Holy Lint Monster, Batman! (And a Trip the the Zoo!)

I was a torn about what to do for today's post. On the one hand, I've now finished two drafts of the manager for the Oceans! (though I still have to make a third...) On the other hand, I had what might be my most successful visit to the Bronx Zoo ever (from a photography standpoint)...which ended with my camera breaking. While I really want to share my Manager, I decided that current events take precedent, so it looks like it's two days of image-heavy posts in a row!

I was shocked when I discovered how absolutely gorgeous and warm it was today. Even better, my meeting was only a short distance from the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo...so I decided to walk over to the NYBG!...but when I was part way over there, I realized that the Garden was probably closed (it was) so I went to the Zoo instead! I re-upped my membership (I let it lapse a year ago, but I've missed having it) and then did some business-related investigation: I went to go speak to the Public Relations department about what would be involved in getting permission to sell prints of the photographs I took at the zoo! Unfortunately, this query hasn't produced results yet (the helpful folks at the department weren't able to reach the people who actually could help me, and when the right person called me back - which they did, and I appreciate - they had looked up the answer to a slightly different question, and so will get back to me :) ). I'm hoping that there is a small licensing fee that's within reach if I carefully select a few of the best images I've taken there over the past few years. But I guess we'll see... :)

After that, I wandered around the indoor exhibits, plus a few of the outdoor that have year-round animals (bears and tigers, primarily). I took a LOT of pictures and waited very patiently for beasties like tigers, lemurs, kangaroos, otters, monkeys, and hornbills to get in to just the right spot for the just the right picture. My persistence paid off - about a third of the shots I took turned out, a few really, really well (for active shots in low-light exhibits, it's not a bad ratio at all...). I'm thrilled, because it's one of those concrete events that help me see how far I've come. Right around this time last year, I did a trip where I went to a lot of the same exhibits, with the idea of doing primarily photography, and the difference between the two sets is night and day.

Some of that is because of a change in camera. Early last April, I was at opening day at Citifield when the lens on my old camera (Canon Digital Elph SD 1000) jammed. It did unjam, but the writing was on the wall - after two years, tens of thousands of images, and a whole lot of abuse, I'd been having trouble with the focus for a while, macro was starting to just flat out not work, and I really wanted a new camera. In fact, when I originally started Curiously Crafted Creations, that was my only goal: raise enough money to pay for a new camera. Since I still haven't done that, I guess it's a good thing I didn't wait. :) Instead, I broke in to my saved change and scraped together half the price for a much nicer camera than my old one, and paid the rest out of pocket. The new camera is a Canon Powershot SX210 IS - still not a fancy one, but bigger than the travel/pocket/mini-sized one I'd been using. Not long after, I did a post in my LJ in which I compared my efforts at photography of the same items at the Met. (though a lot of the differences in that set reveal more about how much I learned about photography in between when the shots were taken than they do about camera differences). Some of the old shots were comparable or better, because I'd gotten to really know my old camera and how to optimize it. And in the months after that, I had a lot of trouble with the SX 210; it wasn't until the trip in September that I really began to feel comfortable with it.

And today, I got to remember how hard it is to switch. Right after I took a really successful (imo) shot (you can judge for yourself - it's the pic of the hornbill, below), I turned the camera off, wandered down to the next area, turned the camera back on, and noticed that something wasn't right - there was a weird blurry spot on my lens! When I looked, I saw this:



A giant piece of lint had somehow worked it's way in to the space between the layers of glass that make up my lens!! WTF????? Look what it does to my pictures!!



Needless to say, I was pretty freaked at first, but I used my phone to go to Canon's webpage, did a little trouble shooting, nothing worked, so I called them and they're going to fix it for me - probably for free (I really, really hope I can find some document or other that proves it's still under warranty!!). But in the meantime, I pulled out my old camera, which I meant to sell but never got around to it, so that I could snap shots of my recently finished Manager and other such things. And ya know...? Now that I'm used to my new camera, there's really no comparison. I'm going to have to completely re-shoot the pictures of the Manager because without control over shutter speed and such the shots just don't come out quite right...I've come a long way in the past year. And that's nice to see.

