Filed under: costumes, favorites, friends, holiday, photography, self-portrait by ramune

“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs”
Amazing cut out of Amy falling down the stairs by Karissa

This past weekend was one of the best weekends of 2008 (so far). My great friend Rasa has a catering company in Philly that does a variety of tasting parties. This weekend’s was an Edward Gorey themed tasting party (kicking myself for not having thought of that one sooner!). The invite went like this:

Edward Gorey has been one of my greatest inspirations/influences since I was a wee tot (maybe I wasn’t that wee . . . but still young) and my sister introduced me to The Gashlycrumb Tinies. She even got me a personally addressed and signed copy of one of his last books The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas. Two years later he died on the day of my senior prom (not really relevant, but still). All of this is to say that I was ecstatic when I received the invite in my email. I pulled together a few black and white options, got the ol’ bowler hat I bought some five or six years ago out of the closet (and fancied it up) and managed to convince our other great friend, Vaiva, to come down for less than 24 hours from NYC.

Rasa’s team did an amazing job with decorations, food and a great game of Murder. I happened to pick the piece of paper with an “X” on it for the first round, and thus was the chosen murderer. Unfortunately I only managed to kill maybe four or five of the ten people I intended to kill (you don’t hear that every day). It is an interesting exercise to intentionally make eye contact with complete strangers and wink at them without them thinking you are hitting on them or feeling rather creepy yourself. Several people definitely looked at me like I was being weird when I winked at them with my twitchy Gorey eyes.

The second round was much more exciting since there were two killers and they were on a spree! I was one of the victims and managed to win the prize for best death. I am convinced that it was rigged so that the guest staying at the house the longest would win and share the chocolate (and M&M) covered pretzels with everyone else.

The party was a great success and I think I got a few good photos from it. Below are some of my favorites from the night. As usual, the rest can be seen here on my Flickr site.

“They Got Themselves Up Killingly”

Rasa, before the guests arrived

All Gorey’d Up (without hat)

Vaiva and me all Gorey’d up (with hat). Photo by Adrienne R.

Adrienne was my first victim and she managed to die without spilling any wine!

Gintautas (Rasa’s brother) modeling one of many hats that evening

Filed under: friends, photography by ramune

Welcome to the last of the marathon projects. Below are a few shots from this past weekend at the Chicago Marathon. I was hoping to get some better action shots but apparently I need a bit more work on that. More photos are on my Flickr site.

My brother “holding” the Packet Pick-up sign

Wheelchair racers

Part of our large support crew (wearing the shirts!)

Running by us at around mile 17.5, grabbing a bottle of water and a banana

After cooling down we went to Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant . . . where they had this sign on the door “We have the ‘Breakfast of Champions’ for the Chicago Marathon . . . or anytime . . .”

Filed under: screen printing by ramune

When I decided to screen print the t-shirts for the Chicago Marathon I thought it would be a fun project that would not take more than a few days (including some testing). Unfortunately I made a silly mistake at the very beginning which caused some mild insanity and took up a ridiculous amount of time. I decided to go with photo emulsion because it was the only method that would allow me to do the design I wanted. Below is some boring info to give you an idea of what I went through. Mind you for each of these I had to put more emulsion on the screen, dry the screen completely and then wash it and dry it after exposing it.

Test 1: 250W Halogen Work Light positioned 12 inches from the screen, exposed for 10 minutes
Result: Screen looked exposed but emulsion washed off way too easily

Test 2: 250W Halogen Work Light positioned 12 inches from the screen, exposed in strips for 10/15/20/25/30/45 minutes
Result: Screen looked exposed but emulsion washed off way too easily

Test 3: 250W Halogen Work Light positioned 12 inches from screen, exposed in strips for 45/60/75 minutes
Result: Screen looked exposed but emulsion washed off way too easily

Test 4: 150W Clear Incandescent bulb with aluminum pie pan (like directions recommend), exposed for 45 minutes
Results: Screen looked exposed but emulsion washed off way too easily

Test 5: 150 W Clear Incandescent bulb with aluminum pie pan (like directions recommend), exposed for 45 minutes, washed really really carefully
Results: Screen printed fine but there were areas where the ink bled through where it wasn’t supposed to

After switching bulbs and adjusting exposure times I finally decided that something was definitely wrong with my emulsion. It seemed to be working fine (I could see that my design was showing up) but it would always wash away far too easily, so I bought new emulsion and made sure it was completely mixed (ALL of the sensitizer has to be mixed into the emulsion or else . . .). Sure enough everything worked! If only I had realized that was the issue from the beginning, it would have saved me days of experimenting and brain scratching. Unfortunately I think I overexposed my screens because I was never able to fully get the emulsion off the screens when I wanted to clean them completely. I need to look into other options so I can reuse the screens. Anyway, here are some photos of the (successful) process.

Exposing the screen with the new and well mixed photo emulsion (rig consists of a tripod, 150W clear incandescent bulb, aluminum pie pan)

Seven minutes into exposing the screen I noticed that I had mistakenly typed MMVII instead of MMVIII! My guess is no one would have actually noticed but I ran to my computer and printed out an extra “I” and very carefully placed it on top of the screen. It messed up the exposure a wee bit but I was able to cover it up easily enough before printing.

Hooray! The photo emulsion worked!

Printing on one of 26 shirts

Success!

Filed under: collaboration, design by ramune

This year my brother decided to take on the challenge of running the Chicago Marathon. The last time he planned to run it he broke his ankle several months before the race (ouch!). I had only been to a marathon once before and had a great time supporting not only my friend Ashley but the other runners as well. This year since a whole slew of my family members were planning on coming out I decided to design shirts and print them myself. I figured it would be fun for everyone involved.

