Artsy Fartsy

I’ve been keeping up on my Drawing 365 set much better than my Crafting 365 set. I’ve failed at that one and haven’t crafted anything other than dinner in the past several days. Last night’s drawing was my camera because I spent the evening taking new pictures of my jewelry to update my Etsy shop.

I even made a new banner for the shop.  Cute and springy, no?  Doesn’t it make you want to buy stuff?

I thought the perky colors might help to improve my mood.  It might just be working.

I’m sorry. I’ve been feeling rather blah lately and haven’t been able to think of anything to write about today. I have no reason to be this crabby, but I feel like this little grumpy cloud has been following me around. Maybe it’s the weather. Or the lack of new TV programming. Or all of the irritating political commercials. Whatever it is, it has to stop. This cloud was my drawing of the day for Monday when I was feeling particularly ornery, but it seems to apply for today, too. Sorry about that, I’ll work on it.

Molly was barking out the front window this morning and, although she barks at leaves and cats and my car if I park it in a different spot, I thought I’d look in case it was the neighbor’s cute golden retriever puppy on the loose again.  This is what I saw.

Can you tell what it is?  I could tell it was a bird, a hawk I thought based on the size, and it was struggling with something in or on it’s feet.  I thought it had a blue bag stuck on its feet.  I was trying to figure out how one helps a wild hawk with a plastic bag stuck on it’s feet without losing one’s eyes or limbs, when I looked closer.

Hold on just a minute!  That’s not a bag.  Are those… wings?

Why yes, they are.  Yikes.  First I was a little fascinated and horrified at what was happening a short distance from my front window, but then I was also amazed at just how blue the blue jay’s wings were.  They’re like chalky electric blue.  I felt bad, but the blue jays are the bullies of my yard.  They terrorize the little birds and scare them away from the feeders.   I guess what comes around goes around even in the bird world.

Kind of makes driving halfway to work today before realizing I left without my purse seem like not such a bad thing.

Thursday I sewed. (You knew that already.)

Friday we repainted our bedroom.

Saturday we had friends over (I baked a cake).

Sunday we celebrated my brother-in-law’s birthday.

And here’s a bonus picture from my weekend. Sunday I was overcome with incredible willpower and did not slam the dryer door and turn it on high.

Have you ever had something you need to do, something you promised you’d do, but every time you think about doing it you feel a sense of dread? Like taxes. I know I have to file them, but actually looking at the TurboTax box makes me feel sick and then I come up with a million other, quite important things that I have to do instead.

A very patient, lovely woman named Anais, found my Etsy shop and requested a big version of my Tiny Tote in a very specific fabric. The brown polka dot and striped fabric I bought last spring because it was on the clearance rack as a discontinued pattern. Just like the taxes I dread to file, I dread making this bag. I have already made two others in an attempt to get the pattern right before I cut into the very slim remains of the material she wants, you may have seen them: the loud tote (too small) and the big striped prototype (too big). I ripped apart another bag I had made of the same fabric so I could use the scraps if necessary and last night I finally made my first cuts into the last of the fabric. Amazingly, I had just enough of the stripe to make the long shoulder straps you see up in that picture above, and there was enough of the polka dot to make the outside of the bag. I was even able to stitch together the old bag scraps to make sort of a quilt-looking mix of stripes and dots for the lining. Things were going well, and then I started to get tired.

This is what happens when you sew and yawn at the same time. It was about the fourth time I sewed a piece to the wrong side and I just gave up after that and went and took a nap.

The funny thing about procrastination is, as soon as I started the dreaded project, I got excited.  Even after I screwed up for the umpteenth time and gave up, I felt great because I started it and the end didn’t seem so far away.  Now I can’t wait to get back and finish the bag, not just to get it off my list, but to feel proud of my accomplishment.

So Anais, if you’re reading, thank you for your patience.  Your bag will hopefully be finished this weekend.

After reading such a wonderful, delight of a book as Eat Pray Love was, it’s hard to read anything else.  Should I read something funny? trashy? intellectual? British?  I can’t decide.  I received a copy of Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics for Christmas so I thought I’d give that a go.

Ug.

About a year ago I heard Kurt Andersen of Studio 360 review Special Topics and interview Ms. Pessl.  I remember at the time thinking that this book sounded great and I wanted it, so I added it to my Amazon wish list.  All these months later, and after attempting to read it for the last week or so, I can’t think of why in the world I thought that.

