Ridiculous Pasta:
One box of Pasta Roni(r), Angel Hair Pasta With Parmesan Cheese Flavor
One pear chopped into little chunks
Some frozen peas (to taste and whatnot)
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Okay. Prepare Pasta Roni as directed, of course, but somewhere in there, add the chunks of pear and the peas.
Once it's done, sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon on top.
Pasta for texture, sauce for savory-ness, peas for protein, and pear for awesomeness. Plus spices because cooked pear without cinnamon? Come on man, you must be joking.
Seriously. It's ridiculous and delicious and I'm doing it again. I wonder if Pasta Roni(r) is holding a recipe contest.
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Japanese
Junior year is kicking my butt!
I know, I know, excuses. But I'm honestly terrible at Japanese, and I'm taking three classes in it, all on the same days, each of which assumes that it's the only Japanese class I'm taking so it had better cram as much larnin' as possible into my head and quiz it all as often as possible, so I'm constantly overloaded with readings and writings and testings and fillings-out-of-worksheets. And that's without even counting the other (phonetics) class I'm taking. Sigh! And I'm bad at time management or I wouldn't be writing this. Clearly. At 4:40 am.
Oh,
I figured out what that science-fiction-y stone is...prehnite, also known as green (or grossular, sometimes) garnet, with rutile inclusions. Pretty nifty.
I know, I know, excuses. But I'm honestly terrible at Japanese, and I'm taking three classes in it, all on the same days, each of which assumes that it's the only Japanese class I'm taking so it had better cram as much larnin' as possible into my head and quiz it all as often as possible, so I'm constantly overloaded with readings and writings and testings and fillings-out-of-worksheets. And that's without even counting the other (phonetics) class I'm taking. Sigh! And I'm bad at time management or I wouldn't be writing this. Clearly. At 4:40 am.
Oh,
I figured out what that science-fiction-y stone is...prehnite, also known as green (or grossular, sometimes) garnet, with rutile inclusions. Pretty nifty.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A Research Blog
I've lately realized that, while I follow a lot of other jewelry-makers' blogs for techniques, inspiration and tips...that stuff is only interesting to me because I am also a jewelry-maker. And even then, the more interesting blogs have other stuff thrown in, too. Someone's scruffy husband being a dear and fixing the car on the dramatic road trip to the bead show. Someone's apple-cheeked kid spilling ice cream on himself. I'm a sucker for that stuff, and it makes them seem more like real people as opposed to just really-awesome-jewelry machines. I love jewelry, but I will never be a machine. Someone I can relate to is much more interesting.
And I, like every other jewelry-maker and -seller, also have to realize that my target audience is not, in fact, other jewelry-makers; it’s jewelry-buyers, or people who will tell other people about my jewelry. And I can only assume that a string of neat-looking stuff will not hold their attention as much as a real person’s life, because the same is true of me even though jewelry is one of my favorite things. Bottom line, it wouldn’t kill me to show some personality on this thing. Hence my “cooking for absolute idiots” posts showcasing what an absolute idiot I am about cooking. If anyone’s listening, stir-fry is NOT THAT HARD, I SWEAR.
Well, I don’t have a scruffy husband or an apple-cheeked kid...and dear, camera-shy Boyfriend of Mine would probably object to me putting his picture online...but I do have a life besides jewelry. In fact, it’s been taking up all of my time lately. When I said “It would take me 3 pieces a week to catch up” I didn’t mean that I would actually manage that. I knew it wouldn’t happen when I said it, at least not soon, and just recently I started my analyses in earnest, so it definitely won’t. But it is interesting nonetheless. (THOUGH I DID MAKE TWO PIECES TODAY, YES TWO. PICTURES UP SOON.)
So, prepare for a long, laughing, overdramatized account of my adventures in...(dun dun dun) LABELING SOUND FILES!
For anyone who doesn’t know (which is most of the internet) I’m a linguist by major, and my research for this summer has been studying intonation patterns in a production study. Basically I get people to talk into a microphone and then figure out how getting them to say certain things rather than others affects their pitch. It’s the kind of stuff that’s fascinating if you’re a linguist, and if you’re not, you don’t have any opinion about it, so how ‘bout that weather?
But I’m learning a lot of stuff that bears thinking about even if you’re not into intonation, phonetics or any sort of linguistics at all. General research stuff, like: How do you decide when something is an error and when it’s a data point? But back to that in a moment.
My analysis work so far has mostly been prepping things for computers to pull data out of them. I go through sound files and label certain parts, like high points in the pitch and where the vowel starts. Sounds easy, right? Until you realize that I went through a three-day stretch where all I saw was this:
Which by the way, zooms out to this:
Which is fine except it zooms out to this:
And a couple more times, to this:
Which is not quite as large as the whole thing:
Those are 1) the level I work at, 2) zoomed out twice from there, 3) zoomed out twice again 4) zoomed out 4 times from THAT point, and then 5) zoomed out a whole three more times because that’s all of it. Yeah. Eleven zoom-outs total. Notice the way the pitch track disappeared after the first one? That’s because if I have it calculate all of that even if I’m zoomed in to like 2 seconds, it slows down my computer. I have to zoom into ONE SECOND to actually see what I'm analyzing...and the file is ten minutes long. Long story short, I spent 22 hours straight staring at a screen that looks very much like 1) up there, got 8 hours of sleep and then went back to it for another 16. And I only got to halfway through subject 5 before I burned out. There are 6 subjects...I’m taking a break and doing some data-pulling, thanks.
Doing stuff like that really starts to mess with your head after a while. Somewhere in the middle of figuring out where the d ends and the m begins in this squiggly line:
(Hint: The cursor’s on it. Couldn’t tell? That’s okay, it means you’re sane!)
I realized that in trying to label the end of the consonant, I could not remember what consonant “consonant” started with. At one point I freaked out wondering, “Where’s the consonant at the end of ‘be’?? I can’t find it anywhere!” Only to remember that it is, and always will be, in the hammer space.
After several hours of each, I started to get thoroughly sick of nearly everyone’s voice (Okay, just the nasally ones...subject 2 was actually rather adorable). And of course, each and every subject came up with a special individual problem that I had to figure out how to deal with...one subject inexplicably changed all his Ds to Ns – don’t ask me, he doesn’t do it in person – another had a mysterious extra pitch peak that made her samples all look like little hearts, which was cute and all, but I have to label one of those peaks, which one? WHICH ONE? - another subject had weird lilts at the beginnings of the parts that I was labeling that made it impossible sometimes to make an accurate label...and even when it was possible, it was nerve-wracking because every time, I could be wrong. Here I was labeling important parts of the intonation contour, and suddenly this bizarre thing happens and I have no idea what to do...and then each subject proceeded to make his own individual weird thing happen like EVERY OTHER TIME. And since my mentor was on a two-week vacation and is absolutely terrible at answering emails even at the best of times, let alone while hiking with his kids...Yeah. Bad news. Some freaking out happened. When I got too crazy to label anymore, I ended up labeling a lot of them “m” for “help Me please” even when in my normal state they seemed totally fine. And that was for the ones that are totally fine.
Which brings me, by the way, to my previously-mentioned dilemma. How do you tell when something is an error, some outlier to be not counted with the rest...or a data point, a piece of useful information? How do you know when it’s important? For instance:
This is what the contour I was working with looks like:
So what do I do when all of a sudden it looks like this instead?
And there were a lot that were less obviously software problems. Do I assume “That can’t be right, it doesn’t look like the rest of them” or do I have to say, "Well...that’s the way he made it, I have to take that into account.”? Most of the time, it’s the first one...the software I’m using is notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking pitch and is known to change its mind on what’s what pitch depending on things like how far you’re zoomed in, how far left you are of the pitch in question, and what settings you’ve chosen to display the pitch at. It’s usually reasonable, if something looks bizarre, to assume “That’s an error.” Especially the cases where you can see a normal contour under that, looking all groovy, and there’s just a few artifacts screwing it up. Or, if not by virtue of the software, it’s entirely plausibly throw-out-able just because the person got tired and said it wrong. A lot of them switched into listing mode, for instance, when we wanted a pitch contour that sounded like a standalone statement.
But then there are the brain-stirring errors that completely change everything and you have no choice but to just go with it against your will even though you know the sentence doesn’t sound like it looks like that and why is that bump there, but it’s too big to just be an artifact, what’s going on? MOM?!
My “m” labels go through tides of desperation with my sleep cycle...near the end of my “functional” periods there are lots of notes like, “That has to be an error, why would it look like that?”, “Should I be worried about this?” and “This one's high in a really awkward place, much like a stoner at a funeral.” Part of my way to keep myself sane was to think up a new emoticon denoting devastation whenever someone said it in a way that we’d have to throw out, like using the wrong contour, or coughing in the middle. If my mentor ever actually reads those (unlikely), I think he’ll get a new perspective on the art of iconography. They included upside-down, upside-right, backwards and to either side.
Halfway through Subject 4, I got the idea that I’d blog about it afterward...and that kept me going through another half or two of data set, stopping every once in a while to take screenshots. Every annoyance or delay was like “BOO-YAH. ANOTHER INTERESTING SENTENCE. I CAN TOTALLY HYPERBOLIZE THAT.”...including that one.
I still burned out.
Not to complain, though...it was just a strange time not many of anyone who’s going to read this will ever experience...and it’s probably the easiest job I could have that would still be intellectually stimulating, and the schedule is lax enough for me to still be awake at 5:00 am (now)...and if I had left myself more time to do it before it was necessary to get crackin’, then I wouldn’t have had such crazy days, but actually, it was rather fun. I’ll try not to do it again, but if I could go back and have the chance to do it once, I’d still do it the first time. I feel like that’s an experience I ought to have had, doing almost-grad work the summer after my sophomore year. And I’m learning a ton! Pretty soon everyone (who works in intonation theory) will start hearing about Tonal Center of Gravity – and if anyone asks, that’s my mentor’s idea, oh yeah. I know that guy. I could get you an autograph...if you’re nice.
Oh and also, Boyfriend and I had a second anniversary. That was fun. More rain than expected. Less being outside than expected. Therefore, more cozy than expected, so it's all good.
And I, like every other jewelry-maker and -seller, also have to realize that my target audience is not, in fact, other jewelry-makers; it’s jewelry-buyers, or people who will tell other people about my jewelry. And I can only assume that a string of neat-looking stuff will not hold their attention as much as a real person’s life, because the same is true of me even though jewelry is one of my favorite things. Bottom line, it wouldn’t kill me to show some personality on this thing. Hence my “cooking for absolute idiots” posts showcasing what an absolute idiot I am about cooking. If anyone’s listening, stir-fry is NOT THAT HARD, I SWEAR.
Well, I don’t have a scruffy husband or an apple-cheeked kid...and dear, camera-shy Boyfriend of Mine would probably object to me putting his picture online...but I do have a life besides jewelry. In fact, it’s been taking up all of my time lately. When I said “It would take me 3 pieces a week to catch up” I didn’t mean that I would actually manage that. I knew it wouldn’t happen when I said it, at least not soon, and just recently I started my analyses in earnest, so it definitely won’t. But it is interesting nonetheless. (THOUGH I DID MAKE TWO PIECES TODAY, YES TWO. PICTURES UP SOON.)
So, prepare for a long, laughing, overdramatized account of my adventures in...(dun dun dun) LABELING SOUND FILES!
For anyone who doesn’t know (which is most of the internet) I’m a linguist by major, and my research for this summer has been studying intonation patterns in a production study. Basically I get people to talk into a microphone and then figure out how getting them to say certain things rather than others affects their pitch. It’s the kind of stuff that’s fascinating if you’re a linguist, and if you’re not, you don’t have any opinion about it, so how ‘bout that weather?
But I’m learning a lot of stuff that bears thinking about even if you’re not into intonation, phonetics or any sort of linguistics at all. General research stuff, like: How do you decide when something is an error and when it’s a data point? But back to that in a moment.
My analysis work so far has mostly been prepping things for computers to pull data out of them. I go through sound files and label certain parts, like high points in the pitch and where the vowel starts. Sounds easy, right? Until you realize that I went through a three-day stretch where all I saw was this:
Which by the way, zooms out to this:
Which is fine except it zooms out to this:
And a couple more times, to this:
Which is not quite as large as the whole thing:
Those are 1) the level I work at, 2) zoomed out twice from there, 3) zoomed out twice again 4) zoomed out 4 times from THAT point, and then 5) zoomed out a whole three more times because that’s all of it. Yeah. Eleven zoom-outs total. Notice the way the pitch track disappeared after the first one? That’s because if I have it calculate all of that even if I’m zoomed in to like 2 seconds, it slows down my computer. I have to zoom into ONE SECOND to actually see what I'm analyzing...and the file is ten minutes long. Long story short, I spent 22 hours straight staring at a screen that looks very much like 1) up there, got 8 hours of sleep and then went back to it for another 16. And I only got to halfway through subject 5 before I burned out. There are 6 subjects...I’m taking a break and doing some data-pulling, thanks.
Doing stuff like that really starts to mess with your head after a while. Somewhere in the middle of figuring out where the d ends and the m begins in this squiggly line:
(Hint: The cursor’s on it. Couldn’t tell? That’s okay, it means you’re sane!)
I realized that in trying to label the end of the consonant, I could not remember what consonant “consonant” started with. At one point I freaked out wondering, “Where’s the consonant at the end of ‘be’?? I can’t find it anywhere!” Only to remember that it is, and always will be, in the hammer space.
