Countdown to Fan Expo 2008 - DAY 1

Wow! Who's this girl? She's pretty hot! Is she wearing any pants? I guess we'll never know. UNLESS YOU GO TO FANEXPO AND FIND OUT, THAT IS. $35 for a picture, though? $25 for an autograph? Man, I went to a Star Trek convention in grade 7 and Marina Sirtis signed autographs for free. She danced around the stage at the beginning and posed provocatively, too. And I got free instructions on how to build my very own tri-corder! What does this girl have on Counselor Troi? Well, the no-pants thing, I guess. But that's not even guaranteed.

FANEXPO STARTS TOMORROW GET YR TICKETS HERE!!!

ps: Benita would like everyone to know that she claims no responsibility for this post.
pps: Smallville is actually a pretty good show.

Countdown to Fan Expo 2008 - DAY 2

Introducing Octo! Octo is a Sea Wedge. He works at a stop sign factory at the bottom of the ocean. He takes a great deal of pride in his work and has completed several certification courses above and beyond his regular workload. He is trained in the use of precision laser cutting devices. He's big on lasers in general. One of Octo's life goals is to have lasers mounted on his tentacles and to become a crime fighting ninja octopus. A Ninjoctopos.

Octo has either 8 arms, or 6 arms and two legs, depending on who you ask. At any rate, Octo tends to favour his 4th arm for table tennis (4th and 6th when playing pairs solo) but he's generally quite ambidextrous.

Did you know that Octopuses are ridiculously intelligent? They can open jars and escape from any aquarium that is not locked down like Fort Knox. There have been reports at zoos of Octopuses that have escaped from their aquariums, slurped across the floor to their feeder aquarium, and gorged themselves on fish. If that wasn't enough, they then knew enough to break back in to their own tank to avoid getting into trouble. This blows my mind and makes me want an Octopus as a pet, except that that is the worst idea I have ever had.

Countdown to Fan Expo 2008 - DAY 3

With so much to see and the Comic Expo, Sci-fi Expo, Horror Expo, Anime Expo, and Gaming Expo combined all in one, you'll need to carefully plan out your 3 days!!! You can check out the floorplan here and map out all the Artists and exhibitors you just have to see! Don't forget to put Booth A71 (We Are Wedges by House of Hsueh) at the top of your list! ;D



Need to plan your time? Check out the following schedules:

• COMIC BOOK EXPO
• SCI-FI EXPO
• HORROR EXPO
• ANIME EXP
• GAMING EXPO

Countdown to Fan Expo 2008 - DAY 4

A few days ago, we introduced Squido the librarian. Today we're proud to introduce Sluggo, a sea snail who lives at the bottom of the Wedge Sea. Sluggo is a window cleaner, but has been unemployed for several months. We're all for skilled trades, but he may have wanted to consider that there are very few windows to clean at the bottom of the ocean.

Sea snails are gastropods. We were going to steal a general overview of the class from wikipedia, but the following really jumped out at us, so we're going to focus on it:

"Snails are distinguished by torsion, a process where the visceral mass of the animal rotates 180º to one side during development, such that the anus is situated more or less above the head".

Wait a minute, what was that last part? They have butts on top of your heads? Headbutts? Needless to say, our Wedge tribute to all things gastropod is not entirely anatomically correct. No headbutts. Sluggo is however pretty much adorable. Not a showboat like Octo, Sluggo's content without pesky appendages, just slinking across the ocean floor, feeding on whatever floats his way.

Watch for Sluggo soon in the Wedge Shop!

Countdown to Fan Expo 2008 - DAY 6

With just 6 days to FanExpo 2008, it's time to start rolling out some new Wedges! Over the next several days you'll get to know the new members of the Wedge family, Squido, Sluggo, and Octo!

Squido is librarian at the bottom of the Wedge sea. She spends her days sorting her books and lobbying for much needed public funding for expansion of the oceanic wedge libraries. She is very efficient and is an effective public speaker.

Squido made us promise to give you a refresher course on the Dewey decimal system, so here goes. Melvil Dewey invented the Dewey system in 1876 (pff, not even as old as Canada). It's comprised of 10 main categories, which are further subdivided to narrow down your search for books on a specific topic. The top-level categories are:

• 000 – Computer Science, information, and general works
• 100 – Philosophy and psychology
• 200 – Religion
  
• 300 – Social Sciences
  
• 400 – Languages
• 500 – Science and Mathematics
• 600 – Technology and Applied science
• 700 – Arts and recreation
• 800 – Literature
• 900 – History, geography, and biography

Personally, our library is 99.4% science fiction fantasy, so we're a bit heavy on section 813. And hey, if Dewey isn't your thing, Squido understands. Maybe you're more for the Library of Congress classification system, or maybe Universal Decimal Classification system? The fun never ends!

Les Fruits De La Mer!

This morning when you woke up and immediately refreshed wearewedges.com, you may have noticed something new.