First off, and a bit unfairly, the copy I got is hardcover.  Now unless it’s Harry Potter, I never buy hardcovers.  They’re too big and too expensive, and too darn heavy to read in bed.  After that, my biggest problem with the book is the run-on sentences.  I can’t believe how many paragraphs in one book can be constructed with one sentence.  One page of this book had three sentences on it.  I think the first chapter probably had less than two dozen.  It drives me crazy.  At this point I don’t care a bit for the quirky father and daughter main characters in the book because I’m playing the let’s-find’a'paragraph-made-of-more-than-two-sentences game just to stay awake.  And then there’s The Capitalization.  Everything has A Name and therefore A Capitalization.  It’s giving me A Headache.

I wanted to copy one paragraph sentence sentagraph (can I make up my own words?) to give an example of the run-on in all its glory, but I left the book at home.  Let me try to give my own example based on what I’ve read.  I’ll do it by telling you about the book’s website: www.calamityphysics.com

Although I have, so far, found this book to be dreadfully boring - though a good sleep-inducer - I am enjoying the books website for it’s  fun, quirky, link-filled construction, making the site feel not unlike a video game; and though the pages do contain a bit of text, there are no hyphens, colons, (or parenthetical statements), rendering the delightful site a thousand times more interesting and less visually, mentally, and verbally exhausting as The Book upon which it is based.

Yes, I am not exaggerating.  And yes, the website is fun.  And yes, I put it back on the bookshelf.  I’m now reading About A Boy (both funny AND British).

The set is up! Drawing 365 is official. There are a whole two drawings there, including this one you see above and yesterday’s wood stove drawing. Check back every day for new drawings.

I went back to Lotus Yoga with Andrea last night and it was HARD. We worked on all the tight areas of our bodies which means it was a good thing to do, but really tough, and I came home feeling like a limp noodle. I didn’t think I’d be able to hold a pencil (we even did hand and wrist stretches) but I grabbed my pad and made a quick sketch of myself in class. Well, maybe it’s someone based on myself. My feel aren’t really that small.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy my year of drawings with Drawing 365.

Yes, I did draw last night. I drew for an hour or so, actually. I drew a cute picture of my wood stove, since I was huddled in front of it all night. But do I have a picture to show you? No, I don’t. I hastily threw my sketch pad on the scanner before I left the house and didn’t check the scan before I ran out the door. Now that I look at it, it’s so far beyond fixing, not even Photoshop could help it. I’ll scan it again tonight and start my Drawing 365 Flickr set.

In the meantime, if your eyeballs are yearning for something pretty, check out this blog that I love: Kris’s Color Stripes. She takes a photo and plucks out the individual colors that are in the photo, then shows the colors next to the photo. Sometimes the color swatches stacked up next to each other are more beautiful than the photo. You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? Here, let me show you an example.

Pretty, huh? I could stare at these photos all day. They actually make me want to go make jewelry. The color combinations are so lovely and sometimes unexpected colors look so nice together. So in lieu of my drawings, go enjoy Kris’s Color Stripes today and come back here tomorrow for some sketchy loveliness.

The Christmas drawings have been erased and the black backsplash was calling to me last night so I drew this fat cardinal.  It was quick, it was fun, and I realized that I don’t spend enough time drawing.  With all of the sewing and jewelry-making and doing all of the other things I love to do, drawing gets pushed to the side and I go for weeks at a time without drawing anything, unless you count the doodled Post-Its all over my desk at work from the boring phone calls I’ve had to sit through.  That’s just sad.  I need to draw more.
So here’s my pledge.  I joined the Crafting 365 group on Flickr (see today’s craft here) but I think I’ll start my own Drawing 365 set.  I’ll draw something, anything, everyday and try to post them all to Flickr.  They may not be perfect or finished.  I’m thinking of just drawing something from my day.  Like yesterday I could have drawn the waffles that Luke made me for breakfast, or the computer which is where I spent most of the evening.  It should be fun.  I’ll let you know when the set is up and running.

Checking through my stats just now, I saw a search term that has to be my new favorite. Someone clicked over to LisaGaumond.com to answer the burning question:

“should we snuggle or ride a dirt bike?”

Too funny. I have to go Google that now to see how high up in the results I am.

(Update, I’m the first search result.  HA!!)