New Product: Tech Serenity Prayer

by Ariela

On days when you need help remembering how to take a deep breath and not take a baseball bat to all the machines in sight, it helps to have this Tech Serenity Prayer at your desk.

How it Came to Be

As with almost all of my art, the inspiration for this piece came from something that happened to me. In my day job I do tech stuff for a non-profit. I describe it as "playing a programmer on TV" - I don't actually do any programming, but I am the admin of a bunch of the applications we use. Recently one crashed and burned in ways that I don't want to relive in the course of this blog post, but it was offline for an unconscionably long time. I've never heard Support use the terms "dangit" and "horrified fascination" in consumer-facing correspondence before.

Some time during this fiasco, I quipped that I needed a serenity prayer for tech problems. Then I realized that there was no reason I couldn't have one, I just needed to figure out if "a hammer" or "rm -rf/" was funnier. After a brief poll of some programmer friends, I decided to go with the latter.

In the tradition of feel-good text, I used a Copperplate hand to write it out, but I put it in white on a blue background to reference the classic Blue Screen of Death. 

Prints are available in two sizes: 8"x10" for $30 and 11"x14" for $45 (matted dimensions).

New Product: Clockwork Lovebirds Art Prints

By Terri

Were you looking at our ketubot and wondering "I love the artwork, but already have a ketubah/would never buy a ketubah"? These art prints solve that problem!

How They Came To Be:

Way way back in the dark ages of 2012, Ariela and I figured out that we might be able to make a go of this business. I knew that the key to subsidizing the ketubot was to create smaller prints of the art with a quote on them, rather than the full ketubah text. That way someone coming across Ariela's work could be able to purchase the art they love, even if they weren't in the market for a ketubah. 

We actually got a request for a variation on the Clockwork Lovebirds a few months ago, making it the natural choice for the first set of prints. For the Hebrew quote, the obvious choice proved the best one. I looked through שיר השירים, (Song of Songs, the infamous Biblical erotic poem), to find the one quote in there about birds. Ariela found the English quote, using the incredibly difficult method of tossing search terms into BrainyQuote and choosing the best result.* It owes more to the clockwork than the birds, but is lovely.

The prints come matted and are available in two sizes:
Small - 11" x 14" - $45
Large - 16" x 20" - $60

 

*After performing the all important step of actually verifying that the quote really was from Ikeda-san -- we all know how reliable some of these databases are.

New Product: Database Administrator's Oath

By Terri

Demonstrate your all-encompassing database mastery with this oath on your cubicle wall.

database-administrators-oath.png

How it Came to Be:

Ariela is all about logical next steps. We've done a Coder's Oath and a Sysadmin's Oath, so next up was a Database Administrator's Oath. We are getting further outside Ariela's zone of familiarity with this content. While she uses databases, she has not ever been and never hopes to be a DBA. So she consulted friends who are DBAs to compose the oath text.

The border art is a pretty version of one of the standard ways of visualizing a relational database or relationships in a data set. Ariela went with circles only for visual unity, worrying that if she tried to introduce squares and triangles and whatnot it would be overwhelming. More variables means more complicated, and this isn't supposed to be a representation of real data, just evocative of relational databases in general.* 

The circles are all primary colors, two shades of each, and are supposed to represent different kinds of data. The lines are all tertiary colors rather than secondary and are meant to represent different kinds of relationships. A line between a yellow circle and a blue circle will be in the green family, but it could be yellow-green or blue-green, depending on the relationship between the two data points. Ariela felt this was a more elegant solution than arrows, because relationships do go two ways, even if one datapoint is a daughter of another.

 

*It is likely possible to backwards-engineer a data set that will fit the relationships portrayed here.

New Greeting Card: Bereavement Card

by Terri

Spoon Dragon comforting its kitsune friend in a time of hardship is here to say the words you can't always come up with.

How It Came To Be:

Many of our cards have genderless chibi figures, so at first the card was going to feature two of them hugging from behind. But Ariela had been toying with the idea of making some of our cards feature other recurring characters, so she decided to use the spoon clutching dragon (herein after referred to as Spoon Dragon) from the Take Care of Yourself card.

Ariela briefly considered drawing Spoon Dragon by itself, crying, before remembering that the point of a bereavement card is to offer comfort, and that image would be really counterproductive. Her sister actually said “Nooooooo! That would be so sad!” So instead, she decided to show the Spoon Dragon comforting a friend. I threw out a few suggestions (including, but not limited to: sea serpent, The Loch Ness Monster and a vampire squash), but Ariela wisely chose a kitsune as the dragon's friend.

