NaBloPoMo, and Happy All Saint's Day

It's National Blog Posting Month again! I'll have to admit that I'm feeling pretty rusty at writing, but I'll plow into it. For Halloween this year, we went as a family to the elementary school's Halloween Fun Night. As usual, it was crowded and warm, but the kids were glad to run into and socialize with their friends.

Dash, in the "hooded scream" costume, found his buddy, Max, who was wearing some sort of Norse god costume. They're adorable!

Rosie was dressed as an "Artist Vampire" and didn't want her photo taken. I snapped the photo below before she had a chance to dive out of my camera's way! Dash has been carrying a camera around with him lately and told us that he was thinking about being a paparazzi — he'll get plenty of training just by trying to get a shot of Rosie. She's wily!

Rosie did her own makeup for vampire teeth and blood and was pretty proud of her work. Funny, for our actual trick-or-treating, we didn't have a chance to get the makeup on (for anyone's costume actually; gotta stay on schedule...), and without the teeth, everyone guessed that she was Little Red Riding Hood. Understandable, don't you think?

It was dark and rainy on Halloween night, but we made the best of it. We brought umbrellas, I wore a big hat, and had plenty of glow-sticks and flashlights. The kids had quite a haul, as the places they visited had plenty of candy! There seems to be fewer and fewer trick-or-treaters on our street—we only had 6-8 visitors—and I'm not sure why. There are plenty of kids on our street. I'm thinking that the parents take them to parties instead or a busier neighborhood and just hang out. I don't blame them. Dressing up and getting candy is fun, but when it's cold and wet? It's nicer indoors.

Is trick-or-treating going strong where you are? Or is it on the wane?

The case of the missing jewelry photos

In January of 2010, I was going to revive my Etsy shop. I had a bunch of inventory that I'd made over the holidays for friends and family and new fresh ideas for more items to add. I really am horrible at taking photos of my work (or most things, but I don't usually fret about quality for family pictures), so I needed to get some help. At a local Etsy "Street Team" workshop, I learned how to set up a light box, got great tips on how to arrange the lighting properly and adjust my digital camera's settings for the best effect.

Doesn't this photo of my origami cicada earrings look great?! I might have taken it, or the pro might have been taking a test shot with my camera. Whichever. After the session, I packed up my new light box, brought all my gear home and planned to put the photos up on my Etsy site soon. Any day now, I'd have some time. Yep. Tick tock.

Time did pass (days? weeks?) and finally, after who knows exactly how long, I found an afternoon to set aside and put my photos up already. They were going to look AWESOME on my page! I was going to start selling stuff and the momentum would come. I grabbed the camera, hooked it up to my laptop and went to download the photos.

The memory card was empty.

A sick sinking feeling, killing my creative energy set in. I asked Monkeyrotica what happened to the photos. He downloaded them, of course! He needed the camera. Where? How the heck should he know? The usual place. I spent hours and hours doing searches in the usual places. I searched by .jpg, by date, by DSC, I browsed, I used Adobe Bridge. NOTHING.

My Etsy shop languished with no new images of work for sale. Every time I thought of taking new photos of my work, that sinking feeling came back, reminding me that I ALREADY HAVE some fabulous photos, somewhere, if only I could find them! I gave up, figuring that they had been deleted.

Then, in mid-2011, we bought an Apple TV. Monkeyrotica had the genius idea of using our shared photo directory as a screen saver, randomly cycling our photos-from-all-time that exist on the hard drive. It's actually mesmerizing, seeing a photo of Dash running on the beach last summer next to Rosie at two months old wrapped up in layers for a stroller ride in the snow. I think a few weeks or more than a month went by when I saw one of the photos from the workshop!!! I think I screamed, "How can I find that!!??" Monkey shrugged. "It's a randomizer. It's in the photo directory somewhere."

At least they hadn't been deleted.

Anyone who's been reading my blog lately knows that I've been digging through the archives, looking for old photos of Rosie and Weegee. It wasn't until last night, when I couldn't find one of her birthday images that I was really excavating. Our photo drive is organized by year, based loosely on the size of the images, and the amounts of photos we were taking at the time. For example, Bundle #1 has years 2002 through 2006 on it, Bundles #2-3 have 2007, #4-6 have 2008, and so forth; we are currently at Bundle #13 for 2011. Where were the jewelry images? OUTSIDE all of the "Bundle" folders in a folder marked "DCIM"! Inside DCIM (WTF does that stand for?), there's a folder labeled "100SANYO" with 274 loose images in it. My photos were at the bottom of the directory.

I'm glad that I have them now, but more than a little upset that they were missing for close to two years. Anyone want to buy some origami earrings for a holiday gift? I take commissions...

And I've totally got to get them up  to sell online. I was thinking about an Artfire.com shop this time. I'll post links when they're up.

Wordless Wednesday: Weegee

The most adorable game of soccer, evar!

