The Basement

In October we moved to a lovely little house that we're renting in the Mission. There is a dark, dank, low ceilinged basement which Adam has generously "given" over to me to do with as I wish. Of the two rooms, I originally claimed the larger one till flooding and ants chased me out of it. Now I'm in the smaller section, near the door, with the window. Not bad. The whole "unpacking" thing still hasn't finished and I've not enough carpet to cover the floor... but despite that, I have begun to "move in" and make the space feel more like my own.

I'm quite fond of my growing wall 'o things. Pictures, a skull, some bullet bugs, fabric creatures, things. Since the basement wall is unfinished I feel no qualms about sticking a hundred and one nails into it. The only thing holding me up is my lack of frames (apparently only Ikea has non-tacky yet still cheap frames! Curses! I had hoped not to need to return so soon!) and the knowledge that I want to have some sort of ... useful tool hanging "things" above the desk. I've ideas & supplies, just not the time to pull it together.

Having my sewing machine out is pleasing, along with all my books and thread available. My fabric and yarn collections are still abandoned in the other room, which needs to be corrected. I've been making good use of the desk though, cluttering it up with pins and soldering supplies. My old iMac is practically useless (I can upgrade no further) but it does at least play music and let me search for reference photos. You can't really tell from the top photo, but beyond the ironing board (which I was using to iron plastic, thread, beads, and wire together to make wings!) is my lovely futon bed for those who are bave enough to stay over.

If we owned the place I'd put forward efforts to actually improve the basement (like finishing the fucking walls!) but we don't and so I can only hope to cover and work around its "quirks". One thing that isn't horrible is the metal pipe? that runs over the wall and on the ceiling for the SINGLE outlet in the room. Sticking monsters to it via magnets makes me happy.

So, yeah. Some horrible photos of my "crafting cave".

Other things: I've been playing the Starcraft Campaign! I <3 Abathur! Expect to see related crafts soon. I had my butt handed to me at Dr. Sketchy's last week, could not get in the grove. I appear to be momentarily tapped out on the letter writing front. Need to recharge. Have been crafting a magnetic wall butterfly monster... thing... educational, but it's not quite coming together as I had hoped. I bought the thumb drive of stock poses from Senshi Stock but haven't found the chance to sketch anything from it yet. Am excited to do so at some point. Went to Angel Island for the first time and loved it. Saw the movie Stoker. It was... kind of fun? Watched Strage Days again, it was also rather fun. Both have horrible dark parts to them though so I can't broadly recommend. Also saw Pitch Perfect which was delightfully silly & fun. Have been quite enchanted with one of the songs from it. I was compelled to sketch the scene it's from and you can listen to it below.

Doing Good

Dr. Sketchy's tonight! Woot! Disclaimer: images scattered through post have nothing to do with following topic other then the Sisters falling under the banner of "doing good"--

I really enjoyed attending W3Conf last month. It was an ideal first conference since there was only one track and the subjects were very focused. One of the talks that really struck me, and those I was with, was Léonie Watson's "Design like you give a damn: Practical accessibility for web pros" (which is available on YouTube, 40 min long). The talk itself was rather simple but the Q&A afterwards was informative and the subject itself sort of startling. My coworker, Matt, and I both found the title of the talk appropriately... harsh? Why of course we should make our site not shitty for those who might need to navigate it differently.

This last Friday was my first Hack Day at Rdio (got a sweet t-shirt out of it!) and I happily poked at the issue of accessibility. Turns out doing it "right" is hard... and rather stupid because the ARIA spec uses IDs for a lot of stuff, which isn't great for reusable components. Yes, yes, obviously something can be figured out. But for a one-day-at-work project, wrestling with that was more then I wanted to do. Some take-away thoughts:

• OMG use alt="" if your image is just decorative! If it's not, put some damn text in the attribute.
• VoiceOver on Mac might not be the hottest screen reader around, but it's so easy to run you have no excuse not to at least try
• Using buttons or divs with with just a background image for a button is lovely and totally not accessible to screen readers. The aria-label="Button Name" and role="button" attributes are so easy and make a big difference!
• Handling focus with popup divs is not instantly obvious (I flailed for most of the end Friday with it, got it working for < 2 minutes on Monday, and cannot figure out how I did so nor return to that state since)

Because it was just a one-day hack, no code is really fit to be rolled out... but it's something that will probably be coming soon.

Jumping topics- Dr. Sketchy's was a joy tonight. Our models were several of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, which is my second time drawing them and the fourth time they've modeled for Dr. Sketchy's. I'm thrilled that I got first place in the contest tonight, whose theme was "Draw the new pope". My entry was the following image:

I used construction paper today because I knew the Sisters would have lots of black & white... totally wasn't prepared for the amount of pink though. Luckily a kind lady next to me let me borrow hers. The gentlemen to my right (a former art teacher?) also helped me out with drawing some sparkles. Another lady lent me her light blue pencil, which I sadly failed to return before she left. What I'm trying to say is that everyone at Dr. Sketchy's is awesome. Also, I must give a shout-out for one of the sponsors Utrecht- the paper (toned gray) and pencils (graphite aquarelle) I won tonight are exciting and I'm looking forward to using them soon. I also won a lovely lei which looks perfect wrapped around my bun.

