Pornata Funfessions

I have a confession. This is not actually my first Pornata experience. When I turned 30, we threw a huge party, renting a Victorian mansion on the ocean for a weekend. Two of my friends came bearing a pinata. At the appointed time, the entire party headed out to the beach via a long, dark, wooded path. Fortunately we were all wearing glow sticks, (and glow bracelets, and glow necklaces...) so any predators were scared away.

When we reached the beach, we tossed the pinata over a sign, and commenced the ritual beating.

Our yelling and glowing attracted some of the other late-night beach goers, including a number of children. As the pinata began to give up its delicious, sugary guts, the children asked if they could have some candy.

"SUUUUURE! Yaaay!!! Candy for everyone!!!!" I told them, feeling unusually magnanimous about the distribution of candy to strange children (it was MY birthday, after all... those Chompos were all mine according to the calendar.)

What I didn't realise at the time was that the pinata had been well stocked with airlines-sized alcohol bottles and porn, my friends having just come from a visit to Las Vegas, where they collected a number of those cards the street guys flick at you. One of my other friends went around covertly trading the children porn-and-booze for candy before the parents realised what was happening. We aren't sure if she got it all, its possible some minors escaped her dragnet and returned home with tits and whiskey, but she was vigilant in her attempts. It is for that friend that I am making the current pinata, which I intend to fill only with candy.

Probably.

Maybe.

Overly Charmed

I'm deeply embroiled in a terrible law class that requires a ridiculous amount of reading and writing, even for a graduate class. This means that I need occasional mental breaks, and I find having something tactile to do helps to clear my brain. Since the pinata is drying, I needed another project. I wanted to make a gift for my friend's party that was more keep-able than the pornata, so I decided to go with jewelry.

I cyber-stalked my friend's pintrest and facebook pages, and found pictures that she had liked, and some of her family. I know she really likes bracelets, so I'm going to try to make one using the photos. The first order of business was making tiny copies of the photos. This was complicated by the fact that I don't currently have a working printer. I outsourced the printing to my father, who delivered me a page of tiny pictures.

The tiny photos then became even tinier circles. They're on my phone for scale. Also because it made a convenient holding tray. I guess there really is an app for everything. 

I bought some cabochon trays in bulk on Amazon, along with the little glass pieces that go into them. This was harder than it sounds, because sellers of the trays don't seem to feel its necessary to say what size glass matches it, which is important because if they are mismatched then you can't make jewelry magic. Eventually I found some products that looked like they would match. I stuck the pictures into the circles, added a drop of glue, and threw on the glass pieces. 

The result is cute little charms. The glass helps to magnify the photos, but some of them are still hard to distinguish from little blobs of colour. That's ok, I think my friend likes colour, and she will probably be able to recognise her kids, right? RIGHT?

The next step was to put these puppies onto a bracelet. For that, I needed to make a bracelet. I'm kinda guessing at size here, I used a standard 7 inch bracelet measurement, and added a giant clasp so that it is theoretically easier to put on than using a tiny one. Then I attached three lengths of jewelry chain to hang charms from. The silver on the hardware is all slightly different, which bothers me, but it is what I have, so I am going with it. I am hoping it looks charmingly mismatched and vintage. She can upgrade later. 

Since I don't have any matching jumprings to hang the charms from, I just took apart an extra piece of chain and am using the links. I hope this works. I realise at this point just how many charms I have. It's a lot, but I don't really want to give any of them up. I will just put them all on, and she can edit down to her favourites.

Holy crap, that's a lot of charms. I tried to sort of stagger them on different strands, but I'm not sure I was very effective. I think my mistake was putting the bracelet together before adding the charms. I will probably have to move some of them around before I gift this. 

It looks slightly less overwhelming when its hanging. Maybe it can always be hanging, like the pornata. 

It doesn't look terrible on, but it is pretty heavy and.. clacky. I sound like a troupe of gypsies if I shake my hand. I think my mother would call it "interesting" or "bohemian" or one of those other mom words that mean "that looks like crap and I would never wear it, but you are wearing it and so I will say something that sounds nice but really expresses my disapproval instead." 

My solution: I think I will take my jewelry pliers with me when I give her this, so that I can resize and remove as needed. I considered making a matching necklace with the extra charms, but I'm not sure that would turn out any better. I may just make each strand of this removable so that she can customise.

Perhaps pinatas perpetually perspire.

Throughout the last week I have been slowly, but steadily adding layers to the pinata. The first layer went fine. Record breaking 88F weather ensured it was toasty and dry. The subsequent layers taught me why this is a tradition in warmer, dryer parts of the world.

