Feb 15 2025 - Sofas So Cute

 

Look at these cute seats/chairs or whatever we'll call them.  Aren't they creative!  These are showing up in the Pinterest feed.  My Pinterest pictures have wreaths, gardens, and water colour prints.  But weird ads show up regularly now.  I call these weird because of the ludicrously low prices. There are all kinds of pictures like this - a bed that is a grand piano with the keyboard at the foot of the bed.  A bed shaped with lotus petals, a bed shaped like a violin, even a pizza bed.   Alvanila - the site where  sofa seats like this are for sale says it is a grocery site.  And then the prices - they missing at least one zero, and possibly two zeros at the end?  Could these turn out to beminiature seats for a doll's house? There are more and more of these selling sites appearing in Pinterest  The one that got my attention previously was women's clothing with a pretty Chinese flower print.  It got my attention sufficiently that I have painted some Chinese branch watercolours.   You can find the sofa/seat images on stock photo websites and they have the heading royalty-free AI generated. How interesting things have turned out:  It used to be that I would look at gorgeous pictures of sofas and chairs in British House and Gardens or Architectural Digest, knowing they were priced far beyond my means.  Now I see gorgeous sofas and chairs priced below my means, but alas, they exist in pictures only.  I could never have guessed this would happen.

Here's one of the Chinese flower branch water colours   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 5 2023 - Weather(ed) Balloon vs Chinese Lanterns

 

A weather balloon vs a spy balloon.  Spot the differences!   1. Weather balloons are small - about 20 feet across.  There aren't any the size of three buses. 2. Weather balloons are relatively unchanged since the 70s or 80s, so no expectation of the equipment on it. 3. Weather balloons go up over one particular place to about 50,000 feet.  They are up there for a few hours. They don't travel distance - maybe 100 miles from where launched. They come down. 4. Weather balloons as high altitude balloons don't have good maneuverability.  Reference point above, they go up and down.  Latest news is a US fighter fired an air-to-air missile at the balloon six nautical miles off the coast in US airspace over its territorial waters.  China say this "seriously violated international conventions." Now that it was shot down, recovery and analysis can begin.  It is in  47 feet of water and seven mile radius six miles off the Carolina coast.  I doubt we'll get many reports of what's there. Interesting, one of the articles say this was done at least three times during the Trump administration.  Today is the big Lantern Festival with celebrations all over the Toronto area.  No more competition from a flying balloon. Here are my pictures of a flying white patio umbrella crossing the sky over Stoney Creek.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 12 21021 - There's One Chinese New Year's Joke

 

It is Chinese New Year.  How is  the date determined? First new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February  I know so little about how it works.  Here's an impact - figuring out your Chinese birth-year: "Many people inaccurately calculate their Chinese birth-year by converting it from their Gregorian birth-year. As the Chinese New Year starts in late January to mid-February, the previous Chinese year dates through 1 January until that day in the new Gregorian year, remaining unchanged from the previous Gregorian year. For example, the 2018 year of the Dog began on 16 February 2018. The year 2018 is generally aligned with the year of the Dog. However, the 2017 year of the Rooster officially ended on 15 February 2018. This means that anyone born from 28 January 2017 to 15 February 2018 was actually born in the year of the Rooster rather than the year of the Dog. Many online Chinese Sign calculators do not account for the non-alignment of the two calendars, using Gregorian-calendar years rather than official Chinese New Year dates." There are lots of charts in the Wikipedia entry as the Chinese calendar is not continuous but cyclical.  That just seems so strange to me now that we've become an arithmetic-based, linear society.  The headline promises easy but funny Chinese New Year Jokes 2021 For Everyone.  But there aren't many jokes.  Here's one: If you celebrated Chinese New Year in America do you celebrated American Years in China? Summer images are so full of colour compared to our current landscape. The statue is in the Powell Garden in Kansas City. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca