(no subject)

[camwyn]

I finally got a decent digital camera, so for those of you who want to know what my apartment looks like, here it is.

Swordage! Just inside my apartment door. My dad originally made the rack for me to hang my bows from, but really, I think it works much better this way. Don't you?

Living space When you've got a 500 square foot studio apartment, you gotta do what you can with your space. I sleep in the loft. The kitchen is through the doorway on the right. The telly is under the stairs to the loft, and the bathroom's behind all this lot.

Desk My desk and my bookshelf- there will be a second bookshelf shortly, once I paint the darn thing and get it assembled. I still have way too many books to be strictly healthy.

Bathroom Look, it's got a wooden ceiling! ... well, *I* like it that way...

Looking down from the loft That's my dining table on the left and my couch up against the wall. The detritus on the table is, er, my electronics stuff; I'm teaching myself electronics from a book and feel no need to clean up between sessions.

Comments

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

*drools over your swords* I would comment on the other pics, but my eyes seem to be stuck on that awesome sword rack.

[camwyn]

That turned out really, really fortunate. My dad had originally envisioned me somehow hanging bows from all four of the pegs involved- I guess one on each side- or else balancing bows across the pegs, but the dangly approach didn't work and you can't fit more than a longbow and a half on the horizontal approach. I realised, looking at it in the apartment, that it had exactly the right curves and general aesthetic to match the Japanese swords. The Chinese one happened to be a lucky bonus. Dad is an absolute wonder with woodwork, really he is.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

That's a nice place. Beats the hell out of the tiny cell I lived in during my southern exile :-)

I take it you keep the bows up in the loft so you can push away the drawbridge and pepper burglars with arrows and boiling oil? :-)

[camwyn]

Alas, no. The loft has a fifty-one-inch floor-to-ceiling clearance; unless I cant the bows severely to one side, I haven't got any short enough to draw up there. I have to move around on my knees or crouch a lot when I'm in the loft.

My recurve bow is in the case to the right of the television in the 'living space' photo. I intend to hang that and the longbow collection high up on the walls- my ceiling is something like 13 feet up- just as soon as I get a proper ladder that I can use to climb that high.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

=noddle=
If I win the lottery, I promise I'll get you a chinese style crossbow or something :-)

[camwyn]

That would be lovely. The crossbows they sell at the NY Renfaire are nice but they're all Western and stuff. Just, um, don't tell anyone where you're sending it; in NJ you're not allowed to use a crossbow unless the arrow remains attached to the bow.

Yes, that restricts the use of the things to bowfishing, but enh.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Well, you could make the line conductive... put some of that electronics study to good use. Nice induction coil arrangement.

I always wanted to build a Tesla coil one day, but everyone I've ever lived with has refused to permit it for some strange reason...

[derien.livejournal.com]

It is an awesome swordrack.

But I love that Ghostbusters poster, too. :)

And the wooden ceiling in the bathroom is pretty. And the shower curtain is dizzy-making! hee! :)

[camwyn]

Thank you! That ceiling is in the kitchen, too- it's the underside of the loft.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

You have leet decorating skills, or something.

[camwyn]

Thank you! I still have some stuff to do with the walls, but for now I like to think it looks reasonably civilised in there. (Also gotta paint and assemble a second bookcase, then work out how to get rid of that desk and replace it with some more of the bookcase system and a nicer chair.)

[weasleyqueen.livejournal.com]

OhmiGod- I ***WANT**** your Ghostbusters comic poster! *Jealous rage*
I think your place is great- although you need to put things on your walls! I wish I lived nearer so I could come over and help you decorate- if there's one thing I'm good at is decorating. ^_^

Also jealous of swords and white couch.

[camwyn]

I got it from Graham Crackers Comics, in Chicago- I think their web site is www.grahamcrackerscomics.com. I dunno if any other comic stores sell it online, but they might still have it in stock for all I know. It was $8 plus the cost of shipping, for me.

I have plenty of stuff to put on the walls; I haven't framed it yet, that's all. That 'living space' photo contains one framed poster that I intend to hang up as soon as I get some wire so I'm not just balancing it on a couple of nails, and there's another poster that's 26 x 28 instead of 24 x 36 so it's a bit hard to frame. Plus a few certificates and things (mostly for Red Cross service). There are pictures and stuff on the walls on the way to the bathroom- a Judd Winick sketch, a pencil sketch of an Akhal-Teke stallion, a print of ursulav's "Billy Vs. Satan", my Arctic Circle crossing certificate- but that part of the apartment's a little pinchy since that's where I keep the laundry hampers so I didn't photograph it.

The couch was chosen largely 'cos a) attractive and b) I could get it up the stairs by myself. It also comes in dark blue, but they were sold out of that colour when I got there. Still, the white's nice, since I have no kids or furry things to shed on it... and yeah, I like the swords too. I need to show my dad at some point so I can thank him properly.