I'm not worried. Canon has promised to send it back to me in 5 - 7 days. Unfortunately, the release date for the camera was a week ago last year, so it is actually possible that I bought it long enough ago that the warranty could be expired (though I actually bought it the last week of April...)...but if I can't find proof of the warranty and they ask me to pay, I will, and that's that. :)

Anyway. Enough of all that! ADORABLE ANIMALS! :)

Sleepy was the main theme of the day! Sleepy fossa...


Sleepy sea lion...


Sleepy monitor...


Sleepy leopard...


But don't make the mistake of thinking the Nile Croc is sleepy...


And when they wake up, it's time to play! The Amur tigers were playing with their food...


The ring-tailed lemurs were running around just because...


The golden lion tamarins ran around so much I had trouble getting a clear shot...


The ebony langurs were mostly just grooming each other...


The hornbill made his (or her?) voice heard...


The Asian water dragon was just watching (until his fellow jumped on his back right after I took this picture)...


The peacocks mostly ran away...


...but my shots of the day were of this Silvered Leaf Monkey, who looked like he had all the knowledge of the world, and was just waiting for someone to come and ask him all about it...


...but I couldn't convince him to tell me...


You can see the whole set here. It took five minutes to pick the tiger shot from about the 30 that I took, all adorable (there are three tiger cubs along with their mama at the zoo right now...). The old set that I took last year and shows my improvement is here.)

HAHAHA YES!! In the time it took all the photos to upload, I found my receipt!! It's dated 4/23/2010, so it blatantly proves my warranty is still valid, so I'll definitely not gonna have to pay for any repairs or replacement! YAY!! (I was worried, I'll admit - I tend to toss receipts, so it was entirely possible that I didn't have it...)

SQUEE! And adorable animals! :) (and if you want a spoiler for tomorrow, the pictures of the Manager are already up on Flickr...and I promise I will not do a third day in a row of so many pics!)

Some Photos of Venice

It's been a little bit since I did a post about photography, and as I've got at least two more amigurumi posts coming up (just as soon as I finish second drafts of my two brand new designs...) plus an idea for a third crochet-related post, I thought I'd attempt to keep things somewhat mixed, at least. :) Because I haven't been neglecting the photography part of the business, quite the contrary!

First, I've listed five of my prints as 8 x 10s on Etsy!
1. Sunlight on a Stump.
2. Honey Bee on a Sunflower.
3. Columbine.
4. Big Ben and Parliament.
5. The Lotus Leaf.

For the first time in a long while, I've been devoting serious amounts of time to trying to get my photos on Flickr labeled. I've gotten through about a thousand, I'd estimate, of the roughly 12,500 unlabeled pictures I've got uploaded (out of almost 43,000 uploaded items, I've got 75% labeled). I'm also on top of things, in that I've labeled almost everything I've uploaded recently, which is great. At this point, most of what isn't labeled is from 2009, when I traveled a lot and got way behind. What generally happens is that I fall behind when I go on big trips, and then spend a long time catching up. So most of the random pictures I've taken in NYC have been labeled, but hardly any of the pictures from Italy have been, ditto my trip to Paris last February, and ditto my trip to Chicago in December 2009, ditto (to a lesser extent) my trip to Paris, London and Amsterdam in September 2009, and ditto a long roadtrip I took in April 2009. If I got through the pictures I took on these trips, I'd be almost caught up.

Middle of last month, I set a goal: try to get all of my pictures labeled before my Flickr account hits 2 million hits. At 500,000 and 1 million hits, I did commemorative posts on my Live Journal - I hit 500,000 on May 4th, 2009, and 1 million on January 3rd, 2010, if anyone wants to read what I wrote back then... My next milestone is approaching, when I started this labeling kick I was at 1.75 million, and getting about 1500 hits a day. At that rate, I thought I would have time to get the labeling done. I don't know what happened, but for the last few weeks I've been getting closer to 3000 hits a day. As a result, I would have to get all of the currently unlabeled pictures done in a mere 51 days - a rate of 230 pictures labeled a day! Well, I can't do that. So I won't be caught up by then. Which makes me sad. However, the effort I am making is pretty time consuming, and has been eating a lot of my photography time. So, consider this a teaser - in about two months, I'll be very excited to be posting a big long post (along the same lines as the two on LJ) about hitting 2 million, which I think is quite a milestone.

