mmm.... coffee.....

who is a cartographer to tell me where the mountains are?

just in case you need to do this some day, here is how you digitize a panoramic painting!  i'll be spending most of my time this week in the Ann Mary Brown Memorial handling this massive watercolor painting with my coworker Mae & Peter Harrington, curator of the Military Collection at the John Hay Library. 

A crew of photographers from Boston have been hired to digitize the entire 4.5 high by 273 feet long, double sided, panorama about the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi which was completed in 1859 by J.J. Story with figures by Henry Selsun.  in the mid-nineteenth century people would pay to watch a moving panoramic painting, the scenes would be scrolled by & a narrator would read an explanation.  when this project is completed i believe you will be able to watch it online & even listen to a new recording of the speech.

besides being about 150 years old, this painting travelled around a great deal so it has had many assorted repairs done to it & was once conserved by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  it has everything: delicate japanese paper repairs, heavier paper repairs (above left) that were painted to match the original watercolors, filmoplast tape & a great deal of hand-stitching along the fore edge (above right) because the painting itself is on paper & the edge is lined with canvas.

end of history lesson for today, kids.   thank you thank you, everyone who came out for ArtBeast in Somerville this past saturday, i had a lot of fun & sales were great!  the shop Magpie in Davis has been restocked with vinyl goodies & i'm done with craft fairs until October, but now i suppose it's time to start sewing quilts for the holiday season...

two little kids with a flow you ain't never heard

hmm, this could very easily become another cupcake-blog...

you are ogling a vegan, gluten-free vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting.  one of my coworkers finished school & got her MLS so we had a little surprise party for her - it was an all gluten-free affair because she can't eat wheat.  i spotted a couple recipes in the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cookbook & had to try one.  they smelled very much like corn muffins when i took them out of the oven & i had to replace the almond ingredients, but everyone agreed they tasted pretty damn good.  and, of course, the frosting was delicious - you really can't go wrong with cocoa & sugar.

who the highway patrol to tell me what is & what isn't a lane?

hoya kerrii (sweetheart hoya)

if i don't go to NYC this weekend will someone please take me out on an adventure in New England?  some place that isn't the east side of providence.  some place where i can see more trees, maybe climb a few rocks & just be outside...  speaking of outside, it's supposed to be record-breakingly hot today (it's already well above 70) so i am very glad to spend it inside the library:

both students that have been working in the lab with me all year are graduating tomorrow & i am going to miss them.  besides being great to hang out with, they completed re-housing the Dated collection in phase boxes.  this is the collection that i had surveyed - we took everything that was in an acidic wrapper or had detached covers with no wrapper & put them into acid-free archival boxes.  all that's left are some small books & they'll be done, oh, by the end of the day!  it's very satisfying to work on a entire collection like this, it may be a teeny slice of the whole library, but it's in much better shape than when we started.  particularly since my time here at the Hay is limitied, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the amout of work that needs to be done.  we need moments like this, moments where we can step back, smile & say, "Done."

then i get to ask, what's next?

but if we act all shy, it’ll make it ok, make it go away

there is nothing craft-related in this post.  i just wanted to share with you the insanely adorable baby bunny i found shivering on the sidewalk this morning!  i know i shouldn't pick up wild baby animals because it will smell like me, but it was on the sidewalk & i didn't want either:
a) a college student to try to keep it in their dorm room.
b) a high school student to mess with it.
so i took it over to the little lawn next to the library where i know a family of bunnies lives because i've seen them there before.  actually, they live all over campus & i'm guessing this one wasn't far from home, but home had just been ruthlessly landscaped.  oh, it's so cute!  it didn't really move around when i picked it up & held it, but once i tucked it under the bushes it set about cleaning its face & hopped around a bit:

it was still there when i went for coffee, but i'll check on it again at lunch.  i'm kind of worried about the little guy, but it is a wild bunny & seems big enough to fend for itself.  i really didn't want to let it go, i wanted to hold it or take it home, but that didn't seem right...  right?

update:  by the end of the day the bunny had scampered off & i haven't seen it since.  i did a little research & leaving it was the right thing to do.  it wasn't an infant , it wasn't injured & it has only a 1% chance of survival if i brought it home!  it was possibly old enough to be on its own or it's mother came looking for it in the night & i didn't move it very far from where i found it.  i still keep an eye out for it every time i walk by.

