The Song of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0


From: Rosetta Blog

Not only did we puny humans land a probe on a freaking comet, but we also recorded it singing the song of its people.

A Poem

A better mess
A perfect cyclone
tendril climbing from
the mother cloud
to lick
the salt
of a slow lazy dream

Brasses

Before


After

The person who stripped and painted it the first time didn't remove the hardware for stripping, so why would they bother to do so before painting? The brasses are slopped with green and cream paint. I boiled them in water, then scrubbed away the paint with a toothbrush, then gently buffed them with #000 steel wool. I didn't want to remove all the patina.

Oiled

After a coat of linseed oil. One coat every day for a week, then one coat every week for a month, then apply another coat once a year or so. This wood is so maltreated, though, that it may need more than a week's worth of intensive treatment. We'll see!

Scraping and Sanding

You can see in the second photo where the drawer pulls were, as well as all the scratches made by the person who originally stripped the piece.









These are too deep to sand out. I'm not even going to try to get the rest of the paint out of them, because I don't have the patience or the motivation. They are honest scars.

Bubble, Bubble

A Couple of Handy Tips

Those stupid fake credit cards that come in the mail make great paint spreaders. Every arty-crafty person knows that. They also work really well for spreading stripper. Much better than a brush.



A dry, hard kitchen sponge makes just about the best sanding block EVAR.

The more you know...

Before

Before


Missing trim


More missing trim


Cat scratches (My cats did not do that.)


Paint job (I did not do that!)


Paint job

I got this dresser from a coworker a couple of years ago. I've been meaning to re-finish it or paint it or do something with it, because A) the colors are kind of awful and not something I'd choose, B) the paint job is kind of awful and not something I'd do, and C) it's got a lot of damage.

I finally got around to starting on it this weekend. I thought I'd strip the top and maybe the drawer fronts, then paint the body, since there was so much trim that was damaged and missing. Once I got some of the paint off, though, I realized that it had been stripped before, then re-painted. The person who stripped it the first time did not remove the knobs, so they left paint under them. (And paint on them, because they also didn't remove them when they re-painted it.) Worse, though, they scratched the living hell out of it. I'm assuming the deep gouges were from rough living, but the lighter scratches I found were clearly made by someone who stripped the piece and had not one single clue what they were doing.

Basically, it's a hot mess. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. Right now, the plan is to finish stripping the drawer fronts and maybe the sides, oil them with linseed oil, and paint the body. I'll just live with the scratches. Of course, I may change my mind tomorrow.

I Call Shenanigans

So I ordered this cute, reflective, PINK harness for Franny, from Amazon. It said right on the damn item description that it is sold by and ships from Amazon.com. So why the hell is it shipping from China? And if that's legit, WHY don't they indicate on the item page that it's not shipping from within the US?

Shenanigans. I call them.

Pretzel Pelvi

Pretzel Pelvis #food #snacks #pretzels

A photo posted by @ellypdq on Jan 21, 2015 at 6:34am PST

These things. I just don't even.

Things That Are Orange

Sunrise Over Wright Quad


Clementine

Clementines exist to remind us that winter cannot last forever.

Esther's Senior Yearbook Photo

Artubus, Indiana University, 1923

I've got a couple of photos of Esther, but not many. This is actually quite lovely in an unfussy kind of way. She was, I think, an unfussy kind of woman.

Beautiful Day

It's supposed to be 50F today. And I don't want to jinx anything, but when I got to work this morning, it was 74F on my floor. HUZZAH! It was warm at work yesterday, too, and I'll be damned if people weren't complaining about it.

From the "You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up" Files

Rainy Day

Gimme!

Wherever the green beans are, there's Franny, hoping one will jump into her mouth.

Raindrop

This. This is what we have been looking at for days and days and weeks and weeks. It finally cleared up, and it looks like it will stay mostly dry for the next few days.

I wouldn't mind winter so much if we could just see the sun once occasionally.

Cardinal

This little guy stopped by a couple of weeks ago. I love that we have cardinals year round. They're like bright and cheerful little strawberries in the midst of the winter greys.

A Visitor

We had a yearling deer visit. Franny was absolutely beside herself, because I was a giant meanypants and wouldn't let her bark at it.

I Made a Book

The Mirage
three needle, single sheet Coptic bound book using recycled materials
7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches

The boards used to belong to a college yearbook. The pages were cut down from larger pieces I did years ago and meant to bind but never got around to it. They were single folded sheets, then, which would have been easy to do as a Coptic binding with single-sheet sections. But I've been wanting to try out one of Keith Smith's single sheet Coptic bindings, so I decided to cannibalize some old work to practice on.

Why single-sheet Coptic? Because I've got all kinds of single sheets of things that I want to turn into books, but I don't want to stab-bind them. I want the pages to lay completely flat.

It's not perfect. Because I was working with single, unfolded sheets, it was a little too easy to get them flipped upside down. Which I did. Which meant that the center section of sewing is a little skewed because the center holes in the flipped sheets did not line up properly. Also, though this is actually less annoying, those pages are now upside down. I'll have to go in and rework them so that they make sense. Story of my life. Boys and girls: Never attempt bookbinding while drinking bourbon. It's a bad combination for a lot of reasons. Like blood.


When Art Attacks