Out of the darkness

I have consciously tried not to anxiously await the date when the days begin to grow longer. This goes for any other definable moments in the future...wishing time away seems like a terrible waste when it is so precious. That said, I can't help but feel elated that those of us in the northern hemisphere have made the shift toward longer days—imperceptible though it is. (Imagine how people living in the Arctic Circle must feel!)

In the past I've noticed that sunrise & sunset continue to remain pretty much the same for a while after the solstice, but I only just realized that this is alluded to by the word's etymology:

solstice |ˈsōlstis|
ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French, from Latin solstitium, from sol ‘sun’ + stit- ‘stopped, stationary’ (from the verb sistere).

With the sun hovering at more or less the same light/darkness ratio during this period—for example, between 30 November & 18 December, the variation of the time of sunset was a mere +1/-1 minute—the sun's rising & setting time has indeed stopped its usual faster rate of change. In fact, we will have only two seconds more of light tomorrow than today (and it may well be a couple of extra moments of gray)...but by the second of January we will have worked ourselves up to a nine-hour day!

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And now, back to this month's ROY G BIV challenge (see my last entry if you missed it)... My original plan was to use photos of last year's winter solstice. We had gathered ceramic & glass containers from all over the house & put tea light candles in them, filling the living room with light. I suppose because I remembered the candles/some of the candle 'holders' and the tablecloth being white, I thought the photos would be suitable for the 'white' theme, but in fact the best shots showed the glowing light against a black background—fitting in spirit, perhaps, but not in color.

So, today seemed like the better day to post a couple of those images of last year's winter solstice ritual. Last Christmas's gingerbread cookies, my favorite 'star' lights, and one morning's cappuccino also feature in this quartet.

In last year's blog entry (from the former 'Arzigogolare'), written on the day of the winter solstice, I recalled our first one in this apartment. I will never forget how my plans went awry:

I bundled together fifty white taper candles with a ribbon to serve as the centerpiece for our evening meal. Unfortunately, I had underestimated the intensity of their combined heat: the fifty flames joined forces, fusing the candles into a single mass almost instantly. In a matter of seconds, the wax began flowing all over the table, then dripping on the rug, before we managed to extinguish the flames!

In contrast, last year's celebration was considerably more serene—and that is what I hope for around the world tonight, whether you are enjoying the shortest day of your year or the longest.

{My source for sunrise/sunset times (and much more) is this site.}

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Even though the whole gingerbread cookie dough/baking/decorating process often takes us three days, last year it was accomplished in record time, with great success. This weekend we will be making cookies with my parents in Montepulciano, so it should be even easier!

{The recipe for the cookies can be found here.}

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And now a couple of PaperSynthesis-related notes... Saturday, 22 December is the last day to order electronic gift cards to be sent out this year; there are some new choices in the shop, under the listing in the 'Calendars+GiftCards+' category. (Orders are accepted at any time, but will not be sent until 2 January if placed after tomorrow.) Also, items ordered by Monday 7 January 2012 will ship for free during the week of 14 January. A few more of the new items I have been working on this year will be showing up in the shop soon as well... 

White & shadow

Few words today, but plenty of images. As research for my BookArtObject edition (Mise en place), I have been wanting to photograph little dishes and bowls and other kitchen-y things, and yesterday's gorgeous sun brought all that these pieces needed to entice & enthrall me. I had such fun! Since many of the things I gathered happened to be white, they also seemed perfect for this month's ROY G BIV challenge. In the brief time that the sun was in the studio, the light changed considerably, so there are cool whites/shadows and warm whites/shadows...and many whites in between.

If you look under my suggestions for "Inspiring places to visit' in the sidebar, you'll note several blogs are featuring 'White' today...I'm just off for a look myself.

A few more white-themed images will follow tomorrow, and maybe a few more words as well...

