Just Saying

It's a shame more child molesters don't make great music.

Perfect

Some days we float atop joy. We feel it under us pushing up gently against our skin. Our faces toward the sky. Bodies drifting.

Tonight I was adrift. It's the culmination of events. A good weekend. Knowing I was driving home toward Zach. And I'm marking this here because so often this is a space for worries and self pity. But tonight passing through the fields of this valley and watching the summer night push out the day. Watching it all from my car window, the conversations of the weekend mixing with the beautiful emotions of a just read play. Magical. How is it that there is this much Perfect around us all the time and it's only occasionally we set ourselves free out in it? Why is it the exception to close our eyes and feel it on us. Through us. Bathed softly in all things good.

Goals (4 month review)

I'm slowly taking a lot of these off the list. Is that against the rules? Are there rules?

1. Pay $1500 in school loans-
I think I'm at the $400 mark. Waaay behind schedule. This isn't going to happen. I'll get about $1000 tops. Should I cross it off completely or just keep admitting failure?

2. Create at least $500 cushion in bank account
It's not in my bank account but it's in checks I've written to myself. (They pull it out of the account and send you the check.) Although, I'm going to Portland this weekend and might cave and cash one.

3. Attain 2 octave singing scale
Singing is going reeeally well. Accept the current head cold from hell, I've been making a ton of progress. I love Jazz. I can't express this enough. Current songs:
Black Coffee
God Bless the Child
Angel Eyes
Just starting: After Your Gone

4. (I'm cutting this b/c it's been completed.) (Musical audition)

5. Finish writing 1 song with accompaniment. (Guitar and/or piano)-
Been working on this. Slow and steady. Getting close on a couple. Close doesn't actually mean close but I'm making progress on a couple. Maybe have found a way to get help.

6. Send 5 birthday cards- ON TIME
(May 9 change of goal.)
(June 24 change- 5 is enough. Cross the sucker off your list but still try and send people cards.)

7. Send cards for one holiday-
I've been trying to find the Halloween cards I started last year. They might be gone. This royally sucks b/c they were a lot of work. Also I really liked them. *sigh*

8. Pursue art/design/craft/collage: figure out specifics and how to gauge-
Still unsure of what this means.

9. Get through 5 drafts of 3 shorts total (includes at least 3 people writing comments on each draft.)-
(These names won't make sense to you probably but are for my records:)
Zach's Taco Shack- Draft 1 complete (3 people have viewed and commented) How can I design a set for this?
Phone Calls- Still rough drafting
Car Faith- Found draft an dam working.
Happy Birthday- rough Draft 1.
Cranes- Story board draft 1 complete.

June:
You're Paranoid short: had 3 people review. This would be filmable. We'd have to mock police lights and find a uniform.

10. Learn Flash
I'm on chapter 8 or 18 or something. I should try and make like Tuesday after frisbee my Flash night.

11. Design and do photoshoot.-
Gathering ideas for this.

12. Direct music video.-
In May I think I decided that I was going to do a Flash animation music video for this but now I think I might try and do something from a song a man here in town wrote. I don't know how to categorize it. It's not pop. It's not folk.

13. Shoot a short.
May: Need to write those drafts first.
June: Need to write those drafts first.


14. Write, create, shoot, edit super short stop motion-
Working on this as much as time allows. I'm figuring out today which weekend I can pull aside and finish building and start shooting. This may not be done until August or September.

15. write, shoot, edit 1 CCP review for YouTube. -
May: I've got a quarter of this entire process finished. I watched the video and did artwork. This is on back burner until #16 is over.
June: Drafted a version. Need to redraft the words and begin building the set. Memorize as well I suppose.

16. Edit CCP vid under craftcat brand.
May: I'm working on it. This could be finished this coming week. Oh dear Christ that would be nice. I'm sooooooo close!
June: This has been completed!!!!! http://www.ccpvideos.com/r/dancik

17. Learn to cook 5 vegan entrees.
Cooked two recipes last week. One was excellent. One was not excellent. I need to cook again but probably won't happen until next week.
May: Banana empanadas
June: nothing to add. I've not cooked in a looong time. Although I made some really excellent non vegan sopes recently. Delicious!

18. No bed piles.
The bed piles are back.

19. Learn congressional committee chairs and cabinet members.
OK, so instead I'm changing this to read the Cheat Sheet from Daily Beast every day. It's not much, but it's something. Have I mentioned I hate politics?

20. Take on an entrepreneurial project.
May: Hahahaha. I failed her. Such a fail.
June: I'm taking this off the list.

21. Call/write my Grandmother once a month.
This is sort of verging on fail as well. *sigh*

22. Thank You cards for birthday presents. - GAH!

23. 200 lines of calligraphy a day (this isn't much considering a lowercase "a" has 3.) (*added March 5)
(May- I'm officially taking this off the list :)

24. (May 9th add) Write rough draft 1 of a feature screenplay.
May: I've got one in mind and have started outlining in my mind but nothing more than a story plot is committed yet to paper.
June: No progress.

Last month it was hard finishing my editing project. This month is finding time for stop motion. I've got a ton of great stuff planned this summer it's just making it very very busy. But no complaints. Just gotta find a free weekend and plug in "animation."

I always wonder if I should post this list, but it's proving really useful for me to have it in this one place where it's easy for me to review and reassess. And every time while I'm updating it I have a sinking feeling of not making much progress. But by the end I'm reinvigorated and ready to go!

Well I guess this is a photography blog

Also I should say if you click on the picture it becomes larger. I generally save them to 600px.

The Project

I took a letterpress class this weekend at OCAC in Portland. I took it with my Mom as a birthday present to her. It ended up being really fascinating. I'm not planning on saving for a letterpress anytime soon but oh man, the possibilities.

A lot of the shots here don't really tell a story. But the workshop was a macro lens paradise. It combined two of my favorite elements: type and tiny. If I had been on my own I would have stayed an hour after the class finished on Sunday and just taken pictures with all the type. Drawers and drawers of glorious type.

Letterpress seems to be able to combine a lot of different elements but what we did was a push press with type over the top. First we made our plate, which was a piece of paper divided up into 8 sections. We each got a section.


We added layers of texture to our area. The thicker the texture the darker that part of the plate would print. The the lighter the texture the lighter that part of the plate would print. You really have to learn to think about things in a certain way.

You can see the varying tones. That just means how much ink was on the rollers. We probably reapplied right after a few of those.




So you print all your pages with the pressure plate. Then you take your type and you put it all in the bed of the press. My type was 72 font and like 6 letters. Some type was 10point and over a hundred.

Letterpress includes a LOT of work with numbers, subtracting, and a ruler. This is the part that would probably drive me crazy. B/c it's extact. We had 8 sections of type and we put them all in the press bed at the same time, which means you have to be REALLY careful that they all line up with their corresponding graphics.















Look at the image where you can see the word "cat." Notice there there seems to be the letters. Then surround to the immediate left and right of the letters are metal pieces to make sure the type only goes so wide (the width of the section we each had to work with.) Then between all those chunks of metal and type we put what's called furniture. Wood blocks to fill out the rest of the space in the press bed.


If you look at the whole press bed you can see sections of type and sections of furniture.



Then you mix your type's ink and put it on the roller and run through (by hand) all your sheets again and wallah.



I no longer feel bad about spending $7 on a letterpress card.

Letterpress Pictures Section 2

Letterpress pictures

I know a lot of these are repeats from FB but here they are again (with some new ones if I do the sorting I should!)

Also, when did this become a photo blog?!?!

More pictures

Click on image for a much larger view.

Random Photography