Before then, one of the perks of going through the labeling is I get to see the work I've done. The downside is that I'm going through it so fast that I'm not getting to really appreciate much of it. However, on Friday I finished up labeling all of the sets I'd taken since the trip in September (yay!!) and so now I'm tackling the Italy trip (I'm working backwards, most recent to least recent, in my labeling). That meant that today I went through the first of several sets I took of Venice. I thought I'd share some of the best shots from that first set - and find out if folks think any of these are print sales worthy.

You can check out the whole set here: Piazza San Marco. There are 138 photographs in this set, taken between 9/27 and 10/3 of last year, and it includes a visit after dark, and another I took the last morning we were there, when I woke up stupid early with insomnia so went out to take pictures of the sunrise (our hotel was pretty close to the square).


This picture enables me to introduce the main buildings in all of these shots. This is the Piazza San Marco. The domed building in the left background is the Basilica San Marco. The tower is the Campanile. The building on the left is Procurate Vecchie, and on the right is Procuratie Nuove, which now houses the Correr Museum (a museum about the history of the city), an archaeological museum, a gorgeous library, and more.


This is part of the facade of the Basilica. The inside of the Basilica is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, but photography wasn't allowed inside. Every single surface is covered in golden, shimmering mosaic of biblical figures, scenes, and saints. (this shot I sneaked while outside doesn't begin to do justice to how astonishing it is.)


Walkway of the Palazzo Ducale (not in the above image - this is the building to the right of the Basilica).




Column of Saint Theodore.








This is the Palazzo Ducale. It's really amazing. The two people in this shot were clearly engaged in some sort of photo shoot.


A view of the Piazzetta di San Marco, a smaller plaza off the main one. The Palazzo Ducale is on the right, the Libreria on the left.






The Lion of San Marco.


One of the things about Venice is that the entire city is slowly sinking in to the Mediterranean. As a result, the important buildings need constant maintenance. Which is why the Basilica was half encased in scaffolding during my visit. This is the only shot I took of the Basilica that wasn't pretty much destroyed by that fact. :)



So, I know it's a lot of images, but, well, I took a lot I think turned out well. :) Hope ya'll enjoyed! I'll try to do more image posts in the future, once I'm more caught up on the labeling.

Re-Introducing Sammy the Squirrel!

Last summer, I completed a squirrel pattern as a commission for a friend. I've now finished a second version, and it's been thoroughly pattern tested and updated, and it's that wonderful time again: a re-release!

Meet Sammy the Squirrel!


Sammy is a real tough guy, the biggest and strongest squirrel in the park, and a lot of the other animals think he’s a bully. But that’s only ‘cause they haven’t gotten to know him! Sammy only got to be strong so that he could protect all his brothers and sisters from all of the predators, especially the big, mean dogs who spend all day chasing the squirrels. All the dogs are afraid of Sammy, though. He might be smaller than (most) of those cruel dogs, but he’s so fast and brave that he leads them around in circles until they’re totally exhausted, and then he taunts them until they promise not to bother his fellow squirrels ever again. In the squirrel community, Sammy is a hero!

The new version of Sammy is available for $2.50 from Etsy and from Ravelry.

In other news, I've finished the first version of the Manager for the Oceans on Thursday, and should be finished with a second version today or tomorrow - with hopes for a third version (because I had to modify from the first a fair amount) by Monday or Tuesday! Expect to meet this mystery man...er...ocean-goer soon!

Swedish Chef Amigurumi

At the beginning of January, I agreed to make a Swedish Chef pattern for someone who was looking for one on Ravelry. At the time, I hadn't yet done the copyright research, and I thought I might as well go for it! Yesterday, I finally finished (a week late, and I feel terrible about it). I heard back in the late afternoon that she was satisfied with the FO, then I put the pattern together and send it out, so now it's finished, and I'm glad of it. :) It was late enough that I offered to send it for free, but we agreed on half payment, instead. It didn't cost me much to make (mostly scrap or old stash yarn) so I don't mind. Once I found out about the copyright stuff, it suddenly became like pulling teeth to get myself to finish this project. On the plus side, I am getting a lot of positive feedback from it. Doing something like this, it's easy to see the allure of working with well known properties - people notice, and appreciate more because the work is more accessible. The temptation is certainly strong - but oh well.