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

yay for ursulav paintings! *looks at one that keeps grey cubicle from being too aaaah get me out of here*

And bizarrely, I also have a sketch of a stallion. Not the same one, but ... yah. *G*

Nice place though - and I echo the 'nice ceiling' on the bathroom. As well as the 'one can never have too many books' (especially given the fact that half our rather small bedroom is taken up by my bookshelves - he gets one shelf, I get alll the rest! - so I may be biased)

[camwyn]

Oh, there's no way it could be the same sketch. It's one I did myself. ^_^

And thank you. This was the fourth or fifth apartment that I looked at, and I'm really quite fond of it by this point.

[lasa.livejournal.com]

One can never have too many books to be strictly healthy.

Looks great.

[camwyn]

Well, it's not strictly healthy when it's a 70-inch bookcase and you haven't figured out where the studs are so you can safely secure the top to the wall yet. I would rather not be killed by booktopple, y'know? Not that Jersey City is exactly seismically active, but I'd rather not take that chance.

[vaspider]

FYI, I did get your AIM the other day; my PDA is just really flaky. I'll catch you online sometime, I swear.

[camwyn]

Ah, sweet. No worries. You can always send a text message to my cell phone if need be via LJ's service, but I think I left the phone home today so that might not work at the moment.

[vaspider]

I shall do so!

[sundre.livejournal.com]

On seeing the awesome swordrack, my eyes were immediately drawn to the awesome hat.

Is it just the angle? Is it just my imperfect vision? Or does it really look like Indy Jones headgear?

[camwyn]

It does sort of look like that, doesn't it? It's Australian, though. I bought it from an Australian goods store in San Antonio, Texas, when I was there for the Red Cross flood relief efforts in 2002; in San Antonio, at least, something like one out of every five Texans wears a cowboy hat as a matter of course, and I wanted to fit in at least a little. Not completely, since I don't like the cowboy look, but a little. The Aussie hats were in styles that I really liked, and looked close enough to what the locals wore to count, so I bought this one and have been wearing it to quite a lot of places including other Red Cross missions and my Alaska trip ever since. So it's not quite Indy's fedora, but it's in the same sort of spirit.

(I've got it on in this user icon. I pinned one edge back in an effort to duplicate the look I've seen on bush ranger hats, and to get it out of the way of my bowstring.)

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

Love the sword rack. It looks like those two people you were writing about - the Chinese guy and the cowboy in the other universe, you know the one, took up residence together.

And love the Ghostbusters poster.

And one can never have too many books.

[camwyn]

Thank you! Something like that was more or less the look I was going for, insofar as I can be said to have been going for any look at all. The first art I put up in this apartment was the poster next to my television- from the Asian Art wing at the Met- and the second was the running horse wall scroll from Toronto's Chinatown. I do like to keep my art and furniture simple and stylized, too, where I can.

Nice Place!

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

You win on swords, but I've got you waaaay to hell and gone beat on books!

I've also got you beat on clutter -- but I'm a fiber artist and a loom (currently in pieces), a knitting machines, 2 spinning wheels, their assorted accessory tools, 7 (I think at the last count) fleeces and gods alone know how much other assorted spinnable fiber, yarn, half-finished items, et al. completely consume all spare space.

Re: Nice Place!

[camwyn]

I've got a bunch more book boxes at the apartment, hence the need for more shelves- but the majority of my books are at my parents' house, locked in the attic because I didn't think they'd all fit. Once I've got the shelves loaded and bolted to the wall I'll be able to figure out just how many small shelves I'll need for the loft; I'd rather get my books away from my folks' place if I can, for all that they're willing to store them.

And the only reason the clutter isn't worse is because on Tuesday I thought I had a Lutheran minister coming to visit. I went bugnuts cleaning up. There's several bags of Stuff I Ain't Got Places For Yet crammed into various closets, and a lot of stuff got thrown away, too.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

nice rack >:)

but you really need more swords :) .... which reminds me... I still need to hang mine up somewhere... maybe now that I have a job again, I'll get a sword rack, instead of hanging them on hooks (though that has it's own appeal)...

[camwyn]

Eh, I'm not really a sword person. I like my bows better- the Hoyt Custom Pro recurve, the fifty pound hickory longbow from Woodcraft, the lemonwood Woodcraft bow that's probably older than me because bow-quality lemonwood comes from Cuba so the thing is probably pre-embargo, the other three or four longbows I own but don't shoot on account of their age... They'll be going up high on the walls once I get a ladder to use for that specific purpose.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

so the swords are just because all bowpersons carried a sword just in case the other guy got tooo close?

[camwyn]

Got it in one. I really only wanted the short member of the Japanese pair, since archers usually stuck to shortswords in the West, but hey- for $20 at the scratch & dent bin, I'm not going to argue with a free katana. The Chinese one is because I really liked the look of the Chinese broadswords in Iron Monkey.

[zou.livejournal.com]

Sweeeet. I envy!

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

I WANT TO GO THERE.

[ocean-song.livejournal.com]

Oh! It's absolutely DARLING!!! The sword rack by the door is just too friggen cool! And of COURSE you'd have the Ghostbusters poster. I wasn't even surprised. I used to have a place with a loft, and love it!!! I just worry about getting down to go pee in the wee hours of hte night.

Anyways, just dropping by to remind you that I do adore you ever so much! And soon we shall have to play duelling cameras! Soon!