Buratino

Circus-vertizing... It was like having the county fair drive around and advertise by towing the "world's largest hog" along.

Every other day (it seems) I hear a parade going by, somewhere in town... Most of these are to promote one of the various circus groups that visit San Miguel. Another way they advertise is driving around in a truck with speakers, towing behind them some of the circus animals. Last week, I saw a lioness being towed. This past Monday it was a camel (bicameral), mini-pony and a spotty-faced llama.



Somehow, Mads and I got talking about Pinocchio the other night. This led to me wiki-ing "pinocchio" and reading, aloud, a summary of the plot--- the story Disney doesn't tell. I, needless to say, prefer the more disturbing, original, version. This thread led to Buratino- Tolstoy's strange re-telling of Pinocchio, with a Russian twist... and this led to me hunting the internet for illustrations of Buratino. I'm in love with these illustrations. It seems like it'll be easy enough to track down a copy of this version via ebay (once I return to the states & a reliable mailing address).
Buratino burying gold coins outside the city of Catchfools, as the fox and cat (secretly) watch.

So. That was a fun diversion.

This is one of my favorite results from the second day of patinas....The pinks and purples were awesome, as were the egg blues and sea blues.


My other fun diversion this week has been the Japanese alloy Shibu-ichi, and the lovely patinas I can get from this copper-silver alloy.

My li'l set up for testing patinas the first day. The second day I called in the big guns and used the hot plate.

I'm excited about the full potential of these alloys and patinas. Next week, I'll play chemist and mix up some of the traditional Japanese recipes- such as the patina that calls for sake or beer and some (preferably rusty) nails. hooray!

an aside: one laptop per child, or buy one give one...