Few New Things

I'm not doing much lately... I simply can't find time for my crafts. I made a tray for swap and I had quite some troubles. I made one first but I used wrong paint which was too concentrated and I made total mess on the wood. I left it like that, maybe I will fix it somehow when I have time. Or maybe it will stay in my storage room for some time, like so many other unfinished things, until I run out of space and throw it away.

The second one was better luckily (in the middle). And this swap was a good trade for me - I got beautiful tray, made in mosaic from polymer clay tiles. Thanks again Irena, it's really wonderful!

And here's a new tile I like very much... made mostly of polymer clay with few findings, stones and pieces of really old book. It's a small piece which is now part of bigger "painting"... and the complete painting, made from tiles by different authors, looks really amazing. And two pendants, made just like that - trying new techniques.

That's it for now. There are few more things I made but gave them away before even taking pics.

P.S. I'm having troubles with arranging pics in blogger today. Don't really know why. My computer acts weird, Mozilla Firefox is not running, cam is not working, spekaers are dead. Crap! It's about time I fix all that somehow. I need some music!

Eurovision Song Contest

Last night was reserved for watching Eurovison Song Contest with few friends, some good wine, cola and snacks. In my living room, of course. Without kids. It was a fun evening with a lot of silly comments and laughing. And listening to the music from different europian countries. Not from our country though, because our participant didn't make it to the final round. Which is a pitty, the song was not that bad. He presented his song in our language at our national contest and won, but later he changed the lyrics and sang in English - so he actually didn't present the song people here voted for, although the music was the same. Anyway, we sat there, watching the show and I was rather disappointed again at the music. I shouldn't have been, last past years have proved that this contest is changing too. It has been a pop and ballad song contest for years and many really great songs were presented there. Every country presented their song in their national language. Now most of the lyrics are in English, which doesn't really bother me. Few years ago there was a band who sang a song in a language they invented, and that was rather interesting idea. The ballads are still not gone completely, but it seems people are tired of that and want something different, something new, something else. I can't help myself, I still prefer nice ballads and that's why I always liked this contest.

When Finnish band came to the stage, we were all quite shocked... what the hell?? Monsters, like from the science fiction movie, appeard on the stage with loud heavy rock music, "Hard Rock Hallelujah". The song was not that bad at all, I would say it's a good song - if it wasn't presented in a pop song contest! And their show? Oh my, this is really going to turn this contests upside down! Next year there will be at least 20 Extra-Terrestials, Martians, zombies, vampires and other creatures on the stage. Because that's happening all the time - after a certain kind of song wins, next year all the others go into that direction.

When the votes started to show on the screen, we were even more surprised because Finlad was getting so many points! I couldn't believe my eyes... votes of the people from all 38 countries showed that people are ready to rock. I was disappointed and surprised, I admit - but congratulations to Lordi and Finland anyway!

Hard Rock Hallelujah
original English lyrics

music & lyrics: Mr Lordi
arrangement: Lordi
performer: Lordi

Hard Rock Hallelujah!
Hard Rock Hallelujah!

The saints are crippled
On this sinners’ night
Lost are the lambs with no guiding light

The walls come down like thunder
The rocks about to roll
It’s the Arockalypse
Now bare your soul

All we need is lightning
With power and might
Striking down the prophets of false
As the moon is rising
Give us the sign
Now let us rise up in awe

Rock ’n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah
Demons and angels all in one have arrived
Rock ’n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah
In God’s creation supernatural high

The true believers
Thou shall be saved
Brothers and sisters keep strong in the faith
On the day of Rockoning
It’s who dares, wins
You will see the jokers soon’ll be the new kings

All we need is lightning
With power and might
Striking down the prophets of false
As the moon is rising
Give us the sign
Now let us rise up in awe

Rock ’n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah
Demons and angels all in one have arrived
Rock ’n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah
In God’s creation supernatural high

Wings on my back
I got horns on my head
My fangs are sharp
And my eyes are red
Not quite an angel
Or the one that fell
Now choose to join us or go straight to Hell

Hard Rock Hallelujah!
Hard Rock Hallelujah!
Hard Rock Hallelujah!
Hard Rock Hallelujah!

Rock ’n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah
Demons and angels all in one have arrived
Rock ’n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah
In God’s creation supernatural high

Hard Rock Hallelujah!

