What A Long Strange Year It's Been

Image shows chibi Terri & Ariela sitting on the floor. Chibi Terri is holding an outsize wine bottle, and there are two champagne flutes between them. Chibi Terri asks "Champagne babe?" Chibi Ariela replies "Nah. I already have a 2017 hangover."

By Terri & Ariela

"OW." ~ The US healthcare system, the US tax code, the average American

What can we say about 2017? It's been a singularly awful year for many, while Geek Calligraphy has grown as a business beyond what we could have expected or hoped for.

Some of our business highlights:

• We incorporated!
• We launched a new line of products - our coloring pages
• We released a new line of greeting cards - the Covertly Hostile series
• Our art was hung in 6 art shows in 5 states
• 13 new products this year (the last comes out on Wednesday)
• Terri & Ariela got to go to 2 cons TOGETHER!
• Donated $115 to charity through the sale of our prints

Once again, since Geek Calligraphy has exhibited at a number of convention art shows in 2017, Ariela is eligible to be nominated for a Fan Artist Hugo award. If you are eligible to nominate, please consider her for the ballot! Note - please nominate Ariela Housman, rather than Geek Calligraphy.

Arisia Prep is Bananapants

by Terri

Arisia is less than a month away. While we're also prepping panels, costumes and menus, the Arisia Art Show is a huge focus of our attention. Since we take so much more art there than any other show we exhibit at, Ariela and I have had to come up with a good system to ensure that she is not lugging too much matted art from Chicago. Last year Ariela brought most of the art to Boston with her along with the clear bags, hanging tabs, labels and stickers. I went out to Blick and bought ALL THE MATBOARD* (plus linen hinging tape, drafting tape and spray adhesive). We then had an epic matting party in my office.**

This year, she mailed all of the art to me ahead of time. We also ordered pre-cut backboards, more bags, & die cut stickers and had everything shipped directly to me. We still have not yet ordered ALL THE MATBOARD, but I already have just about everything else. I will be cutting the front frames once we order it, and then we will have another epic matting party when Ariela gets to Boston.

We have already had one exciting equipment failure (Ariela's printer decided that NOW was the best time to die, necessitating an express trip to Office Depot), but so far everything seems to be going OK.

So here are some picture of the already bananapants process, which is going to get Even More Bananapants as we get closer to the con.

This is sad art that the printer decided to eat.

[Image shows three different art prints that have color layers in the wrong places, chewed corners and black ink on their edges]

The new printer calmly doing its job.

[Image shows a printer on top of a bookshelf with a print half completed coming out of it]

A new treat for this year's art show - Stickers!

[Image shows a pile of colorful die cut stickers in plastic hanging bags]

ALL THE ART!

[Image shows a pile of unmatted prints and greeting cards on a wood floor]

Backboards. It turns out that it's cheaper to buy pre-cut matboard for the back of a print than it is to cut them ourselves.

[Image shows stacks of 11x14 and 8x10 backboards plastic wrapped together, surrounded by brown packing paper]

*I almost blew over waiting for my rideshare home.

**This involved discovering that one Does Not Buy inexpensive mat cutters and sending Matthew out to Blick to pick up a new shiny mat cutter at 9 pm.

Move Over Latkes

by Terri

Geek Calligraphy is a multi-culturally Jewish establishment. I am as Ashkenazi as you can get - my ancestors come from all over Eastern Europe. While Ariela is of Ashkenazi descent, she now follows the Spanish & Portuguese Sephardi traditions of her husband.* 

Crispy brown potato latkes on a plate.

What does any of this have to do with latkes? Well, it turns out that Jews of different communities and cultures have different חנוכה (Hanukkah) traditions! I know, right? The potato latke is very much the American symbol of the holiday, but only belongs to the Ashkenazi tradition. Interestingly, that tradition isn't even that old - potatoes didn't even arrive in Europe until the 16th century. What we now know as the "traditional latke" has gone through many transformations. It began as an Italian fried cheese dumpling, transformed into a buckwheat patty, and ended up as a potato pancake. Which is delicious with applesauce.

