Writer's Block: R.E.A.D. in America Day

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Oxygen.
Nutrients.
Books.

It's that important. It has been that important ever since Dad would climb onto the bed with a copy of English Lyric Poetry or The Nonsense Anthology or D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. It's why I could recite Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" before I could read it. It's why I climb onto the bed with my nephews and read to them when I go visit - I've been pronounced almost as good as Pop Pop, which is high praise indeed.

I'm currently in the middle of Peter Carey's 2001 Booker Prize winner, The True History of the Kelly Gang, which I picked up used because it looked interesting and passed my "random paragraph test."  I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction. I just finished Arthur Herman's To Rule The Waves: How The British Navy Shaped The Modern World.  Next on the To Read Pile is A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns, Kitabatake Chikafusa's 14th century chronicle, the Jinno Shotoki, translated by H. Paul Varley.

So many books. So many, many, wonderful books!

The world is a little less cool. Paul Newman 1925 - 2008

International Taiko Festival, Berkeley, CA

Celebrating its 40th anniversary, San Francisco Taiko Dojo is pleased to announce that tickets are now available for the International Taiko Festival. The performances will take place at the prestigious Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus on the following dates:

 Saturday, November 22nd 7:00pm
Sunday, November 23rd 3:00pm

 This will be in memory of Grand Master DaihachiOguchi.

Featuring:
Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka & San Francisco Taiko Dojo
 
Special Guests:
From Japan Grand Master Seido Kobayashi & O Edo Sukeroku Taiko  
World Renown Artist Kitaro (Sunday only)
Grammy Award Producer Narada Michael Walden (Saturday only)
 
Special Guests from Japan:
Tsuzumi Master Saburo Mochizuki
Tsuzumi Master Kiyonari Tosha
Taiko Master Megumu Nishino
 
Guests from across North America:
Shasta Taiko
Taiko Master Kenny Endo
Burlington Taiko - Vermont
Fubuki Daiko - Canada
Sacramento Taiko Dan
Fushu Daiko - Florida
Ringtaro Tateishi
With Native American Leader Dennis Banks

Tickets:
$49.00, $42.00 & $38.00
Cal Performances 510-642-9988 or online  www.tickets.berkeley.edu

Made of fail?

The shibori sampler is hanging in the shower. I won't know whether it worked or not until it is dry enough to pull out the threads, remove the tape and plugs. I am not encouraged by the fact that one piece of tape fell off on the trip from the kitchen to the bathroom.

Frustrating? YES. Tying knots for kanoko was an exercise all on its own, especially since I'd try to do it the way it is in the book and end up pulling the previous knots out....  I can only wait and see if the method I worked out produces the desired result.

In the meantime, working backwards, I have put together the bibliography/webography and about two double spaced pages so far on the research paper. (I have two books I can't cite simply because they are in Japanese and  one is a museum catalogue with no ISBN number and the other is a museum publication with an ISBN number that I was unable to trace by searching on the internet. The good news is that there's a significant amount of digitized art on the internet that I CAN provide citations for.  And no, I'm still not telling what it's about yet.

EDIT: When is a 14 page paper "less than 10 pages"? When it includes a two page bibliography and a five page appendix of illustrations. Time to put it away for awhile. I'll proof it tomorrow evening. Food would be good about now.....

 EDIT   

Made of inconsistent

It's dry, the verdict is in.

Despite what the book said, I got better results with cheap polyester/cotton thread than with pure cotton - I tried both, out of curiosity.

The wood-grain effect looks right, if a bit subtle. I'd like to try it with the poly thread.

What I was hoping would be kanoko has resulted in a bunch of square rings, which came out quite nicely, but weren't what I was shooting for. (How the hell do they get such small dots? YEARS of practice.) I tried using a teeny bamboo knitting needle to help pinch points in the fabric (a linen/rayon remnant) and it poked right through. I suspect this would not be an issue if I were doing this with a nice, tight weave habotai, and I might even be able to get smaller dots as a result.

The tsujigahana is murky, probably because I didn't plug/cap it snugly enough. That one of the pieces of tape came off in my hand right out of the dye bath tells me that the dye bath may have been too warm for the adhesive. Maybe tape it and tie it off over the tape just to be sure? 

How I got a rust stain on it, I cannot figure out....

Disappointed? Hell yeah. Skill level 2, ambition level 9.5, baby, all the way. Set that bar high enough to crash into.

Sigh. Well, winter IS coming.

This Brain cramp brought to you by this month's issue of Smithsonian.

This month's Smithsonian includes an article on baroque sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini and the first glossy photo was of his Apollo and Daphne. There she is, turning into a laurel tree to escape a rapist.

A laurel tree.

A. Laurel. Tree. 

Horny Bastard God Apollo decides the thing to do is to break her FINGERS, because, hey, she's just successfully petitioned for divine intervention and turned into a tree,  and make a wreath out of them. To wear on his Horny Bastard, Nymph Raping head. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the symbol of victory and achievement.