Beginning to think about the new year

I can't imagine Florence without the Arno. It's like a shimmery version of a piazza, offering a lovely pause amid the otherwise dense urban fabric. I love how it changes with the weather, the time of day and the season. Sometimes glittering silver, other times taking on a shade of olive green—or blue, or brown—there are also those serene autumn afternoons when the palazzi cast copper and gold onto the water, creating reflections that look too dazzling to be true. The water turns bright green in the presence of grass or trees that sprout along the banks, and the sunset can light it on fire. Sometimes, for example early in the day, controluce, the river is so pale that it appears practically colorless.

It's not just the rainbow of colors that appeals to me, but also the sense of structure found in many of the reflections. Orderly rows of windows overlooking the Arno reflect as vertical bands of alternating light and dark, while the narrow streets that end at the river's edge create dark abysses between the reflections of buildings. With one side catching the light and the other in shadow, corner buildings appear as two differently-colored rectangles side by side. The arches of the Uffizi's river-facing façade create their own distinctive pattern, as do the towers and bridges. Depending on the texture of the water (which in turn relies on the whim of the wind), the reflections are either perfectly mirrored, or abstract beyond recognition—fascinatingly so, in either case.

The Arno's ever-changing palette & personality has inspired many photos over the years. I've brought together a dozen (from the last 14 months or so) for Florence Reflected, a calendar I designed for the fast-approaching New Year. Here are a few photos showing how it came out...

And below is the cover, followed by a composite image of all twelve months. {The calendar can now be found in my online shop, PaperSynthesis.}

 Here's hoping that these last weeks of 2012 are merry & bright...

Words emerge - Updated

Back in May I wrote a post about my early days with found poems (here). In the months since then, a number of questions have come up: 1) should I use the original pages or create reproductions; 2) what color of threads to use + how to weave them & knot them + whether or not to wax the threads; 3) should the pages be mounted to a background and, if so, what would be a good choice?

1. When it came to deciding if I should use the original pages from these old books, my answer came the moment I began sewing the first trial page. The over 100-year-old paper simply felt too fragile, and was certainly not archival. This led to the decision to digitally reproduce the pages as closely as possible, using a scan of the original. I then selected papers that shared some of the same characteristics as the book pages in terms of color & texture. Some of the pages from the original books are deckled/torn, thought not consistently so; borrowing their spirit, I deckled the poems on all four sides (which I also think helps them to stand on their own).
2. The earlier experiments sewing over the words that didn't belong to the poem entailed knotting the ends of each line on the front of the page, but I ended up preferring a less 'distracting' method that emphasizes the shape of the text block, in which the knots end up on the back. Lines of thread on the back also mark out the poem's presence on the front side. At first I wasn't sure if I should wax the threads, but decided to for the sake of strength/durability (as well as for my sanity...waxing the threads before use prevents headache-inducing knotting & tangling). The effect is a bit crisper this way—and not as 'full'—but I do think it suits the direction I ended up taking with these pieces.
3. My initial thought was to use marbled papers as backgrounds; I have a nice collection made by a local Florentine artist, and they seemed relevant since marbled papers are traditionally used in bookbinding/as end papers. Inspired by the appearance of the word 'silver' in one of the poems, I tried out an iridescent silver paper for its background; I like the simplicity of this look as well. Each 'background' paper is also adhered to 285g Fabriano Rosaspina for a bit of structure before the poem is sewn on.

Answering the questions led to the decision to also offer all poems without the background/border, and sewn with natural-colored thread that blends in with the page. Because each item in my shop is individually made, I have also given the option to create customized versions with other papers found in my shop.

All of those decisions came before the poems had even been 'found'! I'm not sure just how many hours I devoted to allowing the words to emerge—or how many revisions they then underwent over the last six months—but I have to say that it was most enjoyable. I love how certain phrases would capture my fancy, and the many possibilities/directions they offered. Because of the challenge of following a thread (so to speak), or finding some kind of narrative—which, in keeping with the concept of the found poem, had to flow in a predetermined order, and without traditional punctuation—each piece also comes with a postcard-sized version of the found poem arranged in lines showing the rhythm I had in mind as they came together.

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Photographing the pieces over the last week or two has been a challenge because of the lack of natural light, but I thought I'd share some of the photos I did manage to take. The sun does feature in a few, like those of the threads as I was separating each strand from the skein of six...I love the effect of the remaining strands as they bunch up—looks like a nightmare of a tangle, but isn't!

