Outdoor photography with cats

When the weather allows, I like to take photos outside rather than having to rely on artificial light indoors. Indoor is often fine, but some colours are hard to get right in the way too yellow light I have available. There's just one problem: indoors, you just close a door and make sure the cats are on the other side. Outdoors, it's harder to cat proof the photo session...

Usually it's Ubbi who's in a really cuddly mood, but this time it was Jinja. Who claims she isn't disturbing at all and not understand why I don't want her to walk across the white photo background. Don't know what it is about that table that makes them so affectionate because they're never cuddlier than when I go behind the barn to the garden table and start to assemble the photo set-up.

Guess I should be lucky it was only one cat this time. But in the end I had to lure her indoors so I could take some photos undisturbed.

First snow -- it came and went

I've been wanting some colder weather. Not just because the snow light up the long nights and dark evenings, but mostly because I'm so tired of all the rain. A few degrees below zero is much better than a few degrees above zero, as it is now. And yesterday afternoon, we got the first snow of the year. Not much, just a light and uneven coat, but it felt nice to have something lighting things up. Sadly, most of it was gone by noon today and it was back to fog and dark, grey skies...

 Only snow left... I want more! Not a lot, just a light coat that stays a while is enough. With a record warm november and december, I kind of miss not having had an opportunity to make any snow cats or snow/ice lanterns this season. Yet, I should add as you never know until april is over if there'll be some snow or not.

 


 The fog did clear up a bit in just an hour or two, as you can see below.

 Still not used to the empty garden...

 While sitting on the computer, uploading the photos I looked out and had to take a few more photos.

Texture plate update

Well, so far I haven't made anything using my texture plate as I've had too much fun adding more to it. Wish I had more than one square because now I've pretty much run out of space. Since it isn't technically a texture plate with one background pattern but rather a mix of patterns and single motifs, you need a little bit of space around those motifs. Unfortunately, as I've carved the back too I can't cut out the motifs and use them as stamps.

The little doodles on the front look a bit boring, but they do look better printed into clay (I keep testing with Tack-It while I carve. Wy Tack-It? It was what I had nearby). And then you add some colour to that. Same thing with the uneven carving, which adds a nice hand-drawn touch.

The tiny bell flowers, like the one in near the bottom left corner, are fun to make and when I get my hands on a new square of linoleum substitute (believe the material I'm using is called Soft Cut) I'll fill one with those.

 The only downside to carving is that you can't always save a "derailed" cut or change something that you don't realise wasn't that great until you test it (with clay or Tack-It). As you can see in my fritillary here. In this case, I also made a second mistake by forgetting that you have to draw the motif mirrored. This flower looks better facing left than facing right, which it does when pressed into clay.

But it's not just single motifts. I enlarged the flower meadow textures on the back too, as you could see in the first picture. I'm really fond of making those glass and three-petal flowers patterns.

 To finish, just a couple of backlit pics of the texture plate.

Carved doodles

We once learned how to make carvings in linoleum blocks for printing in art class at school. I doubt I was really good at it, but it was fun. Didn't cut my fingers off, at least. It is, however, nothing I've dabbled in since. But then, some time last year I bought a set of knives (for carving in linoleum and soft wood) and a square of linoleum substitute.

This time I wasn't looking to carve printing blocks, but rather texture plates and stamps. I started out making raised motifs as that's easier: you just carve the parts that will be raised unlike when making stamps and you have to carve around every little dot and hair-thin line. I'm also thinking of trying to carve wood, but it'll have to wait. Focus right now is textures and motifs for imprinting clay. There's some forgotten poly clay that needs to be used soon.

At first I didn't want to start carving as I was afraid of ruining the square. It's not big so there aren't much room for carving and so I didn't want to mess up and have to buy a new one. Then I got an urge to just carve something. Didn't have a pen that worked on the greasy, plastic surface so instead I doodled and worked on freehand. As long as I stuck to simple flowers and leaves/grass straws it wouldn't be too hard to succeed with. They might not be amazingly good, but they are decent -- especially considering I haven't carved anything in the last 18 years and when I did carve in school it was just a couple of printing plates before we moved on to the next technique.

This is one of my more expensive types of doodling as you can't reuse the linoleum once it's cut. With photo editing, I don't run out of material. With drawn doodles, it takes a long time to run out of pen/pencil and paper. And in both cases you can -- in some amount -- erase mistakes in a way you can't do when carving. So I won't carve that much, it'll be too expensive to keep buying something to carve in. But it's fun so this won't be my last carvings.


The carvings look pretty boring photographed as there's no colours and no sense of scale so first I'll be showing a few pics taken in "artistic" angles.

 Very simple and not exactly meticulous carvings, but I hope that with some colour and a nice shape of the bead or pendant, they'll look nice. Some carvings are a tad shallow, but I'm hoping it'll be enough.

 

 Apart from the flower meadow, I made a few small motifs and a hideous texture that I can just hope will turn out ok once printed in clay and painted.

