The book I’m currently reading deals somewhat with antique jewelry, and mentions lover’s eye brooches a few times.  Finally, I had to satisfy my curiosity.

The lover’s eye is a Georgian trend, originally intended to give the wearer a remembrance without revealing the identity of his or her lover.  Evidence suggests the brooches became popular when Prince George exchanged one with his lover, Mrs. Fitzherbert. Closer to the Victorian period, lover’s eyes were often used as a memorial.

Usually a brooch, though sometimes a ring or pendant, lover’s eyes are delicate gouache paintings on ivory, with a crystal covering.  They are exceedingly rare and fakes abound.  Generally, the more elaborate the setting, the more closely a collector should should scrutinize the piece.

Modern versions are as rare as antique.  Personally, I think lover’s eyes are beautifully creepy, and it’s time to dust off this delicious tradition.

Mark Ryden painting Incarnation. I wish this had been twice as long, as it only gets to the rough stage of the painting. Note the full-size sketch to his left, and all the visual refs he grabs.

Also, a thought about yesterday’s post: why wax? Would something like polyclay work as well?  Hmm.

A wax museum is a great place to educate the populace, highlighting historical figures and taking special care with accuracy.  Ha, just kidding.  I’d rather emphasize the strange, horrible, haunted, and titillating.  Proposed displays:

Walk of Mayors and Other Robber Barons. Not all the mayors, obviously.  Just the most recent and the most salacious, along with a few extras like Ben Holladay and Francis Xavier.  Hawthorne gets his own section, because hey, asylums are spooky.

Portland Celebrities. Callahan, Ursula LeGuin, Matt Groening, Danny Glover, and anyone else we can shoehorn in.  Hey, that guy who played McGuyver was from around here, right?  He gets a spot as McGuyver and Jack O’Neill.  Oh, and life-sized Simpsons figures (how creepy would that be?) to go with Groening.

Lathe Of Heaven.  Not only did LeGuin write the book, but the film was made here.  Also, this is just out-of-the-blue weird.  People will say “Why the hell is there a Lathe of Heaven display?” Every wax museum needs at least one of these.  It will involve lasers, and that will be enough.

The Rat Pack.  I have always admired Newport’s display of Sammy Davis Jr., Liza, and the rest.  It’s a lounge setting, with a soundtrack that asks the audience to sing along.  Onlookers stand around in subtle embarrassment, afraid to sing, but wondering if they’ve hurt Frank’s feelings.  It gives the museum a sense of history.  People will assume the museum must have been around since the 60s.  Also, Sammy Davis Jr., with that eye?  Creepy.  Maybe we can work in some lasers.

And then, for no apparent reason, just as it is in all wax museums, there must be a Chamber of Horrors.  I say make it 18+ so we can get away with more awful stuff, and also nudity.  I’m not so much into gore, but we gotta have it to draw the crowds.  Maybe a Dexter display. Just include lots of ghosts and vampires and stuff for me.

In addition, the museum should have a bar that is accessible both from the beginning and end of the display.  The beginning, because wax museums are totally more fun drunk, and at the end, because wax museums require more drinking to forget.  Microbrews, natch.  There will be one way to exit from the bar, which will include a surprise corner containing a final figure of Sasquatch.  Lots of teeth.  Motion activated roaring.  The idea is to make traumatized, twice-drunk people say “holy fuck!” and possibly mess themselves.  This is where we take the blackmail photos.

Gravecast is offering free spooky soundscapes to download

The Bone Room Should you ever need lollipops containing parboiled scorpions. Via

Kirsten Hassenfeld makes amazing things from paper.  Better than her site, is this great post from All Things Paper.

Dark Geisha Costumes

Because of this post at All Things Paper (which, by the way, is a fine, fine blog), I have discovered a new beautiful thing: Kolam, or Rangoli. Women draw these ephemeral patterns on the ground outside their doorsteps. Similar to sand painting, white and colored rice powder is used to create the art. Dots and lines are drawn first, to guide the pattern.

