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July 23, 2010

imagining strongs

Posted by dogpossum on July 23, 2010 2:42 AM | Comments (0)

I am still thinking about large moustaches. I blame Murdoch Mysteries.

"imagining strongs" was posted in the category crafty bastard and scribbling

June 30, 2010

Baz and mandarin peel

Posted by dogpossum on June 30, 2010 9:04 PM | Comments (2)

I am trying to improve my drawing, so have been taking requests and illustrating friends' tweets. This is Basil (friends' companion who usually lives over at Sorrow at Sills Bend) with mandarin peel.

It is winter, here, and mandarins are in season in a major way. I ate so many at MSF I gave myself a rash. My favourites are Honey Murcotts, but they're harder to find than the ubiquitous, people's favourite Imperial. The Murcott has a stronger, more orangey flavour and scent and isn't as loose in its skin as the Imperial.

Basil is an internet rockstar.

"Baz and mandarin peel" was posted in the category crafty bastard and scribbling

December 20, 2009

Happy Christmas!

Posted by dogpossum on December 20, 2009 7:42 PM | Comments (0)

up-pops!

I've been making popup cards. It got a bit fiddly and annoying, eventually, and I ran out of card long before I actually made cards for all the people I had on my list.

I've also uploaded (finally) some popups from the last time I did some popup work, which was about a million years ago. Last year... no, 2007 perhaps. Sheesh.

If you're following me on twitter, you've seen all these before. But it's nice to have them in my (poor, neglected) blog as well.

"Happy Christmas!" was posted in the category crafty bastard and domesticity

October 27, 2009

crazed renovating woman bores internet to tears

Posted by dogpossum on October 27, 2009 10:26 PM | Comments (0)

terracotta floor tiles

I am nuts for the idea of these tiles atm. They are made of terracotta and they're hexagonal. Click the linky if you want to read more.

I have also started thinking about door handles.

I've never even considered these things before. And we have had to get some housey type things in a hurry. Choosing paint was rushed (but really, there's no choice beyond 'classic white' for a small flat that has dark bits). I could perhaps have chosen a stain for the buttery yellow, knotty pine wood floors we've just had done in a clear satin water based finish.

I am still humming and hawing over painting the woodwork white. I'd like to get this shit done before we move in. But then, I should probably go slow on this stuff so I don't screw things up.

We will also need to get a glazier in to fix a stupidly 'mended' window. And I need to get the dodgy painters in to do one room (the hall over the stairs - the ceiling is >5m and it's over the _stairs_.)

After a while, we'll redo the bathroom (which is really quite important) and then the kitchen (which is less important, but assumed greater importance when we discovered a leak this week).

And then I want to get the space under the stairs made into cupboards or large, pull out drawers. And I want to open out the 'wall' which edges the stair case into think palings or even just leaving it open (and dangerous!). And we will really need some built in bookshelves in the lounge room (we'll cover an entire wall with them).

I like the thought of doing all this stuff. We are doing the painting ourselves, though we got a dood in to finish the floors (I'll let you know what sort of job he did. He's very nice, but you never can tell.) We'll get a plumber to do the plumbing stuff, and a proper tiler to tile because those are jobs you don't want to have to live with if you fuck up. But we've discovered we quite like doing this renovation stuff. The Squeeze is concerned he'll like it too much and we'll be renovating everything, forever.

So, in order of priority, I should be thinking about:

- the woodwork round the doors, etc

- getting all the locks changed, including the window locks. Years as a rental property mean that there are definitely dozens of copies of the keys floating about. So we need new ones.

- the bathroom. I have no idea on this one. We have a good iron bath and a decent toilet bowl, but we need to rip out the shitty shower unit ASAP and the vanity is screwed. It's a tiny room, and very poorly laid out, so we'll need to really think carefully about how we do it. I'd like to keep the bath as it's in very good nick, and I had thought about putting the shower over the bath, but that's not always a good idea, and not great for re-sale. We'll need lots of new tiles and possibly need the ceiling sorted as it does open out into the attic space under the roof. Nice and bright but also DIRTY.

- the kitchen. It needs redoing entirely.

