A New Thing.

I am sure that this post is mostly for my benefit, for I suspect that anyone who had ever read this in any sort of repetative fashion noticed that I stopped caring about this a long time ago and followed suit.  If not, CONGRATULATIONS, you did better than I did.

Anyway, to me or random peoples or friends or enemies, I am sure that you have noticed (or didn't notice) that I drastically altered this blog.  I removed a lot of old posts, and changed the look a tad (I plan on maybe doing more to the layout later) because I got tired of it.  I may have plans for the future, or I may fail to implement them.  

We'll see.

Here is a picture.  I made this (what you see is merely a detail) on my gocco long ago, and recently altered it.

Thanksgiving feast

I know that Thanksgiving is long past, and people are thinking about Christmas and beyond now, but I wanted to show what my good friend Alton Brown helped me do for Thanksgiving dinner. If you've seen his episode of Good Eats entitled "Romancing the Bird", then you know these recipes well. I brined this turkey and used the turkey triangle and everything! You must know that the cranberry dipping sauce is simply divine, I was eating it alone by the spoonful.

I am so skilled!

The pics were taken outside because it was warm enough to have dinner outside. Dumb Denver. I did things a little different from the recipes (click the pics for the links.) I didn't add anything sweet to the brine other than the brown sugar and changed the spices up a bit, and I omitted the maple syrup and replaced it with some sugar (to taste) because the only "maple syrup" we had was artificially maple flavored pancake syrup with butter flavoring...not to tasty sounding in my book! Plus I am actually afraid of maple syrup. Everything was awesome. I am still so skilled! The End!

Art Update (it might be too big, but whatever.)

So! It's been a long summer and now that we are pretty far into the fall, I thought I should post about what's been going on art-wise. I'm going to post some old stuff (from the summer) and then some new stuff. It'll be awesome.

Batik -
So, this summer lisa and I devoted a very long, hot day to batik. It was somewhat frustrating, as our results didn't turn out the way that we would've liked, but we learned a lot and hopefully sometime we will be able to attempt batik again with our newfound knowledge. Here are some pics of what we produced.

this one was one has stars on it. and some lines



i tried to draw a face on this one. you can see it, which is good i suppose. i was really hoping that there would be a lot of different colors on it. the dye that we used was for this purpose, i think we messed up with the procedure (we think we didn't let the dye sit long enough on any of them because all of them ended up being less saturated than we had hoped.) the red dots come from the black dye that i was trying to use there. awesome!



i think this one was supposed to be a design with leaves and little vines, but mostly it turned out to be dumb. learning experience!



lisa did this one. she drew a lemur and a border. i think it was another one that could've turned out better (not because the drawing was crap but because the procedure didn't go great.) the lemur was really cute! the problem here was (we think) the heat of the wax. when it's too cool it doesn't soak through the fabric, it just sits on top, which allows the dye to get under the wax. that's not good because it compromises the design, hence the lack of lemur face.



i did this one with the horns and the bird thing. i really liked the design, and the color scheme was really neat, it was all olive and brown and blue. the problem was that the colors didn't really represent what they were supposed to. also i used a ton of wax on this one and you can still see where the leftover wax is. i don't think that we've got a solid plan for wax removal, which sucks. we'll figure it out, though, we're problem solvers.



this is another one i did. again, all the problems are represented here quite nicely. stupid batik.



this one is my favorite, it was all built up and it looked really sharp. i was using brown and yellow and black, and it went together quite nicely. again, the color problem. but! i think you can easily see where the different lines were supposed to be (for the most part) which means that the wax was applied pretty well. it could use some work, but it's my favorite of the group.



seriously it'll be a good time when we figure out what we're supposed to be doing and how to do it well. it really takes the desire to do it, though, because it's a pretty involved process. anyway, that was the batik thing.

Onto SNOWFLAKES!
so, as you all may or may not know, i like to make paper snowflakes. this past sunday i spent the whole day (and i mean the WHOLE day) on the floor in the living room making these things. it was awesome.

these first ones are awesome because they are actually only 1" big. well, probably smaller than that, as they were cut from a piece of paper that is 1"x1". seriously. it was the tiniest damn piece of paper, but it was fun and neat, especially when you see them together like that. i made 19 of them. thats how much fun they were.















the next 2 are the medium ones, they are 2" big. at first i thought that these were small, but that was before i tried the 1" ones.



this guy is a 3" one. he's the only 3" one. he's a winner. : D



these are the big ones, they are 4". i thought that this size was super cute when i made them the last time (winter 2004.) they were the smallest i made that time. they were the biggest i made this time on sunday. the kinda greyish ones, the ones on the left, they were cut out of vellum. i think that is how i shall do it from now on, the vellum was much easier to cut than the regular paper. the only problem is they tear easier too. oh well.





here is all of them together. there's a quarter to show you the size of the small ones.



so, onto other things. in this case, i am going to show you some of my dumb drawings and such. yep, they're dumb and they're mine.

this are some old ones. they're from the summer, when i discovered pen and ink. i love it!

