Namárië

I finished this calligraphy piece several months ago but forgot to blog it-- it's J.R.R. Tolkien's beautiful poem Namárië from The Lord of the Rings. It is written in Quenya (the High Elvish language). On the left, the poem is written in our alphabet, and on the write, it is written in the Tengwar (Elvish) script.

The poem is a beautiful piece which the Lady Galadriel sings to Frodo when the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien to destroy the Ring. 

I didn't have space to fit the entire poem on my little sheet of paper board, so I just used the first stanza and stuck the final two lines (about farewells and finding Valinor) on at the end. 

The border was done entirely freehand using india ink and watercolors. I am pretty proud of it-- this was my first time making an Art Nouveau border, and I'm getting better at making celtic knots with decorative tips.

The heraldic device at the top is the symbol for Feanor, as designed by Tolkien himself. I thought this device would be fitting because not only is Feanor Galadriel's anscestor (if I have my genealogy straight), but it was mostly because of his family that the Elves were banished from Valinor-- and this poem is all about Galadriel's longing for Valinor when she thought she could not return, but nonetheless wished that Frodo may make it there one day. (Valinor is sort of like an Elvish heaven-- sort of, not really, but it's the best description I can come up with off the top of my head).

Here's the English version of the poem:

Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls beyond the West,
beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice, holy and queenly.

Who now shall refill the cup for me?

For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds,
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!

______________
For those of you complete Tolkienites, the title of this blog post ("Farewell") is not about me saying farewell to blogging or anything. I have one more crazy busy week of school left, and after that I will be taking a couple of days to just do nothing and not feel guilty about it (in other words, I will curl up on the hammock for two days and do nothing but devour some novels and drink lots of iced tea and catch up on TV shows before bed). After that, however, I will be working on some of the hundreds of creative projects that have been clanking around in my brain. :) 

It's so incredibly strange to think that I am almost done with high school. It's been a beautiful four years and I've learned and grown so much! For all of you still in school, when does your summer vacation begin?

Skylines and Turtles

I've grown up in semi-rural and suburban areas, so cities always overwhelm me. However, there is definitely something beautiful about all the hustle-and-bustle and the strangely crowded buildings. Last weekend, we visited some family in Chicago for my cousin's baptism. It was my first trip to the Windy City, and the only sightseeing we did was a stroll along Lake Michigan.

That walk was beautiful and eerie. The lake is practically an ocean, and it even has a proper beach. After driving by so many crowded streets it was strange to walk on the beach and see no more people than I see hiking in the woods at home.

The pier, snuggled between a gray sky and cold gray water, was empty, but we could still see the busy skyline from a distance.

It was a lovely trip and I took some really cool pictures with my family!

There's been this strange sense of unreality for me lately-- it's probably one of those things most teens get when preparing to graduate high school and "start being adults." When we came back home and I had a bit of free time after school and work, I went hiking in our local woods. These are the same trails that I've walked and biked for three years, but the powerful scent of honeysuckle and the heavy, damp forest air made it feel more like a fairytale adventure than one of the crisp hikes I'm used to.

 I know I'm being florid right now. Oh well. Bloggers are allowed to do that sometimes.

And look! I found a woodhollow tree!

I ran into two box turtles on my walk. These fellows are anything but shy! When I got up close and personal to this turtle, he nonchalantly chewed a sprig of grass and kept his quizzically distant gaze fixed on my camera lense. All he needs is a pair of sunglasses and he'll pull of the "cool dude" look really well!

THIS turtle, however, did nothing but glare at me.

Flowers don't glare. They explode like fireworks instead.

Solar Panel Tariffs

It's time to start a new series on "energy idiocy." You just can't make this stuff up... From today's WSJ:

BRUSSELS—Chinese solar-panel manufacturers will face import tariffs of up to 67.9% at European Union borders under a plan from the 27-nation bloc's executive body...

Europe, like the US, subsidizes the installation of solar panels. So, we subsidize things to make the prices to consumers go down and encourage the industry. Then when the industry is encouraged and prices do go down, we pass tariffs to make prices go up.  This is almost as fun as oil, which we subsidize to make prices go down, then pass regulations to try to stop people from using it.


