binge, wishlist

yes the afghan is still in the works. kind of.
i'm liable to have any number of projects up in the air at any given moment, and then add a few to that when i step into an unfamiliar yarn shop.

familiar ones are the ones where i hem and haw upwards of an hour and have fifteen ideas flit through my head, though most of them are not aesthetically appealing in the least. to me or the visually impaired, ideas loud enough to startle the hard of hearing, ideas that would work up like mottled camouflage. damn those variegated yarns.
have gone on an off tangent, shrug vest bolero kimono coat crop sweater binge. flipped up a little shrug from some off white cotton i had laying around in a stitch i'd wanted to try. i thought, well hm. that went fast.
and so cannabilized another project for some cotton fleece. the red turquoise greyish dusty blue vest is probably under protective custody as we speak, hiding from me. i hate it, it's ugly and i kind of think it's cute all at the same time. no ambition to tuck in all those loose ends and put a decent edge on it.
then there's this
a tarty little vest from a back issue of interweave crochet i probably purchased last time i was in alaska. (i go seriously crazy in this yarn shop in palmer, it's like i enter another dimension. the snow gets to me and makes me think i need to get busy in case i'm anywhere and the heat fails. or some primal thing like that.)
and you know you are some kind of weird nerdy freak when a title like "schoolmarm vest" gets you kind of excited. really.
i was too overwhelmed the first time i went in there this afternoon, and had to come home, write an article about cucumbers (of all things!) and get my winter 07 interweave and go back to tackle the yarn selection.
while i was looking, i totally lusted after the takhi new tweed. it's freaking gorgeous, muted rich natural gemmy kind of colors with a matte gold strand in there. class-say, i think, but not the right gauge for the pattern.
i'm so gullible, i got a sympathy gift for the afghan project- a ball of mochi plus by crystal palace. merino! yay! color progression! yay! kitty face on the label! OMG can you say YAY!
(20% nylon. boo. but there's a KITTY on the LABEL!)

i carried around some wool for a while earlier too, something a lot like cascade's ecological wool (which i'm working with right now, it was another alaska purchase, i think the day after xmas 20% off bug bit me hard that day. i didn't know they flew so well in such cold...) but it wasn't quite as soft. wrong gauge, wrong project.
but then i thought. then i thought, schoolmarm vest, tweed. tweed vest. marm tweed. school vest. and went into my inner place, approved it.
got a smashing jo sharp silkroad dk tweed. it's pea shoot which is a nice pea green with a little indigo. the other light green was too yellow. the lavender was tempting but not enough balls, and the magenta was HOT but there was only one ball. there was a greyish oatmeal that had a little brown, a little red/orange here and there and it was so much prettier than my description sounds. remorse, not enough balls of it. and i've got too much oatmeal yarn anyway. i wanted it though.
also found out about to be no more jo sharp in the u.s.? the company is not selling to the u.s. starting soon, unless my otherwise reliable yarn guide is somehow misinformed. stock up of that, and make some international hook-up connections for the jo sharp i suppose. or buy plane tickets to australia or new zealand. actually, the latter sounds nice...

so yes. a picture suite of the bolero binge should be upcoming. soon. like within a month.

finally

finally, i got over myself and listed something new.
i don't know what my funk has been lately, but i do know that the afghan squares are going awesomely.
i've given in and bought two skeins of yarn for the project, i knew i'd have to, and would want to, as well. it's mostly kureyon which is so my drug/yarn of choice (my #1 favorite reason for winter, sometimes i think!) but i got a different something and alas, the label's in the other room, so i'll chat about that later.
that one looks a mess- they'll all need to be blocked obviously, and none of them are joined. but that pink is even more eyeblinding in person; it's ultra alpaca, so it's got a little bit of shine to it. there are a number of optical illusions to that square pattern and i have spent a considerable amount of time while working on it, wishing i was clever enough to have devised it myself.

while re-examining the wash cloths (and finishing them, because i'm such a stickler about finishing details, i rarely do it as soon as i finish crocheting something) i realized that they are very nicely done. i don't mean to pat myself on the back and risk breaking an arm or anything, but they are nice. that was also when i splurged on one of those wooden hooks, carved to look a bit like a chess piece. it is a nice looking, nice feeling and functional tool. i'd like to have more of those.

and all the while i'm packing up, getting ready for yet another move. i'm quite tired of leaving places, but on the upside, most places have yarn shops. i was satisfied with two in california, and i'll be just fine with the two that there are where i'm going. amongst other things.
(i really am trying to convince myself that two are enough. as i recall, neither of them stocks lamb's pride brown sheep in near enough quantity and neither stocks lanaloft. sigh.)

want

so want.

but then i'll need some alpacas. or their fiber, anyway.

project of last resort.

This
is completely awesome, and I'm doing it now, kthx.
I have a baggie of saved up bits of beautiful wools- mostly Kureyon that I can't find anymore, some alpaca/mohair stuff from a jag of using that last year, a scrappy ball of second time cotton by knit one crochet too (which I feel compelled to purchase every time I see it, as it's got crochet *in the brand name!* savvy marketers, that lot, saying the technique that dare not be uttered in most of these posh yarn shops I semi-frequent) and a bitkin of some groovy crystal palace taos. have some gigantic balls of eco-wool that i got to be the binder and I'm making an afghan.
I've needed to do it for a while, I've been saving these scraps for some time specifically for this project. So of course, now, with everything up in the air and planning a potential/probable/hopeful interstate move, of course now, is the time to start an afghan.
Quit laughing, really, it is! It will probably save my marriage, too. The hyper control freak is making her way to the surface, I spent yesterday cleaning (and cleaning, and cleaning) and I've baked a loaf of bread today as well as a yeasted cake (need to use up that two pounds of yeast that have been goofing around in my fridge. This weirdo needs to keep her hands busy, and I've fallen out of practice recently.

It's not *exactly* what I want to be doing- no really, what I wanted to do was make myself this awesome vest from an Interweave Crochet issue...hm, two years ago now? But my divine cashmerinosilk is the wrong weight (!). So then I wanted to make a new purse for myself (this hobo bag is adding 10 lbs easy to my hips, not quite the thing I'm going for) and I wanted to do the striped side-to-side bag I've been seeing everywhere (or maybe just in my own imagination?)
But. My mistake was in mentioning this out loud. Which got me a crazy look from the s.o. and several "how much yarn do you have anyway, why not use this cashmerino whatever ("but it's the wrong weight!) okay i don't care you've got a lot of yarn. Use that."

sigh. one foot stomp, but I know better than to make it two or three or four- the family made it quite clear that stomping is unsociable behavior when I was younger.
So. Fine. I'm'a Make This Afghan I've Been Meaning To Work On, But I'd Better Have Enough Yarn or else I'll Be Cranky.

cry me a river.

then build me a bridge and get the fuck over it.

sorry for the harsh language, i really do apologize if i've peeled anyone's eyes back and i'm happy to offer eye drops or more soothing language in the rest of this post.

see, for a long time, i didn't know the completion of that phrase. i knew all about the sarcastic tones of "cry me a river" but didn't know the constructive side of that phrase.
i knew all about the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song but didn't even realize bridge buildign was part of the expectation. so i sit, with hammer in hand, thinking about blueprints.

two things sat me right back, today. and here they are in no particular order.
first of all, we have hannah. hannah is a normal, healthy and probably bratty and sweet, outgoing and shy, ten year old girl who's been diagnosed with breast cancer. she's probably part of the average american family, penny pinching yet generous, openminded but traditional, grateful and angry, with two parents and two kids. one of whom may very well be the youngest girl in the u.s. to be so awfully diagnosed.

i read this and said to myself, get over yourself. there are worse things in the world than writer's block. there are worse things in the world than a shelf full of unhooked yarn and worse things than empty notebooks. there's worse than this empty headed vacant feeling. but she's better than me too, because she's already over herself. she's moving on past it already. she's dealing with the talk of invaded lymph nodes and being feted at girls' softball closing ceremonies as the recipient of charity. in a world that causes us and helps us to treat each other shitty (oh sorry. i'm a trucker/sailor/mechanic/cook in the mouthparts and let's just leave it at that), she's a rallying point- a reason for little girls not to be mean to one another, but to have someone to help. a cause about which to give a damn. she's a symbol, a statistical unlikelihood and someone's little girl. and even more than that, she's someone's own self. thank you hannah for restoring my sense of perspective.

