Day 40: Yarn

The prompt to work with yarn pretty quickly led me to think of cats, possibly because any project involving yarn also involves keeping it away from our own.
About the cattiest book I know of is T.S. Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats', and my copy is illustrated by Edward Gorey. Probably more people are familiar with this one from the Broadway musical, but it's really worth sitting down and reading the original poems. That's actually why I bought this little paperback of Amazon years ago, back in High School or College. There were a few versions available, but I couldn't pass up Gorey's illustrations.

I tried to capture the style in yarn, which sounded simple enough since there's a lot of attention to line, but it turns out yarn doesn't do well for details. Not standard black yarn, anyway. I drew a quick pencil sketch, and laid down glue over the lines section by section, letting it get a little tacky before I put the yarn down. It was all pretty quick and easy, but I lost the toes on the original drawing and decided whiskers would just clutter it up.

Maybe if I'd worked bigger, I could have gotten more details in.

I have to admit that sitting down and looking through the poems does tend to leave me humming the tunes from the musical, but I think they leave a lasting impression even without that. There's so many different cat personalities described, that we sometimes end up wondering which ones best fit our own cats. Also the poem on 'the Naming of Cats' amuses me, because I don't think I've ever had a cat that didn't name herself.

They also definitely do strange dances in the night, and who knows what all else. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard some bizarre noise downstairs, a crash or something else, in the middle of the night, and gone down to find nothing amiss and one of the cats sitting innocently in the middle of the floor, giving me a 'did you want something?' kind of look. It's pretty clear from the poems that T.S. Eliot personally knew at least a few cats.

Our cat Froggy giving a gang sign?

Day 37: Stapler

Should have made his head wider...

Still trying to get myself back into the swing of daily updates, and I spent all day yesterday feeling inexplicably crappy.
Anyways, this prompt was to use staples, or even the stapler itself, and for some bizarre reason my brain leaped from making a picture out of staples to the ridiculous phrase 'stapleface'. It sounds to me exactly like the kind bad guy of name you'd hear in the Dick Tracy comics.
If all you know of Dick Tracy is from the wacky early 90's movie, you probably think it's full out campy stuff.
That's what I expected when I picked up a collection of the old comic strips at the library a while back, and I was... surprised.

Stapleface

The villain names are sometimes pretty goofy, and some of the plot stuff is too, but a fair amount of it is weirdly straightforward. The villains commit a lot of very real-world type crimes, and there's a fair amount of villain and sometimes even innocent bystander death. When the latter happens, the characters usually pause to ponder what a horrible shame that is. It makes for a really bizarre blend of serious crime drama and cartoony art and monikers. Sometimes it's a little jarring, but it's definitely worth reading at least once, and I do wonder what it says about the era it first came out of.
For the record, it's very hard to make a straight line with staples. The nice curves you see are staples I bent by hand and fed into the paper, folding over the backs with my pocketknife. I only jammed the stapler up once, which is kind of amazing, especially since it happened when I was mostly done and just trying to get out a few loose staples.

Day 34: Work with wire

The people on the cover are alarmed by a giant wire dog...

It really would have been easier to do something three-dimensional with wire, but for some reason I had the idea of trying sort of flat continuous line drawing with it, and that made me think of the illustrations of James Thurber.
When I was growing up we had a copy of 'My Life and Hard Times' on the bookshelf, and it was one of my favorite non-fiction books. As an adult and living across the country, I came across 'the Thurber Carnival' in my favorite used bookstore, which is a massive collection that includes that entire book and more, like the short story 'the Secret Life of Walter Mitty' (which had an excellent Danny Kaye film loosely based off it).

