minouette in the Etsy Showcase at the Fall Home Show!

Schroedinger's (Disappearing) Cat Linocut

 

I'm really pleased to be able be tell you that there will be things from secret minouette places in the Etsy Showcase at Fall Home Show, October 3 to 6, 2013! This is a huge show, held at the Better Living Centre, Exhibition Place. The Etsy Showcase will be in Booth #328; it will contain a carefully curated living space decorated with handmade Canadian Etsy goods, selected by HGTV! The selected Etsy sellers will also be featured on the HGTV website. If you're going to the show, be sure to visit and get special deals in all the shops represented.

I think this is a great opportunity! I've been taking it easy this fall and am not planning to do many shows in the lead-up to the holidays. I was really flattered to be accepted to sell in the Rising Stars section of the One of a Kind, but I had to regretfully decline, since I'm expecting a baby during the show. They were very understanding of course. I love that this is a way to participate in a show on a similar scale, without having to be present, selling all of the time, and without having to have huge amounts of stock prepared, all of which might be a bit too gruelling right now. So this opportunity turned up at just the right time for me!

I'm also pleasantly surprised that the works selected by HGTV are all seriously sciencey (that's a word, right?). I had imagined they would want works which make for pretty home decor or strong graphic design- and not that science-themed prints don't - but I didn't expect that they would particularly select interactive, colour-changing, thermochromic prints about quantum mechanics, or organic chemistry, or genetics.

 

 

Chemistry

Psst... there is also a sale on society6 - if you would like to get any minouette products, follow this link to get FREE Shipping when if you order now through Sunday, September 22, 2013 at Midnight Pacific Time (9 PM Eastern).

Hello (cloned) Dolly!

So, this February, the Mad Scientists of Etsy challenge is Keith Campbell the biologist, who was part of the team that produced the cloned sheep Dolly. You remember Dolly? She was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. She was born 5 July 1996. Usually, when the theme is a scientist, I do a portrait. I am a little more wary about the 20th century scientists, because we lack distance. Further, being out-numbered by biologists, on the Mad Scientists team, we do get some characters about whom I know next to nothing. Undoubtedly, Dolly was a big science story, but I know nothing of Campbell and I can't say that naming this sheep, cloned from a mammary cell, for the "most impressive mammaries" really impresses me. Ms. Parton has a great sense of humour, but that doesn't mean that I support objectification. I wouldn't want to be humourless, but people are more than their parts. Likewise, sheep. Though really, I suspect we likely need more distance to fully grasp the ethics of cloning issues too, so this is not that kind of post. No, this is simpler: the really cool thing about block printing is that one gets (or can get) multiple originals so there's a obvious analogy to cloning. The title I'm blaming on the accidental punning headline-writer. After groaning, I decided RJH's comment of "Hello Dolly!" was corny but funny. Plus, I'm obsessed with typography. He also said I chose to "go pink or go home" but I really wanted the contrast with the gray. I must say, my magenta ink is the pits. I wonder if it's a bad batch or whether there's some sort of chemical problem with their emulsifier. Anyhow, enjoy the sheep: edition of 6 on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper, each sheet is 12.5 inches wide by 10.25 inches tall (31.8 cm by 26 cm).

I must run. I'm in the middle of a symposium on scientific visualization. This is my lunch break.