Susan Arthur

I found out Wed AM before I went to the book repair workshop for the day that I was to be able to make a scroll in honor of my lovely apprentice harlenquinzell receiving a Coral Branch on Sat at Ymir. Eek. I rummaged through my books and found one with a good selection of artwork that might work, and slammed it into my bag as I ran out the door. Sunneva and I conferred over lunch and decided which piece to use. Wed night I cleaned off my drafting table and played with scroll texts a bit. I was having absolutely no luck with fine motor skills that night so I took the wussy way out and retired to bed with a book. Thurs AM I hit the callig boards, so to speak.

I had no idea how much I rely on being able to print out everything on my trusty printer. I've been having trouble with it for a month or two, and in trying to fix the original problem (won't scan) I "fixed" it so it won't even print at all now. In fact, the computer doesn't even know I have a printer now. Damn, I'm good. The immediate effect was that I couldn't print out the final text and I couldn't scan and reverse the image from the book. Off to Kinko's.

I had sort of forgotten how long it's been since I did any callig, too. Sigh. I am SO not happy with the callig. Spacing issues, mainly, and spacing is always a problem for me. Sigh.

So, Thurs night I was going to Livia's to help her with final touches on the two scrolls she did for Ymir. In a stroke of good fortune or good planning, Sunneva lives one door down from Livia. Convenient, eh? I just went over a few hours earlier than I told Livia I'd be there, parked my thoroughly unremarkable beige car several spots farther away from her house, and took the callig'ed piece to Sunneva's for her to transfer the drawing and start painting. At the appointed hour, I showed up on Livia's doorstep, and we took care of our business as planned. When I left, instead of getting in my car, I sashayed back down to Sunneva's where we worked a bit longer before I took the (half done?) scroll back home. All I can say is, Sunneva and I must be the world's slowest combat scribes. Heh. I worked on it all day Friday, and took it BACK over Fri night. I had Sunneva call me when Livia left for site Fri night so she wouldn't see me come in. We took turns painting till I had to come home and get some sleep so I could be at least remotely coherent in class on Sat. (Which was only mildly successful, BTW. The sleep was good, but the coherent part... not so much.) I have progress pics here; the ones that say "Thursday" show work that was done by quitting time Thursday night. The Friday ones were what was done when I took it back to Sunneva's Friday evening. She finished it after I left. We are both very pleased with it. Livia seems happy, too. We'll have to get her to post pics of the finished piece.

Ymir was good. Weather was about as good as it gets for the second weekend in February. During the day, it was damn near perfect, but I admit that my toes were small round lumps of ice by the time court was over. I have no idea what the temp was by then; it got down to mid twenties during the night but it was surely nowhere near that at 7 PM. I helped in the kitchen during feast, and damn, Daemon and Emma put out a fine feast. The pork loin was particularly succulent, moist, tender, and garlicky. Does it get any better than that? I think not. There was also a chicken course and a leg of lamb course, but I was stuffed just from nibbling. I can't imagine whole servings of each dish.

All in all, a fine weekend. Now to do homework.

Oh, and you can also see a picture of poor Miss Molly with a nekkid neck, after the small tumor was removed. I swear, the vet took out a huge divot. And nekkid cat necks don't appear to be pretty even without chunks missing. Poor kitty.

Well, at least in the context of my usual, sit-in-my-room sort of weekend, this one had some stuff going on.

First I got a commission for a peerage scroll, specifically to be trompe l'oeil. Cool! I haven't done one of those in a while, and that sounds like fun. So I started practicing my callig and fiddled around with the wording of the scroll to make the important parts fit. Lots more practice to do.

Today I invited harleenquinzell and zihuatanejo over for dinner. I fixed Lemon-Roasted Chicken (yum!) and a recipe from my new cookbook- Confetti Kale, which was.... interesting. Gorgeous, but interesting. It had a red pepper and some white corn cooked with the kale. Now if the kale weren't so bitter it would have been very good. Oh, well, it sure was pretty! Along with that I was going to serve pasta with an alfredo sauce. I had bought some sauce and thought, hey, why not just heat it in the jar? Well, now I know why NOT to heat it in the jar, and I think I can even guess the physics behind what happened. See, there was this big POP! sound, and then there was pasta sauce allllll over the inside of the microwave. Heh. Dripping off the top, running down the sides... I fear that there may even be sauce inside the vents, which will smell just lovely in a few days. Ewwww. Anyway, I'm guessing that an air bubble formed about halfway down the jar, and had no way to escape. The jar just directed the bubble the only way it could go-- straight up. Whee. At least there was enough left in the jar to coat the pasta, so all was well. Messy, but well. Since that was my fisrt explosion ever in a microwave, I don't feel too bad about it. Oh, yeah-- and for dessert I made one of my mother's apple pies. Yummmm, indeed! I really don't generally care for apple pie, but her recipe is worth making. It was a suitably tasty meal and I'm still stuffed.

