That’s how this whole week feels. Busy busy busy with paid work (yeah!), and the Markham Fair is in town, and acting like it’s usual Time Vampire self. Managed to get some new sculpting done in the moments in between other things. That’s always fun. September comes to a close as of tonight, and I’m nearly run off my feet busy. Busting my chops to get some larger items done prior to the weekend. But it is starting to look more like a Monday at 9:00am delivery. No matter. Push on, stiff upper lip and all.
Added an older Human Warrior into the mix.Ferris wheel.Midway.Uncle going for a spin.Posing for a pretty picture.
I could have sworn I took more pictures once the lights all came on, but apparently not. Damn it. Three more days of sunshine fair time fun ahead of us. Catch you around town. Ciao Bella!
Lots of balls in the air today. Started a major project, and had some emergency calls for rush work today. Running the gamut of packaging, textiles, POS, and various other things. Brain is fried a wee bit. Going to eat, rest my wrist and then go back for another hour before I gotta pick up my kids. Not much of a story to tell today. Fixes, edits, changes and priority projects abound! Ciao Bella!
When it rains it pours as of late. Which is fine by me. When you can go nine, ten or eleven weeks in between paid projects during the lull period from December through February, you learn to appreciate busy weeks, because that means invoices are going out, and payments are coming in. Wee!
As a side note, I just saw the other day, a distillery that I did work for designing a brand new proprietary glass bottle for their whole range, has finally gone to market, and the glass bottle look amazing. They went another way with the label designs, but the glass bottle with the waterfall element on the shoulders looks phenomenal. We tried versions with ripples on the neck, bubbles on the thick base, and all sorts of neat things. Embossed text along the bottom thick base, and more things than I can remember now that we’re about 2 years out from the thick of it. I know we had many conversations about the limitations of the moulds, and how you can & can not get hot glass out of them with specific items we’d hoped to achieve, but I am super impressed with the final product.
NFCD proprietary bottle early designs.
Now they ended up going a little more square across the top of the shoulders, but I think the gist of the design still rings true. I had been really excited to see this come to market under my watch, but sometimes you’ve got to let things go after setting the course early on. I’m still proud.
Literally & figuratively. The stomach bug strikes again in our household. This time in a pincer maneuver from “both ends”, as it were. But not on the same person at once. It has gotten into the youngest’s intestine, and the oldest’s tummy. For a perfect storm of foul particles in the air. I fully suspect that the wife and I shall succumb during the fair, because of course we will get sick during the one big event we work towards all year long. Oh well. It happens to the best of us. Washing & disinfecting as many surfaces as we can, windows open, air circulating, and lots of hand washing. We can only do so much, so fingers crossed it comes and goes quickly.
Yeah – so that has been my day so far. I’m due to go deliver the fair entries to their respective departments this morning. So that will be a massive hassle & a giant pain in my ass. Still working on finishing up items, plating them, and tagging all of the entries for display. It has been a steady stream of this for the last week solid. Technically some items were started in August. So, we’re fully invested in actually getting stuff to the fair this year. There is no turning back now!
In other news today is the last Tuesday in September. My how this month flew by. It went in an absolute flash, a blur. Didn’t really get a whole lot done around the house, as I was working a fair bit more this September, compared to years previous. Plus I did so much last year when I had my very first taste of childless freedom, that I only needed to do minor touch ups, and cleaning versus the total tear down and rebuild from last year. I should totally trim out the basement bathroom, as that’s one of the last few DIY jobs I can tackle. I can’t or won’t do much with the water softener or the water heater (a pressurized vessel, a.k.a a bomb) I’ll have to leave those, and the fridge to people that know what they’re doing. No point making the issues worse. So this is how my Tuesday has started. Let’s see how this day plays out shall we? Ciao Bella.
