new calligraphy supplies + planning for the meteor shower

I had the usual lab meeting this morning, and despite my results looking kind of wonky, my supervisor really liked it! Because it exhibited something seen clinically. I mean, the error bars are still pretty damn large and the plateau wasn't perfectly flat, but it still did stuff at the proper concentration.

I also showed them my data from Tuesday when I got super small error bars on another experiment, and how the data fit a quadratic curve more than it did a linear line of best fit. They liked it, so I was cool with that.

I headed home directly after in hopes of having time to do chores and study (oops, I just ended up sleeping). Made a stop at Curry's, something I've meant to do for the past couple weeks/months. I only wanted to see if they had refill cartridges or ink, but I ended up buying $50 worth of stuff:

• Calli | Daler Rowney - (Burgundy 013), 29.5mL [x]
• Calli | Daler Rowney - (Brown 013), 29.5mL [x]
• Royal India Ink - #95000, 30mL [x]
• Panache Master Calligraphy Set* [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Red 856)- [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Green 296)- [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Purple 606)- [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Black N15)- [x]

*I do not recommend this set at all; I will update with another blog post reviewing the stuff I bought at another point.

Curry's didn't have the Staedtler set, but after a quick Google search, Amazon sells them for pretty cheap and I can generally rely on Staedtler's quality (I've been using their triplus fineliners for a few years now) + Curry's actually stocks refill cartridges. When I asked the lady at the register if they had any Sheaffer cartridges she said they didn't, which was disappointing. Again, I'll tell the full story on a separate post.

Tonight is the first and possibly last time we'd get to see the Camelopardalids meteor shower - and I only found out about it yesterday. Weather permitting, I plan on dragging Rosie out in the middle of the night to Faculty Hollow to see if we can't watch a bit of the meteor shower. The last time I made a conscious effort to catch a meteor shower/astronomical event was two years ago - the Lyrids shower. I set my alarm for 3:30am, actually managed to get up and get dressed, and wandered outside. It was cold (mid-April, a day before my biochem final) and although the sky was clear I couldn't really see the sky because I only stayed on my street and the light pollution washed pretty much everything out. So I went back inside after 20 minutes.

Regardless of the outcome of today's adventure, I'll probably make another post about past astronomical events as well -- how I tried to follow the blood moon eclipse during exams but it was drizzling the night it actually happened, how the most stars I've seen in years was actually in Kingston on a tournament, maybe about how Orion's belt pretty much the only (partial) constellation I can recognize on my walks home at night because everything else is washed out.

Until then,

Alice out ~

Flowers from today (L-R)
Found these in front of the general hospital as I was waiting for the bus home.
Bleeding hearts on the front lawn of my former house. I've always really liked them for the vivid colouring and unique shape. To be honest they remind me more of cracked eggshells with egg white/yolk running out than bleeding hearts.

Springtime calligraphy

Today's experiments ran... not well. The control runs came out pretty good, but as soon as I tried using the AT-D plasma everything fell apart and the results don't make sense. I've re-adjusted some of the calculations, so hopefully tomorrow's runs go much more smoothly.

As I got home I noticed a lone tulip on our front lawn. I'm not sure where its bretheren are, but it was a nice tulip.

While I was uploading that photo I also found one I took of Mac earlier in the month. The daffodils were in full bloom and the sun was shining, and the campus actually looked very pretty for once. Because you know, if there isn't a honking lake in the middle of campus, it's usually grey, wet, cold, and miserable.

I ended up at Williams for dinner because I had no groceries left and HSM meeting began soon, so I parked myself across campus and ordered their chicken quesadilla. It turned out to be very soggy and disappointing, but while I was there I resolved to use one of my Hobbit Moleskine notebooks as the HSM notebook -- after a few weeks of deliberation I decided to use it after all. I had my calligraphy pen on me -- the only remaining working pen -- and set to working on a title page. It took me a lot of tries and a lot of practice, but eventually I gave up on having it look absolutely perfect and I didn't want to rip any more pages out of the book.

New card: Safe Travels

Adam is going on an archaeological dig next Monday to Belize, so I figured I might as well procrastinate some more and make a card and put my calligraphy to use. Too bad I had a really hard time to find a working calligraphy pen; I blame it 100% on not having any time during the school year to make anything. I definitely do not neglect my calligraphy supplies. Once I get paid for my lab work I'm going to make a trip down to Curry's on Dundurn to get more cartridges and ink, and maybe pick up some of their mixed paper grab bags.

As always, cards can be found on the Cards page. That is where I will be keeping all of my cards, since Blogspot doesn't seem to be as customizable as Tumblr. I'm actually thinking of transitioning over to Weebly just because they make designing the layout so easy. We'll see, I guess.

Safe Travels - May 2014

Base - blank card, blank parchment card

Belize - cardstock paper & scrapbooking paper

Fish - scrapbooking punch-out shapes

Fedora - cardstock paper

Lettering - scrapbooking punch-out shapes, gold metallic marker

Outlines- gold metallic marker
Calligraphy - PIGMA Calligrapher felt-tip marker
Words (interior) - fineliner
Envelope - parchment envelope & gold certificate seal

So this card was quite an adventure. At first the base was just the parchment card (see top-right image). It had a helicopter as well as the cut-out of Belize and the fish, but when it was time to do the lettering, the only calligraphy pen I had was a super cheap one that bled and fuzzed everywhere. The card became unusable, but I managed to salvage the cut-outs and transfer them (with the additional layer of parchment underneath) to the blue card. Then I decided to continue using the scrapbooking pack I had and added the letter embellishments on to the blue card. I also got rid of the helicopter because it looked super childish and it didn't fit in with the other elements.

Then it was time to do the interior. Luckily, one of my three PIGMA markers still worked (and it was the right width too, thank goodness) so I used that to ink in the main message and added the extra words in with fineliner. The thing about calligraphy is, it's a) hard to write consistently for a long period of time, especially with felt-tip markers, and b) is hard to read/fit on to the page. 

The envelope was initially the blue one that was paired with the base, but after consideration I used the parchment envelope instead because it fit the theme of the card more and because the blue envelope had enough wax on it to render the felt-tip ineffective. The gold seal was left over from a certificate pack I bought last year as part of a club event hosted for middle school students, so I added that as the finishing touch.

I only wish the lettering on the front was better; if only I had a gold metallic calligraphy marker instead of a fineliner, then it would have been perfect.

This card easily took a huge chunk of time, as with any card that involves calligraphy. However, this one took the most time (apart from the poinsettia card) solely because I had to scrap the parchment base idea, and because I spent a lot of time looking for a calligraphy pen that works.