My aunt-in-law brought these out to show me after I was explaining my new hobbies to her.
The biggest one(or the one with tits) is a Meerschaum.
(made from sea foam)
The other three in order from top to bottom:
Falcon, with removeable bowl,
Bulldog from Italy carved from Briar with vulcanite stem,
Churchwarden from Italy carved from Briar with vulcanite stem.
They were her grandfathers, and were some seriously nice and well smoked pipes.
My knife collection has grown greatly since I inherited my grandfathers old knives. Many are very incredible and come from all kinds of eras and places throughout the world.
The black one you see in the photo is a Kissing Crane from before World War 2. Solingen Steel, German knife.
A friend (Tad) let me borrow an incredible knife sharpening stone set and I went to town on about 20 knives.
eMonkeyWilliam says: Crap yes! I have to def. thank you for this awesome idea. I always wanted to carve/whittle however the thought never crossed my mind to carve a pipe. I still cant get over the fact that you found 17" stems in Germany. Thats brilliant! and freakishly long! (*insert joke here*)
Man I cant wait to camp...chill in the hammock, drink good brew (wish it were hommade), whittle on sticks, and...
A few days ago I made a trip to Jerry's Artorama in Nashville, TN. The store is basically a Hobby Lobby without the decorative shit. All Art no nonsense.
I bought a sketch book, 3 different pencils with varying leds, 2 shades of charcoal, a sharpener(which is the wrong one for any of these pencils), and a kneadable eraser(which I have a lot of, but they are fun!) All for about 10 dollars.
After the jump you can see the result of my first Charcoal drawing in about 6 years. It was really fun playing with the medium again and readers can expect to see a nice progression as we move along. More.
NicholasGann.com is getting a facelift. I have yet again progressed in my digital designing abilities, so this should be nice eye candy.
I will be experimenting with HTML 5 and a really cool new Geolocation idea.
This is truly just a beginning to the madness but wanted to post what i had done in the last little bit. The idea for the site in its current mental state is going to be one of adventure through different mediums of art more or less. With plenty of room for my forced philosophies.
I have spent some time in random research on GrassCity.com forums, and recently found this Zen parable listed.
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you shoud not return emptyhanded. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow, " he mused, "I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."
This band is in my opinion badass. They are a mixture of Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, Presidents of the USA, and a little Ween.
They played at a local dive bar called The Spot where my mom bartends. The lead guys name was Nicholas, so she asked him for a cd and brought it to me. I love the band and have a shirt on the way.
Hopefully I can get in contact with them and book them at LTA.
Let me know what you think, unless your name is Larry, because you have probably already heard them.
I don't think it's actually a saga, but I have noticed that putting saga after things makes people pay more attention to them.
Today Laura and I went to see the exhibit at Rivergate mall. The room felt strange and the energy wasn't exactly positive. Seeing the different muscles flexed according to the task being performed was interesting but the idea of how strange it would've been for their eyes to start moving kept me slightl distracted.
Bodies for the exhibit are preserved using a process called plasticization. The only part of the body that doesn't survive the process is the eyes, which are replaced with lifelike glass replicas.
One of the more interesting displays consisted of 8 slices starting at the back of the skull and moving its way forward to the front of the face. The slices were about 1.5 inches thick and creepy when you get to the section that is just eyelids, lips, and thin layer of cheek skin.
After the entire exhibit I still couldn't help but wonder if those people ever thought in life that one day their bodies would be flexed and encased in plastic for everyone to observe....more.
Alice in Chains has long been a top band for my ears. Their new album Black gives way to Blue for the most part leans way too much toward the metal genre for me....more.
Jacob Estes says: I'm not as familiar with Alice in Chains as you, but this and another song comes on the radio sometimes and I agree about the sound of this one.
Jacob Estes says: The few videos I've watched and things I read about home brewing all look really awesome. There are just so many possibilities, and it sounds like there is just so much zen to the whole thing. That's of course the modern male type zen, not the authentic zen which I won't pretend to know anything about.
I'm looking forward to our thing we talked about. I want every part of the meal to ...
Around here what sells, or at least the only thing you can find, are bars with emphasis on 50 cent drafts, and these ridiculous drinks that pass for cocktails.
I have only been a bartender for a short period of time, but presentation and flavor have been something I focused on for at least half my life... More.
Jacob Estes says: There's this chef Thomas Keller that I didn't know much about until about a week ago. He basically changed my mind on how I look at most fancy restaurants. I'm more open minded about it now, but I used to get this feeling that if the food is supposed to be this fancy looking, they care about presentation more than taste. But looking at his food and reading some of his book, he cares abou...
As my business partner and I near financial backing for our web design business my art interest has sky rocketed.
Partially because I have a born again interest in photo manipulation and partially because I have a full interest in doing what I want.
As I develop my own style and further my knowledge of using the tools presented in the Adobe suite, I have been looking at others artwork for influence and little elements I think are neat.
After the leap you can find some of the artwork that I find incredible, as well as a source to get more of it. More.
Jacob Estes says: The Almawash and the Fuhrer ones are amazing.
This whole thing about the Picasso thing in New York and some movie about stealing art have me thinking art more. I was looking through documentaries on Netflix and remember being really irritated that some movie about stealing turned out to be about stealing paintings.
I don't give a fuck about art thieves. I think it's just as absurd ...