Here we are just past 9:00am and we’ve got the kids dropped off, clothed, fed, watered & teeth brushed with lunches packed. The first load of laundry in the wash, the dishwasher emptied, and the main floor vacuumed. Followed by a general light tidy up, as fair entries dominate the space, and nothing can get thrown away yet until all tags, and art works are present & accounted for. I think our vacuum now has craft herpes with the amount of glitter I got off the floors near work surfaces. That shits going to be with us through Christmas, if every other previous year is any indication. Ha!
Even managed to get some banking done too, so we’re off on a roll this morning. If it stays dry long enough I think I’ll mow the lawn today too. Expecting a week of rain. Naturally, it being fair time, I should not be surprised by frosts, flurries, or the heavens opening up and dumping buckets of icy rain on us for the four days of the fair. Then afterwards we’ll have a heat wave or two, and I’ll attack the fallen leaves with gusto. Speaking of which, I did two full mulched bags already, so I’m only about ten more from finishing for the season. Just need all of those leaves to come down first. Then it’ll be a matter of tearing down the patio furniture & outdoor kids toys, and making sure the pressure washer hose is disconnected and emptied so it won’t burst, or rupture the gun/nozzles. Same goes for the front garden hose, trigger needs to come off, and the hose dried before storage. And the valve inside the house shut off, and the spigot emptied. All the solar lights can get packed away aswell.
Maybe this year I can get some of the bikes in the shed too, now that we’ve gotten the gazebo out of storage and shipped off to the cottage. A man can dream can’t he? Well the work emails have begun, so I best get going. Ciao Bella!
It is raining. It will rain incessantly for the next four days. Today is Sunday. Fair entry completion is on my wife’s mind. She will stop at nothing until the bulk of the entries she signed up for are completed. Life in our household is tense right now. I have yet to paint either of my three possible painted ceramic entries. I may resort to using the one meant for 2020 instead. I feel more like sculpting than painting. Glad I have a few items in the wings for just such an occasion. I may have a stroke of inspiration later this evening, or tomorrow and paint up a new bust, but I’d not hold my breath if I were you.
Spent an hour or so yesterday in the afternoon sunshine clearing leaves from the front lawn. I did about half of it before I got too hot. My fault I was wearing long pants and multiple layers. The reason for that was in the full sun thec16° felt hot, but under cloud cover that same 16° felt really chilly. We had been outside in Sutton for a Pow Wow in which various students that my wife teaches were dancing and wanted us to see their grand entrance. Which we did. We came, we saw, we watched in awe and then we grabbed food and did some shopping for jewelry for the kids. They both loved the bright colours and fancy outfits that many of the dancers wore. We’ve been told that the students were working on beading and stitching right up until the event. I can believe it given how intricate their designs were. Lots of bright and colorful silk ribbons. Bells and beads of all shapes and colours.
The food was plentiful and very reasonably priced. Given that the fair is this week, we were expecting the same pricing from the food trucks we’ve seen all summer about town, but nope. I feel like we get raised event pricing from food trucks that come to town whenever something big is going on. Captive market and all that.
Right now our kids are climbing into the bathtub to do their paper mache projects. I can hear “that’s so gross!” And some heart felt “Eews!” Too. Gotta love fair time. Ciao Bella!
None of the kids are sick today, and everyone slept in to make it a truly glorious Saturday morning. Fair entries are strewn about the floor of the house, as the kids race to get a start on all of their art pieces. We have until Tuesday to get them into working order, as that is the drop off deadline. Crafts, paintings, drawings, glue and glitter. Glad I had those two or three days of a clean living room last week, as now it’s back to being a disaster area. I’ll be scraping glitter flecks off of the floors and counter tops until Halloween night. Not to mention any sludge from paper mache pinatas, that gets onto the tile floor.