And here's the list of all Eurovision Song Contest winners:

Year	Song	Artist	Country
2006	Lordi	Hard Rock Hallelujah	Finland
2005	My number one	Helena Paparizou	Greece
2004	Dikiye Tantsy (Wild Dances)	Ruslana Lyzhichko	Ukraine
2003	Everyway That I Can	Sertab Erener	Turkey
2002	I Wonna	Marija Naumova	Latvia
2001	Everybody	Tanel Padar & Dave Benton	Estonia
2000	Fly On The Wings of Love	Olsen Brothers	Denmark
1999	Take Me To Your Heaven	Charlotte Nilsson	Sweden
1998	Diva	Dana International	Israel
1997	Love shine a light	Katrina & the Waves	United Kingdom
1996	The Voice	Eimear Quinn	Ireland
1995	Nocturne	Secret Garden	Norway
1994	Rock 'N Roll Kids	Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan	Ireland
1993	In Your Eyes	Niamh Kavanagh	Ireland
1992	Why Me?	Linda Martin	Ireland
1991	Fångad Av En Stormvind	Carola	Sweden
1990	Insieme:1992	Toto Cutugno	Italy
1989	Rock Me	Riva	Yugoslavia
1988	Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi	Celine Dion	Switzerland
1987	Hold Me Now	Johnny Logan	Ireland
1986	J'Aime La Vie	Sandra Kim	Belgium
1985	La Det Swinge	Bobbysocks	Norway
1984	Diggi Loo-Diggi Ley	Herreys	Sweden
1983	Si La Vie Est Cadeau	Corinne Hermes	Luxembourg
1982	Ein Bisschen Frieden	Nicole	Germany
1981	Making Your Mind Up	Bucks Fizz	United Kingdom
1980	What's Another Year	Johnny Logan	Ireland
1979	Hallelujah	Milk & Honey	Israel
1978	A Ba Ni Bi	Yizhar Cohen & Alphabeta	Israel
1977	L'Oiseau Et L'Enfant	Marie Myriam	France
1976	Save Your Kisses For Me	Brotherhood of Man	United Kingdom
1975	Ding Dinge Dong	Teach-in	Netherlands
1974	Waterloo	ABBA	Sweden
1973	Tu Te Reconnaitras	Anne-Marie David	Luxembourg
1972	Apres Toi	Vicky Leandros	Luxembourg
1971	Un Banc, Un Arbre, Une Rue	Severine	Monaco
1970	All Kinds Of Everything	Dana	Ireland
1969=	Vivo Cantando	Salome	Spain
1969=	Boom Bang-A-Bang	Lulu	United Kingdom
1969=	De Troubadour	Lennie Kuhr	Netherlands
1969=	Un Jour, Un Enfant	Frida Boccara	France
1968	La La La	Massiel	Spain
1967	Puppet On A String	Sandie Shaw	United Kingdom
1966	Merci Cherie	Udo Jurgens	Austria
1965	Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son	France Gall	Luxembourg
1964	No Ho L'Eta	Gigliola Cinquetti	Italy
1963	Dansevise	Grethe & Jorgen Ingmann	Denmark
1962	Un Premier Amour	Isabelle Aubret	France
1961	Nous Les Amoureux	Jean-Claude Pascal	Luxembourg
1960	Tom Pillibi	Jacqueline Boyer	France
1959	Een Beetje	Teddy Scholten	Netherlands
1958	Dors Mon Amour	Andre Claveau	France
1957	Net Als Toen	Corry Brokken	Netherlands
1956	Refrain	Lys Assia	Switzerland

Mokume Gane - My Way

Mokume Gane is a technique of working with polymer clay. Here you can see how it is done - and the result is great. I specially like the effect of golden leaves and that holes always look great. But I also like to do it in another way, with holes filled with scrap clay. Ann, maybe you like this result too and try it some day. Here's my version of this technique (I made this last year, those who know about my album, have probably already seen these pics with shots of complete procedure of making a small pot):

1. Stack clay sheets together.
2. Cut.
3. Stack.
4-5. Make holes, can be different sizes.
6-7. Fill holes with scrap clay.
8. Repeat the same on the bottom side.
9. Start reducing, make sure to distort the layers of clay while you do that. On the contrary from usual cane work, where we tend to keep the pattern inside the cane not distorted.
10. Arrows show where the scrap clay was inserted earlier... be sure to reduce cane in the right direction!
11. It's easy to cut such cane, much easier than with the originial Mokume Game technique.
12. A pot made of that cane.

Hmmm...

Do I use too small font size here or is it just something wrong with my eyes today???