Just before daylight, a village woman prepares the ground before the entrance of her house. After the day’s initial tasks are done, she sweeps the front porch area with a broomstick made of coconut fronds. The sound of her broomstick striking the earth resonates with those of other women who are also sweeping their thresholds. Soon there is an orchestra of brooms signaling to those still in bed that morning is coming and that it is nearly time to rise.

After sweeping, she prepares her earth canvas by first coating the ground with a mixture of water and cow dung, which has been chosen for its purification value. Then, with deft and nimble fingers, she first lays out a regular pattern of dots with white powder. By letting the powder run smoothly between thumb and forefingers as if she were pouring dry water, she composes a continuous line, which turns and twists around the initial dots. Some women can draw up to four lines at once, as the powder slips through poised fingers. Sometimes a woman knows a pattern by heart, and sometimes she will create a pattern that is entirely new and unique. Each type of design has a name and a symbolic meaning. On festival days, kolams are particularly large and magnificent.

The Spousal Unit and I spent a good chunk of time last night, mesmerized by videos of women gracefully spreading delicate swoops and curls.  Here are two of our favorites:

]]> http://frykitty.com/2010/07/23/rangoli/feed/ 1 http://frykitty.com/2010/07/22/bits-of-me/ http://frykitty.com/2010/07/22/bits-of-me/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:22:45 +0000 Cat http://frykitty.com/?p=3412 I was going through an old password list, and found some pieces of my web self. Some of these may require registration for you to see my profile. Not long ago, this list would have included a Geocities page. C’mon, you had one too, admit it. The one constant has always been frykitty.com. I’ve been blogging here, frequently or not, for more than 10 years. I suppose this will do for a belated anniversary post. So here, like discarded bits of clothing leading through the house to the bedroom…

My Vox page, which is lovely to look at, but was never very useful to me.

Imood.  I am astonished this is still around.  Every time I find it again, I’m so charmed that I update rather than delete my account.

Cafepress.  Half of it was stuff I made on the fly for a work friend, and means nothing to anyone anymore.  The two frytopia items are from a design I miss very much, and should probably find a way to have again.  WordPress doesn’t play well with just including the raw blog in a design.

Last.fm.  Dang, why haven’t I been here in years and years?  I used to be absolutely addicted, and it’s a cool thing.  Maybe I’ll revive this one.

ICQ.  Bwahaha! I had to delete embarrassing stuff from my profile before I’d post this. I hate to chat, but once upon a time, this, IRC, and AIM were the only games in town.  I remember they used to have the absolute worst, most confusing site on the web.  It still kinda sucks.

Librarything. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a wonderful site; it just never meshed with the way I read.  I put a bunch of stuff in, but stopped a year or so ago.  Spending the time to log books got annoying. I still keep track, but with a little paper notebook.

MySpace. I wanted MySpace to be what facebook is, but let’s face it, MySpace is complete crap. The only thing it’s good for is band sites.

The Stone was one of my first online obsessions.  An elegant puzzle game steeped in mystery, it encouraged lots of research and community.  It no longer exists, but there’s a tribute site that preserves the puzzles, though you must register. I think I still have my Stones (yep, I bought more than one) somewhere.

Tribe. I can’t believe I didn’t delete my account. The thing about message boards: on most of them, it’s people saying the same things over and over.  Once you’ve read them for a month or so, there’s little new. So I get bored with the boards. I was really into this for a while, though.

And now that I’m fully nostalgic, I think I’ll grab a Mt. Dew and party like it’s 1995.

I found a blank spot on Google Maps, which in Gresham means a butte.  It was nameless, and I was curious, so I went driving around, looking for good access.  Found okay access, and will explore more later.  In the meantime, I came home to try to find more information.  Mapquest had a name: Grant Butte.  That led me to this entry about Kelly Butte. It looked awfully familiar.  Sure enough, I’d perused it a few years ago when I was exploring Kelly Butte, and even commented.   I guess all roads lead to cyclotram (which, incidentally, is a fave blog of mine).