On the upside, managed to get some paid projects completed this week. And started two more, but those look to be getting close to done. Which means I can turn my attention to the falling leaves, and my vacuum mulcher! Clean up the grass but put all that material in the beds to protect the soil and add all the lost nutrients back in. We have a small toad who has set up residence near our garbage bin box, so I think he was wintering in the deeply mulched leaves. Glad to have him/her around. Far fewer bugs in the box this year. I’ll add more leaves to the pile, and maybe next year we’ll have even more visitors about. The squirrels and chipmunks eat our tulip bulbs, like the little shits they are. But a rabbit or more reptiles and such wouldn’t go amiss.
We did not get any pumpkins to grow this year. A handful of gourds grew, but not much else. The Zebra tomatoes seems to have gone wild in the space. That took off and tried to spread out laterally. I should pick those so the squirrels don’t eat every last one. The two apple trees and Cherry tree that positively exploded with fruit last year, took a rest year this season, flowers but no fruit. Well, we had cherries, but the birds and squirrels got 99% of the yield. I was going to make a cider press because of how many apples we had last year, and this year? Not a one. I haven’t looked at the grapes. Not going to be much there either I think. I didn’t bother with potatoes this year, as I emptied out the compost box to fill up the front beds. It has yet to be refilled from household food waste, and garden clippings, leaves and bits of sod.
The very back yard usually get neglected a fair bit. I trimmed the hedge in the spring, and pulled weeds in early July, but abandoned it for much of August. In that time the Maple seedling took of, as well as an Oak tree, and possibly a Silver Birch. I’ll need to transplant those further away from the house at some point, but I’m not worried about it this year. I gotta do it before the tap root gets too deep/large. I’ll have to check which tree type gets a wide shallow root system, versus a long and deep tap room. I don’t want to kill either tree when I move it. I’ve had descent luck with transplanting trees over the years. Of the five I’ve done, four took off. One was dug up and eaten. I don’t consider that my fault. I think it was a rabbit. Would have got it had I left it alone anyway.
I need to get back to weeding the front beds again. Starting to look shabby. With that thought I’ll leave you be. Ciao Bella!
The first stomach bug has followed one of my children home from school. To which I woke up to puddles of puke in the kitchen, hallway, bathroom floor and the tub. It really emptied my youngest out. Points for coverage and density of material. No flow issues found. Snopes.com says – “True, no lies detected”. So I bolted out of bed from the yells for help from my wife. And spent a good while of this morning soaking up the mess, gathering chunks, and depositing wet paper towel globs into a plastic bag. After several rounds of mopping, and then lemon scented wipes for wiping down all of the surfaces my youngest Jackson Pollak’ed all over. Through it all the youngest remained calm and really positive about the whole thing. Bravo. Nicely done. I’ll take some positives wherever I can find them this morning. Which also happens to be an elementary school PA Day. Great timing! 3 days to recoup and test to make sure it’s only a stomach bug and not Covid.
Either way I’ve washed my hands, and the floor and several other surfaces a handful of times. If it’s a bug, we’re for certain all going to get it, just due to proximity. A tiny bungalow doesn’t offer much breathing room to escape from anything brought into the mix. Let’s hope it is over and done with before the fair starts next week. We’re right in the thick of building our entries, and prepping materials for display & judging. Nobody wants to miss a day of fun just to be draped over a toilet feeling violated. Next weekend is one of the longest that we experience all year. We spend double digit hours at the fair grounds from Thursday through Sunday. Plus setting up, and dropping off entries on Tuesday evenings. Then you have tear down and entry pick up on Sunday night. Flash, boom! The whole thing is over in the blink of an eye, and all eyes turn to next year! It really has a rhythm of its own.