this drawing was just an experiment with color and how the pen nibs themselves worked. control is hard sometimes. damn pens.



this one was also an experiment with color, i like the way i did this one a lot. it feels softer than some of the other ones.


this one was fun because i drew it all in black first and then i filled it in with color.



these others are also from the summer, though they lack color.

pencil! mouth! eyeball!



archway! thing inside! lines!



it's a weird city. that's what i see when i look at it.



this was actually very tiny on the page. i call them the twins.



these two guys were made this summer (early summer, maybe even spring.) lisa drew a rooster and i made these too. the dog was styled after something in a book, the turtle i made on my own.





this are newer doodles with the pens. i like them! they were also pretty small on the page, they fit in my tiny sketchbook, about 3.5 x 5, though they don't really take up the whole page. the longer ones took up only 1/2.

this thing is ugly. i like it. the scan didn't work out too well, which kinda pisses me off. that's ok though. with all of these guys, and some of the ones from above, i plan on coloring them in, then rescanning them. we'll see how they turn out.


a flying eyeball thing!



another ugly guy. i wonder what it says about me.



i like this guy. i think of him as a "guy" as opposed to a "thing." weird how that works, huh?



this one is one of my favorites. i don't know why, he just is. i can't wait to color him in.



these last two i made over the last couple days. they're prints from a linoleum block that i carved. printmaking is fun!

bird (it's a crow, not a raven.)



GREETINGS!



well, there's a big art post. i hope you liked it. if you didn't, well, then you didn't. but i can say that i enjoyed making these things and that doing art makes me happy. i think that, looking at the group as a whole, i can easily see my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to art (each group having different strengths/weaknesses.) it's kinda cool to look at things as a whole and not just on an individual basis. it's super weird being okay with putting all this up here on this dumb blog for just any old person to see, but i'm ready to be okay with that. now if i could figure out a way to make money with this stuff...
-amber

My collection.

I like pictures. I like ones that I've taken, ones that have been taken by others, ones that have yet to be taken. I like the devices that take pictures. Personally, I generally only use one camera. I really want to break that habit. I find digital photography to be awesome, but as time goes by I long for the seemingly decreasing media of developed photos. This collection that I am starting, a collection of cameras, is partially to get me to use film more often (that probably won't happen for a while as film costs money and my digital doesn't) and partially to honor the beauty that is the camera.
Here is a brief history of prior cameras that I've owned: My first actual camera was probably the little Mickey Mouse camera (something like this but a bit less fancy) and in high school I owned an APS camera (remember these?) but I lost it. I then purchased a Canon Rebel G in college and that took me all the way to my first love, my Canon Digital Rebel. This is the starting point of my collection. I am sure you know it, so I won't waste time with it. (I had to use a stock photo as I don't have a picture of my camera and didn't want to set up a mirror. I'll work on it later, as my camera looks more used than this one. It has personality.)



Recently my grandmother gave me her old Kodak Brownie Junior (from the1930's) and I was very excited about this...oh, the possibilities! According to some, I can still get film for this, and though I've yet to try it, I am pretty excited about that idea. I've seen some of the pictures people have taken from their Brownies and I really, REALLY want to put it to use.



Not too long after that, my father gave me this old camera (Wards xp400.) I've taken pictures with it, and some of them turned out pretty good (I've lost those pics, but I remember I was surprised with the results.) I've searched the internet, but I've not found any info on it. I am sure it's nothing special, but I still like it. We'll see how much I end up using it.



My friend John gave me his camera (he got it from his parents some years ago, we had a fun day of taking pictures and I think that is the last time that he used it.) I'll probably use it a little, but it works so differently from my first SLR (a Canon, see the second paragraph) that it might take a little getting used to. I'm down with that, though, as I don't want to forget film. Seriously, people, DON'T FORGET FILM CAMERAS!



This last camera is something I was really excited to get. We have a flea market here and our family goes there pretty frequently. It's a fun place to be, there is plenty of crap to buy, especially when you don't need it. Anyway, a month or so ago my dad and sister and I were there. We were walking around, not really looking for anything, when I happened upon this camera. It's a Polaroid Land Camera, Model 80A. I must say it's a pretty thing. When it's open, showing all its glory to the world, it's a sight to behold for the person who likes cameras. The guy selling it said that he knew a camera man somewhere in Evergreen that still had film for it. (If he does, that'd be a good thing seeing asPolaroid doesn't have any film for it anymore.) Anyway, I didn't really expect to get the camera, there is no NEED for it, but my dad bought it for me anyway. I've found some reports on the internet about how to use 120 film in it (in case the random camera guy doesn't have any film for it) so that'd be a cool thing to experiment with. Even if I can never use it, I'm happy to call it my own. If I knew how to make film, I would do it so I could use this camera. I'm serious when I say this.



So there is my camera collection. It's not much, but, like I said before, I hope to keep adding to it. The cameras that don't work could be decoration, I suppose. I'm okay with that. Hooray for collections!