SEA WEDGES!

Octo is an octopus!
Squido is a squid!
Sluggo is a sea snail!

Which is your favourite? Did you know that Squido has 2 more tentacles than Octo, so a bit of an edge there. But Octo works works in a stop sign factory, which is pretty random/awesome. And Sluggo is named Sluggo! It's so hard to choose!

Sea Wedges aren't in the online shop yet, but will be varrrrry soon. However, they are for sale at our summer shows and events starting right...now! Speaking of summer events, watch for more SUPER EXCITING news soon about upcoming events. Seriously, SUPER EXCITING.)

ps. Did you know Brent Spiner is going to be at FanExpo Toronto this year?

pps. Brent freaking Spiner!

Uh Oh! Wedgenapped!

Oh dear. Walter found out about Twitter. Twitter's like blogging for really impatient somewhat self-centered people (don't get huffy, it's totally true). Walter really gets caught up in these internet-phenomenon-of-the-day type of things. This is probably going to end up with more internet addiction counseling.

Until the intervention occurs, you can keep tabs on Walter in almost kind of real time at www.twitter.com/walterthewedge. If you like, you can 'follow' Walter, and you'll be pestered whenever he does something in twitter-land. The internet is awesome!

Mitten + String = Disaster

This is Miko's namesake...

We went away on a 2 day trip....
and then disaster happened....

NOoOOOOooO...Miko, you're not supposed to eat string!

Then you have to sit on cold tables,
endure evil thermometers...

and then you get a giant cut in your belly!
Weeks of Medication!!! MEDICATION!!!

Don't eat string! String is for wedges, not cats!

***A large portion of all wedge sales will be necessarily donated to Miko's vet fund!

Show and Tell

Show and Tell at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery was a fun and idea filled night with fellow Toronto artists and crafters.

Thank you to Susan Rowe Harrison for putting this idea together and to Day Milman, and Jen Anisef of Toronto Craft alert for hosting it.

Here I am...
with my wedge smittens.

Miko-Nation

This is it....Miko Mass Production....well not really as I only have 2 hands.
Octo would be really helpful right now.

Lightboxes!

Walter, Brie, Miko, and Mantari are in the Wedgeshop! We posted some 360 degree shots of them and one day when we get really fancy we'll turn them into animated 3D VIRTUAL WEDGES. It'll be like they're from the future, or at least, some 80s version of the future where everything involved 3D goggles. Memories!


Also, taking pictures is hard! Or was hard, at least, until we made THE MOST AWESOME LIGHTBOX EVER. Lightboxes are things you shove stuff inside of to take pictures in a controlled glare-free-ish environment.

OK, HOW TO MAKE A LIGHTBOX

1. Procure things! A cardboard box, big enough to put your photographables in with some leftover space. A piece of bristol board, white. Tracing paper or some translucent white sheet/paper/etc. A few lamps or light sources. Tape.
   
2. Cut holes in the front, left and right sides, and top of the box. Make them squarish. Leave two inches or so along the edges so your box retains it's boxy strength.
3. Cover all of the holes you just cut with tracing paper, or cut pieces of thin white sheets. Tape them down.
   
4. Cut the bristol board to be the inner width of your box. Place it inside the lightbox so that it covers the back, uncut side of the box and curves down along the bottom of the box. The idea is to eliminate any corners/possibilities of shadows along the bottom of the inside of your lightbox.
5. Shine your lamps through your tracing paper/sheet windows from the top/bottom/sides as necessary.
6. Take pictures of stuff, glare free!

So the next time someone with a fancy camera with 7 lenses and a panorama SLR gigapixel floodlight condensertron gets all camera-snobby, show them your cardboard box! It really worked out fantastically for us.

Miko mass-production is next! And when we say mass-production, we're referring to the hand-made, filled-with-love kind.

Walter talks magnets

Magnets are awesome.

Walter wants you to know that he has them in his guitar and gets very excited about how they convert sound to electricity, and how there are very strong ones in computer parts if you smash them apart and look very hard, and how you can make a magnet by wrapping a wire around a nail, and a bunch of other things that seem to be very exciting to him.

SEGUE TIME!! (DEFINITELY NOT SEG-WAY TIME)
You can buy Wedges magnets in the wedges Etsy shop! They're just like the pins except you can't accidentally stab yourself with them. And they're not wimpy can't-stick-the-phone-bill-to-the-fridge magnets either. There was rigorous quality assurance testing involved (we stuck the phone bill to the fridge).

We're on the internet!

Woo! Wedges website, online! Walter, Brie, Mantari and Miko are finally out for the world to see. We're really happy with the website so far, and are continuing to hack away at it, DIY-style.

The plush versions have turned out ridiculously well and we are hard at work on getting heaping mounds of wedge product ready for the masses (that's you!).

Lots of new things coming soon:

• More wedge comics!
• More shiny website stuff!
• More wedges!

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