and in the not quite so dire, but inspiring, i made a trade at an art show at the beginning of the month. after quite some time of frustration, with felted beaded bangle bracelets only slightly appreciated, not valued for their work, materials or worth, a woman was at my table admiring them. her eyes were looking at them the way my eyes do, and when she asked me how the beads got on there, i told her that they went on one by one in an old beadweaving technique. her eyes went wide, and she was the first person i'd told that to whom it seemed to make any impact whatsoever. she then told me she was also there to sell things and that she'd be back after she'd done some business. time passed, and bored (not to mention a tiny bit frustrated), i walked over to her things, where she had a dress, a little orange/coral/clay colored one that was simultaneously really cute and also inordinately sehx-ay. i looked at the tag and was glad to see that she valued her work and time (it was well made and made of a good material) but sad to realize that no way was i going to sell enough at this fair to come even on buying it. plus, although it was good material, it was cotton knit, kind of like a thick jersey, and i'd tried on a dress of the cut a year or two ago, when i was in much more serious shape than i am in now and was disappointed. (it was not made of such good material, and it was a quarter of the price she was asking...in a store, which means that *included* markup and transport costs. which makes me very sad for the people sewing those dresses). i loved it was unsure, but she said "you should try it."
we traded, and my first (and only at this point) front page etsy items went to a home. a happy home, with at least one little girl who looked at her mama's new bracelets with envy. and me? i got a dress that gave me legs, where i've got stumps *and* shows off my waist. without looking trampy. i think it was kismet. anyway, check out karina's etsy shop, and prepare to fall in love with her cute things for behbehs and grownfolks alike. and thank you karina, though you'll probably not read this, for showing me (without telling me) that family and creativity are hardly mutually exclusive, and that putting any of the blame on them for not trucking right across that bridge i built over that river i cried is not fair at all.

burn. out.

i am completely sure this will not come as much of a surprise, given my failure to recently post, but i think i am in the complete, acute, falling in and out throes of burn out.
like the four syllable pronunciation that alicia keys gives "fallin".

i have not gotten back too much on what i've put into the fiber work recently. well. hm. i mean on a grander theme, it's not necessarily a dirty dollars thing. i'm saying i went into it all doe-eyed, and caught a case of deer in the headlights maybe.

i've had no desire to take pictures and edit them endlessly. i've gone into yarn shops and bought supplies, but they languish, languidly, right there on my shelf. gorgeous stuff. silk/cotton. bamboos. crazy great stuff, and they sit. moon pies and cow eyes, and everything pretty much a big fat zero.

which is not to say i haven't been making things. but art shows/fairs/craft things continue to be uphill, as opposed to any other way. from all available evidence, that's kind of how it is. and i will certainly be the first to admit i haven't any sort of successful seeming setup, or over-investment in the outcomes of said events.

and this is the part where i say "buck up, this is where the losers wash out" but...
but...
but i've learned to make (a sort of) okonomiyaki, not to mention finally conquering crepes. i wrote a couple of short stories a month or two ago. i found a sheaf of poetry i sent to my now-partner while he was deployed and completely floored myself. i may be little more interested in that. i certainly long for that one of me, that her more strongly.
(yes, i know i'm whining about/celebrating multiple talents. multiple things i enjoy doing well, and here's how you know i'm listening to my guilty pleasures pandora station, i've got justin timberlake's chorus inviting "cry me a river". don't even start. musically speaking, it's a great freaking song, and it's thursday which is my friday.)

but i feel like i'm getting pulled on, and when i cook, damn sure people appreciate that. and it's no greater an art than evening dinner, so it's something i'd be doing anyway. when i manage to write, i've finally gotten to the point at looking at things in hindsight and realizing i've got a way with it... killing myself softly with my lines, as it were, singing my life with my words.

i'm not going to quit. this is just justification for lack of recent activity. and venting.
i'm sure it happens to all of us. more proof that i'm not invulnerable.

finished, and not

and so i've come mostly to completion on the first of the capes, tentatively called either the laurel or the daphne prototype*. i used the same yarn i used for my new leaf afghan, the pale green cotton. i had a fine time modifying the pattern, as it's not one that instinctively works with increases and slight shaping.
this cape project has been one that tests my innovative abilities, especially regarding the numbers of crochet. however, i've found that i do ever so much better with it when i go at it intuitively, instead of sticking with the strict numbers. i understand the math, logically speaking, on paper, but math does better with pencil and paper than it does with hook and yarn.
i'm already working on a second one, with a shell pattern. it's in a pink that's somewhere between fruity and bubblegum, and i'm using the shell pattern in recognition of my influence for that particular piece; aphrodite.

this project is so fun because i'm playing with ideas that i've loved for a long time, and combining them with something new to me. i haven't made a lot of garments beyond very basic shawls- and there's nothing wrong with those shawls; their simplicity makes them really beautiful and wearable to me. however, cape, just the concept is ever so much cooler. i fear that when people see "shawl" they immediately think that it's for one specific age group, and i don't think that's the case at all. i hate for style to be pigeonholed to any particular decade or time of a person's life (besides onesies, of course) . but the theoretical influence is totally mythology and literature-based. the same woman, my great grandmother, who taught me to crochet at the very beginning also incubated in me an appreciation for old stories; poetry and histories. she was a devotee of the tragic story of the love life of henry the VIII- more tragic for his wives than him, i suppose. she was firmly in anne boelyn's corner; i have to wonder what book in her youth in the nineteen-teens inspired her love for that story. she made certain that i read her old copy of robert louis stevenson's a child's book of verse frequently, and i've still got most of "twas the night before christmas" memorized due to our recitations. that passion ignited, someone, a particular aunt i think, gave me d'auliare's book of greek myths. i read it so often that the spine is a faint memory, and it was one of the books i never marked my place in by turning down the corner of the page. (no, it had a special bookmark, as i remember, a lovely piece of embroidered ribbon with a shiny brass unicorn at the top). it went on many a road trip with me, despite its large size, and the illustrations weren't michael hague or kinuko craft, but they still filled my head with ideas about sturdy, larger than life gods and the mortals under their influences.

so the first cape, with the leafy pattern is tenatively either laurel or daphne. daphne was the daughter of a river god, fated to never fall in love (cursed by a lead tipped arrow of eros', perhaps) and though the beautiful god apollo loved her and pursued her, she was determined never to wed. at one point, apollo's pursuit of her was an acutal chase on foot and when she reached the banks of her father river, she implored him to save her. having little power in comparison to apollo, daphne's father was able to help her, but at the price of losing his daughter. her toes sunk into his sandy banks, her arms reached out as branches and her hair turned into the flickering leaves of the laurel tree. from then on, the laurel has been sacred to apollo, and is the crown of leaves with which victors were honored in ancient games of skill, might, or intellect.

this was an interesting story on which to meditate while crafting the piece, and i anticipate finding the buttons that will truly finish the cape.

a new leaf

the pattern that i'm enjoying working on most right now is the one i call the leaf in my head. it's in a pale green and i'm working up my cape prototype. i've worked with this stitch pattern before, and it's so relaxing and rhythmic to my hands and mind that it's a good meditation to work on.

and i do need to work on my meditation. which is a laugh; meditation is supposed to be non-work, but it's coming so difficult to me. this is one place i do try not to self judge, but there i was, doing so just now.

but i've caught an upswing, it happens this time of year, frequently, coincident with spring and my birthday. i'm not a religious person, but i do celebrate my birthday with a festival amount of energy and happiness. this isn't really a terribly egotistical thing as might be supposed, it's simply to celebrate my own arrival, to give gratitude for the moment of my emergence into this world. (and as always, a moment of gratitude for my mother, as i squirm a bit for her.) it's a convenience, easier than celebrating the day that i first deciphered words via reading or began to communicate myself to the rest of the world in spoken or written words.

i was gifted with a trip to breitenbush hot springs, which is a retreat as well as the spring tubs and found it incredible. the literature and people of the place communicate a desire to provide an atmosphere of renewal and respect and sanctity. a community environment, but minus the loudness generally present in places like rivers and beaches.
it was spring or summer in the pools, and winter, with snow on the trees on the mountains across the river from us. and the noisy river, working hard on its work to make it to the pacific, i think. or to make it somewhere, and breaking down the big rocks into smaller ones, making stones, then pebbles, then sand.

i happily take this chance to turn a leaf, and to embrace all the crawly critters that have taken up habitation underneath.

short stories. other things.

