Thursday, October 27, 2011

Sunset

This was the sunset from my backyard last night, brought to you by The Artist Without a Paintbrush.

It is nice that the colors partially offset the headache-inducing atmospheric conditions of the Chinook arch.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Rethinking Power Dressing

A lot of books about wardrobe color talk about the cultural statements certain colors wear. I started a database of those constructs as I read the different books, but it got lost or deleted. Dang.

For example, black has long been considered the power clothing color.  Brown is considered more sensible. Purple is royalty, green is relaxing, blue means loyalty, red is "Va va VOOM".

Every business person in Korea wears black. They called my husband a "playboy" for the colorful clothes he was wearing. Here he is, pictured in his travel clothes in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Those guards are the same height as my 6'4" husband!

Now to the point of my post:  I've been thinking of in light of the recent Occupy Wall Street protests.  Maybe it's time for Wall Street to get back to wearing brown, the more "sensible" color.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Wearing suits to get your message heard

The folks from Occupy Wall Street want to be taken seriously, not dismissed on the basis of their clothing choices. Out of this has emerged the Proper Business Attire Working Group at suitsforwallstreet.org.


Suits for Wall Street from Wall Street Suits on Vimeo.

From their website: "We all look great in suits. To reporters, to workers, to skeptical tourists, we'll look like people to listen to, or, at the very least, to hear out. Lazy journalists won't be able to take the easy, dismissive out, and will have to actually listen to what we are saying. The conversation will grow out of the protester echo chamber and into the wider world, where it belongs."

Monday, October 10, 2011

Color Math

These days I am trying to figure out some color space math, because I have an idea I'm trying to develop which involves some color space conversions. It was very good of Gabor Boronkay to put this all on an Excel spreadsheet. I can understand doing some mathematical operations in Excel, although I am very rusty at it.  I refreshed my memory by going to Youtube and viewing some tutorials on matrix multiplication. 

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Makeup pigments

I'm on the guaifenesin protocol for fibromyalgia, which has been working quite well for me for the past three years or so. Salicylate molecules block the effectiveness of the medication, so we have to watch what what we put on our skin, as salicylates are readily absorbed.

The only makeup item that proved especially problematic to buy locally was lipstick. Mail-order companies like Andrea Rose make a castor-oil free lipstick.  Castor oil is a a major ingredient in lipstick, but contains salicylates.

I decided to make my own lip glosses, so I ordered a bunch of mineral pigments and I mix the colors I want with petroleum jelly. Works well for me.  I also liked receiving my mineral pigments in the mail, it brought me back to the days when we looked at such things in geology school. *sigh*

My learnings: one, all makeup is basically pigments in a medium. It always was "mineral" makeup! Two, if you want botanicals in your makeup, you have to add preservatives or the makeup will get moldy very quickly.  It seems a bit ironic to me that to have the benefit of the botanicals you have to add the preservative. Actually I have no strong opinion on preservatives, I know that some folks are dead-set against them; I haven't looked into the topic for myself.

I know this is a bit of a rabbit trail on the topic of color in clothing, but it's been a while since I blogged, and my lip gloss supply was diminished. So here I write about it.