Summer of Crafts: The Wooden Staff (1)

So, here's the first post about a series of crafting projects I'm currently doing. First off, my staff.
As you know, I have bought a heavy glow-in-the-dark staff at Keltfest ealier theis year, and have since then fell in love with staff-juggling. However when it comes to events like Keltfest, or -more of current concern- Castlefest, the neon-yellow lining of the juggling staff kind of clash with the mandatory mideaval/pagan/celtic costumes I'll be wearing at these kinds of events.



So, I decided to make a new staff myself! I was going to make one myself, and would be from wood,and encrypted with pyrography, and... and.... and.... Anyway, after dreaming came actually doing it when I a begged an old wooden broomstick of my mom's. I had previously walked through the forest some and decided that the chances of finding a natural stick of at least enough lenght wich was straight enough were really tiny.

Then, there were several ways of making it into a staff.
It needed
a) Decorations
b) Markings to indicate the center, and quarts of the staff
c) weights.

The weights were the most difficult. After some research I found out that the neon-staff I bought was weighted with old inner-tires from bycicles. Although tempted to break apart my bicycle, I waited a week to go to my old hometown and went to the bicycle-repairshop. I asked them for old, useless (leaking) inner tires, and strangely enough, they were not surprised by this request, instead, they were surprised I needed only two (they had about seven or eight to offer me.)

By the way, the black cloth is a secret preview to my second project....

Anyhow, after a *very difficult, mystical and secret process*, I attached the parts together. It then needed decorations and a handle. I could use several methods for it, but eventualy I decided on doing it all through woodburning. Mostly because I simply felt like it ^^

I did several markings. At the ends I wrote to poems in Runic, both by Omnia. (So technically, they're lyrics, but hey, lyrics are poems to!) I'll leave it to those who are able to read runes to figure out what lyrics I used precisely.







So, after this picture whore-fest (pardon the language), I must announce that these pictures are allready out-of-date: After consideration I decided that the weights needed to be attached more firmly and that I didn't like the woodburned handle-markings (they were done a little scewed), so I added emergency measures.
Oh, and I began working on staff #2, this one for Earthlycolours. It's not finished yet, though ;) (updated pics shown below)

In summer, the song sings itself.

And thus began a blogpost about nothing at all, composed out of sheer cheerfullness. If cheerfull nothingness does not interest you, feel free to stop reading from here. If it does, well, good for you, strange beeing.

My Muse post still lies half-finished on top of the stack of 'unfinished posts', along with the post about keltfest, and about summer '09. Today, a collection of little bits in the beginning of summer '10.

The Reproduction of Cats

First news: our dear little Thijm is not going to have any children anymore. Her beautifull 'eastern' eyes, her shining grey-tiger fur, her absolute loyality, her wise instinct for tactical retreat, will not be passed on to a new generation...
She's going to get 'helped'. (What, did you think she was dead?). The appointment is for coming tuesday, and it will be done quickly. However, it's going to be most troublesome to try and get her to go into the cat-basket so we can take her there.

In the meantime, her cousin and nephew have taken to New Age Rituals in order to get a new play-friend.




Look who's driving

In short news, the day after Thijm's 'adventure', I'll be going to have my own adventure: a driving-test, designed to see wether I'm fit to get my driving license in a so called 'rush-class': instead of having one hour of driving instructions a week, I'll be having two, three or more weeks of full-time driving lessons.
The test is specifically designed to calculate how many weeks I will need.

I will also get the chance to ask some things about the theory-examn, and perhaps even make an appointmet for one.

The General Staff

Remember the last post in wich I spoke about staff-twirling? Well, I kept my promise, because two days after the post, I had finished all the moves except for the last one, which I had somehow forgotten. I learned this one in secret yesterday.
I also wanted to share a video in the same theme, but unfortunately it's in a format I can't embed, so, here's a link. Be sure to watch it.
Apart from the guy's hilarious accent, his own invention, the "Buugeng", is awesome. They are a sort of S-shaped staffs wich can fold up and create awesome visual effects.



De Vensterbank, oh nee, de vensterbank!

Although I'm not a football supporter, on an impuls me and my girlfriend have just painted our windowstill orange. As in, literally, just. In between typing this and typing about my driverslicence.

Lastly: The watermelon.

To celebrate all this, and the beautiful weather, I bought a watermelon. I butchered it myself this morning. Look at the delicious, bloody red inside of the thing....

