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Monday, July 30, 2007

crack that book open



Well, that was unplanned. All the better. Been a long time. Course, it's all relative.

I followed suit and suggestion from Kit and picked a bouquet last week, and today I replaced the dahlias with roses, and refreshed the amaranth (that's the puple plumes.....gorgeous, isn't it??):



Upon closer inspection I saw this and it freaked me out. A wee bit of aggression? Eeek, even though I am much bigger than it.

Yes. I mean that little dayglow yellow-green spider in Attack Mode. Maybe it's just hot and airing its pits out? Gives me the willies. Despite a certain beauty, granted.

The pictures hanging there are from a session with Jacque in December 2002. I'd learned about some yoga thing called The Tiger. Jacque had borrowed a digital camera from a friend (neither of us had one at the time) and we each took turns standing or sitting in front of one of her paintings (that's it in the background - fucking awesome, isn't it??). And it all fell together. The painting is a perfect foil for the yoga things we were dramatizing and we really got into it, whipping our bodies and heads around and shit. I'll post the pictures from disc if I can find them....they're around here somewhere.

What a great evening this turned into. Sitting at my L-shaped art table drawing and painting , listening to Thom Yorke's The Eraser, and now Caribou's Andorra. For the first time (me like). I downloaded a slew of music last week. I found Cat Steven's Tea for the Tillerman, finally...I grew up in San Diego listening to that. Now if I could find Manfred Mann's Angel Station. I think that's the name of it.

wherever you go......

blind contour and then some, for a pen/ink ATC swap

my dreams weren't pleasant last night




But BEFORE the dreams, I sat out on the deck and ate dinner (salmon from John, and a stir fry vegetable concoction of the garden variety). I looked up and saw the sky in splendor.


Sunday, July 29, 2007

time enough

Well, ya know, I seem to be on a roll with this theme. So well there it is. I tried to do a sketch for a print earlier, and I kept becoming lost in it - but not in the way of absorption. More like....I'm not into this! So I switched gears. It's about blind contour, loose sketches, and cartoonies right now I guess!



I'd stamped a couple of those pointing fingers on a postcard some time ago and found it today. That's what happened with it.

Word for the day:

glabrous

(smooth, hairless - used to describe leaves or skin)

Saturday, July 28, 2007

holy harvesting!

Here, a series of ATCs for a Pen and Ink themed swap. I began each of them as a blind contour drawing, and then did a bit (just a bit mind you) of refining after I'd done the blind bit. These are in the order in which I drew them:

The first two are from pictures of Patti Smith - she is such an interesting subject, I really like drawing her and want to do more




These next two are just some chicks from ads in Interview magazine, which is actually a pretty great rag




I keep seeing that guy I drew a quick sketch of in the library a few weeks ago!



It's rather bizarre and uncanny. I've never seen him before and I sketched him upstairs on the third floor, in the Fiction department. No doubt he was reading a sci-fi novel. I drew it mostly all blind contour, which is kind of amazing and cool and every time I see him I think Hey! It really is that guy! A jolt of recognition - and he's been cruising around the Mags and News too.

Naw, he's not stalking me or nothin'. But, if you don't hear from me for, say, a couple weeks, well then......okay that's nothing to joke about. I've had bad experiences with guys who stalk. Next subject!

Spuds! Came home this afternoon, and visited the garden which I've not had time to do since thursday. I noticed that Kit has been a busy gal! She harvested the rest of the potato patch. But, I decided to dig around myself and I found two flower-pot-fulls of potatoes! It's like a treasure hunt, I love it. And, they are very very tasty roasted with olive oil and rosemary. I'll be making out like a bandit next week when I meet a friend from work at her garden (there are lots of community gardens around here) and relieve her of beans. She's planted several bushes and they're loaded. She said to please come and take some, so I guess I'll work on my farmer's tan and do a bit of weeding in exchange for some beans! (Jacque's gonna LOVE that....she's bananas fer beans...)

Well, the life of luxury continues. Shall I watch a movie or read before lights out? I best get going before I find it midnight and me squinchy-eyed with overtiredness.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

garden art

wahooo! more squish!

squash.