But what about Jews from other places? What do they eat on חנוכה (Chanukah)? 

Two square waffles side by side in a waffle iron.

Spanish and Portuguese Jews eat waffles. Why? Because on on חנוכה (Hanukah) we celebrate נס ופלא (pronounced nes vafele). Read it out loud, then groan and insert rimshot. Because just like Ashkenazi Jews don't have a monopoly on Judaism, they also aren't the only ones to make terrible, terrible puns.

Jews in Tuscany eat chicken deep fried in lots of olive oil. Many traditional חנוכה (Chanukkah) foods incorporate oil either as an ingredient or as the cooking medium.*** This is to reference the story of the miraculous oil that burned for 8 nights during the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. There is also an Italian tradition of eating dairy during this holiday (hence the original ricotta latkes), including a sort of cheesecake called a cassola. Eating dairy, specifically cheese, comes from an apocryphal text of the story of Judith and Holofernes in which Judith served salty cheese pancakes to Holofernes before getting him drunk and decapitating him. Though it is not technically a story that actually took place during the time of the Hasmonean revolt (it takes place several hundred years beforehand), it is connected to the story of חנוכה (Ḥanukah) because the stories were conflated during the Medieval period.

Golden fried chicken pieces on a blue platter. There are cloves of garlic and rosemary sprigs scattered over the chicken, as well as a pile of lemon wedges. Yum.

A large, synagogue style Indian chanukiah. It is formed of a large six pointed star made of brass, with the 8 lights of the holiday in an arc around the bottom and the shamash (helper candle) near the center of the star. 

I wanted to finish this post with some חנוכה (Janucá) traditions of the Indian Jewish community. The Indian Jewish community has a long history, with the community of Cochin, Kerala dating back to at least 562 BCE. In a time when news traveled by the speed of camel traders, communities were much more isolated. The Jews here didn't even celebrate חנוכה (Chanooka) until the immigration of other Jewish communities - they didn't know it was a holiday! Once the holiday became established, there seems to be a tradition of sweet foods and food fried in coconut oil eaten on the holiday. Among those foods are the Indian donuts gulab jamun. The Israeli sufganiyah (jelly/chocolate/dulce de leche/custard filled donut) is not the only fried sweet dessert associated with this holiday!

Another unique aspect of Indian חנוכה (Chanucah) celebrations are their traditional chanukiot. Instead of putting them in the window, Indian Jews hang them on the walls of their home.

So to conclude, there are as many traditional חנוכה (Hanucah) foods are there are Jewish communities. This year חנוכה (Hanuka) starts tomorrow night. Why not try waffles and gulab jamun along with the latkes when you celebrate!

*Ariela's adoption of Spanish Portuguese rite has nothing to do with heteronormative values wherein the wife must follow her husband's practice.** The number of Spanish Portuguese Jews has dwindled sharply in recent history and Ariela wanted to help prevent the custom's extinction.

**Note: some families divide adoption of customs differently. In my family, Matthew follows some of my long established customs rather than what his family does. I have also adopted some of his customs.

***Though the buckwheat version of latkes were fried in rendered poultry fat, since most oils were not to be found in abundance in 15th century Eastern Europe.

We're Incorporated!

The logo of incfile.com, the company we used to incorporate.

By Terri

We're coming up on the second anniversary of Geek Calligraphy as a business. Anniversaries are often good times to take the next step in the life of a business. So we have an announcement to make:

Geek Calligraphy is now Geek Calligraphy LLC!

While the distinction may not mean much to you our readers, to Ariela and me it is a Big Deal. Because we are no longer a sole proprietorship, Ariela is no longer the only one of us with a legal stake in the business. If something happens, we're both protected, which is very important to us not only on a practical level but also as an expression of our ideals; in case you missed it, workers' protections are something we care about.

It also allows us to do Fun Accounting Tricks that keeps the business money separate from our personal money (which is something our accountant has wanted us to do for a while). There are other reasons to do this, most of them legal and money related. These reasons are mostly boring to the average blog reader who comes here for the art, so I will not bother you with them further. Suffice it to say that this is a milestone and we are proud of it.