War And Walking

Nina went to march around Ljubljana last Friday. Every year after first Mays holiday this march is organized. It's called "March along the wire of occupied Ljubljana". In 1941 Ljubljana was occupied by Italy and later they completely encircled the city with 32 of barbed wire. The barb wire fence was guarded by around 1,300 soldiers and 400 policemen, who checked the identity papers of those travelling to and from the city. It stayed enclosed like that for 1171 days. In 1957 first march was organized and it became a tradition. All around Ljubljana, where the wire was once installed, sandy road was built 20 years ago and it's where the march goes now. This public walkway is called "Trail of memories and comradeship". I went to my fist march when I was still little, I remember (probably from the pics) dad carried me on his shoulders. I got my first badge then. I have quite a nice collection of badges from years that followed. I started to hate this thing when I was in high school - we had to go to this walk (the shorter version, maybe just half of the way? A quarter? Ummm, I don't remember!), it was part of our school plan or something. Thats ok... but it was not so ok when later it was on the radio and tv news how nice it is that so many young people voluntarily join that walk every year. Thousands of youngsters, walking voluntarily? Yeah, right!

Anyway, yesterday was 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and the liberation of Ljubljana. The other day I watched a clip from a performance for the soldiers who faught in that war, partisans. It seems many of them are still alive, the hall was pretty crowded with old men. Some didn't even look so old. Weird... Many were killed though, my both granddads, for example. Maybe we don't appreciate that enough nowadays - at least I don't most of the time, but I surely am happy to live in a free country! And I'm happy that the war 15 years ago was over in just 10 days... who knows what our lives would be like if it lasted longer.


*Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. (D.H. Lawrence)

*They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. (Ernest Hemmingway)

*Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth! (Homer - The Iliad)

*Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. (Herman Goering)

*Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. (John F. Kennedy)

My latest creations (7)

I haven't done much lately. Really, what have I been doing, I have nothing special to show? Where has my time disappeared?? Well, I made few things anyway and here are the pics of some of them.


Here are two beaded rings, on the left is mine, the right one is Nina's. And a fancy necklace in the middle - I'm pleased with it, it is just perfect for warm days and open t-shirt.


Making a caleidoscop cane. I'm still working on that, somehow I'm never really pleased with the result. I have made a a necklace for trinkets swap from these pieces, and I prepared pieces for a bracelet too. I had enough scrap clay from that cane for this plate, and for a spoon for Nina. She wanted a big handle, but I think I exaggerated a bit - she hardly holds it :)).


I finally started to work more in my colors, olive green and brown; I guess it's about time I make a few pieces for myself. I just love both above shown canes, and also the beads made of them. Though the colors are a little dark, specially on the one with the tiny pattern, it still looks good - much better than on the pics! :)


Another olive green and brown cane. In fact that was the first one. I don't like it that much, though I have a pieces for a bracelet ready; and I intend to keep it for myself!

Ohhhhh my....

look what I have found here - a blog! Poor neglected lonely and lately so very empty blog! There are many blogs like that, abandoned by their creators and owners; I have seen quite some when I was checking them more often. So why do I have to mention this poor neglected lonely empty blog?? Well, it's because it has my name on it, it has parts of my life and my work in it... because it's mine and it's me who neglected the poor thing! My little one, everything is fine, don't worry - mommy is back now and will take a really good care of you from now own!

Thanks to all of you who were visiting my blog and all of you who reminded me that I should post! I will make some pics of my new work ready to post them when I come home, though I haven't done anything really special lately.

I'm at work now and I have quite few busy days ahead. Luckily we have just 3 working days this week, so weekend is not that far away. Maybe I will even figure out what to write about :). Somehow I'm out of ideas right now!

Watching Movie Last Night

I was rather tired yesterday evening, so I was lying on my sofa and watching TV. That's how I fall asleep almost every day; sometime during the night I wake up and go to bed. Anyway, I've checked TV program earlier and I was looking forward to watch a Swedish movie. I love scandinavian movies; although I don't understand their languages I like the melodic sound of it and contents of the movies are usually interesting enough. Specially their comedy! Like Danish black comedy In China They Eat Dogs. I loved that one... well, I loved both parts. And swedish comedies like Yalla-Yalla or Kopps (Cops).

So, I'm lying on my sofa and waiting for a swedish movie to start. It started with the music...and then singing... in english! I'm a little disappointed because I wanted to hear swedish language but... well, that's fine, most of the music is in english nowadays, I will wait for another minute or two. Now we see the first scene - a girl is released from reformatory home. She starts to talk with someone. My ears are strained in anticipation of hearing nice melodic language - but all they can catch is English with rather bad accent. What the hell??? Ahhh, most probably this girl is in England and will return to Sweden now? Wrong! It was not quite so. It was just a dubbed movie - actors' lips were talking in Swedish language, voices were speaking English - and guess what? That's not all; there was another bonus - subtitles in our language! I couldn't watch that movie any longer, so I quit after few minutes and rather read a book instead...

