projects

Project Updates

Dollhouse - On hold, temporarily. I need a stand for the house, so that I can build a yard, primarily a side yard, and a greenhouse. This all falls under *“long term projects”, of which I can really only focus on one at a time.

Sea Holly Impasto Painting - the textures are built up, so progress.

Furbinator - Untouched*, see above note about “long term projects”

the writing project - Untouched*

the shrimp - Untouched*

the window book - Untouched*

Temperature Quilt - Untouched*, sort of. I’m tracking the temperatures still, and now that Annatar is complete I have emotional space for this other sewing project.

my Voynich Manuscript - 15% complete. I’ve also created a digital layout with the intention of creating a print version of my manuscript once it’s completed - with 7 foldout tipins it will probably require a Kickstarter to fund, which works out anyway because what else will I do with all of those copies?

With Annatar finished and PCCKC over, I have a lot more time to work on things, and clean up after myself, and go to the gym. Speaking of which…

With the “Witch-Queen” of Angmar, aka the Witch Kings wife

…and the Witch King, who needs to go find his wife.

I had a great time giving out rings, seeing my friends, and going to panels. Of course now I want to grab my favorite local photographer, Russ Matthews, and get some foresty glamour shots of all of that hard work.

my Voynich Manuscript

Like a lot of people, at some point in my life I came across the Voynich Manuscript, and it now lives in my head, rent free. I have a bad copy of it I had printed at my job - because they needed something to train the sewers on, and someone asked me for page files - but it’s not great, and also the wrong size.

I love books. I make books for a living. I sometimes recover old beat up books as a hobby. And I have long wanted to make a book, sewn and bound, completely from scratch. And now I am - completely recopying and reillustrating the Voynich Manuscript. I’m neck deep in other peoples research into what all the plants might actually be. I found a calfskin vellum analogue (Pergamenata) to use as the paper, practiced writing the text with different types of dip nibs until I found one with a similar look, found a truly black black waterproof ink, made a plan for all of the signatures of the book including all of the foldouts to avoid any tipins - and now I've completed 30 pages of transcription, including 20 illustrations.

Generally my goal it so finish a page a day, and four each day of the weekend - and this has been pretty achievable as each page is taking approximately an hour and a half. Obviously the foldout pages will take longer, being larger - with the giant star map in the center of the book taking the longest. Still, if I can keep the schedule up, I should be able to finish the entire inside of the book by the end of July - and the end of August on the outside range. Then it will be on to sewing the signatures and casing the cover, which may end up being plain leather. With PlanetComicon this weekend, I’m not going to get anything done, and possibly not anything finished the rest of this week as I fell into a cleaning spree of the ADHD variety and have a lot more to do until my brain settles out and I can work again. Fortunately I finished Annatar two weeks ago so I have one less project hanging over my head.

Current Project Plan

  • Transcribe 204 pages - currently 15% complete

  • Scan all pages for potential print version

  • Sew Signatures

  • Case Cover

  • Bind Book

There are definitely errors in my text - it’s entirely too easy to loose your plages when copying out a wall of indecipherable text. My husband would like for me eventually to make a printed copy of this book - and I’d ideally like to fix any transcription errors digitally if I did that. The thing that have struck me the most so far are the repetition of “words” - there are a lot of them, and I’ve written out enough of them that I’m starting to recognize character patterns. And in regard to the plants - there are plants that are definitely real plants, completely recognizable in original drawings - and others that look to me like drawing made from verbal descriptions rather than referenced from anything visual or real.

Page Plant
fv1
fv2 Deadly Nightshade
f2r Diffuse Nightweed (Centaurea diffusa)
f2v Nymphoides
f3r Feathery Amaranth (Celosia argentea)
f3v Aconite
f4r Linum catharticum (fairy flax)
f4v Rampion (Campanula rapunculus)
f5r Paris Polyphylla
f5v Mallow (Malva sylvestris)
f6r Bear Breeches (acanthus mollis)
f6v Sea Holly (eryngium maritimum)
f7r starflower (trientalis europaea)
f7v Bog Myrtle (Myrica gale)
f8r Petasites radiatus
f8v comfrey (symphytum offcinale L.)

Original Voynich page F1V

My Voynich - plant reinterpreted, text copied more or less accurately.

There was a plan, now there's a new plan.

I stumbled into this year with a plan - a plan I made back in November. Read too many books, learn silversmithing. It has been just over three weeks and already that plan has been flung out the window.

I had an idea. I mulled on the idea, I plotted what the idea could look like.

I bought paper.

I came home yesterday and shared my idea with Husband, who got so excited for my idea, immediately declared it my thesis, and encouraged me to push back my “plan” for the year and Do This Thing.

And I am. I’m doing this thing. It will be a while before the paper arrives in the mail - assuming it’s even the correct paper (I might need the heavier stock). And there will be other things I need to explore before I start - what paint works best, what pens and ink work best: it’s all very particular and I’ll probably need to wear gloves as well. And while all of that is going on I’m going to Finish Annatar.

And then…

Looking Forward, Looking Back

I think it’s pretty typical to use the end of a year to look back and reflect on what happened, what didn’t happen, accomplishments, failures, and what-if’s. 2024 has been a rollercoaster, an evolution, and a year of discovery - and 2025 is going to be even worse! (Or better? Maybe both. Probably both.)

Project Updates

Dollhouse - I fixed some fallen shelves, hung some interior art, worked on the exterior (finished windows, flower window boxes) but otherwise haven’t really touched it. I ought to take some really good progress photos/videos for a post.

Beetle Impasto Painting - I did finish that beetle painting!

Sea Holly Impasto Painting - Untouched

Tattoo design for a friend - Finished!

