Lord of the Silent

Amon-Re is the Lord of the Silent. Who is Amon-Re? He is the Ancient Egyptian god of the Sun, and a beautiful golden artifact found by the amazing Amelia Peabody Emerson in my most recently completed book.

I believe I have mentioned before that I am in love with the Amelia Peabody series written by Elizabeth Peters. I had started this series by listening to the audio books narrated by the fantastic voice talents of Barbara Rosenplat, but I had to switch to reading the books because Audible has a gap!

This post is mostly an update on what's going on in my life, as I have not been very consistent in my blogging (If you happen to have a twitter account, I've been slightly more consistent in getting tweets in...).

As I mentioned above, I just finished reading "Lord of the Silent" by Elizabeth Peters. It was a very enjoyable book, as they all have been thus far. I had the chance to finish this book because I read most of it in airports and in flight. I've recently started this thing while reading in which I write down words I come across that I either do not know the meaning of, or words that I am just curious of the dictionary's definition. In reading this book, I wrote down over 100 words that met the criteria I just mentioned, and I didn't even have my notebook with me for at least half the book! Here are some of the more entertaining words that I have had the chance to look up:

aggrandizement: to make great or great; to make appear great or greater: praise highly

picayune: something trivial, or little value; A Spanish half real peace formally current in the South.

surreptitious: done, made, or acquired by stealth

supercilious: cooly and patronizingly haughty

ungainly: lacking in smoothness or dexterity: clumsy; having an awkward appearance.

I'm happy to report that reading this series will be building up my vocabulary! You are probably curious as to why I was traveling, well, I just got back from a quick trip to Boulder, Colorado for a triathlon that Kambria competed in. It was a fun trip with the sisters; we got to see wonderful lightning storms, do some window shopping, eat bad Thai food, eat great Chinese street food, watch new shows, and see Kambria compete at a pretty large race! Kambria did well, though not as well as she would have liked. The most important part is that she qualified for another big triathlon at the end of the season. If you want to read more about her season, you should go visit her blog. She hasn't written about her Boulder Tri yet, but you can feel free to bug her about it!

I think this will be the end of my brief update. Coming up soon, I will write about my sister Devynn's Etsy store, and her self-taught glassworks business (she's making me an adorable pair of earrings!). You should check up on her store periodically, it's called Fallen Leaves Koi. Check her out on facebook and Twitter!

I will leave you with a picture of my newly acquired stickers. If you didn't know, I collect stickers to put on my sketchbooks (Cassandra does this too). I wanted to find a cool Colorado one, but didn't have the best of luck. These stickers are pretty cool though!

For the Love of Contests

One of my goals for this year is to participate in a contest each month. Contests are a wonderful way to give yourself a deadline, and push your limits to learn something new. Now that I am out of school, and  somewhere in between free-lance designer and employee for my parents' business, I find that I need to push myself more than I did when I was in school.

For the month of January, I failed miserably. I had intended to design a fabric for one of Spoonflower.com's weekly contests. If you have never had the opportunity to check out Spoonflower, I highly recommend doing so. They are a fantastic website that gives you the opportunity to design your own fabric and actually get it printed! There is also a wide range of beautiful designs available to chose from that other artists have already uploaded. My favorite part is the contests though, and at some point this year, I will enter one!

Because of my failure at making it into any contests for the month of January, I decided that I would just have to enter two contests in February. To my surprise, there is a wide range of contests on DeviantArt.com. I found two different fashion illustration contest groups to join, and designed something for each one. 

This dress was for the "Greek Mythology" theme for the "Fashion Illustrators" group.
My dress design is based on Heracles fighting the Hydra. If you want more of a description, go check it out on my Deviant Art account.

This dress design was for the "Ugly by Design" contest in the group "Catwalk Challenge" on DeviantArt.
There were several ugly patterns given for this contest, and the challenge was to use at least two in one design.  This was what came of my design, which I had to do all of the rendering on Photoshop to keep the patterns.

Back in January, I did some surfing on the web to see if I could find some design contests that required sewing and fashion shows and the like. I found a really cool one involving the "International Talent Support", which is located in Italy and has design labels that come to watch the show! I had to create a collection of 5 to 8 looks with a specific inspiration.

I have been quite obsessed with Ancient Egyptian Mythology lately, and after purchasing a book about it on my birthday, I found plenty of interesting topics to inspire a collection. I chose "the Book of Gates," which is a work that describes the passage of Ra (the sun god) through the Tuat (the Underworld). There are 12 divisions of the underworld, each with a gate and large serpent guarding it. Each of these serpents have a name, and in order for the deceased person to get to Amenti (sort of a heaven), they must have the names of the snakes to get through the gates. For Ra, he has to pass through all of the divisions to get through the other end. The 12 divisions represent the 12 hours of night, so when Ra emerges at the end, it is morning.

I designed a menswear collection inspired by the different divisions of the Tuat.

My collection for the ITS Fashion Show.

I mailed my package at the end of last week, and will hear in mid-April if I am a selected finalist. If I get in, that means I get to actually make all of these garments by July (when the actual show is), and the really awesome part is, ITS will fly me and my collection to Italy for the show! So send me all of your good energy so that I make it as a finalist!!

For next months contest, I am thinking I might try for a t-shirt design contest.