The US doesn't get to indulge in any Europe bashing here,

The U.S. has already placed tariffs on solar-panel imports from China.

We also subsidize ethanol, but only from midwestern corn. We have tariffs against ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane, which is a whole lot better environmentally (is a lot less closer to using 1 btu of petroleum to produce 1 btu of ethanol, wash away topsoil and fertilizers down the Mississippi, drive up corn prices)* but seems not to show up at the Iowa caucuses.

Of course it was a bit of a miracle that prices came down in the first place. Usually,  subsidizing and protecting an industry in the idea that just making it bigger makes it cheaper leads to large inefficient industries. The correlation between big and cheap comes from competition. Hence revealing that it was the Chinese who figured out how to exploit European subsidies and actually make panels cheaper.

If you have any remaining thought that concern for the environment motivates any of this mania, reading between the lines of the rest of the story will put that to rest:

Suntech Power Holdings ..and its subsidiaries will face tariffs of 48.6%, according to the document. Tariffs on LDK Solar ... will be 55.9%, and tariffs on Trina Solar Ltd.... will be 51.5%. JingAo Solar Co. will face tariffs of 58.7%..

Most other Chinese companies in the sector that cooperated with the investigation will pay the average tariff of 47.6%. Those that didn't will pay a tariff of 67.9%, according to the document.

The tariffs vary specifically company by company, and reward those that played along politically.

...European manufacturers have filed a separate complaint against the Chinese firms alleging they receive Chinese-government support

They are shocked, shocked to find that subsidies and bailouts are occurring in the Chinese solar panel industry.

European import duties would deal a blow to these (Chinese) manufacturers, which have been piling up losses and struggling to refinance huge debts. 

In March, Suntech sought bankruptcy protection in China, after defaulting on a $541 million bond repayment it owed mainly to Western investors.

Western investors, who appaarently are not as well connected as the western investors in European solar panel plants.

LDK and Trina are both facing large debt repayments. LDK's hometown of Xinyu, China, bailed out the company in 2012, agreeing to repay $80 million of its debts.

Here in the land of free markets, we never bail out large politically connected solar panel plants....

If we want to subsidize solar panel production (debateable, but "if") for environmental reasons, and if China decides to tax their citizens to provide the subsidies rather than us tax our citizens, the appropriate response is flowers, chocolates, and a nice thank-you card.

Update: Donald Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek did a much better job.

*Update: A reader catches me with possibly out-of-date facts. I'll leave his comment here and postpone getting in to a sidetrack about corn ethanol. I'll look in to it, as it seems a good topic for another "energy idiocy" post at some point.

The tariffs on Brazilian ethanol were removed back in 2011. In fact, because of the misinformation around environmental impacts of corn ethanol, California imports Brazilian cane ethanol in remarkable quantities (and at remarkable expense, compared to Midwestern corn ethanol). We also repealed the VEETC at the same time we eliminated the tariff, which is what I assume you’re referencing in your comment about subsidization of corn ethanol. There are still incentives for some ethanol feedstocks, but corn is explicity excluded.

The information about the energy consumed to produce ethanol is also considerably out of date.... And the stuff around environmental impacts is very much in dispute—but life-cycle “science” is so lacking in data one is usually left trying to prove a negative when defending the issue

I won’t dispute Gulf of Mexico hypoxia, but there’s remarkable progress being made with agricultural production today. We still need to get homeowners to stop fertilizing their lawns at a rate 4-8X what farmers use in cornfields if we’re going to stop it, but at least the corn farmers are cleaning up their act.

My DIY Craft Fair Display

Yesterday I was a vendor at the St. Theodore Tea and Fashion show and I needed a display to put my jewelry in! I spent exactly zero dollars on this, and just used things we had lying around the house! Somehow it still managed to look pretty professional and now I want to do more craft fairs just to use it! (I don't know if I'll be able to this summer, because it's such a time commitment--- we'll see!).

I know that most of you won't have supplies like these on hand, but I always like to see how others come up with solutions for things even when I don't have the supplies on hand. It usually helps me to think outside the box-- something I had to do a lot of for this display. No way was I going to spend $100 or more buying the "real" supplies that "real" artists use at fairs. I can buy beads and wire instead! :) The only item that I personally bought was the white necklace stand, and I got that months ago to use in photoshoots.