honk if you love the truth & please stop watching tv while you're driving

i upgraded my flickr account because i keep taking all these photos of things (especially books at work) and not getting around to showing them here because, well, for one, they're not things that i've made & two, i feel like i need to have something clever to say when i post.  it won't be taking the place of this journal because it will mostly contain different photos - like photos of pamphlets advertising Hires Root Beer.  but it will also have some repeats like this wonderful little edward gorey book:

yes, that is indeed a tiny edward gorey signature!  how fabulous is that?  edward gorey's books have definitely had a huge influence on me, i blame him for my insistance on drawing everything itty bitty & buying .005 micron pens.  i used to draw everything with thin little rapidograph pens & have been thinking about returning to that again... 

at work right now i'm surveying the small books section of the Harris Collection of American poetry & plays.  to be a small book you have to be under 3" tall, but anything else goes!  these are leather books, cloth books, pamphlets, accordians, scrolls, matchbooks, poetry, music, psalms, primers...

hey remember that month i only ate tangerines

i have these random moments in my life where i realize i'm utilizing my RISD education...  not something i learned in the classroom, but the culture of hard work & scrappiness, using whatever supplies you have access to, staying up for days & never considering giving up.  like this week when i'm making giant mats for giant maps for an exhibition.  i've never done something like this before, but, hell, give me an x-acto & some paper and i'll figure it out.

i'm also working under extreme conditions because my office has been without heat for over a week now!  it won't get above 60 in here, but at least it warmed up to 60?  i'd leave, but i have a space heater to keep me company & i'm climbing on tables - sound like fun to me!

oh i see how his life resembles yours and you somehow are like him

this is all i will show you of my super secret box making project.  i know cutting that s-curve by hand was a little insane, but, well, those are the best parts of my boxes!  i tend to do the little details that other people wouldn't bother with & besides, a straight edge isn't as beautiful...

i'm wearing a new pair of sock-sleeves today & arguably the most amazing socks ever.  or sock. since i'm only wearing one...  actually, they're both amazing since the non-cephalopod sock is a bowling sock teresa gave me.  i also bought skull socks & new sneakers - abby was visiting this past weekend & we wandered the east side shopping after our tasty sunday brunch.  pears in a grilled cheese sandwich?  strange, i know, but incredibly delicious.

i stopped in at work today, but i'm not really here because i'm taking a day off, but i'm working on the aforementioned super secret box project so i came in to use the board shear.  also, all my hand-tools are at my workbench & it's february birthday party day & i need to be here so everyone can congratulate me on my job extension!  yes, i will continue to be gainfully employed, pay my rent & eat for another year - complete with health insurance & retirement plan.  my new & improved unemployment/move to maine & work in a coffee shop date is now June 30, 2008...

i heard someone say the mind keeps wandering

this massive thing was found sitting in a puddle...

it was housed in an equally extravangant wood box covered in purple leather & lined with gold satin which took all the damage & protected the item quite well.  it weighs upwards of 100lbs & i can't quite figure out why!  sure, the velvet cover has enameled metal bosses & a giant cross in the middle, but whatever the cover is made out of seems to weigh an extraordinary amout... inside it is a four-flap containing chromo-lithograph plates of the mosaics in the Basilica San Marco, Venice.

it's breathtaking & i hope we send out the box to be repaired.

why do you need my wife?

one small part of my job at the library is disaster recovery.  luckily the only type of disaster i've had to deal with is water damage caused by the HVAC system leaking, but sadly that can be often in such an old building.  commonly i find things that were once wet & now just stained, but today 1N sprung a leak & some of the archives absorbed it. 



[more photos on flickr]

in case you didn't notice, i bought a new camera this weekend.  i went for another canon because i liked mine so very much: powershot SD630 digital elph with 6 mega pixels.  i could have gotten one slightly cheaper, but it wasn't as beautiful & i think $40 isn't too much to pay for good design.  i was wise & opted for the extra warranty that covers the mysterious "impact damage" that deprived me of my previous camera.

now we have some catching up to do!

i tried to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes

this is what my afternoons have been filled with at work; a collection of early printed works dating back to the beginning of the 16th century.  i've been handling prayer books, bibles, testaments, commentaries on such things & the occasional play or poem.  unfortunately i can't read greek, latin or german, but my interest in them is more the book as an object rather than the content.

pictured above is the suede-bound "Locorum Communium Christianae Religionis" from 1609  that had been languishing for many years inside an acidic enclosure.  no matter how many times i unwrap a book & find it in such a state, i am still startled!  although it looks like mold, it's actually covered in bloom (or spue) which, as i understand it, is the oils in the leather exuding back out & crystalizing.  this may be really boring to you, but i am such a dork about books & past conservation treatments.  i learned pretty quickly from working in libraries that over the years many awful things have been done to book when people thought they were saving them, it's only 50 years later that the damage is visible.