I think its’ probably the small blanket I wove for my dad. I looked all over for a weave that would give the effect I wanted, and there wasn’t one. So I designed the weave - interlocking ocean waves of white & blue. One end up, blue waves on white, the other end up, white waves on blue. Flip it over, same on the other side.
My dad was a charter boat captain & loved boats & fishing, it just seemed appropriate to do waves for him. He wanted a small blanket to use on the boat for taking naps. I made this for him, for his birthday, out of washable cotton yarns. Typically for him, once he got it, it was ‘too nice’ to use on the boat, and he left it at home & only used it after he’d cleaned up…
The stylistic imitation seems really impressive to me!
The scarf I knitted for my boyfriend. No pictures of it here. It’s nothing particularly special, but I’m proud of the fact that I made it and it looks reasonably professional. And he actually wears it 
That’s completely wonderful.
This is a wonderful thread, especially for someone as new to these boards as I am to get a sense of what drives so many different people here – in so many interesting directions. As for me:
My gesso & fiber wall work was selected for 13th Int’l Biennal of Tapestry in Lausanne, more years ago than I like to count, and before pictures of everything were posted to the web, alas. You can read a bit about the Biennal exhibitions (which came to an end in 1995) here. The three days of opening events, spent celebrating with artists from the US to Czechoslovakia & Poland (where Solidarity was growing ever stronger) to China (5 months after Tiananmen Square) and Japan, were some of the most extraordinary of my life, and later led to an invitational collaboration between 4 pairs of architects and artists for the American Craft Museum in New York. That’s when I learned, in what was actually a pretty painful process, that ceding a measure of control to someone else can sometimes end up being more creative, rather than less.
My most profound achievement, however, may be something I wrote when I was in the middle of divorce that took two agonizing years to resolve. In a moment of total despair, I decided to take everything I was feeling and use it in a poem – about something else. The poem itself was less significant than the realization that I could take the worst things in my life and turn them into something worthwhile and maybe even fine.
Over the last few years, I’ve developed an interest in photography. I never took any courses or formal lessons – everything I know is pretty much self-taught (trial & error, lots of reading, etc.).
I like to think that my photography has improved over the years. I have a few photographs that are among my favorites.
Here’s a panorama of the NYC skyline that I took last April. I’m proud of this one because my first print sale was of this work (someone bought at 12 x 42 canvas print of it).
Another favorite of mine is this shot of a waterfall in Central Park. I’m proud of it because I’d been working to improve my waterfall pictures and this was the first time that I truly felt that I nailed it.
http://www.thegracefulimage.com/photos/i-ZGdtNbf/0/L/i-ZGdtNbf-L.jpg
Lastly, here’s a shot I just took in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, this past week. I like this shot because it just seems to inviting and I’m really proud of the fact that I was able to capture the scene like that.
http://www.thegracefulimage.com/photos/i-g5dxWWj/0/L/i-g5dxWWj-L.jpg
Just to give you an idea of how far I’ve come – in 1996, I started working for J&R Music World in their customer service department. I remember flipping through the catalog during my first few days there and seeing cameras for sale being sold without lenses. I can still remember myself wondering “who in the world buys a camera without a lens?” Of course, now I know better. 
Zev Steinhardt
(Shameless plug: If you like my pictures, feel free to like my Facebook page. I regularly use it to display new pictures)
Photography:
A candid that is a comment on today’s non-communicative society.
Digital art:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artrock2006/9407348931
A medieval gate near our home, based on my own photography.
My poem Prayer Wheel, in Turtle Island Quarterly.
You guys are amazing. Great job all around.
I love bright colors and this is beautiful.
Some of the cartoons I did. This seems to be everyone’s favorite.
RobotArm, love the squiggle on the condom.
Love it, that’s worthy of Life Magazine’s Parting Shots.
As mentioned I just sat down years ago and knocked out several sketches, though I’d never drawn before and haven’t since. While it might have been nice to pursue it to see if I had any talent, it just wasn’t relaxing to me. I felt a bit worn out after which wasn’t what I was looking for. There’s a couple of other western scenes, cowboys, horses and Indians but the wife redecorates a lot and I need to track those down.
pulykamell - great photo. We have a wedding photo that is referred to as The Photo by friends and family because it is so perfectly framed and captured, with us dancing and the piano player in background. Photos like yours have a life way beyond the event.
lieu - you have a real talent - those have a great style.
I really admire your poem, both for what you’re saying and how how you’ve constructed it. The pull of “exotic accessories of belief” set against “the weight of peer review” somehow seems especially apt for the message boards here. I’ve often wondered how the interplay between spirituality and reason has come to be seen as a kind of tug of war between polar opposites. You treat them both in a wonderfully evocative way.
(And a 21 year old goldfish… Wow!)
Haven’t had a chance to dig into your poetry yet, but a fifty to sixty poem collection is long enough to submit to a book publisher. The Winning Writers website is subscription based, but they provide one of the most comprehensive, annotated, lists of contests for everything from single poems to first book publication – most of them with some sort of $$ prize attached. Their info is updated on a monthly basis, and they also have a list of contests you should avoid!
Yeah, but entering these contests almost always costs money, right? Unfortunately this would not be a good time to tell my wife I’m spending money on poetry contests… 
But I’ll look into it–maybe I’m wrong about the costs.
IF you do end up reading some of my stuff, I would be really happy to hear whatever you might want to say about it, in PM or wherever…
Well since you asked, and then its not a shameless plug … my skin lotions and potions.
Because they work and they smell nice,
I’ve been doing a lot of street photography over the last few months (I posted a thread before where I got a lot of great input and critiques from other Dopers) and I found a great spot under some railroad tracks in the town I live in. All of a sudden the sun came out and created some really great light and shadows, so I waited a bit and after a little bit this little girl rode her trike into frame, up way ahead of her family… stopped right in the shaft of light, and began to turn back to her family. I was on the opposite side of the street shooting through traffic and just barely got this shot off between two cars. It’s not perfect, the girl is a bit soft from turning, but I feel like I really knocked it out of the park.
I’m a geek for Fender Stratocaster electric guitars. Leo designed them to be modular so individual components can be replaced easily. When Fender wasn’t turning out exactly what I wanted I started buying Fender and aftermarket necks, bodies and other components online and started building exactly what I wanted. They may not be to everybody’s tastes but they all turned out great and play really nice. I keep telling myself that as soon as I build the “perfect” Strat for me I’ll sell the earlier ones but I haven’t been able to part with any, even though other than my current #1 and #2, they are just taking up space.
I don’t have any pictures online that I can link to. I need to do that.
Also, I taught myself Photoshopping and have turned out some things I think are pretty good. They mostly pertain to my somewhat peculiar fetishes. I won’t be linking to those.
I think this would make a great sticky thread. It’s going to take quite awhile just to work my way back up the thread for a closer look at everything that’s been offered up!
I don’t know what the sticky parameters are, or where best to recommend an addition, but I posted my suggestion in the “About this Message Board” forum, in case other like-minded folks might want to weigh in on the idea too.
Thank you, JM Hanes! …and he’s 22 now.