A conversation about DIY constructing scrapjournals with board game backs, calendar paper fronts, mixed blocks inside, with a side sewing technique. Including: what materials to gather and adding a few treats to start so you “don’t get precious”.
Arts and Crafts with Peace and Intention
Plus using a Tin Tin calendar as a substrate for a travel scrapbook with a ephemera (coaster, tickets stubs, boarding passes, maps, etc) from Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Greece, Rome , Istanbul (with space for Suez).
Plus a few comments about the Vatican’s reconciliation *campaign* with Indigenous people of current-day Canada. Lighting incense and sage in hopes of sincerity and action.
All from the “Giggling Piglet studio” in a historic storehouse barn in provincial Japan with *Special hellos* to Kim in Austin, Jason in Gifu, Dan in Mass, Vincent in Victoria, Aki in the islands, the students of a school near Yokota, and others along the way.
More Importantcy:
* Indian Residential School Survivor’s Society (donate)
Blurb: Now that the major parts of our renovation(s) are done and we settled in, turning our attention to “improving the campsite“ with yard, garden(s) and more decorative outdoor projects including this directional sign post, with weather station on top, aligned with the compass cardinal points.
Hoping it becomes an object of interest for the neighborhood kids, as well as when friends can come visit down the road, they can make/add a sign.
If curious, measured exact distance from our front yard to a specific point (hospitals, hideout, parks, museums) notable from my rambles rather than from “city center to city center” – then figured out azimuth from the geo-coordinates.
Made a Google Earth project with candidate locations, still plenty to add in leisure times using leftover scrap wood from the construction, a bit of milk paint, and loads of memories / all mounted on a decommissioned tree from my wife the arborist. (the unadorned board in the middle-ish is showing *exact* West & East)
Combining memories, leftover floorboards, milk paint, quasi-Shodo, and various amateur cartography skills, added the first few signs today… More to come >> Will need another pole for the whole list.worksheet with places, geo-coordinates and compass azimuth
Places: Current working list with latitude and longitude and compass points (is the azimuth?) denoted here – Referenced to exact special points in each of these places, often hospitals, peers, homes, hideouts and so on. More to come… Ran out of paper but still have more pencil.
If you have questions about any of the locations, feel free to ask, will eventually explain in more detail for the permanent record. Also suggestions welcome, though I probably already know :-)
Process: First i planned the location in a google earth project, figured out geo-coordinates (degrees, minutes, seconds &/or 4 decimal points out) and distance right from our front yard to a specific landmark.
screenshot of project in process – each place has a story (not surprisingly)
i.e. 133.9833 E 34.6968 N (Tsuchida Station) to 32.6014 E 25.7401 N (Valley of Kings Egypt) is 297º25’35” on the compass
the Moab ones are a gift for some friends, Noto needed kanjj (now painted by Ryoko) Process: cut the boards, a couple coats of “milk paint”, the the lettering (in one breath) and then clear coat, drill holes
Post (mounted in cement) has a weather station on top, also adjusted to proper cardinal points. Measures temperature, dewpoint, humidity, UV, rainfall, wind direction, barometric pressure etc., transmits to a display panel inside the parents’ house and then onto the Internet.
Note: the unfinished board about halfway up the post is pointing to “exact“ east and west
Next batch in process already, lots more places to add. Have plenty of scrap wood, a sweet little work area, and an assistant delivered in a box.
Adding a wish for peace in Ukraine from Tsuchida Station where we oppose violence and tyranny and all its forms.
Yup, that’s it, just a fun time lapse of re-papering some doors on a table using an iron, cutter knife and tape at Tsuchida Cottage, Okayama, Japan.
Added “Margaret Yang’s theme” music by Mark Mothersbaugh from Rushmore just for a little something. No instructions or usefulness, just fixing some doors. Carry on.
I was recently a guest on (my occasional co-conspirator) Bob Mackin’s excellent PC/Pacific Rim/Cascadia news podcast called “The Breaker” talking about the postponed/cancelled Tokyo 2020 Olympics as well as riffing about personal archiving project, life lessons at 50, and birth of Ichiro Stanley Thorvald Olson.
In this 6-ish min. trimmed excerpt, i offer a few audio annotations about what i learned about myself, life as we know it etc whilst curating #daveo50, i.e.: how we really are who we are at a young age (in my case anyway), the importance of being kind, fostering and nurturing long-term relationships, that hobbies are the real thing, and the Internet is for communication not just a business construct.
Artifact: “Sounding Board” family newsletter, 1985 / masthead
My dear ole grandfather, Robert “Bob” Stevenson (rip), (one of many Bob/Roberts in our extended family), fired up a family newsletter for various extended cousins and uncles and aunts et al… Of course, this sort of project requires a lot of wrangling of assignments to generate content which he then dutifully typed, laid out, re-produced and distributed (yes i come from all this honestly). When he was expressing frustration about lack of input from various family members, brother Bob and I volunteered to guest edit an issue. Of course, we put our own style to the dispatch with mail bombs, clipped cartoons, corny jokes, plagiarized punk rock lyrics along with the various “scene reports” from extended family units.
Artifact: “Sounding Board” family newsletter, 1985 / (mildly condescending passive aggressive) letter from editor, Gramps
I’ve shared a few pages here – with some minor crops – to provide a flavour of the publication while retaining some semblance of discretion as to not shock or offend any family members (any further).
Artifact: “Sounding Board” family newsletter, 1985 / punk rock lyrics (stolen from Massacre Guys), corny jokes, a remixed punk rock sticker and possibly made up letter from RobbyArtifact: “Sounding Board” family newsletter, 1985 / “scene report” from our segment of the family including Andy’s love of He-Man and our choice for “2nd place” of the family crest (shown elsewhere in the newsletter but not in this review)Artifact: “Sounding Board” family newsletter, 1985 / fun page with sports items including instructions for a piledriverArtifact: “Sounding Board” family newsletter, 1985 / i guess this is really the masthead, is the masthead the part which tells who contributed? i should know this. Anyhow…
