it can’t all be about manga…

I haven’t forgotten that I was going to post some pictures from my trip to Japan some weeks back.  (Only a little over a month!  Why does it always seem so long ago?)  I had Flickr issues.  Specifically, I had to decide if I wanted to pay for an account so I could organize my pictures or just not bother.  I finally decided on the account.  :)

I’ve just started messing around with it, but I have created my first set of pictures from the trip.  So if you’re interested, here are some of the sakura and plum blossoms.  It’s a mix of photos that I took on our first and second trip to Kyoto (a week apart so the trees had time to bloom a little more) and the garden Kenrokuen in Kanazawa.

This is a close up of some plum blossoms with sakura in the background.

Some of the branches on a rather spectacular sakura tree.

My half-hearted attempt at being artistic… :)

If you’re interested, you can view the rest of the set here.

Slideshow is here.

My nephew was kind enough to upload a couple of videos on to YouTube that I made while on the train going from Ishikawa to the Osaka airport while in Japan.

Boring scenery, but here they are:

and

Nothing but rice fields!

I was going to do a longer post tonight, but WordPress was down most of the evening.  Instead I uploaded more of my trip pictures to Flickr.  I took most of my pictures in Kenrokuen, which is a garden in Kanazawa.  I spent about two or three hours there and  was very sorry to have to leave. They had the best trees I’ve ever seen.

Here’s my Kenrokuen set.

Yes, I finished my trivet!  No more mosaic pic posts!  Yay!

I think the big one might need one more polish with vinegar. I’m going to see what it’s like in the morning when it’s dry again. I have to say that this was quite fun, and I’ll probably do it again. Coasters for everyone!

As predicted, tonight I finished my mosaic within half an hour… then had another two to kill.  So, I decided to make some coasters.  Low labour intensive coasters with lots of uncut tiles.  :)  I’m now finished my trivet and my last class next week will be grouting that and the coasters.

I pulled up a couple of pieces that were bothering me and laid it out slightly differently. Did pull a fairly typical bonehead move when I flipped the thing over to shake out the unglued pieces and the board fell out of the frame. SMACK! Right onto the table. Fortunately nothing broke. I’m happy with the way it turned out, but I’ll have to wait until it’s finished to be entirely sure.

I decided to make my coasters different as I don’t care much about matching colours. Laurie glued down the black and blue one for me, and then I decided to switch my pattern on the red and green ones.

This one is Laurie’s! She finished grouting tonight and got to bring her new baby home. There’s some additional polishing with vinegar to do (it’s optional and has to do with brightening the tiles) but I think it looks pretty good!

I’ve had a good yet very busy week and am happy it’s close to the end. I’m wistfully waiting for Sunday and my day off. I’ve had a fun week though. Not only did I have my classes and a friend visit from up North, but last night we went to see Evil Dead the Musical. Do yourself a favour and see it if it ever comes to your area. It is freakin’ funny. And pay extra to sit in the splatter zone, because nothing says “entertainment” like a face full of fake blood spurting out of a hacked apart Deadite. And that wasn’t sarcasm. Those people had a blast.  (You can see some bits of songs here.)

I had a semi-successful night tonight in my mosaic class.

I started with this:

It’s harder to tell the shade of pink of the flowers here, but I wanted a pale colour to contrast with the bright colours I picked for everything else. I’m not sure what my logic on that was, but I think I just wanted it to be bright without being garish.  (And isn’t my pencil art underneath just so grade three??)

Tonight I ended with this:

I didn’t finish! Now I have to sign up for another class because the glue has to dry at least 24 hours before you can put the grout on. arg! And since it’ll probably only take me half an hour to finish my background, that means I’ll have two hours to kill and will probably start a new project. This is going to get expensive!!

There was less flinging of glass this week and I got to use the expensive clippers.  They have wheels on the ends instead of just chisled flat edges so it makes cleaner breaks in the tiles.  My source of angst was the glue instead.  I was trying to place all of the little blue pieces and towards the end my fingers had glue on them and the pieces kept sticking to me.  And I have no fingernails right now so I couldn’t hold them without getting messy.  I think there are a couple of pieces I’m going to pull off and move, but I was trying to glue as much of the background as possible before the end of class so I ended up making a couple of bad placement choices.  It’s kind of like assembling a puzzle with wrong shaped pieces that you’re supposed to put together in a made up picture, if that makes sense. 

Still having fun, though.  :)

I just saw a clip of a live action Sexy Voice and Robo on YouTube.  Huh.  That’s probably only new to me but I am going to explore it further when I have more time.

Tonight a friend and I went and signed up for a mosaics class.  I will be making a small tray.  I can’t remember what the crafty name is (something-ivet) but now I have to think of a pattern.  I can either be a grown up about it and do something flowery or geometric… or I can be weird and “me” and go for Totoro.  I’ll let you know what I decide.   

I poked my head into iTunes tonight to see if there was anything new I wanted to listen to and came across a new Avril Lavigne song called “Girlfriend.”  I was both intrigued and amused by the fact that there’s also a Japanese version of the song.  Well, it’s in English and Japanese.  Yes, yes.  I bought it.  I figured if I took an interest in even a partially J-Pop type song maybe they’d look into trying to get more Japanese music in the store.  (The only ones I’ve been able to find are from Puffy Ami Yumi and I already own that cd.)  Also, I still have an absurd amount of iTunes gift certificates left from Christmas so I can buy according to my whims with a clear conscience.

It’s not bad.  All I really require from my pop music is a catchy tune with a beat I can have fun walking to.  This has both, I guess.  The lyrics are about what you’d expect - repetitive.  Even the ones you can’t understand.  :) 

Perhaps the Japanese version is in anticipation of her graphic novel coming out in April, which I am not going to be cynical about or make fun of.  (Shocked?)  However the plot may turn out, I do like what I’ve seen of the art so far.  It might be enough to make me buy it.  We’ll see.

 In the meantime, they actually put up a music video/gn preview.  Kind of neat, actually.

And I have another manga update, damnit!  I tidied my room a bit tonight and kept finding new manga every time I shifted a pile of books.  grr.

Platinum Garden 3
Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her  (a belated Christmas present that finally came in)
Bleach 17
Gals! 9 (second last volume)
Hayate the Combat Butler 2
Naruto 13
Free Collars Kingdom 1
Mushishi 1
Train + Train 1
Innocent W 2

Another fun purchase I made this week was The Cute Book by Aranzi Aronzo.  This is a really cute friggin’ book!  I mentioned it to a co-worker yesterday and she said her grandkids liked making crafts so she’d be interested in seeing it.  One look at the cover today and she was handing me $$ to buy it for her without even cracking it open.

It’s such an awesome book!  There are patterns to make little (cute) stuffed toys, like cats, squirrels, bunnies and sheep.  Towards the back of the book the patterns get a little darker - you can stitch together a kidnapper, alien or your very own bad guy.   The kidnapper is carrying a little white sack which makes him look more like a robber, but perhaps he kidnaps very small people.   Today I bought some felt on the way home and I’m going to make a little kitty first.  I will let you all know how it turns out.

I also wanted to get The Bad Book, but the wonderfully bright head office people at a certain unnamed, national Canadian bookstore chain apparently decided it was a graphic novel, because it has scenes of the figures talking to each other.  When it arrives in stores, staff can tell it’s a craft book.  I’m told there’s some sort of conflict about this.  What it means for me is that I’ve been to three different stores now that are supposed to have this book… but no one can find it.  Including my own store.  grr!