Anyway, on to the pics!








All in all, I'm pretty happy with how this project turned out. I got to experiment with some new techniques, practice making a doll based directly off of a picture (though actually, now that I think about it, I've referenced pictures with most of my creations), and it was interesting to make a doll with so many different pieces (body, arms, head, two ears, nose, hair, two eyebrows, mustache, apron, bow tie - made of two bits - and the cleaver). Making the hat was entirely experimental and turned out almost exactly how I wanted it (but shockingly time consuming). Then, I had to figure out how to make the hair (which worked much better than I thought it would). Lastly, to make the eyebrows and mustache, I had to learn how to do a loop stitch (I used Planet June's tutorial), and then I crossed my fingers, muttered a prayer to no one in particular, and clipped each loop - and discovered to my joy that this didn't, in fact, cause the whole thing to fall apart. Phew! Several moments of fear involved in that one. :) So this whole project was an excellent learning opportunity.

My inspiration photo, by the way, was this one:


I'm not happy to have done something that violates copyright, now that I understand how that works, and I'll say plainly as I said when I wrote this post about what I learned relating to that: never again. Now that I know how the law works, I will not make anything else based directly on a copyrighted source. Inspired by - like, say, the cowel I made on Monday which was inspired by the Jump Gates in B5 - that's fine, it's a distant enough interpretation that I don't see any cause of thinking it's a derivative work - but, say, a doll based on a puppet? Totally off limits. So don't ask. :)

Free Pattern of the Month: How to Crochet a Pyramid!

So, I'm a gamer. I won't go in to detail on what that means here - I play Dungeons and Dragons and numerous other games, is the short version, as well as board games. I suffer from one of the normal side effects of this particular hobby: I love dice.



What's not to love? They're colorful and useful at the same time!



See how pretty they are?

Last week, I was lying in bed and I was struck by an idea: I'd like to crochet a four-sided die! (from now on called only a d4)



d4's are the bane of the gamer. Just look at them! They're so pointy! If you drop one in the carpet, you're in big trouble! Stepping on one hurts like crazy. That's why my friends and I took to calling them "caltrops." I firmly believe that a field strewn with d4 would stop an army.

So I had this vision...a vision of an ouchless d4.



This free pattern will give you instructions on how to make your very own ouchless d4 (or pyramid, if you'd prefer). One of the coolest things about this pattern is that it can easily be modified to make a pyramid of different sizes!

Abbreviations: Note that this pattern uses US definitions.
Ch – chain
Sc – single crochet
Ss – slip stitch

All pyramids are done with a crochet hook, size G (4 mm).

Lets start with the small pink one.


Round 1: Ch 4. Join.

Round 2: 3 sc in each of the next 3 ch, sc in next ch. Do not join. Place marker: 10 sc

Round 3: Sc in next sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc: 16 sc

Round 4: Sc in next 2 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 3 sc: 22 sc

Round 5: Sc in next 3 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc: 28 sc

Round 6: Sc in next 4 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 5 sc: 34 sc

Round 7: Sc in next 5 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 10 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 10 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc: 40 sc

Round 8: Sc in next 6 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 12 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 12 sc, 2 sc in next sc, sc in next 7 sc: 45 sc

Round 9: Sc in next 5 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 9 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 9 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 4 sc: 36 sc

Round 10: Sc in next 3 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 6 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 6 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 3 sc: 27 sc

Round 11: Sc in next 2 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 3 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 3 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 1 sc: 18 sc

Round 12: Decrease around: 9 sc

Stuff with fiberfill.

Round 13: Decrease around. In last sc of previous round, ss, tighten and finish off.

...and you're done!

The beautiful thing about this is that you can modify it to be any size!

