Blog

J’accuse!

I walked into the living room after work, and thought “Well that’s weird. Why is there a big bag of candy on the table?”

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Testing the Powdered Dyes

Liz has so many different tests, with so many different products… I’m having a hard time keeping it all straight. When she gives me a recap of what she’s done, I tend to have to ask a lot of basic questions, to try to catch up.

It’s a lot of testing, it’s a lot of variations. It’s all kinds of impressive.

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Halloween Prep, 2023

As some of you may know, we get a lot of kids visiting our block for Halloween. We’re not quite on par with Harper Avenue in Hyde Park, but we’re working on it. We get a good turnout, and it’s been a source of fun/joy for both me and Liz these last few years.

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Double Miss

Liz and I were out today, with the intention of getting our Flu and Covid shots. Well, I was the one who was thinking I’d get both at once… but Liz convinced me that probably wasn’t the best idea.

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Exploring Powdered Dyes

Liz had another day in the basement (or should I call it her laboratory). Today’s session involved her trying out powdered dyes – another approach to staining Douglas Fir.

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Revisiting the Infinite

It’s been fun getting back into this project, after setting it aside for so long. It was more of a proof of concept project, but lately it’s been enjoyable to try to improve it a bit.

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The Vesuvius Challenge

“The Herculaneum papyri, ancient scrolls housed in the library of a private villa near Pompeii, were buried and carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. For almost 2,000 years, this lone surviving library from antiquity was buried underground under 20 meters of volcanic mud. In the 1700s, they were excavated, and while they were in some ways preserved by the eruption, they were so fragile that they would turn to dust if mishandled. How do you read a scroll you can’t open? For hundreds of years, this question went unanswered.”

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Shellac and Dyes

Liz has been in the basement a lot lately, doing her mad scientist routine. She’s been methodically trying to figure out how to best stain the new trim we’re looking to purchase: vertical grain Douglas Fir.

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C82: Works of Nicholas Rougeux

I don’t know that I have the words to describe my reaction to these images of his work. There’s an immense satisfaction I feel, at both the symmetry and colors. There is a rigidity and structure to the vector shapes, but it’s the color that pulls them a bit towards the artistic. It’s phenomenal.

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