Lately we’ve taken to watching “Welcome to Wrexham“, with Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mcelhenney. It’s funny, charming, touching and some times rather moving. Whether they keep a hold of the team for a decade or just a few years they’ve certainly revitalized the stadium and that’s gotta count for something. I didn’t realize my home town football team, The Wycombe Wanderers were in the EFL, or League One, which is several tiers up from Wrexham. The Chairboys could potentially, with a promotion get to the Champions League, and then be in the Premier League one tier higher after that. Awesome. They have really nice blue jerseys, of which I have several. I recall having a cousin named Mark who when in his teens was playing for the farm team system for a major football club. He’d be in his forties now, so I have no idea if he ever made it up the chain to play professionally, or semi professionally. Either way, I’d bet he was glad to have followed that dream, and to have had the skills to do so. Mark Thornton if my memory serves, but again, been three plus decades, so don’t quote me on that. I played on one Rep team in Ontario, where I missed most of the games because I couldn’t get a ride to any matches that were scattered around southern Ontario. I recall the day the coach came to one of my local games and gave me this amazing cotton white Jersey & shorts combo. It was so much nicer than the polyester kit the non rep level teams were wearing. Oh what could have been!?! Most likely not soccer stardom. My knees and ankles can attest to that. But… to dream. MLS wasn’t a thing in Canada back in the 1990’s (that I ever recall hearing anything about), so I don’t know what all the soccer stars did. Probably had to go play in the states or Europe in order to make anything of their potential.
Chairboys apparel collection.
I chose rugby over soccer in university, better drinking games, larger crowd to hang out with. But I did play soccer in high school, and again in a men’s league once. Badly damaged a knee that season. That was the summer of 2010. Twelve years ago now! Twelve!?!
That sounds ominous doesn’t it. No worries, the Elf in question is not a ‘Shelf’ elf but a clay bust made from Super Sculpey Firm. He’s a little battle damaged and gnarled around the edges. Once fully cured and cooled I will decide which item of the three I’ve done this year to paint for the Markham Fair 2022. Yes it’s back, and in person, fully operational once more. We’re excited for it!
The bust is roughly 1/5th scale, as far as I can tell. That’s a comfortable scale for me to work in. I am a tad rusty. I got into wood working more this year than any other one previous. There have been times when I have completed twenty or so sculpts, but this year I’m sitting at three. The Ninja Turtle was an exercise in patience, and the Apoxie Sculpt had a steep & unforgiving learning curve. So I’m back to sculpey in its various consistencies.
I wish I had the money, and the know how to mould and cast resin copies of my work. I find I enjoy using Chavant Hard the best for sculpting/modeling in clay. It’s firm and rigid, but also reusable. I like Sculpey and Apoxie because you get a solid paintable piece that’ll keep for years and years. But nothing sculpts like oil based hard clay. Atleast for me. I’m no guru or expert. I just do it for shits and giggles. Warm waxy clay that can be spread on hot, then cut away and refined cold is my jam, man!
The as of yet unbaked grisled Elf Barbarian.Baked but not yet painted Ogre Rogue.My attempt at an unnamed Ninja Turtle; full standing figure.
I have the armature wire ready to go for a fourth bust, I’m just not sure who it will be. I like the idea of a Killer Croc, from Batman. Or a cleaned up Hellboy bust wouldn’t go astray in my office. That’s a character I seem to be drawn to a bunch. I can always fall back on my goblins or ogres. My trusty monster men.
Perhaps I should try more women sculpts? I don’t know. I’m concerned that they always tend to be a showcase for tits and ass. Cleavage and ass cracks seem to dominate sculptures of the female form. I went to art school, I’m no stranger to nudes of any gender or combination. I just don’t want a bunch of hand sculpted tits floating around my office. I once did a nice clavical & up bust of the blonde woman from Vikings – Lagertha. That turned out ok. My proportions were off a bit on the size of her skull. I made it about 5mm too deep front to back, but didn’t have it in me to cut that out and reattach the two more to scale parts. She at least looks like a woman. With a slightly over sized novelty head.