Minutes after everyone left, I got a call from Mother. I mentioned the other day that my aunt fell and broke her hip, and I've been waiting for Mother to call and tell me how the surgery went. As it turns out, they haven't been able to do the surgery. When they were examining my aunt, they found out that she has three blockages and needs heart surgery. They won't fix her hip until they get her heart fixed. Tomorrow the doctors are going to make a decision about what to recommend, and then it'll be up to her to make the final decision about what to do. One of the heart doctors told her today that he's worked on 70 year olds who are in worse shape than she is, so I guess that's something. Mother says she's in a great deal of pain and, probably as a consequence, is frequently confused. It doesn't help that in the last month, she's been in three different hospitals and a nursing home.

I have got to get the scroll done enough to take it to Kentucky to draw/paint. I really think I'd have an awful time trying to do calligraphy there, since I get too distracted if there's any talking going on, and since there's a TV playing loudly most all the time at my parents' house. Sigh.

Night, all.

Quite the pleasant weekend. ( See more details of the weekend )

In other news, I'd been worrying about something I expected to be a problem for a few weeks, but had been so focused on the scroll I hadn't had a chance to actually check it out. Today I did, and I think it's less of a problem than I had feared. ( Weird tent discussion follows. )

In other matters of cosmic importance, I think I need classes in how to eat a tossed salad without looking like an idiot. Or is that possible? I admit, I don't recall seeing elegant salad eaters even in movies, but even in the real-people world, no one else looks as goofy as I feel. First off, the lettuce is always in big pieces- bigger than will gracefully fit into my mouth. Then you have to spear some stuff (lettuce, tomatoes) while piling other stuff on top of your fork (carrots, croutons) so as far as I can tell, it's not really possible to get a variety of things in one bite. Boring. Or should I just try for excitement elsewhere and let the salad-eating experience be boring as it need be? There, I knew that'd give you something to lay awake nights worrying about. Heh.

General frustration. The scroll is nearly done... really. Very little painting left to do. It's just that I've reached that unfortunate phase where I'm tired of looking at it. Happens every time; it always just takes a bit longer to finish than my enthusiasm lasts. Annoying. It's also unfortunate that I have other stuff to do to get ready for the event, since this lack of enthusiasm makes me dawdle over the scroll, thus delaying the other stuff I need to do, too.

Livia has thus far been lucky and has not heard the alleged "music" from upstairs. I haven't heard him for a long time, either, and thought that my fans were probably just masking the sound of his practicing. Nope, tonight I heard him practicing for a few minutes. Heh, heh. Livia will get the full benefit sooner or later. Poor woman.

Second entry today... I got the gold leaf on the gesso. Woot! Amazing, though, how something that shines like... well, gold... makes every little flaw show right up. I burnished the gesso before applying the leaf, so it was nice and shiny. Oh, baby. It'ts looking SO good. I have to lean up the lines... the gold stuck to them, too. (I could never figure out how come it stuck to the ink so easily but not always the gesso.) I should be able to start painting tomorrow.

I just looked at my calendar and realized I was supposed to volunteer at the library this morning. I was sure I hadn't signed up for today, but apparently I was wrong. Embarrassing. Very.

Instead, I spent the day starting over on the current scroll. For once, it wasn't the callig that prompted this turn of events. (That's so common I don't even mention it.) No, I spent the day yesterday inking outlines, and a good portion of the night lying in bed thinking about how bad they looked. I used a pen that was too wide, and so instead of looking all light and airy, the vine things on the sides were heavy and awful. When I got up this morning, it looked as ham-handed as it did when I went to bed last night, so I started over. It took me about two hours to re-do the calligraphy. I'm getting ready to start the inking... again. This time I'm using a dip pen which will give me more control over the width of the line than taking the "easy" way did. Sigh.

The kittens are growing up. They have (or at least one of them has) become a Mighty Hunter. When I went to the kitchen this morning I found that a roll of paper towels had escaped from its assigned position and was apparently making its way to the bedroom where I lay sleeping. If it hadn't been for my fearless kitten, I might be dead in my bed right now, smothered by a vicious roll of paper towels. My protector, however, had gutted it thoroughly and I only needed to dispose of the shredded remains of this most dangerous of creatures. (Cue Wild Kingdom music.)

My apprentice came over to work last night. We sewed on her dress, and got it done except from some embroidery she's going to do around the neck, and hemming it. We can do that another night this week.

