Cynthia – Page 15 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Quilt – Toile de Jouy

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This is the quilt Cynthia made for her sister, Carol, in Michigan as a Christmas gift this year.

It’s a traditional pattern made up of various toile (pronounced “twoll”) fabric swatches.

Carol LOVES toile, and from all accounts has her entire house decorated in the stuff.

NYE – 2006

No big surprise, last night Cynthia and I spent NYE at the Continental Club.
Last appearance of David Beebe with the El Orbits for the foreseeable future.
It was a good show and a good time with good people.

Jim Henkel
Click for full size

David Beebe
Click for full size

One last thing

Prior to Christmas, I was talking with my boss (who happens to be Korean) and the subject of the Chinese characters for “giraffe” came up. As it turns out, his father’s name contains these characters.

In Chinese, the word “giraffe” is rendered using the characters for “˜long-necked deer.’

I was struck by the idea that some type of artistic rendering of these characters would make an excellent gift for Cynthia as an addition to the giraffe room.

So it was off to the Intarwebs in search of some way to execute this plan before the holidays.

I found three separate web sites that advertised custom Chinese calligraphy and sent them my request. Only one responded. That was Oriental Outpost. They responded in less than 24 hours with the results of their research and provided me with several options in the form of scrolls/wall hangings.

After selecting the one I thought would be best suited, I placed my order. Sadly there was no way to have the item in hand in time fro Christmas as it was a hand made, one of a kind from China. Still, I was pretty excited and I knew that even if it was to arrive after the actual holiday, it would be more than worth the wait.

It showed up just a few days after Christmas and it is AWESOME!

It’s hanging in a place of honor right next to Cynthia’s sculpture

Thank you Santa!

Christmas eve was spent in the company of two of our bestest friends, Jim and Greg Henkel.

I forgot to get a good picture of it, but Greg is wearing a shirt that Cynthia made for him as an Xmas gift. The fabric is Hawaiian and has pictures of islands, palm trees and BATTLESHIPS. Greg’s a huge fan of the dreadnought so it was the perfect gift for him.

Cynthia had great gift from her sister waiting under the tree on this chillsome Xmas morn.

It’s a giraffe marionette.

It’s a pretty well known fact that Cynthia loves giraffes and some of you may might recall her adventures/antics/shenanigans at the Texas Renaissance Festival as the “Crazy Puppet Lady.”

And I got the coolest present EVER!

It’s a collectible set of GI JOE Xmas ornaments that are replica pieces from “The Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb” set which came out in 1971. This is what the original looks like:

It was a gift from Cynthia’s mother. She has the idea that I should have a GI JOE tree if Cynthia has a giraffe tree. We’ll see. For now I have them in my collectors case with the REAL GI JOE’s. I especially like the back of the ornament box which features the actual graphic from the original box.

Here’s hoping Santa brought you something nice this Christmas!

Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum

In my swinging batchelor days I didn’t decorate for the holidays in my own space. I was happy enough to see the familiar trapings of the yuletide season when I visited friends and family but never took the time to trim a tree with tinsel or anything sentimental like that.

I am of the age and background where whenever I hear the song “Oh Christmas Tree” I think of the Saturday Night Live “Killer Trees” skit. I especially loved the episode where Frank Zappa was in the lineup of trees as a “suspect” …

Cynthia, on the other hand, LOVES to decorate for Christmas.

In our living room we have our main tree as well as the tree made from Xmas postage stamps that you can see above the fireplace.

It was conceived when Cynthia was hunting giraffe stamps to create something for the giraffe room. She collected the stamps and did the layout and numbered the stamps to match a diagram she created and then handed the materials to our framer to put together.

Of course it doesn’t end there. At some point a few years ago Cynthia either bought or was gifted a giraffe Xmas ornament. Since the primary tree is deocrated in a mouse theme there was no real place for the ornament to go and the giraffe tree was born.

Giraffe ornaments are hard to find, but we have managed to find a few.
In fact next year we are thinking we’ll need a bigger tree.

Merry Xmas everyone!

Tall blondes

It is no secret that Cynthia’s absolute favorite creature on the entire planet is the giraffe.

The first time I ever visited Cynthia’s apartment when we were first dating it was hard to miss the life-size giraffe sculpture in the living room, a sculpture Cynthia had made from scratch using dowels, chicken wire, paper mache and finished in polymers and which, to this day, dominates our dining room.

For Cynthia’s birthday this year I arranged a behind the scenes tour of the Houston Zoo’s giraffe exhibit. Our tour was this past Saturday and it was a blast!

It was a chance to get up close and personal with these magnificent creatures

Cynthia gets a nuzzle from Kiva

Cynthia joins the herd

Nigel likes the carrots

It was incredible being so close to these animals.
Cynthia claims it was the best birthday present EVER!

So now I guess I have my work cut out for me for next year….

You can see many more pictures from the encounter here.

Say I’m the only bee in your bonnet

For the last several months Cynthia has been working on a quilt as a Christmas present for her mother. It was originally going to be a green and white traditional birdhouse style quilt.

Before Cynthia got started on it we went to the Gee’s Bend show and it inspired her to do something a little less conventional.

Cynthia decided to design her own non-traditional pattern and ended with this spectacular original creation:

click image for larger view

The pieces are all machine sewn together, but all of the quilting is meticulously and painstakingly done by hand. All in all it took Cynthia about 4 1/2 months to complete this project.

We shipped it last week and Cynthia’s mother received it on Friday.
She was very excited and says she loves it!

Apronicity

Cynthia and I met up with Allen “King of the Oldies” Hill and his lovely lady, Andrea, for dinner last night. We dined at BYOB Lebanese restaurant called Cafe Mezza. It was our first time to eat there and it was quite good.

Cynthia wanted to make an apron for Allen and personalize it. Since Allen’s primary marketing trademark is a wearing a tuxedo and tennis shoes Cynthia came up with the perfect thing:

It’s called the “Allen Hillpron”