I don't like dubbing at all; I prefer to watch movie in it's original language with subtitles in one of the languages I understand. Indian speaking German? Chinese speaking Italian? Swedish speaking English? Garfield speaking Slovenian? Oh, come on, that's too unnatural, even for a movie! :)

P.S. I remember watching first dubbed movie with Nina... it was few years ago and the movie was Stuart Little. Despite the fact it was very annoying for me to watch it, there was one advantage - parents didn't have to read subtitles to the kids, so it was rather cool anyway...

Sudoku

I think I have found a new addiction. I visited my parents on Sunday. My dad was solving a new kind of puzzles for some time now and mum was complaining that he does nothing but stares at his book with grids lately. I saw that grids filled with some numbers earlier, but it never really draw my attention. It did now. I was hooked as soon as my dad explained to me what it is all that about.

Sudoku - Su Doku - a placement puzzle. 9x9 grid made up of 3x3 subgrids. Various digits are given in some cells (it depends on the difficulty level) and the aim of this puzzle is to fill every cell in the grid - so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits from 1 through 9. These are the rules. No other rules. Guessing is out of the question, it would last too long... only logic works here.

There are probably different ways for finding right numbers or/and/with eliminating wrong ones... I think you figure them out as you do that puzzle and as you move from easy grid through medium to hard. Every Sudoku can be solved with just one possible solution - at least it should be - and if you take some time and let your brains do some work, you'll probably find it.

Want to play it online? You can do that on this site!

I think it's time I solve another one before I leave work! ;)

Rainbow

Usually I don't remember any of my dreams. It was a bit different today as I woke up with the image of rainbow in my head and a slight memory of my struggles to pull it out of the ground... I have no idea why would I want to do that - perhaps I wanted to take it home; or just turn it around. Or free it and let it go. I really don't know. But now I do know few things about rainbows I didn't know before: they have very strong colourless roots and they are attached to the ground with them - and I think it's impossible to pull them out with the bare hands. They're warm. They're very soft and your hands kind of slip into it; but you feel it and can actually hold it. It would be impossible to climb on one because they're too light. They produce some kind of a tune, but it's not like music, it's more like whispering, but it's not talking. Barely audible sound... very pleasant one. And colours of the rainbow are, of course, just amazing!

So, if you have ever wondered about how rainbow really looks like or how it would be to touch it, perhaps you have a slightly better picture now :).


P.S. Do you think I have watched too many episodes of "Lost" this weekend? :))

Witches, Doughnuts and the Wig

Ok, here we go with some more pics. We had Carnival (Pust) last few days. It's like Halloween in America... well, similar - with costumes and trick-or-treats, but without pumpkins :).
It's a traditional Carnival when kids (and some grown ups who still have a kid inside!) dress in different customes and go around to get some candies. In the past it was an event with a purpose to scare winter away. Hope that works nowadays as well as I am sick of this cold weather!

We were witches, again! Nina went to school dressed like on the first pic. Well, Lin, who would be just apropriate companion of such a cute little witch, had to stay at home. I just wore wig at work and changed clothes before I picked up Nina at school. Of course I was the only parent in a costume, but I'm already used to that! We went around for a while and then ended up in my parents house, after we visited all the neighbours there. We got a whole bag of candies so Nina was rather pleased.

My mum baked our traditional doughnuts, which have to be baked during Carnival. Well, we're weird family so our doughnuts are not really traditionaly decorated with sugar :). And these dougnuts were so delicious!! Yummie! On the right pic is my dad - enjyoing, as you can see!

Ohh, and the wig. That's my new wig I bought for this year. Left pic was taken at work, my co-workers had a lot of fun watching me with long hair and trying this wig. My mum couldn't resist putting it on later as well. I have to admit she looks good with long hair; when she was much younger, she used to have hair about that long while my hair had always been rather short... or very short :). This color looks pretty good; perhaps I should consider changing my hair color from black to brown or red. We'll see...

Playing With Beads And Wires

Beside shopping and sorting things I have had some time to play with the beads this week. I used some of the polymer clay beads that I had left. I'm finding new possibilities every time I do something and now I have head full of ideas how to make even better things.

Nina's coming home today in a few hours, so we will be back to normal again - with not enough time for everything I would like to do. I wish I could make a living with playing with clay and beads and colors and other stuff. That would be like a dream come true. Oh well... I'm not giving up... maybe someday, who knows!