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kittymaru. If you comment to this post and request them, I will give you 5 discussion topics that I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
1. handcrafts-- This is a kind of odd term, in my head; I feel like it's one of those things everyone defines differently. When asked, I'm liable to say "I make things" rather than calling it craft or art or whatnot. But in the sense of things crafted by hand, I suppose I can't really remember a time when I didn't do something of the sort, whether it was learning cross stitch from my mother at age five-or-so, or crochet from my grandmother at age eight (both of which I put down again soon after) or making yarn hair and little cloth skirts for my lego figures, who lived in box-castles and forests where the lego trees were supplemented with long branches of dead rosemary, stuck in clay. Some things ameture-ish, some I'm still quite fond of. My mother taught me to use a sewing machine when I was twelve, on the grounds that any competent adult should know that. I flit between art forms with about the attention span of a butterfly (although I have my favorite foods, so to speak) leaving far too many things unfinished, but I have a certain confidence in my ability to create, well, most things, if I put the time and effort into it.
2. long hair-- My father was on a submarine somewhere on the other side of the world when I was born, and the first few months of my life were spent with my mother (who has straight dark hair that when braided, can tuck into her belt) and her youngest sister, who at one time grew her hair out so that it trailed a foot on the ground. Generally she keeps it at about knee length. My hair, inherited from my father's side of the family, is much lighter, thicker, and has some curl to it, and doesn't grow quite as long; I was constantly frustrated in high school that every year or so my mother would cut her hair off to waist length and then let it grow out to longer than mine again.
I discovered the wonders of controlled trimming in college (and to this day, I've never had any professional touch my hair) and so the longest bits of my hair are now about fingertip length, which (for obscure reasons) I actually measured the other day and discovered is about 3.5 feet long. I've always wanted to get to knee length, but it may not happen. And this is easier to brush.
In terms of other people-- "long hair" in my world doesn't start until close to waist length. But one of my internal "this-is-stupid-but-I-think-that-way" calibrations is that somehow people with longer hair are more worthy as people. The standard is relaxed slightly for males, but I've been in situations where someone else commented on how hot some guy was and I had no idea what she was talking about until I realized that I hadn't even looked because his head was shaved. It's more PC than judging people by their skintone, I guess, and it's really just a first-impression sort of thing, not a deep value judgement. Also, particularly cool hair (well-dyed, or styled in a slightly unusual flattering style) can make up for length, somewhat, and I try not to tell other people that it's morally wrong to cut their hair off.
3. beads-- baubles, bangles, and...? Well, I'm not that much of a bead person, in the way of bead people, although I have got a drawer of beads&stuff in my desk. They're a useful ornament for certain things, and therefore good to have around. I really like the textures of bead embroidery, though, and it's one of those crafts where you sit down and start playing and the next thing you know it's six hours later and you have a raging headache, but you're half-way through the piece and you can't stop *now*... Some day, when I've collected enough colors of seed beads, I want to make an abstract bead embroidered tapestry about 8 or 10 inches square. This, I suspect, will take months.
4. dolls-- Well, my mother collects ethnic dolls from all over the world. She's got several thousand of them, handcrafted, mostly inexpensive, a lot obtained at doll shows from estates where no one remembers where they originally came from, and because she cares about these things she's become somewhat of an expert on identifying regional doll styles and clothing.
I mostly just like miniatures, figures, and dolls that I can move and pose and assign personality to. I'm told that my mother was disappointed that as a toddler I wanted to play with dolls more than to build things. I wasn't allowed Barbies as a child (because they will always be in my mother's head the hideously ugly things from the first release) and so they were always that mysterious grail toy, and I have a box full of them that I've collected second-hand (and they're now awaiting conversion....) under my bed. The idea of making permanent changes to dolls still seems strange and subversive to me; I was not the sort who cut off my dolls' hair (because, I mean, then you'd have a doll with short hair! who wants that?) and I learned fairly early that while nail polish remover will not get pink pentel marker out of doll plastic, it will remove Marilyn Monroe's eyebrows. I also never understood the idea of kids wanting to look like their dolls; if anything, you might want to make the doll look like you. But the owner is always, whatever fictions of personality you may spin for your dolls, the dominant persona.
5. archaeology-- This is a bit of a hard one; let's see... I love archaeology; I like history, particularly ancient, and bits and pieces of old things and learning to piece together clues of what the bits left behind mean. The only periodical I read (er, sometimes...) is Archaeology Magazine, and I was a classics major in college because I found ancient cultures fascinating.