So Elf Barbarian is in the oven at 175°, for the next 2.5 hrs. Then I’ll shut off the oven and leave the whole lot to cool down slowly inside. I might get cracks, but as of yet, no major catastrophes. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I had to bake one piece laying down and some important details got smushed flat on the baking tray I use. I was sad about that. But I fixed it with more sculpey. More of a time waster than anything else. My issue tends to be burned sculpey, as I make my pieces tall, as in floating off their base via thick wires, and the elements can burn the clay since it bakes for so long. However, as long as you prime the ceramics before the full paint job you shouldn’t get any uneven tones from the darkened burnt ceramic material. Or so I have found. Again – anecdotal don’t take it as gospel.
Oh look the sun has come out. First full day of Fall is here, and my oh my how the temperatures have changed. I’m amazed at how humid these last few days have been. But out on the east coast we are gearing up for hurricane season, so that makes more sense. Winds, hail, rain and the potential for tornados. Things are getting silly out there!
You know what movie I just bought for $5.00 from Walmart the other day? Fury. The Brad Pitt in a tank in WW2 Germany film. It’s still really good. I had totally forgotten how it starts, so it’s great to rediscover solid movies from the last 5-10 years. I was hoping to see Top Gun Maverick but Fury for $5 is hard to beat. I also picked up Morbius for cheap too. Will have to find an evening to watch that with my wife. I’m going in knowing it’s kinda bad, so low expectations here. Let’s see if it will limbo in under my low bar, or just barely hurdle it. To tell you the truth I am excited to find out one way or the other. I also brought home The Rise of Gru for the kids, and they thoroughly enjoyed that. So yeah. Would be great to get back out to the movies again with the family, that was always a great way to give my wife 3-4 hrs of alone time on a Sunday. I too liked the silly yellow Minions, nonsense and all. The kids laughed for 90 minutes, and I didn’t have to pay theater prices for snacks and drinks. That’s a win in my book.
Didn’t I start this out talking about baking a sculpture? Yes, yes I did. And somehow got all the way out here discussing cheap Movies and expensive theater snacks. Focus! I have to focus! It’s all fluff here any way. You don’t come here for political analysis or a dialectic on the duality of man. This is surface level, fun time fluff. I’m like pulp fiction magazines. A fun way to waste 3-5 minutes of your day. Like it or lump it! Ciao Bella!
Tis the season for Girl Guide cookies to make a major play in the marketplace – again. After two long years the chocolate mint cookies are back! I went to pick up thirty (30) or so cases, and then we drove about town and delivered eleven of those cases to their warm & loving hosts. Then we grabbed our own two cases worth, sold seven boxes before we even got them into the house. And dropped off three more cases early this morning on the way into Sutton. We are currently sitting on the last fourteen cases, which have yet to be delivered. I’m not certain that every single case has been claimed yet, but it has to be close.
As of yet undelivered cases of Chocolate Mint Girl Guide cookies.
The issue is these cases had to be ordered in June, so no one really knew if the demand would be high, or if it would tank after two years of pushing the standard Chocolate/Vanilla mixed pack for so long. I’ve heard it told that in previous years the troop would order upwards of seventy cases. This year we have thirty and demand is up! Bit of a dilemma, but there are work arounds if absolutely necessary. Or so I am told. Don’t quote me on that.
I have no idea if I’ll be volun-told to go deliver more later this week or not. I have the time, as it is, while I wait on some projects going through approvals, or are under review with the analytics team members. So why not get out and see parts of town I usually would never have cause to go see. Ran into an old friend yesterday as we dropped of her daughters cookie order. So bully for me! Yesterday evening weather was lovely, sunny & warm but not hot. Clear enough sky with a golden sunset. Didn’t take us much more than thirty minutes. Plus – no screaming kids. A plus!
So far, after the first meeting my youngest seems to enjoy Sparks a great deal. They sing songs and do crafts and go on field trips. What’s not to love about that. My eldest still likes it too. Though she is a Brownie now, and nolonger a Spark. My wife went right through to the end with that sort of thing, so I applaud her for taking the kids to it now. I wonder if I can get away with having mint cookies for breakfast today? Nah. Better not. Ciao Bella!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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