A Maze - Page 35

Here is the next page of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 35

This is the same page in the wild. This was taken back at the Ravenswood Estate in Livermore. The broken down wall is part of the ruins of an old winery.

That's all for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's February 2011 Ink Drop - Part Three

Here is another in my series of Ink Drop mazes. This one page maze was drawn using J. Herbin Rose Cyclamin which is a February ink and Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue which is not. These colors paired up very nicely. The Rose Cyclamin is a good well behaved ink. I had zero problems with it. The Supershow Blue was a pain on this paper. It took quite awhile to dry and I smudged it all over the place. The Rose drew a consistent line with little color variation which is really a violet.

Here is the scanned and lightly edited version.

Here is the raw version where you can zoom in and see all of the blue smudges.

That's about it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 34

Here is the next page of my first maze. It is cold, stormy and rainy today with in Santa Clara. It might even snow tomorrow. This page is jut the thing you need to pass the time to spring.

First the scanned and edited version of page 34.

Page 34

Here is the same page in the wild. This is Penitencia Creek that runs through Alum Rock Park in San Jose. According to the notice board the most recent reported mountain lion sighting was on January 18, 2011. I have always said it is not the lion you see, but the one that eats you that have to worry about.

Tomorrow I will have another Ink Drop maze for you.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's February 2011 Ink Drop – Part Two

Today I bring you a single page maze drawn with one of this month's Ink Drop colors. That color is Noodler's Ottoman Rose. Again I used Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue as a contrasting color even though it is not an Ink Drop color. As I mentioned earlier, this blue is my all time favorite color. At least for now.

The Ottoman Rose is a great ink. It seemed to take a little longer to dry than the Shah's Rose. Since I tend to be a slob, this meant that I had a few smudges where my hand rested on completed lines. To me the color reminded me of blood. It was deep red when wet and dried with a bit of a brownish cast. If you had to sign a contract in blood, say with the devil for you soul, this would make a good substitute. I don't know what legal difficulties might arise with the Prince of Darkness if you did use ink instead of blood, but if you are squeamish about pricking your finger to provide the blood, definitely use this ink instead. Check with a lawyer before signing any contract with the devil.

Anyway here is the simple maze that resulted from the pairing of these two inks. I edited out the worst of the smudging and it spot where a tiny speck of water fell on the page.

Here is the maze in the raw so that you can see the mistakes.

 

So, two down and three more inks to go for this month. As I said before, I probably will not have time to do a maze for Private Reserve Arabian Rose. This ink I already have and have used for my fourth maze.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 33

It seems as if I'm running out of month. February is almost over and I've only posted one of the Ink Drop mazes for the month. It is time to get serious about it. So it will be a short post today.

Here is the next page of my first maze.

Page 33

Here is the same page in the wild. It is back at Ravenswood Estate.

Tomorrow I will post maze two of the February Ink Drop series.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 32

It is raining today and quite cold for Santa Clara. I'm sure that when rain stops and the clouds clear, we will have a fine view of a Mount Hamilton topped with snow. The wind which has brought this cold and rain pounds against my window. These are not good conditions for working on my Line Around The World Project.

This weather does bode well for my other projects. I'm already on page five of my fifth maze and almost done with the second test maze for this month's Ink Drop. Even my great laziness can be overcome when I'm stuck inside for most of the day. If I'm at my desk, eventually I will, even if only out of sheer boredom, pick up a pen and do a little work.

Unfortunately with my laptop at the side, I can be easily distracted. Today while checking in on one of the blogs I follow, Whatever, it pointed me to a very cool project someone is doing. On the blog, Sandy and the 1000 Paper Cranes, the story of the release of 1000 origami cranes is being told. What is fun about it is the stories of how the cranes have been found and released. It is sort of like the Where's George? project with paper currency. I'm going to enjoy following the progress of this adventure.

Anyway, it is time to get to work. Here is the next page of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 32

Here is the same page in the wild. Well, maybe not wild, but on my balcony.

Compare this background with that in a picture from the first days of this blog. Who says there are no seasons in California?