I don't exactly live in a seat of ancient culture here; "history" in most of north america is 400 years old, and in this particular area just about the only things left from before that are chips of rock (mostly quartz) and a few fragments of steatite or disintegrating mud pottery. Click on a few of the ceramic types in the side bar for pictures of the kind of stuff we normally find. About 90% of the east coast has been ploughed at one time or another in the last few hundred years, so the first 6" to a foot of soil don't show anything that happened before that time. The historic stuff can be fascinating-- I can tell you all sorts of interesting (to me, anyway) things about nails and bottle manufacture and types of modern pottery, although not having taken classes in it, I only have a working knowledge of what I've happened to run across.
There's a certain zen to shovel testing-- wandering through the woods or fields digging holes at intervals-- and I've learned a great deal about the limits and needs of my body from things like 10 hour days in the august sun, or having to finish a project in weather so cold the dirt freezes to your screen if you don't process it fast enough. It can be fascinating to dig out the foundation of a house, or bisect a pit where someone once burned garbage, and I've always liked the little broken pieces of things. The most hideous piece of ceramic, rendered to the size of a quarter, looks cool. And I like knowing what things are.
But (and of course there's a but, or I would still be out there, either full-time in the lab, or digging up FEMA-land somewhere; I had at least two chances where other people wanted me to go full-time and I refused to apply) all career tracks in archaeology lead either to spending more than half your time in an office writing reports and playing with databases, or to becoming a bitter vagrant alcoholic. And I think I learned about as much as I could from where and what I was doing, without heading in one of those directions (ok, I wasn't about to become an alcoholic, but still) and even the best, most fantastic project somehow stopped being fun after the first couple days. So I think I'm done, although should there be lab work again, I may go back to a day or two a week sometimes.
--ETA: also, I had a dream last night that I and several (real) co-workers were excavating test units in my brother's old room. Two feet down in dirt on the second floor, roof still intact above us, and there was one of those inane fights one gets into about the proper way to cover the units, and the dream ended with me screaming at one of my co-workers at the top of my lungs, "I hate you! I know that sounds childish, but I really, really do." and running away, half because of that and half because of being horribly embarrassed I'd just done it in front of the people I actually liked. Which pretty much sums up my present feelings about personality dynamics on archaelogical sites, ie, stupid feuding and poor decisions brought on by environment and/or me not wanting to be there.
---
Little miss I-have-no-eyeballs is looking at me funny...
kittymaru. If you comment to this post and request them, I will give you 5 discussion topics that I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. 1. handcrafts-- This is a kind of odd term, in my head; I feel like it's one of those things everyone defines differently. When asked, I'm liable to say "I make things" rather than calling it craft or art or whatnot. But in the sense of things crafted by hand, I suppose I can't really remember a time when I didn't do something of the sort, whether it was learning cross stitch from my mother at age five-or-so, or crochet from my grandmother at age eight (both of which I put down again soon after) or making yarn hair and little cloth skirts for my lego figures, who lived in box-castles and forests where the lego trees were supplemented with long branches of dead rosemary, stuck in clay. Some things ameture-ish, some I'm still quite fond of. My mother taught me to use a sewing machine when I was twelve, on the grounds that any competent adult should know that. I flit between art forms with about the attention span of a butterfly (although I have my favorite foods, so to speak) leaving far too many things unfinished, but I have a certain confidence in my ability to create, well, most things, if I put the time and effort into it.
2. long hair-- My father was on a submarine somewhere on the other side of the world when I was born, and the first few months of my life were spent with my mother (who has straight dark hair that when braided, can tuck into her belt) and her youngest sister, who at one time grew her hair out so that it trailed a foot on the ground. Generally she keeps it at about knee length. My hair, inherited from my father's side of the family, is much lighter, thicker, and has some curl to it, and doesn't grow quite as long; I was constantly frustrated in high school that every year or so my mother would cut her hair off to waist length and then let it grow out to longer than mine again.
I discovered the wonders of controlled trimming in college (and to this day, I've never had any professional touch my hair) and so the longest bits of my hair are now about fingertip length, which (for obscure reasons) I actually measured the other day and discovered is about 3.5 feet long. I've always wanted to get to knee length, but it may not happen. And this is easier to brush.
In terms of other people-- "long hair" in my world doesn't start until close to waist length. But one of my internal "this-is-stupid-but-I-think-that-way" calibrations is that somehow people with longer hair are more worthy as people. The standard is relaxed slightly for males, but I've been in situations where someone else commented on how hot some guy was and I had no idea what she was talking about until I realized that I hadn't even looked because his head was shaved. It's more PC than judging people by their skintone, I guess, and it's really just a first-impression sort of thing, not a deep value judgement. Also, particularly cool hair (well-dyed, or styled in a slightly unusual flattering style) can make up for length, somewhat, and I try not to tell other people that it's morally wrong to cut their hair off.