In addition, we would like to remind you that shipping deadlines are approaching fast! In order to have something arrive before חנוכה, it needs to be ordered by December 6th. חנוכה being 8 days long gives you something of a grace period, but it starts on December 12th and ends December 20th. You don't want to miss it all together. As for Christmas, the USPS has a deadline of of December 19th. In order for the art to be ready to ship by then, you need to place your order by the 14th.

Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving!

Get Your Own Terri

by Ariela

Basically since day one of Geek Calligraphy, I have been telling friends how grateful I am to have Terri as my partner, because without the things she does, this would be a much more difficult undertaking. I have also been telling my professional creative friends forever that they should get a Terri of their own. Well, now you can!

Chibi Terri holds a sign saying "Will Wrangle on a Contract Basis."

Terri is now taking on wranglees on a contract basis.

What can Terri do for you?

• Invoicing – Do you forget to invoice your clients on a timely basis because you are so caught up in the creative work of your project? Terri can send your invoices to your clients, or remind you to do it.
• Yelling at people – Are your clients late in paying their invoices? Did someone use your art without permission but the prospect of sending a DMCA takedown notice makes you want to hide under a blanket? Has your confidence in your prices deserted you, leading you to work below market price? Terri can speak sternly to people on your behalf and enforce your professional boundaries.
• Unsticking – Do you have a magnificent new project that you cannot wait to start but you are unsure where to begin? Does the magnitude of stuff that you need to get done paralyze you to the point you cannot do any of it? Terri can be a source of outside accountability to keep you on track. She can also help you break things into manageable bites and figure out which ones to start with.
• Social Media - If you need social media for Professional Business-y Reasons but it is overwhelming and stealing brain from your creative work, Terri can help.
• Work with you for short or long periods of time – If you need help with one specific thing, Terri can work with you for that long. If you need ongoing help, she can do that, too.
• Other things - This is not an all-inclusive list. If you need help with something not on here, ask her!

What Terri will not do for you:

• Be your business or creative partner – She’s mine, I found her first!
• Work below market rate – Terri is providing an important service and will be compensated accordingly. It would be hypocritical for her to offer to help you get paid what you’re worth, then accept less for her.
• Work without a contract – Contracts are there for the protection of both parties. Even a short engagement needs a contract.

While Terri's personal website is ArtistWrangling.com, and artists are her specialty, she does work with non-artist clients.

What are you waiting for? Get your own Terri!

Getting Your Art For The Holidays

Image shows a chibi Ariela under a pile of boxes and cardboard tubes saying "a little help, please..."

Thanksgiving is a week away, which means that the $_WINTERHOLIDAY shopping season will soon begin in earnest.* As such, we wish to make you aware of the purchasing deadlines we will be using to make sure that you (or the recipients) receive your purchases in time to celebrate. 

As per our FAQ, we generally ship USPS First Class. That requires the item be mailed by December 19th to guarantee delivery for December 24th. In order to give Ariela adequate processing time, we will require the orders to be placed by December 14th to make sure that there is enough time to get things printed, matted and shipped to you.

If you were looking for the perfect חנוכה gift from us, that needs to be ordered by December 6th to ensure arrival by December 12th. And may we suggest the Police Box Mizrach?

No matter what holiday you celebrate, our newest greeting card makes the perfect accompaniment to any gift. Be sure to pick one (or a pack) up with any order you place in the next two months.

*Despite Michael's best efforts to declare otherwise, the $_WINTERHOLIDAY season does not start until the day after Thanksgiving. At least not in our establishment.

New Greeting Card: Spoon Dragon $_WINTERHOLIDAY Card

Are you worried about picking an appropriate English spelling for חנוכה? Want to make a point in the "Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays" culture wars? Then we've got the card for you.

How It Came to Be:

As 2016 wrapped up, Ariela knew that November of 2017 would involve a significant amount of work at her day job. So we looked for some products we could release that would involve minimal effort on her part. Greeting cards tend to be the sort of things that can give Ariela a break from her day job, without taking a lot of time to finish and post-produce. Terri proposed the idea of an Global Winter Holiday Season card, using the "$_" variable. Ariela thought that Spoon Dragon was a great character to feature on the card, with winter gear. 