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to begin i'm temporarily peeved that my browser appears to have eaten all the tabs i saved on it from last night. i accumulate quite a few over the day, and the interesting looking ones or the ones i am just about to look at stay open for a while.

i was chatting with someone once and managed to relate a quote or spout off some fairly specialized information, and they didn't know why/how i'd had that particular thing at the ready. memorized? no, many many tabs open. a holdover from an old job, is as far as i care to get into that. (another time, it's certainly an entertaining tale here and there.
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i've really woken up to short stories all of a sudden, recently. i've always liked the form, and it's contributed heavily in making grace paley and dorothy parker two of my favorite authors. i would say it's hell loving dead writers, but their stories are good enough to re-read many times, as i have. (having not quite the budget i'd like to have for books and a sporadic at best relationship with libraries for some reason. [note: it's because i often have a problem with how they're curated. no offense intended to librarians, and i'm sure that i feel this way because i have not looked hard enough at the selection.])

but often, in the past, tho i've enjoyed reading them, there felt to be something poignant about short stories' brevity. grace paley's stories kind of make up for this because they're also kind of poetry, a series of epic poems in which i can imagine the same narrator, or similar. and dorothy parker's are so often about me- or to be more correct this little incarnation of me that hangs out in part of my brain. the dread, the clumsiness, the self consciousness, the monk trapped in junior high school- knowing there's so much more, laughably infinitely more, and yet subject to the ridicules of closed minded Others.

for my current (unfortunately adult) circumstances, i have work, and an apartment with people who like to be fed, well and often. i like to cook, so this is not such a big deal, but it does cut into my reading time. i sneak it in, as i have this art/craft habit and get itchy hands if they sit still too long. therefore, short stories have been my balm.

short stories are inherently a twisted little thing, having taken so much longer to write than to consume. a little block of aged cheese, gone in a blink. a carefully mixed and hand shaped piece of chocolate. gone that quick, as soon as it's in my mouth. well, best to consider it gone, as i generally let a nice piece of chocolate melt on my tongue, and that's sort of a private thing.

and happily, i can speak from experience this week- having had a non-professional, non-compelled writer's block (meaning i can write non fictionally about a topic and do so reasonably well or clearly. yes i can write clearly, not a drunken camel's walk across the harshnesses of the page. believe me.) this writer's block having lasted since my partner was deployed, since 2007. that year, i wrote so much that i think i broke something. some circuitry, over loaded and stressed wiring finally cracked. but i was able to dream up and write down i think two little ditties this week, and of that fact i'm well proud. i won't worry about whether they're good or not at this point, it was just nice to get them out.

but output requires input. it's a nice feeling to return to a familiar pasture- your shit having broken down and nourished a newly green corner, she same old dandelions along the fenceline. that quiet spot under the tree where you can lock your knees/hips/ankles and put your head down and rest for a while.

i hope to remember this kind of remedy for burn outs in the future.

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if wishes were horses (i'd have lots of poop to clean up)

re: the last post, handfelting. i'm now inspired to take up wire work or blacksmithing or even horse shoeing, as i don't know how soon i want to touch wet fiber again. it was interesting at first and then got old, fast. drips running up the forearms, etc.
i'm thinking that is going to be more of a summertime activity.
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i've learned a bit about biting my tongue, and that old saw about discretion being the better part of valor, i.e. knowing when to keep one's mouth shut this week.
first, i learned "thanks for the tip" instead of freaking out on someone explaining something to me that i already know. i'm not patient, and feel insulted sometimes when someone explains something to me- esp when i'm like a billion steps ahead. however, in the future, a grave nod and a serious "thanks" or "thanks for the tip/idea" will suffice. no one will give a damn how smart you are if you are a complete asshole about it.

second, well, it regards projects in various states of "in progress" and my need for information to continue with any of them. i am impatient (see above) and so am punishing the projects by picking up an old bracelet project that's been patiently waiting for me on my shelf. it's nice that what i make is more chilled out than i am.

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and speaking of impatience, i think it's a good time to get my ducks in a row and get some projects done and posted already. i'm chomping at the bit to get some new yarns and some new projects started (especially since i've visited with some incredible yarns new to me and have some super cool ideas). i can't complain, as much as i'd like to say "if i don't make any sales i can't move it to the next level already" because it's no one's fault but my own.

(i could also consider blaming the military/industrial complex and a certain former president, not to mention some unscrupulous financiers as well but i think they've really got enough on their heads as it is. perhaps.)

everyday circumstances kill the creativity sometimes, and make it harder to do these things that i love, but in the end those are just excuses too.

and on the plus side, i've just made a lovely pitcher of tomatillo salsa, have tortillas in the oven turning into chips and a pot of non-burnt black beans on the stove. if i could find it in myself not to wish for a six pack of pacifico or another pitcher full of margaritas, i would be completely content.

felting....

i'm working on my first real ambitious hand felting project. it's pretty entry level, but i'm enjoying it so far.
i've felted a lot of bracelets by hand, but working with my hands with the fibers before they're at a yarn level is pretty new to me. i got up early this morning at started at it, so as to work with a little less interruption, but it was only marginally successful. i have all the colored balls i'm going to make for this project, i think (depending on how big i'm going to make it) and am about to move onto making smaller brown ones. i got new roving this week and am proud to be in the minority of people who are really really excited about getting something like wool roving.

working with it wet is another matter, as most of it is silky, fine merino. it's worse than dealing with wet human hair- sticky, and when i went to fix balls or add contrast color to them i had little fine strands of wool sticking to my hands/wrists more than the ball. add to that also having drips of water running either down my hands or up my forearms (one of my number one unfavorite feelings) and it is super time for a break.

am still working on pictures from the lightbox, i stumbled across a few the other day that better represent the neck pieces i'd made. and in my recycle bin (always check the recycle bin on the computer before emptying, especially if you're prone to temperamental picture deletion!) i found a good one of me modeling the neck piece i gave myself as a little gift. (it was a chilly hiking day and i couldn't resist.)

one of the downsides of the lightbox has revealed itself, which is kind of a fear of shooting "outside the box" - i'm pretty sure this felted ball project will be a hung one, and therefore not lend itself to easy photography in a light box. natural light = scary at this point. it's a good thing that it's not anywhere near finished, so i've got a minute to figure out how to handle that.

another project for the day- working on the custom afghan i'd made for a lovely customer. it'd been a long time in the making and it made its way to its new home, but then needed to be bigger. so there's a whole thing with measuring and growing it. i'm working with a fantastic supplier on this one, who even called brown sheep to ensure we have access to the same dye lot of yarn that the blanket was originally made with. incredible customer service. outstanding. really. i've dealt with yarn shops in person who've been less accommodating, and regarding the same yarn company, no less. this is a benefit of dealing on a really really small scale, this whole chain of uberprofessionalism. if you took a blanket back to macys (etc) and said it needed to be bigger, chances are they'd ask if you had a receipt and if you'd prefer an exchange or a store credit refund. regardless of how much you'd like just that same blanket, only bigger.

but i suppose that's an obvious point, and i'm just procrastinating editing pictures. again.

where a light box will get you...

so, as previously mentioned, i braved the critiques section of the etsy forums, and though i mentioned that i knew my photos needed work, they were the main focus of the criticism. which, i suppose is nice, but really, i would have rather have heard "well those aren't selling because they're crap." if it were true, that is. but going along with the community wisdom, and my own knowledge, i already had a tab opened to a how to for a quick cheap and dirty light box.

i improvised, of course, as i didn't have tissue paper. i never have tissue paper, and when i've been able to send orders to people wrapped in tissue paper, it's because it was in an order i got. there we go folks, total transparency there. if i've sent something in tissue, it's re-used. i never order anything like goat poop wrapped in tissue paper, so it's clean. it may have even wrapped the yarn that i made your special little something from. so parchment paper it was. i had a leftover bit from an old row that i was damn sure would be good for something one day. and it was.

enter the ikea lamps, with the marvellously flexible necks (they remind me of aluminum flamingos for some reason) and the nice eco-friendly bulbs. i don't know that the eco bulbs put out the kind of light i like, but it's what we have right now. i like to make myself feel better by promising myself that i'll get one of those aluminum collar and single bulb work lights at the hardware store one of these days, but there's much more pressing stuff on the list.

so i re-took photos for things that i thought could have been shown in a better light. here's some before/after makeover style photo action.

for an apples to apples type comparison, i've tried to take the previous main photo of each of the items and compare it to the new main photo for each.

