What Does The Fox Say?

[Ashtyn]

tl;dr: this is my personal "stuff I feel like sharing" thread.

 So! I thought about this a long time ago, but at the time my suggestion was much grander: To offer blogging space here in our forums for our players who wanted to blog.

 But at the time the idea was shot down by people saying they either don't blog, they hate blogs, or they blog in 92491743152 other places already and didn't need to add one more to the list. Also some pointed out that popularity was an issue: On MyFace (or whatever it's called) you get 384263875321 watches in an hour, while on personal sites good luck getting 10 visitors a day - and of those, 8 will be bots.

 That was then, and this is now! I don't blog anywhere else, and I have access to this lovely message board system here where several of my closest friends do check out every now and then (or at least they should!). So I figured I would start a highly shameless self-indulging blog thread for myself here! If more folks feel like they want to do it too, let me know and I'll set up a proper board for it. For now, it goes in the General Discussion board!

 Although my life has quieted down a lot in the past few years, I'm not exactly totally inactive, so I'll be sharing here my endeavors, whatever they may turn out to be, that I feel worthy of sharing! Feel free to post comments/questions/ignore on the stuff I will post here.

[Ashtyn]

  One of my New Year's resolutions this year (this is actually the first time I did that!) was to have hobbies, because I don't have many hobbies, I end up turning everything I do into all-out jobs!

  And one of those hobbies was to grow bismuth crystals! So, here are some photos of my first crop!

This is the whole set. Took me 2 days and some 30 or so tries to grow these all (not all at once).



This was the very first crytsal I grew, on the very first try! It had some pretty yellow hoppered appendages to it but my cat swatted it out of the table and across the wooden floor until the pretty jagged edges were all rounded off.



I call these the "Twins", because they grew spontaneously at same time on the same batch.



I call these the "Manhattan Cluster", because they make me think of skyscrapers from New York.



This one was the one with the most complex geometry I got. Haven't been able to get one like this again yet. It's hard when they grow all on their own and you have practically no control over it!

  For anyone who hasn't fired up Wikipedia yet, bismuth is the element number 83, Bi on the Periodic Table of Elements. It's a heavy metal but it's non-toxic (to a point), it is the active ingredient in Pepto Bismol, and it's technically radioactive but its half-life is several billion times the estimated life of the universe (meaning your granite countertop pumps out more radiation than bismuth ever will). And it's as fragile as glass so it breaks really easy!

[Ashtyn]

  I have a bunch of cedar boards left from a previous project from a while ago, so I decided I needed a new computer desk, so I could use the boards to make it!

  Cedar is one of my favorite woods! I love the way it smells, I love the color, and it's reasonably easy to work with, and affordable. Also it lasts forever! The only problem to me is that it sometimes has a few too many knots in it. But one can always work around that, or incorporate the knots as part of the visual aspect of the thing you're making!

  I'm currently going through my Art Nouveau phase, so any old square cut desk wouldn't do it. Because the place where this desk is going is reasonably limited on space, I had to keep it small, and relatively simple. There's going to be some whiplashing and crazy Art Nouveau curves, but nothing too crazy.

  I asked Tye to take a photo of me working, because my mom just loves to get photos of me doing stuffs...

...here seen about to cut one of the curvy legs for the desk - no, it's not overkill to wear a respirator with safety goggles with ear protection while working with dusty loud splintery stuffs (no gloves here, though. Never wear gloves when working with machinery that can snag them and pull your hands into the machine!).



And here the desk upside down with 4 of its eventually 6 legs being glued in place. Due to the tiny nature of my workshop, I often have to improvise, and while there's no lack of clamps, there's lack of room, so the angle sander doubles as 'heavy-thing-to-keep-things-in-place' while the router and angle grinder and box of drillbits serve as counterweight and support!



One of the pieces for the desk, held tight by clamps while the glue sets.



The desk with its 6 legs.



Here's the desk with the little 'computer shelf' at the bottom. And because the desk wasn't complicated enough as it was, I added a drawer to it! (pieces of it seen clamped while the glue sets)



...and it's not proper Art Nouveau without some whiplashing. Early on I had decided to have a whiplash branch on top with some ginkgo leaves, and had that piece already made. But today I figured it needed some more whiplashing on the bottom to balance it aesthetically. So I tacked on a board to the desk and freehanded some vine...



5 hours later!
That's the back of the desk. I put the leaves there not only for aesthetic reasons, but because I need something back there so the cats don't shove whatever is on top of my desk down behind it!

  Now all that's left to do is some final sanding, then apply some polyurethane to seal and protect and bring out the color of the wood! Might get that done tomorrow if it doesn't rain.


  And it's done! Weeeee!