And just so everyone's aware of it, the Sisters do a big Easter even in Dolores Park every year. They have posted the event calendar and it should be noted that the Hunky Jesus Contest starts at 3:45. I'm not sure if it's my kinda' event, but I've heard good things.

In closing, I just wanted to add that I've finally found a use for my pile o' Dr. Sketchy's doodles (aside from scanning them). The Month of Letters may be over (I bombed the last week) but I am still writing letters (at a far, far slower paces). For several letters now I've been using sketch pages as stationary and winding my words around model's form, scribbled across the page. It hurts less then tossing the scraps and yet gets them off the desk & outa' the house, which Adam approves of.

Good things

I attended my first Meetup event- a Women Who Code Hack Night thing. It was... interesting. There were more ladies in that room, interested in programming then I believe I've worked with in my career so far. Sadly I felt socially awkward, my laptop misbehaved, and I failed to actually "hack" on anything. But it was pleasant in an overall abstract way and I hope to attend again.

While it didn't come out this month, I have just recently stumbled across Professor Elemental's Father of Invention album and it is crazy good. Superior to all previous albums, in my opinion. There's no single song better then Fighting Trousers on this album, though there is a track featuring Mr. B-the-Gentleman-Rhymer. Listed below are my favorites:

You're Invited: The best part about Professor Elemental is how fun and happy and joyous his songs are. Good hearted!

Animal Ice Cream: The Professor has an abnormal interest with animals and it produces amazing things

You Remind Me of a Car: What's better then these breathy sexy, sexy lyrics? I quiver!

The Attic: A mysterious story! Reminds me of table top games...

Speaking of music, I just found on my camera a photo from Doug's CD exchanges from early January. I love my album artwork on this! The title of the playlist: Everything is Horrible. Adam's playlist is 'Unsolved Mysteries'

The only sad thing is that I've failed the Month of Letters challenge... but that's something for another post. Was distracted with a new project... it's been too long since I've made a monster. You can see some in-progress shots below. A weighted paper holder is the core that I've been building around... just skinned the legs after I took the photo... the eyes are in the process of being painted... slow progress, but it's coming together. Destined for my desk at work when completed.

Warning! There be boobies ahead!

How is February not over yet? I'm feeling quite overwhelmed and there's still more then a week left. Ugh.

Have returned from Seattle, which holds friends and family and is still quite nice. Saw the Amaluna Cirque du Soleil show while up there with good friend Trisha. I greatly enjoyed the acts, was intrigued by the engineering of the costumes, felt 'meh' about the music, and loathed the clowning, which is luckily only a small part of the show. Definitely recommend it if you can make it. Wont go into details about the acts (you should never know what you're getting into with a Cirque show!) but I will say that my most favoritest act was the man pole dancer. Not really a stripper pole dancer act, just a freakishly athletic man and a pole. Good times, good times.

Dr. Sketchy's was tonight and the model had quite a get-up. Sadly she didn't keep most of it it on. Lacy skirts are so much fun to draw! All those fashion templates I copied from finally paying off!

Turnout was strong again, yay for them, boo for me. Placed third in the contest, yay. Next session is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence which should be fun but no doubt will be even more crowded.

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I'm a bad person and entered both 20 minute sketches in the contest. The one on the right got 3rd place.

The session started off rough... the model had a strong jaw and nose, elaborate makeup, and quite the crazy hairdo. Took a while to get into the groove... She was also mind bogglingly thin which was hard to capture and not look "wrong". I include 3 sketches that I consider border-line worthy of scanning because.... why not.

But once I got rolling, I was quite pleased with the results. Favorite sketch of the evening is below. Yes, she had heart shaped pasties on. She also had antlers draped around her neck which made for quite the awesome look...

Again, I'll wishfully state that I'll get back to posting about crafts and code...
...some day...

Papers! Papers everywhere!

Letter writing continues. Yesterday I received my first response back. There's some people kicking around the concept of some letter RP, which I'm ashamed to admit I have little faith in. It did however motivate me to dig around a horrendous number of boxes (we still haven't really tackled our basement full of boxes problem yet...) to find the results of my long-ago attempted round-robin story telling. Turns out they're still very delightful to read!

I survived Tahoe. Turns out I still remember how to downhill ski and I still don't know how to cross-country ski. It was a fun & educational trip but I don't think I'll be doing it many more times. Four hours in a car seems far more unbearable to me then four hours in a plane.