While looking for image references for Spoon Dragon's scarf, Ariela accidentally stumbled into one of the more intense intersections of the Fandom and Knitters Venn Diagram. While years of friendship with Terri made her peripherally aware of the fact that fandom knitters are a dedicated bunch of detail-oriented people obsessed with accurate reproduction, she still wasn't prepared for what she found there. Debates about patterns and yarn choice were expected, but essays on the relative ease of matching paint vs fabric to Pantone swatches and the differences between studio lighting, photoshoot lighting, and daylight were a tad overwhelming for a casual visitor to this subfandom.

The card shows Spoon Dragon holding a snowball, with large fuzzy blue earmuffs and a Very Long Striped Scarf. The outside text reads: "Happy $_WINTERHOLIDAY!!" The inside is available either with no text or with the following: "May your season be joyous and not eat your spoons."

As with all our cards, it is available singly for $4 each or in packs. In addition to our usual pack of 6 cards for $20, this one is also available in a pack of 10 cards for $30. 

One Artist's Tips for Taking Care of Your Hands in Cold Weather

by Ariela

Chicago seems to have jumped straight from summer to winter, skipping most of fall entirely. Bloody Hands Season is upon us, so here are some of my strategies for taking care of the appendages that let me make art.

Mostly, it boils down to two things:

1. Don't let your hands stiffen up; and
2. Moisturize.

Cold hands get stiff and restricted movement interferes with line quality. Dry skin gets paper cuts more easily, in addition to peeling and cracking on its own, hence these steps. This can be harder than it sounds when your office is very cold. In addition to being uncomfortable and distracting, cold makes moisturizer absorb more slowly, even into thirsty skin. Moisturizer residue on hands + paper = sadness. I also have poor circulation in my hands (thanks, genetics!), so my hands get cold and cramp up very easily, even if I am wearing lots of layers on the rest of my body. Doing calligraphy in gloves isn't a practical option, so I have developed some other strategies for coping.

My ink-stained fingers wrapped around a mug with a tea strainer sticking out. 

Before I get started on art each day, this is what I do:

1. Apply a heavy-duty moisturizer all over my hands.
2. Don rubber gloves and wash dishes in HOT water.
   The motion and the heat help limber up my hands, and the heat also helps the moisturizer absorb into my skin more quickly and thoroughly. Also, this gets the dishes done.
3. Make a hot beverage in a mug. The mug is important.
4. Start calligraphy. At the end of every line, put down the pen, wrap both hands around the mug of hot beverage and take a good sip.
   Drinking something hot warms me up, but the key point here is the hand motion. Unlocking my fingers from around the pen stretches them, wrapping them around the mug heats them.
5. Reheat and refill beverage as necessary.

Fingerless mitts designed and knit by Terri. Nine years of hard use and still going strong.

When I am working just in pencil, I can wear fingerless mittens, like this pretty purple pair that Terri made for me back in 2008. When I work with ink, though, mittens are a no-go. All it takes is a drop of ink on them, then when I put my hand back to the art it will soak right through my guard sheet and the entire piece is ruined. (A guard sheet is a piece of paper I put on top of the art so that my hand, with its sweat and oils, will not rest directly on the art.)

Hand Stretches

Stretching your hand and arm muscles is something to do year-round, not just when it gets cold, but it's extra important when it's cold and also more difficult - stretching in the cold is more likely to lead to injury. So I try to put on my mittens when I do my stretches, and I try to do some extras when I am in the shower and know that I am adequately warm.

If you don't already have a series of hand stretches you like, these are some good ones to start with.

Take care of your hands and happy cold weather!

FiberCon!

by Terri

A week ago, thanks to the generosity of a friend, I got to go to the New York Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY for the first time.  Typically referred to as "Rhinebeck" by fiber artists, this is one of the biggest festivals of its kind in America. 