The Great Vegan Catfood Dilemma (and some juggling too!)

As you may know, I'm a vegan. Or, actually, an octo-vegetarian. I don't eat meat, I rarely use milk, and since a month or three, I don't eat fish. And I love cats.

(Did that last bit remind you of this as well?)

Anyways, it's pretty clear that cats, by general rule, are not animals devoted to the causes of veganism and vegetarianism. Still, it felt quite silly for me to buy a four kilogram bag of cow for my cats, while not going near the stuff myself.

Being a pescotarian at the time, the solution was simple. Buy the Tuna-flavour. Cause, Fish isn't as bad meat, right? Well, as said, I don't eat fish since a while since realising that although I care decidedly (and hypocritically, I know) less about their wellbeing, they're kind of at the brink of extinction at a lot of places. This week my GF (who has been vegetarian since her 9th) has finally compelled me to change cat-food. Instead of my regular tuna, I bought veal. It's been strange walking around with a bag of meat, but since a vegan lifestyle for cats seems absurd, all rationale points to the fact that this is the least of the two evils.

Any Vegans/Vegetarians out there who can help me with this dilemma?

The next thing about cats: Cats, juggling and me!

This is me, with my devil-sticks. I've had devil sticks for a while now (I think since somewhere between christmas and 2010) and am enjoying practicing with them a lot. For a long time I have been doing it several hours a day on weekdays, and I still practice regularly.

Obviously, the cats weren't really fond of the hobby. A big stick that flies through the air, making noise on other sticks and randomly flying on the ground with high speed (and above all, loud noise)? Not much fun! However, this has slightly changed since the kittens arrived. The little ones grew up from the start with devil-sticks being played dangerously close, -far to close, in fact-, and regard the mortal danger as just another part of life. Not wanting to be less brave than their children/nieces, the older cats have also adopted a less scared attitude towards the activity.

Recently, while on celtfest (where the heroïc picture of me + DS was taken), I purchased a new toy: a Staff. I had to choose between a very light or a very heavy one, and in the end chose the heavy one. Although I'm still not sure, I do think that thanks to the heavy practice I am now quite profficient with light staffs, who, when I get the chance to try them, seem ridiculously easy.


There is one very good tutorial floating around the internet, by an internet user named Imakokode. I'll post it below. Allthough I won't pretend I can do all these moves (I'm still mostly a DS'er), after reading a forum post by a guy who claimed he could do these after one day of practice, I've vowed to put more speed into learning them.

The funny thing is, the cats aren't afraid of this one at all. (mostly due to the NOT falling hard on the ground randomly). In fact, one of the kittens, a small black warior, is extremely drawn to the thing, and seems to feel the need, whenever I twirl staff, to either cuddle up against my feet or throw herself clawsfirst at the end of the staff.
It's a dangerous life, being a cat in house Gwydion.

About those elections, part 2: the musical

So, basically, today has been about "Post-Election-Music". As this is deffinately to long for twitter, here an overview of my post election-music.


Ofcourse, on number one, as posted in the last link:


When I was still trying to figure it out,








Voodoo & Voodoo Two. When you need Godsmack to describe something, you know it's bad.



Wait.... did I say Godsmack was bad?



For Added Drama

And finally, as the fascist say that people can't get around them anymore, I suggest, we go right through:



There. Just to get it out of my system. That's what blogs are for, right? Or should I just have twittered, again?

About those elections:

I wasn't going to talk about them, but I point you to this:

http://earthlycolours.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-mornig-hurts.html

Says it al. I completely agree.

Should I have twittered this instead?

What's that I smell a'burning?

Although I would have liked it to be the Binnenhof in the Hague, or the whole province of Limburg, I'm currently avoiding thinking about last night's elections like a plague -wich is a quite accurate term to describe them, come to think about it- and instead decided to blog about a newfound hobby of mine: Woodburning.

As illustration:


On second thought, no, stuff like the above is not what I do for my own pleasure. Actually, officer, I deny all responsibility for this. And for the burning of the Binnenhof.
No, woodburning does not come from a desire for destruction, rather a desire for decoration.

I had seen the woodburning tool in a local artshop some months ago. It was a relativly simple tool, remarkably similar to a soldering iron. It came with several tips, for lines, writing, dots and surprisingly, for soldering. Somewhere between then and now, my Girlfriend decided she was sick of me staring at the object, and bought it for me. I really must not forget to thank her for that...