As I thought about putting a display together, I kept thinking about height-- no one likes bending over to see things!

The main part of the display is an unfinished oak kitchen cabinet which my Dad bought for $20 because it was damaged. We haven't given it a proper home yet, so it was out in the garage receiving a coat of cobwebs. It's heavy, but not too heavy to carry by myself.

The earring racks are two pieces of thin wood which I cut into rectangles with the scrollsaw and drilled dozens of holes into. The only downside is that a couple of the earrings get stuck in the holes-- they aren't too hard to get out, but they aren't too easy, either. It does make it easy to transport because none of them fall out on their own!

(By the way, I'm curious to know how other artisans price their jewelry for craft fairs. I rarely have more than one of any item on hand, except the ever-popular Evenstar collection, and it's tedious work to put a price tag by every item. Online, I can set each item to the exact price for my supplies and time. I would up compromising yesterday and averaging out the price of items to the nearest even-dollar increment. This meant that I had $7 and $14 earrings on the same rack, priced at $10. It's not ideal but for a one-day event I didn't know what to do!).



The strip lights are something that Dad had in the garage-- something for his truck, I've no idea what they are exactly but they are battery operated and stuck to the top with double-sided tape!

The bracelets are all resting on an empty roll of wrapping paper which I covered with part of a papery fabric tablecloth-- the same one that I use to wrap orders in when I run out of fabric or organza bags!

I put all the cuffs on the bottom of the display and gave it some height using glass from picture frames and wooden blocks.

I'm pretty proud of the hooks for the guitar string bangles and chainmaille keychains! I made it out of this giant roll of cheap aluminum wire I have on hand.

I was trying not to damage the nice cabinet so I used masking tape-- it was just strong enough but I was afraid it would fall down as people fingered the items! (it didn't!)

We had this wooden box lying around with knickknacks in it. I rolled up some fabric into little rolls and laid them side by side to display my rings properly. The cheaper plain wire rings and guitar string rings got jumbled up on the left because I had too many!

The necklace display is made from the cabinet doors. It wasn't ideal-- I think that necklace displays do a much better job of showing off my full necklaces. If I do any craft fairs in the future I will reserve these door displays for the pendant necklaces only. It works *great* for that!

The doors were just propped up on a basket and a book. They also have wire hooks taped to the back.

Lookie! Lookie! More Evenstar colors! It turns out that it's very difficult to find the leaf beads that I use for the Evenstar sets, especially when the website I usually buy from stopped carrying half the colors. Other places have them for crazy expensive prices. Think 50 cents or a dollar a bead. Then I found Brightling Beads and Shipwreck Beads so now I have every color they have in stock. Lots of new Evenstars!

I also will start using silver-plated chain instead of aluminum for the Evenstars. The aluminum I had before was cheap but wasn't up to par.

Anyway, the Evenstar necklaces and Enchanted Forest earrings are on another thin sheet of wood. I drilled holes for the earrings and nailed nails in to hang the pendants up.

The sapphire blue set is on the necklace stand that I made with an old book and a cereal box-- check out the tutorial here.

This is the necklace stand that I bought at Michaels awhile ago, and a folded-over index card (the perfect earring display in a pinch!). 

This necklace very similar to the Eowyn necklace I made a few months ago, only (*cough* if I may say so myself) better made.

It's the first new item that I've had a chance to put up on my Shoppe-- check it out!

Hope you liked this peek at the jewelry display I dreamed up!

Preparing for a Craft Show

This Sunday I will be selling some of my jewelry at the St. Theodore Tea and Fashion show-- local friends, please come stop by! There will be lots of good food and fun, and it all supports the church's mission trip.

Here's a sneak peek at some of jewelry I've made in the past three weeks.

(These first few pictures are from my Instagram account-- @ShealynnsFaerie. It's a weird story why I have an account when I have to use my mom's phone to do it, but basically one of my youngest brothers signed up without permission and now I have to monitor him. What better excuse to start posting my own over-edited, blurry snapshots?)