Three sheep (2 with white wool, one with grey) with numbers on their butts. The sheep have recently had haircuts, and their fleeces were likely for sale at the show.

Maple cotton candy in bags hanging from a clothesline. It really looks like undyed wool for spinning. Watching people eat it is slightly disconcerting. It is delicious.

As the title of this blog post suggests, Rhinebeck (and other large sheep and wool festivals) is basically FiberCon, though weighted much heavier towards the Dealer's Room and Art Show and very light on the panels.* There are show presentations of sheep, goats and alpacas; and live demonstrations of sheepdogs herding sheep. Typically there is at least one Sheep to Shawl competition. There are tons of food vendors, people selling jewelry, clothing, edible roving (otherwise known as maple cotton candy), and all sorts of tools for fiber artists. 

But the main attraction is the yarn. Barns and barns crammed full of yarn and spinning fiber in every color of the rainbow (and a few colors that the rainbow wishes it could come in). I wish I'd taken pictures, but I was too busy staring at all the pretty. 

In some ways the festival was overwhelming. Even if I'd had an unlimited budget (I didn't) and the ability to carry anything I wanted to buy without getting tired (didn't have that either), I would still not have gotten everything I could have wanted. There was honestly too much to see and squish. (Given that we sell a card telling you that you don't have enough yarn, I know that can be hard to believe). I did blow through my budget twice (my friend is a wonderful, though expensive, enabler) and got some yarn that I never otherwise would have seen. I have plans for most of it, and may feature some if it here on the blog when it's finished.

The haul:

So much yarn in all the colors. 

Clockwise for the top left: A Gale’s Art gradient set in Wild Berries on their MYS 622 base (Superwash merino, yak, & silk), an Indigo Dragonfly Trimorphs Gradient set in Gothic Unicorn on the CaribouBaa base (100% superwash merino) with a set of 8 purple buttons from Jennie the Potter, a tin of lavender and mint solid lotion from Heal My Hands, a Gale’s Art Sparkle Sock Blank in Rockstar Rainbow, a skein of Miss Babs Yowza in Iolite, the Dragonfly Fibers Rhinebeck exclusive colorway on the Damsel base, and skein of Harvest Yarns Minty Mix from Sweitzer’s Fiber Mill (no colorway given, it’s a sort of purple grey. The base is 80% merino, 20% mint fiber).

All in all, a lovely way to spend a fall Sunday. I'm looking forward to coming back next year.

*And unless you count the fabulous haircuts** on some of the llamas and alpacas, no Masquerade to speak of.

**Example of a camelid with a fabulous haircut:

Cream camelid with brown spots with a poodle-style haircut.

Book Review: Steal Like an Artist

by Ariela

Periodically I like to read advice for artists and other creative type people. Even though I have been working as an artist for 14 years (good grief!), I'm always looking for more inspiration. If anything, the longer I go on with this, the more important it is to have a good process to prevent burnout. Since I have been doing this a while and have a pretty functional workflow, the percentage of new advice I find that I want to try is fairly low, but sometimes it's good just to be affirmed in the things I already do; sometimes it is also good to affirm what you do in the face of contrary advice.

Cover of the book Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

I recently read Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon. It is a very short read, and on the whole I liked it.

My Favorite Advice from Kleon

Kleon presented a couple of ideas in ways that worked extraordinarily well for me. Sometimes it's not about finding something new, but looking at something you already knew in a different way. The two that stood out for me here were his titular "Steal Like an Artist" section and his section on hobbies and side projects.

While the lines "nothing is new" and "take inspiration from everywhere" are hackneyed, but the particular collection of quotes about them that Kleon collected is funny and evocative and makes it seem, if not fresh, at least reminds me of the truth of it. I particularly liked the André Gide quote of "Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again." 

I was also somewhat surprised to see Kleon refer to taking pictures of things that you want to "steal" as keeping a "swipe file" or "morgue file." I take pictures of things that I find inspiring and want to use in my own art all the time; I just called it my "reference pictures." What I call my morgue file is the file I keep for my day job of...ideas I think are good that I want to emulate. Son of a gun, they are the same thing. How about that.