The first step was to get the design done. After talking to Ashley about it she suggested I do something with cowbells since she had bought cowbells for her support team when she ran the Philadelphia Marathon last year. I had worked on several ideas along the Christopher Walken SNL skit theme (if you haven’t seen it, you are missing out on a classic), talked to my brother about it and he [being the excellent artist/illustrator/(insert other creative things here) that he is] came up with the idea of a cow coming at you with a bell bopping it over the head. He is a much better illustrator when it comes to things like this so he did the sketch and sent it to me (last minute).

My brother’s sketch for the t-shirts

As much as I loved the sketch of the cow that my brother sent me, I wanted to sharpen it up and smooth out the lines. I have come to realize that I really love vectorizing (don’t think that’s a real word) files and making all of the lines nice and smooth, point by point. It’s probably something that other people find tedious and time consuming but I find it calming and therapeutic in some strange way. Here it is below all cleaned up. The screen-printing project will be coming up next . . .

My vectorized touched up version of the t-shirt design (notice that is says MMVII and not MMVIII . . . a mistake I almost missed too late)

Screen shot of the vector points

Filed under: uncategorized by ramune

Just a quick note to let you know that Projects #48-#50 have been keeping me very busy and won’t be posted until either the end of this week or beginning of next week. They are all related and have to be done for this weekend, so hopefully you will see something up here very soon, just not today . . . or tomorrow.

Filed under: photography by ramune

Yesterday afternoon the sky became ominously cloudy and occasionally the sun would shine on the tops of these trees. I particularly like how yellow the tree to the left looks in the sunlight.

Clouds and Trees

Filed under: food, photography by ramune

In an attempt to catch up on these posts, I am posting two photos today. The first one is from last week’s farmers market. I imagine this won’t be the last since now is the time when all kinds of tasty veggies and fruits will be making an appearance.

Peppers at the Farmers Market

Filed under: favorites, food, friends, ice cream by ramune

Six years ago my mother was given a little fig sprig that her friend’s grandmother brought back from a fig tree in Italy. Today this fig tree is 12 feet tall and produces hundreds of figs each year.

The image many people have of a fig is a dried-up shriveled nugget of fiber that is consumed by the geriatric community to get things “moving”. My view of figs has completely changed since I have spent some quality time with the fig tree. When you cut open a fresh fig it is one of the most beautiful fruits out there (in my opinion). It is not brown and shriveled at all. To the contrary it has a vibrant red center full of little blobules (spellchecker says this is not a word, but I think it should be) surrounded by a pale green and aubergine skin.

It’s amazing how many people have never had a fresh fig before (I am sure the exorbitant price doesn’t help). If you are one of these people I suggest you remedy it immediately. I don’t want to get your hopes up but it is a very different experience than eating a dried fig (which I still like).

With dozens of ripe figs waiting to be picked each day it’s hard to keep up with eating them all (if you did it might get things “moving” a little faster than you’d like), so I decided to make ice cream. I also needed to make a dessert for my friend Scott’s housewarming party so this was the perfect solution. After my last disaster with a horrible ice cream recipe I thought it would be a good idea to get it from a reputable source. In my search I kept reading wonderful reviews about the fresh fig ice cream found in the book A Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. Unfortunately it was sold out at every bookstore within 10 miles of me, so I drove out to the one store that had it (before some other ice cream lover could get it . . . sorry if that was you.

The recipe was easy and and the process was delicious. In fact, when I tasted the figgy jam part of the recipe I was in heaven. If you know me, you know I am a serious foodie and I get pretty excited about it (there is always something to look forward to!). This was a different level of excitement altogether. The best way I can describe it is like someone meeting their soul mate and never being able to live without them . . . but maybe not on such a dramatic scale. I now feel the need to have a fig tree wherever I live for the rest of my life (because buying fresh figs all the time is quite an investment). As if the figgy jam part wasn’t good enough the ice cream came out even better. I was nervous that it would be too hard (homemade ice cream has a way of doing that) but I think it came out a perfect consistency. Now I am not trying to toot my own horn here (I hope it isn’t coming off that way), I am tooting the figs’ horn and A Perfect Scoop‘s horn. Toot! Toot!

This was initially going to be two posts (since I am still behind by two) because after the ice cream I made a flourless chocolate-hazelnut cake (my friend Maya has a gluten allergy). Unfortunately I was in a bit of a rush to get it done and did not take enough time to get good photos of the process. The cake came out well though and I have included a photo below. I don’t think anyone else had the “soul mate” experience I had, but I think it was well received and I didn’t see any leftovers in anyone’s plate, so that’s always a good sign.

Filed under: doodle by ramune

There isn’t a whole lot to say about this week’s project. It’s just a little something I doodled while traveling the past couple weeks.

Doodle

Filed under: baking, collaboration, food by ramune

This past weekend I was in Chicago (for oral surgery and to see my family) and made cupcakes at my aunt’s house. I wish I had set up the camera to take photos of the process as it was quite unique. I am used to baking by mixing the wet ingredients and then adding in the dry. This recipe started out with the dry and then I had to add butter (a bit messy) and then the liquids. Either way, the cupcakes came out fantastic! When it came time to decorating them my aunt made the frosting and then we decided to add some color. Three of my cousins, one of their friends and I all contributed to the decorating as you can see below.

Collection of Buttercream Frosted Cupcakes

One of my decorated cupcakes

Detail of the buttery buttercream frosting

My cousin/goddaughter cleaning up the leftover cupcake dough (one of my favorite pastimes!)