Carving seven pumpkins will cause your wrists to be sore.

I like carving pumpkins. This year we got lots of pumpkins and no one wanted to help me carve them, so I did it all myself.

the smallest pumpkin was this little white pumpkin I found. His face was drawn on a whim, because my dad told me the other faces weren't mean enough.



this little guy was initially a little less piggy looking, but I thought the nose went with the shape of his "body" and the eyes.



this little guy is for my uncle Ernie. He watched me carve the pumpkins, but didn't want to do one himself. When I was doing the other faces he kept trying to get me to do this one. So finally he drew it for me and I carved it for him.



this pumpkin is my least favorite. I just couldn't get anything straight or symmetrical or cut cleanly. So, I finished her and moved on. My uncle Ernie would howl like a ghost anytime he saw her.



this guy was one of my first drawings. I've learned from this guy (and the next two) that when I carve away flesh but leave some behind (like his eyes and his teeth), I have to do some serious carving. They recommend scraping the inside of the pumpkin down to 1" width, and though that's good in thought, it didn't really work for me. Most of these guys were so stringy on the inside that when I would try and thin the walls down it would just pull clumps out. Anyway, I know that next year I should put more time/effort into that thinning down of the walls. He's cute, though, with his big toothy grin. That's his spiky hairdo on top.



this next guy was another of my first drawings. They translated ok to the pumpkins, I guess that's something to work on too. Anyway, I like him, he's kinda surly looking. He has curly hair there on top, but you can't see it too well because I didn't carve deep enough. Oh well, maybe next year.



this last guy is the biggest one, and one of my favorites. He didn't look as good as I had hoped (that whole depth thing again) but I still like him a lot. I should give these guys names.



family portraits!



so there they are. They aren't anything particularly spectacular, but I like them. My next post might involve pictures of them being blown up. We'll see.

autumn in denver

It's snowing here, folks. The accumulation is slight, however, it's been snowing all day. It's actually quite pretty snow. It's light and flaky, not heavy and ugly. Just thought you'd appreciate some snow on October 17th, 2006.

pictures and words, and longest post ever

tomorrow i am heading home for a week! w00t!

some pictures from WoW: I present to you, my characters:

oori: 35 orc warlock, my first character ^_^. she hasn't been touched in months due to me changing servers. ( >.< ) i am hoping for a garona --> trade though


thac: my lovely 28 (soon to be 29) undead fire mage. she kicks butt. it's awesome.


daw: my 19 undead rogue and current project: operation twink. she will kill all the alliance in battlegrounds. see those snakes? they're maces. maces of DEATH!


fuegomuerto: my new undead fire mage that will kick in 19 bg's. . .eventually (she's lvl 6 right now. i haven't even bothered with gear yet) XD



and now, onto pictures from last week: (lisa and i took a lot of pictures. some are mine, some are hers. it was fun!)

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first: EYES! everyone loves eye pictures!
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my eye. see the dots?


lisa's eye. see the lines?


lisa's eye. i like it because to me it looks like a mouth with an eye in it. the eyelashes are upper lip hair, or something like that.


my adopted nephew samwise's eye. he stood real still and opened his eye really big for me. appreciate the cooperation, people. and the beauty, blah blah blah, but the greatest part of this picture, to me, is that a 2 year old cooperated.


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some of nature's body parts pictures. *note* all of them were pointed out by lisa.
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tree nipple.


wooden vagina.


the best way to spend your money to *really* deck out that truck of yours.

*************
injury photo:
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lisa's splinter #2892749827598723497


onto:
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VALID PHOTOS
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random branch of a random bush



bark of a branch



web



duck prints on the snowy ground


snow fort, courtesy of random people



electric eyes


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and now, the best of that week. lisa and i were real photographers, working together to capture the perfect shot. here are the results:
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little drop



drop #1



drop #2



drop #3

hooray for macro lenses and enough lighting and icepools of cold water catching icicle drops and good friends : D

more pictures to come soon, hopefully after this week at home : D
peace out, visit with me if you're in the area.
LOVE
-amber

some macro pics

so i havent been taking many pictures, but here are some that i have taken in the past 2 weeks. i am learning how to deal with the tight focus of a macro lens...

a snapdragon blossom

um, some little leaf thing

a dead poppy

the littlist flower

through the slots of my bay fan, through the filter, you can see the light of day because the side of my computer case has been taken off

autumn!

i forgot what this flower is called (i promise that i know it!)

part of my shoe!

a flower i made out of a wax casing for some cheese (mini cheese)

the mini cheese wax flower, soft version

the sole of my shoe (those squares are really tiny in real life!)

drawer handle.

well there you go. some pictures. i hope the brighten your day. let them brighten your day. LET THEM YOU INSENSITIVE JERKS!

peace out
-amber

yesterday's party

this is a picture of my birthday cake. those "candles" are really matches. thats how we roll.

first snow of the season for t town

the snow falling

this is the best that i could do at one a.m. without a tripod or appropriate clothing.

fun with lights