Mermaid

This weekend I drew a mermaid on 6x6 bristol board. I used just a regular ball point pen, though, because it was too freakin' hot to use the dip pen. I haven't even inked the pencils for Arthur and Georgie I did last Tuesday because it has been too hot out. The ink goops up almost as fast as I can get the pen to the page. Hopefully this Saturday morning or Sunday morning, I will be able to. But I have to get my hair dyed for my High School Reunion in a couple weeks.

I was inspired by the Girls Drawing Girls blog, whose theme last week was mermaids so I saw a bajillion mermaid drawings and had to do this one to get it out of my brain. For some reason I am tending to draw people with great big heads and tiny little necks...

Also, this weekend we got to have "lunch" with my Aunt Bonnie who lives in New York. I haven't seen her in two years about, so that was nice. We went to the Greenbean and Yum. I got a Peach Granola Muffin that was divine and Bonnie got a Vanilla Lavender Italian Soda. Pretty good. I would have preferred more vanilla less lavender. Then we ran home and got the dogs and represented the Boyle's at my Aunt Carol's party because none of the rest of my immediate family could go. Jerks. :) Actually, Isaac might have gone after we left, since we had to leave early because we have a headlight out. Fortunately, we were going to bring the car in for a tune up today anyways so we just had them fix that at the same time.

Playing catchup

Whoops. I forgot to post in a while. Maybe next time I will post about the plants. There is a new one...

Well, I have been up to a lot. Let's start with Harry Potter Crafts. I participated in the last swap, which was potions themed. Here is the very practical swap I received. From left to right, there is glittering body spray that smells like pear, brown sugar hand sanitizer, and baking soda based cleanser. And I think a small hand-knit sock.

I sent my recipient a potions recipe box.

This was pretty fun to make. I got the box at Good will and sanded and painted it. I am pretty pleased. I think if I make another, though, it will be even better.

I also sent her these potions. The sleeping Draught broke, but I sent it without the liquid. I put the correct number of drops of food coloring in each bottle so she only had to add the water to get these colors.

Haha. Funny stuff, right? Anyways, here is a scarf I wove. This one was tricky because the yarn I used was shlubby.Crystal Palace Yarns Waikiki in Kiwi/Mango. I am a bit smitten with it. It is nice and soft.

I also knit these socks from the Rockin'Sock Club in just under a week and a half. Pretty awesome, right?

They are pretty comfy. My next project is the Lilac Leaf Shawl. I have one end done and I am almost at the same point on the other end. I just need to have it done by October 15 for the Nordic Knitting Conference, which makes me giddy every time I think about it.

Also, I bought this funny magnet I drew for The Jerks Store. We will get pictures posted when it arrives and let you know how the quality is. $7 is a good price for a test though. Better than just buying a bag. Since Abe has a job now and I can never tell when the dishes are clean or dirty, we got this so I don't have to call him at work and ask.

Finally, I drew this the other day and I am pleased. I think it was inspired by looking at drawings of Regina Spektor on Deviant Art.

Check it out

Check out my desktop. I can't stop laughing.

A short post

Just a quick post to link to this which is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while. The guy that did it took WWII photos and found the places they were taken then took pictures today and overlaid the WWII photos so you can see both times at once. Some of them are really powerful.

--Abe

Good news

So, after much deliberation and consideration, I went back to the metro and asked if I could work there. My friends Kim and Jeff were amazing and not only got me rehired but did it quickly too. I'll be on the schedule that starts this Friday!

The pay isn't fabulous but it's not much lower than nintendo and the work environment and management are about 10 billion billion billion times better. So I am very pleased and Angela is really happy as well.

I went in on Sunday to fill out some paperwork and I spent like 3 hours there chatting with old friends and new people too. It was really fun.

I have some pictures to post that we took at the blowing sands gallery this weekend. We dropped in there with Anita and Jim. They both seemed to enjoy the show. Jim became our official first customer of The Jerks too! He bought one of the collections of the first twelve comics that I made for the gallery. You can see the cover, and order one if you want, here.

Anyway, I can't find the cable to get the pictures off my phone at the moment so I'll edit this post and add them tonight or tomorrow after I find that darn thing.

--Abe

Two birds on a wire

I didn't get a chance to post earlier because I had to go to the dentist for a cleaning today. My teeth hurt. Anyways, this Friday I actually did some digital painting. Very fun. Here it is, a short comic inspired by the song Two Birds on a Wire by Regina Spektor on the CD Far. This may be made into a print at some point once we figure out how. Sound good?

