So What the Heck Was That We Were Looking At, Anyway? Contest Results Revealed!

First of all, let me thank everyone who played my Second Annual NaBloPoMo Midway Contest.  You are all very, very smart!  Also, your answers made me realize that many people would be thrilled to have spouses who paid half as much attention to what they said as my readers pay to my blatherings here at this little blog.

Absolutely every single answer I received was at least partially correct, even the most outlandish.  You all rock!

To refresh:  The question asked was, "What the Heck Are We Looking At Here?"  (Click to enlarge, if you think you can bear it.)

Well, here's what.

This picture was taken during my Monday night jewelry making class at the DeCordova Museum's little art school, the class on Tiny Parts and Moving Mechanisms taught by the charming and very patient Alison Bruun.  It was taken using my crappy, traumatized little Optio E10, the one that has been dropped on its head a whole bunch of times and also ritually disemboweled and left for dead in a trash can so that now its color interpretations tend toward the creative, or at least in a direction more creative than we commonly expect of computerized and supposedly nonsentient low-end consumer devices.  To give you an idea how creative, while the above shot is the first, the next shot is the 16th that my psycho little light brick took in this series without my changing any of the settings:   (Click to enlarge.)

As you might imagine, I was truly torn which image to choose!  In the end, in the interest of keeping it fun and still being ever so slightly artistic, I chose the most clear and realistic of the series.  The colors are still inaccurate, but I don't think quite so maddeningly so.

Yes, it is my right, "Tupperware"-encased thigh (or what's left of the thigh and what I now have instead/in addition) inside faded black jeans, covered with gorgeous, glittering, sterling silver sawdust.  I am seated on a chair in this picture.  I did take the picture myself.

The table in front of me is part of a very long, not exactly new worktable.  This is what the same table looks like during my Tuesday morning class in beginning jewelry making taught by the kindly Yehudit Schorr (part of whose back can be seen at left):  (Click to enlarge.)

See that really messy station with the bright yellow travel mug full of life-endowing coffee and the torn and wadded up paper?  That's mine!

Incidentally, this is what my worktable in my home studio looks like, by contrast:  (Click to enlarge.)

But I digress.  Back to this.  (Click to enlarge, again, if you need to.)

You want to know what's really sneaky about this picture?  What you are looking at is not the table top.  What you are looking at is a wooden pull-out tray underneath my station.  It pulls out to catch, uh, sawdust and other bits and pieces so they don't go poinging off into the, yes, reddish brown carpet never to be seen again.  Or so they don't get embedded in your clothes.  As you can see, I only remembered that it slid out after I was done sawing.  Oopsie.

This tray has been painted kind of a gunmetal blue-black which is indeed chipping off to reveal wood underneath.  It is not lined with anything; what you're looking at is whatever material was used to form the tray bottom.  The items in it which can be seen here are a bench pin and fragments of a number 2 jewelry sawblade.  (You go through those things like a motherf-, uh, quite a bit when you saw through sheet metal.)  A bench pin is indeed something you clamp onto your worktable to help you shape pieces, and the number of ways it can be used depends largely on the ingenuity of the user.

Let's talk about the denim-clad leg.  Ha ha -- another trick!  Yes, it is both living and artificial.  It is my stump encased in its suction socket.  The knee, however -- mwa ha ha -- is not visible.

Here is a photo of my fabulously glamourous prosthetic leg when it's not clad in anything but a beautiful black leather boot moderately spattered with fresh muffin batter: (This one enlarges on a click also, if you're interested.)

See that circled red area?  That's my artificial knee.

Visually, my suction socket, which is molded to fit what's left of my right thigh (or it was; I need a new one, actually) is like a cliff you have to go over before you get to the bendy part of the prosthetic leg assembly.  So I have to lean pretty far forward to photograph the knee while I'm wearing it, like so:

The photo which you all had to identify in this contest was taken by me sitting up.  Consequently, the knee is not visible.  This is why the trapezoidal shape that is my encased thigh does not taper more dramatically toward the pull-out tray.

So you see what I mean?  Absolutely everyone who played this game said at least one correct thing.  Picking the winner, however, came down to details -- the number right and the number wrong in each answer.