The kitsune is a Japanese fox spirit. Kitsune are usually portrayed as having between one and nine tails, with more tails generally corresponding to greater age and power; traditions vary. This kitsune has five tails, one of the more common numbers below nine. Ariela wanted to make it clear this was a magical creature, hence more than one tail, but that it is not quite as wise or all-knowing as a nine-tailed kitsune*.

The interior text was really difficult to compose. We wanted the card to be able to convey a general feeling of sympathy (especially the kind you feel when someone you care about loses someone they care about), without it sounding like a Hallmark platitude. I often find that in situations like this, many people sound a lot less comforting than they think they do. We both wanted to avoid that, while also having a card text that would appeal to a large group of people. We hope that it accomplishes that.

Like all of our cards, the Sympathy Card is available singly for $4.00 and as a pack of 6 for $20.00.

*Also, some traditions say that nine-tailed kitusne turn gold, and Ariela likes red foxes

New Product: Salute Ketubah

By Ariela

Are you and your spouse-to-be looking for a highly logical choice for your ketubah? Do you fancy yourselves commanding presences in yellow? Are you science types in blue? Perhaps engineers in red? (We rather assume you're not redshirts.) Look no further!

Available in four texts and three colors.

Available in four texts and three colors.

How it came to be

The first seeds of an idea for this design were planted way back in the summer of 2010. A coworker told me that she had a friend who was looking for someone to make "a zombie or Star Trek ketubah." I thought a zombie ketubah was a bit beyond my ability to get my head around (though it became a series of greeting cards!), but a Star Trek ketubah was totally something I could do. Unfortunately, the project never happened. The parents of the couple decided they wanted to make the ketubah their gift, and they were not at all down with a Star Trek ketubah. "That's ridiculous," I thought to myself, "they just don't realize that Star Trek could be classy."

But with no client and a number of other active commissions taking up my time, the idea got shelved until 2013, when some fannish friends announced they were getting married and wanted a similarly themed ketubah. I was starting to think about doing prints by that point, not just one-off commissions, and decided that with two requests under my belt, this might be a good place to start. But I didn't want to deal with licensing. What to do?

Fortunately for me, Leonard Nimoy was Jewish. He didn't so much invent the Vulcan Salute as lift it straight from Jewish tradition in the form of the way the priests hold their hands while blessing the congregation. It was the perfect copyright-free stealth-geek statement - those who are fannish would recognize it immediately, and everyone else would assume it had to do with the Priestly Blessing.

The execution of this design, however, turned out to be more complicated than average. The way most ketubah prints come about is like this: I make the art and then I write all four texts out, each on separate pieces of paper, to fit the space left in the art. I get them all scanned, and then I composite them in post-production, switching between texts as needed for printing. But there is no art aside from the text here. Moreover, I wanted to make it available in all the iconic colors of the Starfleet uniforms. So instead of writing four different texts, it's actually more like twelve. Suffice to say that it took a looong time to get them all finished in between other art. But here they are!

The other challenge of this design is the personalization. When you write a generic text, you leave space for the clients' names, wedding date, etc. But with a calligram (which is what you call a picture made out of text), if you leave giant gaps in it the effect is dulled. A lot. So thus began my search in Star Trek canon for appropriate couples.

First and easiest was Worf and Dax. Their wedding date is in the canon, Worf's parentage is totally known, and Jadzia's father is named in Memory Beta. I had a lot of fun figuring out the Hebrew date of their wedding. A lot of people think they got married on April 1, 2374, because that's the Stardate listed in the captain's log in the opening voiceover, but the content of the episode makes it clear the actual wedding is a week later. That actually puts it in the week after Passover in 6134. Their information is the demo text in the Traditional Aramaic ketubah.

Troi and Riker's wedding took place in a movie, so the Stardate of their wedding is totally borked, but other than that, we have a lot of information on their wedding, including location, and the parentage of both parties. They are the demo text for the Lieberman Clause.

For the Gender Neutral Lover's Covenant I had to look into the licensed novels. Star Trek isn't great about QuILTBAG representation, so I looked through Memory Beta and pulled Etana Kol and Krissten Richter. They're married sometime between 2377 (Fearful Symmetry) and 2383 (Plagues of Night), and I extrapolated from that that they got married aboard Deep Space 9. The date was a pretty much arbitrary pick on my part.