Jacque makes amazing pancakes; last weekend she added zucchini and WOW. I put some in the blackberry breadcake stuff I make every summer and YEAH BABY.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

un autre

Oui, pour Haddock! Est-ce qu'il un camarade chanceux, n'est pas lui est-il ? (is he not a lucky fellow?) I'm not entirely sure nor do I need to be, what these things are about. Ce n'est pas nécessaire.


Good news! No cataracts! I've been experiencing this cloudy/hazy/smudgy thing with my right eye's vision. Quite marked in the last week. Went to the doc today, she said definitely no cataract. Probably just a bit of astigmatism. Funny thing, though......all afternoon and evening, even as I sit and type and look at the computer screen with no other lights on (is that bad for me?), there are no smudgy halos. Jacque said maybe the doc blew some pollen outta there. Ha! Hey, could be......or maybe I am now so accustomed to it that I can't tell it's there? No, my eye feels no strain, like it's trying to focus around a foggy thing.

It's blackberry season! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Tons of ways to make blackberries into yummy things! We picked lots of 'em on sunday, and our good intentions were to make smoothies afterwards but instead we sat out on the deck and ate burritos and huge garden salads. Actually......I made a smoothie at 10:30 or 11 (is that bad for me?) and it hit thee spot. Yesterday I helped the girls clear out the back quadrant of the yard to make room for more garden and stuff. I think I slept the sleep of the dead last night! And today, I rode to the eye doctor's which is in my old stomping ground.......so I stopped by the plum trees by the old apartment and grabbed a few, and checked out the neighborhood. Felt good. Not weird at all - which in itself is kinda weird. A testament to our adaptability? And it really was time to move on. Glad I did.

Also, been browsing a great store called Lehman's ("Products for simple, self-sufficient living"). A guy at work told me about a nifty thing you can do your laundry in, by hand. Yes that's right. No electricity. Compact. Does about five pounds at a time. (there is no washer or dryer here, but I'm already accustomed to washing out stuff in the shower) So I went hunting. And I found some very smart things like

a floor dryer

the pressure hand washer

the rapid washer (I really wanna try that one out)

aaaand

the hand wringer (for a mere $182.50)

What in Gethsemane has got into me?! All the modernization to save us time and energy and effort, automating everything, and here I wanna go back to days of yore? Well, yeah. I LIKE doing household stuff. I LOVE hanging out my laundry to dry (in case I haven't mentioned that a hundred gajulion times). A hand-wringer would be AWESOME.

Dear Santa....

I sleepy now.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

the load!

Sheeeesh! Lately, the blog has fallen by the wayside, in the wake of gardening and harvesting and preparing the food from said garden. So when ya get an update, it's positively torrential, eh?!

From the top: last week's golden morning sunshine through the windows facing east. Have I mentioned enough times how many blessed windows are in this place??


It also rained last week. A month ago I would've groaned, wailed, and gnashed my teeth. Now, I'm so happy. The garden will grow! It's warm, too, so that helps. No yeti slippers in sight (they are tucked safely away in the closet for next winter).

I harvested lots of basil last week (Kit harvested the week before and suggested that I do this harvest) and made mega pesto!! With garlic from the garden, too. WOWEE. Found this carapace on one of the plants. It's a cicada that busted out of its shell! I had no idea this is what they looked like. I love cicadas.


Even though it's a shell, I was kinda creeped out holding it. It's so....big!

More harvesting last week, too. I left this for John (Kit was hiking with her sister on the Santiam River):

And he brought me a bowl of stir fry, "I invited him to dinner!". ('twas very yummy)

That night, the sunset (the camera settings don't do it enough justice, but you get the idea, and it's fabulous to be able to sit on my deck, eat dinner, and with such a view):

The sequoia doesn't obscure the entire view!

In a bit I'll go say hi to the garden, and then ride on over to the girls' so we can go pick some blackberries. I rode an extra detour home last night to check on the status of berries, and they're pretty darn ready. This is one of my favorite things in life: it's warm, there's a breeze, the birds are barking and the bees are nuzzling around, I'm at the river, picking succulence. I mean really. Can it get much better?

