Crazy Kate's bargain barn

bionicdingo @ 2007-05-06T17:28:00

2007-05-06T23:40:25Z

School is finally over for the year; final crit was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. Only one of my instructors, however, has anything insightful to say. the other two just told me my finishing sucked. Which I knew, so that's ok. Unfortunatley they broke one of my projects, in a way that can only be repaired by dismantling it. Which I'm not about to do.

Lapidary fair was this weekend, and Nigel was good enough to take me, even though it bores him out of his skull. aquisitions were 5 pairs of matched ammonite fossils, a 14" strand of varigated hessonite garnet beads, and a Sri Lankan black star sapphire which I got a fantastic price on because the dealer screwed up. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it's rather pretty.

It's nice that classes are (mostly) over, as I can actually see Nigel again, which is a treat.

For my own information:

2007-01-22T04:29:37Z

What, exactly, is the little chain-and-T-bar bit on a tie tack for?

Beg, borrow, or steal

2007-01-02T07:08:58Z

cause I'm sick of looking. If anyone knows where I can obtain any of the following, please notify me.

-test tubes, pyrex or glass, not plastic

-Small glass vials, varying sizes. (you know, those things they give out perfume samples in, or larger ones that scientists keep samples in. stuff like that)

-unshaped blocks of black packing foam, like the stuff used to line breifcases for transporting fragile electronics

if you have any of those you'd be willing to barter to me, let me know as well.

bionicdingo @ 2006-12-15T20:53:00

2006-12-16T03:54:14Z

Final crit was this morning. much less painful than I had expected, frankly. I set all my projects up on the table, we all (me and two instructors, not the whole class, thank god) took a good look. Then I told them what I thought, and then they told me what they thought, which was basically what I thought but more drawn out. I know my shortcomings well, apparently.

In a nutshell: My finishing skills suck. And so do my settings.

And they do, so it's OK that they think that. I know I suck at finishing. It's just so damn boring, not to mention dirty. That shit gets friggin EVERYWHERE.

Speaking of dirt, since it's christmas holidays I'll be able to sneeze normal colours again insted of varying shades of black and brown. Which is good, because I'm starting to get a tad concerned about that.

Critique was at nine AM, so I spent the rest of the day in the shop, working on personal things. Today was first year crits, too, so the shop was full of them, in panic mode. It was chaos.

I will say, though, it's physically painful watching some of them try to light a torch. They crank the gas wiiiide open, and then are mystified when it goes FWOOOSH*pop* (the pop being the torch going out) One of them must've been at it for a half hour, trying 3 diffirent torches. This same kid is a regular at the bookstore on wednesdays. Not only is he dumber than dirt, he's rude, too.

Anyway, in a week or two I'll post some photos if anyone's ac

bionicdingo @ 2006-11-20T20:00:00

2006-11-21T02:00:34Z

My brain hurts.

Business plan with powerpoint project next week. fucking stupid project, but whatever.

Present project is a cut away layer-of-the-earth pendant in copper, silver, brass and garnet. Because of the design I've come up with I now have to construct five gem settings of various sizes, one inside the other. Much easier said than done, unfortunatley. Also, North America keeps popping off the surface of my globe, and it has now bent the top of south america out of shape. I also have to do a sample piece of cuttlefish casting, which I'm turning into a simple pendant and hawking for cash. My final piece for the term is a commissioned bracelet. I have no ideas how I'm going to pull it off yet.

One thing I do appreciate about my major is that the supplies costs very easily translate back into cash.

Finished the venus flytrap. it's really quite a monstrosity of a ring. Unfortunatley, "class" and "subtlety" are not words I have in my working vocabulary. Everyone else can do classy.

Unfortunatley, aside from school, not much has been happening in my life. I see Nigel fridays or saturdays, and I pretty much do homework the rest of the time. After this weekend I should be free for some partying down and various other activities.

bionicdingo @ 2006-10-22T20:06:00

2006-10-23T02:09:14Z

There is, at the moment, a smoking toaster plugged in to an extension cord in the middle of my driveway. This has not been my doing.

Also, if you want to get ahold of me, either phone, or email me a katelyn.fehr (at) acad.ca as I have not been checking my hotmail.

Also, for those interested, the brooch in question from the last entry. It still needs a bit more polishing.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/41836581/

bionicdingo @ 2006-10-20T21:09:00

2006-10-21T03:49:30Z

Not dead, contrary to popular belief.

I have far to much shit to do this weekend. School has been keeping me ludicrously busy, and I apologize to those good friends of mine I've been forced to neglect. It'll be made up to you guys.

