Filed under: collaboration, favorites, photography, silliness by ramune

Attempting to break into National Airport?

The other week when I went to my friends’ Christmas dinner party I got a lomo fisheye camera from my secret santa (Brandy). I was pretty thrilled and have had a chance to play around with it. Normally I post smaller images but I could not help posting these ones large, I think they are so much fun. The ones on this page are from this past Saturday, but you can see more in my Fisheye set on Flickr.

Have a fantastic New Years and see you back here in 2009!

My sister looking “troubled”

Filed under: animation, collaboration, silliness by ramune

Since I have been behind on the posts and it is the last day of the year, I am updating twice so that I can start 2009 on track. This past Saturday my sister, brother and I went to Gravely Point by National Airport with my dad and his wife. What usually ends up happening is we watch the planes for a bit, walk around and then we take random photos of us either frolicking or doing handstands. This time I tried to get a photo of my brother doing a handstand and my sister doing a cartwheel simultaneously with an airplane coming down to land at National Airport. It isn’t meant to be a smooth stop motion animation, it’s more just to show the progression of the motions.

Filed under: gift, knitting, photography by ramune

Patrick wearing the scarf I knit him (backwards, but that’s ok)

My friends Lilly and Brandy hosted a Christmas dinner/gift exchange at their house this past weekend. The food was delicious, the Eggnog dangerously tasty (I might have been 12 when I last tried Eggnog) and I was strangely too full for the large quantities of dessert (my second dessert stomach seriously let me down). After dessert we exchanged Secret Santa gifts. I was Patrick’s Secret Santa and knit him a scarf made from Peruvian Highland Wool. When I was at the yarn store it took me a good 10 minutes to decide which colors to get, they were all really lovely. I might have to go back and buy the other colors for another project.

Filed under: favorites, holiday, photography by ramune

Playing with star shaped bokeh

I have been wanting to play with shaped bokeh for a while now and forgot about it until I saw Flickr’s recent blog entry on holiday bokeh. It’s really quite easy to do if you have the right kind of lens (which thankfully I do). I haven’t tried playing around with it much on my other lenses because I have had pretty good results using my 50mm F/1.4 lens.

After cutting out some of my own shapes and experimenting with them I went to Paper Source and tried out their moose hole punch (for all my fellow meese). Initially I was hoping to get a snowflake hole punch but was not too impressed with the selection. Either way, I was like a little kid taking photos with my shaped bokeh filters. I might make some other shapes and add them to my Christmas set, in the meantime here are some to keep you entertained.

The beta with some hidden moose bokeh

Star bokeh over fish bowl

Shooting star bokeh

Regular bokeh with Christmas lights

Filed under: favorites, knitting, self-portrait by ramune

My first pattern! Knit gauntlets

Years ago my sister gave me a lovely pair of gauntlets for Christmas. They were fantastic in every way . . . and then I lost one. The following year she gave me a new pair of gauntlets by the same designer and again, they were fantastic in every way . . . and then I lost one.

This year I decided to “throw down the gauntlet” and knit myself a pair. I looked online for a pattern but didn’t find anything I was particularly excited about. Either they looked way too complicated for a first try or they looked boring. I decided to go through some stitch pattern ideas to see what I could work into a gauntlet pattern (no, not the Medieval pieces of armor) . The chevron pattern jumped out at me as a good first simple/interesting design. The yarn is super comfy/warm/soft and I can’t wait to put them to use! I also look forward to making other gauntlets with different knit patterns.

Silly attempt at modeling my new gauntlets

Filed under: enamel, jewelry by ramune

Cloisonné Fig Pendant on a fig branch

I meant to post this last week but with Thanksgiving and all it was pushed back. Last week was my last Enamels class and I managed to finish my fig cloisonné pendant as well as a few other pieces. This is my second cloisonné and I am pretty happy with it, but wish a few things had worked differently. For one, reds are hard to work with and it is difficult to get them to look vibrant. The red inside the fig is a little bit duller than I would have liked, but that’s ok.

Instead of putting the shot in early on in the process, like I did in my last cloisonné piece, I put them in at the very end during the last firing so they would stick out more and stay round.

On the trivet waiting to go in the kiln for the last time

Closeup of the cloisonné fig pendant on a fig branch

Filed under: enamel, jewelry by ramune

Champlevé Pendant on Jade

Since I only have two more weeks of my enamels class I figured it would probably be a good idea to post one of my pieces to the ol’ blog. I am in the middle of working on a bundle of pieces and hope to finish them all in the next two weeks but that might be a bit too ambitious. So either I will take the class again in January (if I’m still in the DC area) or I will have to set up a studio or find another class when I move (the aim is to find a job/move in January but we’ll see).

This piece uses a technique called Champlevé, which involves etching the copper and then filling in the etched spaces with the enamel. It’s similar to Cloisonné, however in Cloisonné you form metal wire to create the “walls” instead of etching the metal.