Thurber's short stories are entertaining and often clever, but what I like more are his little essays and bits of personal history. One of my favorites is titled 'The Dog that Bit People' and is a recollection about a dog his family once owned. He describes an Airedale terrier named Muggs who would randomly bite people and walk away, but the story is really in the way he tells it, and his illustrations anthropomorphisize the dog in a way that makes his personality come through. Here I've tried to mimic one of the classic illustrations of Muggs in wire, all one piece just to make it a challenge.
I will admit that one reason I like the stories Thurber wrote about dogs (he had many, because it's apparent he really liked dogs), is that some of his other stuff suffers from cringe-worthy hints of casual racism. I guess it's just a mark of the culture and times he grew up in, but if you're deeply bothered by that, I'd stick to his animal stories. This book also has some entertaining cartoons, though, and strange modernized parables such as a version of red riding hood of which the moral is 'It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.' His tales of his teen years at home, with a senile but slightly aggressive grandfather, a mother who comes off as just slightly dotty and fond of throwing things, his brother and assorted cousins, are all told with a dry wit that turns weird situations even more entertaining. These are the stories that stuck in my mind and had me buying his book years after I'd read it last.

Nobody Knew Exactly What Was The Matter With Him.

Day 31: Make a path

Computer, inspiration, map, & tea.

This was another prompt I had to think hard about, and then when the idea did come to me it was a more involved project. Making a path is pretty wide open, because there's big paths and little paths, literal paths and metaphorical ones. The additional challenge on the prompt was to have somebody else follow it, and that's interesting but only for the person or people you can get to actually do it.
A literal physical path would be limited to local people following it, although I considered that option.
Then I got into thinking of the kind of path anyone who can read can follow, and how they can decide where to go...

I'm just one of many people, I'm sure, who grew up reading the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' type books. The idea is fascinating, and if you haven't read one you should go to your nearest library and ask in the kid's section, because chances are they'll have a few. None of mine went with me when I moved across the country, but more recently my girlfriend's dad gave me one as a stocking-stuffer. Not only was I delighted to see one of these books, but it's also a more advanced kind that was co-written by Steve Jackson. Probably only geeks know who he is, but he has a game company that does a lot of little card games, the Illuminati card and Role-playing game, and G.U.R.P.S. which was the major occupation of my life from High School through college. That stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System and it's way more awesome than AD&D, because it's designed for RP in any setting from medieval to space opera to whatever else you come up with. It's simple, adaptable, and I still have my old game books.
Anyway! As somebody who's been a GM (That's Game Master for you non-geeks), I figured I was up for the challenge of writing my own 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style thing, and my basic web skills gave me a way to put it up online so anybody reading this can play it.
That said, this is pretty simply and quickly done, and it may be buggy still. If you run into any glitches, please comment here and let me know, and I'll tweak and fine-tune it ASAP. The photos are almost entirely mine, although why I even have some of them I'm not sure. The arrows are pretty wonky, and I apologize for that. I've spent all day on it, so I need a break before I try to mend the glitches...
Please come check it out, play to your heart's content, and comment! Click here or the arrow below to play...

Day 26: Create something portable

The prompt for today was to make something portable that normally isn't, and that's a tricky idea that I struggled with up through this morning. I had an appointment today that got me up earlier than usual, and in my groggy pre-coffee state I had this weird idea of a forest in a cart. What this concept had to do with anything I wasn't really sure, but once the image was in my brain it wouldn't let go.
Later when I suggested the thought to my girlfriend, she pointed out that it's a very fairytale idea, which made everything slip into place. I've read at least half a dozen fairy tales where some heroine or hero is given an item that, when opened or thrown causes a forest to spring up and bar the way of whoever is chasing them. Sometimes it's a comb, or sometimes a nut or acorn, both of which make some kind of sense.

The book behind the forest here is a copy of Grimm's fairy tales from 1925, which I have no real idea how I came into possession of but which has some nice little odd stories or strange versions of stories that are a little more obscure. There's 'The Man Who Learned to Shiver' which was retold in the Jim Henson Storyteller series as 'Fearnot', some weird stuff such as one titled simply 'The Nose', along with more familiar stories like 'Snow White'. Even when I was younger I preferred the more obscure stories, and the idea of opening an acorn to produce an entire forest is just an enchanting idea.
It kind of reminds me of the puppet show I'm helping design shadow puppets for right now, which is a more realistic telling that includes the idea of planting an acorn to sow the future of a forest.