Whenever somebody got a detail right, I gave her a point.  Whenever she got something wrong, I took a point away.  Whenever she said something I could neither deny nor verify, or something completely subjective such as whether the table was too low or not, no points were given and no points were taken away.  There were benefits to making me laugh; for example, Kay ended up with a positive score even though almost everything she said was ridiculously, purposefully wrong.  And I do not think this photo reveals the presence of oxygen or the fact that this photo was taken on earth; I do know there's no way you can tell it was taken in North America; however, her brazen point-loading made me laugh, so Elizabeth got some half-points which added up to whole points.

In the end, this is how it broke:

Laurie 1
TheAmpuT 6
Elizabeth 7
Alphabitch 7
Danielle Wegman 4
Jen 4
Kay 2
Jana 7
Sugared Harpy 1

As you see, we have a three-way tie!  How exciting!

As promised, I wrote the names of the tying contestants on tiny pieces of paper --

-- crumpled them up --

-- and threw them in a big bowl.

Then I mixed them up and pulled one out.

And the name I pulled was...

...insert drumroll here...

...Jana!

(Insert confetti here.)

Hurray!  Congratulations!

Please tell me whether you'd like a scarf or a dish towel, and what color(s), and I will get cracking on it tout de suite.

Thank you all for playing.  I hope you had as much fun as I did.  Of course, you're all winners as far as I'm concerned, and I hope I see you all here to play again next year.

__________

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!  Today and every day I am grateful for my true love, of course.

"Thanks for taking my picture.  Don't worry.  I'll crop out my underwear."

"I did assume as much."

"Yeah, it's not that kind of website."

"Damn straight -- not for free it's not!"

And I am grateful for Sam, who is also grateful for my true love, who is a dab hand with a brush.  (Click to enlarge.  Go on; you must.)

And of course I am also grateful for all of you, my esteemed correspondents.  Best wishes to you and yours.

Comments

[elizabeth]

I LOST! Well I obviously think the was rigged, how could I not - but a cheer for Jana and Chaos Theory who it seems worked together to win. And you say "point loading" I say, "interpretation by Sherlock deduction" - Where once all else is eliminated what remains MUST be true! (And since we narrowed down MOST of your posts to earth).

I did have to say when I read I went "Gosh and I thought it was a #3 jewelry sawblade" (Jewelry sawblades come with numbers?) Still very informative to see you work table however EVEN more informative to see how you selected the winner - because I KNOW THAT BLUE BOWL - a stared at it and a severed growing leg for many many (too many) minutes. This convinces me that you may have many bench clips and saws but you have VERY few decent kitchen bowls (how you like that deduction!). So, enough said, I think I can confidently predict what a good Xmas present for you might be. (thanks for the game!)

[Kay]

Yay for Jana! And, yay, I got 2 points, much more than I expected, though I did not know we were operating on a point system. Next year I will be better prepared.

Also, Mr. Muffin Love is making Sam seriously blissful there.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[alphabitch]

So close! And yet so far! Alas!!!

Elizabeth, I would challenge you to an arm-wrestling match to determine second place, if only there were a second-place prize.

I agree with you about Sara's kitchen bowl deficiency, however. At least given the evidence presented here.

And of course I enlarged the picture of the kitty; dear sweet Sam looks to be so happy he is drooling, with his eyes rolled back in his head. What a pumpkin pie sugar bear of a love cat he is!

[alphabitch]

Oh yeah, and congratulations to Jana & alla that.

[Jana]

Gasp! Me??? WOW!

Okay, so I would like anything made by you, Sara. But I think I'm going to lean in the direction of the scarf. Not that I really _need_ a scarf where I live, but I do like wearing them around my neck in the morning while it is just a tidge cool and I am still in my PJs and I am reading my email before I get into a warm shower. That, and I can always bring it with me on my next trip to the East when I take tour #2 of Sara's town. :)

Colors: blue? Maybe a lightish blue or sky blue (or something in a shade that would match those pretty French blue earrings that I love to wear)? As for fiber: I am just fine with wool, even though I live in such a warm climate (I _love_ natural fibers and when I wear wool then EllyCat is my best friend). Or...if you have some very favorite yarn already and you would like to surprise me with whatever color it happens to be, then I would be just thrilled with that, too! :)

[Michelle]

Congrats to Jana!