Wait for Dusk hasn’t been released yet.  On my wishlist, it looks exactly the same as Kindle books that are currently out.  I have to click through on a title to figure out if I can buy it yet.  Very, very frustrating.  I have faith that they’ll fix it.  Thought they would have fixed it already, so I’m actually sending them a note as well as whining here.

Yes, I know your wishlist is supposed to be used by other people buying stuff for you, so the Kindle status shouldn’t matter, as it can’t be a gift purchase.  In reality, and I am darned sure Amazon knows this, people use their wishlist as a personal shopping list.  Right now, I’m adding print editions instead of Kindle.  This is after I went through my wishlist and changed all my print editions to Kindle where available.  This book junkie is getting irritated.

I’m new at this, so one reason I’m posting is to see how my technique changes as I get more experience and look around for more inspiration.

This is “3 Laws”.  The stamp is based on the cover of the first edition of “I, Robot”.  I also carved the moon wedge in the background, and I think I’ll be using it a lot.  The robot was embossed on to card stock using a mix of a couple of reds and a silver, then cut out and affixed to the background.  Most of the background is blending chalks, which I just started using and lovelovelove.

This card is called “Klaatu barada nikto!”  Sorry for the unimaginative titles–I name them after the letterbox, and I don’t like to be too cryptic.  Of course, it’s Gort.  This card is very shimmery, which doesn’t show up well here.  Swirly alcohol inks make up the background.  There’s that moon again.  Gort is embossed in a mix of black and charcoal, and cool mini-ribbons (I forget what they’re called–they’re for scrap booking) border the top and bottom.

“DON’T PANIC!”  Marvin and his caption are two separate stamps.  I planted them both with the letterbox.  This one is the Spousal Unit’s favorite so far.  Copic markers, ink, silver gel pen.

Here’s R2 in “The Force”.  Oops, looks like I got the scan a little crooked. Blending chalks and pencils for the background here.  Keep in mind that this card is 2.5″ x 3.5″.  Yes, that teeny robot was a bitch to carve.

First, the one-quart Ziploc. I have cut a piece of cardboard and inserted it into the Ziploc to make it easier to work with. I am working on a large plastic cutting board.

The side with writing is the front. If your baggie has no writing, note that one edge above the zip is shorter than the other. The long edge is the front. We’ll begin applying tape on the back, just below the blue line.

Apply tape all the way down, overlapping each strip by about 1/3. Let the tape go beyond the sides, and go about 1/2-inch beyond the bottom of the baggie.

Clean up the edges, leaving enough to fold over to the other side. Turn it over.

Cut from the bottom of the baggie to the bottom of the tape on both sides.

Fold up the center, and remove the extra tape.

Fold in the sides.

Tape the front of the baggie. Go right past the top, adding 3-4 inches.

Clean up the edges, leaving enough room to fold, and turn everything over.

Again, cut from the bottom edge of the bag to the bottom of the tape on both sides, and fold the bottom up. Get rid of the extra tape at the bottom, but don’t fold the sides yet.

Cut from the blue line at the top to the edge of the tape on both sides. Fold in the sides.

Beginning at the top edge of the baggie, apply tape to the other side of the top flap. Overlap a little at the top.

Lining up so the edge is flush with the rest of the pouch, clean up the edges of the top flap.

Get rid of those tiny sticky bits.

Fold over that top edge.

Remove the cardboard. Fold the top flap, then fold the pouch again. Crease it a bit on this second fold.

Apply velcro tabs to both sets of folds. As you can see, I put down one part of the tab, then dab it with a little chalk ink and fold the pouch to see where the other half of the tab goes.

Ready for letterboxy goodness! When you fill the pouch, the contents must fit in the bottom half, or the pouch will not fold properly.

Ready to plant (indeed, this one was planted an hour later).