Silent movies - Buon Anno!

For today I managed to find a silent film which works perfectly as "Buon Anno" means "Happy New Year".
"Buon Anno" is an Italian short from 1909.
The "plot" - you can hardly call it that - is told very quickly.

New Year's Day. A man is getting
ready to go out and looking
forward to it. He has put on some
scent, has had his coffee, and
he's in a good mood.

Not even out of the house yet, he's
offered calendars by the servant
and the mailman who on this
occasion expect a tip.

The more people push for a
New Year's tip, the more aggravated
the man gets. The concierge gets a
tip, but he throws the calendar on the
the ground. At the café, he's so annoyed
that he knocks over the table. At the
barber's he shoves the two men.

In the street, he runs into more
people trying to escape the Happy
New Year wishes and they all chase
after him (turning this into a classic
chase film), even after the police
turns up to take him away.
He starts having hallucinations
about all those people carrying
calendars ... 

... and the images even follow
him to the police station.

Finally, he's allowed to go, but not
before one last calendar pops up.

On one page it said that "obsession lurks in the symbolic places of the bourgeois social ritual" and that "time doesn't stop and chases us everywhere".
Maybe I'm too simple a person, but I don't see this short as more than a man being annoyed by the tradition of people expecting a tip at certain times. I remember one time years ago when someone rang my bell on Christmas Eve yelling "Mail" only to then "notice" that they didn't even have mail for me. It was the first time they ever rang, and although I am usually a tipper, I was stubborn in that particular case. So I kind of get that the man was overwhelmed (who was played by Ernesto Vaser, one of the first Italian film comedians).

I like what I think might be a little homage to Georges Méliès near the end with the moon winking at the man over the dancing calendar leaves (done in stop-motion).

I wish you all a very Buon Anno, Frohes Neues Jahr, Happy New Year!


Sources:

1. JEC: Buon Anno ! (1909) Happy New Year. On: A Cinema History, October 2023
2. Museo Nazionale del Cinema: Restaurations - Silent Films - Buon anno!

The cat

Happy New Year!
This is not a bad day for showing something fresh off the hoop.

The other day I was hanging out on my bed like so often - it's big and the perfect space for the cats and me, tools and supply boxes, books and remote controls.
Der Dekan is one clingy cat, so I usually have some kind of blanket on my legs, thin or thick, summer or winter, so the master can choose to sleep on my legs or on my feet or under the blanket snuggled up against my legs (which can be rather nice if it's cold because he's a veritable little hot-water bottle, just filled with kibbles instead of water, if it's too hot, he luckily stays next to me instead).
In this case, he was on the blanket sleeping like only he can, meaning his weight mysteriously tripled from one second to the next, so I was completely paralyzed. Yes, I know he's a spoilt brat, but I don't make the rules, I just work here.
I have never been a girl scout, but my motto for such situations is "Be prepared" which means that my embroidery box was next to me. I hadn't planned anything in particular, but seeing his cute little face, I grabbed my smallest embroidery hoop, one of my water-soluble pens, and whipped up a quick sketch, as well as I could, I'm not an artist.

That didn't mean I planned to make my kitty look like der Dekan, I'm definitely not there yet with my embroidery skills and don't know if I ever will be, but that doesn't really matter as I just enjoy the process.
Also I'm completely overwhelmed by all the colors cats have even if they are "just" black or tabby cats. Sometimes I find myself staring at my cats in wonder trying to determine which colors I'm seeing at the moment, depending on the light. Der Dekan mostly doesn't mind me poking each color I can see in his fur, going "boop, boop, boop" (if you think that is silly, be glad you don't know more).
I still don't know what base color he is exactly. Sometimes he looks brown, sometimes it's more of a grey.

One of the things I like to do when I start on something without a clear plan is to pick a bunch of colors from what I have around at that moment.
That doesn't mean my whole stash, but what I find in my current project box which is just a nice way to speak of the box I throw beads into because I'm too lazy to put them back right away. To justify that, I take it as a challenge to create with what I have.
Now my embroidery box is organized, but only because I don't have enough stash yet to start a second box, and that means I have a limited amount of colors, more brown than grey which settled the color of my cat.

Whenever der Dekan was sleeping on me again, I took a good look at him for inspiration and went to work on the piece on and off over a week.
As usual I see the flaws and shortcuts very clearly, but this is a journey of which I don't know where it's going to take me to, and at the moment I still embrace my flaws and allow myself shortcuts consciously. My experience is that if I want too much too quickly and fail with that, it can lead to WIPs (works in process) turning into forever UFOs (unfinished objects) - that's my definition - and I didn't want this one to become one of those.
Der Dekan, however, wants you to know that he has a much cuter nose, and I have to agree on that.

What really annoyed me that one spot of the yellow pen stubbornly refused to come out. The last time I used it, I had covered it completely and there was no need to wash it out, but not this time.
The only idea I could come up with was to add a bit of sparkle to the background which I had wanted to do anyway, only not in that particular spot. Don't tell anyone ;-)

I had ordered a few round frames, wooden ones - I used one for my "Guardian of the Woods" - and vintage brass ones. They have a little hole and hook at the bottom which confused me at first, but of course they are meant to be hung up in a row, with family pictures for example. That took me back in time 45 years, to my violin teacher's living room. I can't remember every detail of it, but I remember it feeling cozy and comfortable - even if I had never practiced enough - and a bit old-fashioned and plushy, with elegant wallpaper and miniature portraits. I always wondered if they were ancestors of hers, but never dared to ask.