That's it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 31

It is raining this morning for the first time in almost a month. After checking the weather reports, it appears that the next week and more will have plenty of rain. This will no doubt focus my mind on the tasks at hand. No longer distracted by warm sunny days with birds singing away in the trees and flowers smiling at me as I amble along life's paths, I will sit at my desk and work. Naaah!

Anyway for today here is the 31^st page of my first maze. If the scanned and edited version.

Page 31

This is the same page down in Santa Cruz again. This picture was taken in the bus station. The little kid there in the background seemed be having the time of his life. He was in a dinosaur costume with a carton of ice cream all to himself. I don't know that life can get better than that.

When I moved to try and get a picture of him chomping down the rocky road, he went into flight mode running away, then back under the bench. Dinosaurs are seldom seen in pictures nowadays because they are quite camera shy.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's February 2011 Ink Drop - Part One

Way back when I started this blog, one of the main features was test mazes using the Goulet Pens Ink Drop samples. This turned out to be a rather large chore mainly because it took so much work to run the ink out of my pens. And I'm sure that has not changed. Still, it was fun for me to do the simpler mazes that I did for the tests. So I've decided to have another go at it.

For the month of February Brian and Rachel Goulet came up with a Valentine's Day themed selection of colors. They called this Ink Drop, “My Inky Valentine”. All of the inks have the word Rose in their name. So, in the February Ink Drop we find:

J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen

Noodler's Ottoman Rose

Noodler's Shah's Rose

Private Reserve Arabian Rose

Private Reserve Rose Rage

I may or may not use Private Reserve Arabian Rose in a maze. It turns out that I already have used that color of ink. I like it and it will be very interesting to compare it to the others in this selection, but I may not have the time to do a maze with it this month.

Anyway, here is what the February Ink Drop looks like. They package has been streamlined over the months as Goulet Pens' work load has increased. Their margins on this project must be razor thin with all the work preparing and mailing thousands of samples each month. Some months have had a sixth bonus sample, which adds to their work and mine when I test them.

The idea for my test mazes this month is to draw a one page maze using one of the Ink Drop colors and a contrasting blue color. I tend to enjoy using contrasting rather than harmonizing colors more often, so the blues are good for me. Not to mention that they were the two colors I had in my two pens when the Ink Drop arrived. The blues you see in these mazes are Private Reserve DC Super Show Blue and Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue. The latter color is my all time favorite.

The completed maze to the right has been drawn with the aforementioned Lake Placid Blue and the Noodler's Shah's Rose from the Ink Drop. I was very impressed by how well this Noodler's offering worked on the Clairefontaine paper. It dried quite quickly so that I only had one smug with it.

Here is a scanned and edited version of the first of these test mazes. Enjoy!

I will have more of these simple mazes as I complete them.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 30

Here is the next page of my first maze. This completes the first third of this monster. It has gone very quickly don't you think? Maybe not.

Here is the scanned and edited version of page 30.

Page 30

Here is the same page in the wild. This is the little shop in Santa Cruz, California with the cools lights, candles and other mediation stuff. It looks sort of like how I'd like my living room to look in the ideal world. Maybe not. It needs more bean bag chairs.

I still have one more update for my Line Around the World project, but I will save until next week. Tomorrow I will post the first of the February Ink Drop mazes.

Jonathan

Drawing the Line - 17

On Thursday January 27^th I waited until the afternoon before setting out from the monastery to roll out my Line again. It was my last full day down at the New Camaldoli Hermitage and I had spent the greater part of the day trying to finish my fourth maze. As I have mentioned before, I failed to finish while I was down there.

It was around 3:30 in the afternoon when I drove down the two mile long driveway of the monastery and out on Highway 1. It was a 5.4 mile drive north of Lucia to where the last segment ended. I had four rolls of cash register tape prepared. The wind was stronger than it had been the previous morning though and I was concerned about it.

Here is the start of roll 55.

Here is the view from the end of roll 55.

You can't tell it from these first two pictures, but the wind was quite troublesome. Here is the view from the end of roll 56.



Here is the view from the end of roll 57.

Now you can see that the wind has broken the tape back along the line. There was quite a bit of traffic going past even though it doesn't show up here. I made the decision to go back and gather up the part of the Line attempting to escape.