These are some brand-new chainmaille bracelets! I've been having fun with my two favorite weaves: the Byzantine (lookie at the blue and green ombre!) and the two-in-two mobius. I've also made some bracelets with the Shaggy Loops pattern, the European 4-in-4, and the Persian box weave.

Basically, lots of fun. These are my favorite bracelets to make and to wear. ^_^ I'll photograph them properly later!

Behind the bracelets are some guitar string earrings.

Earrings! These are all on a display that I made all on my own with some scrap wood. I'll take some pictures of my displays this weekend and write up a blog post with tips and tricks later!

One of many necklaces made with my favorite beads ever-- the Czech glass pressed into leaves!

Also hard at work on two of Aurora's crowns!

I made Evenstar sets in every single color I could get my hands on.

The teacup is there because of Tea Trolling. :)

My brother kept pestering me to upload pictures to Instagram the moment I created an account, and I couldn't find anything to post except for the teacup I was drinking out of at the time. So I spammed him with funny pictures of tea or just the teacup in different places. ^_^ If anyone else likes taking funny pictures of tea, use the hashtag #teatrolling. 'Tis fun. Especially when you have little brothers who call tea "dirt water." Tea trolling rankles them. (I'm such a lovely big sister.)

I'm off to go write some essays, drink some tea, and put the finishing touches on the displays! What are you all up to this evening?

DIY Book Box {Tutorial}

Secret book boxes. These are the stuff of old whodunits, with cursed and precious jewels hiding in the library of mysterious mansions. The only word to describe it is cool.

I've tried my hand three times in the past at making book boxes in the past. At first, I simply used an x-acto knife to cut out hundreds of individual pages. I did a tutorial for it and everything, but it is a very time consuming process and your hands get really tired.

Last year I attacked a book with power tools, and learned what not to do! Don't worry, though. I just helped a friend make her own book box and now I can (finally) show you how to make a nice book box using a drill, two screws, a scrollsaw, and some glue!

The project takes around half an hour to complete, but you'll want to let it dry overnight.

Begin by taking a destroyable book. What is a destroyable book? Something like a Reader's Digest Abriged book, which has a beautiful cover but it generally rubbish inside.

Do NOT destroy good books. You'll make bibliophiles like me die a little inside. ;)

Fold back the cover and a few pages from the front and back of the book.

This next step is very important-- if you forgo it, you'll ruin the book box. Sandwich the book between two pieces of wood and screw two screws through it.

Make sure everything is very snug.

Next, trace the edges of the book on the wood and draw the design you'd like to cut out. We chose a rectangle with rounded corners. Be sure to leave at least a half-inch border around the design.

It's difficult to twist a scrollsaw to make sharp edges, and even the curves we worked with were sideloading the blade. If you would like to make a straight rectangle, I'd recommend drilling holes at each corner. This gives the blade enough room to wiggle so that you can cut ninety-degree corners.

Drill a hole all the way through the book, push the blade through it, and set up your scrollsaw:

Then, DESTROY THAT BOOK!

When you are finished, you'll have a nice block of paper left. These book guts are lots of fun. You can use the paper for origami, artwork, and even costumes!

Next, do a victory dance because IT WORKED! :D

The book will feel very smooth where you cut it. You are done hollowing it out at this point, but it doesn't work all that well as a box because the pages can be opened.

Paint the insides of the box with glue. This will make your box sturdy but let it look like a very normal book from the outside.

(This is different from the technique that I did with my previous book boxes, when I glued the outsides of the pages shut. If you are sure to sandwhich the book between the pieces of wood, you won't need the extra stability that gluing the outside of the book shut gives.)

Glue a piece of decorative paper or fabric on the first non-cut page at the back of the book.

Now, set a nice heavy dictionary on top of the book and let it dry flat and even.

This would make a really cool afternoon project! It takes around half and hour and only requires a basic knowledge of how to use a drill and scrollsaw. My book box is the perfect place to hide candy from little siblings, and my little sister keeps her favorite pieces of jewelry inside of hers. I've seen some neat pictures of people putting engagement rings inside of book boxes or hiding ipods and other valuables in  hollowed textbooks inside backpacks.