I have a piece in the ACAD open house, but I'm only second year so it got banished to the 4th floor faculty area. It's a strange-looking thing anyway. Flying saucer pendant. Additionally, the government has decided they want to give me $1000 I didn't actually ask them for, so they must think I'm pretty cool.

Finished my mother's birthday/christmas present last week. A nickle silver butterfly pin with two bezel-set moonstones on the wings, and a matching set of fine silver bezel-set moonstone stud earrings. The earrings she's getting for christmas.

On one of them I made the bezel cup a bit to small, but if they'res one thing I've learned from art college so far, it's that the right hammer can solve pretty much any problem craftsmanship has caused. Luckily the stone didn't break.

My next project is a hollow-constructed sterling silver ring with a bezel set garnet. I'm building a sheet silver venus flytrap to go on top. If enough of you pray for me, I may actually assemble it without melting it. But that is exceedingly unlikely, given my past history.

bionicdingo @ 2006-07-22T22:42:00

2006-07-23T05:51:32Z

So I haven't had a computer for a week or two, in case anybody's wondered where I actually am.

Am contemplating dyeing my hair red, cutting it shorter. tattoo on my ankle, maybe. I've been stuck in neutral for years. I'm restless on a vast scale.

Things need to be finished. Education is such a slow process. Time is crawling. I hate my job, I hate working only for the money. I hate being stuck here. I need to get going. Maybe when I finally get my license I'll go in for a class 1.

They'res so much out there I need to see. I want to be gone.

bionicdingo @ 2006-06-15T22:40:00

2006-06-16T05:03:35Z

So, tuesday morning I register for my second year at college. For those I haven't already mentioned it to, I'm doing my BFA in jewellery and metasmithing. I never have to draw anything I don't want for anyone, ever again. That's an incredibly liberating feeling.

and Holy crap, I get to take a design class from Jeff DeBoer. That guy is like, god. A god, anyway.

http://www.jeffdeboer.com/portfolio/work9.html
(yeah, that's samurai armour for a cat. If that's not awesome I don't know what is.)

He also made the airplane-carousel at the airport. Personally I've never seen it, it's on the other side of departures. My father, however, has seen it, and describes it as "The ugliest goddamn thing he's ever seen", so it must be good.

Oh, and also I apparently work at sunterra now. (Cause starbucks is JERKS) The one near the james short parkade. I'm a coffee bar bitch. (A note to Jess: If you're still looking, get your ass over there. You might be able to wrangle a full-time position in the bakery. They make tiny cheesecake!)and they're gonna give me a shirt, tie, apron, and snappy little black hat.

bionicdingo @ 2006-05-16T23:22:00

2006-05-17T05:23:47Z

Honestly, businesses. If you're not hiring don't put up a "WE ARE HIRING" Sign in you window. It's not THAT difficult.

Also, Money Mart, fuck you. I am NOT going to work at a pay day loan shop in Forest Lawn.

bionicdingo @ 2006-05-07T20:12:00

2006-05-08T02:14:54Z

Here's an interesting fact for you. According to estimates recorded in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, Approximatley 100 molecules from your personal structure once belonged to Shakespear.

Just in case you were wondering.

bionicdingo @ 2006-04-23T21:03:00

2006-04-24T03:03:27Z

Holy.
freakin.
crap.

http://www.bobross.com/news.cfm

I gotta get in on that.

bionicdingo @ 2006-04-22T22:17:00

2006-04-23T04:24:23Z

an, I can't believe I have to work tomorrow. yuck.

Ended up making $340 at show n' sale. Or, I will have, if the piecies were sold rather than stolen, but that's a tiny chance. Butterflies went for $120 each, and the fish for $50. So I can buy pants now. Which is good, because I need pants. My jeans are almost translucent when held in front of a light source. I've had them since grade 10.

Almost finished for the year, thank god. I've one critique left for monday, and if I know the instructor, he won't really have much to say and I'll get a B. Which is fine in my books. Mediochre is all I need.

It's so nice to have nothing to do.

INPUT

2006-04-16T19:07:39Z

I need a dollar value for the two piecies below. I'm pricing them for show and sale. Let's hear what you think is fair. And don't worry about offending me, I hear worse from my professors on a daily basis. any honest input is fervently appreciated. Oh, and these are cut paper piecies. The light makes them look a bit like paintings in the photos.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/28417399/

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/27405727/
(The two frames are seperate piecies in this one)

Oh, and I'll be there from 6-9 on the 20th.

bionicdingo @ 2006-03-05T18:32:00

2006-03-06T01:42:03Z

Honestly, fuck you, family channel. That was a very mean trick you pulled today. when you have an autograph session for one of your bad shows, you should warn the mall. Clerks don't like it when they arrive to see about 700 screaming children rampaging around in front of their stores. Also, parents, please make an effort to control your snotty children.

also, dear crabby woman: Taking items outside of a store without first giving cash for them is defined as theft. That is why I won't let you take them outside. Also, it gave me warmfuzzies when you thought saying you'd buy them at Chapters instead was a threat. It's just soo cute when you people do that. Also,it gave me even more warmfuzzies when you were back not five minutes later, buying them.

dear serial returner: It's not like we haven't noticed by now. But next time you come in to return something, please have the desency to wait until whatever you're high on has worn off.

And no, they're not free. If I hear that line again, I shall punch you. Consider yourself warned.

Also, I am presently writing a report on the world's fanciest salt shaker.

I truly, honestly wish I was making that up.

Public service announcement

2006-02-06T05:53:24Z

Stupid Query of the Day: Narnia cake decorations. At a bookstore. Jesus H Christ.

bionicdingo @ 2006-01-05T21:57:00

2006-01-06T05:23:09Z

ok, fine, 5 habits.

1- My bookshelf. fiction and nonfiction seperated. alphabetical, by author's last name. If several books by one author, numerical by series or, if non-sequential, organized by ascending year of publication. Someone, recently, has been in my shelves, and they're disorganized. It rakes fingernails down the chalkboard of my very soul.

2- I absolutley cannot sleep with a lighted clock within view. It drives me nuts.

3- I keep junk. In my closet I presently have boxes labelled Cicuit boards, broken glass, clock parts, and crap, respectively.

4- I have, regrettably, a magpie's eye for glitter. I am also attracted by bright colours. There is a certain shop in Banff I could quite comfortably live in, and I don't think I'd ever get legitamitely bored.

5- I love bland food. Plain spaghetti with butter, plain chicken, burgers with nothing on them but cheese and meat, yum. Not that I don't like flacourful food, I just also like bland food as well.

ok, fine. five people i tag.actually, 4, I'm thinking outside of the box. or something like that. Jenna, Jess, Sara Beth, Nigel.

I <3 george carlin

2005-12-02T05:36:42Z

I've deicded I'm going to run for PM. And this is my pledge, to you, the people;

If anyone pisses you off, I personally will go over to their house and beat the shit out of them. Thank you, and vote Fehr.

bionicdingo @ 2005-11-30T21:58:00

2005-12-01T05:56:43Z

[Unknown LJ tag]

Effectively my magnum opus for Glass Casting 101.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/25872939/

I realize it is ugly bordering upon sin, but I'm inordinatley proud of it.

Project had to involve light and glass of some variety. Half a wine bottle, TV processor board, Florist's wire (Marked specifically as "Decorative use only" but it works so who gives a shit), insulated wire of some variety, and a number of LED's that ranges from 29 to 37, depending who's counting. It does, unlike alot of my work, function, though not if you move the leaves about in certain ways. The wire wrapped around the glass shorts out the boards if it touches in certaing spots.

The board I used is also, unfortunatley, a dual-layer conductor, which I forgot to take into account whilst wiring. Silly me. Still works, though a few of the board chunks needed pathways removed. Whoops.

What, you never heard of fridge pants?

2005-11-26T07:19:57Z

Glass is, without a doubt, the single most frustrating thing on the face of god's green little mother fucking earth.

To anyone who hasn't already heard my bitchy tale of not-really-woe, It centeres mostly around my latest endeavour, a piece I have dubbed the Sink Fish.

It all starts with a rather unfetching clay fish. Then, I coat the whole thing in plaster. 7 buckets of plaster later, I flip it, and dig the clay out with my trusty spoon and Bent Chunk O' Wire(TM), only to find out that, much to my dismay, then entire thing is FULL of cracks. I now have 2 options. I can start over, (Not fucking likely, thankyouverymuch)or do an exterior coat of grog plaster so that when the (Almost promised) mold explosion happens, the rest of the pieces in the kiln are spared. Grog plaster it is.

For those of you wondering what grog is, essentially, sand of some variety. It was not, alas, pirate hooch. Which I would've had much more use for at the time.

Sooo, I cover my mold in a further 2 buckets of plaster, incresing the weight to roughly that of a juvenile walrus. Boy, they must've had fun watching me try and get that thing down the hallway.

By the way, to all concerned parties, I did not get any up my nose this time. I got all the areas I missed last go-round, but not up my nose.

A week passes. It's time to open the kiln! Yay! I enlisted the help of a rather kind classmate to help me move the thing, seeing as it had gained a further 8-10 pounds of glass during the week. Motherfucking heavy. So I take it to the plaster room, to commence the second excavation.