After several hours of each, I started to get thoroughly sick of nearly everyone’s voice (Okay, just the nasally ones...subject 2 was actually rather adorable). And of course, each and every subject came up with a special individual problem that I had to figure out how to deal with...one subject inexplicably changed all his Ds to Ns – don’t ask me, he doesn’t do it in person – another had a mysterious extra pitch peak that made her samples all look like little hearts, which was cute and all, but I have to label one of those peaks, which one? WHICH ONE? - another subject had weird lilts at the beginnings of the parts that I was labeling that made it impossible sometimes to make an accurate label...and even when it was possible, it was nerve-wracking because every time, I could be wrong. Here I was labeling important parts of the intonation contour, and suddenly this bizarre thing happens and I have no idea what to do...and then each subject proceeded to make his own individual weird thing happen like EVERY OTHER TIME. And since my mentor was on a two-week vacation and is absolutely terrible at answering emails even at the best of times, let alone while hiking with his kids...Yeah. Bad news. Some freaking out happened. When I got too crazy to label anymore, I ended up labeling a lot of them “m” for “help Me please” even when in my normal state they seemed totally fine. And that was for the ones that are totally fine.
Which brings me, by the way, to my previously-mentioned dilemma. How do you tell when something is an error, some outlier to be not counted with the rest...or a data point, a piece of useful information? How do you know when it’s important? For instance:
This is what the contour I was working with looks like:
So what do I do when all of a sudden it looks like this instead?
And there were a lot that were less obviously software problems. Do I assume “That can’t be right, it doesn’t look like the rest of them” or do I have to say, "Well...that’s the way he made it, I have to take that into account.”? Most of the time, it’s the first one...the software I’m using is notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking pitch and is known to change its mind on what’s what pitch depending on things like how far you’re zoomed in, how far left you are of the pitch in question, and what settings you’ve chosen to display the pitch at. It’s usually reasonable, if something looks bizarre, to assume “That’s an error.” Especially the cases where you can see a normal contour under that, looking all groovy, and there’s just a few artifacts screwing it up. Or, if not by virtue of the software, it’s entirely plausibly throw-out-able just because the person got tired and said it wrong. A lot of them switched into listing mode, for instance, when we wanted a pitch contour that sounded like a standalone statement.
But then there are the brain-stirring errors that completely change everything and you have no choice but to just go with it against your will even though you know the sentence doesn’t sound like it looks like that and why is that bump there, but it’s too big to just be an artifact, what’s going on? MOM?!
My “m” labels go through tides of desperation with my sleep cycle...near the end of my “functional” periods there are lots of notes like, “That has to be an error, why would it look like that?”, “Should I be worried about this?” and “This one's high in a really awkward place, much like a stoner at a funeral.” Part of my way to keep myself sane was to think up a new emoticon denoting devastation whenever someone said it in a way that we’d have to throw out, like using the wrong contour, or coughing in the middle. If my mentor ever actually reads those (unlikely), I think he’ll get a new perspective on the art of iconography. They included upside-down, upside-right, backwards and to either side.
Halfway through Subject 4, I got the idea that I’d blog about it afterward...and that kept me going through another half or two of data set, stopping every once in a while to take screenshots. Every annoyance or delay was like “BOO-YAH. ANOTHER INTERESTING SENTENCE. I CAN TOTALLY HYPERBOLIZE THAT.”...including that one.
I still burned out.
Not to complain, though...it was just a strange time not many of anyone who’s going to read this will ever experience...and it’s probably the easiest job I could have that would still be intellectually stimulating, and the schedule is lax enough for me to still be awake at 5:00 am (now)...and if I had left myself more time to do it before it was necessary to get crackin’, then I wouldn’t have had such crazy days, but actually, it was rather fun. I’ll try not to do it again, but if I could go back and have the chance to do it once, I’d still do it the first time. I feel like that’s an experience I ought to have had, doing almost-grad work the summer after my sophomore year. And I’m learning a ton! Pretty soon everyone (who works in intonation theory) will start hearing about Tonal Center of Gravity – and if anyone asks, that’s my mentor’s idea, oh yeah. I know that guy. I could get you an autograph...if you’re nice.
Oh and also, Boyfriend and I had a second anniversary. That was fun. More rain than expected. Less being outside than expected. Therefore, more cozy than expected, so it's all good.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Well, that was a PayPal adventure...
Today, my business account got hacked.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."
Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.
I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?
So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.
Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.
And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?
Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.
Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."
Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.
I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?
So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.
Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.
And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?
Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.
Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Kitchen Adventures Part 2!
Made my first pizza last night...REALLY easy, and I didn't even have access to all the *optimal* things that I ought to have had, like flour and a good work space. I ended up just stretching the dough into a rough rectangle on a cookie sheet. I didn't oil the cookie sheet enough, though, that was my only major mistake. But anyway! EASY AS PIE (no pun intended):
Trader Joe's pre-made wheat pizza dough
One sliced tomato
(At least) 3 leaves fresh basil, cut into strips
(Part of) one can of pre-made pizza sauce
Little fresh mozzarella balls, cut into little round slices - as many as you like
Shredded mozzarella cheese
I put the pizza sauce on, then the toppings, and then the shredded cheese, but that's just personal preference. EASY. There are baking instructions on the package of dough so it wasn't even difficult to figure out...it worked exactly as it said. So basically, a really good and reasonably authentic pizza for minimal effort. Bam.
Trader Joe's pre-made wheat pizza dough
One sliced tomato
(At least) 3 leaves fresh basil, cut into strips
(Part of) one can of pre-made pizza sauce
Little fresh mozzarella balls, cut into little round slices - as many as you like
Shredded mozzarella cheese
I put the pizza sauce on, then the toppings, and then the shredded cheese, but that's just personal preference. EASY. There are baking instructions on the package of dough so it wasn't even difficult to figure out...it worked exactly as it said. So basically, a really good and reasonably authentic pizza for minimal effort. Bam.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Cooking adventures! Part One
Part One, that is, because I'll probably have more. It's the first one I've posted, but not actually the first one that's actually happened.
(The last was a delicious pasta dish I proceeded not to improve on the next three times I made it because it was so good, and the first was a delicious stir fry which I only got up the confidence to make after I asked someone (Asian, no less) if he knew how to make stir-fry, and he looked at me like I was insane and told me that was like asking him if he knew how to dance or write. The answer was obviously yes because he was physically capable of holding a pencil and not crippled in the legs. Boyfriend of mine, lovely man that he is, confirmed to me that it was delicious, but I have trouble justifying making it because it requires so many different kinds of VEGGIES. I love veggies, but they are pricey and go bad...Tangent over, sorry. It's 6 am and I've yet to sleep. On to adventures!)
This is why it's an adventure: I'm terrible at cooking, and right now I'm being guided by a mother who only ever made bland food around me (she told me years later that it was because it was all my brother would eat, and he'd smother it in soy sauce, but I regret that I never got to experience the full range of her cooking potential) and my best friend, you know who you are, who is an AMAZING and not-at-all-bland cook, who kindly typed out for me a bunch of recipes in small words like "fry" instead of the many ways to say "fry" that would freak me out, like "pan-sear". What a sweet-heart that girl is. I'm also living in a spare room in a house that happens to have anything you could possibly need in a kitchen, if you're willing to hunt for it and hopefully what you're looking for isn't perishable.
But it's giving me confidence, and, as we know, necessity is the mother of invention. I invented good chicken today.
The problem was, I didn't think ahead, so I didn't get any ingredients for anything SPECIFIC...nor did I leave my pre-cut chicken breasts to defrost all day. This led to a hard frozen chunk of multiple chicken strips with separator sheets embedded in it that I only vaguely knew how to defrost using a microwave. I did that, and I think it was reasonably successful. The only problem was that apparently there was still a lot of moisture in it, so when I tried to "pan-sear" it, it all melted into puddles and just sort of boiled my chicken. It wasn't pan-fried, it was boiled chicken.
Have you ever had boiled chicken? It's about the most bland thing in the world. And I hate bland food. It's not that I can't stomach it, necessarily, but I have trouble making it REACH the point of my stomach. The effort of stuffing it into my mouth, going through the motions of chewing it while allowing it in all its awfulness to come in contact with my tongue, is almost too much for me to bear. As you can see, I didn't have fun eating my mother's food, since while my brother only wanted bland food, that was something that I could barely get myself to live on...and when I had to eat something as bland as boiled chicken, my solution was to SMOTHER it with Laurie's Seasoned Salt - known in my family as Magic Seasoning and rightfully so. In fact, that was my solution with bland veggies, eggs...pretty much anything that didn't have enough flavor for me, which was all of my mother's cooking. Magic Seasoning was to me what soy sauce was to my brother, I suppose, except it's not that I liked the taste as much as it was better than the alternative. But enough of that.
I smelled that boiled chicken as it boiled in my pan, and I knew I couldn't eat it. I would try and try and kick myself for it but I would eat it a piece at a time until it would go bad, grimacing the whole time and then I would just expect it to be so awful that I wouldn't notice when it went bad and then it would make me sick and it would kill me, and therefore I would not win this torturous battle. I already knew I would lose a confrontation with bland food. Drastic measures became necessary, before it was too late!
It's worthwhile to note that of all seasonings, Magic Seasoning is the ONE we don't seem to have in this house. Honestly I don't know that I could even think of another one that isn't here, and a lot of the ones that are here, I hadn't heard of before I took a spice inventory. So, my drastic measures ended up being: open jars and sniff everything, and add whatever smells like what you intend for this meal. And however good it smells, Leo, don't add chili powder because you WILL regret it (I can't handle spices/the sandwich I was making was intended to be Italian-style).
Which ended up being liberal amounts each of garlic powder, coriander (what the heck is coriander?) and - wait for it - chardonnay.
Yes, I live in a house with a bunch of grad students. Yes, there is liquor on the liquor shelf, but there is also wine in the fridge and it is ACTUALLY for cooking. It makes me want to never go back to living with undergrads.
Garlic powder, coriander and chardonnay. One of those things I hadn't even HEARD of before I put it in my meal. I'm secretly hoping that not knowing what I'm doing will give me some advantage, like Denna's music in the Kingkiller Chronicles (READ IT), it will make me really creative because I can trample over all sorts of established boundaries and be the Queen of Something for adding coriander and chardonnay and garlic simultaneously to chicken.
Sorry if I sound a little melodramatic, I've been reading too much hyperbole and a half.
The problem with this theory, of course, is that "established boundaries" in cooking, I'm pretty sure, are made up just to be broken. If you've ever watched a cooking show you know that established traditions are not exactly in vogue. So until I start making my own green-onion-flavored ice cream in pretentious little not-nearly-enough-ice-cream-balls, I'm still out of my league.
But, despite getting burned (again!) by hot oil, I didn't end up with any large welts this time! That's definitely an improvement.
So I guess for the time being, along with my posts about jewelry trials and tribulations (I made something awesome! Pictures up soon!) I'll succumb to that temptation that bloggers seemingly all run up against, the temptation to post recipes. My excuse is that since I'm so terrible at cooking, anything I post will be helpful to other people who are terrible at cooking, and who are as afraid as I am before each and every one of these cooking ventures...rest assured, my friends, you can be completely incompetent and still make this stuff.
And a note on the pepper: Like I said, I didn't buy ingredients for anything specific. Realizing that I like Italian food more than anything, I bought a bunch of things that could easily be used in some meal or another, like pesto, pasta, and a couple of pricier things like sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella that I proceeded not to regret at all because I rarely much enjoy eating and they make getting sustenance a lot more fun...after I learned to roast peppers, I put red peppers on my list of things to buy, even though they're veggies and go bad, because I've discovered that if I make Italian food at least once a week (and I am likely to) I can probably find somewhere to put roasted red peppers, and you can keep them and put them in a sandwich with practically anything whether meat or veggie or tuna salad, so there's no disadvantage in keeping them around. That's why I had a red pepper, though it may seem like a strange thing to have.
Today's meal: Italian Chicken Pesto Sandwich...so good I ate one and a half, and only another half because we ran out of bread.
Chicken strips, A single red pepper, pesto, bread, fresh mozzarella cheese (my splurge and vice)
Take some chicken. Defrost it. Cut it up into chunks the size of which you'd want to eat in a sandwich. Put it in a hot pan with oil in it and let it turn white and knobby and rubbery and weird. Poke it a little.
Put whatever you can find in this chicken that doesn't say "Mexican Blend" on it and doesn't smell like lobster bisque. In my case, sprinkle garlic powder and coriander on it - not too much but enough that you can see it on the chicken. Stir it around lots, especially if the water's all evaporated. Add a decent splash of chardonnay and if you can't smell it after stirring that in, add some more.
Stir it around until the water is all gone, and you've got a little yellow crusting on the outside of your chicken, (that's how I know it's done, at least...and if you break a piece open with a spatula or something it should look like chicken and not like raw meat, and separate cleanly) and then turn off the heat.
I only know how to do this part with a gas stove, so bear with me - but if you don't have one of those, google how to roast red peppers and there's some other versions I believe. If it's gas, just turn it on and put the pepper on the cooktop right above the flame. Turn it when the skin turns black. When it's black all over, take it off, put it in a tupperware container or bag for five minutes to let it "sweat" (don't ask me what that does, I just follow wikihow) and then take it out and cut it up. The skin comes right off. I messed this up the first time I did it, so learn from my mistake and wait until it's ALL black. Only the black parts are roasted, and only there will the skin come off easily. If you stop it too early you have parts of a pepper that aren't roasted and that's no fun because the skin doesn't want to separate and ugh fresh pepper taste and blah. Just give it enough time. Chop it up and now you've got your roasted red peppers.
Spread your pesto on both slices of your bread. Assemble sandwich from those components you've assembled. It should be delicious and if it's not, well, it's on you, because mine sure was.
Anyway, perhaps that will help someone out someday. Soon maybe I'll post the components of that awesome pasta recipe. The stir-fry was pretty uneventful except, uhh, marinade your chicken and tofu for a little while and you won't regret it. I also recommend Trader Joe's Island Soyaki sauce because Trader Joe's is the closest store to my house and it does well. I can't speak for any other kind of sauce.