P.S. During this set of 9 week classes I have vowed not to use my favorite color, Old Silver. It has been my standby but we don’t have much left in class and apparently they have stopped making it, so I am trying to pull away from my dependency. This piece uses a color called Pigeon Gray instead and it might be my new Old Silver.

Filed under: friends, photography by ramune

Last weekend my friend Kathy flew out to visit me from San Jose, CA. We spent the first couple days in the DC area and then went to New York for less than two full days. She had never been to DC or VA before so I had to show her the touristy things, like all the monuments and memorials, and then I tried to balance that out with a day of Virginia wineries (I know . . . she’s from California, but at least she’s not from France). It has been a while since I last wandered around the monuments and memorials so it was nice to go again and show Kathy (even if it was 75 F in November). I am not normally one for touristy DC photos but I like how a few came out so I am posting them below. All are from DC except the last one which is from our last breakfast in NYC. More photos from Kathy’s visit can be seen on my Flickr site.

The Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool

Yellow foliage near the Reflecting Pool

Kathy and her delicious warm buttered apple cider with rum

On a side note: Friday night we saw Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza by the National Harbor. If you haven’t been to the National Harbor, don’t go. It is so plasticy and they stole away my favorite sculpture, The Awakening (it used to be at Hain’s Point). I would say go just to see The Awakening, but it’s not the same at the National Harbor. When I went the stairs were blocked off so you could not walk up to it, you could only stand above it. At Hain’s Point it actually looked like a man coming out of the Earth with his knee and arm towering above you. Somehow seeing it from above just does not have the same effect. Sadness.

Filed under: costumes, favorites, holiday, photography by ramune

My Jack O’ Lantern
He eats children

It’s been one year since I started this blog and although I haven’t always been timely I have completed 52 projects in 52 weeks! Since my first project was a jack o’ lantern I figured it would be appropriate to post this year’s jack o’ lantern for Project #53. Since it’s the 1 year anniversary and it’s also Election Day (everyone seems to have some deal going on), I will give you two for the price of one . . . only if you voted. So go vote, and then come back to this blog and read the rest. It’s on the honor system.

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Yay! You voted! Or you are cheating (I hope you can sleep at night). Now I shall continue with the bonus project, my Halloween costume.

On Tuesday afternoon I went to a cafe to use their wifi (my usual routine before Enamels class) but it was not working. I was there for 2.5 hours without access to the interwebs and forgot to bring a book so all I had were my two Moleskines. There is something liberating about being “forced” (liberating and forced in the same thought?) to sit with your sketchbook for that length of time. Since I had a while I thought it would be a good idea to work on a Halloween costume idea since it was only days away. After a bit of sketching I came up with The Peanut Gallery. I was pretty thrilled about it because I love to see creative costumes (especially ones that depict phrases) and I usually don’t think of anything until it’s too late and then I forget about it before the next Halloween.

I started out by taking a bundle of photos of peanuts in various situations. Three of my favorites are below, the rest are on my Flickr site.

Urchin and peanuts

Bobute and Peanuts (Bobute has traveled with me since Summer 2007)

Kinder Egg snail with Peanuts (his head moves forward when you roll him across a hard surface)

After taking the photos I went out to buy all of the supplies I needed. Ideally if I had had more time (and didn’t mind spending more), I would have made gold frames that had more dimension and detail, however I chose to spray mat boards with gold webbing paint. It worked out alright and was probably the best option in terms of comfort (not sure I want the weight of 12 wooden frames on my shoulders). I connected the “framed” peanut images with a ribbon and hung them from two rods which were connected by two ribbons that went over my shoulders. Below are two images of the final product (two is the magic number).

The Peanut Gallery (front)

The Peanut Gallery (back)
It looks like my head might do a full 360 Exorcist style

Unfortunately it was pretty dark when I went out with my friends on Halloween, so my costume was not the most visible and obvious to people. The people who did take the time to figure it out really liked it (after I fed them a number of hints “Do you notice a theme in the images?” “They are framed” . . .). Now to start working on next year’s idea . . .

Filed under: baby, favorites, friends, gift, knitting by ramune

Zarina and the baby blanket I knit (covering her very pregnant belly)

As I had mentioned before I had a few project that were a little more time consuming than the rest. Finally I can post this one because I just went to my friend Zarina’s baby shower this weekend.

Zarina and I have been friends since 4th grade and she is my first friend (my age) to have a baby, so I was pretty excited and wanted to knit a few things for the little nugget. I started off with two super soft wool winter hats (that should look different on a baby’s head than they do on a mini pumpkin) and then moved onto a slightly more complicated wavy baby blanket.

Below are a few photos of the items and a couple more are on my Flickr site.

Hat #1 keeping a pumpkin warm

Hat #2 keeping a pumpkin warm

Detail of the baby blanket