- the built in bookshelves and other assorted fitting and joining and random acts of carpentry. I need a good cabinet maker, I think.

"crazed renovating woman bores internet to tears" was posted in the category crafty bastard and dogpossum and domesticity

March 26, 2009

i like pie

Posted by dogpossum on March 26, 2009 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

Here's a little round up:

Western Swing is ME.
I am currently in love with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. This is in preparation for the Hot Club of Cowtown tour next month. I saw them in the UK (at the Marlborough Jazz Fest) in 2004, and they were freakin' GREAT. The next week I saw Casey McGill's band at a dance camp and they told me that their bass player had absconded for the HCCT. I'm not sure whether that's a tragedy or an awesomey.

Bad foot is still ME.
My foot is still bung. I have been to see a podiatrist to strapped me up. That helped the first time, but not the second time. I am also doing exercises to strengthen the muscles in my calves/shin to help out my plantar fascia (ie so it's not overloaded). I am down to get orthotics next week, but they mightn't work. Basically, these fibroids in my foot are never going to go away and they can't be cut out. So I'm looking at pain management and impact reduction. I danced two half dances on the last weekend and it HURT. The problem is not so much the impact (which hurts and hurts normally), but the fact that there's pivoting and my foot actually twists when we do lots of turns and things. That's where the pain is at. It sucked to find out how much it still hurt, but at least I know where I'm at. Though I think I'd have preferred to continue in blissful (and hopeful) ignorance. If I can't dance again, I'm really not sure what I'm going to do. If it's not lindy hop, it could have been something else - I come from a long line of dancing, lumbering folk, and I can't fight my DNA. Perhaps I'll learn an instrument. Any suggestions? Maybe the drums? Bass? I did a lot of singing at school, but that was a long time ago.

Allergies are GO.
I am having trouble breathing and my ear is all glued up. Again. Still, I've had much less trouble with my health since I moved to Sydney, so I'm certainly not complaining. It is melaluca flowering season, and there goddamn paper barks all over every street in every inner city suburb in Australia, so I need to deal. Won't be long now, though, and I can come off the antihistamines.

Library is MINE.
I have been back to the Con's library this week. It is a joyful place. Though it is full of students, now, and that sucks. They're almost uniformly middle or upper class, supernerds and 70% male. Guess that's what a career in hardcore arty music requires. The jazz section was all dusty when I first got in there. Now it has at least some use. The refec near the library is SHITHOUSE. The actual room is quite nice - it has a lovely little stage (with nice piano), and would be perfect for a dance gig. The acoustics are magical. But the food is inedible. I was reduced to pre-made sandwiches. Most of the students in this (actually quite nice) mini-refec were eating packed lunches. There you go.

emusic is not all mine. Yet.
I am blowing through my emusic downloads ridiculously quickly. Even when I ration them. There're simply not enough.

Quickflix is suspended.
Since we moved to Sydney the DVDs have been slower to arrive, have almost always been terribly scratched, and we never get anything in the top 50 of our list. I have suspended our account until we've decided what to do. We're still on one of their unlimited DVD accounts, but I'm not sure it's worth it, as we only get about 3 a week, which isn't much better than getting 12 a month max, is it? The video shop here is pretty good, so we might just go old school. Though using a video shop means I have no natural limit on my DVD viewing.

Dr Who and Farscape rule my world.

Screw BSG with its upsetting gender politics and ridiculously FAILED science. I am all about rebooted Dr Who and Farscape. I didn't dig either the first time I saw them, and never really got past the first couple of episodes. Now I love them. Farscape passes the Bechdel Test. Dr Who does not. Rose + her mum. Talking about the Doctor. Though every now and then Rose gets to discuss a drama with another female character, there's not much woman-to-woman action. I think it's partly to do with the newer format - story arcs only last an episode, rather than a week's worth of episodes. There's not as much character development. And a bit too much kissing. I like Eccleston, but I'm not struck on Tennant. His bottom jaw sticks out too far. I liked Eccleston's big nose and ears a whole lot. And was the Doctor always this manic? I'll have to rewatch some old ones (I liked brown, curly haired, long-scarf, jelly baby Doctor best).