Also: pro-tip for getting enough protein when you don't even eat enough in the first place and don't eat red meat: add chicken sausage to everything. They sell lots of kinds at Trader Joe's and they've got lots of protein and it makes you feel slightly better about your diet because now it has something meaty in it, even if you're not a meat person (I'm not either). But recently I added "smoked apple chardonnay" chicken sausage to an Italian dish, and then shortly thereafter, mango chicken sausage to a cheese-and-broccoli dish, and they both were excellent and not too overpowering and fit surprisingly well. So that's my advice.
Wish me luck on my grand adventures of life-without-dining-hall. And I hope this makes someone look back with nostalgia on her first "place", and think...I remember when stir fry was intimidating. Ahh, those days.
(The last was a delicious pasta dish I proceeded not to improve on the next three times I made it because it was so good, and the first was a delicious stir fry which I only got up the confidence to make after I asked someone (Asian, no less) if he knew how to make stir-fry, and he looked at me like I was insane and told me that was like asking him if he knew how to dance or write. The answer was obviously yes because he was physically capable of holding a pencil and not crippled in the legs. Boyfriend of mine, lovely man that he is, confirmed to me that it was delicious, but I have trouble justifying making it because it requires so many different kinds of VEGGIES. I love veggies, but they are pricey and go bad...Tangent over, sorry. It's 6 am and I've yet to sleep. On to adventures!)
This is why it's an adventure: I'm terrible at cooking, and right now I'm being guided by a mother who only ever made bland food around me (she told me years later that it was because it was all my brother would eat, and he'd smother it in soy sauce, but I regret that I never got to experience the full range of her cooking potential) and my best friend, you know who you are, who is an AMAZING and not-at-all-bland cook, who kindly typed out for me a bunch of recipes in small words like "fry" instead of the many ways to say "fry" that would freak me out, like "pan-sear". What a sweet-heart that girl is. I'm also living in a spare room in a house that happens to have anything you could possibly need in a kitchen, if you're willing to hunt for it and hopefully what you're looking for isn't perishable.
But it's giving me confidence, and, as we know, necessity is the mother of invention. I invented good chicken today.
The problem was, I didn't think ahead, so I didn't get any ingredients for anything SPECIFIC...nor did I leave my pre-cut chicken breasts to defrost all day. This led to a hard frozen chunk of multiple chicken strips with separator sheets embedded in it that I only vaguely knew how to defrost using a microwave. I did that, and I think it was reasonably successful. The only problem was that apparently there was still a lot of moisture in it, so when I tried to "pan-sear" it, it all melted into puddles and just sort of boiled my chicken. It wasn't pan-fried, it was boiled chicken.
Have you ever had boiled chicken? It's about the most bland thing in the world. And I hate bland food. It's not that I can't stomach it, necessarily, but I have trouble making it REACH the point of my stomach. The effort of stuffing it into my mouth, going through the motions of chewing it while allowing it in all its awfulness to come in contact with my tongue, is almost too much for me to bear. As you can see, I didn't have fun eating my mother's food, since while my brother only wanted bland food, that was something that I could barely get myself to live on...and when I had to eat something as bland as boiled chicken, my solution was to SMOTHER it with Laurie's Seasoned Salt - known in my family as Magic Seasoning and rightfully so. In fact, that was my solution with bland veggies, eggs...pretty much anything that didn't have enough flavor for me, which was all of my mother's cooking. Magic Seasoning was to me what soy sauce was to my brother, I suppose, except it's not that I liked the taste as much as it was better than the alternative. But enough of that.
I smelled that boiled chicken as it boiled in my pan, and I knew I couldn't eat it. I would try and try and kick myself for it but I would eat it a piece at a time until it would go bad, grimacing the whole time and then I would just expect it to be so awful that I wouldn't notice when it went bad and then it would make me sick and it would kill me, and therefore I would not win this torturous battle. I already knew I would lose a confrontation with bland food. Drastic measures became necessary, before it was too late!
It's worthwhile to note that of all seasonings, Magic Seasoning is the ONE we don't seem to have in this house. Honestly I don't know that I could even think of another one that isn't here, and a lot of the ones that are here, I hadn't heard of before I took a spice inventory. So, my drastic measures ended up being: open jars and sniff everything, and add whatever smells like what you intend for this meal. And however good it smells, Leo, don't add chili powder because you WILL regret it (I can't handle spices/the sandwich I was making was intended to be Italian-style).
Which ended up being liberal amounts each of garlic powder, coriander (what the heck is coriander?) and - wait for it - chardonnay.
Yes, I live in a house with a bunch of grad students. Yes, there is liquor on the liquor shelf, but there is also wine in the fridge and it is ACTUALLY for cooking. It makes me want to never go back to living with undergrads.
Garlic powder, coriander and chardonnay. One of those things I hadn't even HEARD of before I put it in my meal. I'm secretly hoping that not knowing what I'm doing will give me some advantage, like Denna's music in the Kingkiller Chronicles (READ IT), it will make me really creative because I can trample over all sorts of established boundaries and be the Queen of Something for adding coriander and chardonnay and garlic simultaneously to chicken.
Sorry if I sound a little melodramatic, I've been reading too much hyperbole and a half.
The problem with this theory, of course, is that "established boundaries" in cooking, I'm pretty sure, are made up just to be broken. If you've ever watched a cooking show you know that established traditions are not exactly in vogue. So until I start making my own green-onion-flavored ice cream in pretentious little not-nearly-enough-ice-cream-balls, I'm still out of my league.
But, despite getting burned (again!) by hot oil, I didn't end up with any large welts this time! That's definitely an improvement.
So I guess for the time being, along with my posts about jewelry trials and tribulations (I made something awesome! Pictures up soon!) I'll succumb to that temptation that bloggers seemingly all run up against, the temptation to post recipes. My excuse is that since I'm so terrible at cooking, anything I post will be helpful to other people who are terrible at cooking, and who are as afraid as I am before each and every one of these cooking ventures...rest assured, my friends, you can be completely incompetent and still make this stuff.
And a note on the pepper: Like I said, I didn't buy ingredients for anything specific. Realizing that I like Italian food more than anything, I bought a bunch of things that could easily be used in some meal or another, like pesto, pasta, and a couple of pricier things like sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella that I proceeded not to regret at all because I rarely much enjoy eating and they make getting sustenance a lot more fun...after I learned to roast peppers, I put red peppers on my list of things to buy, even though they're veggies and go bad, because I've discovered that if I make Italian food at least once a week (and I am likely to) I can probably find somewhere to put roasted red peppers, and you can keep them and put them in a sandwich with practically anything whether meat or veggie or tuna salad, so there's no disadvantage in keeping them around. That's why I had a red pepper, though it may seem like a strange thing to have.
Today's meal: Italian Chicken Pesto Sandwich...so good I ate one and a half, and only another half because we ran out of bread.
Chicken strips, A single red pepper, pesto, bread, fresh mozzarella cheese (my splurge and vice)
Take some chicken. Defrost it. Cut it up into chunks the size of which you'd want to eat in a sandwich. Put it in a hot pan with oil in it and let it turn white and knobby and rubbery and weird. Poke it a little.
Put whatever you can find in this chicken that doesn't say "Mexican Blend" on it and doesn't smell like lobster bisque. In my case, sprinkle garlic powder and coriander on it - not too much but enough that you can see it on the chicken. Stir it around lots, especially if the water's all evaporated. Add a decent splash of chardonnay and if you can't smell it after stirring that in, add some more.
Stir it around until the water is all gone, and you've got a little yellow crusting on the outside of your chicken, (that's how I know it's done, at least...and if you break a piece open with a spatula or something it should look like chicken and not like raw meat, and separate cleanly) and then turn off the heat.
I only know how to do this part with a gas stove, so bear with me - but if you don't have one of those, google how to roast red peppers and there's some other versions I believe. If it's gas, just turn it on and put the pepper on the cooktop right above the flame. Turn it when the skin turns black. When it's black all over, take it off, put it in a tupperware container or bag for five minutes to let it "sweat" (don't ask me what that does, I just follow wikihow) and then take it out and cut it up. The skin comes right off. I messed this up the first time I did it, so learn from my mistake and wait until it's ALL black. Only the black parts are roasted, and only there will the skin come off easily. If you stop it too early you have parts of a pepper that aren't roasted and that's no fun because the skin doesn't want to separate and ugh fresh pepper taste and blah. Just give it enough time. Chop it up and now you've got your roasted red peppers.
Spread your pesto on both slices of your bread. Assemble sandwich from those components you've assembled. It should be delicious and if it's not, well, it's on you, because mine sure was.
Anyway, perhaps that will help someone out someday. Soon maybe I'll post the components of that awesome pasta recipe. The stir-fry was pretty uneventful except, uhh, marinade your chicken and tofu for a little while and you won't regret it. I also recommend Trader Joe's Island Soyaki sauce because Trader Joe's is the closest store to my house and it does well. I can't speak for any other kind of sauce.
Also: pro-tip for getting enough protein when you don't even eat enough in the first place and don't eat red meat: add chicken sausage to everything. They sell lots of kinds at Trader Joe's and they've got lots of protein and it makes you feel slightly better about your diet because now it has something meaty in it, even if you're not a meat person (I'm not either). But recently I added "smoked apple chardonnay" chicken sausage to an Italian dish, and then shortly thereafter, mango chicken sausage to a cheese-and-broccoli dish, and they both were excellent and not too overpowering and fit surprisingly well. So that's my advice.
Wish me luck on my grand adventures of life-without-dining-hall. And I hope this makes someone look back with nostalgia on her first "place", and think...I remember when stir fry was intimidating. Ahh, those days.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Blogs
I seem to have fallen off the wagon in terms of The Year of Jewelry...moving, the beginning of summer, traveling and starting work have all thrown my jewelry under the rug, so to speak. But I've got three, count'em, THREE custom orders going right now, so expect to see some catch-up work posted soon. Okay, that's not as many as the weeks I missed, but they'll get me back on track for the rest of them. That's the plan!
And here are some lovely, lovely people who have blogged about my work! The giveaway's already over, sorry folks, but I'm posting the link anyway. Stephanie from BabesRockinMami got a lovely custom set for her review, gave me some new perspective on colors and gave me a great birthday present a month ago when she posted a glowing review. Daffy from BatCrapCrazy, the second link, was the winner of the giveaway, and just LOVED the My Fair Lady earrings...they weren't originally on the table for giving away, but she was so nice about it and liked them so much, I didn't see a reason to say no. After all, every artist wants her work going to a happy home. She even likes them enough now that she has them, and is fantastic enough, to blog about them!
The feedback both from them and from their readers and commenters is really encouraging, and if I can get my butt back in gear, I'm beginning to think maybe this dream could be viable after all. If people like my work that much, then really I just need to get the word out so that people KNOW they like it that much. And these two lovelies have just kickstarted that process. Thank you SO, so much, you guys. It really means a lot.
http://babesrockinmami.com/?p=3920
http://batcrapcrazy.blogspot.com/2011/06/flight-of-fancy.html
I'm planning to participate in some more review/giveaways soon, (and post them while they're still active,) so uhh...keep on the lookout, my friends.
And here are some lovely, lovely people who have blogged about my work! The giveaway's already over, sorry folks, but I'm posting the link anyway. Stephanie from BabesRockinMami got a lovely custom set for her review, gave me some new perspective on colors and gave me a great birthday present a month ago when she posted a glowing review. Daffy from BatCrapCrazy, the second link, was the winner of the giveaway, and just LOVED the My Fair Lady earrings...they weren't originally on the table for giving away, but she was so nice about it and liked them so much, I didn't see a reason to say no. After all, every artist wants her work going to a happy home. She even likes them enough now that she has them, and is fantastic enough, to blog about them!
The feedback both from them and from their readers and commenters is really encouraging, and if I can get my butt back in gear, I'm beginning to think maybe this dream could be viable after all. If people like my work that much, then really I just need to get the word out so that people KNOW they like it that much. And these two lovelies have just kickstarted that process. Thank you SO, so much, you guys. It really means a lot.
http://babesrockinmami.com/?p=3920
http://batcrapcrazy.blogspot.com/2011/06/flight-of-fancy.html
I'm planning to participate in some more review/giveaways soon, (and post them while they're still active,) so uhh...keep on the lookout, my friends.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Whoosh
My work is beginning in earnest in about, oh, 9 hours, so I kind of (really) need to sleep, but I just wanted to post an update so all three of you guys know I'm still here. :]
So, I'm now about 4(? 5?) weeks behind on...oh, pretty much everything related to Letterbox Lion. Including the Year of Jewelry Project...this could take some effort to recover, but I'm sure I'll manage. (GOT SOME STUFF UP MY SLEEVE.)
This is for a few very specific reasons: travel, work, and SLACKING OFF. I spent a lot of time packing up and moving stuff (while taking exams) and then immediately went home for a week's vacation, not taking any of my jewelry-making supplies. I came back for about two days and then went off to my lovely boyfriend's house for another week-and-change...and I've been trying to figure out how to live in a place with a kitchen since then. Buying for oneself is very...fulfilling, in some ways, but scary in the way that I don't know anything about nutrition. To be safe I'm eating as much protein as I can because I still doubt that I'll end up getting enough. Also, I learned to play Settlers of Catan. It's great! Enough about that, though! Jewelry!
I'll be starting up again soon. I have two custom pieces in the works...one for a housemate, a very manly soccer player who likes shiny things (oh man, I love my housemates) and one for the review/giveaway I did at http://babesrockinmami.com/ - (Congratulations Daffy!) - so hopefully that will be the kick-in-the-pants I need to get me back on the beadin' path, as they say. They do, I swear. Oh, man, I need sleep.