Peter Pan approves!

I guess my brain was still on materials from the back yard. The wagon is one of several kits my girlfriend bought to make up and put with dolls. It went together fast, but I was in a hurry to paint it with some very watered-down acrylics to get a kind of stained look, and the wood warped some because it was so saturated. I should have given the glue more time to set, at least, I think. It's not very sturdy.
There's real dirt packed in, and some moss from the back yard over that. The pond is a blue flat marble I found on my walk earlier today, and the horse (just pretend it's a deer?) is a little plastic thing I for some reason remembered I had in my old childhood jewelry box. The trees themselves are the very tips of branches, where the leaves come out in bunches. I cleared out our tiny garden in the process of looking for these. I still had more of the moss I used for Peter Pan yesterday, for the treetops. I noticed as I was taking photos that he's just the right height to stand next to the forest and be camouflaged, so I just had to include him in the photo session.
If anyone has a magic acorn that will instantly create a full-size forest, let me know, but in the meantime this one on wheels will do.

Day 22: Create a bridge

I was saving this book for a special project, because it's one of my absolute favorites. I came across 'Winter's Tale' in my High School library, but fell in love with it immediately and spent years tracking down a copy.
It's a complicated book, and I'll admit it's not the kind that will be a favorite with everyone who reads it. The plot twists and turns through time and place, and pinning down what it's actually about can be tricky. It's about people, and New York from its aristocratic heights to the terrifying depths of slums, and how dreams shape history and what we do echoes down through time. If you're in love with cities, this is well worth reading.

Bridge of light, cast on the wall.

The main character, Peter Lake, has an influence in the course of the city's history in a dozen different ways, although to his perspective he never does anything all that exceptional. He may be one of the few characters in the book who doesn't have big world-changing dreams. One of the dreamers is a man named Jackson Mead, and his grand dream is building bridges. He sees them as eternal rainbows, a kind of heavenly architecture. It's not just the construction he's in love with, but the very concept of what a bridge is, and how it connects people and places.
It's probably important to note that even though this story takes place in New York, it's a kind of mythical New York that isn't quite historically accurate. In a way this New York is even larger than life, and much of the story takes place around the turn of the century.

Brooklyn Bridge, 1896

It's late, and I'm failing at finding the words to adequately describe this complex and moving story.

The bridge I've created is made of light, which is an entire rainbow in itself. I made a stencil using this photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, so with a good light source it can be projected to bridge just about anything you want to connect.

Day 19: Something that floats

I almost made a pirate ship, because who could resist the excuse to make a pirate ship? I have lots of books on pirates, after all. Making a boat for something that floats seemed just a little too obvious, though. This, instead, is Louis from E.B. White's 'the Trumpet of the Swan', in his bathtub at the Ritz.
It's an entertaining book, but there's something about the absurdity of the swan's night in a hotel room that's always stuck with me. He orders a dozen watercress sandwiches and sleeps in the bathtub.
If you haven't read it, Louis is a trumpeter swan who is born mute, and to compensate and hopefully win the lady swan of his dreams, he learns to play a trumpet which his father steals for him. His other aim in life is to acquire just enough money to pay back the store his trumpet was stolen from.

I didn't have a trumpet the right size, but I did have a little plastic saxophone, which is an instrument I've always wanted to learn to play. If he can play the trumpet, maybe someday he could move on to other brass. Louis himself is carved from styrofoam, and I ended up pulling out the pumpkin carving kit for the details. His neck/head and body are two separate pieces, with a little indentation carved into the body for it to fit into and a little Grrrip glue. I dabbed on some acrylic paint over his bill and glued on beads for eyes (kind of squished them into his head while the glue set). His bathtub is a stroke of random luck. We think it's a soap dish, and it came out of my girlfriend's old stuff from her parent's house recently, and we kept it thinking she'll make a doll that goes into it. I put down my chess board (which i made in High School) for a floor and a nice piece of scrapbooking paper for the wallpaper. Just so you can see him in real floating action, I made a doofy little video:

