Happy Birthday to me! (to my blog, anyway)

Hello there! Were you wondering where I was? I'm here, just workin' like a dawg, but couldn't miss sharing the joy of my blog's second anniversary with you.

To celebrate, here's an adorable little gargoyle-like stone decoration on Via Boscovich in Milan.

Want to know more about it? See my blog dedicated to Milan, "My Milan (Italy)": http://mymilanitaly.blogspot.it/2012/02/neo-romanesque-fun-on-via-boscovich.html

Enjoy! (confetti thrown here!)

Happy Birthday, Rome! (April 21)

Happy Birthday, Rome! Legend has it that Rome was founded by Romulus (one of these two cute twins) on the 21st of April in 753 B.C. The origin of the little twins in this sculpture is indisputed: they were added in the Renaissance. The origin of the wolf is another story...More......

It traditionally was dated to the Etruscan period (some Etruscans perhaps were the last kings of Rome before the Republic was founded in 510 B.C.), but long boiling disputes burst into fairly recent carbon-dating (probably on remnants of the sculpture's core left after the bronze was poured into the mold) that seems to date it to the Middle Ages, perhaps from the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. (that's the Carolingian period, she said ponderously). Interested in the diatribe? You can see a few words from 2008 (!) about the dating of the sculpture on: http://english.sina.com/technology/1/2008/0711/171023.html.

Just who were Romulus and Remus? For starters, here's a snippet from the Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509038/Romulus-and-Remus.

Why did I say "Carolingian" so ponderously? For more info about the importance of ancient Rome to Charlemagne, try http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03610c.htm. (Though dating to the beginning of the 20th century, this encyclopedia is considered by many scholars to be more thorough and accurate than the more recent version. Though its Catholic origins tend to peep through, forewarned is forearmed.)

For the rest of us, it's just an occasion to celebrate Rome and to share a fun needlepoint design, which I created uploading a freely available Wikipedia image into my StitchPainter program, then turning it into a BMP for your personal non-commercial pleasure on my blog.

If the design is too complicated for you, just simplify it by picking out at least three major groups (dark, medium, light) for the shapes and proportions. Print out the design, and have at it with a felt-tipped pen! You'll do just fine!

Enjoy!

A(nother) baby gift

What's been happenin' needle-wise around these parts?

Had promised a new mother-to-be friend a keepsake for her first baby.

Promising's the easy and quick part....More......

Deciding what to do, making a gazillion sketches, being enamored of the latest when done, but somehow dissatisfied the day after, going through the cycle again and again, finding the perfect frame, having to reduce the design even more because the aperture is quite small, and so it went for months.

Thank goodness a baby is in gestation for 9 months because, I swear, that's almost as long as it took me to do this project, as little as it is (the diameter is no more than about 3 inches across).

I started out with something much more elaborate and flowery, though shied away from designs too baby-ish in nature...I wanted this to be a keepsake she could keep out and enjoy forever (nothing pretentious about me, nope! nope!). Settled on a monogram: GM.

The small space available for the stitching helped me focus on making the design ever more clean, especially since I wanted a good balance between the more elaborate frame and it. (Keep the frame/final form in mind when designing your projects!)

The mom and baby (Hi! I. and G.!) are coming into the office, tomorrow, to say "hello," so I finally can spill the beans.

That's what I've been up to, amidst this whirlwind of work.

How about you?

Trains

You might as well get your needlepoint out, and stay at home if you can, if you live in Italy.

Tomorrow, there'll be a nation-wide strike of the regional train services all throughout the country.

So here's a cheery train in an evocative setting to brighten your day.

(Thanks, Microsoft, for the free clip art, n. MC900198033!)

Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday (MS900411506)

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Photoless Friday: Owen's next to last exhortation

Owen's next to the last bit of design advice:

PROPOSITION 36: The principles discoverable in the works of the past belong to us; not so the results. It is taking the end for the means.

Surprised?

I know I was....More......

Looking at the works commended in his Grammar of Ornament, which takes examples from countries all over the world and all across the ages, I wouldn't have expected this.

No mere copying-and-pasting design elements for our Owen, however. No historical pastiches, and they were plentiful during his day, no Neo-Gothic, no Neo-Renaissance, no Neo-Classicism, no Neo-Orientalism, no! no! no!

Then again, maybe I should have expected it.

It rings true to his exhortation about studying nature:

adopt the principles, abhore superficial copying.

If you think about it, it doesn't just cut one way.

Like a two-edged sword, for those loving modernism the implied exhortation is just as strong:

don't turn your nose up at works of the past just because they are "old"; they, too, should be studied in order to distill and profit from their accomplishments.

The farsightedness and continued usefulness of his advice continues to astound me.

Wordless Wednesday

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Photoless Friday: Owen Jones countdown

Only a few more of Owen Jones' precious design principles still left to ponder.

PROPOSITION 35: Imitations, such as the graining of woods, and of the various coloured marbles, [are] allowable only, when the employment of the thing imitated would not have been inconsistent.

huh?...More......

It's easier to understand if you take out the double negative:

PROPOSITION 35: Imitations, such as the graining of woods, and of the various coloured marbles, [are] allowable only, when the employment of the thing imitated would have been consistent.

In other words, in Jones' opinion, artists and architects should use materials, or their imitations, only where they make logical sense.

Today, I think most artists and architects would be more eager to "push the envelope" than this might seem to encourage, but, for all his seemingly hard and fast rules, Jones encouraged keeping true to the principles, not the surface details, of nature.

If we want structure of any kind to seem sturdy, then the materials, or their representations, must seem able to support the "weight" in whatever form it is.

It also means that the contrary is true. If we want to encourage a sense of disorientation, or incapacity, or..., or..., or..., then the structure will be out of materials, or their representations, that do not seem to support the weight.

Klee's twittering machines just sprung to mind.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday


















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Milan Monday: a beautiful capital from via Manzoni

Looking for a classicizing capital to top off something in a design, or just make a lovely horizontal pillow, or decoration? Well, here you go!...More......

I developed today's design--free for your personal non-commercial stitching pleasure--out of my own photo of a façade on via Manzoni in Milan. I captured the detail of my photo that I wanted, then I uploaded it into the handy StitchPainter program, forcing the size and shape that I wanted (you CAN do this, but you also can let the photo upload as it will).

The capital has the ancient Greek (handed down through the Renaissance) ionic order scroll curls gussied up with a 19th century taste for decoration.

For more info about the building, and a picture of the whole façade, see my post in my "My Milan (Italy)" blog: http://mymilanitaly.blogspot.com/2012/01/via-manzoni-9.html.

Enjoy!