....And I just realized I never posted here about the review/giveaway. OOPS. That was a full day, I'll blame it on that...it was my 20th birthday. Oh yes, I turned 20. I know, I know, don't tell me I'm young, I already heard it from about 20 people.
Also, this place I'm living: I'm not religious, but now that I'm staying in a Jewish neighborhood, the food is all amazing. Cheese blintzes, the taste of my childhood! Kichel, ruggulah (sp?) and every kind of bagel! Matzah ball soup just like mom used to make, quite literally! I'm hoping to drag my boyfriend over for visits as often as possible so I can expose him to all the foods I loved (and hated...gefilte fish? blech.) growing up. I LOVE this town!
Bed time for Leo. Please forgive her her incomprehensibility.
So, I'm now about 4(? 5?) weeks behind on...oh, pretty much everything related to Letterbox Lion. Including the Year of Jewelry Project...this could take some effort to recover, but I'm sure I'll manage. (GOT SOME STUFF UP MY SLEEVE.)
This is for a few very specific reasons: travel, work, and SLACKING OFF. I spent a lot of time packing up and moving stuff (while taking exams) and then immediately went home for a week's vacation, not taking any of my jewelry-making supplies. I came back for about two days and then went off to my lovely boyfriend's house for another week-and-change...and I've been trying to figure out how to live in a place with a kitchen since then. Buying for oneself is very...fulfilling, in some ways, but scary in the way that I don't know anything about nutrition. To be safe I'm eating as much protein as I can because I still doubt that I'll end up getting enough. Also, I learned to play Settlers of Catan. It's great! Enough about that, though! Jewelry!
I'll be starting up again soon. I have two custom pieces in the works...one for a housemate, a very manly soccer player who likes shiny things (oh man, I love my housemates) and one for the review/giveaway I did at http://babesrockinmami.com/ - (Congratulations Daffy!) - so hopefully that will be the kick-in-the-pants I need to get me back on the beadin' path, as they say. They do, I swear. Oh, man, I need sleep.
....And I just realized I never posted here about the review/giveaway. OOPS. That was a full day, I'll blame it on that...it was my 20th birthday. Oh yes, I turned 20. I know, I know, don't tell me I'm young, I already heard it from about 20 people.
Also, this place I'm living: I'm not religious, but now that I'm staying in a Jewish neighborhood, the food is all amazing. Cheese blintzes, the taste of my childhood! Kichel, ruggulah (sp?) and every kind of bagel! Matzah ball soup just like mom used to make, quite literally! I'm hoping to drag my boyfriend over for visits as often as possible so I can expose him to all the foods I loved (and hated...gefilte fish? blech.) growing up. I LOVE this town!
Bed time for Leo. Please forgive her her incomprehensibility.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Year of Jewelry 3rd go, and psychology
My third week into the Year of Jewelry Project:
A lotus pendant. I like the way this one turned out...the more gems I put on it, the better it looked, so it's definitely a step up for me, since I'm used to making smaller, subtler and less gaudy (and less expensive) things. It was also quite a learning experience in "use twice as much wire as you think you'll need". This includes bright and oxidized copper, peach moonstone, pink garnet, fanta carnelian, peach aventurine, picture jasper and sunstone. It looks nice with a dark green shirt, with its dramatic contrasts and fall colors.
In psychology class we are learning about the science of motivation. It's well-known (but little practiced in the business world) that incentives for something decrease performance...the higher the incentive, the lower the performance. At least, that holds true for things that require even rudimentary cognitive work...tasks that are purely mechanical are better accomplished with incentives than without, but nowadays, not that many people have jobs that are purely mechanical work. The best work is accomplished with "autonomy, mastery and purpose" - being able to do what you want went you want, being able to become better and better at something that matters, and feeling like you are contributing to a cause bigger than yourself, whether only a little bigger or world-wide. This rule has been noted by businesses like Google, whose employees are free 20% of the time to work on whatever they feel like working on...and about half of Google's most awesome innovations...gmail, for instance...were born from employees puttering around working on their own projects that turned out insanely good.
This is also what my boyfriend is going through, and struggling with, right now...the conflict between his class demands for code and his desire to make his own game. Google says: What kind of email client would you want to use? Could you make it? Go for it. Jeff says: there is a game that I want to play that doesn't exist yet. Can I do it? The fact is...he can, if he puts enough work into it...but no amount of money is going to convince him to do so, only the doing itself can do that.
The Year of Jewelry is giving me my non-incentivized rewards. I am not doing this for the money, though of course that is my "aim" - making jewelry started being less fun when I had to go through all sorts of rigamarole to do it...*had* to being the key word. Now, I still go through rigamarole, but it's a challenge! I made two pairs of earrings on a ballroom dance floor. I put six kinds of gemstones on a pendant because it looked best that way. I ran out of wire halfway through a pendant, and started up with another kind of wire, adding a cool vine effect at the bottom. I have ALL of my pictures formatted to go up on Etsy...my least favorite part. These things are obstacles to be overcome, not to complain about and use as a reason to not do any work.
Long story short: my productivity has SHOT UP over the past few weeks.
The reason for this is that now I have a different aim - to do work when I can (autonomy), to get better at jewelry-making (mastery), to get feedback(purpose), and of course, though most other people's YOJ contributions are far superior to mine, to show off. Granted, that "purpose" is only a little bit bigger than myself...but I envision things for it that are bigger than I am. I'd love to support myself on jewelry, though I know it's unlikely to ever happen that way. I'd love to learn until I master it and then to teach. I'd love to create things I can look on with wonder and not understand with anything but rationality how something so beautiful could have come out of me. You know, just the usual.
So thank you, Year of Jewelry, for putting me back on my track.
A lotus pendant. I like the way this one turned out...the more gems I put on it, the better it looked, so it's definitely a step up for me, since I'm used to making smaller, subtler and less gaudy (and less expensive) things. It was also quite a learning experience in "use twice as much wire as you think you'll need". This includes bright and oxidized copper, peach moonstone, pink garnet, fanta carnelian, peach aventurine, picture jasper and sunstone. It looks nice with a dark green shirt, with its dramatic contrasts and fall colors.
In psychology class we are learning about the science of motivation. It's well-known (but little practiced in the business world) that incentives for something decrease performance...the higher the incentive, the lower the performance. At least, that holds true for things that require even rudimentary cognitive work...tasks that are purely mechanical are better accomplished with incentives than without, but nowadays, not that many people have jobs that are purely mechanical work. The best work is accomplished with "autonomy, mastery and purpose" - being able to do what you want went you want, being able to become better and better at something that matters, and feeling like you are contributing to a cause bigger than yourself, whether only a little bigger or world-wide. This rule has been noted by businesses like Google, whose employees are free 20% of the time to work on whatever they feel like working on...and about half of Google's most awesome innovations...gmail, for instance...were born from employees puttering around working on their own projects that turned out insanely good.
This is also what my boyfriend is going through, and struggling with, right now...the conflict between his class demands for code and his desire to make his own game. Google says: What kind of email client would you want to use? Could you make it? Go for it. Jeff says: there is a game that I want to play that doesn't exist yet. Can I do it? The fact is...he can, if he puts enough work into it...but no amount of money is going to convince him to do so, only the doing itself can do that.
The Year of Jewelry is giving me my non-incentivized rewards. I am not doing this for the money, though of course that is my "aim" - making jewelry started being less fun when I had to go through all sorts of rigamarole to do it...*had* to being the key word. Now, I still go through rigamarole, but it's a challenge! I made two pairs of earrings on a ballroom dance floor. I put six kinds of gemstones on a pendant because it looked best that way. I ran out of wire halfway through a pendant, and started up with another kind of wire, adding a cool vine effect at the bottom. I have ALL of my pictures formatted to go up on Etsy...my least favorite part. These things are obstacles to be overcome, not to complain about and use as a reason to not do any work.
Long story short: my productivity has SHOT UP over the past few weeks.
The reason for this is that now I have a different aim - to do work when I can (autonomy), to get better at jewelry-making (mastery), to get feedback(purpose), and of course, though most other people's YOJ contributions are far superior to mine, to show off. Granted, that "purpose" is only a little bit bigger than myself...but I envision things for it that are bigger than I am. I'd love to support myself on jewelry, though I know it's unlikely to ever happen that way. I'd love to learn until I master it and then to teach. I'd love to create things I can look on with wonder and not understand with anything but rationality how something so beautiful could have come out of me. You know, just the usual.
So thank you, Year of Jewelry, for putting me back on my track.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Another week of Year of Jewelry - Quick Earrings
I'm copying this from my post on the YOJ site:
I was quite determined to not fail the challenge in my second week of YOJ, but I had an immensely busy week and a two-day ballroom competition on the weekend…and right now I ought to be studying for tomorrow’s midterm, so we’ll see how that goes. I apologize for the quality of this picture, it was taken with my camera in horrible light in the middle of the MIT gym…I made these sitting on the floor in my ballroom dress and shoes! I’m proud of that (and of getting this up only one day late…I was proud of myself for being on time until I remembered that the week actually starts on Sunday. Oops.) :] We did reasonably well in the competition, too. My partner’s a good sport.
These are from the same hammered spiral frame, one version big and one small, but I went in completely different directions with them. To one I added a clear red garnet briolette to swing freely, and accented it with pinky garnet chips along the outside…the difference in color is hard to see in this picture. To the other it was rhyolite and carnelian and overlapped the frame…very different color schemes, there.
Sadly, I think I might have to redo them. I didn’t have 20G wire with me, so I made them with 16…not unheard of, but it hurts me to put them in my ears and a lot of people would not be able to wear them. Maybe I can avoid having to redo the whole thing if I take the hooks and shrink them into little loops and attach them to normal, thinner hooks. What do you think?
P.S. “Call the Law” by Outkast is a great quickstep song…for the first 2 minutes and ten seconds, anyway. My whole team loves that song now.
I was quite determined to not fail the challenge in my second week of YOJ, but I had an immensely busy week and a two-day ballroom competition on the weekend…and right now I ought to be studying for tomorrow’s midterm, so we’ll see how that goes. I apologize for the quality of this picture, it was taken with my camera in horrible light in the middle of the MIT gym…I made these sitting on the floor in my ballroom dress and shoes! I’m proud of that (and of getting this up only one day late…I was proud of myself for being on time until I remembered that the week actually starts on Sunday. Oops.) :] We did reasonably well in the competition, too. My partner’s a good sport.These are from the same hammered spiral frame, one version big and one small, but I went in completely different directions with them. To one I added a clear red garnet briolette to swing freely, and accented it with pinky garnet chips along the outside…the difference in color is hard to see in this picture. To the other it was rhyolite and carnelian and overlapped the frame…very different color schemes, there.
Sadly, I think I might have to redo them. I didn’t have 20G wire with me, so I made them with 16…not unheard of, but it hurts me to put them in my ears and a lot of people would not be able to wear them. Maybe I can avoid having to redo the whole thing if I take the hooks and shrink them into little loops and attach them to normal, thinner hooks. What do you think?
P.S. “Call the Law” by Outkast is a great quickstep song…for the first 2 minutes and ten seconds, anyway. My whole team loves that song now.
Friday, March 25, 2011
News: the new things
A couple of things. Spring break was fantastic...I got not nearly as much work done as I planned, which is probably as it should be considering my schedule lately...unfortunately, I got hammered with schoolwork immediately afterward, and I have not been able to go to bed before 3:30 am since break ended last Sunday. So forgive my silence, and here's some news and some pretty pictures to compensate.
I joined a project called the Year of Jewelry - it's a yearly project in which participants make a piece of jewelry every week for a year...obviously no promises, since the only free time I really have weekly is on Wednesday nights, and jehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwelry-making inspiration is not something one can turn on on cue...but I managed my first week, at least. This is week 12, because the sign-up goes by quarters of the year, so I'm not starting at the beginning...I wonder if I should restart at week one next year or just go until week 12 again...then again, I guess it doesn't matter. The Project is a really neat forum full of people like myself, but people who know more than I do and are better at what we both do than I am. They are friendly and like sharing what they know, and I'm really excited to be in a community with them where I can make friends. If you want to see some really spectacular pieces (as well as some pretty normal pieces from people just starting out, like me) go visit http://www.bleilysgems.com/YearofJewelry2011/.
Anyway, here's my first post for Year of Jewelry:
This pair has been floating around in my head for a while like a blossom on the breeze. I wanted it to be extremely light and open like the first spring breezes that have been sifting through my hair lately...but knowing me, it had to be something small and subtle. I don't go for gaudy. So here's the result; they go very well with dark hair. I like the organized but somewhat chaotic wrapping of the wire and the contrast between the dark and light oxidization.
By the way, the peach head pins in the middle are exclusive to livewirejewelry and I have no idea how she makes them! A really interesting effect and the contrasts are perfect for flowers, looking like nature herself built them.
And, some more pictures! I went on a roll recently and then got a chance to take pictures over break.
These are in no particular order: celtic knot copper and sunstone earrings, copper and multi-gemstone earrings (that's lapis lazuli, chrysocolla, moss agate and sodalite), earrings of moonstone and sunstone, a mandala-style necklace of copper and carnelian tentatively titled "spokes of the sun", and some tribal-looking fishy earrings I think I'll call "Fossil".
Can you tell I've been having fun with copper?
The glow of sunstone is really hard to capture on camera, by the way...the problem with selling chatoyant gems online. Moonstone also glows, making those peach and orange earrings the most awesome piece of subtle work I've ever done.
The mandala necklace, by contrast, is big and not subtle at all. The bail is one of my better ideas, though I still might modify it - the wire is wrapped tighter in some places than others so that part of it seems to float off the chain. It looks really neat on...that was actually the necklace I was wearing when the man complimented me and asked me what my website was.