I love how you class up your home workstation with the wine glass. I notice it's empty.

But that Sam. I've never seen a cat drool with glee before. He sure is something.

Ah and I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving ;)

[Bipolarlawyercook]

You have a keen sense of drama. That reaching into the bowl shot is priceless. Yay, too, for Sam getting some brush=love

[Sara]

Elizabeth, please note that I did give you credit for gravity. Gravity is clearly in evidence in this photo. :)

Also, I have only ever used #2 blades (I think you get to use other sizes in the more advanced classes.)

Also, I have more than one big bowl; I even have more than one of those blue glass bowls, which are huge and excellent for many purposes, including both cooking and mad science. However, after spending a good part of the day dirtying my kitchen/laboratory on such pursuits as muffineering and egg scramblery, this was the clean one.

Kay, yes, my true love is also Sam's true love. Our true love is among other things a certified massage practitioner and thus has highly developed, professional quality petting skills among many other fine attributes. The man can wield a red rubber kitty brush like nobody's business.

Oh, and one of your points came from the observation that the silver sawdust all over my pant leg was the result of "Inadequate Crafting Supervision." Funny story. I haven't been in an art school classroom since 1982, and I've been having difficulty getting to the right place at the right time with the right stuff all semester. On the evening when I took this particular picture I was not working on stuff for this class, but stuff for the other class, because I'd forgotten to bring stuff for this class, but I'd remembered to bring stuff for the other one, which I'd forgotten to bring stuff for the week before, so I was using the time to catch up. Though she is quite generous with her attention and knowledge, it's not really Alison's job to supervise me while I do work for Yehudit's class, nor did I wish to pull her away from the students who were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing, so...yes! A point for you!

Points were the most objective way I could come up with for determining relative correctness. In the end, as Elizabeth noted, chaos ruled, as it usually does in my life.

Alphabitch, you would have won except that you made almost as many incorrect guesses as you made correct ones. That Mo Rocca style of guesswork both paid off and cost you. (I refer to Mr. Rocca's fine work on the NPR gameshow Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!)

It is possible that I may be persuaded to create special, secret runner-up prizes. It is possible that I promised such a thing to someone else last year but never got around to making it because I really thought I should make the main prize first, and, well, I haven't done that. My ability to create such super-top-secret runner up prizes would depend entirely on time and my ability to meet other, previous obligations. If I were to create such things, however, I wonder whether I would make scarves or kitchen towels and what color(s) I would use? I also wonder if you and/or Elizabeth have any ideas about that?

Sam likes to drool on my true love's neck and bearded chin while my true love sleeps. Since Sam is still a little radioactive, and since my true love has to fly to D.C. today, my true love is slightly worried about having radioactivity detected on his person, on this really specific part of his person, while going through airport security. "Oh, yeah, my cat is radioactive, but it's just temporary." Uh huh.

Jana, blue will be delightful. I can totally match the earrings. If you want to wear the scarf here, though, I do recommend you come later in the year next time! Ha! Though if you do that, you will miss the Wayside again, which closes in winter.

Do you want one blue or two blues? If I use two blues, you will be able to show off more colors of cat hair. ;) I can stripe it like a Harry Potter scarf or just make one long solid swath.

Sognatrice, ha! Trust you to find the wine glass! It's a prop for when I photograph earrings. I like to show how they hang and also what they look like with light shining through them, and I saw a number of other Etsyers using glasses as props, thought it was a clever idea, and shamelessly stole it.

And yes, some cats do drool. They usually drool because they are missing teeth (which Sam is not; his teeth and gums are perfect and beautiful) or because they are just the kind who drool when they are happy. You can tell by the length of the loogie depicted here that Sam is very, very happy when our true love brushes him.

BLC -- I am so glad you brought that up! I did mean to subtly point out that overly dramatic posing can lengthen the neck and reduce the number of extraneous chins in "spontaneous" snapshots, something every woman my age and build and the people who love her might like to keep in mind. You see, I'm really all about education. ;)

[Jana]

Sara:
I suck at making choices...One blue, two blues, stripes....why don't you decide and surprise me! :)

[Sara]

Done! And at the risk of repeating myself, mwa ha ha... :)

[alphabitch]

Oh, I dream of a dreamy soft red scarf, just a small one, to match the new flannel jammies I am building.