The scroll has reached the real-paper stage. I had laid out the calligraphy lines last night, so this morning I got up, practiced a bit to get my hand (and my Hand) warmed up, and started to do... Real Calligraphy. Since I had done at least three practice runs of the main body of the text, and had the best one taped beneath my (translucent) Pergamenata as a guide, I figured this would be a piece of cake. I was not even a third of the way through when Idonea called. While I was talking to her, I glanced at the scroll, and noticed that the last line I'd done was, in a word, embarrassing. The first half of the text was condensed and the last half was stretched out to make it fill the line. I stood back a few feet and looked at it, and it still looked crappy. WTF? How did I miss that before? When we finished talking, I looked at it some more and debated. I finally took it off the desk and got out fresh paper. With all the work I've put into making this calligraphy right,, I couldn't let it go out looking like that. By the time I got the calculations done for how to get the most scrolls out of the sheet, cut the paper, and re-drawn the callig lines, it was lunch time. So now I've eaten and read all my friends' journals, and I'm ready to go back to work. At least I know I won't be attacked by a sneaky roll of paper towels.

What a perfect song to be playing... I have a friend who lives in Santa Rosa Beach, Fl, which the Weather Channel guy specifically mentioned as being in Dennis' path. That sucker is a Category 4 right now. Beth and Stan have always been pretty blase about hurricanes, but I'll tell ya something... after Fran, which technically wasn't even a hurricane by the time it blew four oak trees over on my house, I don't ever want to be that close to any hurricane again, never mind a category four. I say that, but I don't know that I'd evacuate from where I live now, except maybe in light of the aftermath. I'm on the second floor of a three story building with 12" thick masonry walls, so I'm not likely to have the roof land on me, tree branches come through the walls at me, or flooding get to me. The aftermath, however... I also remember no water, no power, no phones.... ah, good times. Har.

In other news: I found this article interesting. I've never considered myself to be particularly analytical about politics, but I thought this was pretty obvious. So much so, in fact, that I was almost surprised to see an article articulating it. Now, if.... oh, never mind. Not gonna happen, anyway. Sigh.

The new scroll is coming along. For some reason, the acanthus leaves have given me fits this time. Usually I don't have any trouble with them. I finally got 'em going, though. Whew. I plan to try real raised gold leaf gesso this time. I found the required hide glue on Friday, which had been a problem in the past. So, what with one thing and another, I'm feeling all happy about the scroll. Whee!

I've been working on calligraphy this AM and figured out a good trick to help fix my spacing troubles. I always print out the text I want to use on the computer, in big letters so I can read it easily while I work. A long time ago I figured out that once I have an idea (from practicing the text) of how many words will go on each line, I can then adjust the width of the borders so that the same number of words print per line of the Word/Word Perfect document. This really helped keep me from losing my place. Today I realized that if I draw vertical lines top-to-bottom on the print out, with corresponding lines on the scroll page, I can use them as a guide to help keep my letters from spacing out. Then I figured out that if the printed text is justified on both edges, the resulting calligrapy text would also align, at least much more closely than it has before. The result still isn't as perfectly aligned as my Laurel's was, but damn! It's so much more evenly spaced than anything I've ever produced before. I'm so proud of myself! I know there are some natural calligraphers out there who will think this a very awkward way to work, but.... pbthpthbth! It's going to help me a lot. Now I can start on the rest of the design. The fun part-- Whee!!

What a pleasant weekend! (This was supposed to be Monday’s entry, but I had a hardware lockup—peripherals, not the Mac—and lost several well-honed paragraphs. I was not amused.) Nothing really exciting happened, but then again, it wasn’t dramatic, and that in itself can be wonderful. Just ask Brigida, who is so drama-ed out that she wants to come over next weekend for a couple of drama-free hours. She wants to sit in a white room, (that would have to be the studio, which I find inherently less restful than other rooms, but it doesn’t have yellow walls,) and talk about stuff that isn’t stressful, although even she admits it’s not always possible to predict what will trip her switch. We could eat white, non-exciting food and drink only white stuff. We had some fun creating the menu for this meal. We came up with pork (the other white meat,) mashed potatoes (no chives) and cream gravy, and cauliflower with white cheese sauce. We’d drink white wine, of course. For desert, rice pudding (maybe with almonds and golden raisins) and then maybe White Russians. All this reminds me of the meal Alfred Hitchcock is reported to have served once; all the food, including the butter, was dyed blue. His guests were said to have a hard time eating. This wouldn’t be quite as bad, but it would be pretty weird.