with a bang, bangles before:


after:



i'll be honest, i'm torn on a lot of these. i like seeing stuff on models, so i like the bracelet on wrist "action shot." but there's a lot of that on etsy that i squirm when i see. specifically, hand things, as lots of us artisans don't have pretty hands. my hands personally are bashed up, scarred and often swollen. i don't think the angle on my hand in that first picture was flattering at all and the lighting shows off my new pacific northwest pallor. granted the model for the new photo is a little colorful, and i'm sure plenty of people given the opportunity to voice their opinions might say it's distracting; but that's only if i open myself up to further critique. otherwise, they'll say it safely in front of their computer screens and i'll never hear it. whether it's a good thing or bad thing, i can't say for sure. i think the light looks better in the new one, and though the colors are well represented in the old photo, they're still good in the new one. another part of the criticism that i got for some of my images was that they look too wintry, and i'm guessing it's the cool light and dark stuff in the pictures (which i like, but not everyone seems to) that is making people think of that.


carbonite before:

after:

damn. i might like a lot about the old one better. i love the canteen/thermos cup in the middle. but the new picture does make them look more grey- which they are. they're not black. in the old picture, the bracelets kind of melt into the dark background, having the white behind them, i think helps them pop. which, for heaven's sake, the pictures have to pop. the wire is a sculpture i did in a college design class forever ago.


emerald city bangles before:

and after:
in my mind, these turned out the "best". that's the main shot right there, then i shot each of the bangles individually on the gourd. i love how refined the bracelets look and how organic and funky the dry gourd looks. these shots were the ones i clicked through several times, quite pleased with myself. there's something kind of elegant about them, but maybe i'm just full of myself. but looking at that main shot again, i'm wondering if it's still just a little too dark? how obsessed can one actually get over this thing?

another, shot number five in my shop:

it was hard to make that one square, and i don't know how happy i am with the cropping. however, it was nowhere near as difficult to shoot and edit as this last piece.

eye carry, before:



after:

the before shot is another one of my windowsill shots, and it was working for a little bit, but the light was just too erratic. i got spoiled on that southern california light.
this color orange is hard hard hard to photograph correctly, and the colors are still off. the orange should actually kind of be a canteloupe color. sort of. the purple is kind of close, but i don't love how warm the white in the background is.

as a whole, the shots still need work. as before, how obsessed, actually, can one get with taking pictures of this stuff? i am not a photographer, though i've wished to be in the past. there was a time when my passion for it far outstripped my talent, but honestly, the really good pictures i've taken have been few and far between. it's frustrating, because i know these things i make are beautiful in person and unless i can get the light, the cropping, the setting, etc, all just right, i don't have much luck in portraying them correctly.

*but as the trip to the farmer's market this morning also included a trip to the library, i'd rather look at those books, and worry about pictures later.*

nerves...the nerve! (i get critiqued and live to tell)

well, here i am, listening to some classic ragas (nayan ghosh playing a song i think called kafi- i'm a sucker for tabla and sitar, and want to learn more about it) and avoiding that camera of mine sitting next to me.

i'd rather check the email that i never check (it's supposed to be my personal one, it seems everything is in my "official" email); i'd rather read the kitchen gardeners' email newsletter about yes the obama family will have an edible garden on the lawn of the white house. i think that's a good symbolic victory, and the clever quote in the email was michelle obama saying that all members of the family will work in the garden "like it or not." which is good. i hope the chance is also being taken to re-normalize family gardening and re-normalize personally conducted growing and self-feeding. if we can all work one hour less each day for another person and work one hour more on our land, on our families and on ourselves, i think it will be worth that hour of salary/wage we don't get.
better yet, i'd like to see a little class erosion and have office gardens, tended by office gardeners as well as the gardeners of the office building. really, it wouldn't be so difficult. many office buildings have plants, planters, etc. i think of office buildings like space ships, and once upon a time i had an idea for a setting of a story; on a space ship that included plants and gardens as a supplement to the ship's air systems. yesh.
anyway, it's an idea whose time has come, and i'm not trying to get anyone into anything they really don't want to do, but seriously, keep a plant. just one. prove something to everyone because you can keep a plant alive (quoth a woman who's killed damn near everything, or allowed it to die. i may also write a column in a little gardening magazine but that's about food, and yes folks i have killed a cactus. a really cute one.) and better yet, make it one that you can eat, and eat some of it. grow some basil, grow a little arugula in a windowsill. grow some catnip in a windowsill, but make sure your cats can't knock the planter out of the windowsill. grow a little chives, or something on the back of the toilet if that gets any sun at all. or put a plant light under the cabinet over the toilet- something that can deal with the humidity of your showers.

i would actually love to do that last, i'm mentally bookmarking it.
and yes, i would rather preach planting things than dealing with these pictures.
they are not problematic (other than being pictures that i have to edit) in and of themselves. they are representative, part of this hurdle i'm trying to clear in representing my work accurately and flatteringly.
i make beautiful things. i am not trying to boast or be proud, many people have told me this. i am happy that this is their perception- i feel like people deserve as much beauty as they can take in. yet there's something that's failing and i think it's a symbolic undervaluation of my own work. by the time i photograph something, i've usually spent so much time with it, so much time working on it that i've grown familiar, perhaps contemptuous. the "taking it for granted" phase- but it's really not fair. it's every bit as wonderful as it was when i first conceptualized it, as excellent as it was when i took that admiring step back to appreciate the thing in context.

yes. so it's time to work on representing it as such. i visited the critiques version on the forums and got honest talk, but not too rough. i was expecting worse, though i don't know why because i'm one of those that's always complaining that the crit in there is too soft, too bum kissy. i don't think mine was like that at all; however there's also the distinct possibility that i was being sensitive and would have cracked under any blunter criticism. however, it was good and also coincided with a helpful post about quick fast and cheap lightbox. i recycled a flat rate box from stuff my mom sent me (i love boxes from my mom. there's always assorted and random stuff from froberg's - jordan almonds, pine nuts and sour worms! and coffee! and the magazines that we're subscribed to that for some reason get sent to her house.) and put it to the test. once i connect the camera to the computer, i have to see if it passes or fails.
i have a little anxiety about it, to be frank, for some reason. besides just plain not feeling like cropping and shrinking, etc. but maybe i'll just put them on the computer, and look at them and not mess with them. i suppose there's always that.

assorted thoughts

while waiting for the pot of beans to re-heat.

if you find yourself in the position to make a pot of beans, do so. treat them well, season them liberally and they will taste better on the second and third day than they did the first.
you can also add things, for instance this pot began as black beans, then were adulterated with black eyed peas yesterday.
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coming home today i saw the clearest evidence i've seen yet that it is indeed in process of becoming spring. i am already nostalgic for the cold, i've got a hot weather native's appreciation for the cold that borders on the fetishistic and i've been sad recently, watching the temperatures rise. but today, ah today, the fluffy cumulus clouds and the blue sky and more people than i've ever seen outside, just outside for any excuse they could be. any excuse at all, kids playing ball unburdened of winter's mummification, women on porches playing hand drums, a group of men on the metal skeleton landing of apartment stairs enjoying sunshine, an afternoon cigarette.

the daffodils in full riot, the various and sundry trees which i will be able to identify six months from now about to explode into bloom.
it will be interesting to watch this place, whose late winter face is the only one i know, change.
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the initial design phase of the first cape is going shakily.
but there are three or four other projects also in progress, so i've happy alternatives when it becomes too frustrating.
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i smell the hot smell of a griddle ready for making quesadillas. that's my cue.

venting. (to the whiners) [shortened considerably from its original concept.]

i had a more vitriolic post in mind when i was thinking of this entry. i was frustrated at a culmination of moments- and a specific type of frustrated too.
i've been party to many people who do things like what i do expressing dismay over a lack of progress, a lack of sales, etc, and asking the community- what's wrong with me? should i quit? i have only x number of progress points. and invariably, they've been at it less time than i and have made more, in various ways of looking at it, progress points.
note, i'm not talking about some rewards system, literal progress points, i'm just substituting that for number of sales, amount of income, etc, steps in the path of progress/success, however that individual defines such a goal for their own efforts. i'm not talking about stats, like in some rpg. (i think i could deal with this etsy experience if i viewed it more as a game part of me engages in, like a role playing game. STATS!)
[yelling "stats" is a shoutout to my husband, who nevertheless never reads this blog. that's okay, he has to live with me.]