Arm-wrestling Elizabeth would be dreamy too, but after seeing her boxing pics today, I'm pretty sure I'll lose.

[Sara]

Hmmm. What is this word "small" of which you speak? What would you say are the dimensions of something "small"? ;)

The great thing about super-secret runner-up prizes -- when they actually materialize, mind you, and aren't just talked about for six months, and then sort of lamely not spoken of at all for another six months after that -- is that no competition is involved. I mean, you should arm-wrestle whomever you want to arm-wrestle -- assuming it's consensual, of course. I'm just saying it probably won't have any bearing on whether super-top-secret runner-up prizes arrive suddenly in various mailboxes or not.

Just so you know.

[alphabitch]

The hypothetical dimensions of a small scarf would be something like 6-8" wide by 40" long or so. So you could, say, wrap it around your neck and tuck the ends into the collar of your jammies if you were up reading and you weren't quite so cold you wanted another layer. For example.

My family used to have a cat who started to drool profusely the second anyone started to pet her. It was gross. You had to put a dishtowel on your lap if you wanted to pet her. People would admire her and she'd jump on their lap and start to purr. Someone would warn the new person, and they'd say, 'Oh, such a pretty kitty. It's OK. She just does it because she's so happy to be sitting on my lap.' And then: "Eeeuuuwww yuck!"

[Sara]

That is very interesting information about smallness, Alphabitch. Thank you so much for contributing to my overall knowledge. ;)

I wonder what Elizabeth envisions when she thinks of secret prizes which may or may not materialize ever? Probably something with skulls.

Yes, I understand about how the drooling can be less cute and more gross. Sam has itchy ears because of the hyperthyroidism. Apparently it makes them produce extra ear wax; who knew? But the thing is, you can be giving him face scritchies, and he'll be drooling, not extravagantly, just a little, and suddenly you will hit one of his itchiness trigger areas and he will shake his head really hard, spattering everyone and everything within two feet with a spittle shower. Adorable? Well...not perhaps for everyone.

[leslee]

Yes, I notice the difference in the two workbenches. The one at school has a bottle of water on it. The one at home? Would that be a wine glass??

[alphabitch]

Is it just me being rude, or does 'muffineering' sound like something that lesbians might do when they are lost?

You'd think I'd know that, as I get lost pretty much daily in this town. There aren't very many lesbians here though. And even if there were, it's not the kind of thing that people talk about hereabouts.

[elizabeth]

Skulls with pink bows on top please! Yummy!

[Sara]

Leslee, yes, but the water bottle wasn't mine (the yellow coffee vessel was), and the wine glass is strictly a prop. Honest!

Alphabitch, not rude, just, er, differently focused. I have gotten to a point in my life where I am much more interested in baked goods than, well, a lot of things, so it would never, ever have occurred to me to place that construction on this word, which I made up to describe my obsession with inventing and developing ever more delicious muffin recipes. Now that I have this interpretation in mind, though, it does make me curious how people at the IBTP forum which I occasionally visit interpret my describing myself in my profile as a "muffineer." ha ha ha ha ha

Elizabeth, I'm assuming you're thinking wool scarf thoughts, not cotton kitchen towel thoughts? (I don't know how to crochet comfortable socks. Yet.)

[elizabeth]

No, I'm kinda of thinking ANYTHING - kitchen towel, cookies, um...stickers on shoes, I'm very flexible....but I shouldn't brag about that here - I should stay on topic. Anything with skulls (with little bows on them) is good for me - Vibrator Bag?

[Sara]

I completely love the idea of a bag of that variety. Love it. Now, if it's not indiscreet to ask, how big do you envision it?

[elizabeth]

Not that big, just enough for the dolphin, my lipstick vibe and maybe one more, so about 8.5 by 5 probably - or just for the dolphin and the lipstick which would be 4 by 7.5 inches I think for the smallest, carry around with you anywhere style

[TheAmpuT]

HA! And that is what MY MostImportantGuy has to say about it, too. You know how much gals like you and me could make with those underwear shots?? lol
OY.