Encaustics

I bought mom (& me) an encaustics kit plus a bunch of cradled boards for Christmas, and today we had fun painting! I painted starfish from a photo I had taken a bunch of years back:

Not bad for a first attempt, huh?

Interestingly, it also looks good rotated by 90 degrees:


Now I need to decide which way to hang it. ;)

In the category of "no shit, Sherlock"... tins of wax are still hot several minutes after you remove them from the heat:

I also had it all over me, the floor, and the newspaper covering the table. Thankfully I was able to get it all off the floor! I put as much as I could back in the tin... that stuff is expensive!

Open Letter

Open letter to manufacturers of toasters:

Is it really that hard to design a toaster that toasts more evenly than this?

Done?

Contemplating...

House Discoveries

I was out for drinks with some colleagues on Thursday, and, after talking with a friend of my boss, it occurred to me he might be interested in the oscilloscope in my front porch that my brother left behind. It turns out he was. Idly, he wondered why it was in the front porch, since that isn't a terribly good place for an oscilloscope. I didn't know why, but said I'd bring it in to warm up so that he could test whether it actually worked or not.

Tonight I wandered down to the basement, wondering if my brother had left behind a "third hand", since Princess Auto has them on cheap right now. I found out why the oscilloscope was in the front porch: there were two more in the basement.

I had no clue what I would do with *one* oscilloscope, let alone three.