anyway, to sum it all up it's discouraging. i am a competitive person, and so when i see the person who's publicly expressing their perceptions about their progress or lack thereof has more stats than i do, i get annoyed. i am trying to convince myself that i am annoyed because the person seems to be whining in a public forum, not that the person has more stats than me.
i think that the latter is a rather juvenile reaction, and the no whining thing is a bias of mine that makes the public a nicer place to be. but i'm being a bit judg-y and i try to be much more live and let live. in public anyhow. but the critic in my head still smokes cigarettes, and she still flicks the ashes from them rather sharply sometimes.
so what it amounts to, is that regardless of personal preference towards no whining, is that i do it anyway, on my blog, and that while i dislike it, i'll defend someone elses right to do it? eh, okay, not quite. but i will try to chill about it because everyone else's ideas about progress are different than mine, as are what feels like everyone else's production scale, budget, etc.
i think some of those etsy people out there have extra hours in their day. i'm suspecting that reality is just a little biased. (jokes! pointless accusations and jokes!)

and besides
i'd rather not dwell on that because i need more hours in my day. and because there's a lot to do.
and because
i had a Very Good Idea that i'd rather wallow in, instead.
a very very good one indeed.
who doesn't want a cape?
a goddess cape.
stay tuned. details at 11. or whenever.

been working on the railroad...knitting

and wish it was going just a little faster. i might be having a bit of an attention deficit about it, but that doesn't mean i'm not enjoying this project. it would be totally cool if i hadn't gotten mostly finished with it and then dissatisfied with my results, taken it apart and began to re-work it. but, it is valuable as a learning experience.
(none of which means that learning experiences often don't suck. this is the beauty of a good leader, teacher, mentor, coach, whatever, is that they in some way alter/betterify [a new word] the learning experience. which involves mistakes and not being good at something.)

a rainy weekend, following a few gorgeous days that were work time. a little frustrating, but at least i'm not cooped up in an office.

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another sunday, another family dinner/lan party. cheese is what i want this evening, and vegetables and bread. and something dippy. and roasted garlic. i have a ton of different colors of bell pepper, but i think those will just be roasted, pureed and frozen. i'm not feeling bell peppery today.
nor, i suppose am i feeling very bloggery.
the tree outside the window looks poised to burst, perhaps explode, into bloom. i wonder what sort of tree it is.

so i don't know if it's obvious by now or not

but for my dedicated readers (owls hooting, crickets chirping)- okay for anyone who's stumbled across my blog and read more than an entry or tow; it should be pretty obvious- i'm not good at a fixed schedule.
my mom no doubt, blames herself for this, and it's not for her lack of trying. sure, i get my days straight and am at work when i should be, but i'm not good when things are absolutely the same all the time. i create for myself wiggle room and then do sneaky things like sabotage my own plans by getting sick. example in point: last sunday's post that was never made up and languishes in my saved drafts file of oblivion. we won't even talk about how many saved drafts exist in my various google mail accounts. (let's be fair, i use them as notes to myself for things like upcoming column ideas, etc).

i have a set of bracelets that fears they will never see the light of day, i was derailed from that project, i think, a few weeks ago by needlefelting. i'm a little stuck on needlefelting at the moment and have been sidetracked again by a new/old favorite- railroad knitting.

it's also called afghan stitch, tunisian crochet and about a million other things, but since everyone assumes anything done with yarn and stick or sticks is knitting, i like the term railroad knitting. (i've also often considered getting a shirt that says something to the effect of, "no i'm crocheting" or a graphic of a hook and then an = crochet, but i'd hate to seem rude. plus it gives me a chance to talk to people a little bit about my much misunderstood art. craft. whatever.)
so i'm in the middle of a trade with a lovely etsian who wants a laptop sleeve to protect her precious in her backpack and sent out a call for knitters/crocheters. i guess i was the lucky winner, either that or she's got totally bored of waiting for me to get through my attention division/new job/sinus issues and has yet to let me know. she seems the gracious type though, so i think she may stick with me. i like the opportunity to try something new, especially with a captive audience, so the big old book of 101 tunisian/afghan/railroad knit stitches i got at the library just the other day seems to have filled the ticket. for a project like this, i wanted to use something that makes a denser stitch, to protect the surface of the machine, but i wanted it to be textural- something the hdc sack thing i was doing only halfway covered. the stitch i'm doing at this moment looks like a honeycomb sort of thing, with nice texture lines in between, so i'm digging it. i'm using brown sheep's cotton fleece and i'm thinking i've found my all-season cotton blend yarn. it's got a nice texture, good colors, a little sheen, not much fuzz. i don't like the fact that it splits into strands a lot when i'm working with it, but the yarn's been nicely tolerant of my abuses so far otherwise.
i've also got an art/craft show/sale coming up this week (littman gallery, on campus at portland state u) and feeling the pressure. it's two days so i need to have inventory (which shouldn't be too much of a problem, etsy's slow at the moment; one reason i jumped at the trade!) but it's got to be the right inventory. it's on a college campus, so i'm thinking i'll leave the baby afghans at home. hate to be stereotypical, especially as the college from which i graduated (university of north texas) had such a large number of non-traditional students. but i regard those pieces quite seriously as heirloom quality and don't really want them pawed at, especially by people who may be admiring but may have smudgy hands and no intent to make them their own.
boy i think i'm coming off rude and snotty today. i think i'll end this as it lies now, and go switch out laundry. i'll try not to hurt anyone's feelings on the way down. hopefully the results of laundry will please me, as there's a nice big bright pink bags in there felting.

all kinds of starty-stoppy

i've been pushing myself to do a lot of fiberwork recently, as i've just become enamored of a new aspect of it, and have been feeling the spring fever (as well as the spring sinuses!) but it's been hard to coordinate the thousand little things that have to be done in order to "do" this fiberwork in a business sense at all.
blogging's been problematic for me this week, and earlier in the week, when i really really wanted to just needlefelt, i had to take pictures, edit them, do listings, etc. and now that the posting part has slowed down, i am kind of temporarily tired of needlefelting. it's the way i would tell my mom when i was a kid, re: foods, "it's not that i'm full, i'm just tired of the way this tastes." which, when said calmly, i'm pretty sure she accepted it.
(and to add to my scattered attention issues, i've just been solemnly brought bamboo type purse handles, by the newly deputized vacuum patroller. what to do with these?!?!)
anyway, i'm not full of needlefelting, i'm just a little tired of it at the moment.
and dmanit there's a spot of decent light, time to throw off the computer and take some pictures. grr!!!!
so my attention span for the past week or so has been fractured to say the least.
dangit and an etsy forum question, but the etsy forums are being slow as molasses to load. so, to pass the time, some photographs (hot off the windowsill!) of the work in progress:
(these pics are not really edited, so they're not etsy listing quality, there's your disclaimer.)
all of the pieces need work. it's true, but i am going to give myself a night off, just to avoid just throwing stuff on the sweaters. i'm afraid that lacking real energy might make me push designs on them instead of what the sweater is saying to me. oh dear. yes, i talk to fibers.

the above is on a lovely cardigan originally sold at the gap. it's got a little rabbit hair yarn in it so it feels really soft. i'm trying to keep it from looking country, but this looks a little like a folky pear. i'm also craving avocadoes.

not that anyone could tell. this sweater's an older looking avocado green light wool thing. at least this is a little more peacock feathery in shape. but i need to decide if i love it or if i'm tired of it. it's a really lovely motif, but how far will it go, really?

this one actually has a name, and it's the closest to being ready. it's an awesome bennetton sweater, albeit a small one. i wear smalls, preferring a snugger fit, but this is ridiculously snug. but for a smaller framed lass, this one's going to be gorgeous. inspired by all manner of blooms and blossoms. it's a little femme for my general tastes, but it was too pretty an idea to ignore, and the perfect color sweater on which to do it. it's not a cardigan, but it says early spring to me.
when i allow myself to get back to needlefelting tomorrow, this will be the first to be finished and posted to my shop.

ojodios/practical magic

i think i realize why i like the new-to-me god's eye motif- it's a good representation of my brain.
it's going five or seven different directions and i'd like very much to do today's blog entry, rather than yesterday's.
it's incomplete and unposted and it's going to require me digging around in my favorites list on etsy. but i'm running this show and everyone seems to prefer it when i'm eased up on that, so i'm moving the share the love until wednesday. that sounds like a good day for it. don't you agree?
i mean, you do agree, right?
(i'm nodding my head here, pulling you on with me).
the story of yesterday is this great burst of energy, a whole lot done, and a whole lot more intended to do. my brain and energy have clicked into a different gear recently, and i realized today, while at work, that visualization is more powerful than i thought previously, and that it has a lot of influence on what manifests.
this is a liberating yet sobering thought. in our actions, we're only treading down grooves/tracks that we've already laid. but that means taking responsibility for daydreams, and when your airy fairy type friends say things about "follow your own bliss" they neglect to mention that actually doing it is a lot of work. it's not about the path of least resistance, passion only flows that way in fiction.
(and here's where i contemplate all that, and one of my role models and send a mental emotional heart to tiff, hope she gets that.)