Day 10: Water

Day ten's assignment is to use water as your medium or inspiration, but why not both? The idea of pure water as a medium sounded interesting, and initially I thought why not draw directly with water on some hard, resistant surface? I have a black sketchbook with plastic still on one cover, so I got a glass of water and a brush, and started pooling the water and trying to draw it into shapes... but I really don't recommend this method.
One pool of water in the lap later, I decided to paint with water on actual paper. Much better results, as you can see. What's even more interesting to me is the way the first-drawn shapes fade and vanish as the water dries.

Water, whales, it all goes together with this book, 'Deep Wizardry', which I first read in my Freshman year of High School, I think. This is actually the second book in a series, and I read them in order, but at the time my school library only had the first three, or possibly that's all that were written then. The series follows two kids (pre-teens?) who discover manuals to becoming wizards, and tumble into a whole hidden network of wizards that way. These people live like anybody else, for the most part, but also use their powers to maintain the balance of the world against the forces of destruction and entropy. The concepts in the book are nicely more complicated than good or evil, and are the kind of shades of grey that still resonate with me as an adult. I'll admit it though, this book struck me just about the time I was also obsessed with whales. The wizards of the world are not, as it turns out, all human. In this story the main characters temporarily take the shapes of whales to join whale wizards in the performing of an important ritual to keep the balance of the forces in their world, and there's some subtle hints at how interconnected the ocean is to everything else on earth. If the balance falters there, it's just the start of a chain reaction that would affect everything and everyone else.
It's a book well worth reading at any age.

Day 9: Breakfast

This is just one of the books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (which is five books long, because the author was worse at math than I am), but the prompt to make something out of your breakfast had me thinking of the phrase 'ten impossible things before breakfast' and thus led me to this book.
This past week has been one of those where I feel like I'm doing ten impossible things before breakfast. I guess I'm exaggerating, it's more like one difficult thing before breakfast each day, but still. Breakfast often comes late, or hurried, or today it was both. Monday started with a call that the person we've been caregiving for had another siezure, Tuesday I had a deposition to go to and couldn't eat before due to anxiety. Wednesday I drove a friend to a coffee/social thing, although I got some coffee and fruit there and people were very nice even though I didn't really belong at the gathering. Today we had to run downtown to pay a bill, and got breakfast late between that and going to our friend Heidi's studio to learn wet felting.

The heart of gold starship drive logo? Or not.

We grabbed breakfast/lunch at Shoney's, which means for this project I took my camera along and played with my food in a public restaurant. And took pictures of it. I have no idea what the other customers thought of that.
Obviously I ate some of it first, but how else was I supposed to cut out a little gold heart from the eggs, right? Anyway, this is supposed to be a gold heart with a bacon infinity sign going through it, for the Heart of Gold starship drive logo. Balancing little pieces of bacon into curved shapes is awkward when there are businessmen having lunch in the next booth.

Slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick.

I also noticed the slice of lemon from my girlfriend's iced tea sitting on the edge of her plate. This is supposed to look like a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick, which is supposedly what it feels like you've been hit with when you drink a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It disturbs me that I didn't need to look any of this up. I used to be absolutely obsessed with this series. Also, the potatoes were pretty brick-like, really. I think I got the last of them left over from the breakfast rush. They're usually pretty good.

As we pulled up at home, we were right behind Heidi, who was there to pick us up and give us a felting workshop. The kids were along, which made things interesting. We started out serenaded by Thea's violin practice and Tegwyn's playing with her toy trains.
I forgot to take a photo of the felt fibers when they were first laid down dry, but here's the wet matted mess I started out with early on. I picked a kind of greenish blend, which Bridgie called 'cthulu green'. I think she's hoping to use it to make more of these guys to sell in our Etsy shop.