Anyone of my readers a crazy contest person like me?

Salumu Alakum!

Salum Alakum is the Arabic greeting "Peace be upon you!"

Recently I have become very interested in Arabic and Middle Eastern countries. Where did this inspiration come from? Well, it probably started with my listening to the Amelia Peabody Series by Elizabeth Peters. 

I used to have this idea that I would never have any reason or desire to listen to a book when I could just read one. It probably didn't help that the only book I had ever attempted to listen to was a terrible written story narrated by mediocre voice talent. Then one day, I began working in the Outdoor Gear Repair Shop in Corvallis. The shop is a fair sized room made from an old garage of a building, and is filled with different sewing machines, various hardware, scrap fabric and materials and plenty of gear in need of repair or recently repaired. The man who owns this shop and works in everyday loves to collect and listen to audiobooks. So while I was employed there I got to enjoy quite a few good books with good and bad narrators and discovered how much easier it is to do mundane work while listening to a book. Expanding my vocabulary isn't a bad side effect either.

One of the last books I had the privilege of listening to was one of the Amelia Peabody books: "Seeing a Large Cat." I fell in love with the characters in the story. Amelia Peabody is an opinionated Brittish Egyptologist, that has a wonderful family of colorful characters placed in 1880s to early 1900s. Most of the books take place in Egypt and always have some sort of mystery that needs to be solved and usually some confounded young lovers that need her help. The narrator of the audiobook is a very good narrator. If you decide you should listen to these books, you should look for the versions narrated by Barbara Rosenplat. Elizabeth Peters in a wonderful author, and I would recommend reading the books if you don't want to listen to them. The author definitely knows what she is talking about when it comes to the history and relics of Egypt, which means in reading the books you are actually learning something about history. I am currently on book 12 of the 19 book series, and can't wait to finish them!

Listening to Amelia's passion for Egypt makes me want to go and see it for myself. A world that is desert is very intriguing. The other two books I have been reading this month have also inspired me to learn about the Middle East. The nomadic tribe of the Tureg have certainly captured my interest. I have also recently learned about one of the most expensive hotels in the world is located in Dubai, and it is interesting! Dubai seems to have a collection of unique and modern architecture. 

Burj Al Arab-- Luxury Hotel of Dubai

Now back to the phrase "Salumu Alakum!" In the Amelia Peabody books, a reader will become familiar with some Arabic words that the author has included in the story. This phrase is definitely one of them. Imagine my surprise when I was walking out of Corvallis's Dollar Tree and I heard and recognized this phrase! Imagine my further surprise when the person who said this phrase was a Caucasian gentleman, holding the door open for two Arabs! Hearing him say that to them, really made my day! I do not think I would ever be brave enough to try to speak someone else's language here, because I feel like I cannot differentiate between races that well and would hate to offend someone. If I was in Egypt, it might be a different story! 

Egypt is definitely a place I would like to visit one day, and Arabic might be a language I want to learn (It's at the back of the line though). I love how a whole new world has been opened up before me, thanks to a book!

Ramses the Tyrant

What do you know about Ramses II, one of the longest-ruling Pharaohs of Egypt? There are a lot of very interesting facts about this Pharaoh, but the main discussion of this blog is the feline who has been given his name.

And this is Ramses! The eight-month old, starving cat that got dropped off near my parents' house! He picked a good time, because the only heart he had to melt was my mother's, and she has a big heart. It just so happened that my dad and Devynn were just leaving for Eastern Oregon for their deer hunt, and Kambria and I went to visit Cassandra in San Francisco for her birthday. This little guy was here when we got back, and what a surprise he has been!

First of all, he is ridiculously playful. Our other cats are all Manx, and are very "introverted." They are super sweet to everyone in the family (although some cats seem to have their favorites) and very skittish when new people are around. Not Ramses. He could be described as extremely extroverted! He hardly sleeps, he always wants to play, he is always hungry, and he always has something to say! 

So, why the name Ramses? I think this name was actually Kambria's idea. It could be that I made her listen to the first book of the Amelia Peabody Series on the way down (and she enjoyed it!) and that the majority of the story takes place in Egypt in the late 1800s. 

It does seem fitting for him though. Instead of black eye liner like what Egyptians wore (or like a lot of other cats) he has black lipstick. He also wants to be the center of attention, which is similar to Ramses II erecting statues of himself all over Egypt. The fact that he came to us as an adolescent could also be likened to Ramses II taking the thrown of Egypt in his teen years. 

Ramses is adapting to life here very well. He still plays a little rough, but he sleeps more and isn't starving (still obsessed with food though). 

Here are another couple of pictures of this funny cat:

Here is Ramses on my shoulders sleeping ( I think)
He jumped up there of his own accord!

Here's the little Tyke playing by himself underneath
the wine cabinet

I will also share with you  just one fact that I learned while doing a little research on Ramses II. (Note: This was on Wikipedia, but it did have 3 citations, you make the call!)

Apparently in 1974, Egyptologists saw that Ramses II's Mummy was deteriorating in the Cairo Museum. Ramses II was issued an Egyptian passport that stated his occupation as "King (deceased)" and they sent him on to Paris to find out that he had a fungus that was causing the problem. Also, when he arrived in Paris, the military gave him a welcome befitting a king! 

Way to go Ramses!!