Scans, scans, scans... Here's some scans from Dr. Sketchy's on the 5th. The mermaid costume was impressive. I appreciate her nods to The Little Mermaid in her poses, despite her lack of red hair.

I did not come near to winning the contest (she was just one of those kinda' judges, you know?) but at least I liked my entries. Contest theme: Mermaid in a Martini Glass. I've since mailed off the 2 entries to miscellaneous folks as part of the letter swap. I've given away all my good tea, clearly I'm hurting for content at this point ;) I keep meaning to pull together a zine about data structures but... not. Been busy, yo!

Saw Hansel & Grettle. Do not recommend. Am hoping to catch Warm Bodies and Beautiful Creatures in theater because I'm pathetic. Warm Bodies I at least enjoyed the book. Beautiful Creatures has great trailer music:
and a fun soundtrack:

Also, I played Lady Blackbird again. That happened. Yeah....

In closing, I am tired. I've been doing a lot and yet still not enough. One thing I know I'm not doing enough of now is exercise. My snazzy new Fitbit tells me so. ;)

Busy Month

'Sup

February has lots of things. I will be up skiing, I'll be up in Seattle, we'll be hosting an Oscar party, there's two Dr. Sketchy's, I'm attending my first conference ever via work and I'm participating in the Month of Letters challenge which means every not-Sunday or Monday the 18th I'm dropping something in the mail.

I'm also itching to sketch more since I accidentally went through my old collection of doodles... I was all prepared to rot my brain and waste my time on the Starcraft II : Heart of the Storm beta (went to Gamestop and got a key and everything!) but my game installation appears to be in a sad state and I can't play! :( So instead I spent Saturday night trying to get my groove back. Above is my tabletop character Jaya. Mel would give me a hard time for the continuing inconsistencies in character model but something is better then nothing. Shirt heavily referenced from this photo.

Sketches from the Ball

While I would never claim to be that good at it, I do very much love to sketch at events where people are dressed up. It combines the delight of people watching with some artistic exercise, isn't as lazy as poorly-done photography (the only type of photography I'm currently trained in), and removes any awkwardness of attending an event alone. I used to be better at it, as demonstrated by some scans from the 2008 Ball [1] [2] [3]. My rusty skills in no way deter me from continuing to attempt it however. I had a lovely tiny black square book to work with this year, which I believe is an improvement... though I've a spot in my heart for the old now-filled-up sketch book which was tall and narrow with an ornate cover and magnetic clasp...

Some highlights & photos taken by a talented collection of random photographers:

• Diver Helmet Man w/ Bowler was fantastic! He had a drink in his hand, a dapper hat atop his helmet, and what looked like a good attitude from my vantage point across the dance floor. Interestingly enough there was another diving helmet, though I think dapper hat man wore it better.
• This year's Dark Garden fashion show was one of the best yet. The fashion line of corsets + dresses/skirts made me seriously re-consider my no-corset stance. Sadly I can never sketch these shows because I'm absolutely frozen in place with awe. There were in particular a lot of buckles and straps across corsets and skirts and lovely silhouettes that were snug on top and flared around the knees. [1] [2]
• I am always delighted by the acrobatics at the Ball. This year had a talented silk straps act, an impressive rope/cord act done by a woman (I believe I've only seen men perform with it so far), and a far more amazing then initially expected bike act. There were other acts as well, but I've not found good photos of them yet...
• I saw Holy Motors a couple days before the Ball... let me just say, it made watching her act a bit uncomfortable. That movie is really, really, really strange... that doesn't mean it's good, am not sure if it's bad. It's just odd to the point of being nearly nonsensical...
• Did not like the music as much as last year, sadly. I saw Shovelman in passing but didn't get to listen to him play as much as I would have liked. Delachaux is an awesome DJ & I can barely stand to listen to Miz Margo string together more then 3 tracks.
• The belly dancer was to die for. I believe her name is NagaSita. Her movements are magic. (I wish she had more appropriate music to dance to... like some killer techno)
• New crazy costumes every year. Less Edward Gorey themed ones this year (no one in a giant iceberg, alas) but some very original ones stood out: gentleman frog & tentacle woman (sketched below and not be be confused with this other lady adorned with squid)

Alas, my black marker was lost rather early on the second night and let me tell you, you can not sketch at the Edwardian Ball without copious amounts of black ink. This wound up putting quite a cloud over Sunday night and sent me home before the end of the evening (that, and Miz Margo's DJing) Though none of them made it into scanned sketches, mad props given to the crew who posed upstairs in their stark black & white costumes without moving (or with minimal but continous movement). Enjoyable to watch, useful to sketch, good idea all around. Hope they carry it over to next year. Luckily my friend Suko attended with me on Friday night and took a lovely shot of both the model modeling and myself hard at work trying (but failing) to sketch him. In closing, here is something rarely seen- an photo of me in full get-up. The outfit was more silly then usual, as is my pose. I compensated by wearing all black on Sunday.