Birthday workout

I had a fun day.

I took the MPV in to work and drove the guys in for the normal Thursday curry. I shouted them all lunch, except that confused the poor lady at the counter so she charged me for one less meal than she should have, which they told the guys whgen tyhey collected their meals and one of them covered the xtra. The guys have standing arrangement that each Thursday the owner of the stand in the food court makes a batch of extra superchareged hot curry just for them. I have no idea why theyu torture themselves that way, but they seem to have fun going red and sweating copiulsy over it.
Lynette gave me some great presents and I had fun cooking a nice dinner for us. She also put a birthday post up on the BX forum and I got some great birthday posts.

While I was doing that I did my own very basic birthday WOD, 45 x 100kg.
Which wound up being 5 x 9 x 100kg and those 5 sets were broken. I wasn't sure it was

a. Possible
and
b. Sensible
to keep going after the first round so I set myself up carefully each time and struggled my way through. I could have tucked soemthing else in there between rounds, but I didn't.
Maybe next year it will 46 x 120kg. :-)

Birthday 2008 part III

It's a good thing we got that taxi last night.
Lynette's been sleeping all day, the wandering around took more out of her after the cold she's just had than we thought.
I lay around watching the Sunday Star Trek re-runs and now I'm making muffins to take the the Session tonight. My back is still might sore, but I can get in and out of the car and squat down to pick something off the floor. The walk and keeping moving yesterday may have been rough on Lynette today (and me yesterday), but it was the right thing for me to do. If I'd laid down after hurting my back I would have stiffened up this morning and not wanted to move at all. With a little bit of loosening up I have pretty full range of motion. Just not comfortable.

Birthday 2008 part II

I trained in the morning (see previous post), then we walked to the train into Britomart, then bussed to Mission Bay.
Mission Bay was De Fontein a belgian beer cafe that also serves nice food. This time no attempt to be Zone compliant was made at all. Funnily enough I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I mean I liked it, but I had very quickly had enough of the beer and the mashed potatoes and the sausages and I found myself thinking I'd probably have enjoyed the salad more. That surprised me because I love mashed potatoes and I thought I really missed them and the first mouthful or two was really yummy, but I'd had about enough by then. Determined to push on, I finished everything and had chocolate mousse for dessert and wound up impossibly full. And drunk.
2.5 beers (I had part of Lynette's) and not even particularly strong beer and I was extremely dizzy and disoriented. I wanted to try the 3 fruit flavoured beers they had, having had the cherry flavoured last Kriek time I was there, so I got the raspberry flavoured Timmerman's Framboise first.

Lynette got the peach flavoured Timmerman's Peche

and only had about half of it. I moved onto the Belle-Vue Kriek and Lynette to the Hoegarden White. I liked the Hoegarden White best of all. Who'd have thunk that I'd lose my sweet tooth?

A blurry photo of Lynette and me.

Lynette looked stunning. She finally bought herself some clothes that fit, instead of the loose tent style things she normally gets and with the training and dieting she's been doing for her bodybuilding bootcamp she looked fabulous.

And one of Allan.

There was a TV playing C4, a predominantly music channel in the bar below and we couyld see it from our table, so Allan spent the whole time watching that and grunting at us. Why did he come with us again?


We managed to find the bus and the train and went to Sylvia park where I got a massage. My back was killing me all day I'm afraid.
The massage helped, but it was still pretty bad.

The plan then was to see a movie, but there was nothing we wanted to see on. I used to plan trips to the movies, carefully checking the timetables and I still do that if there's something we want to see, but if we don't have a particular movie we want to watch, just turning up and seeing what's going is a fun thin Lynette's introduced me to.

So we caught the train to Papakura, rented some videos and got fish and chips. We won't be having that again in a long time either, so I figured if we're going to blow the diet, may as well do it properly. Fortunately it wasn't fantastic. Again, nice enough, but nothing special. That's fortunate because if it had been I'd have wanted it again soon and fish and chip shops are everywhere here.

Taxi home and then I went to sleep watching the first video, then hobbled to bed like the broken old man I resembled.

Happy Birthday to me

Double 4's, although I'm still 43 in America. Datelines are cool.

