Lucky Bamboo

Click Download to see a larger image. My wife and I went back to Color Me Mine about a week ago (the same place where I made my Ine and June mug: [link]). I’ve wanted a bamboo plant for a while, but wanted to make my own vase for it. So here’s what I came up with! I’ve never written anything in Chinese before, so in case my calligraphy is atrocious I included the symbols and translations for each side. They’re simplified characters; traditional would have been even harder! The translator I was using couldn’t figure out what Ine would be in Chinese, so I looked up what Pinyin characters would most closely match and decided that Ine’s Chinese name would be Yi-nai (pronounced yE-nI). Close enough, right? Also, when translated, my last name became the Chinese word for “cod.” Turns out there’s a type of fish called a whiting which is related to cod I guess? So my last name is a type of fish. So anyway, after getting the vase back from the kiln, we bought a couple lucky bamboo plants from an asian gift shop along with some filler rocks, and viola! If anyone out there knows Chinese, I’m interested to know how accurate my characters and translations are. (Yes, I used the papyrus font in the title. Sue me. )

I used the following websites for translations: [link] [link] [link] I used this site to turn the Chinese characters into calligraphy: [link] And I got the free background texture from here: [link]