Each increase round proceeds in the following pattern:

Round 9: Sc in next 7 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 14 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 14 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc: 52 sc

Round 10: Sc in next 8 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 16 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 16 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 9 sc: 58 sc

Round 11: Sc in next 9 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 18 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 18 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 10 sc: 64 sc

Round 12: Sc in next 10 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 20 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 20 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 11 sc: 70 sc

Round 13: Sc in next 11 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 22 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 22 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 12 sc: 76 sc

...etc. Whichever round you decide to make your last, replace the last (3 sc in next sc) with (2 sc in next sc).

The decrease rounds are a little harder, and will require some calculations. You take the number of sc in the last increasing round. Subtract 18 from this number, then divide by 3. The result will be the number of sc on each side of the pyramid. So, for example, if Round 13 just above was our last increasing round, you would have 75 sc (because you have replaced the last (3 sc in next sc) with (2 sc in next sc) ). 75 minus 18 equals 57. 57 divided by 3 is 19. Thus, the instructions for the next round would be:

Round 14: Sc in next 10 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 19 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 19 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 9 sc: 66 sc

For each subsequent decreasing round, subtract 3 sc per side (9 sc per round). To continue with the example, you would proceed as follows:

Round 15: Sc in next 8 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 16 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 16 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 8 sc: 57 sc

Round 16: Sc in next 7 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 13 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 13 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 6 sc: 48 sc

Round 17: Sc in next 5 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 10 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 10 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 5 sc: 39 sc

Round 18: Sc in next 4 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 7 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 7 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 3 sc: 30 sc

Round 19: Sc in next 2 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 4 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 4 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 2 sc: 21 sc

Round 20: Sc in next sc, decrease three times, sc in next sc, decrease three times, sc in next sc, decrease three times: 12 sc

Round 21: Decrease around: 6 sc

Calculating the decreasing is definitely more difficult than calculating the increases, so lets do another example:


This is a d4/pyramid which has sides of 20 sc at the widest part. First, you do the increasing rounds:

Round 1: Ch 4. Join.

Round 2: 3 sc in next 3 ch, sc in next ch. Place marker: 13 sc

Round 3: Sc in next sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc: 16 sc

Round 4: Sc in next 2 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 3 sc: 22 sc

Round 5: Sc in next 3 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc: 28 sc

Round 6: Sc in next 4 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 5 sc: 34 sc

Round 7: Sc in next 5 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 10 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 10 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc: 40 sc

Round 8: Sc in next 6 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 12 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 12 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 7 sc: 46 sc

Round 9: Sc in next 7 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 14 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 14 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc: 52 sc

Round 10: Sc in next 8 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 16 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 16 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 9 sc: 58 sc

Round 11: Sc in next 9 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 18 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 18 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 10 sc: 64 sc

Round 12: Sc in next 10 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 20 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 20 sc, 2 sc in next sc, sc in next 11 sc: 69 sc

(remember - in round 12, replace the last 3 sc with a 2 sc in next sc!)

Then, you decrease. Calculate the length of each side in the next round: 69 sc minus 18 sc is 51 sc; divided by 3 is 17 sc per side. Thus, we can figure out the next round as follows:

Round 13: Sc in next 9 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 17 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 17 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 8 sc: 60 sc

Then, just figure out each subsequent round by subtracting 3 sc from each side of the pyramid:

Round 14: Sc in next 7 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 14 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 14 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 7 sc: 51 sc

Round 15: Sc in next 6 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 11 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 11 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 5 sc: 42 sc

Round 16: Sc in next 4 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 8 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 8 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 4 sc: 33 sc

Round 17: Sc in next 3 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 5 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 5 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 2 sc: 24 sc

Round 18: Sc in next 1 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 2 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 2 sc, decrease three times, sc in next 1 sc: 15 sc

Stuff with fiberfill.

Round 19: Decrease around, sc in last sc: 8 sc

Round 20: Decrease around, ss in last sc, tighten and finish off: 4 sc



You can download a PDF of this pattern from Ravelry. I don't think you need an account to do so: download now!