• '183/A Place of Wonder & Delight', sewn with green threads to a multicolored marbled paper background. {Note that in the second image the shadows of the sewn threads blend in with the threads themselves, making them appear rather thick & uneven. There is also another view of the finished poem at the end of this post.}

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• '120/A Fascination Lost', sewn with variegated threads to a marbled paper in autumn-tones.

 

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• 'In the Stillness', sewn with natural threads to a terracotta/chocolate/charcoal/gold marbled paper background.

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• "122/Much Wandering & Whispering", sewn with silver threads to a pearly silver background. {Again, the shadows cast by the threads are a bit distracting, and it's difficult to make out that they are grey/silver against the paper.}

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Below are a few images of the final process: the holes (shown on the back of the page); the basket of threads that I chose from; the backs of the pages, with the knotted threads.

The four finished pieces together...

 


As a reminder, this project first began here...

...and here's the ending place (at least for now)...

I do hope to revisit the found poems at some point, either to create new ones or explore other ways of presenting them...perhaps when I make my way further through the backlog of projects. In the meanwhile, thanks for following the process with me...

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{PaperSynthesis update: the Rose Garden calendar is now in the shop, and a calendar featuring a palette of Arno reflections will follow shortly. The found poems should be in the shop in the next day or two are now in the shop.}

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas - Updated

Although the calendar says it's still autumn, there is no doubt that we've already entered winter. Yesterday's steady drizzle brought a brief spell of snow flakes, and this morning we woke to clear skies that revealed snow blanketed hills north of the city. The air is bitingly cold, and smells like Christmas...and the mosquitoes finally seem to be gone. I can't believe it's already time to fare l'albero—decorate the tree—a ritual observed on the eighth of December in Italy. Coinciding with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, this reminds me, once again, of how traditions/schedules are so often organized around the religious calendar.

Before assembling our 'tree' (shown in the image at the top of this post—looking up from underneath...it's very difficult to photograph—you can read here about its 'conception' last December), my daughter and I went out to get some apple juice so we could make spiced cider tonight. Walking around Florence may be chilly at this time of year, but the cheerful decorations make even a simple outing feel magical. I brought along my camera, hoping to photograph some of the streets strung with lights, but the 'fresh' battery I thought I'd put in was in fact so low on charge that I only managed to get two pictures before it quit (above is Ponte Vecchio, and below the cathedral). At least they will remind me of our fun walk under the lights, complete with a few dozen random snow flakes (especially surprising since the stars were still visible!).

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I have been busy in the studio, tying up loose ends for some of the year's many projects—including a couple of 2013 calendars. Below are a few images of my Rose Garden-inspired calendar, which will be in my online shop in the coming week now! It's been hard to get decent photos of the things I've been working on since there's been little sun lately—even on days when there is sunshine, it reaches into the studio for just a few hours. Thankfully the days will start getting 'longer' in a mere couple of weeks...though I must admit that I'm finally starting to remember just how wonderful December in Florence can be...

Colorful things for gray days

The myriad—and unexpected—sources of inspiration never cease to amaze me. A few weeks ago, as I was watching how olive oil behaves when added to water (while making polenta), I got an idea that has led to a seemingly endless potential for decorative papers. Because of their spotted/marbled paper effect, the designs are perfect for my second A Letter a Week alphabet (which requires that dots/spots play some part in the design).

Here are some snippets of the decorative patterns (click for a larger view)...

I'll dedicate a post to more details on how these came about after I've done some more experimenting. But for now, here are some notes on things I've been doing with them so far...

Since this discovery coincided with preparations for my daughter's birthday, I wanted to incorporate some of the designs into something for her. My first thought was to use one for her birthday card, but that ended up taking another direction as I played around with some images my daughter been collecting (more on this in a moment). I also wanted to make some gift certificates for a few things that couldn't be given right away, and somehow those 'cootie catchers' (also called fortune tellers) that we used to make in school came to mind as a fun way to use the 'marbled' patterns and give the 'gifts'.