Tournament of Chivalry was fun. I would have enjoyed it more if I’d packed the night before or else gotten up early enough to make sure I had everything I needed before I left the house. (Duh.) As it was, I had to come back home (good thing I’m only a half hour away from site) and lost a chunk of time out of the middle of the event. I did get what I needed done, though, so I don’t have that hanging over my head for another day. I got to spend a couple of hours with Alianor, too. I’m doing a scroll for her, and she’s doing some stained glass in exchange, so I got to do some window shopping. Heh. (Couldn’t resist.)

I also got to see Livia’s two latest scroll’s and was very impressed and excited at her progress. Sometimes people talk about “progress” when somebody’s work starts out really sucky, but in this case it started out good, with great promise and is getting better, so I really am excited. Did I mention impressed? And excited?

After the event I went to dinner with Ysolt. Lots of times it’s fun to do a huge dinner and circulate between tables gossiping, but Ysolt really wanted quiet decompression time, I think. She’s been spending a lot of time with Geva, who’s just gotten out of the hospital and gone into a really bad nursing home. What with one thing and another, she’s wound up taking care of a lot of Geva’s financial details, too. The whole situation has been rough on everyone. Geva’s mother may be able to help more now, though she needs several months of R&R herself.

My mother called yesterday to say that she got the birthday package I sent on Saturday. Damn good thing the USPS was having a fast delivery spell, is all I can say. She actually got the package on her birthday! I sent a silk scarf from (you guessed it) Ten Thousand Villages and a card made from the original painting I used to make the self-portrait icon I’m using on LJ. I think she was as pleased with the card as with the scarf. She loves the medieval cards I make, and sends them to all her friends, and brags on how I paint them. They write back and say how they love the cards. Now if I could only make a living selling cards to little old ladies who like medieval cards. Hell, I’m not proud. I’d even sell to people who aren’t little old ladies.

I’ve been painting on Keith’s AoA scroll, which is about three quarters done. I pulled my old stunt of doing the main body of the text and then going directly to the illumination—in this case, a trompe l’oeil border, because that’s the fun stuff. I didn’t do his name yet, because I’m going to do that in red, and I didn’t have the red mixed up, and I just didn’t get the Rex/Regina and Heraldic confirmation part done, because I just wanted to start the fun stuff. Now I have to go back and do the rest of the calligraphy, which just gives me hives. It’s a Batarde, which is not a hand I’m comfortable with, and now I have to make the last part match the part I’ve already done. Erk. Stupid of me. Plus, I haven’t drawn the heraldry yet, and I’m not really looking forward to that, either. He doesn’t have simple heraldry with stars or wavy or anything like that. Nope, he has entwined snakes, owls, and apples, all of which are deeply symbolic. (Of course. Nothing is simple for him; everything is deep.) The real kicker is, at this point I wonder if he will even want the damn thing. I’m pretty sure he isn’t playing and probably won’t ever play. I’m not sure he’ll want a reminder of me hanging on his wall. Well, if it were me hanging, maybe…. Oh, nevermind.

I got registered for Pennsic yesterday. Whee! I’m looking forward to going after missing a year. It is at least theoretically possible I won’t be able to go, but the stars would have to align in a fairly rigid way for that to happen. If I can’t go I should know far enough in advance to either sell my space to someone else or get a refund. It’s also theoretically possible I’ll be traveling most of the month of August--to Kentucky to see family for a week, then to Pennsylvania. Hrm. Wonder if those could/should be back-to-back? Make a big loop instead of going to Ky, coming back here, unpacking, repacking, then going to Pa? Wonder what the relative sanity factor is? Shit, there’s a pun in there, isn’t there? Haw, haw.

The kittens’ distinct personalities are really starting to come out lately. If one of them jumps into my lap and immediately starts purring very loudly, it’s Carmen. If one of them jumps into my lap and wants attention it’s Miranda. If one of them tries to leap to my shoulder from the floor, it’s almost certainly Miranda. The one who is most likely batting stuff onto the floor while looking innocent is Miranda. Really, it’s like it took two kittens to make up Niccolo’s personality. One of them has taken to sleeping under the covers, too, but I haven’t been awake enough to find out which of them it is.

I’ve got a good mix of CDs in my player, on random play. It’s kept me entertained for a couple of days so far. It includes Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon, Bonnie Raitt, the Putomayo American Blues compilation, the Allman Bros, Patsy Cline, and Toni Price. The only problem I’ve found with it is that it’s pretty hard to paint those fine details when I’m dancing. Heh. They might call it “blues,” but baby, if Taj Mahal singing Cakewalk Into Town doesn’t make you feel happy, maybe there’s something wrong. Or, to put it more bluntly, mebbe you jes cain’t feel.

I think I should take advantage of this dancety feeling to get some dishes and cleaning done. Later, gators.