Artsy Fartsy

OK, so maybe it wasn’t a mystery.  I love my car for many reasons, but looking through my old pictures, now up on Flickr, I found something that never occurred to me before.  Previous to my love affair with my Yaris, I had another car that I loved to death, literally.  It was a 1987 Subaru Justy.

It was old and rusty and tiny and cute and even at 13 years old, it still topped 43 MPG.  It was fun to drive and great in the snow, and it survived being totalled in a car accident, being run into by a deer (I’m not kidding), and ran for a couple of years with a cracked head gasket.  I only begrudgingly gave it up for scrap when major parts started to fall off of it and then, after removing the engine and calling the scrap yard to tow it away, Luke decided that he needed to climb it.  With his Jeep.  And then his quad.  It was an undignified end for my valiant steed, but what can I say?  I married a crazy person.

So what’s the mystery?  Well here’s my poor Justy, above, being violated.  Now look at my spunky, little Yaris (below):

Notice any similarities??  I think my Yaris is my reincarnated Justy!  No wonder I love it so much.  Hopefully I never catch Luke trying to jump the Yaris with his dirt bike or anything, although I’d love it if I could own and enjoy the Yaris as long as I did the Justy.

My worst fears have come true.  The CD that had all of my Molly pictures, pre-Flickr, is now a useless shiny Frisbee.  I’m so glad I got some of the pictures off of it last night.  My PC froze up when I was looking through the pictures on the disk and I had to force quit the CD drive to get things back to normal.  Once things settled down and I put the CD back in, half of the pictures were gone.  Fearing that I’d lose the others, including my favorite first-night-home puppy pictures, I uploaded them to Flickr, stat, and then thought maybe a reboot would clear up this misunderstanding between the disk and my CD drive.  So much worse.  Not only did the missing picture not show up, the CD won’t even load.  My pictures are gone, but luckily some of them are safe on Flickr.

Let this be a warning, if you have any precious pictures on your computer, or even on an archived CD, consider putting them on Flickr, too.  I don’t keep any pictures on my computer anymore, I don’t even save them to CDs, everything goes onto Flickr.  All the picture files were slowing down my computer and trying to find a specific picture among a boxful of archived CDs on was annoying.  Now it all goes to Flickr and if I want that picture of my sister winning at Jenga three years ago, I search for “Andrea” and there it is!  Or the one of mom graduating from the University of Hartford, I search for “mom” and “graduation” and voila!

So what I’m saying is this, no matter how safe you think your precious photos are, they aren’t.  I know that Flickr isn’t perfect, lightning could strike their server, who knows, but one more layer of protection for my memories is important to me and I have found that Flickr does the job well and cheaply.  Go check it out, you may be singing its praises someday, too.

When I was at my sister’s this weekend, I took this picture of Molly.

It reminded me of another picture I took of her when she was just a little pup, so I dug through my pictures and found it.  Brace yourself for the awesome cuteness of puppy.

I can’t get over how little she was!  I mean, she’s not huge now, by any means, but look how teeny she was.

And look at this face!  I can’t stand it.

OK, one more, and I promise I’ll stop.

HA!  I love that one, she was so busted.

If you want to see more, I’ve started adding her puppy pictures to Flickr, here’s the rest of them: Molly’s Puppy Pics

I didn’t get home until 10:30 last night.  After yoga, Andrea dragged me to the mall and forced me to use her coupon and buy a cute new jacket at NY&Co. for only $10.  She’s mean, isn’t she?  Then we went to Barnes & Noble to try to find some books that aren’t preachy and religious that would give some answers about heaven to my very analytical and curious 5 year-old nephew who has lately been obsessed with the topic.  Something like 101 Facts About Heaven.  Andrea and family don’t go to church or talk about religion, and other than mentioning that Grandpapa and Sydney have gone to heaven, no one talks about god or heaven but lately it’s been on his mind and he won’t drop it.   It makes me smile because he thinks just like me and I find it funny, but I can’t imagine being Andrea and having to answer impossible questions like “does it snow in heaven?”  or “when God dies, who will be in charge of heaven?”

Really I’m just trying to come up with an excuse why I haven’t scanned my drawings yet.  I think it’s Andrea’s fault.  Tonight, I promise I’ll have them scanned and up on Flickr.  In the meantime, check out the cute mug-to-be that I’m crocheting.  I saw the idea on someone’s blog last week and now I can’t remember who it was.  Oh well, thank you brilliant blogger lady whoever you are.  It’s cute, isn’t it?  If I don’t get dragged out and forced to shop again tonight I should be able to put the handle on and finish it (after I scan my drawings, of course) and maybe even have a picture of it for you tomorrow.  Oh the excitement.

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.

I joined a Flickr group yesterday called Crafting 365.   Members post pictures of their works in progress and label them by the day, for instance, this one is called Crafting 365:15, because I posted it on the 15th of January.  It’s a great way to keep track of your progress, see what other people are doing, and also motivate yourself to do something so you’ll have a picture to post every day.  Feeling crafty?  Join me and Craft 365.  Actually, craft 366, it’s a leap year.  Or craft 365 and take a day off.

Merry post-Christmas.  I’m alive, I’m tired, I’m good.  Christmas Eve traditions, Christmas day visiting and present opening, day-after Christmas traditions, and a cold I’m fighting off are keeping me busy.  That, and the fact that Luke ended up with THIS week off, not next are keeping me from keeping you all updated.  I only have a minute or two right now as Luke takes a shower so I wanted to say hi, and check out my Flickr photos for my Christmas in pictures.  I’ve uploaded a bunch and I’m in the midst of uploading more.  Go here to see them, or click on that bar on the right with the photos in it.  And be prepared for an onslaught of “look what I sewed” photos to come - Luke bought me a shiny, new (quiet) sewing machine for Christmas!!

Flickr has this neat, new service called Picnik that allows you to edit your photos right in Flickr.  You can also add things like text and pretty little hats.  I had some fun with it this afternoon.  I suspect that Molly will be sending this one out to all of her four-legged friends this season.