There was definitely a change from the mess of loose wool after we'd worked with it a while. Here's the shrunk-up felted mats as they were when we left the studio. Bridgie's is the reddish-brown one on the right, which I guess didn't shrink as much because it was a different type and texture of wool to start with. After we'd gotten them to this stage, Hedi balled them up and slapped them around on the mats, which was a little startling. And sprayed water everywhere, which was kind of awesome.

I'm not sure our felting was quite finished, but the kids had places to go, and this week has been so busy we were both ready to crash for a little while.
Before we left though, I took a photo of this, which is the bathroom right across the hall from Heidi's studio space. She says everyone who sees it comments about the giant gears in the bathroom, but seriously, how awesome is this? What are they from? Who put them there? How did they move them?
Anyway, there's my artistic adventures for the day. The felting lesson stuff is a bonus because what I made with breakfast was so pathetic...

Day 8: Altered book

Soothing blues for a restful feeling!

Do you ever find yourself wanting to sit up in bed and read, when your partner just want to sleep? Does the light keep them awake and complaining through all the best parts of the story? Well we have the solution for you!
Just try this handy new sleep aid, the book mask! It looks like a book, and won't be out of place on your nightstand with the stack of books waiting to be read, but just open it to the center and this handy volume transforms into a convenient light-blocking sleep mask! Now they can look like they've fallen asleep reading, without ever considering a single word!

Actual results may vary.

As an added feature, when you do turn out the lamp, the stars on the cover of the book mask will glow in the dark, thereby acting as a useful night-light.

Yeah, okay, it's goofy.
My inner librarian rebels at the idea of defacing a book, even though I like the look of altered books. I got this one out of the ten cents each box at the local used bookstore, and it's the biography of a Shakespearian actor. I think. I didn't actually read it, of course, although it's just possible that would work as a sleep aid too.
I put fabric over the cover, and yes, the stars really do glow in the dark.

Day 6: Fruits or vegetables

Today's prompt was to work with the fruits or vegetables in your kitchen. Thanks to helping out a local grower we know through the Farmer's Market, we currently have more lettuce than we know what to do with. I wasn't sure how to use it for this, though, but then Bridgie suggested lettuce was for rabbits, and I should do something connected to the book 'Watership Down'.

I admit it, I saw the animated movie before I read the book. That was true for both this and 'Plague Dogs' (also by Richard Adams), but I never could get through the latter even when I tried just a few years ago. I was excited when I realized, after seeing the movie, that the book was already on my parent's shelf, but I struggled with reading it, because certain parts were just so chillingly well-written that I got too scared to read on. It took me several tries, first getting bogged down at the Warren of the Snares, later the Efrafans. I think I was at least 13 before I got all the way through it, and by then of course I was in love and read it all over again.

One of the things that makes the culture of rabbits in the book so amazing is that they have their own mythology, enough that there's even a second book just for stories from it. In the movie, these myths were portrayed in a different art style, stylized and almost aboriginal. Here then, bizarrely stylized out of vegetables, is a kind of origin story of the rabbits.

Long ago, Frith made the world. He made all the stars, too, and the world is one of the stars. He made them by scattering his droppings over the sky and this is why the grass and the trees grow so thick on the world. Frith makes the rivers flow. They follow him as he goes through the sky, and when he leaves the sky they look for him all night. Frith made all the animals and birds, but when he first made them they were all the same. The sparrow and the kestrel were friends and they both ate seeds and flies. And the fox and the rabbit were friends and they both ate grass. And there was plenty of grass and plenty of flies, because the world was new and Frith shone down bright and warm all day.

Nom nom nom...

 Now, El-ahrairah was among the animals in those days and he had many wives. He had so many wives that there was no counting them, and the wives had so many young that even Frith could not count them, and they ate the grass and the dandelions and the lettuces and the clover, and El-ahrairah was the father of them all. And after a time the grass began to grow thin and the rabbits wandered everywhere, multiplying and eating as they went.

