The Many Faces of Shannon

Hello blog-land!  We here at the Sherwood household have been busy these past weeks performing The Sound of Music with a local youth theater company.  Throughout the course of each evening I dressed myself in four different costumes and danced upon a stage of…stagelyness.  (I just sort of ramble without thinking of what’s coming next; can you tell?)  Anyways, I was alternately a nun, a townsperson, a puppet, and a rich lady at a party.  In that order.  I sang and I danced and I cried after the last show, but I’m alright now.  I’m going to the cast party tonight, provided my cold doesn’t act up again.  Yeah.  I only sang for the first weekend because by the next weekend I had no voice.  Here are some pictures from the show!

Here we have the persona I like to call “Sister Shannon.”  This disguise is used when attempting to blend in as a penguin, or alternately, when infiltrating an Abbey.

And now we have “Confused Townsperson.”  Perfect for roaming about Salzburg, especially during WWII reenactments.

Expanding on our Townsperson line, we now present the “Mama Goatherd” costume.  You’ll fit right in with your frumpy skirt, woolen shawl, and hand-painted puppet cheeks!

Last but certainly not least we have the “Ball Gown” which will enable your to hobnob with the richest sea captains and their baroness lady friends.  Keep in mind when wearing this costume that the floor-length gauzy skirt is easily trod apon by others, especially while waltzing.

Dress.

So I finally (after having the pattern for almost a year and the fabric for a few months) finished my regency dress.  I made it with Mrs. Chancey’s pattern from her website, Sensibility.com.  The fabric is a white cotton with little raised blue dots – very light and flowy.  I used a blue grosgrain ribbon around the waist and for the bows.  This pattern is so easy, I really ought to have finished the dress a few weeks earlier, except I cut the pieces wrong and – whoops – ran out of fabric.  I don’t actually have any shoes that match yet.  Haha.  In these pictures I was wearing my old dirty pink flats…which looked pretty bad.  I also need to fix the back of the dress.  >_<  I evidently made it a little tight and one of the buttons popped off.  Arg.

Close-up

Would you…

read a story that started:

Prince Harry was shy, and it was for this reason that it is generally accepted that he ran away from home.  It was well known that he had been betrothed to the Lady AnnaBarbra for some time, but without affection, and most waited for an eventual breaking of the engagement.  Harry’s lack of interest in his fiancé was obvious whenever the prince and duke’s daughter went out together.  Why AnnaBarbra would stick around for a boy who appeared in no hurry to marry her baffled both their parents.  It also disturbed the citizens of their country, who were eager for their marriage, if only in anticipation of the free-flowing booze inevitable at wedding celebrations.  So, when Prince Harry disappeared, ostensibly forever (though with royalty, who knows?) and AnnaBarbra retired to her own mansion in tears, it was only reasonable to think that the Crown Prince finally had the gumption to turn her down once and for all, and then escape himself to avoid repercussions.
But as there always are when intrigue arises, there were those looked skeptically upon the whole matter.  Harry, they argued, was much too small and pliable to have turned out Lady AnnaBarbra of his own accord. So it must have been the Lady herself who had walked out.  But for what reason?  Something big, exciting, and scandalous had to have taken place behind those thick, cold, stone walls.
What this observant minority had failed to identify was only the magnitude of the act that had indeed taken place.

?

Random Haiku of the Day, Pt. 4

Photography is
My way of expressing my
Uniquenessism!

(I know that isn’t
A word, but it had to fit
Five-Seven-Five time!)

By Shannon of Sherwood

Photo Hike.

Dad and I went on a photo hike a couple weeks ago.

It was supposed to be landscape photography, but I don’t do so well in that department.  (Plus, the lighting was bad.)

So I started taking pictures like this:

And this:

And this.

I just love barbed-wire fences.  I don’t know why.  They make me feel happy and grungy and like a country girl.  I never really wanted to be a country girl, however much I love horses.  There are no large hairy spiders in the suburbs.

One reason I love macro shots is because they force you to notice the details in everything.  I could totally count each little gill under the cap of that shroom.  In the picture of the pink flowers you can see how the light catches the edges of each blade of grass.  I always love it when the light catches in just the right way, or when my focus is just right.

This is my favorite shot from the day.  I have always picked puffballs and made wishes on them.  This one is particularly lovely because it isn’t perfect.  Because the little seed feathers are falling off the base of the flower.  And on the same stem you can see unopened dandelions.  I love it when things aren’t perfect.

Like this rose.  It isn’t perfect.  It has personality.  It has a history.  And I’m sure it was a very interesting history, but since this rose is long gone I guess no one will ever know the story.

But it must have been very nice.