but so. yesterday and today have both been punctuated with things that it was absolutely clear to me that they needed to be done.
there was cooking and cleaning, and i needlefelted a cardigan:
this is my very safe workspace! really! no really, i can't wait until we get a slightly larger place. the countertop/bar is an okay height to work at, standing, but our table's a little taller still so it will be great for feltwork. it's a dark picture, but i promise, mom, all the lights were on and i wasn't straining my eyes. that pattern is called the god's eye, and i have seen it previously as an embroidery stitch.that's not such a good picture, but you get the general idea. i'm hopeless so far at embroidery, but most of the women in my family have a cross stitch/crewel/needlepoint embroidery project in their life repetoire, so i've been exposed to it and have an appreciation for it. i also have a needlepoint project that i've been working on for nearly a decade. one day, that pillow with frogs and dragonflies on it will be done! and as god is my witness, i'll never do needlepoint again! (sorry, channeling my inner southern belle. it's in there. don't laugh.)
so, needlefelting seems like a good way to explore these stitches i love. it's not exactly the same, but one can take advantage of fiber texture to create movement and interesting detail.
this god's eye is really basic, and i've already got much more ambitious ideas. but it's a fun thing to do with brightly colored yarn.
this pocket is a little more sedate:and i don't necessarily love the colors; i think they pull the design into borderline timidity. or are they keeping the design subtle? i like the shading in the leaf shapes, and enjoyed doing it. the lines around the circles are interesting:
and i'll be exploring that some more. i've been playing with that idea in my head for a while so it was interesting to see it come out.
that's another look at it, and already i see so many things that i'll have the opportunity to do better, soon.

i think i'd like to add these to my shop, consider this my statement of intention: these are my coming attractions. i would have the ability to do different sizes, in completely one-off designs, relatively affordably. i'd be upcycling, as i'd be getting sweaters secondhand. if they didn't come with cool buttons (mine came with black faceted shiny plastic ones- i can't decide how i feel about them)- that's easy to fix.
i have been looking at felt and fiber to try to get a fix on the colors that are out there and am very happy to have done so. now i need to learn the sweaters. i have ideas about embellishing seams, modifying sleeve length.
i'm visualizing one specific cardigna, and i think i'm going to start getting supplies together for it tomorrow. i think i'm liking this spring energy, feeling productive is so cool.

sunday, got in the way

have all kinds of an ambitious-type entry saved, but unfortunately my busy sunday got in the way. all will be explained tomorrow, with another late share the love installment, included.

friday

nothing like a return to other people's schedule and expectations to make one welcome friday.

it's so arbitrary and it happens every week, yet i can't help but mildly celebrate its arrival/existence. a few minutes early to work this morning (quite a short drive), i got to enjoy a whole song of regina spektor's, a pretty melodic and echoing piece that suited this morning's bright sky quite well. things are greening. and i'd already had coffee, breakfast, made a listing on etsy. the eye one
which i adore, specifically due to the adaptation of the embroidery stitch to needlefelting. i love a lot of embroidery motifs, but at this point, i am not an embroiderer. there is a certain appreciation for color, texture, fiber qualities that exists within embroidery, and so i'm interested in taking these old techniques and needlefelting them. well that's an ambitious statement, as this pouch itself is one of the first in the projects that do this.
there's a camel-colored felted bag that's accented with a warm blue and nice dark red that's just gorgeous- it's upcoming. i'm having difficulty finding a suitable button- i'm looking for a nice plain wooden one, on a shank. tougher than it sounds. it's fabulous. should i end up ever with a nice camel colored coat, i'd like that motif to go somewhere upon it, in those colors too. but this pouch is a more tropical assortment of colors, and there's nothing wrong with that either.

an enjoyable evening planned, some baked polenta fries (gotten from 101 cookbooks, a food blog i've come to find really reliable and quality) and broccoli, perhaps a cartoon movie from studio ghibli- one of the few types of movies the three of us find agreeable. maybe some stove popped popcorn, maybe some roasted garbanzo beans. the fantastic feeling of leisure, which i'm sure i will muss up with finding something yarn-related to work on. oh well, if i can't pet a cat, i can at least mess with sheep hair. planning tomorrow's breakfast all the while.

midafternoon: beer and potatoes (with a sort-of recipe)

i'm not being needlessly decadent, both the beer and the potatoes were leftover. started the new job in earnest today, and while it's not my absolute favorite type of job in the world, there are perks; i'm not confined to a chair and a four foot by four foot space for eight hours a stretch, tethered to a telephone (eek! the horrors!) and my mind completely on loan to someone i don't even like very much. and, i got off today rather early. early enough to stop by a clothing resale (somewhere between a lowbrow vintage shop and higher end thrift shop) and try on a couple of things that didn't fit "just right" and then come home and shoot some pics for my etsy shop and enjoy some of last night's potatoes with the hub. and a 1554 "enlightened black ale" from new belgium. in reverse order, now.
the new belgium beer was one of a twelve pack, purchased the other night for our weekly family dinner/lan party. being done in by sinus illness, ill partner and week-long school break kid, i was not into cooking. i'd tried wooing both of my darling housemates with tasty treats throughout the week: valentine's day, we had heart shaped, faintly sweet scones sprinkled with big grains of colored sugar and sweet yogurt (brown sugar and almond extract in plain yogurt- a versatile dip/sauce) with some rhubarb and strawberry jelly from last summer; individual cherry pies, tortilla soup, eggs and fried potatoes & bacon amongst other delights. but exhaustion and jaded palates led us to a chinese buffet. i am so traumatized by the experience that i may never visit another again. i tried to convince everyone else that the best chinese food is not to be found beneath a sneeze guard and on a steam table. but none of us could pin down one item from a conventional restaurant that we could settle on so it seemed a good idea. i'll not fault that certain unnamed buffet for its lack of variety, but for the execution thereof. it was close enough to being pretty good that its failure to do so led it to be completely awful.
feeling sorry for ourselves, we agreed that our beer for the gaming festivities should be good, something that we enjoyed. we've picked up a folly pack on occasion and that evening it fit the bill. there are three of us, so the three bottles of four varieties is perfect, and towards the end of the evening we're usually amenable to trading. the ones we've gotten included fat tire, of course (the chocolate milk of beers), mothership wit (a belgian-style white/wheat beer, which i almost always love), 1554 (a tasty and dark brown ale) and the wildcard, which has been an interesting concoction new belgium calls giddy up.
giddy up is billed as beer, espresso and a hint of lemony citrus. rewind back to my college days; the first coffeeshop i really frequented (r.i.p. brickhaus) featured a proprietress versed in coffee and a menu item that included espresso and lemon. i never tried it, as i was in a mocha shake (the porsche cherry was the best, off-menu and named after our friend bobby's "porn name" - based on his childhood pet's name + the name of the street he grew up on) phase, if not availing myself of the 2.00 bottomless cup of coffee w/ lots of sugar. those were the days. anyway, i should have tried it, regretted not, and therefore was excited to taste that beer. i've drank a lot of beer, tried lots of kinds, but don't really claim to know much about it beyond what i like, what i dislike and what i've not tried yet. it's like most new belgium beers, quite refreshing. a good start to an evening of gaming and beer sipping, the espresso taste kind of gives a (psychosomatic) energy lift, and the rich dark beery flavor and lemon kind of spiral together. delicious, to me.
so the 1554 was left over from a couple nights ago and i enjoyed it. a moment of leisure and a pint is a lovely moment.
the potatoes, nommed in a hurry, are the only recipe i really remember gran cooking when i was young. she went all out and did eggnog french toast on xmas morning, and would do the occasional thing here and there, but really is not one for cooking. this, i remember eating along with something that required ketchup and mustard type condiments as i used the same to cover over the green onion flavor in the potatoes. but when i was making them up last night, they didn't smell right, then i rescued some old green onions and once they were added, it was all correct.
so. the sort of recipe. i'm not going to bother with strict measurements, just use what you have, use your nose and judge based on your crowd's hunger and needs. we ate this as a main course, but it could have been a side, too.
boil enough russet potatoes. i didn't use russets at all for a while there, and have recently gone back. they're delicious. buy them organic, scrub the skins and don't peel them. that's wasting food.
while potatoes boil, get out some yogurt (sourcream), cheddar cheese (sharp if you fancy it), green onions (if the outsides look wilty, pull them off. there might be some good onion shoot there in the middle), a little butter, salt and pepper and a couple slices of nice thick bacon- i buy some good ends and pieces at an independent grocery here in town, for flavoring use, so i cut a couple of slices off that. (bacon's tasty, but optional. i made this without when i was hard core vegetarian, and with margarine too, and it was a-ok.)
if bacon, put it in a cold pan and turn on the burner, removing when it is nice and browned and crispy. let it rest on a paper towel to drain a little grease and crisp up. save your pan of bacon fat for browning onions or something in, throwing it away is wasting food.
while bacon cooks and potatoes boil, cut off a tbs or two of butter and set aside. cut off a good knob of cheese, and slice.small cube, and save a nub for grating over the top of the potatoes. slice some green onions, and put butter and cheese back in the fridge. after the bacon's done and drained, dice it up into nice-sized pieces
one-a these days, your potatoes will be done- test them with a fork, when they're soft enough for pretty easy mashing, they're done. get out a baking dish (i used a glass bowlish shaped thing) and put the potatoes in. mash them up, add the butter so it melts. add enough yogurt/sour cream to make things pretty creamy. russets are mealy, so we want to bind that together. add in the cubed cheese and part of the bacon while stirring, then the green onions. add some salt and pepper, and stir. smell. you want to smell everything in a nice balance, but the parts that will stick out to your nose will be the bacon and green onions. use this smell to let you know if you need more green onions or not- they cut the richness of the dish, but we all have differing tolerances for them.
once that's all done, use a spoon and make the top nice and smooth. sprinkle on the bacon and cheese. it can sit for a little while at this point, or you can bake it immediately. stick it in the oven, covered, at 350 until the cheese starts to melt, then take the cover off so the cheese can brown a little. it takes 20-30 minutes all told.
ingredients: potatoes, butter, cheese, yogurt/sour cream, salt & pepper, bacon and green onions.
it's good stuff and a food/flavor memory for me.
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i have several projects going right now, in various stages of completion. they all reproach me when i walk past them; there are yarn balls giving me baleful looks, and purses that need buttons heaving meaningful sighs. beads twitter and giggle to one another under their breath, and patterns to find or devise playing ring around the rosy in the back of my mind. a folder of photos to edit and posts on etsy to space out and create. hopefully, it all leads to more.

