Friday, August 7, 2015

It's very clear




Rummaging through my files of scans - and of course I didn't find the item I wanted - I came across this, obviously scanned from a book. But most of my book scans turn out shitty, grainy or covered in criss-cross lines. That's partly due to the fact that my scanner costs  $14.99, but this - this actually came out nicely, with a lot of detail, a sense of infinity which lends it that lovely sense of certain doom.  I had to tweak it a bit to bring out the contrast, as Harold sort of greyed out and blended in to the building. These types of shots are posed promotional photos, nothing like screenshots, and there must have been tons of them, which necessitated hanging on to the wall and remaining absolutely still with the right facial expression. Some have noted that there is a naturalness to HL's stills which makes people think they were taken directly from the films. You find these little nooks and crannies of craftsmanship when you study Harold. He took the trouble, and whether his fans consciously knew it or not, it's one of the reasons they kept coming back for more.


One of the better gifs found on Facebook

 

Thursday, August 6, 2015

and death shall have no dominion.






Happy. . . birth. . .day. . .Mr. . . Pres-i-dent. . .

 








At least they don't melt












Every summer, we have a tradish - or I do - of knitting something for the girls while they're away on their camping trip, usually animals of some kind. Not sure when this started, but apparently it led to squeals of delight: "Look what Nanny made!'.

This is the first time I have knitted food for them (though I did an assortment of vegetables in a basket for their Mum): ice cream cones, and they're harder than they look. There are two components (I won't tell you what they are, eejit), the bottom half usually being harder. Displaying them without them falling over is a challenge. I used those plastic molds that you use to make juice popsicles. They had to be good for something.

The element of surprise in these projects is crucial, though I never get to see it. This all started small and escalated, a little alarmingly. A couple of years ago I made a tableau called Snail Valley (still reverberating in memory) that I am particularly proud of:






This is only a tiny percentage of it, as I photographed the snails before I knitted the leaves, branches, mushrooms, rocks, trees, etc. that completed the scene. I don't know how many snails I completed, probably at least ten, all different from each other.  I must say they're cool. The pattern had the snail's eyes in a jolly, winky position on their head. SNAILS DO NOT HAVE THEIR EYES ON THEIR HEADS. They loll out on gooey, freaky stalks, the ends of their slimy retractable antennae.




This is the Megasnail, about ten inches long, commissioned for an 8th birthday. 
The body was harder to make than the shell.

Oh well.



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