Here's a link to a better one.

I also have the plain black and white version up there.

An Isaac'ed weekend

Here's a head kerchief thing I knit with three different yarns from the Phat Fiber box I bought a long time ago. I tried buying one this time but kept getting errors from Etsy so I think I am done with that little experiment. :(

My brother came over this weekend. We had a good time. He arrived before I got home from work, so Abe met him downtown, where they had coffee. Then they came home and played Team Fortress together. When I got home, we went to the Phinneywood Farmer's Market. Isaac bought Strawberry wine, Tayberry wine, and Blackberry wine and let us have the remainders of the strawberry and tayberry. Unfortunately, I didn't like either, but Abe did. So he can have those and I will drink beer. That night Isaac and I played some Lego Batman and it was awesome. I can't wait for him to come down and play with me again. Abe played through it once with me and that was apparently enough for him.

On Saturday, we didn't wake up until 10. Whoops. We went to Patty's Eggnest across the street for breakfast. I had swedish pancakes with strawberries instead of lingonberries. They were pretty good. Then we rushed over to the Sidewalk sale at Acorn Street where I think we (Isaac and I) spent 2 hours or so looking at the yarn. I found this great french one that looked like fur, but I wanted to make a whole purse with it and it was $8 for 17 yards. That was way too expensive. So I bought some other stuff.

The Waikiki from Crystal Palace will some day be woven into an AWESOME scarf. I think it will be awesome. It is the Kiwis/Mangos colorway and I just love it.

The Baby Alpaca Grande from Plymouth Yarns will be fingerless gloves. They were supposed to come with a free pattern, but I didn't get it because I forgot to ask. Though perhaps it is inside the band? Anyways, I can undoubtedly find a pattern on Ravelry, my love. It is so soft, you can barely tell you are touching it. I will make the fingerless gloves and see how it wears. I might get two more skeins to make a pair of the best slipper socks ever.

Finally, there is the Noro Sukko. I think I will be making the Swallowtail shawl out of that. It is a simple shawl pattern and it appears others have done that with success and it looks nice. The colors of the yarn are black, green and brown, as far as I can tell, but I bet there are surprise colors inside too. There always are.

Then we went to the Cartoonists North West meeting where Milt Prigee gave a talk/answered questions. It was fun. He does editorial cartoons, which Abe is more into than I am. Then we dropped Isaac off at the train station to get back home to his GIRLFRIEND. :) Good for him.

Anyways, the other thing I bought at Acorn Street was a skein of Noro to make a tea cozy. And make a tea cosy I did. (I think I just heard one of the dogs fart...) So here it is in all its glory. This is a nice pattern. I am not kidding. I think the whole thing can be knit up in 4 hours (small version). If I hadn't been distracted by how much I love the first X-Men movie, I think I could have knit the whole thing Saturday night, but as it is, I sat there just holding the knitting for a fair chunk of time. So I finished it Sunday morning while I drank tea.

This week on the Ten Ton Studios Sketch Challenge, the theme was Nocturno, an Argentinian graphic novel, by Salvador Sanz. Lovely, but I can't find it in English. Anyways, here is what I drew. It is also up on the Forum.

Last week, I also started the Lilac Leaf Shawl so I will have a Nancy Bush Estonian Lace Shawl to where when I go to the Nordic Knitting Conference in October! (I am taking Icelandic Lace on Saturday and Estonian Cuffs on Sunday.) I started with the other end so that I can knit the middle until I run out of yarn or finish the pattern, whichever comes first. My skein of yarn is about 50 yards smaller than the one called for so I wasn't sure I would have enough.

One of my friends, Celina, put a link to I Write Like on her blog. So I though I would give it a shot. Here are my results. I tried a bunch of things because that is how I am.

When I put in writing from the blog, which is a bit stream of consciousness: Vladimir Nabokov. Abe was impressed.

A story I wrote in high school (which I may end up turning into a graphic novel - 'Cigar Smoke' if I ever talk about it again): Jack London.

Office Cowboy is apparently written like Stephen King. (Haha. There is a joke in that sentence if you know of Stephen King's writing style well enough.)

The water lady story is like Harry Harrison, who I have no idea who that is.

At this point I stared to think it is just completely random.

Vergamon is apparently written like Dan Brown.

A paper for a TC class my last year of college: Agatha Christie.

Hmph.

I will have pictures of my plants in my next post, maybe.