  ...but it has to sit in the workshop for a few days to air out the intense smell of the varnish! (actually it's sitting out in the wind right now to air, and I'll take it out every day for about a week to air it  )
  I'll take another picture when it's all set up with my computer and other random stuffs in the place it will go.

[Ashtyn]

Most people have New Year's resolutions: Things that they want to change in their lives and they promise themselves (or others) that they will do it as the new year rolls in.

My New Year's Resolution for 2014 was to have a hobby! You see, I have this problem, I'm a workaholic, and I end up turning everything I do into job-like proportions! So this year I decided to have a simple hobby, something simple, silly, casual, where as with pretty much all hobbies I put more money into it than I get out of it.

SoOOoo, for my hobby, I picked collecting celebrity autographs through mail requests! It's rather simple: You figure out what address to write to a celebrity, write them a letter saying some nice things, and oh by the way can I have your autograph? Here's a photo and self-addressed stamped envelope for your convenience! If they are nice, they respond, if they are jerks, they have their secretaries respond, and sometimes you get no response at all!

I picked a bunch of celebrities I like, wrote them letters of request, mailed them off, and then sat and waited....

....and it didn't take long for the autographs to start coming in!

My very first was from Sir Ian McKellen! As a huge fan of his, and of The Lord of the Rings, I was overjoyed!

[Ashtyn]

...then came in Patrick Stewart!
Squeeeee~!

His is actually worth quite a bit since it's not inscribed to me! ...not that I'd sell it. 

[Ashtyn]

...and Adam West!

[Ashtyn]

And because now I'm hooked on Game of Thrones, I had to get George R.R. Martin's autograph too!

[Ashtyn]

And I like Joan Rivers. Shutup! 

...this one actually was a little weird: I sent in the letter of request, and waited, and waited, and waited... then one day checked the mailbox and there was a huge photo of hers! ...then a couple of weeks later, I got another mail from her with the photo I had originally sent with my letter!

[Ashtyn]

And I had to get some from the great Judi Dench!

Xela actually helped me with this one, sending me British stamps to include with my self-addressed stamped envelope..... which oddly enough they didn't use, neither did they use the photo I sent, but oh well, it's still Judi Dench!   Thank you Xela for the help! ....and for the ...what were those things called, Jelly Babies? 

[Ashtyn]

Today I got back the one from Francis Ford Coppola, and I figured I'd post my collection in my blog thing, because sure why not! 

...so blame all the spam and self-indulging... indulgence on him! ...somehow! 

[Ashtyn]

I seem to be a glutton for punishment! Tye also could use a new desk (down with particle board prefab furniture!), and while he really doesn't deserve it, building him a desk gives me another opportunity to do something I like. So I've started working on a second Art Nouveau inspired desk.

This one is gonna have less crazy whiplash, and it's bigger than the previous one.

May 26, 2014

There's much clamping going on!

June 02, 2014

And it's finally done! This one has practically no crazy swirls, it's on a more stiff style. I kept it simpler, for my own sanity's sake. Still, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

My grapevines in the background are going crazy!

[Ashtyn]

...continuing with my autographs collection, today I got some from James Earl Jones!

I didn't want to impose by sending a bunch of photos to be autographed, so I had to pick between Darth Vader and Mufasa. Mufasa won because Lucas has ruined Star Wars for me. 

[Ashtyn]

Although I'm an extremely picky eater, and skittish about what I call "gross food from hell" (also know as "the parts people in civilized industrialized places don't even feed to their dogs!"), I love watching Bizarre Foods.

So I wrote to Andrew Zimmern asking for an autograph and got it today! Weee!

...no idea why they didn't use the perfectly good photo and self-addressed stamped envelope I sent. My photo was a lot less gross than whatever the crap is it he's eating! Looks like brains soup! Uugh! 

[Ashtyn]

Today was a good day for the autographs collection! Two autographs in a day! Weeee!

This one is from the great Whoopi Goldberg!

[Ashtyn]

(haters are gonna hate!)

This is a project that started over a year-and-a-half ago, but only now it's getting continued, because drying wood without a kiln takes... well, years!

One of my neighbors cut down a big tree on her yard and I asked if I could have some chunks of it. So I cut them the rough sizes and stored them out in the tools shed. Then after  several months brought a couple of pieces into the house where the air is dryer, and intentionally forgot about it until the wood reached a moisture content of 5% (which is amazing for non-kiln dried wood of that size).

The idea is to carve a horsehead statue one of the characters on the My Little Pony Friendship is Magic show has in her home, because 1) I like the design and find it aesthetically pleasing, and 2) I could sell it and try to make some money to help with bills!

So the other day I cut the roughs into nice big blocks of wood, and today (while asking the god Thor not to throw his thunderstorm down on me until I was finished working) I cut the blocks into the starting shape for the carving. From now it's all hand chiseling!

I'm making two of these, one for sale, the other for myself to keep.