The other rephrasing that really spoke to me was his talk about not giving up your other hobbies and passions. Kleon wrote about focusing on writing to the exclusion of his music as "phantom limb pain." Oh yeah, did that ever resonate. I don't get to sew or do woodworking nearly as much as I used to, because between my day job, my calligraphy, and my safrut, I just don't have any time. But periodically the hankering to do them builds up into a compulsion that simply has to be answered before I burst. When I don't get to exercise my creativity in lots of ways, it hurts. Less urgently, I have been on a kick of listening to audiobooks for about the past year, whenever I was doing chores or working, or whatnot, and I basically stopped listening to music. I didn't realize how much I was missing it until I started watching the first season of "Legend of Korra" and downloaded the soundtrack. Wow.

The one really new thing I got from the book wasn't actually new, it was just something I never realized anyone else did. Kleon recommends keeping a "praise file" of nice things people say about your work that you can revisit when you are stuck in the creative doldrums. I have certain emails and even old Twitter exchanges that I like to go back and look at when I need a boost, but I always thought that was a self-involved indulgence of mine that no one else would ever do. Turns out the only self-involved part was thinking that I was the only one doing it.

What Didn't Work

As with all advice books, this one didn't hit all the right notes for me. That's okay. Not all advice will work for everyone because everyone's process is different. I'm not here to bash different methods, but there were a few things that Kleon said (or didn't say) that could be potentially harmful.

Kleon quotes his mother as saying "Garbage in, garbage out," and then expands this to say that you should surround yourself with great people and follow the best people possible online, pay attention to what they are talking about. With that in mind, it is rather appalling that in a book chock full of quotes, only four women besides his mother are quoted; one of the remaining four is his wife. Only one of the special black quote boxes features a woman. I have to wonder about Kleon's definition of "the best people" if it contains so few women worth quoting. So I would further expand his advice about following the best people online and say that it is imperative to follow people who are very different from you, in background, in method, and in fields. You will learn more that way, and your creative life will be richer for it.

The section called "Use Your Hands" also got my hackles up. It is an exhortation to return to analog methods. Normally I am all for praise of physical media; as someone who writes with a quill on parchment, I'm clearly a fan of the old school. But Kleon's framing bothers me intensely because he implies that working purely digitally is bad for the creative process. It may very well be bad for his creative process, and good for him that he has identified this and made it part of his workflow to use analog methods. But generalizing from "this works for me" to "this is the best way to Art" makes me angry. Yes, by all means try some natural media if you primarily work digitally. Try a new medium, or go back to one you haven't worked with in a while. I believe that the artistic process is fundamentally different in natural media than in digital, but I also recognize that people are wired differently. Don't eschew physical media out of habit, but if you try it and hate it keep coming back to this miserable exercise because someone wrote a book or an article online saying that this is The One True Way of Art, just no. Eff that noise. Try new things, stretch your creative muscles in new and different ways, but don't let anyone else tell you what you must and mustn't do to be an Artist. (Jen Bartel had a magnificent Twitter rant on this in response to the originator of Inktober saying something similar.)

I'm also kinda bothered by his placement of his advice about marrying well in the same section where he talks about keeping a logbook and taking care of yourself. I felt that it would have worked better in his section about surrounding yourself with interesting, awesome, and supportive people, because if you are a creative and you're married, ideally your spouse is all of these things in spades. Framing it that way would have placed a spouse as captain of Team You; as it is, it comes off as a lifestyle recommendation, and I'm bothered by people pushing marriage. Yeah, I'm married, but again, people are wired differently and I am uncomfortable with prescribing major life decisions for other people. Also, much of what he said about spouses would apply equally to roommates, so why is it about Marrying Well? Why not "Choose Cohabitors with Care?" I admit, this might be overpicky on my part.

On the whole I don't think this book was a waste of time, and considering my experience with a lot of other advice books for artists, that's actually pretty high praise. Not all of his advice will apply to everyone, but for me the parts that worked outweighed those that didn't.

Yes, I would recommend it.

You can visit Austin Kleon online here.