As the rains moved in, the pinata grew melancholy, and refused to dry. Humidity, it seems, is the natural enemy of papier-mache. I kept a fan on the pinata 24/7 for a few days. Eventually each layer seemed dry, but I am still suspicious. I had started making the layers thicker near the end. For the final layer, I used some tissue paper I had laying around, hoping it would sort of meld things together. I am now worried it is actually holding in some of the moist. 

During the time it was hanging and drying, I had several contractors in to give me estimates for my roof. None of them mentioned the weird dripping shape hanging in the kitchen, or the splatterings all over. I am not sure if this is a testament to their professionalism, or if they just really, really didn't want to know what I was up to with my free time.

I decided perhaps it was time to give this puppy a hole. I think this may help vent any moisture inside, and its needed for the candy-filling anyway. I prepped her for surgery, and began cutting. Then I hit a snag. apparently my pinata has developed an epidermis. I cut through several layers, but there were more beneath. The layers aren't really melded to each other. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, so I am going to ignore it for now. I may try to back fill with some glue or something. I am out of starch, after going through two full bottles. 

Once I got through the second layer, the pinata's orangey innards were revealed. It wasn't as wet as I feared inside, but I am still going to give it a few days before I decorate it, just for good measure. We are supposed to have warm weather this weekend, so hopefully that will help any lingering drippage. 

I decided that every good hole deserves a handle, so I made another little loop of cord to use to open her up. 

The pinata is happiest in its natural environment, which is hanging from a hook in the kitchen in front of a window. This helps it to evade predators (Dickypaws the Destructor, aka The Supervisor really enjoys eating cardboard and will pounce the moment he hungers.) She's starting to look like a real, grown up pinata! Hopefully decoration doesn't change her for the worse.

Porñata

Back in the olden days, when I was living in France for college the first time, I had a fellow ex-pat friend named Kim. We had sort of a rough go of things for the first few months, so when a Kindly Old Man offered Kim a free newspaper on the metro on the way to my place she thought perhaps our luck had changed. She had just been wanting a newspaper, and lo, the people of Paris had delivered.

Then she opened it, only to find that the formerly-Kindly Old Man had stuck porn photos all through it. The "glue" was still wet. Afraid to be seen throwing it in the garbage, Kim carried it all the way to my house, where we vacillated between laughing and screaming about the ick-factor. Why am I telling this story now? Because I think that Old Man would be proud of the state of my pinata.

I chased around town for a while after volunteering this morning looking for discarded newspapers, with no luck. So I wound up springing for a Seattle Times Sunday edition. Hopefully I can make my money back in coupons.



I don't remember papier-mache featuring prominently in my childhood. I only remember two projects I ever made with it, a pumpkin my mother still uses as decoration around Halloween, and a sort of volcanoeque thing. I thought I remembered them being made with fabric softener, but the internet has informed me that I need starch.

Once starch was achieved (they still sell it in the supermarket, who knew!?), I followed the instructions on the bottle and whisked it 2:1 with flour. I dunno what the flour is going to do, but hopefully it won't attract the dreaded pinata ants.



After cutting the Sunday times into strips without even reading it (take that, non-online news!) I started dipping and stripping.



It took me a while to get down the first coat, and it was messy enough to make me understand why my mother never encouraged a career in chewed paper. I am hoping that the tagboard absorbs enough starch to sort of meld with the newspaper and they can shore each other up. I think I will have to do at least three layers to hold what i consider an acceptable amount of candy.



Currently the first coat is drying per the instructions on the starch. I feel like this may take a long time. Perhaps I overstarched. Fortunately we are having record breaking heat.

She isn't pretty. Right now my pinata looks like a refugee from bad bukkake. If there is one thing I've learned in the past few years though, its that paint can hide a multitude of sins. Don't you worry, my dear Porñata Starlet... we can fix it in post.

Viva Pinata

I hate the cancer industry.

I don't mean that I hate legitimate research or the scientific search for a cure. I mean I hate the for-profit cottage industry making billions by selling awareness swag. I get that some of these places donate towards research, but lets face it, most of them just swim around in the pools full of money they got by peddling ribbon-themed merch to the friends and families of survivors.

All of it makes it especially difficult to help decorate for a friend's one year "cancerversary." I don't want to buy a bunch of orange-ribbon, leukemia-awareness crap from a swag peddler, so I'm going to try to make my own pinata for her to symbolically bash in cancer's face. I plan to fill it with red and white candy, because that's as close as I can get to coming up with an actual theme for this project. (Not gonna lie, the back up play is a store-bought vampire pinata, because: blood.)