Once I had gathered the first part of the Line, I walked back to the end and found it was almost gone as well. I had to roll that part up as well. So I would end up rolling out 3 rolls 55 thru 57 at first. Then roll out the last roll number 58. Here is the view from the start of roll 58.

Notice the rocks along the guardrail and the catch fencing on the left hand side of the road. This is a landslide or falling rock area. By the look of the fencing there are some pretty big rocks that fall around this place. In the following picture you can see where the rocks were falling from.

 I found a nice rock to hold down the end of roll 58 while I took pictures.

Here is the view from the end of the Line. I won't be back down in this area for a year or so. Eventually the Line will hook up with this end point.

That is it for this update, except for a little different perspective on the area I have rolled out the Line the last three times. I know that this section of the road looks a bit dull when you are actually on it, but if you get some distance away it looks more dramatic. Here is the view from about a mile and a half to the south of this spot.

And here it is again at sunset.

It looks much more impressive doesn't it?

That's it for now.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 29

It is once again time for a new page of my first maze. Some people have asked me why I am posting this maze serially. Well, there are a couple of reason for this. The first is that by doing it this way I am assured to have considerable material for the blog. The mazes consist of many pages and I have this maze and one more already prepared to post. Being the lazy sort of guy that I am, I want to make the most of these mazes. Hence I stretch out the posting of them.

The other reason is that posting the pages from beginning to end will encourage people to try and solve the maze as it is intended to be solved, from start to finish. Not that I solved it that way, but please, do as I say and not as I do. That is a good general principle really, I'm sorry to say.

Anyway, I had three days of freedom before I started my fifth maze. It was a weird feeling not having a maze to draw during those three days. It has been years since that was the case. I started a new maze only because I needed something to run the ink out of my pens. For you see, I am drawing test mazes for the February Ink Drop samples. I have one done already, but I need to empty two pens before I can continue with the next one. They are going to be simple one page mazes just for fun. I will be posting the first one soon, so stay tuned.

For now I give you page 29 of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 29

Here is the same page in the wild. The picture was taken at Ravenswood Estate once again, this time looking back toward Arroyo Road. When we kids, the vineyard was not there, just an empty field. The tract houses in the background were not there either. For more on the history of this old place you can look here. There are plenty of good photos there, but none of the collection of toilets I mentioned earlier.

Tomorrow I will have another Line Around The World update.

Jonathan

Drawing the Line - 16

On January 26 after two full days of total solitude and silence, or at least no human voices, I left the monastery for my midweek trip to Carmel and Monterery. The purpose of the trip was to reach an area where my antique cell phone could get a signal allowing me to check in with the family. It is a bit strange to be totally cut off in this age of continuous contact with the whole world. I know that I'm a bit old fashion, but I worry about a world where people can't walk to their car alone without digging out their cell phone and making a call to someone they haven't seen for an hour. And I won't even mention seeing every other car on the road being driven by someone with a phone jammed to their ear. It is a very different world than Robinson Crusoe's (yes, I know he is a fictional character) as far as a person's ability to be alone for awhile. He could probably have gone a couple of days without a cell phone standing on his head, or coconut.

Still, I have to admit, after a couple of days even I wanted to talk to someone and it might as well be my family. The coverage for my phone actually kicks in just a little north of Bixby Bridge, but I had business in Carmel and I had a strong hankering for fast food after two days of monk food. It would turn out to take most of the day to make the round trip.

On the way down I rolled out this segment of the Line Around The World Project. It was fairly early in the day, I think about 8:30 in the morning so I might have tried to roll it out around Bixby Bridge. Instead I decided to continue the Line from where the last segment ended. That was about 5.5 miles north of Lucia.

Here is the start of roll 51. I think that there is actually a few feet of overlap with the previous segment.

Here is the view from end of roll 51.

I was aware of a breeze bouncing off the hill to the right and out towards the ocean. I had expected no wind in the early morning, but it wasn't turning out that way.

Here is the view from the end of roll 52.

Thank goodness for the guardrail. Here is the view from the end of roll 53.

Here is the view to the south from the end of roll 53.

There wasn't much traffic here in the early morning, but the morning is when the garbage trucks roll. Even here at the edge of the country. Here is the view from the end of roll 54. You can see the truck coming.



