Thursday, January 31, 2008

The Beads, Anvils, and Pointy Objects Compel You...

In my case at least, that's the truest statement of the month. A short summary of all the madness that's happened in between would read:

Found a store to get gorgeous, unique glass beads; bought more wire and got addicted to wirework as well as chainmaille; started sketching again; sang original songs for friends' album launch and murdered songs with nerves; may be recording demo song or two in March; sang with chamber choir for KL Performing Arts Centre Open Day and forgot lyrics; saw preview of buto performance at same and loved it; started fencing, LOVED it; hammered own pewter bowl at exhibition demonstration tonight, initialled it, and got to keep it; wound and cut own jumprings for the first time.

All that in one breath, and it'll be an approximate idea of how I feel.

And yes, I did indeed start fencing classes yesterday(and I can just hear some of my friends scream in horror, OH NO THE WORLD WILL END SHE HAS POINTY OBJECTS.) I've wanted to do it for years; it's a dream come true.

The pewter bowl hammering was just tonight - my colleague and I were at a convention centre appreciation dinner representing my workplace, and Selangor Pewter was giving people chances to hammer out either a shallow dish or a deeper bowl with a wooden mallet and dapping block. Scarily enough, yesterday I was just looking AT dapping blocks and reading up on what they were for, while researching wirework and making chains. How could anyone pass up such a perfect opportunity for stress relief? Carpe Opportuniem! (or however the Latin goes; I don't know Latin except for the phrase Winnie Ile Pu. Really.)

So now I have a beautiful pewter beading dish with my initials engraved at the bottom. Pewter! It's such expensive stuff to buy and here I got to whack at it AND keep it, all for free!

On the sketch front, since I promised Marcos that yes, I would be good and attempt to get back into drawing something every day like I used to (how's that for new year resolution), I present the following slightly mangled attempts:


Quick, rough, and dirty attempt at speed-sketching from a reference photo I loved. Didn't quite come out the way I wanted, but still better than I thought for five minutes or so.



Accompanied my colleague to the bank to run errands before work yesterday and sat in the car while she went to take care of stuff. Since I can't sketch buildings for nuts and they hate me anyway, I attempted to rectify this by drawing the Choco Boutique across the road. And ran out of ink, of course.



It is not the most polite thing in the world to sketch away when one's at a cocktail function and supposed to be meeting and mingling over pre-dinner appetizers, but those flower arrangements were just too cool to pass up. They look a lot better than this, I promise. The ikebana-like branches caught my attention tonight, so out came the sketchpad and inks.

And now, I attempt to finish packing so I can go home for Chinese New Year...yeesh, where did the time GO? *ahemcoughdistractedbycuttingjumpringscough*

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