Difficulty: 1) I've never made a pinata and only have the vaguest memories of papier-mache 2) The shape I want precludes the use of balloons as a stabilizer for the chewed paper.

The internet tells me I can use tagboard and masking tape instead of balloons or chickenwire. The internet has lied to me in the past, but I want to believe. I'm already skeptical whether tagboard (or even concrete) can possibly hold the weight of candy I am likely to put into anything that can be filled with candy. On the other hand, if I make it too strong, my friend and the inevitable children that attempt to participate may have a hard time breaking through to its gooey center. As much as I enjoy demoralizing little children, this would seem to send the wrong message about a fight against cancer.

This may be a disaster. A pinatastrophe, as it were.

I started with most of the necessary supplies. If this is going to be a -tastrophe of any kind, I intend to fully document it for posterity.

I wasn't really confident in my ability to freehand a ribbon. Yummy sushi scarf to the rescue! 

Because, as my mother is fond of saying, I am my father's daughter, I used a carpenter's pencil to trace the yummy sushi scarf. For the same reason I lost it behind my ear twice during this process.

I cut out two copies of the ribbon, to be the front and back. 

Hey! it kinda looks like a ribbon!

Next step was to cut out the sides. I decided on a 5 inch width sort of randomly. The internet suggested i use 4-inches. I'm not greedy, but more is always better, right? I should probably have measured the tagboard and mathed before cutting, but I live on the edge and it seemed like it would be enough. 

First strip in place. I am on FIRE!

I got the rest of the bottom attached to the sides. But realised i forgot the cut out. I can see this cut out is a trouble maker. I am concerned about it.

I am really not much of a 3-d sculptural artist. These curves are a pain in the rump. 

I took a break to make the hanger. The internet suggested using a jar lid with a hole in it. My jar lid is hole-less, but a hammer and screw driver quickly remedied that. 

I added some parachute cord, tied some knots, and viola: hangeryness.

The next step was adding the other side. this was more difficult,as i couldn't brace it from the inside. More on that later. 

The finalish shape. 

And hooray, it looks ribbony! I don't want to use too much masking tape, in case it makes it harder to break. But on the other hand, I want it to not break before its time. Pinatas are hard.

I should note two things here: the first is this thing wont hold much candy without self destruction and the second... it's a closed system. I didn't leave a trap door for candy placement. I know this may have been a mistake, but my plan currently is to find some newspaper and papier-mache the crap out of the whole thing, then cut a hole in the hole thing for candy-adding.

I don't currently have any news paper, so I am done for today. The plan is to raid some recycling bins under the cover of night. Barring that, I'll take my biggest purse to a bar that has copies of The Stranger for free. 

Dear Petco

Im not sure which i find more disturbing...

That you want me to train a dog to pick fights with the animal that took down an empire....

Or that you froze a mouse in carbonite. 

May the Floss Be With You

On the way home (or maybe to Toshi Station) from Fremont I stopped at the grocery store, where I found this piece of joy for 40% of its clearance price.

That's right. I just paid $3 to be able to tell the dentist that while I may not floss regularly, I brush like a mofo-in' Jedi! Presumably the toothbrush lights up into a plasma beam, which will cleanse my teeth of both badness and sith. I don't even want to speculate about the midichlorian and/or yoda-flavoured mouthwash. 

Tourism

One of the side effects of the Seattle greyness is that it turns the entire town agoraphobic until the sun comes out. This means that not only can we get pizza delivery, but Amazon will deliver grockeries from PCC and Uwajimaya in 2 hours or less for the same price as visiting the locations. If you don't want to cook, then they will bring deliciousness from neighbourhood restaurants, and you need never leave your house or interact with strangers. (They have a box you can check to tell them to leave it on the porch in order to avoid the potential horrors of social interaction.)

What all of this means is that I haven't been getting out of the house very often, except when I am volunteering. I have been spending the bulk of my time buried in outdated internet law books for my Cyberlaw course, most of which were written before 2000. In any other field, this would be like reading a text from the 1890's and expecting it to apply. Needless to say, since they are law texts, they are also soporific. I tend to only leave the house if I have company or a compelling need (read: ice cream emergency), and most of my friends have either moved, are nesting in the suburbs, or are agoraphobic, misanthropic hermits. (No, mother, you cannot paint their shells).

SO in the spirit of fresh air and adventure, I decided to try to spend a little time each week exploring the city and taking pictures. Most of my photos are of exotic locales, and I have very few of the local area, so I'm going to try to remedy that.