love, late

our household for the past week and two days has been hit simultaneously by an adult incidence of illness, with requisite puny days and schoolfree week. bless those year round schools. a week's a nice long time, and we could have done so much more. in my ideal freelance future, i can visualize a three day field trip (and i mean really, like a field with a trail and some trees in it or a field with some sheep in it) but reality intruded, unpleasantly, but was treated to many cups of hot tea.

therefore with these protestations, i must submit my second shared love installment a little late but with no less love. i don't give myself a break on anything else- i was still working (on things that will be felted and thus washed in really hot water) and cooking, etc, so i cheesed out on uptalking another something cool. but here it is.

song for today: yael naim's "new soul" - really too cute.
which fits in nicely with this week's very cute new friend: gossamer, of portland
i cast the net wide on a day when i felt a little puny and the smallest person in the house needed some out time. we managed to catch a beautiful sunny day in the 50s. i made a list from google maps of several yarn/fiber places i'd yet to visit; needing fiber, a needlefelting pad and a good shove towards just getting started on that already.

gossamer was our first stop, and i'm so glad it was. the window beckoned with fairies and skeins of lamb's pride in shades of green (and i'm a sucker for lamb's pride/lanaloft. confronted with a rainbow of them, i'm apt to grab a skein or two of some unlikely shade partly because it's just so darn useful. even more so now, but i'm getting ahead of myself) and once inside we were greeted with natural/ambient light and the warm sweet scent of beeswax. jewelry afore us, lamb's pride to my left, felting supplies aplenty, not to mention work on the walls and lots of books. and a cheery, chatty, knowledgeable proprietress busy at some work on a central table. cozy, without feeling small and homey without being run-down. all questions were answered amiably as i fumbled through wool fibers of several colors and flipped through sheets of all-wool felt, in fabulous shades. (and made in europe to their stringent children's safety standards!!)
sweater scraps, organized by color, and the lamb's pride too. i adore places that organize by color, my thriftshop trained eye is pleased and enjoys browsing that way. the (local) beeswax was the source of the gorgeous scent and many bars stood proudly on the shelves.
i also got to touch a piece of nuno felt/scarf and touching it immediately made thirty or forty new ideas scan across my brain.
needless to say, this was an enjoyable shop that will no doubt become one of my favorites. i like the neighborhood (e burnside) but don't make it that way very often. as i'll be out and about more due to upcoming employment, i will certainly make a stop to visit. and i see on the gossamer website that there is an open crafting time, which if i ever have a tuesday evening to myself, i would like to visit.
gossamer
also has an etsy outpost, on which she sells her beautiful and colorful dutch merino felt. i love how she's got the color groups assembled, and i do believe that she's one of those darling shop owners that would put together a custom set for a buyer.
however, should one make it to portland, her shop is worth the visit- it's part craft/education supply shop, part boutique, part gallery. beautiful felted paintings line the walls- the shading is incredible.

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and of course my visit finally precipitated a felting flood, which is kind of closing in on the finish to my mad de-stash. i didn't realize de-stashing takes so long, but it's okay. the new stash does call, but this needlefelting thing is so awesome that it's a huge distraction. at this point, i'd rather felt, but there's no more felting to do. only buttons. which don't thrill me, but i have to be very serious about as it's such an important part of the piece. i have some new pouches and purses which will appear in my etsy shop as a trickle over the next several days (after buttons and photos, that is).

great expectations (while felting)

i'm listening to Cat Power- specifically "great expectations" while felting. it's appropriate, and an appropriate phrase to describe the apprehension, the excitement, while work is out of my hands and being agitated.
and by the way, if you've never listened to Cat Power, give her a listen. the playlist i've got going has all my favorites on it- my ears were craving to hear "king rides by" - i know ear cravings must be common, right? it's also got "fool", "rockets", "werewolf" and "free" on it- some of the ones i like to listen to the most by her. Cat Power is good working music to me, pretty and interesting and kind of introspective. i really love having music in the house, and it seems like we're listing to it more as of late. the shorter person of the house is certainly going to have unusual taste in music as her pater and i listen to some weird stuff at times- working music, stuff to pace our brainflows. i have a hard time ignoring sounds at times, particularly music, since a lot of the adults i was around when i was younger were kind of particular about their music. so things like dentist's office music drive me crazy, the sounds must have personality. and having spent no small amount of time around musicians, and my own decade with the trumpet are all compounding factors.
back to cat power though, it's some of that music that i was exposed to a couple of years before getting really into it. a lot of things are like that, so i tend to acquire music and then put it aside for a while. i also get great mileage out of my wardrobe by doing this; unless i donate it or give it to a friend first. the major exception there, is things that i make for myself. i tend to finish the ends and wrap it around my neck or plop it on my head or what have you. i hooked up a pair of those handwarmer things, kind of a test pair in this hemp/wool i bought last summer (and was kind of disappointed with it) last weekend and put the left one on and wore it while i made the right hand one. i also slept in them, and woke up with bluish palms. needless to say the quest for the right hemp yarn continues.

and i'm distracting myself from my original point; the tenterhooks of waiting. this is another step in the week of destash, and unlike a lot of previous projects, i know that it's not that close to the end for some of them. for example, the washers i use do not have adjustable cycles, so i know right off that most of them will have to go through again. i like sturdy felt; that takes agitation and time. all the things going (8 pieces!) will need buttons- and i'm going to head to a recommended button mecca hopefully tomorrow and will have details about that! i'm going through a button phase at the moment, loving the combination of aesthetics and functionality. and a couple of the bags in there are intentional test pieces, that will have embelleshment- pretty much my first foray into that. i think i wanted to have the structure down, and will still do unadorned bags, but i really want to explore some new techniques.
i'm happy with the shapes i did in this go 'round, some chubby little pouches and some cool bags. i really like the handle attachment i did on one of the bags, i think it's going to look snappy finished up. hopefully.

of course, not content to work on one set of projects at a time, i'll be finishing this awesome, cupcake sprinkle inspired set of bangles. and starting to brainstorm projects for the new stash. i think i'm not going to allow myself to work from the new stash until i've finished with these in progress and am starting to list them. that should keep me motivated and encourage me to be sure and give these pieces the best attention than i can. they deserve it.