If you have any trouble at all, feel free to drop me an e-mail at unforth@yahoo.com, or comment here, or message me on Ravelry (user name Unforth)...or whatever. :)

Work in Progress Wednesday

I've been seeing other people's WIP Wednesday posts for a while and wanting to join in, and this week by the "happy" event that I've had to cancel all my work things because I'm sick, I guess I finally get the chance!

...and yet I find I have surprisingly little to share, probably because I tend to finish things pretty quickly once I start them. And my main WIP I expect to finish today (and post about tomorrow), so why put it here? However, I do have two...

The Ouchless d4
Last week I was lying in bed and waiting for my alarm to go off when I had this vision of a four sided die that was plush and definitely not a caltrop! In short, I had an idea for creating a pyramid.

So, since then, I've attempted this five times (one of which I frogged).

The white and green die is the first attempt using the original idea (of making four triangles and sewing them together). The itty bitty one was the second attempt, in which it dawned on me that I could make it as one piece. The third, frogged, attempt, I tried to make the second attempt much bigger, and in so doing realized that I'd messed up the base. The fourth attempt is the most successful, and I'll attempt to replicate it, probably today (because I made it during a Superbowl party and stupidly didn't take notes - but anyway, it was still not quite right. The fifth attempt is the one with the yarn trailing off, and it was a complete and dismal failure. :) I hope to have this done in the next day or two, and I'll be releasing it as the February Free Pattern of the Month!

The Manager of the Oceans
For those who haven't been with me a while, the Oceans will be my amigurumi baseball team composed of different marine animals. (I'm a huge baseball fan...) So far, I've only completed one player for the Oceans, and you can read about him in this blog post about Santana Squid. However, I've planned out almost all the other players (er, 13 of them, I think) and about two months ago I started making one of them...and have been too busy with other projects and commissions to get back to him! But I'm almost caught up on other stuff, and I really hope I'll be able to get to him this week. I don't want to spoil the surprise by saying what ocean thing he'll be, but I really lucked out with the yarn, as it's absolutely perfect. This will be the team's manager.

My mom had it in her stash, and she happily passed it over to me; but sadly it's out of production, so when I make the second version (I always make two of everything) I'll be using worsted that anyone can get - I've already bought it, along with the yarn to make the third baseman and the short stop. As spring training starts in less than three weeks, I'm really hoping to step up this project. :)


...and that's all my current Work in Progress! (not counting a couple things that have been sitting around for ages - I'm saving those for future WIP Wednesdays when I'm closer to starting them. ;) )

WIP Wednesday is, er, organized by Tami over at Tami's Ami Blog. There are a bunch of others involved, and everything they are doing looks awesome, so I suggest you follow the below link and take a peak at their work, too!

New Design, Apparently! The Andromeda Cowl

I really don't have anything better to do. I mean, I'm not sick and super busy with the day job, I don't have a late commission, nope, nothing is waiting for me to get to it, obviously I can waste an entire day (much of which I was at a meeting for work) creating a brand new item!

So over on Ravelry, I'm in a group called Nerd Wars. This fun group is a competition between members of different fandoms to create knit, crochet, and spun items related to their fandoms. I'm on team Babylon 5 (an excellent sci fi series from the 90s, which I was a HUGE fan of and am still rather fond of). The idea is simple - the moderates for Nerd Wars gave us challenges, and we have to make items that relate to one of the challenges.

So one of the challenges is to make things related to nebula. I immediately thought of hyperspace from B5, which looks like this:


I thought...why not make a cowl? Mine is taking a beating this winter, and they didn't look too hard! Then, I decided to get fancy. In B5, hyperspace is accessed through jumpgates:


So I thought...what if I did a piece that transitioned from blue to red? That'd be awesome, right?

I grabbed some random yarn and took it with me to a meeting today. I really wanted to work in the idea of the spirals like in the jumpgate (or a spinning planetary nebula, or a spiral galaxies arms). As I messed with the yarn, after a lot of trial and error, I started to get a shape that I liked. I was almost done, when I realized that really I should have done it differently...so I frogged the whole thing. I'm rather proud of myself. I've never done that before. Anyway, I finished the first draft right before I got home from my all day meeting:



(forgive my not so good appearance, I actually am sick, and exhausted to boot, and can't currently afford a haircut, and really should be asleep but I was soooo close to finishing...)




