It's a maker's form for sewing a basketball together.

The colorized version has removed so many of the background details as well as the pie shapes from the eyes. It sucks. I will always prefer the original - be it white, be it purple, be it whatever. Now let me go back to colorizing all those Ansel Adams Photos of Yosemite. (PS: I saw in Italia a "restored" version of the Wizard of Oz - where they colorized the beginning and ending sections of the movie!)

One improvement I might suggest... The surface should be a mottled mix of puke colors - like those found on the most obscure and geeky model kits.

Bring them all home NOW!

After living in Italy for a while, I discovered there is far less dyslexia there because of its phonetic alphabet. Stuttering is also less prevalent... most likely for the same reason. (I have a bilingual friend who only stutters in English... not in Italiano or French)

Ah... th return of Futurism.

pasta cutter

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned living 1/2 year in one place and 1/2 year in another. For me it would be in a small town between NYC and Philadelphia and in a small town on Lago Maggiore in norther Italy.

I am a 58 yr old Illustrator who has been a self-employed-freelancer for 35 years. My biggest recession was all of 2007 where my income was less than 1/3 of my usual average income. 2008 was good for me and it is still carrying through into 2009 (so far). Some people think that freelancers are the 'canaries in the coal mine' ie: the first to suffer at an economic downturn and the first ones to profit during the upswing. I can only hope this holds true and things will return to semi-normal for most everybody else within the near future.