Finally here is the view south from the end of roll 54.

As I starting to retrieve the Line, the wind seemed to pick up strength. If the guardrail had not been there the Line would have gone out to sea and I'm not ready to make the crossing of the Pacific. I did manage to recover the whole segment, but I was lucky. This part almost got away from me.

Later after my business in Carmel and after eating a Subway sandwich in Monterey, I sat in my car near the Pacific Grove Lighthouse. There I listened to the waves and rolled up my Line.

What a view!

That is it for this segment. There is more to come next Tuesday.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 28

Today is the day that I will finally finish drawing my fourth maze. I began work on it just a little over a year ago and it feels good to be completing it. Of course the drawing of it is only the first step in the process. I will have to scan each page, edit and clean it up, find all of the edges between the nodes, and finally find or create a solution. All of this work is necessary and a just as important as the drawing part, but it is not as fun. In fact it seems like work. Still, it is a day to celebrate when the drawing of a long maze is over.

Yippie yi yo ki yay!

Okay, that's enough celebrating. For today, here is the next page of the first maze. First in the scanned and edited version.

Page 28

Here is the original page in the wild. As you can see the picture was taken before Christmas. Do you still have the spirit?

Tomorrow I will post the next update of the Line Around The World. It will show how the elements began to conspire against me.

Jonathan

Drawing the Line - 15

On Sunday January 23, 2011 I was on my merry way down to the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur. Last year I had arrived too early for checking in, so this year I didn't leave Santa Clara until noon. It is about 120 miles down to Lucia which is the town closest to the monastery. Parts of the drive would be on the freeway, but the 55 miles between Monterey and Lucia would be on the quite twisty two lane Highway 1. This section is very scenic and on the weekend would probably have quite a few drivers on it looking more at the views than the road. So it could well take over three hours to make it down there. Three was the check in time and the arrival time I was shooting for.

Along the way I planned to roll out my line. I had prepared four rolls of cash register tape and I thought that I would try to roll them out around Bixby Bridge. This bridge is an iconic scenic landmark not too far south of Carmel. Unfortunately the area around the bridge was jam-packed with parked cars and sightseers, not to mention way too much moving traffic along my planned Line route. I was disappointed, but this is one of the most beautiful coast lines in the world, so I figured I would find a good spot further along.

Well I did finally. Though I chose the spot less for its beauty than for its relative safety. It is actually one of the dullest spots along the drive, but I figured passing drivers might actually be looking at where they were going. Since I'm typing this up you can tell that I survived to tell the tale.

Up until this day my Line Around The World was continuous in a physical sort of way. Each new segment abutted the previous if you took the fourth dimension of time into account. The Line Segment I was rolling out this time would seem to violate this continuity. But this is not so, it is just that the time element is much longer. This segment will at some time in the future connect with the segments I have already rolled out and documented. It might be awhile though.

This segment starts about 5.7 miles outside of Lucia, California. When I got out of my car Green Bay was leading the Bears 14 to 7. The Bear's third string quarterback looked to be a hero by getting his team back into the game. I had too much to do to listen further and it was going to be after 3 o'clock before I arrived at the monastery as it was, so I got busy.

Here is the start of roll 47. It is right on the western edge of the continental United States.

 

That is the Pacific Ocean down there. It looks wet.

Here is the view from the end of roll 47. Note the safety of the spot, plenty of shoulder, sort of.

 

Here is the view from the end of roll 48.

It was very nice that day. Fairly sunny, warm and just a breath of a breeze. Next is the view from the end of roll 49.

Here is a view from the end of roll 50.

There was less of a safety margin here as the shoulder disappeared. There were many cars driving by as I worked. I was definately getting some attention. "What in the world, Martha?!?", one might have asked his wife as they drove by. "Just some California nut, I reckcon, Henry," Martha replied.

Here is the view south from the start of roll 50.

Here is the view west from the end of roll 50.

By the time I got back to the car, the game was almost over. The unlikely hero had failed and Green Bay was going to the Super Bowel.

That's it for this update. I have three more to write up for you. I hope you enjoy the scenery.

Jonathan