I am a crocheting demon.
I should post some pictures to prove it. But I love complicated afghan patterns, and have been compulsively crocheting as I watch my way through the Commonwealth's greatest contributions to popular culture. We went to Spotlight in Bondi Junction the other weekend so I could stock up on yarn. That joint was totally trashed on Saturday afternoon. I need another supplier; perhaps I could order online in bulk? The poor Squeeze is buried in gorgeously three dimensional flowers, in various combinations, so perhaps it's time to stop.
...
No.

I am bike YAY!
Yesterday we rode down the Cook's River after work for a quick ride. It was overcast, humid and coming up a storm. It was great. The sun set over the river, we saw wildlife, we dodged nonnas out walking and talking and planned a longer down-stream walk for a future date. This river goes to Botany Bay, you know.

I am still dealing with the fact that we live in Sydney.
I'm surprised by the historical weight I'm carrying in Sydney. It's like all these suburbs and places are full of all the post-Invasion history of this country. Every bit of history I remember has something to do with Sydney. And most of it is narrated by songs from the Peter Coomb's song book which delighted so many good little Australians in the 1980s.

Singing too-ra-li-oo-ra-li-attidy,
Singing too-ra-li-oo-ra-li-ay,
Singing too-ra-li-oo-ra-li-attidy,
And we're bound for Botany Bay.

I'm sure that that song has celtic roots as well. One of the strangest moments of my post-MA European travel was being shut in at a Cornish pub where a heap of drunken ... Corns? Cornishpeople? sang one of those sorts of 'traditional Australian songs'. But with celtic names. My Irish grandfather used to sing The Wild Colonial Boy. So even though I'm caught up in all this Australian music, it's just as Irish as the American folk music I dig.

I did arrive in Australia in 1982, straight into rural Wagga Wagga, so moving to New South Wales is far more familiar than moving to Melbourne did in 2001. The humidity is lovely. It's not as heinous as Brisbane's, but it's nicer and wetter than Melbourne. And my skin loves it. The Squeeze declared last night, as we rode up the hill towards the lightning and iron-grey sky: "Moving here was the best thing we've done!" He's delighted by the tropical storms. So am I - I've missed them. There's something wonderful about a good, heavy-like-a-hot-shower rainstorm, complete with lighting and crashing thunder. Far, far better than drizzly, wingey bastard Melbourne weather. Even if it didn't rain, it'd be cloudy and overcast forever. I don't miss that shit. Though I'm thinking the Victorians are.

Dollhouse sucks arse, Pushing Daisies is delightful.
That's it in a nutshell, really. I'm not impressed by DH.
1. The FBI/BSG guy is a crap actor. He's so crap I can hardly watch him on screen. That scene in the last episode where he and the 'dead wife' DH client chatted in the kitchen? It was so, so, so bad. I groaned. I gnashed my teeth.

2. The opening credits are incredibly, crappily bullshit.

3. I'm still not entirely sure about the gender stuff. There's an awful lot of talk about the women 'dolls' as sexualised bodies. And though there're references to their missions which don't involve sex, we spend a lot of time looking at them having sex or wearing very high heels or tight, booby shirts, or generally packing a whole lot of very conventional, bullshit femininity. It's a bit too Alias for me, but with less self-determination on their part. I had hoped there'd be a clever twist to undo some of this, but I'm beginning to lose hope. Joss Whedon is hyped, but, really, Buffy was his pinacle. I didn't mind Serenity (look, I'm losing the italics, ok?), but it wasn't great. The film wasn't great cinema. The series wasn't that good - a little too heavy on the patriarchal family structure for my liking. Yes, I get the whole male captain/father parallel, and that Mal might perhaps have been overcompensating for his wartime mistakes with other people's lives, but still... Actually, it takes Buffy an awful long time to lose her patriarch. I've rewatched a bit of season 5 lately, and she's STILL got Giles there, Watchering. So perhaps Buffy isn't so great either... God, if this is the best we can do, this string of compromises.
Anyways, I'm not impressed by DH

4. Did I mention the terrible acting by FBI guy?

Pushing Daisies, though, is wonderful.

