… including me, apparently. I’ll be at AutomataCon the weekend of May 18-20, 2018.
Category: Nerdery (Page 1 of 2)
I posted a request on Facebook for a picture of a cat in a box, and within a half-hour I had six. Naomi Kritzer responded first, so it was her cat Cassandra Fluffypants that got drawn, which is totally fitting because her short story Cat Pictures, Please won a freaking Hugo Award this year.
Enjoy.
Late this fall, I was helping my cousins clean out their mom’s basement, and we came across a stack of cast iron skillets. I don’t know much about them, but I do know that there are a few highly collectable brands — and the entire stack was nothing but Wagners and Griswolds. I half-jokingly asked my cousins if I could have one, and they said yes, that their mom would have wanted them to stay in the family regardless of their value.
So of course, because I’m me, I immediately went home and looked up the skillet online. According to this article on the Wagner and Griswold Society’s website, (of course there’s a society) this pan is a Fifth-Series Griswold #9 skillet, pattern 710D, with an inset heat ring and a rounded rib handle, manufactured in Erie, Pennsylvania sometime between 1905 and 1907. It is both wondrous and a little scary that there are people who know this much about cast iron — but as a fellow history nerd, I’m grateful they exist.
The skillet was in pretty darn good shape to begin with, but since you only find hundred-year-old cookware once in a blue moon, I followed the lye-bath directions on the WAGS site to electrolyze all the gunk off.
It took a couple of dips and some scrubbing, but after about two weeks the water had turned black and thick as imperial stout. After a couple rounds of scrubbing with Dr. Bronner’s and some steel wool, I had a clean, beautiful bare iron pan.
The WAGS site suggested one seasoning coat of Crisco, but I’m a sucker for Serious Eats with their photo-heavy food-sciencey articles, so I used J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s method. The results were stunning:
Once I’d got the antique skillet back in working order, I took our Martha Stewart pan that had served us loyally for the last dozen years, and stuck it in the lye bath for a couple of weeks. Unlike the antique, we’d ridden old Martha hard and put her away wet, and she was covered in a gunky black crust that no amount of scrubbing could remove. That lye bath, though:
The gunk just sheeted off in 2-inch hunks. I was very impressed. I forgot to take a picture of Martha before we passed her on to some friends, but once that stuff was off, she looked like she’d just walked out of the store: perfectly clean, gunmetal-grey iron.
The experts say that the older skillets are a higher-quality iron, and that they were polish-ground to a fine finish — and I certainly saw the difference between the old skillet and Martha, who was rough and pebbly, even after I’d taken a steel drill-brush to hear a couple years ago. When you run your fingers over the cooking surfaces, you immediately notice the antique skillet’s superior quality. It’s lighter, too — the antique is an inch or two wider than Martha, but she’s lighter. There’s a lot of debate over whether or not this makes that much of a difference when you’re cooking, and I probably have some sunk-cost fallacy / confirmation bias going on, but I feel like the Erie definitely cooks better. Still, for me, it’s more about putting a family treasure back in action. Allez Cuisine!
It’s here! Adam Withers’ and Comfort Love’s Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics is now on sale!
Available online and at finer book and comic shops everywhere, it’s the most comprehensive book on making comics, manga, and webcomics you’ll find! Our oversized mega-chapters include: Concepting, Writing, Drawing, Coloring, Lettering, Publishing, and Marketing! Everything you need to know to make your book a reality!
Plus there are sidebars from more than 70 of the best and smartest comics/manga/webcomics pros out there, so you don’t have to take our word for it.
… or mine, for that matter. Check out these reviews from Bleeding Cool and Comic Related. Paul brought our copy home from the Local Comic Store, and it’s even more gorgeous than I’d hoped.
Thanks again, Adam and Comfort, for including us in this amazing project. I’m so glad to still be part of comics self-publishing.
So hey, I know I spend an awful lot of time on this blog talking up all the awesome stuff Paul gets up to, but he’s a pretty legitimately amazing guy who’s always pushing his design abilities and making incredible art. I’m not just saying that because I’m married to him — that’s empirical data, and you can test that stuff in a lab.
He just did an installation for 826 Michigan, and I did a writeup with all sorts of photos and stuff over at the Fiery Studios blog, so you should go check it out.
Sorry for the repeat info, but I just had to show off this great banner that Paul made for me. We leave for Wizard World Chicago this morning, and we’ll be there all four days, in Artist’s Alley at Table C-41. Hope to see you there!