Oh but first, a piece of mail art! Yes! I managed to send Haddock some mail art this week!

Also, when I was riding the bus (it's biking more lately), I sketched quick (mostly) blind contours and there was a period when I was sitting in the library amongst the patrons on lunch, sketching. Here's a compilation, it's kinda funky. But I like the energy of sketching like this, very fast and engaging the part of me who likes to gallop and harness, ya know?



oh ack. this really did turn out funky. I hope you can click for bigger pics. I'll try that when I post and see how it looks.

The montage below is first from a DVD cover, a Wim Wenders film of Yoji Yamamamoto who designs clothing. It's a contemplative film, and beautiful to look at. At first I was charmed but then what happened? Did it turn pretentious? Still I like these quick line drawings, done mostly blind contour. The one to the right is from a cover of a journal that was sent to me for an online journal swap. Again, I feel excited by the energy here. It's always a kick to look down and see something on paper that you put there, that wasn't there before.

This morning I've been listening to a group I just learned of, from the postman who was on duty saturday at work. They provide free streaming audio of their album(s). It's trance/electronic/ambient/house/dub kind of thang, you can check it here at Freeworm.

Oh yeah, and I was able to parle un peu francais on friday: Kit and John's friends from France are visiting and were sitting 'round the firepit when I arrived home (it was dark, I'd swung by the girls on my way home from work and we threw a garden stir-fry together....GOD! my life is GOOD!). I sat with them and a glass of tasty red wine and we talked of cinema. Actually I gushed about Kirikou, one of my favorite animated films by french maitre en scene (director) Michael Ocelot and we found other common denominators. I don't think I've drank much good wine in my life because that red (portaged from Spain to France to the US) was sure smooth. Now I understand why people drink it! Maybe my tastebuds have matured or something. At any rate, it was a perfect wine and fun to meet new folks.

I must go say hi to the garden varieties now.

A bientot!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Sunday evening at Rosewood

Hey! I failed to mention that our Monthly Hourly Comic Day was another great success! Click on over and check it out!

This is how it looks here when the sun streams in from the west:



More pics of the new digs are on this page.

Isn't it just beautiful? The above is me in the picture when I was about nine years old. I'm holding a pair of pliers and a big paperclip and I'm bending it into this shape:



Yeah.....I made it for my Mom :)

Last week we made a bed for carrots - atomic reds no less! who knew such a thing was possible? red carrots?! - and today, we spied some babies!!

The Bed:



A Baby:



Last week, the plums were ready:




And also, the peaches just began dropping out of the trees - so I used them and plums and bananas to make the BEST EVER smoothie oh my god oh my god. That was dinner.

Today we harvested potatoes! It's like an easter egg hunt - after you pull the plant up and dislodge the taters, you need to dig around in the soil more because there are a bunch of satellite spuds.



And that's not even a third of the half of it!!

Soon I hope to make some art, but for now, the garden is my canvas (oh, brother, how many times has THAT been said? BUT, 'tis a truth!).

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

New Digs

Hey folks! I uploaded a short video tour of my new suite that I documented from this morning.

Click on this!

I also snapped oodles of pictures but I am running out of day so probably won't post them tonight. I PROMISED myself I would go to bed at a reasonable hour. I've just enjoyed a five day weekend, and tomorrow is my Monday. So I really do need to fortify myself with a good night's rest. Which means no late night playing on the computer for pete's sake!

Monday, July 09, 2007

ta daa!

Hey hey hey! I'm all moved in and all is well and then some. This place is the sweet spot, for sure. Not much time on the 'puter, settling in and all, plus the garden here is the size of Texas and I'm helping out lots. I love it. We just put in a bed yesterday for the autumn garden, and planeted (I'm leaving that) carrots. The carrots are 'atomic red' - so yeah! They're gonna be red carrots! Won't that be cool. I hope they grow -- I may have watered them too much at one end and they all slid off the side. Eep. We will see.

In the meantime, here is a picture. I started it right before moving, and finished it this evening. More pictures of the place and art space, garden et al to follow soon!