My lovely wife made me breakfast this morning, a nice zone friendly omlette and I got a packed salad with chicken for lunch.
For presents I got a clay extruder for my polymer clay work


and the hollow core accessories


Also some US$$ and a new travel pack for our trip in July.

A near catastrophe almost saw the trip aborted recently and although that's still a possibility, the more time passes, the less likely it is that it will be called off.

True Love

I had a few other ideas for a title for this one, "First love", "Love at First Sight", "Mine!" were a few options, but I came back the original.


The hardest part of this was that @@#%^*(&$# coffee machine!
Polymer clay is fundamentally squidgy stuff. Making it look like machined metal is expletive deleted difficult!

And she got a silver one!
It was going to be orange or red, but she wound up getting a silver one. "Silver" polymer clay does not look anything like metal, so I had to look at alternatives.

Now that I've got that off my chest.

For me, coffee is a hot drink and a foul tasting one at that.
But Laura loves coffee.
I mean she looooves coffee.
Starbucks would go bust if she stopped drinking it.

She had lusted after one of these Espresso machines for months (that I know of, maybe longer) and her husband John bought her one for Christmas (and it was silver! Did I mention that?). She was rapt.
So the coffee machine is black polymer clay (DuKit again, of course) with the metallic effect coming from a coating of Pearl Ex powder. I'd never used this before, but had some small jars of it ready for the day that I knew I would. I didn't realise the powder would rub off easily even after baking, so I lost a bit on the back as I worked on it. That forced a stop to varnish it. The varnish made the markings on the dial run, so I had to paint the dial in white and redo-the markings.
I made a U shaped framework of aluminium wire inside the machine in case it sagged with the weight of that projecting top. I got the proportions a little wrong, it's actually more square than rectangular.


Aluminium wire for the rails around the top and translucent clay for the clear section that warms the milk or something in the back. I really know nothing about making espresso.
I forgot to add the steamer spigot (tricky) and the drain grills (easy), but we'll call that artistic license.

I covered the process of making the face for NinjaGirl, so just read that bit again.
I guess the only substantial difference is that the eyes are closed here and I had no idea how to portray that accurately. Fortunately the hair was going to cover most of the face, I have no idea how Laura sees through it, so any deficiencies were going to be largely obscured.


In the background you can see the arms ready to attach and an earlier version of the torso and legs that were far too bulky. Laura would probably say they're a more accurate representation, but who's making this thing anyway?
An annoying point is that I forgot the blasted laces on the shoes. I did them on the chunky bottomed version and forgot them on the final one. Bother!


Keeping your final vision for a piece in your head when you're looking at this is not easy and I lost it a couple of times. I had to start over and get back on track

Hands. I "cheated" and used one of Maureen Carlson's "what a figure" push moulds.


Pretty much finished figure.


I used Katherine Dewey's hair colouring and texturing techniques, or nearly for this and it was much better than anything I'd tried before. I didn't quite emulate Laura's hair cut (as copied by Katie Holmes and Posh Spice more recently) correctly, but I came pretty close.

The top (blouse?, I'm a guy, what do I know) was a challenge. I scratched my head for a bit trying to figure out how to copy the detailed flower design on the one Laura wears sometimes and decided to go for the same general look by slicing off shreds of red clay onto a sheet of pink and pressing it flat in the pasta machine. It's almost completely hidden in the final version, but I wanted it to be there.

Final assembly. Using a file to hold things in place while the epoxy dries.

There is an aluminium wire running inside the topmost extended leg to give it some strength against the occasional knock
I should have done one inside the bottom leg too, but the figure was originally going to be standing on that leg and reaching up to hug the espresso machine so it wasn't needed. As I went on I figured the figure could be laying on it and the idea of Laura making a flying leap (all the box jump practise Jason and Jeff make her do) onto the machine was much more in character.


Finished product

and


More angles and the rest of the photos are here.

NinjaGirl

This is the one I started first (October?) and finished last (0130 15-2-2008 NZDT).