It's charming. It's clever. It's lovely to look at. Its visual style has a lot in common with Tim Burton's brighter, more colourful stuff. It's a bit surreal and hyper-colour, but not dark like Burton. Well, except for the premise of the series: the pie maker protagonist can bring dead things back to life. For a minute. If he touches them within that minute, they go back to being dead. If he doesn't, they stay alive and something has to replace them in the deadness. The point of the series: Emerson Cod (finally, a show with a not-white central character!), a private detective, works with the Pie Maker to solve murders. For profit. Pie Maker brings his childhood sweetheart, Chuck, back to life in one of the earliest eps, so they can't touch. They love each other. The other main character is Olive, who, by the end of season two, is the very best character.

Why do I like this program?
1. The hyper-colour, phantastical mise en scene.

2. Passes Bechdel Test.
3. Olive. With her pet pig Pigby.

4. The male protagonist is a pie maker. There's a lot of talk about food and baking pies and comfort food. It's very lush. Here, have a look.
5. The singing scenes. Olive sings a couple of songs. One of which is 'Eternal Flame'. Yes, a Bangles singing scene. The other is 'Hopelessly Devoted to You'. It's wonderful.
Also, there's singing.
6. Chuck's spinster aunts (who raised her) are cheese fans and also used to be synchronised swimming super stars: Darling Mermaid Darlings. One has an eye patch.
7. Most of all, I love the dialogue. It's very, very wordy. Lots of fast talking. But it's all puns and onomatapeia (sp?) and all those other lovely wordnerd things. It looks good, it sounds good, and it's funny. It makes me giggle.
8. It's not horrid. There are some pretty gross deaths, but it's not upsetting. Most of the programs I like these days are horribly dark. But Pushing Daisies is not. It's lovely. The Pie Maker and Chuck love each other. Olive is tiny and super tough and awesome. She can bake pies or solve crimes. She's great.
9. I watch it before bed, when I'm tired, and it helps me get to sleep. It's nice.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it was cancelled before the end of its second season. Apparently they're screening the finale in the US in their summer, so at least we'll get that degree of closure. But still. It's really great telly. Here's the first bit to prove it:

"i like pie" was posted in the category bikes and crafty bastard and digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and sydney and television

December 14, 2008

look, no hands

Posted by dogpossum on December 14, 2008 6:28 PM | Comments (1)

I'm copying Alice's work and having a bash at some photoshop tutorials. You MUST go and look at Alice's work - it's freakin' sweet. Mine is a little dodgier:

If you can't see all the image, best to click through to the permalink.

It's not really finished. Basically, it took me hours to get to the point where I had the figure on the textured background. I'm not all that happy with that part - there's not enough texture on the figure (mostly because I gave up on the layering). The text is shitty, but that's because I gave up before I got to the bit in the tutorial about adding layers of 'paper'.

I'm really enjoying it, but I have to follow the instructions _exactly_ because I don't know very much about photoshop at all. I'm just a baby with layers, buggered if I know anything about masks or any of the fancy shit. So, really, I don't actually know anything, I've just been copying. But I'm going to have another go to see if I can actually _learn_ as I go.

I quite like the colours (this whole image is probably the result of too much Deadwood this week), but I _really_ like the colours on Alice's latest effort.

My eyes are kind of square, too.

Ok, here are my sources (and most of them I just found via Alice or the original tutorial):

The basic picture of the woman is from facebook, and it's a picture of Michelle from Sugar Blue Burlesque.
Then I added a hare's head from stock.xchng.
The background paper was also from stock.xchng.
The sunray thing was from deviantart.com.
There's a bit of nice wallpaper in there (as in the stuff you put on walls) fromlovelamp.
There're some brushes (now, there's something I'd never used before) from brusheezy.
I think the font is from dafont.

I'm going to have a bash at some more of these photoshop tutorials. I wish I was a bit more visually creative, or that I had something specific to design for. I just couldn't think of anything to write on this one (it's pretty dumb, I know).