Anyway, having finished this draft, I'd decided on what I was going to do as my version for the Nerd Wars challenge: a jump gate through and through, in turquoise and black. This might have been a problem, but as happy chance had it, Michaels was on my way home from the meeting, and a few minutes ago, I finished the Jump Gate version of the cowl! (I'm calling the other the Nebula Version)





This last shot really shots the blue and black to good effect, in my opinion:


All in all, I'm VERY happy with how this turned out. I've NEVER designed something like this before - not a cowl, not a crochet item that used textures and stitches and patterns to make a particular effect. It was a lot of work to get it to look right - to put it in perspective, I started this project on the bus at 7 am this morning, and it took me until 5:30 to finish the first version (the second version took about 3 and a half hours to makes).

I decided to call it the Andromeda Cowl, because I wanted it to look like the spiral arms of a galaxy, and of course Andromeda is our sister galaxy. :)

I will definitely be having this pattern tested for release. Probably soon.

Fine Art Prints Follow-Up: WHCC

After I finished the survey and posted the results, the next step of the Fine Art Prints for my photography was to find a good place to print. Friends gave a few recommendations, but in the end there were two clear leaders: mpix.com and whcc. I went through the options that both presented, and in the end I decided to go with WHCC, mostly because they were more heavily recommended by the photographers who answered, whereas mpix was favored by the artists. I have no idea if this was a worthwhile way of choosing, but oh well.

WHCC has an interesting way of getting you to the stage of actually working with them, and my work with them got delayed because my initial confirmation e-mail got sorted in to spam, but once I realized that, things proceeded apace. The first step with them took me by surprise, but is in fact totally awesome: submit 5 images which I would get free 8 x 10 samples of. I thought about it for a few minutes, and picked 5 that I thought would give me some idea what the range of prints would look like:


Lotus Leaf, because of the intense green saturation.


Sunlight on a stump, because of the depth of the image and the contrast between the brights and the darks.


Bee on a Sunflower, because of the yellow saturation.


Columbine, because of the depth of the image and the foreground/background contrasts.


Big Ben and Parliament, to see how a night image would turn out.

The end result turned out pretty excellent all the way around. Don't get me wrong, some have their problems: Big Ben shows the graininess inevitable from an ISO 800 image; the bee on the sunflower looks a little out of focus at the larger size; the Columbine flower looks oddly shadowed in a way I'm not in love with; and I've never liked how the sunlight on the stump picture looks printed, it's one of those cases where I'm taking my direction from everyone else telling me they like it. However, the prints overall look lovely and the quality of the prints is very high.

Now, if this is all I had to say, I'd not have bothered to post. However, I wanted to share a bit more about what I got from WHCC as part of this process, and how awesome it is. :)

The coolest piece of my welcoming package is a little packet of prints. There are two different images offered in 7 different printing options, which enable me to see how the same images looks on all of their different papers and finishes. This includes the regular lustre paper (which is what my 8 x 10s were printed on); lustre paper with lustre coating; lustre paper with Embassy texture; lustre paper with Pebble texture; lustre paper with Linen texture; glossy paper; and metallic paper. This is singularly awesome to get to see, because all I knew about metallic paper before (for example) was that it cost more, but on my computer screen what this price difference meant for how my prints would look wasn't at all clear to me. Now that I've seen it and can put it next to the other finishes, though, I can understand what the strengths and weaknesses of each printing option are. Which is totally awesome. The metallic is absolutely gorgeous, by the way, though I probably won't use it because I don't know if it'll add all that much to the kinds of images I've got on offer (but I'll think about it).

Next, there are cards with a range of a few images all on one, which describe the different options for printing documents (ie, brochures, etc.) and which media I can get in each paper and printing type. The paper types include: standard semi-gloss; standard semi-gloss with UV coating; art linen (which I love); art watercolor; art recycled; pearl; pearl with UV coating; satin with UV coating; satin with lustre coating; and standard 100# text. With these, you can get any of a number of products, including: press printed albums; press printed books; accordion mini books; press printed cards; business cards; bookmarks; rep cards and posters. I could attempt to describe all these different papers, but in truth, the kit is the key: it's awesome and incredibly useful to be able to hold, touch, bend, and otherwise compare these different papers. Can you tell I'm kind of in love with all this?