Those last ones weren't even meant to be fish. They just turned out that way. This is rhyolite - rainforest jasper, jungle jasper, basically these are amazon piranhas in a hammered-copper-ancient sort of look.
Edit: Due to a lot of comments on my Year of Jewelry post (the project, by the way, has already gotten me more feedback than I expected, I'm very happy about it) that said that the headpins in the earrings looked like "clean copper...just out of the pickle [solution]" I'm posting a couple of pictures of the other head pins that livewirejewelry makes, just as an example to prove that it's a mysterious process and they're not just shiny copper. My camera's not the best, so it's kind of difficult to tell.
The peach-colored ones are the ones in the project. The others are aqua and red, and I don't have those, these pictures are used with permission from Lisa at livewirejewelry.
I joined a project called the Year of Jewelry - it's a yearly project in which participants make a piece of jewelry every week for a year...obviously no promises, since the only free time I really have weekly is on Wednesday nights, and jehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwelry-making inspiration is not something one can turn on on cue...but I managed my first week, at least. This is week 12, because the sign-up goes by quarters of the year, so I'm not starting at the beginning...I wonder if I should restart at week one next year or just go until week 12 again...then again, I guess it doesn't matter. The Project is a really neat forum full of people like myself, but people who know more than I do and are better at what we both do than I am. They are friendly and like sharing what they know, and I'm really excited to be in a community with them where I can make friends. If you want to see some really spectacular pieces (as well as some pretty normal pieces from people just starting out, like me) go visit http://www.bleilysgems.com/YearofJewelry2011/.
Anyway, here's my first post for Year of Jewelry:
This pair has been floating around in my head for a while like a blossom on the breeze. I wanted it to be extremely light and open like the first spring breezes that have been sifting through my hair lately...but knowing me, it had to be something small and subtle. I don't go for gaudy. So here's the result; they go very well with dark hair. I like the organized but somewhat chaotic wrapping of the wire and the contrast between the dark and light oxidization.By the way, the peach head pins in the middle are exclusive to livewirejewelry and I have no idea how she makes them! A really interesting effect and the contrasts are perfect for flowers, looking like nature herself built them.
And, some more pictures! I went on a roll recently and then got a chance to take pictures over break.
These are in no particular order: celtic knot copper and sunstone earrings, copper and multi-gemstone earrings (that's lapis lazuli, chrysocolla, moss agate and sodalite), earrings of moonstone and sunstone, a mandala-style necklace of copper and carnelian tentatively titled "spokes of the sun", and some tribal-looking fishy earrings I think I'll call "Fossil".
Can you tell I've been having fun with copper?
The glow of sunstone is really hard to capture on camera, by the way...the problem with selling chatoyant gems online. Moonstone also glows, making those peach and orange earrings the most awesome piece of subtle work I've ever done.
The mandala necklace, by contrast, is big and not subtle at all. The bail is one of my better ideas, though I still might modify it - the wire is wrapped tighter in some places than others so that part of it seems to float off the chain. It looks really neat on...that was actually the necklace I was wearing when the man complimented me and asked me what my website was.
Those last ones weren't even meant to be fish. They just turned out that way. This is rhyolite - rainforest jasper, jungle jasper, basically these are amazon piranhas in a hammered-copper-ancient sort of look.Edit: Due to a lot of comments on my Year of Jewelry post (the project, by the way, has already gotten me more feedback than I expected, I'm very happy about it) that said that the headpins in the earrings looked like "clean copper...just out of the pickle [solution]" I'm posting a couple of pictures of the other head pins that livewirejewelry makes, just as an example to prove that it's a mysterious process and they're not just shiny copper. My camera's not the best, so it's kind of difficult to tell.
The peach-colored ones are the ones in the project. The others are aqua and red, and I don't have those, these pictures are used with permission from Lisa at livewirejewelry.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Momentum
I sold a pair of earrings recently and that customer today emailed me to say, could I make her four more pairs? I got another email timestamped a few minutes afterward to say, oops, make that five pairs. !!!!!!!!!
I think that if I could just get the word out, a lot of people would really like what I make. But I'm not active enough and I don't make enough examples for it to be easy for people to find them. I need to make a new shop with a new name, and honestly it's just a stupid excuse for me, that I don't know what to name it...I keep telling myself as soon as I come up with a good name, I'll make a new shop for my origami pieces. I should just DO it. Names, names, names! I just need to pick one, the name doesn't really matter as long as Letterbox Lion is still fine for the other one and has a domain name and everything.
But time seems so lacking recently...I will have about a half-hour of downtime after class today before I go out of town for two days...and I didn't finish making the copper piece I started yesterday. Midterm season is almost over...I just have to power through it. Oh, man, the kanji part of my Japanese midterm...that was not pretty. Let's hope that doesn't affect my grade too much. Oh well, things should be looking up soon!
On that note, looking for an apartment in Boston...man, everything is so expensive here. My friend lives in Troy, New York, and he has an apartment that I could AFFORD, on my 15-hour a week dining hall job...but getting an apartment around here is six times the rent, I'll need help to afford it even with a roommate.
Also, I got my packages...I've been floating around with fire agate and carnelian and garnets and sunstones in my head. Sunstones! I splurged and bought some GORGEOUS little rondelles with fantastic chatoyance, I'm so happy...the only problem is that the holes are very small and I don't have a bead awl, so I need to figure out how to show them off best using small-gauge wire...and I'd like to have the wide part forward in some cases (some of them are just so pretty it would be a shame to only see the sides)so I need to figure out how to do that when I can only fit one wire through the hole. I'll do it though! I've already started.
I think that if I could just get the word out, a lot of people would really like what I make. But I'm not active enough and I don't make enough examples for it to be easy for people to find them. I need to make a new shop with a new name, and honestly it's just a stupid excuse for me, that I don't know what to name it...I keep telling myself as soon as I come up with a good name, I'll make a new shop for my origami pieces. I should just DO it. Names, names, names! I just need to pick one, the name doesn't really matter as long as Letterbox Lion is still fine for the other one and has a domain name and everything.
But time seems so lacking recently...I will have about a half-hour of downtime after class today before I go out of town for two days...and I didn't finish making the copper piece I started yesterday. Midterm season is almost over...I just have to power through it. Oh, man, the kanji part of my Japanese midterm...that was not pretty. Let's hope that doesn't affect my grade too much. Oh well, things should be looking up soon!
On that note, looking for an apartment in Boston...man, everything is so expensive here. My friend lives in Troy, New York, and he has an apartment that I could AFFORD, on my 15-hour a week dining hall job...but getting an apartment around here is six times the rent, I'll need help to afford it even with a roommate.
Also, I got my packages...I've been floating around with fire agate and carnelian and garnets and sunstones in my head. Sunstones! I splurged and bought some GORGEOUS little rondelles with fantastic chatoyance, I'm so happy...the only problem is that the holes are very small and I don't have a bead awl, so I need to figure out how to show them off best using small-gauge wire...and I'd like to have the wide part forward in some cases (some of them are just so pretty it would be a shame to only see the sides)so I need to figure out how to do that when I can only fit one wire through the hole. I'll do it though! I've already started.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
A Glimpse Into My Mind
I have this weird habit where whenever someone talks to me unexpectedly, or goes out of his way to communicate with me, I assume I did something wrong. For instance, a friend of mine sent me a message over Facebook the other day and all it said was, "Are you going to be at practice on Tuesday?" I had no idea why she was sending a message to me, but I assumed, as I always assume, that she wanted to take me to task on something...and I couldn't imagine what I'd done to offend her, and it made me very nervous. All she wanted was to ask if I could give something to someone for her, and my reaction was completely irrational...as is probably obvious to anyone who's not me.
The other day, I was at work in the dining hall, and I was the last of the student employees to leave because I volunteered to stay and help with something. After I finished, I went back to wash my shoe-covers off, only to discover that three other people at some point during the day had failed to wash theirs, simply leaving them in the stairwell where they hoped nobody would see. I take my job pretty seriously, I want to be good at it, and I want the higher-ups to like me. So I picked them up and washed four pairs of shoes instead of one, but I was still on the clock, so I didn't really mind. However I did feel kind of guilty staying so late - I'm technically supposed to get off at 9:45, but it almost always goes until 9:55 at least...still, by the time I was done it was 10:05, so I felt a little like I was taking advantage of something, milking it for all the hours I could get, when really I was just doing work that other people had failed to do. As I passed by my manager's boss's office on the way to clock out, my manager's boss, Adam, called out to me, "Hey, Leo."
This is what happened in my mind:
Adam: Hey, Leo.
Leo: Hey, yeah?
Adam: Why are you still here? *shakes finger at me* I can't give you hours just for not leaving early enough, you know.
Leo: Oh, I'm sorry, I was just washing some shoe-covers.
Adam: We'll need you to sign this waiver form saying that you just didn't clock out in time, you didn't actually earn any money, you're a horrible person, you're trying to extort the company by doing extra work, and I would berate you for ten minutes if I didn't have better things to do.
Leo: D: D: D:
This is what actually happened:
Adam: Hey, Leo.
Leo: Hey, yeah?
Adam: Thank you. For washing those. I appreciate it.
Leo: Oh, uhh... I don't mind. I mean, I'm still on the clock...
Adam: Oh, that's okay, *waves hand dismissively* I don't mind. When are you working next?
Leo: Tomorrow at 11.
Adam: Okay, see you then! *smile*
Leo: See you then!
I mean, enough said. I don't know why I do it to myself...at least it means I'm pleasantly surprised a lot, but it also causes me a lot of unnecessary stress.
The other day, I was at work in the dining hall, and I was the last of the student employees to leave because I volunteered to stay and help with something. After I finished, I went back to wash my shoe-covers off, only to discover that three other people at some point during the day had failed to wash theirs, simply leaving them in the stairwell where they hoped nobody would see. I take my job pretty seriously, I want to be good at it, and I want the higher-ups to like me. So I picked them up and washed four pairs of shoes instead of one, but I was still on the clock, so I didn't really mind. However I did feel kind of guilty staying so late - I'm technically supposed to get off at 9:45, but it almost always goes until 9:55 at least...still, by the time I was done it was 10:05, so I felt a little like I was taking advantage of something, milking it for all the hours I could get, when really I was just doing work that other people had failed to do. As I passed by my manager's boss's office on the way to clock out, my manager's boss, Adam, called out to me, "Hey, Leo."
This is what happened in my mind:
Adam: Hey, Leo.
Leo: Hey, yeah?
Adam: Why are you still here? *shakes finger at me* I can't give you hours just for not leaving early enough, you know.
Leo: Oh, I'm sorry, I was just washing some shoe-covers.
Adam: We'll need you to sign this waiver form saying that you just didn't clock out in time, you didn't actually earn any money, you're a horrible person, you're trying to extort the company by doing extra work, and I would berate you for ten minutes if I didn't have better things to do.
Leo: D: D: D:
This is what actually happened:
Adam: Hey, Leo.
Leo: Hey, yeah?
Adam: Thank you. For washing those. I appreciate it.
Leo: Oh, uhh... I don't mind. I mean, I'm still on the clock...
Adam: Oh, that's okay, *waves hand dismissively* I don't mind. When are you working next?
Leo: Tomorrow at 11.
Adam: Okay, see you then! *smile*
Leo: See you then!
I mean, enough said. I don't know why I do it to myself...at least it means I'm pleasantly surprised a lot, but it also causes me a lot of unnecessary stress.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Developments!
Well, I had my first example of a MAN asking me where I got my necklace...especially special, since he actually asked me for a link to my site. I really need to be more aggressive, to be honest, when he said he liked my necklace I just thanked him, and didn't tell him I had made it until he actually asked where I had gotten it. I feel strange tooting my own horn to people I don't know. I wonder why he asked, actually, but tomorrow is Valentine's day, so that might explain it.
I've been reading a blog by a guy named Zach Wienersmith (fantastic name), who is a successful webcomic artist. He's also pretty much the person he wants to be - spends all his time reading, thinking and making comics, because he wanted it that way. And his blog has a lot of good advice on it. Mainly, what I took away from reading the archives was "if you really want something, you have to be willing to suffer for it. If you're not willing to suffer for it, you don't want it as much as you think you do."
I'm taking this to heart. I need to be MORE willing to suffer for my craft and my business, spend more time on it, do more of the gross stuff like sealing cranes...my business will get bigger if I just work on it more, and if I want it to take off, that's what I have to do. If you asked me if I wanted it to take off, I would say yes...but if I'm not willing to suffer for it, how much do I really want it? We'll see.
I also learned lately that if you plan to do something, it's better not to tell people about it. They give you the fulfillment that you're looking for by saying "oh, that's cool" and then you don't feel like you need to do it anymore...you get the same level of fulfillment with much less work. Therefore, I'm not going to make lists of things I need to do anymore...I don't even do them until I would have done them anyway. Goodness knows what I'm going to blog about if it won't be wild predictions of how much more awesome I'm going to be in the near future, but I guess we'll find out.
And as to that, I'm struggling right now with finding a place to take good pictures. Historically, the ONLY good pictures I've been able to take have been at my boyfriend's parents house, on the back step. Obviously, I don't go there with any regularity, and I have no place around here to photograph my new (and awesome) stuff. I assure you that I HAVE been having fun with copper! But I have no photographic evidence of it. :( Anyone around Boston know where I can find some simple slate-tiled floors?
I've been reading a blog by a guy named Zach Wienersmith (fantastic name), who is a successful webcomic artist. He's also pretty much the person he wants to be - spends all his time reading, thinking and making comics, because he wanted it that way. And his blog has a lot of good advice on it. Mainly, what I took away from reading the archives was "if you really want something, you have to be willing to suffer for it. If you're not willing to suffer for it, you don't want it as much as you think you do."