I also wondered what it'd be like to carve a word or two. Started by writing Ullegull's name and soon realised this would look very... special. Even if I had written out the name to follow, it turned out I had written it slightly too small and too condensed.

Then, thinking about my recent rune doodles, I thought runic script would be better for this than the latin alphabet. After all, runes were designed to be easy to carve into wood. And the result? Well, I still have to practice. Most of all, I learned how important it is to plan the cuts. When you write, you usually draw the main stave first and then the shorter lines and there's no problem, but when carving it turned out to be troublesome to cut the diagonal staves on the N and A runes as I got stuck in the groove of the already cut stave. Next time I'll try cutting the shorter lines first and see if that helps.

 And here's what it looks like printed in Tack-It. Not as horrible as it might look judging from the photo above, but still a lot of room for improvement.

I'll fill the square with some more carved doodles, but then I should try and make an effort to get out the clay and use the texture plate for something more than just Tack-It. Clay isn't my best medium, but some day I hope to master it a bit better -- though I would like to work with epoxy clays rather than polymer in the future as there's no hassle with oven baking. Anyway, fingers crossed I'll be able to show a finished piece soon so you can see the result of these doodling sessions of mine.

Belated monthly bead soup palette

I think I never got around to showing the december bead soup palette on this blog last month. It's really just something I threw together. The idea was to use elegant, dark colours and so I ended up with black, bronze and purple (eggplant) in beads with interesting textures that add a bit of shadow to the colours.

If you prefer crystals, you could make the bead mix in e.g. jet, crystal dorado x2 and purple velvet or amethyst. Purple velvet is colder than amethyst or eggplant, but still works in this colour mix. If you don't like purple, burgundy or dark green could be good substitutes. Black ibiza has a silvery metallic shine. If you don't want that, use plain matte black beads instead.

Beautiful wool rovings

Have you seen those braids of combed, often hand painted, (wool) rovings that are sold in e.g. Etsy's handmade supplies section? They look so soft and the colour schemes are often gorgeous, but despite all that I've just looked at them, sighed and moved on. Why? Because in my mind they're only good for one thing: spinning yarn -- and I have no interest in spinning yarn. Besides, sometimes the finished yarn isn't as pretty as the unspun rovings. Oh, and they can be used for felting. Forgot about that as the one type of felting that interest me, nuno, require a tumble dryer according to most tutorials, which I don't have and so I've never pursued it any further.

But now I look more closely at rovings as I earlier in November/December stumbled over some pins of weaves which included bits of wool roving. After that I started search on Pinterest and googled for more pics of weaving, embroidery and other crafts made with rovings and now I know better: roving can be a really good material even for those that don't spin yarn or felt. It can be woven, knitted, crocheted, couched (an embroidery technique), locker hooked, braided (and stitched together) and much more. If you scroll down a bit on my Embroidery and fibre inspiration board you'll some examples of it. Except for examples of weaving with rovings which you find in the Woven pinboard.

Now I just hope combed wool rovings (like the ones in JaimeMarie's photo above and the ones I've pinned here) aren't too expensive. As I've not had an interest in them before I've never checked the prices -- and now I'm afraid of doing it!


Photo: JaimeMarie C [via Flickr.com], Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0

Dark mori

Mori kei and dark mori has found their way onto my clothes pinboard.

I'm not mad about clothes. To me they're not something to spend a lot of time and money on. While there are clothes I absolutely love and drool over, lamenting the fact I can't afford them, I'm not like many other girls/women who seems so very dedicated to clothes or at least to shopping for clothes. It's even worse with shoes, though that's partially because I can't find the type of shoes I really like and the one type of shoes I do love, the clogs, aren't suitable outside the farm. Of cause it's partially a money and body issue: if you don't bother to look at clothes because you can't afford them anyway or the designer clothes doesn't go up to your size, you don't develop an interest in them.

It doesn't however mean that I've got absolutely no interest in how I dress or in finding a good style. If I had the money, I would go hunting. Not for a lot of clothes, just enough to have a wardrobe for various occasions in a style I feel comfortable in. And that's the thing: without money to buy that style and relying mostly on a handful of plain, cheap clothes (some of which I've had since the 90's) for any occasion when I interact with other people and a bunch of boring mainly hand-me-downs of some sort or other for wearing around the farm. I have no clothes that really express, nothing that says something about who I really am. Well, of cause they do to some extent, especially my long skirts that family members and relatives "complain" about (I wear long skirts in winter if I want to, thank you very much!). But it's just skirts similar to what I like as I make due with the cheapest skirts, not the skirts that are the most my style. What I wear is plain and I don't really want to be seen as plain when that's not really who I am. Shy, yes, but not boringly plain as my clothes seem to signal to others.

Of cause, it would be easier to wear something my style if I could find my style and find the clothes that express something I want to express. With just a small interest in clothes, you don't always pinpoint a style as it's more about finding something simple and cheap that will do, something that can be used for a long time and is acceptable e.g. in school or at work. I have of cause found pieces of clothing I like and that's a start and I do drool over certain styles like goth and steampunk, but while I love the drama they haven't felt like an all around look for me. Those clothes are good for dressing out, but not dressing up so to speak. Love them, but couldn't see myself in them every day or even every weekend.

