art_show epitome of incomprehensibility I'm in a little village in Ontario to help my aunt with hers. I didn't bring my own laptop because I was in a hurry and it was heavy. I don't regret that, but I can't computer for long on her machine. I'm not terribly busy. I've washed windows, a sink, a toilet, and brushes. I've dusted. I've slipped little beads onto coiled wire to make rings and bracelets so I might sell them. Best of all, my "job" for the show, now that it's happening (today was the first day, tomorrow the next, Monday the last) is not to be a cashier, but to stay in the workshop room demonstrating how batiks work... by just doing batiks that I can use for my art show back in Quebeckyland come Halloween. I've discovered one design I'm good at. Forget flowers, trees, butterflies. Forget realistically depicting anything from nature (that's my aunt's specialty). Okay, it's found in nature but much smaller. What paper-cutting craft did I argue about with my fifth-grade French teacher? (She told us just to cut triangles; I told her triangles were boring and bragged about how I could cut little hearts and trapezoids.) That was me in fifth grade, and now I know arrogance isn't generally justified, but... snowflakes! I'm really good (I think) at batik snowflakes. At least, I've been making them obsessively, drawing the small six-sided patterns over stretched-out cloth with hot wax flowing through a tool called a tjanting. (The wax means it's easier to make lines with the lighter colours, such as white, first. So... snowflakes. Also, my artisan show, though taking place near Halloween, has a Christmas-holiday theme just because.) 150905 ... e_o_i I've got a nice table runner... or banner, or something... full of detailed snowflakes that's about $100 worth of work if you can measure art-time that way. But no one I think would pay that much for it. Maybe I'll just keep it. Some of the other snowflakes didn't turn out so well. I was a bit careless with the crinkling and when you fold the waxed cloth too much before dipping it into the pot of dark dye at the end, the lines of dye can overwhelm your original pattern. 150912 ... nr there seem to be about six million of these coming up. with affordable, local art. and some by artists i know. so that's pretty neat. my walls won't know what hit them. 150912 what's it to you? who go blather from