I've finally gotten back into practicing calligraphy (the fact my dad was staying out of town this weekend is likely connected to my returned focus). For the past couple of days I've both had stuff I've wanted to blog here and have also been practicing lettering. What's happened is that I've done the calligraphy and left the blogging to now, just keeping the practice album up-to-date. Our apartment seems to be getting re-organized and cleaned room by room. It's amazing the amount of weird stuff we were saving -- including cardboard boxes and odd bits of outmoded technology. Purging things is hard for me, but once I start it feels so good I don't want to stop.
Here's an odd fact though -- my motivation to get the house organized seems connected to practicing calligraphy. Further, the cleaning and organizing has moved outward from my calligraphy "studio" (as a friend pleases me by calling it) into the restof the apartment. I've organized (and now try and keep tidy) our entire bedroom (which means keeping up on laundry since otherwise it takes over the floor). My dad moving in prompted me/us to re-organize the bathroom and guest room. This weekend we worked on the box room / technology closet. Having things organized has me feel a bit more centered (always a good thing).
Getting organized required a bit of shopping, prompting us to brave both Costco and IKEA on a weekend. We got an amazing deal on a great set of chrome storage shelves (for the closet) at Costco for less than $28. They're amazing because despite the low price they don't suck and each shelf can supposedly hold 350 lbs. Nonetheless, Paul and I have not tried sitting on one together in order to test this claim. It does seem to be doing a great job holding stuff. At Ikea we found new bedside lamps (whose glow adds to the general peaceful feeling of my bedroom studio), curtains and a recycle bin. All are much nicer than I'd have expected, given the price. The lamps and curtains combined didn't cost half what one of the lamps I'd been eyeing at Pottery Barn for the same purpose
Something you may have noticed when looking at the most recent Tinies is the addition of rather shaky Gothic capitals. I'll blog more about last Monday's class later (Deann has an entry about it up on her site), but in addition to going over our recent homework, taking us down from a 5mm to 2 1/2mm nib, and discussing the coming illumination project, she also introduced capitals. The reason wasn't that we're really advanced enough, but rather that class is being cancelled by two Monday holidays in a row and she wanted us to have a chance to practice with the capitals. On the "K is for Kate" I'm experimenting with using a reddish brown ink for the "K" and "Kate" but as the ink is thinner than the black, I'm not sure how it works out. Like most of my lettering practice, it looks a lot better photographed than it does in person.
Coming Illumination Project
Our big assignment for the Gothic course is to produce a 60-80 word sheet of illuminated text. The text can be a quotation from any period, but Deann expressed a strong desire we choose something from the appropriate period (about 1100-1500 AD). I don't want to do anything Biblical because, well, I don't. So I'm considering some passages of Dante, Chaucer (though probably not Chaucer) and also some quotations by William of Occam. Doing it in Latin would be cooler, but given that I leave letters out all the time when writing in English, who knows how many time I'd have to re-write it to make sure I got the Latin right?
We got supply list for the project so another bit of the weekend shopping involved a trip to Dick Blick's in West LA. I love going there. It's always well organized and stocked (unlike, for example, Pearl) and the staff are friendly and helpful. I left the store some $130 poorer, but with everything on my list plus a few other toys. It's my plan to write an entry tomorrow about the tools I'm using so I'll save my shopping finds to discuss there.
(Guest modeling by Carrots and Small Bear.)
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