Furbinator - Untouched

the writing project - Progress has been made.

the shrimp - Untouched

the window book - Untouched

Temperature Quilt - Untouched

Annatar

The robe is sewn, lined, and trimmed. So trimmed: custome embellished piping and beading on the sleeves, foil stamped trim on the hem which is now being embroidered. The shirt is sewn, ruched sleeves and all with some fuck-ass button holes which are fortunately covered up by black glass buttons. I’m thinking about embroidering snakes along the cuffs but haven’t quite worked out the technique between the ruching and the fact that they’re already sewn. The belt is essentially finished aside from adding grommets to the back which I’m waiting on for fit (there’s been a weightloss journey this year which has plateau’d recently but I still have four months until March) - but also I’m still thinking about making a leather version - not that I’ve ever done any leather tooling before.

Which leaves the collar. The leather I initially ordered was thicker than I want for the “feathers”, I ordered more different hopefully thinner leather; and I have yet to decide on the shape/I have to commit to cutting leather and I’m procrastinating as much as possible so I and think through it longer.

2025

Bingo Card - I made one. And I probably already have to change is because the day I finished inking it - because I decided to illustrate it this year - the husband revealed to me the Flat Earth WAS ALREADY going to Antarctica, because some guy offered to pay for them to go to “prove” the earth is flat. Except they’ve almost all backed out because they’re all actually grifters preying on humanity; and now the bar has shifted and I’m sure it will be Firmament or Bust.

2025 Reading List

My reading list, documented here, because accountability. One of the podcasts I have loved in the past was the British History Podcast. I don’t know enough about British History to listen with a critical ear, but it seems balanced? And also left me searching for something similiar with American History - which this recent election and a pointed question from my mother earlier this year left me wanting to explore further and really deep dive into. The History of the American's podcast was a surface level answer to this - but ultimately I found the personality/attitude of the host Jack Henneman to be overly obnoxious and weirdly dismissive of a lot of points that were important to me, and I found myself cranky every time I listened and had to stop.

In short, I’ve put together my own reading list/curriculum to enable me to participate in conversations with facts behind ideas, and because facts sit in my brain more permanently when I take note and write about them after - that will be happening here. Ideally I’d like to finish a book a week, but with everything else in my life… well we’ll see how that goes.

Silversmithing

By hook or by crook, I’m starting my silversmithing learning journey in 2025. I have a plan. I have a bunch of books. I have the emotional support of the husband, although he’s going to be very busy working on his thesis.

I am tired, & we haven't even started yet.

Omg the last 30 days… to say a lot has happened is an understatement - and that’s personally in addition to everything else in the wide world at large. To address the personal items without the external chaos feels cheap and disingenuous, so…

To say I’m unhappy with the outcome of the election would be to put too mildly what has become an ever present booming of foreboding in my ears - flowery language for “I don’t feel good about this at all” - and at the same time I remain completely unsurprised. That a populace with decreasing media literacy has taken that same unwillingness to read between the lines into the voting booth was honestly to be expected. That fear-mongering dominated over hope is unsurprising. I feel there’s been a long tradition of voting against something else rather than for something - and by and large that pretty much played out last week exactly.

I am still processing it all, unsurprised and still stunned and forming all of my usual backup and contingency plans. To voice too loudly the concerns I have about future policies seems hasty, and also I’m too preoccupied with that effing Cabinet nominations. Mostly I think I plan to read a lot, and think about what I’ve read.

And make a 2025 bingo card, for my sanity.

In a more personal mode - I finished some things. Two things. The beetle impasto painting, & the tattoo design. I haven’t finished any of the books I start reading, but I have purchased 9 more volumes of varying subjects.

We (husband and I) also went to the Nelson to see the Hokusai exhibit - which I may have to write about later because this is enough of a disjointed mess of a post without dragging another artist into it.

And then there’s Annatar…

That’s actually coming along really well.

Morgoth’s crown - constructed of wire, paper maché, hot glue, more hot glue, heavy gel medium, paint and silver gilding is finished. There was a moment when my husband - coming home from a long library day to find me on the couch covered in paint and things, made mention of the fact that I could probably find a 3D print pattern of it in a minute and use either of our college’s labs to print it out in a fraction of the time I was spending on it. And yes, I could - in fact I did. One etsy vendor selling the pattern for 6 dollars, and another selling the print for less than 40. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to make it - and it turned out pretty well.

The belt - pattern changed for reasons is also pretty much complete - it just needs grommets which will take all of 5 minutes. I learned a whole heap about crafting with EVA foam - how to carve and cut and paste it. Priming, and the 7 layers of paint it took for full coverage.

The robe/dress is coming along - I did a muslin mockup for the first time in my life. Ordered fabric swatches from Mood and a company in Portugal to find the right fabric - which I then silkscreened to get that gorgeous pattern onto. That pattern itself was about 8 hours of obsessively studying various screen shots to find most of the angles of, and it’s close. Not perfect, but 75% accurate. Fortunately I work at a company that does silkscreening, and was able to have the screen burned there, and then do the actual printing myself after hours on the partially sewn robe. I may yet go into the seams and create joining lines so that the seams all “match”, but I also may not as they are largely not too noticeable and the paint strokes I’d inevitably make may stick out more than the gaps do. There’s some possible refitting to do, embroidery to add, the trim to finish which is a beautiful gold print fabric I’m going to foil stamp over as the very last thing as the foil itself probably won’t stand up to excess handling.

Additionally the shirt is 50% complete. And after all of that, or next thing to start at least is that leather wing collar. And buy a wig. And then it’s done?

And once it’s finished I expect to collapse for a bit in a fit of “what now?”

Probably some coding.