Hey, J.K.!: All of us brainstormed on the lyrics for this musical plea to J.K. Rowling, then I wrote the music. Lots of fun to perform.

The Chocolate Song: Song that we're hoping to perform with Summer & Fall. It's short but pretty dense with counterpointstuff. Allison and Jodi recorded their parts this afternoon. I'll be sending Crystal's and Eva's parts to them by e-mail soundfile. Hopefully it all comes together at GAfilk. :-)

Sing With Me: I wrote this song pretty much in one sitting.

Paper Boats: A beautiful song that Eva (of Summer and Fall, who are Interfilk guests at GAfilk) wrote. Eva says she was inspired to write this song after listening to our version (the original was by Ookla The Mok) of "Tiberius Rising," especially the line about paper boats. Eva works as a criminal judge in Germany. You can find out more about both Eva and Crystal at their Web site.

The above songs will all be performed in our concert at GAfilk in Atlanta, GA this January.



How we usually learn a new song:

We go over the basic melody/structure of the song.

Find the right key. Sometimes Allison has to transpose all her guitar chords if a straight capo change isn't enough. She had to do this several times this afternoon. Jodi and I are very grateful to Allison. :-)

Figure out an arrangement -- who sings what, if instrumentals are needed and where.

We record the main melody. If others have already figured out their harmony and counterpoint parts, we record those as well. If not, we all take away the practice recording to work with.

At the next practice, we continue to put the song together, tweaking a harmony here, adjusting a lyric there, tightening timing and harmonies. We record a new version of the song.

As the song becomes more polished, we focus more on ways we can improve our performance and make it more entertaining or satisfying for the audience.

We've worked together for so many years that sometimes we find ourselves suggesting the same tweaks in the same moment, or making adjustments to a melody or lyric during performance at the same time without planning it ahead of time. We now refer to this as a "UT Telepathy Moment."

:-D



(Above: Allison and Jodi in Germany before Filkcontinental last year.)

This is the first time I've used my new recording gear to record a UT practice. I'm proud to report that I managed to unplug everything, bring it upstairs to the living room, reassemble it...AND IT STILL WORKED! I'm finding that tweaking is needed for every song, depending on the type of music and arrangement.

I'm still figuring out how to quickly gauge optimum Gain levels on the Firebox and the pre-amp. Still haven't figured out exactly how the Output levels on the pre-amp fit into all this, but I'm gradually learning through experimentation. Also experimenting with microphone placement with multiple performers.

For just a practice recording, I just piped everything into one track in Garageband to keep file sizes down. At the end of the session, I converted all the songs into MP3 format and burned them onto CDs for Allison and Jodi to take home.



(Above: Summer and Fall (Eva and Crystal) who are flying from Germany to be Interfilk Guests at GAfilk in January!)

As always, I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of a group like Urban Tapestry. I find the creative encouragement inspirational and working together hugely satisfying. Plus we have a lot of fun just hanging out. :-)

Only two months until GAfilk!

Below: Cat Faber, Paul Kwinn and Urban Tapestry in Ohio.


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