I don't know if I will make something eventually that will work with the tabby for such a row of portraits.
For now I will have to think of something to make that hole a bit less noticeable. One idea is to paint the linen golden in that spot or glue on a bead or to put a hook in - the original one or a smaller one - and hang a charm on it, not that I would know at the moment what kind of charm could work. What do you think?

Erm, Happy New Year?

I know, I know, I'm a bit late. I can only hope you'll forgive me - happy New Year to all of you!
Have you already broken the first of your resolutions for 2024?
I haven't, but that's simply because I have given up on resolutions a long time ago. I don't like setting myself up for failure like that ;-)

It's hard enough for me to start into this year after my time off work. As usual when having more time to myself than just my weekends, I snapped right back into my normal rhythm, meaning staying awake into the wee hours of the morning, sleeping as long as the cats allowed me to, maybe going back to bed after their first, second, and third breakfasts - obviously they are hobbit cats - or having a glorious nap in the middle of the day. I only needed my alarm clock, so I would take out the trash out in time or for one of my rare morning appointments. It was a sad moment when I turned on the alarm clock on Sunday night before I had to start working again, and after more than a week I am still struggling with it.

Somehow that also put a bit of a damper on my creativity. That doesn't mean I haven't done anything this year yet.
A new little chicken, Friedrun, picked a nest for herself and her triplets Huey, Dewey, and Louie (yes, named after ducks).

Two bead embroidered autumn suns made me dig into my old stash once again, this time for the beautiful frosted carnelian beads.

Then, however, I started working again and, creatively seen, took a very easy way out by beading more folded peyote earrings in different color combinations. Actually, I surprised myself by having the patience for so many, but they were the perfect "background beading" (meaning I only had to concentrate on the colors, not so much on the technique which seems to have made its way into my brain at last) while I am contemplating my next big project for which I have an idea, but am still looking for the best way to do it.

There would even have been a blue version that had been suggested, but I didn't have enough blue beads left for a pair of earrings. I do have a lot of grey ...
What do you think, how many more folded peyote earrings will there be before my muse will finally give me that spark that I need to get started on the next biggie? ;-)

Count Catula

First of all let me say I'm sorry for not wishing you a Happy New Year yet. You know how it is, life got in the way. So here I am, very late. A Happy New Year!

Now I want to show you some amazing footage from Bran Castle, also known as Dracula's Castle.
Seems as if the castle has a new owner, and I got an exclusive picture of him. I don't know, there is something odd about him, but I can't quite put the finger on it. Wait ... are those cat ears and a tail??

Picture of Bran Castle by Dobre Cezar on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0 ro)

Happy New Year!

A new year again? Do you also have the feeling sometimes that we are going through the years too fast? I'm not even sure I have been there for all of 2015. I still remember the days when we wondered what we would be like in 2000, except old of course (35, seriously, that did seem old at 10). It all was so far away.
Okay then. Let's give this 2016 a good try, shall we?

A Happy New Year to all of you, my friends!

A Happy New Year!

I don't know what the new year will bring for me and also for all of you. I am crossing my fingers and the cats' paws for 2014 to be a good year for all of us. Healthy, peaceful, creative ... let's be helpful to others, open-minded and don't forget to be good to yourselves.

I'm quite sure there will be headdesks, though. I practically ended the year with them, and I'll tell you why.
Earrings. I like them. A lot. Dangly ones mostly. I like to wear them and I like to make them. That's not completely true. There have been many times when I loved earring #1 and went crazy over #2, and not crazy in a good way, from excitement how wonderful it was. Because sometimes #2 just doesn't want to be wonderful, but does everything to make me hit my head on my desk.

Cabs can only be so small to be used if you crochet or knit with wire. They need to be safe in their bezel which means you can't make it too loose, but you don't want to cover all of them with wire, either.
Sometimes I challenge myself to see what I can do. I grab out the 1.4 mm crochet hook (I broke the 1.3 mm one, shame on me or rather the wire) and go to work. For smaller or narrower cabs I found wire knitting to work better than crochet as the structure is more open, so the wire doesn't take over, also it is easier because your wire "mesh" is more flexible.
I started knitting a bezel for this aventurine. The hard part is to knit high enough, but not too high, and then to hold your small cab in that bezel while closing it up with the last row. More than once a cab decided on a last second jump to freedom. This one was quite cooperative. Being on a wire and pearl path at the moment I added some pearls all around, and I was really happy with it.
Then came #2. It didn't like me from the start. First it refused to sit still in its bezel. Maybe it felt hurt because I was "watching" a documentary about the Hope diamond at the same time. There's not much that a little aventurine can hold against a diamond of that kind. We finally came to terms with each other regarding the bezel, but when it was time for the pearls to appear on the scene, suddenly the wire didn't want to play along anymore. Can you believe it broke three times until I decided we all needed a break until the next day? The (not so) funny thing is that I don't like to add wire in a piece like that which meant the cab spent its night in a bag with the other cabs, but in relative freedom after I took the bezel off again ... which was probably what it had planned all along.

A new day, a new attempt. This time we were all playing nicely, and so here the earrings are now, in my DaWanda shop. Phew! Maybe not a bad way after all to end the old year.