マットサイエンティスト Maddosaienteisuto

A month or so ago I got a note from someone at etsy, saying the Japanese magazine Mono was asking for high res photos of some of my freakish animals. I sent on the goods and heard nothing until I got an email showing me pdfs of the published version.

Lots of etsy folk are included in the issue, as well as other online shops with mostly bizarro stuff.

It's Mono Magazine, issue 6/2/2009, (the translation "thing magazine" or "stuff magazine" works here as far as I can gather).





And here's my blurb, from page 72.

I was especially having trouble translating the long katakana word that was included, マットサイエンティスト, because I'm pretty bad with long katakana words, and easily give up because my brain just can't handle it. I was thinking it said something about "design taste", because I was reading "dosaien teisuto" out of it, but I knew that wasn't actually making any sense based on the characters. And also I'm not sure of the proper romanization with some little characters added to others.

So I emailed K-chan and here's her translation (she also she told me she bought 2 copies and will send me one, which is super cool):

The body is a spider, and the head is a cow(ox?).
Here comes an eccentric monster, which is probably
created by a mad scientist.

So, yeah, マットサイエンティスト　　Maddosaienteisuto = Mad Scientist. I guess I'm honored to essentially be referred to as a Mad Scientist in a Japanese magazine of which K says: "It's a very popular magazine, especially with men."

Now that I might get some Japanese customers to my etsy shop, I really ought to do some shopkeeping: lots of my stuff has expired and I've been totally neglecting everything. I haven't made a flipbook in months, (not sure I feel like doing it at all, production-wise) and am realizing more and more I'm liking the conceptual part a lot more than the labor-intensive part. What to do, what to do...?

* * *

In other news, related to mad scientists, or more like one furry mad genius....

Patches totally taught herself how to turn the knob on her automatic feeder. This is the feeder that actually came (off eBay) missing the part (dome over the timer) which now I realize was very valuable. I kept noticing the time was off, and was thinking the battery was being funky, but then one day I heard the knob gear turning (it's rather loud - click click click) and I went down there and there she was----turning it! I've been wondering how hard she thought this over (for months?) before figuring it out, and if at one point something happened and she was like "Aha! Now I get it." It's a little frightening.

This is like living with the rats of Nimh.

After one low-quality failed attempt to secure the situation with a rubber band and shoddy plastic basket, I got out the real tools (including the power drill, and it was serious business).



Materials/techniques include: half a plastic Christmas ornament thingy, drilled holes, eye screw (clipped and bent), wire, a washer.

I hope this holds up. If she gets into it now, she's getting nominated for some kind of cat intelligence prize.

Karee Raisu and a Crochet Tongue

Karee raisu is the Japanese "katakana English" word for curry rice. And that's Japanese curry rice (quite different than an Indian or other Southeast Asian curry). It's kind of like a thick curry gravy stew served with sticky white rice. It's one of my favorites!




So, I had been planning this for some while, since I bought some tiny little china "bowls" at the thrift store. This is a curry rice pincushion. I was scared the curry rice pincushion in my head wasn't going to come out... but I'm very pleased that it worked out pretty much as I imagined it.

I need to get to the post office before it closes in the late morning. I have a postmark deadline to meet, and if anything is a form of motivation, it's a postmark deadline.

If I make the deadline, I'm planning on entering the curry rice pincushion and a re-worked toothy pincushion into the Interweave Press Pincushion Contest. Thanks to my friend Catherine for telling me about it quite a while ago - of course I waited until a week before the deadline to get these going.

I had to "learn" to crochet as a technique which would fulfill the requirements. So I crocheted a tongue for a toothy pincushion.



Previous incarnations of the toothy pincushion have been sewn velvety fabric. It's much much more difficult to crochet a pincushion tongue than it is to sew one.



It's been a hectic week, craft-wise. Let alone organization/cleaning/yardwork-wise. There's just too much I need to do. As crazed as they make me, deadlines really are helpful.