On a sidenote, I only now find out that the correct english term is 'pyrography'. Well, with 'pyrography' I wouldn't have been able to post pictures of bushfire, would I? Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and so far have finished one design while working on another.

This one was my first practice, a small wooden box. Unfortunately, it's to small to hold the woodburner itself, so right now it holds my GF's handmade Jewelry ;)




The trouble was that I still had to practice with pressure and temperature. All in all I think it turned out very nice, although I would have made the lines thinner. My second project was a magazine-box wich I am decorating. I began with the same basic principle as the jewelry box (an eight-pointed star), but I cut of the edges. I'm going to do the front and other side as well, but I am still thinking about more difficult designs I could do.

Living large!

Yes, Comrade is going for the good life! Well, not really luxurious decadency, but a little step closer. He now lives in an old ex-monastry, in a small room with a bathroom attached. He shared this with a roommate, who, although being very cute, also takes up some of the allready scarce room.

Recently, I've recieved a little ray of luck. We've been trying to get an appartement in a certain building for a while now. We didn't try to hard, because this 'cramped small room' we're in now actually is pretty fine, but we were dissappointed never the less when we came in 2nd last week. See, the system is as following: Every week the free rooms and appartements appear on the website, and members of sshn.nl can 'place a voucher' through the site. Everyone can place two vouchers per week. At the end of each week, they calculate how long you've been a member and then give the room to the member who has placed a voucher ánd has had the longest waiting time. For two or three times in a row we came in 2nd, the last of those times actually being a little less of a room then hoped for.


The day after we heard we were second, new rooms were posted on the site. One of them, our dream appartement.


Comrade's got lucky. We came in first, and took it. One problem was rent. We were supposed to get government support on the rent, making the appartment even cheaper then the one room we're in now. However, this is a strange system as well. The gov. support is related to rent. At our age, there is a maximum amount of support you can receive. If, according to rent, you would receive more support then the maximum, you don't just get the maximum allowed, you get none at all.






I can understand that they do not want people renting luxurious appartements and then having way to much support. However, they do not take in account that there's two of us living there. By any logic, the rent should be devided between the two of us, enabeling both of us to get around half of maximum support. However, because they do not take this in account, our dream appartement suddently became a lot more expensive, but luckily we can share the rent, and we're still a little below average rent in this town.

So the question remains? What about this heavenly palace of luxury you call the 'dream appartment'?

Well, it's two-and-a-half room appartement just out of town, surrounded by forest. It's five minutes by bike to her school and about fifteen to mine. It's up on a hill (whatever that may mean, in Dutch terms.) It used to be a monastry, but unlike where we live now, you can't really tell. You enter in the first room, which is the living room. Behind it is a small passageway with a cabinet and cookingstation which passes as 'kitchen'. In this passageway there's a door to the bathroom and the bedroom.

Above a part of the bedroom and the kitchen/bathroom, there's an 'entresol'. I think that means 'between two floors', which sounds quite acurate. It's a sort of second floor, but it is completely open to the living room. Somewhere in this post there should be a map. Or, on second thought, let's provide you with a picture of the monastry back in the fourties!








Anyway, how to turn this into a dream appartement?

Well, I've got a few promises I made myself (didn't tell my roommate yet, in case I can't keep them...) to ensure that the appartement is going to be perfect.

1. Clean up more regularly. Though simple sounding, this is going to be the hardest of all for me.
2. Make room for study, and hobby. It relates to the first. Have good place to do this things, not just the little place you've got when you cleared the pile of rubble a little bit.
3. Discover the forest! We're quite close to nature here, and we're even closer there. We've allways known there were beautiful forests around this city, but we've never taken the time to explore them. I want to explore the area properly, especially the forest surrounding the building
4. Grow something. Something green. Weather herbs, vegetables, flowers or magic mushrooms for all I care. I want to plant something and make it grow. Preferably both in a pot in the court, ánd free in the forest.
5. Live green, all over. Hopefully, the thing we plant will be something we can use, so that we don't have to buy that particular item.
6. Have cats! This one is almost free, since we're going to get two cats from my father. His cat got preggers two times this year, so now he's got five swarming the place. The youngest two will move with us to that place. I want to make them feel at home and watch them grow up.

I think if I manage to manage both my own life, that of a (or multiple) plants, and those of our cats, I've grown up quite a bit, not?