Finally, they sent me an awesome getting started guide. It's an excellent product for such a company to make, because it excellently highlights the printing end of their business. The guide starts with pitching how they are on my side and want to work with me and build a relationship - and I have to say, everything that they've done so far makes me really feel that that is true, and it's an excellent feeling. The book contains some good hints for getting going and some useful resources to do important things related to getting photography prints done - and as I'm still an amateur masquerading as a professional, some is stuff I don't know and very helpful for that. :)

All in all, I'm pretty happy to be working with them, and very excited about the different things in this kit and the extent to which they help me better understand my options. I'm glad I went with WHCC. :)

I will be listing one 8 x 10 a day for sale on Etsy, starting today with this listing for the Big Ben and Parliament Photograph. I'll post about the rest each day on FB and Twitter - if you're interested, and you're not already with me on those social media options, it's @unforth on twitter and Curiously Crafted Creations on FB. :)

Art Collection: Latest Commission

This post pertains to two of my hobbies that I don't talk about very much. One is that I collect fantasy art - absolutely love it. I mostly get originals, and I commission at least a few works every year - usually of the same character, though this commission isn't that character (that's a post for some other time, but I'd have to get a bunch of permissions first...). The second hobby that relates to this post is writing. Specifically, I'm an aspiring novelist - I've finished three first drafts, one of which I've edited about half of, and I'm currently almost a third of the way through my fourth novel, which I started on 1/1/11. How do these two things combine?

Well, the novel that I've edited about half of is under the working title of just "Golden Age," and is based off of a table-top roleplaying game that a bunch of my friends and I played. It's ridiculously over-length, which is the main reason I haven't finished it yet, but the two main characters in it are very dear to me, both because of the game, the memories I have related to them, the friendships they reflect, etc. Right after I finished the manuscript initially, in August, 2009, I spoke to my friend Avery, who is an artist, about getting three commissions. The first two were sketches of the two main characters; she finished this for me last fall. The remaining was for a full digital piece of a scene in the book.

So, a little background. "Golden Age" is a book about super heroes active during World War 2. The two main characters are a woman named Marie who goes by the superhero nickname of "Enigma," and a man named John who goes by the nickname "Scout." Because it's WW2, there's a lot of patriotic type stuff going on in the background, and at one point Marie gets asked to be the model for the centerfold in "Yank," which is a monthly magazine sent to servicemen. She's always wanted to be an actress, and so she has no issues with posing a little risque. It ends up being a minor plot point at a later point in the story. Here's the original description I wrote for the image in the centerfold:

"A stiff breeze blew a skimpy dress tight over her body and tousled the carefully-done ringlets that had been put in her hair. Her whole body was extended, one leg up, as she reached for her umbrella, moments before snatched from her hands by the same breeze. The shot was of her back, but she glanced back over her shoulder, a moue of lovely frustration on her face."

This was also the description I sent to Avery when I requested my commission (along with an overview description of what Marie looks like) - which she sent me the finished version of yesterday!! But before that, here are two 'in progress' pics...

First, she sent me a sketch to get my approval on the general layout.


Then, she sent me a follow-up with the colors filled in.


And finally, yesterday, I got the image in my e-mail that made me absolutely squee with delight:

(you can look at a bigger version here.)

I'm so, so happy with how this turned out. (and also very excited that Avery gave me permission to share it with ya'll ;) ). If you like what you see, she's always open to commissions (though there does tend to be some delay on their getting done) and you can check out her other work on her deviant art account.

At some point I'll do some posts on other artists I like; I've gotten permission from a couple already about posting some of their work - I was going to do a pre-Christmas post about all of them but didn't end up getting the time, but maybe I'll do a monthly feature instead. :)

And in case it wasn't clear? OMG SQUEE I <3 MY COMMISSION! :)