But recently something happened. Enlightenment.

Just before the new year, I happened to stumble over a new word, mori, and a search later, I found something that really struck a chord with me: dark mori. This japanese street fashion style is also called strega or black forest mori. It's a darker version of mori kei ("woodland style", often just called mori or, when referring to someone wearing the style, mori girl), which is a very romantic and rustic countryside look in white and light pastels, vintagesque and boho, layered and loose-fitting -- many times crinkled or slightly tattered -- clothes in natural fibres. Frills and laces can often be seen, though some seem more prone to love the sweet look with lace and subtle prints while others seem to prefer cleaner lines and solid coloured fabrics. Mori can be dreamy, victorian-inspired or modern minimalist with nature, countryside and green living as the common denominator. Some would probably see it, and especially dark mori, as a boho style and others would spot american hipster styles in the japanese street fashion style. It also share a characteristic with lagenlook what with the focus on loose, layered clothes. It's similar but not the same as the fashion style natural kei. The lifestyle associated with mori is one of closeness to nature, a love of reading and writing, bike rides, forest walks and tea drinking. Perfect for daydreamers and introverts with its focus on the little things in life and activities in solitude as well as meeting friends.

Cutesy mori kei and white-is-the-only-colour rural romanticism can be too sweet for me (and is far from the countryside as I, a farm girl, know it!) and that's where dark mori comes in. Sure, mori kei can include earthy purples, montana blues, burgundy, brown, deep green and other colours than white and beige but it's still a lot about those bleached neutrals. Dark mori adds a bit of darker colours (goth black as well as other colours, e.g. purple, brown and red), depth and a raw, worn look -- and it has an extra dimension that's really my style: it draws inspiration from the dark, shadowy forest rather than the light, sunny forest of the mori girl's daydreams. Fairytales, magic, mysticism  and european folklore/folktales are some of the sources the style finds inspiration in. All of mori is inspired by fairytales, but dark mori brings out the darker and more dramtic sides of them. If the ethereal mori girl is the sweet princess waiting in a sunny glade for her prince, the dark mori girl is the nyctophiliac or witch who doesn't shy away from the shadowy parts of the forest. It's more goth, to compare with another subculture.

But don't take my word for it, I'm a newbie in the mori world and hardly the one to describe or define it! You can read more about this relatively new style for example in this Goth (Stereo)type infographic, at Carnevale Salt and Strega's Forest. Notice that there is a certain width in the style and the three examples offer slightly varying definitions. The last one being more goth than the first two, for example, and focusing more on the dark or sometimes even grim strega, i.e. witch, while the other two focus more on romantic dark fairytales and nature.Of cause, you can see styles that would fit in the dark mori style, but which aren't called that and created by people that have never heard about mori or dark mori.There's also no definite line between mori and dark mori, it's more of a sliding scale where some are more drawn to lace and romance and others to the darker sides of things.

To some extent, I've always dressed a bit mori-esque at home with layered clothes and a love for long skirts, natural materials and at least a partial love of muted colours such as linen/sand and puce. (And an attitude against ironing as unnecessary, resulting in crinkled skirts.) And it's always been mixed with my love of nature, the countryside, poetry, fairytales and the calmer joys in life (reading, picnics, hot cocoa, sitting with a cat in the lap). Though my look has been rather plain with more jersey and other cotton knits that anything else at it's cheap and widely available in the mainstream mail-order catalogues and mall stores -- and that's all I can afford.

On the other hand, I've had the goth side of me since my teens, which has always loved the total opposite or the mori kei colours: black, dark purple, burgundy etc. And while I still drool over dramatic goth clothing, the dark mori style is so much more me. It even ties in with my penchant for (or rather, on-and-off relationship to) the steampunk style with it's more earthy layered and tattered victorian-inspired styles in shades of brown and brass. It might seem a bit boring to some, but I really love it.

For me, this was an epiphany of sorts. Not only did someone just put together so many of the things I love and find interesting into one concept for me to define with, but it also helped me find a focus on my style and a new keyword to explore. Not just my style of clothes, which was great, but my style of everything from interior design to jewellery. Not that all my jewellery is dark mori style -- far from it! -- but it's the kind of stuff many of my WIPs are about and defining a focus on a style has really been inspiring for me. It brought back some things I haven't thought about in a while such as runes, magic and the old witchcraft traditions which then mixed with the love of dark fairytales, which is always in the back of my head. And with a word or label to put on something, you can suddenly search for more things in the same vein and you can use it to find others who like the same things you do.

So really, I'm starting this year by taking up some of the thoughts, ideas and styles that have floated in and out of my life the last 15-20 years or so, tying them together and -- hopefully -- being able to more firmly express myself and shape my own style. Some start their year by finding a word to live by, I'm starting my year with a concept to explore!