Rosie's been playing soccer this season (see a previous post) with a local soccer club. When they were issued red jerseys, their coach asked them to choose a name based on the color. They picked "Bloodsuckers!" Um... well, that lasted about a day until the coach thought better of it and insisted they vote again.  The "Red Dragons" have played two games every Saturday, against two different teams in the club. A few weeks ago, she played another team in the club that her BFF Ava was on, as well as several of her 2nd-grade classmates. Mary Fowler, a professional sports photographer*, was there taking fantastic images of the girls in action. Below are just a few of many that featured Rosie (click on the images to see a larger size).

Ashley, Rosie, Ava (all three girls have been in ballet and tap class together since they were 4)

Janna, Savannah, Rosie (all in 2nd-grade class together)

When Savannah (on the opposing team) saw that Rosie was playing on their field, an amazing thing happened. She started cheering, "Let's Go, Rosie, Let's GO!"

 

  

 

Is Rosie waving at me? Her grandma maybe?

Nope, she's waving at her friend Elizabeth, on the opposing team.

It looks like Rosie's about to score here, but Ava defended her goal admirably.

In fact, after the goalie tossed the ball back into play (and Rosie ducked!), I saw Rosie go over to her friend to shake her hand, as if to say, "Great job, sweetie!" instead of following the ball with her teammates, that is. !

Rosie, Emily, and Ruth celebrating a goal.

Emily scored a goal during the game, but I'm pretty sure the overall score was a tie. They all had a great time and played very well against each other, with little or no competitiveness. I love that about recreational leagues.

*Mary Fowler mentioned to me that her fabulous photos are for sale at her smugmug site. She has a "Special Offers" category, wherein if you choose several sports images, she can print them all together, arranged as a collage, on one 11" x 17" sheet for one fixed fee.

Portrait of Nylonthread

An executive at my office was coming in to have her portrait taken, so my boss was setting up the photo shoot and needed a model to test his lighting. He sent me this image, out of all the test shots, because he liked it and thought I'd appreciate the image. I played around with levels and curves because the original was very dark and red-toned, but didn't try to clone out anything or smooth wrinkles.

So, that's me, with minimal make-up, photographed with professional equipment and lighting, by a guy with some training.

Philly, Day 1: Road Trip!

After departing for Philly, handing the kids an iPhone and a gameboy micro so they could be perfectly distracted and play games while we drove, we planned a stop at Maryland's Havre De Grace vintage prefab, Bridge Diner.

Dash patiently waited for his order (a hotdog, of course) while leaning on the vintage formica tabletop. Rosie cheerfully watched all the locals playing Keno. She was unsuccessful at figuring out the game (as were we all).

I started out our trip with sunglasses on, but somewhere between DC and Philly, the sun disappeared, the shades came off, and I didn't need them until Mr. Sun reappeared about four days later. We dropped our bags at the lovely Morris House Hotel and immediately set off for somewhere to get a drink. Despite Philadelphia's Blue Laws we managed to find a bar in the Jewelry District that had its Sunday sales permit, Coco's. The kids were in a great mood, munching potato chips and watching the easiest to follow of television sports, BOWLING, playing on all the big screens.

With umbrellas in tow, we stopped back at Morris House to have tea, check in, and unpack. We really enjoyed our room, which had a master bedroom (with its own door!) and a fold-out couch for the kids in the living area. The one item that we all looked forward to at the end of a cold, wet, Philadelphia day was the bath. It was large enough to fit both kids (and a couple of friends) AND had jacuzzi jets! Heaven for itchy-fingered four-year-olds.


After changing out of our hobo-traveler duds, we walked the five city blocks to City Tavern, an 18th century tavern with too much Flash on its website. The kids tromped wistfully past darkening, moist gardens that beckoned them to scamper through, but we had reservations to make. Monkeyrotica enjoyed the historic microbrews very much, with Yards Brewing Company's General Washington's Tavern Porter as a favorite. He picked up a 6-pack of the selection before we left town. For appetizers, Monkey had fried oysters and I tried out the duck sausage. I ordered the Braised Rabbit, which was lovely (but waaay too much food for little me—I finished half), and Monkey had the Rack of Lamb, and for some reason, we ordered Dash $18 worth of sausages. Rosie picked at an item from the "Award Winning Children's Menu."

We allowed the kids to scamper through one garden that was still open as the wind picked up, and the drizzle really got annoying. We were fairly blown back across Washington Square as we headed back to Morris House and its promise of hot tea, a roaring fireplace, and freshly baked cookies in the lobby. I sipped green tea and pretended interest in W Magazine; Dash and Rosie scarfed several chocolate chip cookies before we hit that delicious bath and turned in for the night. Next episode: Day 2: Museums that we loved, but didn't photograph! (Have you noticed that for some reason, the Strings family only takes photos while we're at meals?)

The many faces of Alan

At the beach house this year, Monkeyrotica's HS buddy Alan decided to join us. He's a public school teacher in Baltimore and my kids just adore him. Rosie practically hangs on him and is constantly in his face—I caught her draped across his chest while he was trying (unsuccessfully!) to take a nap. We gave Rosie a camera to document our beach trip her own way, and this image is a compilation of what I found on the memory card.

To his credit, Alan has been great playing with them. Four and six-and-a-half year-olds are exhausting.