Punny day! Keepin' the Clouds A Way!!!

The English monetary unit of a pound comes from the Latin libra pondo. And the standard abbreviation of the word pound comes from the practice of taking the first two consonants of a word to make communication easier in the economic world, thus "lb" is pound.

Who cares? I didn't think I did. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew that. But it took so much to dig for it I just said, "huh, I don't know." I am the resident Cliff Claven at work. And some body's kids asked why they had to write lb instead of pnd. So that means asking me because no one else cares to clog their brain with this stuff. Since I didn't know we googled it around the lunch table.


 libra means weight. It does not refer to mass but rather how things are measured as in a balance of  scales. pondo means mass. Which now has me wondering how the Latins measured volume. Would it be a libra something? Or something totally different? I do not know.

And as usual, my fascination with script and symbols got me to thinking about the structure and all the meanings inherent in the shape. And I guess, not that I have anything against the English, you can see my feelings toward the relationship I have with money shining through in the little "time waster" project.

• 16 ounces equals a pound. 16 tons equals a lot of misery for Tennessee Ernie Ford. And it is almost exactly how I feel about my take home wage versus the actual wage.
• talking pound notes always puts me in a frame of mind for Adam Ant
• the root of all evil is the love of money... the German word for love is liebe. A lover is a lieber. And with some relationships when the money is gone so is the love. Been there so thus the German lyric from Matthias Reim... and then the Beattles.

The color scheme is totally inspired by Martha Lever's last pear post which you will find here http://marthalever.blogspot.com/2012/01/pear-on-pink.html
Of course it is my go to complimentary color scheme. So that is why the whole thing resonates.

This does feel a little unfinished. I am thinking about run to Wally World for a set of stencils I saw so that I can add some green and a few extra layers of meaning into this. And in all reality this is probably just a rough draft for something frame-able. Or even on canvas later.  The writing is off and the green is just kinda floating there not tied into other elements. When the thing is more dry I will have to go in and smooth out the yellow areas that are too "in your face" for the mottled textures that I used in the rest of the background.

And I am thinking about a series of symbol portraits. Since I am a few months from having means and opportunity to enact part of my plan to take over my corner of the world, it might not be a bad thing to plan a rubber stamp series around these symbols. The pencil sketches yielded a good crisp and simple image that I can totally see as a stamp. And would use!

But then that means that I will really really really need some new Michelle Ward designs to go with it... hmmmm