What better place to start than the center of the known universe: Fremont. Fremont (which I have today learned is named after Fremont, Nebraska), bills itself as an art community. I sort of doubt any starving artists can afford to live here, so I think it is mostly populated with posers and trust-funded "artists."



Fremont is the sort of aggressively quirky are that people in the northwest love to create. Its sort of like Little Portland. There is a lot of public art, especially statues, and during the solstice there is a naked bike parade. First and foremost among the sculturey is Lenin. He inhabits a corner, and seems to be perpetually trying to cross the street.

If Lenin seems like a strange icon for an artsy community, never fear. Vandals/revolutionaries/cubans generally make sure his face and hands are painted red, and today he sports a fancy "murderer" label. I think the red represents the blood of the people. At least that's what it would represent if I was the vandal. Or raspberry jam. Or candy apples. Yeah, definitely candy apples. 

Lenin stares longingly at the Red Star Taco Bar across the street. The morning is super grey, so I decided to stop in and have a drink and see if things would perk up. They didn't.

It was just as grey when I left, but at least I was full of Sangria. I was the only customer in the place, and to their credit, they didn't question the fact that I ordered a drink at 11:30. No wonder Lenin likes this place.  Maybe its the sangria of the people on his hands. 

Fremont also has some cool neon on some of the buildings, but it isn't very exciting during the day time. The High Dive has a woman plunging from their roof onto the sidewalk. It seems like a terrible message, but I guess there is no accounting for Art.

The street people here are also artistic. This sculpture belongs to a guy named Benny, who stacks and balances rocks in exchange for spare change. I was here last year and there were only three or four rocks, now it is a fullblown arch. There is no mortar involved, just lots of time and balance.

Around the corner is Theo Chocolate. I had heard that they had an interesting tour of the factory, with no-golden ticket required. I thought maybe I would do that and take pictures. 

Then I walked in and saw a) people gearing up in hairnets, b) the cost ($10) and c) the sign across the street. Obviously C was the most appealing of these options, so I set off to taste whiskey, vodka, and gin instead of chocolate. 

Apparently there was some confusion about the distillery. "WE'RE OPEN" says the door. "We're closed Monday" says the sign....

"Drink more whiskey!" says Mark Twain. I'd love to Mark, but it seems the door is a dirty, drunk liar! Mischief indeed. 

I made my way back towards the chocolate factory, where I managed to blend in with a group coming out of the tour and get some free samples. (None of which tasted like Schnozzberry). I also got to see some chocolate dinosaurs. 

Dinos have apparently become some sort of leitmotif here in Fremont. In addition to chocolate form, I also saw them in hedge form, guarding the canal...

...and in what I can only assume is Solid Gold Plastic in one of the nearby shops. They also featured prominently in graffiti, but most of that wasn't interesting/subversive enough to photograph. 

Across from the chocolate factory is the wall the Fremont Outdoor Cinema uses to show movies during the summertime. It has become a bit more upscale than it used to be, back when they just showed them on whatever building seemed the cleanest.

The Fremont rocket is another local landmark. It used to be one of the taller things around, but is now surrounded by condos that dwarf it. 

One of the condo buildings has added a planet as a sort of architectural apology, I think. I hope it makes the rocket less size-conscious.

I think one of the rules of the Fremont Business Association must be that your business is required to have quirky signage. 

This shop announces itself as being "The gift shop for the thoughtful procrastinator."

This was my favourite bit of vandal art, and just generally very, very good advice. It was stickered to a utilities box.

The Fremont bridge has been recently painted, and is probably really pretty on a sunny day. 

It has a neon Rapunzel in one of the towers. Because all bridges need that. 

From the bridge you can see a brigade of stabled bicycles that I am assuming belong to google, based on colour.

I went to check out the JP Patches sculpture that has recently been put up. It is actually pretty cool, despite my general dislike of the entire clown race.

It has a second part that is a see-through televison a few feet away, where you can frame up the clowns if you are willing to sit on the pavement with your head at child-height. (of course I was!)

I think one of the most famous statues in Fremont might be this one. People dress it up regularly. Right now it is sporting the remains of a "happy birthday" banner.

On the way out, I paid my respects to the Dumpling Tzar, because I heard they had mac and cheese dumplings, and that seemed like a good take-home lunch. While I waited I got to investigate their buildings. They have turntables and LP's set up. The saavy among you will notice why I took this picture in the lower right. Clearly someone has good taste in music.

And lastly, I took this photo last year, but no Fremont post is complete without the troll under the Aurora bridge. I cross this bridge regularly, and have never been asked for a toll, but maybe that is just because I'm not a billy goat.