I'm taking this to heart. I need to be MORE willing to suffer for my craft and my business, spend more time on it, do more of the gross stuff like sealing cranes...my business will get bigger if I just work on it more, and if I want it to take off, that's what I have to do. If you asked me if I wanted it to take off, I would say yes...but if I'm not willing to suffer for it, how much do I really want it? We'll see.
I also learned lately that if you plan to do something, it's better not to tell people about it. They give you the fulfillment that you're looking for by saying "oh, that's cool" and then you don't feel like you need to do it anymore...you get the same level of fulfillment with much less work. Therefore, I'm not going to make lists of things I need to do anymore...I don't even do them until I would have done them anyway. Goodness knows what I'm going to blog about if it won't be wild predictions of how much more awesome I'm going to be in the near future, but I guess we'll find out.
And as to that, I'm struggling right now with finding a place to take good pictures. Historically, the ONLY good pictures I've been able to take have been at my boyfriend's parents house, on the back step. Obviously, I don't go there with any regularity, and I have no place around here to photograph my new (and awesome) stuff. I assure you that I HAVE been having fun with copper! But I have no photographic evidence of it. :( Anyone around Boston know where I can find some simple slate-tiled floors?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Twitter and a tea wallet
I finally caved, yes. I got a twitter account.
This could be good, since I like to talk. This could be bad, since I like to talk.
After all, right now I just spout at length into blogspot...but that at least requires an hour or so of thought, some preparation beforehand if I want to post pictures, etc. Twitter is always there for me to type my one-hundred-and-something characters of whatever and worry about it later. But maybe talking and being interesting and interested and connecting with other people and finding people who like to follow crafters' twitter accounts will help me get more involved in the handmade community. And luckily the format should keep me from getting too verbose...I can see anyone contemplating following my blog immediately switching to twitter at that news. :)
Anyway, @letterboxlion. Surprise!
I can't wait to post some more pictures, oh man. I've been getting better at a crazy rate, and my style is evolving by the day into a more artsy, more capable way of thinking - out of the earwires I bought? Not a problem if I've got some half-hard wire on hand. Out of half-hard wire? I can hammer dead-soft wire! Would textured earwires be comfortable? No? I can just make that test piece into a pendant, then. My sitting-down-and-getting-to-work times have been more fruitful than ever...my biggest problem is that I don't like to take pictures!
TRANSITION PHRASE. I have a miraculous best friend. She makes everything. Sewing, cooking, baking, jewelry, whatever it is, she probably has perfected it. (Need some vegan cookies that are moist and yummy? I can hook you up, let me tell you. The only way you can tell they are vegan is that they are extra-delicious, it's bizarre. Anyway!) She made me a tea wallet. Now THAT'S some targeted marketing. Basically it's another example of her knowing me far too well and giving me something that I had only vaguely registered that I should want, considering the tea I always carry around with me is getting squished in the pocket of my backpack that is also used for pens. I received a wallet from her, and it had tea in it, and I said to myself, "Hey, score! I could use this to keep my tea from getting squished!" And told her I would continue to use it for tea, whereupon she informed me that it was made for that purpose. No wonder it's so perfect. I mean, it even has leaves on it. I GUESS THEY'RE TEA LEAVES.
Anyway, if only there were a way for sellers to know their target markets that well...haha, but then we'd want to give it all away. I already have that problem enough.
This could be good, since I like to talk. This could be bad, since I like to talk.
After all, right now I just spout at length into blogspot...but that at least requires an hour or so of thought, some preparation beforehand if I want to post pictures, etc. Twitter is always there for me to type my one-hundred-and-something characters of whatever and worry about it later. But maybe talking and being interesting and interested and connecting with other people and finding people who like to follow crafters' twitter accounts will help me get more involved in the handmade community. And luckily the format should keep me from getting too verbose...I can see anyone contemplating following my blog immediately switching to twitter at that news. :)
Anyway, @letterboxlion. Surprise!
I can't wait to post some more pictures, oh man. I've been getting better at a crazy rate, and my style is evolving by the day into a more artsy, more capable way of thinking - out of the earwires I bought? Not a problem if I've got some half-hard wire on hand. Out of half-hard wire? I can hammer dead-soft wire! Would textured earwires be comfortable? No? I can just make that test piece into a pendant, then. My sitting-down-and-getting-to-work times have been more fruitful than ever...my biggest problem is that I don't like to take pictures!
TRANSITION PHRASE. I have a miraculous best friend. She makes everything. Sewing, cooking, baking, jewelry, whatever it is, she probably has perfected it. (Need some vegan cookies that are moist and yummy? I can hook you up, let me tell you. The only way you can tell they are vegan is that they are extra-delicious, it's bizarre. Anyway!) She made me a tea wallet. Now THAT'S some targeted marketing. Basically it's another example of her knowing me far too well and giving me something that I had only vaguely registered that I should want, considering the tea I always carry around with me is getting squished in the pocket of my backpack that is also used for pens. I received a wallet from her, and it had tea in it, and I said to myself, "Hey, score! I could use this to keep my tea from getting squished!" And told her I would continue to use it for tea, whereupon she informed me that it was made for that purpose. No wonder it's so perfect. I mean, it even has leaves on it. I GUESS THEY'RE TEA LEAVES.
Anyway, if only there were a way for sellers to know their target markets that well...haha, but then we'd want to give it all away. I already have that problem enough.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Some pictures, some typos, customer service
I have no good excuse for being awake right now, except that I turn nocturnal during breaks from school...it's now 7:43 am and I'm thinking of making lunch. Anyway, forgive my abysmal grammar, spelling, etc. during these tough times, I'm only half-awake. I'm one of those lovable people who, when they get very tired, start to say things as though they were drunk, so if I say anything completely whacko, forgive. I probably won't notice for a while.
Anyway, some pictures.
These are the gifts I gave to my friends for Christmas. The first two were for my best friends from back home, but I had to ask them for forgiveness for how obviously amateur I am at wire-wrapping...I didn't have heavy-enough gauge wire to do the projects I was planning, and I did them anyway because I didn't have time to get more...so they're made with the wrong materials, improvised and basically practice projects. Leo doing whatever with her last bits of wire. But that's what they get for being friends with a jewelry artist...the ones that are good I have to sell, but they can have plenty of okay ones :) At least they said they liked them. But gotta love 'em, they'd probably say that no matter what.
The last one is made of half-used soldering wire (for a soldering gun) that I scavenged from the floor of the theatre shop at school (they were going to throw it away!). I said, "Evan! What can I make you for Christmas?" (By the way, it is VERY hard to make anything for men for such occasions when all one can make is jewelry.) And he said, "I'm asking my mom for a bag for Christmas. So make me something I can hang on a bag." And so I did. It turned out to be perfect, actually...the bag was leather, so it was a perfect color, and for some reason it ended up being the perfect size and everything. Serendipity. The thing is, I wanted to make a double-helix, because they're awesome. But I couldn't make a stable double-helix, so I made a 2D projection of one...a shadow, basically. (He's a computer graphics person. It works out.) It's easiest to see it (for me) if you look at one of the points where the wires cross and imagine that one is actually farther away at that point, farther into the screen. Then if you imagine that one alternating each time, you can imagine that it's a double-helix and you're looking at it head-on. ANYWAY.
I came into a lot of supplies recently...I say that like it was a surprise, but that's only half a joke. I bought a ton of wire and beads...and chain, and ball head pins...a TON, like, I've been getting so many packages...hooray for Etsy's supplies category, which can hook me up with $.70/foot oxidized copper chain. But the thing IS. I did it with money that was no longer capital. It was with the money that had gone into my paypal account from my sales. I used money that I had MADE to buy things to make more jewelry. That's how a real business runs, and I am putting everything I bought to good use, knowing the work I put into earning the money to buy it. It's much more rewarding than the office job I had last year (though of course I wish I still had one like that...). Also, my boyfriend's sister gave me a gift card to a bead store for Christmas, so I got to go a little crazy the other day...I spent like 4 hours in the bead store. Jewelry supplies are the only thing I can shop for and buy without getting horrible buyer's remorse, I don't know why...I'm terrible at shopping for that reason, but I love shopping for beads!
And I have been going so crazy making stuff that I'm out of wire again...at least I already bought some more this time, and won't have to wait too long. I'm making my entire stock of wire copper, at least for now, because it's SO much cheaper and looks fantastic anyway. Got tons of gems, mostly green and blue. Sodalite, tree and moss agate, Chrysocolla, a little kyanite. Then there's the fire agate in green, but also in red, with carnelian to match. I am so bad at pink, I hardly ever like it, and that's been a problem because most of the custom orders I get are for pink and I rarely think it looks good, so then I feel bad about selling it no matter how much the buyer likes it. However, I did get some awesome hammer-faceted rose quartz nuggets and some itty-bitty pinkier garnets and made some fantastic earrings, those should be up soon. Takes something really awesome to make me like a pink piece of jewelry. Once I really am at a loss for what to do without wire, I should get around to taking some pictures of what I've been making and putting them up on Etsy.
By the way: buy handmade. Seriously, since I started shopping for supplies on Etsy I have only looked back at my other supply sites to confirm that Etsy is almost always cheaper. Of course they usually do charge shipping, so it's sometimes more expensive...once in a while. But everyone is so NICE. A good 50% of the people I've bought from have sent me free gifts, one person sent some random other things like silver-plated toggle clasps and a few beads...the best ones are the ones that send extra of what you actually ordered, because then you know you can use it. I got 7 lapis coin beads instead of 6, 4 extra copper earwires, and one seller sent me 8 feet of copper chain when I had ordered 6 feet! Just one of those things. No warning at all, either, if I hadn't held it up to my 6-foot measuring stick (my boyfriend) I wouldn't even have known I had gotten extra. People are just very nice. The one order I had to complain about (I hardly ever complain, I promise) the woman explained that she employed kids to pack her beads, had probably just missed the problem ones, apologized, and offered to send me some more to replace the broken, sub-par ones that I had received.
It's probably a very exploitable system. Every seller on such a scale as a handmade goods shop wants her customers to be happy, especially in a forum like Etsy where there are direct repercussions if you don't live up to people's expectations...if you don't have 100% positive feedback, immediately people trust you a lot less, and of course you know you've done it - gone through the reviews of something or someone to find the person who thinks they're terrible and find out why. Buyers have been known to just completely make things up, being totally unreasonable, and that reflects not on their credibility in this case, but on the shop owner's. Nobody wants negative feedback, so every Etsy seller asks for communication and a chance to fix a problem before you respond negatively...and I've been reading lately about customer service and how annoying customers often get free stuff. I didn't want to be a squeaky wheel anyway, so I told her right out that A) I wouldn't give her negative feedback anyway, since the problem was so minor, and B) I would give her another chance if it was a fluke (which it seemed like, since my other orders from her were both fine), but she still offered to send me new beads. Long story short, the customer service on Etsy is fantastic.
I was worried about my own practices until I remembered that I've been sending mine in handmade paper boxes with extra origami...I think it's just a thing that handmade sellers naturally do. Nobody asked me for little paper stars or flowers, but when it came time to start packing things, I just made them and put them in.
And on that note! I'll leave you (at 8:45) with the last-bits-of-wire pieces (L-BOW, ahaha! Forgive me if I use that again) for that time of wire-having that just passed.
Anyway, some pictures.
These are the gifts I gave to my friends for Christmas. The first two were for my best friends from back home, but I had to ask them for forgiveness for how obviously amateur I am at wire-wrapping...I didn't have heavy-enough gauge wire to do the projects I was planning, and I did them anyway because I didn't have time to get more...so they're made with the wrong materials, improvised and basically practice projects. Leo doing whatever with her last bits of wire. But that's what they get for being friends with a jewelry artist...the ones that are good I have to sell, but they can have plenty of okay ones :) At least they said they liked them. But gotta love 'em, they'd probably say that no matter what. The last one is made of half-used soldering wire (for a soldering gun) that I scavenged from the floor of the theatre shop at school (they were going to throw it away!). I said, "Evan! What can I make you for Christmas?" (By the way, it is VERY hard to make anything for men for such occasions when all one can make is jewelry.) And he said, "I'm asking my mom for a bag for Christmas. So make me something I can hang on a bag." And so I did. It turned out to be perfect, actually...the bag was leather, so it was a perfect color, and for some reason it ended up being the perfect size and everything. Serendipity. The thing is, I wanted to make a double-helix, because they're awesome. But I couldn't make a stable double-helix, so I made a 2D projection of one...a shadow, basically. (He's a computer graphics person. It works out.) It's easiest to see it (for me) if you look at one of the points where the wires cross and imagine that one is actually farther away at that point, farther into the screen. Then if you imagine that one alternating each time, you can imagine that it's a double-helix and you're looking at it head-on. ANYWAY.
I came into a lot of supplies recently...I say that like it was a surprise, but that's only half a joke. I bought a ton of wire and beads...and chain, and ball head pins...a TON, like, I've been getting so many packages...hooray for Etsy's supplies category, which can hook me up with $.70/foot oxidized copper chain. But the thing IS. I did it with money that was no longer capital. It was with the money that had gone into my paypal account from my sales. I used money that I had MADE to buy things to make more jewelry. That's how a real business runs, and I am putting everything I bought to good use, knowing the work I put into earning the money to buy it. It's much more rewarding than the office job I had last year (though of course I wish I still had one like that...). Also, my boyfriend's sister gave me a gift card to a bead store for Christmas, so I got to go a little crazy the other day...I spent like 4 hours in the bead store. Jewelry supplies are the only thing I can shop for and buy without getting horrible buyer's remorse, I don't know why...I'm terrible at shopping for that reason, but I love shopping for beads!