re-stash

i have been destashing for a while now; i'd stockpiled yarn for a little while, squirreling it away and have gradually worked through it over the course of the last couple of weeks. well, we were interrupted by the noro niji for a minute or 20 but i have otherwise not gotten new yarn recently.
until today.
in a huge leap of getting out and actually driving, i visited yarn garden. (i was going to put a link in there but the blogger and i are not getting along at the moment. it wants to continue the link, indefinitely and i'm not fighting with it at the moment. www.yarngarden.net. there.)
and i was hemming and hawing on several things, trying to decide if i really want to work with little bitty thin yarn right now. i think soon, but not just yet. i blanked everything else out and just followed my color eyes and found an intense red pink purple. it's called orchid, but it makes me think of retina-searing azaleas down in texas. i have some gorgeous roving that i got in alaska over the holidays, in a teal (color i'm loving right now) and a nice orange/brown that has some little azalea pink flecks in it and the teal too. it may sound funky but when i just wrote that, i saw the idea i'm going for and it will not be easy for me to put that one up for sale, if indeed i do.


and then other errands intervened, and finding myself on the northeast (kind of) side of town, i went to (see it's doing it again and i am annoyed and unable to fix it) grr.
so i went to close knit. i haven't been there as many times as i've been to yarn garden, as yg is walking distance from where i live.
and lo and behold, they had their big worktable in the back, covered in yarn. all 40% off. their destash = my restash. it's a great shop, though a little more compact than yg and they have a lot of wool. i talked myself out of a couple of things, namely this hotpink wool silk blend with little light pink slubs(?) in it. it felt incredible and was nice, and on sale. but reason prevailed. i don't think it'd be useful until next winter and it was awful loud to keep around until then.
i touched some cashcotton that i liked a lot, but it seemed to have a lot of acrylic in it. that actually happened with several yarns- they looked great and felt wonderful, but were over 10% or so synthetic. and i've fixed this as kind of being a guidepost, for some reason. and there's so much lovely looking and fanciful yarn out there, but most of the animals that make the yarn i use, well, their poop is pretty good for the soil. not so much, chemical plants.
and i know cotton's pretty intensively fertilized and herbicided- i'm trying to get more and more organic as i go.

today was pretty much the first time that ever felt like a sacrifice, like i wasn't working with something that aesthetically, shallowly, i'd like to work with. some of the louisa hardings, oh my goodness, there was a two-dollar bin with this awesome sequined yarn, but it was polyester. but TWO DOLLARS?!? unheard of for this stuff. but i was unable to give in, and left with some cotton/silk, some wool/mohair, a stray almost lilac superwash fuzzy merino (for a baby something, i think) and some gorgeous golden buff color bamboo.
okay. nevermind, seeing it written like that, i realize, it was no sacrifice at all.

commentary on these yarns upcoming, to be sure.

*on an unrelated side note, a person for whom i write has requested a head-shot type picture of me. turns out, i don't have one of those. i use my camera a million kittens a week and have a billion pictures of myself, but they're all uninhibited or very posed myspace type pictures. there's probably a whole generation of us, with this easy advent of digital cameras. cameras have generally always encouraged the shy to retreat and the hams among us to be ridiculous (think bunny ears, tongue sticking out, wacky off center poses) but i would think that the digital photo era, combined with the internet has really layered the ridiculous onto the sublime.

sharing the love

so, it's valentine's weekend and all; and as over all the consumer holidays as i'd like to be, it's also headed full-tilt towards the end of winter and spring is afoot. we walked to the grocery store yesterday (fantastic exercise when you're walking back in a hurry to start dinner and your re-usable bags are strapped variously about your person) and i had to stop and pet the fuzzy little buds that my husband calls pussywillow. soft, and sweet, and it's enough to inspire a little lovey-ness even into me. (i'm usually so distracted at making that i'm not all fluff and ruffles with the loveyness. unless you're a kitty.)

so, having some good feelings, i'd like to share them around. today, we'll be sharing the love with someone i met at the craft/art show (still working on that "craft" word) last week:
jose klein.
jose (and his too-cute family) were representing at the show last weekend with some plates. i didn't think much of it at first, like, "oh, plates." plates for eating, decorated plates like you see on late-night infomercials capitalizing upon the success of our most recently elected president, decorated plates that you see in terrible parade magazine and coupon inserts in the newspaper, china you got from some second hand shop and forgot and put in the microwave even though there's gold decoration on?
however, when i took a second to stop by his table a couple hours later, i was quite pleasantly surprised. by this:

"RUTH!" i shouted, having some sort of 13 year old riot grrl, who hungrily read ms magazine, and our bodies, ourselves, and naomi wolf and gloria steinem and even dworkin and mackennon (the last two not with complete agreement, but with interest anyway).
(see jose's Ruth Bader Ginsburg page here. don't worry, his approach to the english language is a little more professional than mine.)
here, at this craftshow in our unexpected basement location, i'd found another nerd. not the kind of nerd who made me wish that i'd brought my 12-sided die, but more like the kind that made me wish i'd finished my polysci minor. (it's okay, as the learning continues, and i still got so much valuable class time with the esteemed dr. saliyeh)
immediately i asked, but alas, no sandy. if i had a pair of plates honoring ruth bader ginsburg and sandra day o'connor, i would need a boudoir. a room that had my own private mirror so when i fortified myself for the day, i could look in the mirror and see these women over my shoulders and have a greater handgrip on something like resolve. on something like inspiration.
i digress, and jose even said that the pair, while not complete at this moment, could be arranged.

on his etsy profile, jose refers to a childhood tradition of plates and markers and reclaiming this- i see it as revisiting that prior, more innocent(?) experience of creation with all this baggage of accumulated experience and knowledge. i am particularly interested in those of us who revisit things we did in our childhoods; it makes for a long evolution. my great grandmother taught me about poetry and crochet when i was little, she crocheted constantly and was the only one of my relations that kept any sort of notebook as far as a knew/know. when we repeat these things we learned at such young ages, they are markings of our passage, cave paintings on the walls of our lives, if one will.

i also see a connection between drawings, oftentimes colorful and interestingly rendered due to the background of in-court drawings. court illustration is so obscure that looking up the history of the practice is somewhat frustrating to do on an "on the fly, while writing" manner. i know i've seen many many of them and am tempted to chalk it up to the practice of drawing the proceedings in a pre-video media era for wider dissemination and posterity. perhaps with a hint of the human tendency towards political cartooning.

but more on topic, part of the goal jose states is the effort "to put faces on the names buried in law school textbooks" and for that matter, the names and dates that we all ran roughshod over in highschool and college assorted history, government, and politcal science classes. these things that affect our every day lives, whether we realize it or not, these things woven into the social fabric of the time and place we live are as mundane and un-thought of as the plates we eat our food from. yet, one could argue, we'd be a great deal less civilized than we are now without them- with salad in our laps and a great deal of disorder.

in addition to images featuring supreme court justices, jose also makes plates representing different facets of law, focusing on "a set of important Interstate Commerce Clause cases, a set about punitive damages, the First Amendment and a set about executive detentions." this may all sound like dry stuff, but as previously mentioned, these things shape our daily lives and often go unnoticed. some of jose's images on the first amendment and executive detentions are somewhat chilling and thought provoking, to which i say "good!"

these plates remind me greatly of a show i covered in brief while i was writing little blurbs for the houston press. julie green does plates that she exhibits as a collection that she calls "the last supper". painted upon these plates, sometimes in pictures, sometimes in words, she features the published requests of death row inmates' final meals.


which is also quite interesting, in and of itself. i'm interested in this idea of plates, and by extension food, being so easily taken for granted; a symptom of a largely comfortable culture, survival wise. even the most foodie types among us who will spend half an hour in rapture over a cayenne accented dark chocolate truffle (who? me!) take it relatively for granted that we will have food over which to obsess and triumph. we take it relatively for granted, upon assumption, that the meal we're currently eating will not be our last. we take it relatively for granted, upon assumption that the products we buy are safe, that we can say what we like without being spirited away to some place either overdark or overbright in my imagination, for punishment.

to learn more about jose's work, background on cases and all kinds of other interesting thing, visit his blog at http://www.learnedhandmadeplates.blogspot.com/ and his website at www.joseklein.com
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i think sundays are a good day for sharing the love. look for this to become a weekly feature, like our weekly family dinner. i'd love to invite you to the latter, but we've only got four mis-matched barstools and one very tiny kitchen.
on the menu tonight? a very lowbrow american feast in honor of presidents' day- buffalo chicken dip, salad, veggies, some of my artisan bread and for dessert? in honor of the washingtonian whopper about the cherry tree, individual cherry pies, in tiny pie pans i've never used. we'll see how that goes.