Hoorah for High C

Voice class was canceled yesterday.  Sadness.  But I persevered.  Joan, Rachel, Petrina, and I simply hopped-skipped-and-jumped down the stairs to the practice rooms.  By 1:30 Joan and Rachel were in a room and at 1:45 I got into the room next door.  We practiced together and had some good fun singing Italian Ariettas about…trees.  No, seriously, we sing about trees.  The poetical idea of Selve Amiche, Ombrose Piante (which translates Friendly Forest, Shady Plants) is that my soul is burdened and I can find peace deep among the trees.  Woo.  It’s a very pretty song in any case, all operatic and whatnot.  While I was warming up, I attempted to get to high C – bad idea.  But, I have to hit it.  In Sound of Music, I am a Soprano 1.  Which means, among other perks such as being able to sing MELODY I already know, in the finale, we have to hit the C two octaves above middle C.  My voice stops making sound at about the A two above middle C.  This is…not good.

I’m going to go play my guitar.

To Kill a Mockingbird

I wonder if whacking a mockingbird is a sin.

I have a mockingbird that sits across the street from my house and calls far into the night. He makes a variety of different noises, including imitating frogs. While he doesn’t bother me at all (I fell asleep with my light on last night – shows how disturbed I get), he keeps my mom from getting her required allotment of sleep each night. Now, this may be changing, because he recently moved from the tree near the master bedroom to the corner across from my room (other side of the house) but those birds are LOUD. I’m sure he can still be heard by my mother. She wants to know who it was that thought that mockingbirds don’t do anybody any harm. Mom is certainly wishing to commit sin, if killing a mockingbird be sin.
I read To Kill a Mockingbird last year for school and LOVED LOVED LOVED it. I adore Scout Finch and her innocence in the face of racism and court. . .drama. Wow. I sound cheesy. Someone stop me now.
Okay, anyways, so my mom wanted to know why those people in Maycomb county thought that mockingbirds don’t do anyone any harm, because they did her some harm. They don’t just make music for us to listen to, they make music for us to NOT GET TO SLEEP TO.

In other news, rehearsals for Sound of Music start tonight. I am ecstatically ecstatic. And a little on the nervous side. Hoorah.

In other other news, I am reading Sir Gibbie by George MacDonald and loving it.  I read MacDonald’s books The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, and liked Goblin better, because Curdie…ends wierd.  I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, but it’s all fine until the very last page when MacDonald comes along and crushes all the happiness that might have come from a Happily Ever After Ending.  *wiggle*

Random Haiku of the Day, Pt. 3

I live in Southern
California, and I wish
I lived in New York

For NYC is
A place of many Broadway
Shows, since Broadway is in

Manhattan. Brooklyn,
Though, is Spot Conlon’s home base
And I aspire

To be a newsie
I only read the comics
But I have a hat

By Shannon of Sherwood

Newsies.

I figured out how to take screenshots. Fun, yes?

I love to edit pictures

I believe that the editing is half of what makes a good picture. Granted, the picture has to be decent before it becomes something wonderful, but at the same time, processing often gives a picture much more of a “feel” than the SOOC. Take, for example, this picture that I took of Will this morning.

I liked his expression, and the lighting outside was good. (The rains have cleaned the air and the sunshine is beautiful, though still freezing.) And anybody who knows my brother will also realize that this is a candid shot, because there is no way that he would look this dramatic on purpose. He just doesn’t do that. I also like his striped shirt in contrast to the green hills. So I took this one straight to Photoshop. The first thing I did was to sharpen the whole thing – the focus was not quite on his face. I then ran “Fresh and Colorful” from P-Dub’s first action set. This action increases the contrast and brightness of the whole photo, and I like to use it for portraits. So I’ve got this picture, all nice and contrasty, and it looks like this:

Nice, yes? But I think that something else could be done. His expression is too full of, you know, 13-year-old emotion for these saturated colors. What do I do? I run another one of Ree’s actions, “PW’s Black and White.” I love, love this action. It’s a high contrast black and white, and a vignette, though this can be removed easily if you think it’s just too cheesy. I use it for many things, not just people. For these purposes, I just left it in because- surprise! I’m not done. I think there could be a lot more impact if the photo was composed slightly differently. I whip out the handy-dandy cropping tool, set to 4 in. by 6 in., and crop away. What I come out with is this:

Much more impact. And I’ve got rid of that annoying arm there – that was bothering me. The black and white action has also reduced the distractions in the background by eliminating the color variety.  (You may recognize our saplings-on-a-hillside from the portrait I entered in the photography contest.)  (On second thought, you may not.)
And here I am with the finished product! I haven’t done anything tricky – I’ve pressed “play” buttons – and the effect is very dramatic. Don’t be scared of Photoshop – I learned basically all of what I know simply by playing around with it. Consider this picture, also from this morning, and its edited counterpart:

While the difference is not as dramatic as Will’s, it is striking, especially in its amount of contrast across the entire photo, and has made it a very much better photo for it. So go get yourself a copy of Photoshop and download some actions – there are a few good free ones, including PW’s and this guy named mulletgod whose actions are a little grittier, but in some instances much funner, than others. The set includes three different “vintage” actions – how bad can it be?