3. beads-- baubles, bangles, and...? Well, I'm not that much of a bead person, in the way of bead people, although I have got a drawer of beads&stuff in my desk. They're a useful ornament for certain things, and therefore good to have around. I really like the textures of bead embroidery, though, and it's one of those crafts where you sit down and start playing and the next thing you know it's six hours later and you have a raging headache, but you're half-way through the piece and you can't stop *now*... Some day, when I've collected enough colors of seed beads, I want to make an abstract bead embroidered tapestry about 8 or 10 inches square. This, I suspect, will take months.
4. dolls-- Well, my mother collects ethnic dolls from all over the world. She's got several thousand of them, handcrafted, mostly inexpensive, a lot obtained at doll shows from estates where no one remembers where they originally came from, and because she cares about these things she's become somewhat of an expert on identifying regional doll styles and clothing.
I mostly just like miniatures, figures, and dolls that I can move and pose and assign personality to. I'm told that my mother was disappointed that as a toddler I wanted to play with dolls more than to build things. I wasn't allowed Barbies as a child (because they will always be in my mother's head the hideously ugly things from the first release) and so they were always that mysterious grail toy, and I have a box full of them that I've collected second-hand (and they're now awaiting conversion....) under my bed. The idea of making permanent changes to dolls still seems strange and subversive to me; I was not the sort who cut off my dolls' hair (because, I mean, then you'd have a doll with short hair! who wants that?) and I learned fairly early that while nail polish remover will not get pink pentel marker out of doll plastic, it will remove Marilyn Monroe's eyebrows. I also never understood the idea of kids wanting to look like their dolls; if anything, you might want to make the doll look like you. But the owner is always, whatever fictions of personality you may spin for your dolls, the dominant persona.
5. archaeology-- This is a bit of a hard one; let's see... I love archaeology; I like history, particularly ancient, and bits and pieces of old things and learning to piece together clues of what the bits left behind mean. The only periodical I read (er, sometimes...) is Archaeology Magazine, and I was a classics major in college because I found ancient cultures fascinating.
I don't exactly live in a seat of ancient culture here; "history" in most of north america is 400 years old, and in this particular area just about the only things left from before that are chips of rock (mostly quartz) and a few fragments of steatite or disintegrating mud pottery. Click on a few of the ceramic types in the side bar for pictures of the kind of stuff we normally find. About 90% of the east coast has been ploughed at one time or another in the last few hundred years, so the first 6" to a foot of soil don't show anything that happened before that time. The historic stuff can be fascinating-- I can tell you all sorts of interesting (to me, anyway) things about nails and bottle manufacture and types of modern pottery, although not having taken classes in it, I only have a working knowledge of what I've happened to run across.
There's a certain zen to shovel testing-- wandering through the woods or fields digging holes at intervals-- and I've learned a great deal about the limits and needs of my body from things like 10 hour days in the august sun, or having to finish a project in weather so cold the dirt freezes to your screen if you don't process it fast enough. It can be fascinating to dig out the foundation of a house, or bisect a pit where someone once burned garbage, and I've always liked the little broken pieces of things. The most hideous piece of ceramic, rendered to the size of a quarter, looks cool. And I like knowing what things are.
But (and of course there's a but, or I would still be out there, either full-time in the lab, or digging up FEMA-land somewhere; I had at least two chances where other people wanted me to go full-time and I refused to apply) all career tracks in archaeology lead either to spending more than half your time in an office writing reports and playing with databases, or to becoming a bitter vagrant alcoholic. And I think I learned about as much as I could from where and what I was doing, without heading in one of those directions (ok, I wasn't about to become an alcoholic, but still) and even the best, most fantastic project somehow stopped being fun after the first couple days. So I think I'm done, although should there be lab work again, I may go back to a day or two a week sometimes.
--ETA: also, I had a dream last night that I and several (real) co-workers were excavating test units in my brother's old room. Two feet down in dirt on the second floor, roof still intact above us, and there was one of those inane fights one gets into about the proper way to cover the units, and the dream ended with me screaming at one of my co-workers at the top of my lungs, "I hate you! I know that sounds childish, but I really, really do." and running away, half because of that and half because of being horribly embarrassed I'd just done it in front of the people I actually liked. Which pretty much sums up my present feelings about personality dynamics on archaelogical sites, ie, stupid feuding and poor decisions brought on by environment and/or me not wanting to be there.
---
Little miss I-have-no-eyeballs is looking at me funny...
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 03:28 pm (UTC)My favorite dyed hair ever was a girl at my college who had super-short (generally about a half-inch long) hair that she'd re-dye every month or two. I remember her going through bright red all over, two colors (I forget which) divided down the center of her head, and (the absolute best) purple with inch-and-a-half round green polka dots.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 07:57 am (UTC)i-have-no-eyeballs is a great name, btw.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-01 06:26 pm (UTC)1) teaching
2) marriage
3) Fabris
4) SCA
5) wrestling