Here’s Mark’s initial report on the Stratoballoon launch:
The launch of the balloon went off as well as can be expected. The deployment steps I was most worried about – filling and securing the balloon, and stringing all of the components together – went just fine.
The liftoff similarly went very well. We released the components one at a time to prevent any sudden jerks on the line, and then had a countdown when it came to the capsule itself. The girls jointly released that piece. We had very little wind, and a bright, clear sky when we released, so we were able to watch it ascend until it was just a pin-prick – about 2000 feet. We even had a small audience to watch it go up!
Read the rest here — and stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion when I’m back from Wizard World!
A little over a year ago, I posted a signal boost on the JanerBlog about my coworker, Mark and his daughter Katherine, who were working on building and launching a stratoballoon.
As the launch date approached, Mark informed me that the test pilot had been selected: Rainbow Dash. Now, My Little Ponies being a favorite of mine when *I* was a kid, there was only one thing to do: Make an aviator outfit for Dash so she could ride outside the capsule like a boss:
Fast-forward another few weeks to today, and the balloon is ready to launch! Mark’s amazing wife CJ cut a bunch of press releases to the local media, and the results are equally awesome: two local TV stations came out to the house for interviews. Here’s the first:
The launch as been delayed a day thanks to the first thunderstorms we’ve had in two weeks (shakes fist at sky) but a launch date of tomorrow means that I can still be their water-rescue crew in case the capsule splashes down in a lake rather than on land.
If you’re as interested in the SCIENCE! as I am, Mark’s written a fantastic series of informative blog posts about the process of building all the components, purchasing the weather balloon, prepping the capsule — even dyeing the parachute a bright orange for better chances of recovery. Check it out, and check back in a few days for more pictures and reports from the stratosphere!
Hey, everybody! This weekend I’ll be a guest at Wizard World Chicago, all four days, from Thursday August 21 through Sunday August 24. Paul and I will be exhibiting in Artist’s Alley at Table C-41.
I’ll have Clockwork Game trade paperbacks, both Vögelein books, and a bunch of clockwork jewelry — probably my very last batch, too, as I’m running out of gears.
My schedule is pretty simple: I’ll be at the table pretty much all day every day, except for a panel that I’ll be moderating on Friday:
Creativity That Lasts
Friday, August 22
2:00-2:45PM
Room 6
I’ll be speaking with Josh Elder, C.S. Marks, and Jack Reher.
This panel is an incredibly fun, off the cuff discussion about creativity within various mediums such as art, writing, music, design, and more. As an artist, writer, actor, musician or creator, there is nothing more challenging than the development of the creative process. Is art birthed from the spontaneous or is it a result of a carefully crafted rhythm and structure? In this panel, esteemed creators will describe how to overcome creative obstacles and share their keys to unleashing creativity.
If you’re in town, stop by and say hello. Hope to see you there!
Earlier this year, a fan of mine emailed me to ask if she could cosplay Vögelein at an upcoming comic convention. Of course I said yes, and yesterday I received a bunch of pictures from her that absolutely stunned me. Have a look at the amazing work of art Rebekah W. brought to the 2014 Denver Comic Con:
I mean, look at the detail! A friend of mine said, “A lot of love went into that costume,” and it’s really true. She made the wings, the dress, the prosthetic ears, got a (really good-looking) wig, and even built both keys from scratch.
Seriously, look at all the detail she put into the wings. They’re amazing, and must have taken weeks to build.
This one’s my favorite, though. It really looks like she’s flying!
And then some jerks went and put her in a cage. I’m not worried, though. She can totally break out of there.
I’m so impressed at the job that Rebekah did translating my character into real life. This is only the second time anybody’s cosplayed one of my characters (a friend of mine here in Kalamazoo was the first, a few years ago on Halloween) and I’m just so honored by her work. How lucky am I, as an artist? How many people get to create something, release it into the world, and then find out it affected someone so deeply?
One last note: It turns out an old college buddy of mine, who’s well-familiar with my books, was working at the convention and actually glimpsed the elusive Vögelein on the wing — but she was busy checking in artists and couldn’t stop to chase her down, then lost sight of her forever in the crowd. “At first I wasn’t sure what I saw; just that I recognised it,” she said. “Then it hit me after I had time to let it sink in but I hadn’t any proof.” Fitting, wouldn’t you say?
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