And I have been going so crazy making stuff that I'm out of wire again...at least I already bought some more this time, and won't have to wait too long. I'm making my entire stock of wire copper, at least for now, because it's SO much cheaper and looks fantastic anyway. Got tons of gems, mostly green and blue. Sodalite, tree and moss agate, Chrysocolla, a little kyanite. Then there's the fire agate in green, but also in red, with carnelian to match. I am so bad at pink, I hardly ever like it, and that's been a problem because most of the custom orders I get are for pink and I rarely think it looks good, so then I feel bad about selling it no matter how much the buyer likes it. However, I did get some awesome hammer-faceted rose quartz nuggets and some itty-bitty pinkier garnets and made some fantastic earrings, those should be up soon. Takes something really awesome to make me like a pink piece of jewelry. Once I really am at a loss for what to do without wire, I should get around to taking some pictures of what I've been making and putting them up on Etsy.
By the way: buy handmade. Seriously, since I started shopping for supplies on Etsy I have only looked back at my other supply sites to confirm that Etsy is almost always cheaper. Of course they usually do charge shipping, so it's sometimes more expensive...once in a while. But everyone is so NICE. A good 50% of the people I've bought from have sent me free gifts, one person sent some random other things like silver-plated toggle clasps and a few beads...the best ones are the ones that send extra of what you actually ordered, because then you know you can use it. I got 7 lapis coin beads instead of 6, 4 extra copper earwires, and one seller sent me 8 feet of copper chain when I had ordered 6 feet! Just one of those things. No warning at all, either, if I hadn't held it up to my 6-foot measuring stick (my boyfriend) I wouldn't even have known I had gotten extra. People are just very nice. The one order I had to complain about (I hardly ever complain, I promise) the woman explained that she employed kids to pack her beads, had probably just missed the problem ones, apologized, and offered to send me some more to replace the broken, sub-par ones that I had received.
It's probably a very exploitable system. Every seller on such a scale as a handmade goods shop wants her customers to be happy, especially in a forum like Etsy where there are direct repercussions if you don't live up to people's expectations...if you don't have 100% positive feedback, immediately people trust you a lot less, and of course you know you've done it - gone through the reviews of something or someone to find the person who thinks they're terrible and find out why. Buyers have been known to just completely make things up, being totally unreasonable, and that reflects not on their credibility in this case, but on the shop owner's. Nobody wants negative feedback, so every Etsy seller asks for communication and a chance to fix a problem before you respond negatively...and I've been reading lately about customer service and how annoying customers often get free stuff. I didn't want to be a squeaky wheel anyway, so I told her right out that A) I wouldn't give her negative feedback anyway, since the problem was so minor, and B) I would give her another chance if it was a fluke (which it seemed like, since my other orders from her were both fine), but she still offered to send me new beads. Long story short, the customer service on Etsy is fantastic.
I was worried about my own practices until I remembered that I've been sending mine in handmade paper boxes with extra origami...I think it's just a thing that handmade sellers naturally do. Nobody asked me for little paper stars or flowers, but when it came time to start packing things, I just made them and put them in.
And on that note! I'll leave you (at 8:45) with the last-bits-of-wire pieces (L-BOW, ahaha! Forgive me if I use that again) for that time of wire-having that just passed.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Lots of pretty photos! And vacation.
I'm now on Christmas break! Though, I know for most people those days are probably far behind them, and "Christmas break" just brings back memories of airport rushing around and trying to find a way to get your mom to take you to the mall so you can buy her a gift without her knowing what it is. No airports for me, this year I'm staying in Boston with my boyfriend and his family, who are all amazingly nice. It's very exciting!
My boyfriend's brother has already 1) taught me how to solder (which I've been itching to try for a long time), 2) given me his old soldering iron (he has a new one) 3) given me some solder specifically for use with silver, which is what I'm going to DO, 4) given me a bunch of old, useless and incompatible-with-anything RAM sticks to cut up and use in jewelry...silver and gold accents on an intricately patterned deep green color. I'm so excited! Such possibility. Some of them even have holes already so I can string them if I want.
But I don't have a file to get the edges nice, or a saw to cut them up into smaller pieces, so I might have to wait before I can do what I'd like. I also don't have flux, which you usually need for jewelry soldering...Evan doesn't need it because he just uses it for electrical stuff, but jewelry is specialized in a different way. Maybe when I get going on it I'll post up a tutorial or something...which, knowing me, will be "How To Get Away With Soldering Jewelry Without Following Most of the Steps"
...AND IT'S NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS YET. Also he and Boyfriend of Mine have a bunch of old computer parts and they say they could help me make a good, fast desktop (something I do not have at all at the moment) for $100. A good deal. I'm surrounded by so many nice people!
So finally I'm posting up my awesome rocks. This is, apparently, standard procedure for jewelry-makers with blogs, but it's mostly because I want to, because I am so excited about them. Actually, I think that's WHY it's standard procedure - those people all get excited about the same things that I do.
First of all, I'd better link to these folks: rockcutter62 and terrafinds. They are the awesome people from which I ordered most of this stuff...both of them are awesome and I have no qualms advertising for them...Terra's stuff is more beautiful than her pictures (and she takes very good pictures) and she has sales often enough to make me want to buy all her stuff, all the time. She finds some of the prettiest labradorite I can find, on etsy or off, and sells it for less than almost everybody else sells theirs. And Ron (rockcutter62, of course) is an awesome retired man just cutting cabochons because he loves to do it, and selling them for beyond-reasonable prices. He even threw me in a free gift because he thought one of the cabs I bought was too "marginal"...a totally bizarre standard in my opinion, (the price I bought it for was $1.00!) but I'm not going to complain!
Here's some pretty rocks:
Itty-bitty lapis lazuli cab with pyrite inclusions...such an intense blue, I love it!
Okay, this one I bought because I'm a sentimental baby. My boyfriend's eyes look like blue lace agate, so I bought the least-expensive one I could find that still looked nice and usable (It's not even a cabachon, it's a pendant bead)...I intended it to be my first wire-wrapping experiments so I could be all sentimental and a baby, but I RAN OUT OF SILVER WIRE. More on that later.
This is a sweet little one. Owyhee jasper. I like it because the little blossoms on the side have a hint of pink to complement the brown. This was the one I got for free with the other (non-marginal) one that cost only $1.00. I probably wouldn't have bought it by itself, but now that I have it and can see it up close, I like it a lot.
And, uh, just...let me reiterate that.
Okay so the second picture isn't too clear, but at least it shows some of the color. I love this stone. Dark green, a color that really doesn't show up adequately on camera, shines like glass, has lots of depth...and like any good seraphinite, it looks like somebody squished an angel into it. I'm so happy about this stone. And it's BIG. BIG. (And Ron sold it to me for $5 because it was 50% off...when anyone else would have sold it for $20.) I'm such a big fan of this rock that I bought another one from him as soon as I got it:
AHHHHHHHHH. SO. PRETTY. I can't wait for my silver wire to come, because I am going to have a LOT OF FUN.
*breathe* Okay. Some even shinier things:
These are both from TerraFinds. Gorgeous high-quality garnets and labradorite...I had more of each, but I put them into Christmas presents, which I will post up AFTER my friends tell me they got them and oh man so shiny and well, I don't really like red but I'm sure it will go with something. The garnets look dark, dark red and shine lighter red on whatever they are near.
The labradorite is a smoky grey with shiny flecks in it, that at certain lights, does an impossible-looking color-change and becomes teal-green, or this brilliant shade of blue. The color-changing effect is so awesome and unique that it's named after the stone: labradorescence. Speaking of which.
BAM.
Oh, uh, sorry, didn't catch that?
I mean, enough said. You can see right into them. And like the other ones, they change in different lights. These ones are cabochons (no holes), so I need my silver wire (!) to wrap them...I can't just string them on wire and let them show off by themselves. But they are top-notch, really gorgeous. The other ones are awesome in their smoky-grey-ness, but these are crystal clear right up to the layers with the gorgeous colors. Breathtaking, really, for something so small.
AND here's where I post my first attempt at wire-wrapping. CAVEAT: It's not ultra-stable. I was so impatient to start wire-wrapping that I had to do it with the only large-gauge wire I had at the time (other than full-hard copper soldering wire) which happened to be gold-filled 20G dead-soft. Translation: it's really soft wire. I hammered it and everything, but it's still easy to take the stone out by bending the top back. Which I guess is okay, since you actually have to lift it out even if you take the top off...the bottom is secure. I wore it all day yesterday and it never showed any signs of not staying in. But it's not realy sell-able...though since it's my FIRST WRAP EVER I guess I wouldn't sell it anyway. BUT HEY. I didn't even make a total-failure-mess-of-things, as expected. My FIRST WRAP EVER and it's WEARABLE.
And pretty, too.
Now tell me, does that stone look "marginal" to you? Does it look worth $1.00? Because that is what I paid for it. It's not only the only one of these cabochons that really goes with gold wire, it's also REALLY. PRETTY. Blood poppy jasper. I would have paid more for it without the free gift thrown in. Seriously, give that guy some business.
So, I owe this blog a few more pictures...I'm going to post up the presents I made because I like what I did, but of course I can't post those until after their recipients see them. And I may not, depending on how much they like them.
Those should also go up under "recent creations" on my site, so don't let me forget.
My boyfriend's brother has already 1) taught me how to solder (which I've been itching to try for a long time), 2) given me his old soldering iron (he has a new one) 3) given me some solder specifically for use with silver, which is what I'm going to DO, 4) given me a bunch of old, useless and incompatible-with-anything RAM sticks to cut up and use in jewelry...silver and gold accents on an intricately patterned deep green color. I'm so excited! Such possibility. Some of them even have holes already so I can string them if I want.
But I don't have a file to get the edges nice, or a saw to cut them up into smaller pieces, so I might have to wait before I can do what I'd like. I also don't have flux, which you usually need for jewelry soldering...Evan doesn't need it because he just uses it for electrical stuff, but jewelry is specialized in a different way. Maybe when I get going on it I'll post up a tutorial or something...which, knowing me, will be "How To Get Away With Soldering Jewelry Without Following Most of the Steps"
...AND IT'S NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS YET. Also he and Boyfriend of Mine have a bunch of old computer parts and they say they could help me make a good, fast desktop (something I do not have at all at the moment) for $100. A good deal. I'm surrounded by so many nice people!
So finally I'm posting up my awesome rocks. This is, apparently, standard procedure for jewelry-makers with blogs, but it's mostly because I want to, because I am so excited about them. Actually, I think that's WHY it's standard procedure - those people all get excited about the same things that I do.
First of all, I'd better link to these folks: rockcutter62 and terrafinds. They are the awesome people from which I ordered most of this stuff...both of them are awesome and I have no qualms advertising for them...Terra's stuff is more beautiful than her pictures (and she takes very good pictures) and she has sales often enough to make me want to buy all her stuff, all the time. She finds some of the prettiest labradorite I can find, on etsy or off, and sells it for less than almost everybody else sells theirs. And Ron (rockcutter62, of course) is an awesome retired man just cutting cabochons because he loves to do it, and selling them for beyond-reasonable prices. He even threw me in a free gift because he thought one of the cabs I bought was too "marginal"...a totally bizarre standard in my opinion, (the price I bought it for was $1.00!) but I'm not going to complain!
Here's some pretty rocks:
Itty-bitty lapis lazuli cab with pyrite inclusions...such an intense blue, I love it!
Okay, this one I bought because I'm a sentimental baby. My boyfriend's eyes look like blue lace agate, so I bought the least-expensive one I could find that still looked nice and usable (It's not even a cabachon, it's a pendant bead)...I intended it to be my first wire-wrapping experiments so I could be all sentimental and a baby, but I RAN OUT OF SILVER WIRE. More on that later.
This is a sweet little one. Owyhee jasper. I like it because the little blossoms on the side have a hint of pink to complement the brown. This was the one I got for free with the other (non-marginal) one that cost only $1.00. I probably wouldn't have bought it by itself, but now that I have it and can see it up close, I like it a lot.
And, uh, just...let me reiterate that.
Okay so the second picture isn't too clear, but at least it shows some of the color. I love this stone. Dark green, a color that really doesn't show up adequately on camera, shines like glass, has lots of depth...and like any good seraphinite, it looks like somebody squished an angel into it. I'm so happy about this stone. And it's BIG. BIG. (And Ron sold it to me for $5 because it was 50% off...when anyone else would have sold it for $20.) I'm such a big fan of this rock that I bought another one from him as soon as I got it:
AHHHHHHHHH. SO. PRETTY. I can't wait for my silver wire to come, because I am going to have a LOT OF FUN.
*breathe* Okay. Some even shinier things:
These are both from TerraFinds. Gorgeous high-quality garnets and labradorite...I had more of each, but I put them into Christmas presents, which I will post up AFTER my friends tell me they got them and oh man so shiny and well, I don't really like red but I'm sure it will go with something. The garnets look dark, dark red and shine lighter red on whatever they are near. 
The labradorite is a smoky grey with shiny flecks in it, that at certain lights, does an impossible-looking color-change and becomes teal-green, or this brilliant shade of blue. The color-changing effect is so awesome and unique that it's named after the stone: labradorescence. Speaking of which.BAM.
Oh, uh, sorry, didn't catch that?
I mean, enough said. You can see right into them. And like the other ones, they change in different lights. These ones are cabochons (no holes), so I need my silver wire (!) to wrap them...I can't just string them on wire and let them show off by themselves. But they are top-notch, really gorgeous. The other ones are awesome in their smoky-grey-ness, but these are crystal clear right up to the layers with the gorgeous colors. Breathtaking, really, for something so small.
