Saturday, November 8, 2008

Idea for ATC's -- Black Jewel Trilogy

Well here is my idea this morning...

It comes from 2 things...Pokey Bolton (from Quilting Arts) said in her blog yesterday that she wanted to make a Soprano's quilt.

http://www.quiltingartsblog.com/

Well, I don't want to make a quilt for a show -- but I am completely stuck on a series of books: The Dark Jewels trilogy. by Anne Bishop. This is a fantasy book with lots of sex and violence. It is not my usual style because it is way too bloody and grim. I usually read light fantasy. I almost didn't make it past the first chapter. But I am just stuck. I've read the entire trilogy 4 Times since July when my daughter suggested it. I've now read every book by the author and I know when the next book is due out. Really, really stuck.

http://www.annebishop.com/

And I thought I could make a quilt about that ... then I thought No, quilts are too much work... so how about a series of ATC's about the books. The author has requested no fan-fiction, but surely trading cards would be all right.I haven't decided to do it yet, but isn't it a lovely idea.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Tin Eye -- Image Searching



I have heard enough stories about people finding images of their artwork on other people's sites -- or even in somebody else Cafe Press store that I am investigating protecting my online images. I just learned about a new tool that could be useful...

Its name is Tineye and you can find it at http://www.tineye.com/

The way it works is that you give it an image and it looks through its database of images on the web for matches. It is supposed to match off the way the image looks.

You don't have to register the image ahead of time, you give it an image and it goes and looks for duplicates. They do warn you that it is new and they haven't got nearly all of the web scanned yet.

I registered on their site and tried it out. I gave it some images that are on my website and some I have on renderosity and on this blog. It didn't find any of them. Not even where I knew they were.

I figure that is because they aren't indexed yet. I would think they would index things that have a lot of traffic first and I don't get a lot of traffic yet.

Anyway I am curious if this would work better for anyone else. Especially someone that gets more traffic than me.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Quilt Festival

I went to Quilt Festival last week and had a lovely time. I went on Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On Thursday I went by myself, Friday and Sunday I met people and wandered with them.

The main thing about the International Quilt Festival is that it is overwhelming: the number of quilts is overwhelming; the quality of quilts is overwhelming; the vender room is overwhelming and I haven't even tried taking classes there yet.

I spoke to Terry White who wrote "Thread Painting" at the Festival. And I spoke to her a lot... first I wandered by and watched her thread paint. Then I got lost and wandered back by accidentally and she helped me get turned around again. Next I helped find her booth for one of my friends and last I went back and actually bought her book. She was nice every single time.

She sews slower than I would have guessed, her needle was going up and down maybe twice a second. Obviously she was moving her fabric slowly too.