I had two previous tries at setting up an armature for this one and they both kept growing until I was looking at a final height of about 8 inches for the overall sculpture. I kept being thrown by leaving portions of the wire extending beyond where the feet where supposed to be. I couldn't visualise that correctly and made the legs too long, so I made the body longer to match and the darn thing just grew.

So instead I re-read some of my books on sculpting and adopted a variation on Maureen Carlson's technique. I started with a small core of clay for the torso, which gave me a comparison point for the proportions.

I knew I was making more than one Laura face, so I spent a day sculpting one, baked it, made a mould of it from Miracle Mold (fantastic stuff) and used that as a push mould. I then realised the face looked nothing like Laura and spent another day on each one doing the best job my limited skill would allow to get a resemblance.
Lesson, polish the rust off your sculpting skills before you make masters for your moulds.

I finally got the nerve to try Katherine Dewey's technique for making eyes for sculpture again although I adapted it slightly. I coated round headed pins in a little clay and used Miracle Mold again for the mould that produces a nice hemisphere. No mould release required. If you want the full technique, buy Katherine's book. I have a signed self-published first edition. *smug*

The half completed face, resting on the mould









I had tried the eye making technique before, but the varnish I used stayed tacky for months and lost its shine when handled, so I had to find a better version.

As the figure was standing I used aluminium welding wire as armatures for the legs, I knew I'd have to bake it standing at least once in the process and I didn't want any collapses.

Legs and head as baked.
















Then I hit one of those logistical things that hack you off.

I desperately wanted to get the arms on to work out the positioning, but I realised I needed to get the Gi jacket sorted out and first and to do the arms I needed to get the hands ready. So onto hands.

3 or 4 tries later I got some that looked like fists and weren't too big.



The two best views of the finished product are:

and



The overall positioning irritates me immensely. Laura set herself in a nice balanced position for the original photo and I emulated that, then tipped the whole thing over onto its toes for some reason that probably made sense at one in the morning, but which I cannot recall now.

You can see a few more angles, and all the rest of these photos here.

The original was this. Laura trying on her new Gi for Kenpo.

Laura's birthday

Happy Birthday Laura!

This post is partly to say that, partly to brag and mostly to put an end to Laura's misery.

I've been dropping hints to Laura since before Christmas that I was working on a present for her. Originally as a Christmas present, but when I missed that deadline I switched my focus to her birthday, which fortunately is, well today. I technically am not going to make that either, the package is still in transit, but I got it on the courier before the day, so that's got to count for something.

The present was in 3 parts:

• Two sculptures in an NZ made polymer clay called DuKit, think Fimo or Sculpey, but much, much better, at least for my purposes.
  The Sculptures I titled "True Love" and NinjaGirl", see individual post where I explain their inspiration and construction, and weasel out of the deficiencies in my skill as a sculptor.
  
  Sculpting is something I love, but haven't done much of recently for a variety of reasons. Since late last year the itch to do some has been growing and ideas for figurines have been coming to me.
  These two were inspired by comments made in Laura and my email conversations.
  As you can see, I like doing what amount to caricatures and although I would like to try my hand at more realism, capturing character in a fun and amusing way is a skill all of its own. I'm not where I want to be in that yet, but these sculptures restored my faith that I might be able to get there if I keep at it.
  
• Some lollies which I think are unique to NZ. Oh, that's candy to Americans and sweets in the UK.

The research into the lollies was interesting. In a global economy it's hard to be sure what is unique to, or originated in, NZ and especially hard to differentiate between Australia and New Zealand. I'm sure I've claimed a few things I shouldn't have.
One big surprise was Minties. I thought they were an English lolly that had migrated here, but apparently they started here. A taxonomy of confectionery would be an interesting study.
The final list of lollies was:

• Minties
• 2 x Picnic bars
• 2 x Crunchie bars
• 2 x flake bars (original yucky milk chocolate, not the white or dark chocolate versions)
• 2 x Pinky bars
• 2 x Bounty bars
  

The contents of the package looked like this before it was packed.









"True Love" is in the striped box, but you can see "NinjaGirl" still. She kind of grew as I made her and didn't fit in the same sized box as "True Love" when she was finished.


Oh, and a ton of bubble wrap.