AND here's where I post my first attempt at wire-wrapping. CAVEAT: It's not ultra-stable. I was so impatient to start wire-wrapping that I had to do it with the only large-gauge wire I had at the time (other than full-hard copper soldering wire) which happened to be gold-filled 20G dead-soft. Translation: it's really soft wire. I hammered it and everything, but it's still easy to take the stone out by bending the top back. Which I guess is okay, since you actually have to lift it out even if you take the top off...the bottom is secure. I wore it all day yesterday and it never showed any signs of not staying in. But it's not realy sell-able...though since it's my FIRST WRAP EVER I guess I wouldn't sell it anyway. BUT HEY. I didn't even make a total-failure-mess-of-things, as expected. My FIRST WRAP EVER and it's WEARABLE.
And pretty, too. Now tell me, does that stone look "marginal" to you? Does it look worth $1.00? Because that is what I paid for it. It's not only the only one of these cabochons that really goes with gold wire, it's also REALLY. PRETTY. Blood poppy jasper. I would have paid more for it without the free gift thrown in. Seriously, give that guy some business.
So, I owe this blog a few more pictures...I'm going to post up the presents I made because I like what I did, but of course I can't post those until after their recipients see them. And I may not, depending on how much they like them.
Those should also go up under "recent creations" on my site, so don't let me forget.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Goings-on
Whoo! So much going on. Ballroom competition...eh, it went ok. Made some semifinals. Didn't actually go as well as my first competition did, which is strange because it was about the same size. And there was no internet, so none of my paper got written because I had no sources to work from...Well, so it goes. So tired! My feet, oh my feet.
Sold some more stuff! AND got it done in a timely manner (three custom orders at once!). So proud of myself. Christmas is a really inconvenient time for there to be finals to worry about, but I think I'm handling it pretty well (so far). Better blog now, this week is going to be a busy one.
My website client, weebly, also emailed me to tell me that my website views are skyrocketing. (Which I would hope, since 1 is infinitely more than 0.) Score! Oh man, so tired. Need to write paper. Wait what have I eaten in the last 24 hours?
Sold some more stuff! AND got it done in a timely manner (three custom orders at once!). So proud of myself. Christmas is a really inconvenient time for there to be finals to worry about, but I think I'm handling it pretty well (so far). Better blog now, this week is going to be a busy one.
My website client, weebly, also emailed me to tell me that my website views are skyrocketing. (Which I would hope, since 1 is infinitely more than 0.) Score! Oh man, so tired. Need to write paper. Wait what have I eaten in the last 24 hours?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Flustered! So flustered!
Meh!
I need to keep my grades up, especially in Japanese and Computer Science...those are the two that have been suffering the most from how busy/distracted I've been. Here I thought I was doing work all day, (mostly on the business) and then I discovered that I haven't really gotten anything done. Well, that's not true. My homework isn't done, that's for sure, but I have plenty of time for most of it...I'm just paranoid enough to do work due Thursday on Monday night. But I did some research, found out more about gemstones, ordered a couple (be careful, Leo...)...And posted up some photos on my new Letterbox Lion Handmade Jewelry facebook page, which you should check out, using the handy new widgety-thing on the side of the page =========>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Though to be fair, this is probably more interesting. Hopefully.
Also, I made some price changes - I lowered my prices for things I was, in retrospect, charging way too much for considering the price of my materials...it pains me that the most effort-intensive and least rewarding things I make are the ones I can sell for the least, though, (while still managing to be the ones I can most reliably sell) and I have to control my tendency to try and make up for it on the higher-end stuff. I DID up my shipping prices though, after finally admitting to myself that charging less for shipping than shipping was costing me was really not an effective strategy. So, lower prices, higher shipping. All in the name of necessity, I assure you.
By the way, add craftywillows (or littlebitcrafting on blogspot) after Fantasian to the list of people I absolutely want to BE. Her blog is old stuff about how she's getting started wire-wrapping, trying tutorials, etc..."we'll see how it goes"...and her shop stuff is absolutely amazing, so far beyond those tutorials as a beginning, and so unique. It's really (REALLY) encouraging to know that from where I am right now, I can get to where she is ...with luck and perseverance and enthusiasm and experimentation...and, in this business, some capital.
We'll see how it goes! I'm getting a few cabachons, and I'm about to order some wire. I want to see what I can come up with if I actually try wire-wrapping, for real this time, legit, this is not a drill.
(HAHA GET IT. CAUSE THEY'RE NOT DRILLED. HA. Oh man, I just got that. *wipes tear*)
Wish me luck, anyway :)
EDIT: OH AND BY THE WAY. I've been meaning to post up more things throughout today and yesterday, but somehow I managed not to pull it off. With my crazy schedule (and my computer losing its internet connection, resulting in an IT visit today that ate up some time) it's been tough to find a chunk where I can just sit down and write descriptions with any personality...not to mention that etsy has no save function, what's with that? Anyway, I'm going to go post something right now.
I need to keep my grades up, especially in Japanese and Computer Science...those are the two that have been suffering the most from how busy/distracted I've been. Here I thought I was doing work all day, (mostly on the business) and then I discovered that I haven't really gotten anything done. Well, that's not true. My homework isn't done, that's for sure, but I have plenty of time for most of it...I'm just paranoid enough to do work due Thursday on Monday night. But I did some research, found out more about gemstones, ordered a couple (be careful, Leo...)...And posted up some photos on my new Letterbox Lion Handmade Jewelry facebook page, which you should check out, using the handy new widgety-thing on the side of the page =========>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Though to be fair, this is probably more interesting. Hopefully.
Also, I made some price changes - I lowered my prices for things I was, in retrospect, charging way too much for considering the price of my materials...it pains me that the most effort-intensive and least rewarding things I make are the ones I can sell for the least, though, (while still managing to be the ones I can most reliably sell) and I have to control my tendency to try and make up for it on the higher-end stuff. I DID up my shipping prices though, after finally admitting to myself that charging less for shipping than shipping was costing me was really not an effective strategy. So, lower prices, higher shipping. All in the name of necessity, I assure you.
By the way, add craftywillows (or littlebitcrafting on blogspot) after Fantasian to the list of people I absolutely want to BE. Her blog is old stuff about how she's getting started wire-wrapping, trying tutorials, etc..."we'll see how it goes"...and her shop stuff is absolutely amazing, so far beyond those tutorials as a beginning, and so unique. It's really (REALLY) encouraging to know that from where I am right now, I can get to where she is ...with luck and perseverance and enthusiasm and experimentation...and, in this business, some capital.
We'll see how it goes! I'm getting a few cabachons, and I'm about to order some wire. I want to see what I can come up with if I actually try wire-wrapping, for real this time, legit, this is not a drill.
(HAHA GET IT. CAUSE THEY'RE NOT DRILLED. HA. Oh man, I just got that. *wipes tear*)
Wish me luck, anyway :)
EDIT: OH AND BY THE WAY. I've been meaning to post up more things throughout today and yesterday, but somehow I managed not to pull it off. With my crazy schedule (and my computer losing its internet connection, resulting in an IT visit today that ate up some time) it's been tough to find a chunk where I can just sit down and write descriptions with any personality...not to mention that etsy has no save function, what's with that? Anyway, I'm going to go post something right now.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Yay, photographs! And a paragraph of bragging.
It's been so long since I've managed to take good photographs. Thank goodness for vacations...they are the times I can go to buildings that are well-lit. And be back to them in time. Since I moved to New England, the weirdest part of adjusting has been how early it gets dark here...Michigan is my home town, and it's as far west as you can go in the Eastern time zone, so where in Boston it gets dark at 4:30, (FOUR-THIRTY. AHHHHH.) it waits for another few hours back home. Oh, man, I need to make a lightbox. Oh dear boyfriend sitting next to me, want to make me one for Christmas?
Juuuust kidding. I'll get around to it. Life is oh-so-scattered and OH LOOK I HAVE A FOLLOWER. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN oh never mind I know you. I love you anyway! :)
So, the advice I've been reading is basically all "you need to re-do everything you've been doing." I'm working on adjusting my shop announcement to be more google-search friendly...and I have to do the same to EVERY SINGLE POST that I have made, and every one I make from now on.
The main thing, too, is "have a product that people want"...I'm sure they want jewelry. They definitely want origami jewelry.
AND ON THAT NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MOMENT TO BRAG. I am, as far as I could tell either by googling OR by searching on etsy, the ONLY PERSON who will make you earrings with more than one crane on them. They're BIRDS! Did seriously nobody else think of a flock? Man, now that I've cornered the market, I wish I could patent the idea. I think that's considered cheating in the art world. But I've been making them for a few years now, without ever realizing I was making something so unique, nobody else is doing it at all.
(Of course, maybe it's because my main materials are so light - the really, really nice handmade washi chiyogami paper is thin and lightweight, but the yuzen paper (not handmade or as expensive) is normal-to-really-thick paper thickness, and it would be harder to make flocks of. I've been using starburst wrappers, which are really thin, light paper, so I've had an advantage...to easily make a flock I have to either use the really cheap materials, or the really expensive ones. Now that's odd.)
Oh and also, advice says, post photographs everywhere. Facebook. Flickr. HERE. So I'm posting photographs. HERE.
Everybody (EVERYBODY) says "don't post all your listings at once. Space them throughout the day, because you'll get a bazillion times more exposure that way." It makes sense. If you only post once, but you post a bunch of stuff, if the people who happen to be on at that time don't like your stuff, they'll pass over it for stuff more up their alley in the just-posted box. So by posting every few hours, maybe, you can get all the crowd that shops on etsy at various times of the day, even if your post is only visible for a few seconds, let's be honest...those are important seconds.
SO, here are some photographs, and they are so new not even Etsy has seen most of them yet. Let me know if you like.
A gold wire-wrapped "apples and honeybees" set I made for a custom order.
A glittery green "bamboo forest" pair accented by swarovski crystals - so much green! - on wire-wrapped silver flowers.
A sodalite and green pair I've been thinking of privately as "the whole world round" and connecting with the earth...gemstone, metal, circles, green, it all fits, right? Add to that that the sodalite ironically looks like the sky, and I'm really happy with how these work.
A palm-leaf-inspired pair that fan out. Have I been focusing on green too much?
And a pair that I love oh, so much...I've been getting all poetic about them, it's almost embarrassing. They have a lot of dark blue, and sodalite in general looks like the sky, no matter what shade it comes in...it just always manages to look like some form of weather, or clouds...and the dark, glittery blue shines like stars, and so does the star-flower wire-wrapping in sterling silver, and the matte beads are the spaces between the stars, right? So the dark blue glittery ribbons dangle down from the silver flower, just as the night sky hangs from stars. That's the way I think of it, anyway. Poetic, am I right? But I'm not even kidding, I love them dearly. I'm tempted to keep them, but I only ever wear one earring of a kind at a time. These ones are posted on etsy already, I could not resist
Juuuust kidding. I'll get around to it. Life is oh-so-scattered and OH LOOK I HAVE A FOLLOWER. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN oh never mind I know you. I love you anyway! :)
So, the advice I've been reading is basically all "you need to re-do everything you've been doing." I'm working on adjusting my shop announcement to be more google-search friendly...and I have to do the same to EVERY SINGLE POST that I have made, and every one I make from now on.
The main thing, too, is "have a product that people want"...I'm sure they want jewelry. They definitely want origami jewelry.
AND ON THAT NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MOMENT TO BRAG. I am, as far as I could tell either by googling OR by searching on etsy, the ONLY PERSON who will make you earrings with more than one crane on them. They're BIRDS! Did seriously nobody else think of a flock? Man, now that I've cornered the market, I wish I could patent the idea. I think that's considered cheating in the art world. But I've been making them for a few years now, without ever realizing I was making something so unique, nobody else is doing it at all.
(Of course, maybe it's because my main materials are so light - the really, really nice handmade washi chiyogami paper is thin and lightweight, but the yuzen paper (not handmade or as expensive) is normal-to-really-thick paper thickness, and it would be harder to make flocks of. I've been using starburst wrappers, which are really thin, light paper, so I've had an advantage...to easily make a flock I have to either use the really cheap materials, or the really expensive ones. Now that's odd.)
Oh and also, advice says, post photographs everywhere. Facebook. Flickr. HERE. So I'm posting photographs. HERE.
Everybody (EVERYBODY) says "don't post all your listings at once. Space them throughout the day, because you'll get a bazillion times more exposure that way." It makes sense. If you only post once, but you post a bunch of stuff, if the people who happen to be on at that time don't like your stuff, they'll pass over it for stuff more up their alley in the just-posted box. So by posting every few hours, maybe, you can get all the crowd that shops on etsy at various times of the day, even if your post is only visible for a few seconds, let's be honest...those are important seconds.
SO, here are some photographs, and they are so new not even Etsy has seen most of them yet. Let me know if you like.
A gold wire-wrapped "apples and honeybees" set I made for a custom order.
A glittery green "bamboo forest" pair accented by swarovski crystals - so much green! - on wire-wrapped silver flowers.
A sodalite and green pair I've been thinking of privately as "the whole world round" and connecting with the earth...gemstone, metal, circles, green, it all fits, right? Add to that that the sodalite ironically looks like the sky, and I'm really happy with how these work.
A palm-leaf-inspired pair that fan out. Have I been focusing on green too much?
And a pair that I love oh, so much...I've been getting all poetic about them, it's almost embarrassing. They have a lot of dark blue, and sodalite in general looks like the sky, no matter what shade it comes in...it just always manages to look like some form of weather, or clouds...and the dark, glittery blue shines like stars, and so does the star-flower wire-wrapping in sterling silver, and the matte beads are the spaces between the stars, right? So the dark blue glittery ribbons dangle down from the silver flower, just as the night sky hangs from stars. That's the way I think of it, anyway. Poetic, am I right? But I'm not even kidding, I love them dearly. I'm tempted to keep them, but I only ever wear one earring of a kind at a time. These ones are posted on etsy already, I could not resist
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