I folded a couple of square test papers first to help me in designing the layout, then cropped four of my colorful designs into triangles to create the template. I exported the file as a jpeg, then sized the jpeg to fit onto a sheet of A4 paper and added text boxes for each 'gift'. Below is the resulting 'folded gift card' before being trimmed/folded.

Click here for a refresher on the folds needed to make a fortune teller/cootie catcher.

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The design for the birthday card was inspired by this next image, which I found in a folder of my daughter's called 'Pictures to Print'. I wish I could credit it, but unfortunately she doesn't remember where it came from.

Somehow, from this creative music-inspired diagram, the birthday card began to take shape. I especially liked the overlapping multicolored curves, which gave me the idea to create eight ovals, each in a different color. I reduced the opacity so the colors would show through when layered, then 'grouped' the eight ovals, 'duplicated' the resulting 'group' so there were four different ones to work with, and altered their proportions and orientations to make them each unique. I realized later that the colorful ovals reminded me a lot of birthday balloons. In this season of little light and much rain, they have brightened my days as I've created a series of cards and postcards built on the initial concept. They will eventually be listed in my online shop, PaperSynthesis, although (with the backlog of things I'm working on for the shop) I'm not sure how much longer this may take.
 

 

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I had so much fun with these birthday-related projects that I wanted to share the files with anyone who might enjoy some color too. I explored several options for making them available online, since my former method for doing so (iDisk) has been phased out, but the only way to offer the files at their full size seems to be to send them via email. You can find my contact info in the sidebar at right (toward the top of the page), by clicking 'CONTACT'...I'd love to pass on the files for the folded gift card and/or the birthday card to anyone who's interested, so please feel free to email me.

 

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Here's a sneak peak at my second alphabet for the ALaW challenge, which incorporates some of the 'marbled' papers. The mini mockup cubes in the foreground are about a fifth of the final 7-cm size. One of the nine printed cubes, yet to be scored/cut out/assembled, can be seen in the background. This concept is considerably different from my original idea, but since the year is drawing to a close I decided to scale back from the twenty-seven-cube project I first had in mind. More on the alphabet as it comes together...

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And now, on a sweet note... Yesterday, in honor of my father's sixty-ninth birthday, I made caramel corn (he loves popcorn & caramel, so it seemed like a perfect melding of the two). Below is the way we make it, and of course you can customize it with your favorite nuts, popping techniques & personal touches. The caramel sauce is the one I've mentioned before (borrowed from the Simply Recipes website); click here if you'd like to see more detailed instructions for the method. I also like to add a little Himalayan sea salt to balance the sweetness of the caramel, and this works especially well with the popcorn.

A couple of final notes: You may not need to use all of the caramel sauce; after coating the popcorn there may be a few spoonfuls left over...store it in the fridge until you need some to drizzle on ice cream, fold into brownie batter, etc. Also, the caramel corn may seem a bit 'wet' as you stir it during the baking period, but it will harden once it's removed from the oven (so don't leave it in beyond the suggested hour in an attempt to dry it out).

This weekend we've also been busy getting ready for my daughter's birthday party with friends, which was finally today, and involved a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. My daughter normally asks for devil's food cake, but since that's what I made for her actual birthday (and also what she made for mine a few weeks earlier!), she thought a change would be nice.

The concept of the multi-layer cake with gobs of frosting is rather foreign here, but over the years my daughter's Italian friends have developed an appreciation for our traditional American-style cakes. I used this cake & frosting recipe, and it came out beautifully. I did make a few small changes, like adding ground cardamom, cloves & orange zest and substituting dark brown sugar for light and olive oil for vegetable oil in the batter + sprinkling cinnamon on the buttered pans instead of flour. I wanted the cream cheese flavor of the frosting to be a bit more pronounced, so I halved the amount of butter and reduced the powdered sugar to just under three cups, and also added a quick squeeze of orange juice.

I never seem to get many pictures of birthday celebrations, tending instead to focus on enjoying the occasion, but thought I'd include this photo since the candles are in keeping with the 'colorful things for gray days' theme of this post.

{Last year's cake recipe can be found here.}