Grandpa’s coins
I just went through a shower cap full of coins from my maternal grandfather.
Sorted within the cap were individual clear plastic bags tied off with coins from different countries within.
I haven’t spent much time researching what’s in there, but grandpa liked interesting coins from many countries, I think.
The one interesting batch that caught my eye: four twenty cent Queen Victoria coins from Hong Kong, circa 1868 through 1895.
A 142 year old coin on my desk.
Reading about that coin in particular was interesting. England shipped their coins over to Hong Kong for use.
My grandfather was born on Mainland China, moved down to Hong Kong to raise his family. WW II had a significant impact on family history, and I don’t know all the stories. I just know he moved around a lot in his lifetime. Grandpa lived in HK, Taipei, and finally Birmingham, England. I guess the coins went with him to England.
A very long drawn out circle.
And now they’re on my desk in Haddonfield, NJ. If anything, they’re not on the right land mass.
Check out the scan at flickr.
In another bag: Nine 20 cent silver coins from Kwang Tung Province with Dr. Sun Yat Sen on the face. Dated 18th year. (1929). I was confused by why there were only coins from that year in the bag as his other bags had coins from different years. And then I remembered that in Cantonese, the number ‘18′ sounds phonetically like the phrase ‘will definitely prosper’. Talk about good luck charms, I got 9 of them!
These days it looks like they may be worth $10-15 depending on condition, but the fact that grandpa went looking for a particular year is priceless, and these aren’t going anywhere.
Just signed up for a screenprinting class
Took a class in screenprinting a decade ago when I was up at Museum School in Boston… Did not pay attention at all and was turned off by the amount of manual labor – printing, cleaning, etc. etc. Which is funny because all the other classes in printmaking like lithography, etching, woodcut had a ton of manual labor. Man, those limestone slabs for lithography!!! And grinding those faces clean for the next print?! Now I wish I paid more attention in screenprinting class.
Doesn’t matter now, refresher course. Screenprinting seems to be the one area where I can make prints for the least amount of $$ outlay. All the other printing areas need at the very least a press. Screenprinting will just need manual labor. Which is free.
Wednesdays at night. Hope this leads somewhere.
At the very least it will force my Threadless subs to be simpler as I should be thinking in terms of screens, # of colors, line vs. field. etc.
Simper in my head = more of a chance to print. A slight majority of prints in the Tless catalogue seem to be 2-3 colors only. And I like big prints, so less the better cause 5 colors is max for oversized subs.
New Inlay design in the works
Hope to flesh it out this week.
Looks to be really interesting.
And that MSCE thing, jeez, it took only 4 days to fall off that wagon.
Ink Addiction at Threadless
It’s subbed
-
and approved
. Here’s to the new decade.
EDIT: I am very proud of my score, and I was even up on the top 25 scoring subs for 2 weeks. Now I gotta wait 90 long days to see if it will happen (print) or not. I’ve been reading up more about screenprinting and all that goes into it just to make my brain wrap around the method behind the madness so that the next few subs will have some organization around it in terms of colors, backgrounds, visibility and detail. I have been thinking in terms of colors and contrasts recently, but not enough in terms of simplicity and editing down my tendencies for overused colors.
I still cannot for the life of me get down to 4 colors. It just doesn’t work in my head. Have to try it though, just to see if I can do it.
2010 MSCE starting today
Better get to sketching, huh?
Hope to return to making one inlay design a week to show on here.
And I gotta get more up at Threadless. I have little mountains of rolled up yellow trace sketches on both my desk and bookshelves. Gotta get to producing something.
And to top it all, I’m supposed to be restarting my job search. Fun! Yes Sir, another kick in the nuts, Please!
New Threadless WIP’s
I have a few sketches I’m still working on for shirt submissions.
And an occasional chip inlay design job.
The Cintiq has been awesome to work with. Photoshop is now intuitive with the pen and the lasso.
I just need to spend more time on that instead of trolling for old Lego space sets on eBay…
Pullback in chips
Since the beginning of 2009, I have been liquidating almost all of my chips to free up cash for bills and such.
I have gotten down to the paulson sample chips. I have even sold off about 13 paulson chip racks, which is really an indication that I do not intend to grow in chip count anytime soon, as jeez those things are hard to get.
I still spend way too much time at chiptalk, but now it’s more useless blather instead of buying things.
I am very happy with the sets that are left.
2 TRK cash sets
1 Paulson casino tournament set
Life rolls on.