2 hours later, I've chipped all the plaster off, and yay! I have a glass replica of my ugly clay fish! Right down to the fingerprints I didn't bother wiping off. Hot damn.

So, I clean it off over the terminally clogged sink. And what does it do? SNAPS THE FUCK IN HALF, that's what. Right into the sink. I almost didn't retrieve it. The water in the sink is the colour of milk, is of above-elbow depth, and they'res a sediment in the bottom of this sink, and it is gray. There could be half a dead body down there for all we know. Their probably is, judging from the stench. Breaking the surface of the water raises a cloud of the foulest gas on earth. Think of the worst fart anyone ever did when you were on a crowded bus with them, and this is SO MUCH WORSE than that.

Seriously. Very stinky.

So fine, I get it clean, Clear off all the flashing with the dremel, (They'res nothing quite like licking your lips and getting a mouthful of glass dust because the drip has turned off and you hadn't noticed) get it nice and ready to be glued together when what happens? I DROP ONE OF THE FUCKING HALVES. Decreasing it to a further nine pieces. God bless the fucking UV glue, I can tell you that much. You can stick shit to anything with that stuff.

After that, I made wine bottle rings with the oil saw, and helped in the team effort of blowing the breakers. It took ten of us, but we did it, dammit. 3 grinding wheels, a belt sander, 2 saws, and a sandblaster which APPARENTLY aren't supposed to go all at once. Well fine then.

Anyways, I'm off. I have exciting things to do with a soldering iron. One of which probably includes burning myself.

bionicdingo @ 2005-11-22T21:25:00

2005-11-23T05:24:39Z

The Renaissance can bite my ass. Seriously.

CRIVENS!

2005-11-14T05:30:31Z

Just finishing up my essay, entitled "Regarding naked women riding clams". Birth of venus is, after an hour's close consideration, an exceedinly silly painting. It's a nice looking one, but it is very, very silly.

I also have a paper on a dead shark in a formaldehyde tank. You know, the more I research Damien Hirst, the less I like him. He is also silly.

I should've written about that fish stick with jesus's face on it.

Went shopping yesterday. made jess into a spendahol and discovered a secret weakness for girly frilly underthings. Also, sadly, bought no books.

Have read "A Walk in the Woods" three times now. Is possibly greatest nonfiction book, ever.

oh yes, show and sale, 17-19. Come and see the faculty show. They'res a short entitled "Mr. Reaper's really bad morning". Is possibly greatest animated short, ever.

following today's class

2005-10-15T05:55:34Z

List of locations I found plaster: On my shoes, on my pants, stuck to my arms, in (and on) my shirt, in my hair, stuck to my forehead, and up my nose.

The nose one I find particularily impressive, as almost the entirety of the day was spent breathing through a dust respirator.

bionicdingo @ 2005-09-24T23:06:00

2005-09-25T05:17:24Z

this is how I spent Saturday.

First, I sculpted a foot-high conch shell out of ceramics clay. Tomorrow I get to coat it in vaseline and plaster bandages.

then, I painted a pterosaur skeleton on a 12X12 sheet of plate glass. In white glue. With a toothpick. Tomorrow after work I get to take it to ACAD to sandblast it. The sandblaster looks like something you would use to handle toxic waste. It's also about six inches taller than I can use comfortably, so I get to stand on tiptoe. This is compounded by the fact the machine operates by a foot-pedeal switch. It is very uncomfortable. You really have to see this thing before you can appreciate the fact it wasn't actually made to be operated by humans.

Then, to top it all off, I got to spend 2 hours stiching to finish my shibori project for fibre class. (Think tie dye, but waaaaay more work intensive.) I'm going to find the old japanese guy who invented that, and beat him up. He's probably dead, but I'll kill him more.

bionicdingo @ 2005-09-23T22:14:00

2005-09-24T04:24:01Z

It has been brought to my attention that the ACAD building is in possetion of a escherian structural peculiarity that allows it to look almost completley empty, at any given time. Presumably, there are hundreds of students, the first year alone consisting of about 400 (And I, for further documentation, am effectively the only one going into my chosen major.)and presumably, a majority of them are there on any given day, but outside of your classmates, you never see more than 5 or 6 at a time. The SAIT campus, on the other hand, is absolutley bustling. They also have cheaper drafting supplies.

You cannot, however, purchase a magic 8-ball at the SAIT bookstore.

I also completley fail to understand why I need to write an essay on a 1.5-foot high statue of a head of cauliflower in a Laz-E-Boy. (Well, it was that, or the ceramic dead cow, and they'res not much room to bullshit your way around a ceramic dead cow.)

(Yes, I have noticed the pun, thank you.)