The real trick was the demo text for the Secular English text. I wanted to choose a pairing that would emphasize the fact that this text is completely gender-free and doesn't promise exclusivity. So I settled on a totally fabricated wedding between Jean-Luc Picard and Jack Crusher during Jack and Beverly's marriage. This was largely inspired by a joke my own spouse made. We attended a wedding where all the tables were named, instead of numbered, after famous couples. We were sitting at "Picard and Crusher," whereupon he quipped "Jack or Beverly?" It also nicely parallels Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, but I won't say any more about that here because spoilers.

The Salute ketubah of your very own, with your wedding information on it, for $210

New Greeting Card: Yarn Fanatic Greeting Card

by Ariela

Let the yarn devotee in your life know that you support their habit. Send them our new greeting card encouraging them to collect more yarn.

Protip: You could even accompany it with a gift of yarn for extra brownie points.

How it Came to Be

As Terri mentioned, my brain sometimes makes odd sideways leaps that result in art projects. This inspiration did not strike in the course of a conveniently recorded IM conversation, so I can't quite recreate the path I took to get to this. Since it involves yarn, I feel quite comfortable positing that Terri was the inspiration/instigator.

I was bound and determined to keep the two figures on the card gender-neutral. As we stated in the Fiber Artist's Oath, anyone can be a fiber arts devotee.

Like all of our greeting cards, the Yarn Addict card is available singly for $4.00 and as a pack of 6 for $20.00.

New Art Print: Fiber Artist's Oath

by Terri

The oath is the perfect gift for the fiber artist in your life. It's also a great treat for your own craft room wall.

How It Came To Be:

It all started with an IM conversation:

Ariela Housman: isn't it a shame that geeks never knit
and i would have no reason whatsoever to make geeky knitting art
Terri Ash: Not a single one
Ariela Housman: ....
KNITTER'S OATH!!!!
aaaah, why did i never think of this before?!?1

I'm an avid knitter, to the point where I have assembled plans to open a yarn shop.* Naturally, this meant talking to Ariela, and thus the above conversation. Ariela's brain is amazing at making cross-connections, and she'd been working really hard on the SysAdmin's Oath. And so the seeds began sprouting. Since Ariela sews rather than knits, she knew that the theme needed to be expanded. In addition, we wanted to recognize every form of fiber arts we know the geek world embraces - knitting, spinning,** needlepoint, weaving, sewing and crochet. Thus, the Fiber Artist's Oath.

The text was a collaborative effort between the two of us, which we then ran by other fiber artist friends to make sure we hadn't left anything out.*** After quite a bit of culling, we still ended up with the longest oath that we've ever made. Ariela asked me for suggestions for tools to include in the border art, and really managed to fit most of them in. The art is similar to the other oaths on the site, but you will notice a distinct lack of curves and tangles emblematic of the other oaths.**** This is because after making both the full Cordthulhu and the mini one contained in the SA's Oath, Ariela was tired of trying to create tangles that look both aesthetically pleasing and pleasingly random and balanced. This is quite the difficult task, and we don't get art if we push the artist too hard. It's possible that there might have been tangled yarn if Ariela hadn't been banging her head against the other art, but the process was making her more than a little itchy. So in the end, the art is comprised of the tools and raw materials that fiber artists use.

 

The Fiber Artist's Oath is available for $45. 

 

 

*You'll start to notice a theme around here - neither Ariela nor I are very good at limiting ourselves to one project at a time. I'm a little better at it, which is why I'm the resident killjoy for Ariela's grand dreams.

**That person in the back of the panel with the weird rotating thing making thread - they're spinning.

***Turns out we had - neither of us had thought of repetitive stress injuries.

****You'd think they belonged here - yarn gets tangled a LOT.

New Greeting Card: Take Care of Yourself

by Ariela

A spoon-clutching little dragon is now ready to help you tell people you care about to care for themselves!

How it came to be:

A little while ago my friend Caitlín Rosberg remarked,

Sometimes I just horde my spoons in my fists like a treasure-hungry dragon and wave my hands at the screen going "nooooo noooo they're all mine noooo you can't have them."

(Spoon Theory is a method of explaining the expenditure of mental resources. It was coined by Christine Miserandino to explain how living with chronic illness depletes one's mental and emotional resources.)

Because my brain works the way it does, this sounded like perfect fodder for a greeting card admonishing the recipient to take care of themselves. After much doodling, this doleful little critter emerged.

I know dragons in various Asian mythologies don't tend to be portrayed as hoarding creatures. But the English-speaking SFF world is already over-saturated with European mythology and I am not interested in perpetuating that trend. But a soup spoon, a wooden spoon, and a measuring spoon are not much of a hoard. And voila!

Like all of our greeting cards, the Take Care of Yourself card is available singly for $4.00 and as a pack of 6 for $20.00.