ahhhhh sorry to all my readers.zzzzz
recent builds 2025-2026
written on 2026-01-25hi...long time no write or read..! some build-specific updates from the end of 2025 into 2026:
- i mounted this jute table runner to the wall in our office for our cats to climb. it's mounted with a single woodscrew into a stud (at least i'm 80% certain it's a stud...) and an array of nails into the drywall. i don't really know if my cats like it. radditz (small kitten) is motivated to jump on it if there's a treat waiting for him, but he seems to lose confidence the higher he gets. peco isn't interested at all. i think i need to maybe staple the runner onto the wall more so it's more secure?? i just need to get over my renters stress...
- i've been (after many many many months) working on this lampshade for this fishing rod lamp (i got on buy-nothing!! lampshade excluded obviously) in the living room. there were a lot of trials and tribulations here as i'm pretty out of my depth when it comes to lighting of any kind. i started first with scrap clothes hanger wire but found that the wire was too short, making the lampshade way too small. i was dreaming up something of a cloth or clay (porcelain!) lampshade but i think both of those were so daunting that i tabled this project for a few months. eventually i bought galvanized steel wire and protoyped something similar to my intial design but bigger...then in a rush of momentum cut out panels of scrap bedsheet fabric to hang over my wire frame. only to find that the fabric was too heavy and my wire too thin to really hold my desired shape. back to the table for another 2 months......................this past weekend i committed to making the fucking lampshade. i have some rice paper cutoffs from my printmaking days that i packed and flew over from home; i had been saving these for a different lamp project but decided to kill preciousness and use them for this -- it's beautiful paper and i should just get more when i go home next. the issue with this project (and one core reason i couldn't just sit down and finish it) is that i couldn't measure the wire to be exactly the dimensions i wanted. i hand bent everything with pliers and matched up parts and angles and lengths with my eye/hand...in retrospect i could have used a protractor or something but it was all floppy wire and maybe it wouldn't have helped too much. this made making any kind of panels for light diffusion (paper or cloth) really difficult because each panel would seem to be a different size if using the wire as reference. everytime i would bend the wire to fit the panel, something else would shift or seem off...but this weekend i sat down and toughed it out. i cut out butcher paper templates and got to work taping them to the wires, spraying shellac on the rice paper for translucency and rigidity (didn't really help honestly), folding, unfolding, cutting, ironing out wrinkled papers, shooing away curious cats who wanted to play wire wire and chew tape. eventually i arrived at a pretty decent lampshade, pictured here: [] the thing that pushed me to the finish line: support wires that held the paper in place at the top of each panel. i feel like i had a stroke of genius doing this. each cross wire is bent like a flat staple so that the paper can loop over it; the bend catches the long/hanging wires at a certain distance and prevents dramatic sagging. i won't say more on this but i was pretty pleased and my head inflated and got really big :) it was deeply challenging to commit to a project i didn't really know how to execute from start to finish. i suffered a lot of psychological blockage/inertia from just being clueless and sketching instead of prototyping with material. i also realized i'm deeply precious with materials that i think are maybe more rare or hard to come by?? or if i have another purpose in mind for it i'm not really inclined to use what i have laying around. i gained a bit of (maybe unearned) confidence completing this though. what's next: glueing the paper to the wire so that panels sit flush and taut; removing all tape from the shade, trimming down papers, maybe adding some illustrations or cool things to the backside of each panel :) or maybe hanging things/charms...
- this isn't really a late 2025 build but i scrapped together an image dithering script/system early last year in a half hearted attempt to maybe make a web portfolio. didn't finish, but i do have the tool now and can upload pictures here :) here's a pic of a cup i made recently that wasn't how i hoped it would turn out but i still like:
- last thing, i've been making a lot of lattes recently. or i guess milk espresso drinks. i haven't been able to graduate past making garlics/onions and also my milk frothing is pretty inconsistent. i'm wondering if it's because of my machine? (i have a basic delonghi stilosa for all you tech heads out there..)
love all!