Frith speaks to the Prince of Rabbits

     Then Frith said to El-ahrairah, 'Prince Rabbit, if you cannot control your people, I shall find ways to control them. So mark what I say.' But El-ahrairah would not listen and he said to Frith, 'My people are the strongest in the world, for they breed faster and eat more than any of the other people. And this shows how much they love Lord Frith, for of all the animals they are the most responsive to his warmth and brightness. You must realize, my lord, how important they are and not hinder them in their beautiful lives.' 

Raaargh! Nom nom nom...

  Frith could have killed El-ahrairah at once, but he had a mind to keep him in the world, because he needed him to sport and jest and play tricks. So he determined to get the better of him, not by means of his own great power but by means of a trick. He gave out that he would hold a great meeting and that at that meeting he would give a present to every animal and bird, to make each one different from the rest. And all the creatures set out to go to the meeting place. But they all arrived at different times, because Frith made sure that it would happen so. And when the blackbird came, he gave him his beautiful song, and when the cow came, he gave her sharp horns and the strength to be afraid of no other creature. And so in their turn came the fox and the stoat and the weasel. And to each of them Frith gave the cunning and the fierceness and the desire to hunt and slay and eat the children of El-ahrairah. And so they went away from Frith full of nothing but hunger to kill the rabbits.

You can bless my bottom!

 Now, all this time El-ahrairah was dancing and mating and boasting that he was going to Frith's meeting to receive a great gift. And at last he set out for the meeting place. But as he was going there, he stopped to rest on a soft, sandy hillside. And while he was resting, over the hill came flying the dark swift, screaming as he went, 'News! News! News!' For you know, this is what he has said ever since that day. So El-ahrairah called up to him and said, 'What news?' 'Why,' said the swift, 'I would not be you, El-ahrairah. For Frith has given the fox and the weasel cunning hearts and sharp teeth, and to the cat he has given silent feet and eyes that can see in the dark, and they are gone away from Frith's place to kill and devour all that belongs to El-ahrairah.' And he dashed on over the hills. And at that moment El-ahrairah heard the voice of Frith calling, 'Where is El-ahrairah? For all the others have taken their gifts and gone and I have come to look for him.'
      Then El-ahrairah knew that Frith was too clever for him and he was frightened. He thought that the fox and the weasel were coming with Frith and he turned to the face of the hill and begin to dig. He dug a hole, but he had dug only a little of it when Frith came over the hill alone. And he saw El-ahrairah's bottom sticking out of the hole and the sand flying out in showers as the digging went on. When he saw that, he called out, 'My friend, have you seen El-ahrairah, for I am looking for him to give him my gift?' 'No,' answered El-ahrairah, without coming out, 'I have not seen him. He is far away. He could not come.' So Frith said, 'Then come out of that hole and I will bless you instead of him.' 'No, I cannot,' said El-ahrairah, 'I am busy. The fox and the weasel are coming. If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole.'

El-ahrairah, Prince with a thousand enemies

      Then Frith felt himself in friendship with El-ahrairah, who would not give up even when he thought the fox and the weasel were coming. And he said, 'Very well, I will bless your bottom as it sticks out of the hole. Bottom, be strength and warning and speed forever and save the life of your master. Be it so!' And as he spoke, El-ahrairah's tail grew shining white and flashed like a star; and his back legs grew long and powerful and he thumped the hillside until the very beetles fell off the grass stems. He came out of the hole and tore across the hill faster than any creature in the world. And Frith called after him, 'El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.' And El-ahrairah knew then that although he would not be mocked, Frith was his friend. And every evening, when Frith has done his day's work and lies calm and easy in the red sky, El-ahrairah and his children and his children's children come out of their holes and feed and play in his sight, for they are his friends and he has promised them that they can never be destroyed. 

If you haven't read the book, you should, and if you have read it I also recommend you track down 'Tales from Watership Down' for more mythology about El-ahrairah, the Black Rabbit of Inle, and a few more adventures of Fiver, Hazel, and their Warren.
Vegetables was a weird medium, but I guess a significant point in the story is how edible the rabbits were... now I'm off to go eat Lord Frith with lunch.