I'm also a bit concerned about putting animal heads on women's bodies. Especially on burlesque bodies. There's something weird there. And I'm not entirely comfortable with burlesque as it is - my politics suggest that there's really nothing all that ok about stripping and women dancing erotically for (predominantly) male audiences. I mean, just 'cause it's old timey stripping, don't mean it _isn't_ stripping and _doesn't_ carry all the accompanying problems that stripping carries generally.
... part of me is also thinking about the Dietrich film 'Blonde Venus' and all that feminist film stuff about female bodies as 'pieces' cut up by the male gaze. I also worry about animal headed women not being able to 'return' the male gaze.
But there you go. I dare say my using that picture of a woman I know without permission is also problematic.

I have a couple of ideas for animal headed men, but I think I'm kind of over them. We'll see, though. I think I'd like to go for a more modern look as well - I'm a bit over that dirty look. But it is useful to know how to do it, now.

But what _I'd_ really like to know how to do, is add those 'pieces of paper' with the text on them. I also discovered that I'd forgotten how to do shaped text (as in following a free form line). Sigh.

...and, my foot is still bung. It's about three weeks, now, and I'm only up to 10 minute walks. They make my foot hurt and hurt, though. But yesterday I rode my bike and it didn't hurt my foot. Ace. I still have a bit of a cold from MLX, but I'm absolutely dying of cabin fever and lack of exercise. I MUST do some sort of exercise before I go nuts. I also plan to get into yoga again after christmas. My house-bound-ness has made me very dull, I'm afraid, so nothing more from me. There's more Deadwood to watch. :)

"look, no hands" was posted in the category clicky and crafty bastard and people i know and webbing and yoga

June 6, 2008

daily pop

Posted by dogpossum on June 6, 2008 1:59 PM

In honour of Frank and the Rathdown Yoga Room....

"daily pop" was posted in the category crafty bastard

June 5, 2008

daily pop

Posted by dogpossum on June 5, 2008 12:24 PM

Should I have used a popup image rather than an embedded?

"daily pop" was posted in the category crafty bastard

June 4, 2008

up pop

Posted by dogpossum on June 4, 2008 6:56 PM

I am very into pop ups (aka paper engineering). I have been making lots and lots of tiny little prototypes to help me learn the basic techniques and to get a handle on designing pop ups. I have made a few fancier ones, but I really like using small bits of card to make basic two page 'books'. I'll try to take some photos, but don't hold your breath.

Any how, it's freakin' GREAT.

I started with the first book by Carol Barton, which is just the loveliest thing. It includes a heap of basic 'test' cards that you make as you 'read' through the book.

Then I moved on to the Pop-up Book by Paul Jackson, which isn't so great. In fact, it's daunting for complete beginners, and I've only just started getting a handle on it now, after doing a few of my own and working my way through the Barton book. Thing is, they look really simple, but (as the Jackson book points out) it's not too useful just 'thinking' your way through them. You really have to make them to understand how they work. Even then, there are some which I really don't understand - I look at them and think 'how does that work?' Which is part of their appeal.

I'm only doing basic techniques so far - I'm having so much fun I haven't even begun to work on the more complicated combinations. And I'm not really all that interested in the serious paper engineering stuff - no rubber bands or pull tabs for me just yet.

If you're interested, they have some nice books here. I can't imagine a whole book of popups - they're so intricate and time consuming, so labour intensive, meticulous... I like just doing one-off, one-idea visual 'jokes' or 'puns'. Just a card that opens up with a little pop up inside. The smaller the better - they take less time to cut out, they're a good way to test a technique, and you waste fewer materials.

...speaking of materials...

I'd really like a folder. Most of them are bone, but I'm not that picky. I just use the handle of my scissors now, but something specific would be good. I really need it more for scoring, as I just don't have anything useful for that. I'm also planning on upgrading from my $2 cutting mat to a real self-healing mat soon. And perhaps something better than my cheapy scalpel as well. I certainly need proper paper scissors with sharp points. Of all those things, the one I'll probably end up getting is the scissors - sewing has taught me the value of nice scissors. I have good cooking shears, lovely embroidery scissors in a pretty case, arse-kicker sewing scissors, and now it's time to get serious with badass paper scissors.
And of course, card. I just can't get enough of it. I'm still looking for just the right weight. 250gm is too heavy. 80 is too light. I need perhaps 150 or 100. But it's good experimenting with them all, just to see why different weights are good for different jobs.

"up pop" was posted in the category crafty bastard