Jack Kerouac, as Sal Paradise once said: "I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." And I think that's a rather apt description of my blog over the years, and perhaps the most perfect description of me in general that I've ever read. So that's what this blog is, a collection of the falling stars that are beckoning me at any time.

29 July 2005

fridays are for window shopping

I love amet and sasha's clothes. They actually began my vow that instead of wasting money here and there on a lot of cheap clothes that I'd get sick of and send back off into the thrift system that I was going to spend the extra money to get some nice quirky and functional pieces from up and coming designers, that or make some of my own scribbled out designs happen. Well I still haven't exactly had the money to buy any clothes let alone ones with heftier price tags than the outlet stores, but this particular amet and sasha skirt remains on the top of my list for the splurge I'm going to make when I lose the rest of the depo/hockey retirement weight and when I have the cash.

I love assymetrical lines especially when it comes to hems.

there's no escape from the hoarding gene

I like to pretend that I've managed not to inherit the hoarder gene that's severely present in the females on the matriarchal line of my family tree, but to be honest I've only refined it, mainly through my habit of picking up and moving to and fro. Keeping one's life pared down to what one can cram into a Ford Escort hatchback is one way to ensure that you never have enough crap that it will take one week's to find your body should you die.

What I am is a digital hoarder, the harddrive to my old computer has every email I ever sent or got from someone, a billion and a half old usenet posts, mailing list post, etc. It's a biographer's dream of my internet social life in the mid to late 90s.

I don't email so much now, or really have too many people to email, I'm bad at keeping in touch and besides getting an email was never as exciting as getting a piece of real mail, I'm far too archaic sometimes to really appreciate digital life, other than of course the ease at which it keeps me in touch with the whole globe at once almost like a teleport device. I'm planning a move at the beginning of the year back east after I've got my degree, and actually I'm really feeling more convinced inside that I really should move to the UK in the next 5 years. It's something I've always wanted to do, assert my British citizenship and move, and the more I look at where the US is heading it doesn't seem like such a frightening idea anymore (I've always an excuse in my head why I should stay, the economy is bad in Europe, the cost of living is much higher, unemployment is high, antisemitism is on the rise, but you know they are really all just excuses because I'm not exactly in the middle class, if I'm doomed to crap retail jobs and eating beans and rice it' doesn't really matter where you have your garret :)) So with more moves on the horizon I'm a little loathe to start any big collection, so for now I hoarde links. My blog list is up to 120. (well plus my regular lj friends on my personal journal) and my shopping links are unwieldy, I of course save everything remotely cool for the day I win the lotto or something and can afford to shop til I drop :) I also hoarde Mp3s, at last look I had some 67 gigs of music on my harddrive, I think between that and my cd collection I could listen to music for a year straight and not be back at the beginning of the loop.

28 July 2005

take your pet to blog day

this is Moshe, he's maybe 3 months old

and the fellow on top is Cobra Commander, Cobie for short, and Moshe again.


So by and large one thing I've noticed about all the crafty bloggers I regularly read is that they are a group of cat fanciers. There are a few dog people out there, but generally they oen a cat too. Well me, I'm a rat owner. I think I kind of like that I have to always defend the honour of my little guys from everyone who is gorssed out by rat ownership becasue rats have naked tails. In fact the number one reason that people don't like rats seems to be naked tails. It's prejudice! Rats are highly intelligent, have a memory longer than 3 seconds, learn from each other, social, and loving, not to mention cute. (now mice are crappy pets, I owned a few mice once and they smell, they're too small to hang with and they chew their way out of anything that's not glass.) But rats are like very small cats that like you more but have naked tails. Pet store rats are kind of hit and miss on the love (my current ones are pet store rats because there aren't any reliable breeders that I know of in my current location) but if you get ones who are bred not to be feeders for reptiles and who were touched at a very early age they arn't skittish around people at all. I'm actually really allergic to rats, but I love them so much that i still keep owning them, just in smaller numbers. At one point before it was detirmined that they were what was setting off my asthma so badly, I had 13 of them at once, this was mainly because between my roommate and I we were such suckers for saving them from being eaten by snakes that every time we'd go into the store to get food the girl who worked there would bring out a couple of terribly sute ones and talk about how they were going to be feeders so we'd rescue them. When you have so many it's really fun and amazing to see how varied and completely different their personalities are from each other, in fact they have like a little rat soap opera going on every day becuase one doesn't get on with another and then they start taking sides in the disagreement. Or how they come up with little tricks they know will get you to give them more attention than their brothers (all my rats have been boys) I had one who had a respiratory problem and whenever he knew you were listening his breathing would sound like he was about to die of tuberculousis, but oddly if you'd just got home or he didn't know you were around and could hear he sounded just fine, because he knew you'd be worried about him and come over and talk to him or pet him and try to see what was up and of course petting just cured those lungs right up. They are hams, but clever hams. The only downside to rat ownership is that their lifespans are very short only a couple of years and if you spoil them alot and keep them well fed (which is hard not to do, becuase well they are just too cute not to spoil) it shortens their life span more. They are also prone to caners and respiratory problems and it's hard to find a vet who really knows their stuff when it comes to rodents. So I've gone through a lot more tears than if I just got a dog.

26 July 2005

of osteocytes and picture books

I work the night shift at a gas station currently, last night I started writing a children's book in between my usual stream of customers asking me if I'm not afraid of working by myself all night. (obviously I can't be too afraid otherwise I wouldn't be doing it would I? I think it's supremely screwed up that my company forces the 3rd shift in an area of town like the one I work in to be single coverage, but I'm not really scared of doing it. Life is too short to run about being afraid of your own shadow, or actually the shadow of an armed robber. I'll just give them the money, and all the booze they can carry and more likley than not they'll just be on their way in a minute or so. Plus it's not like I seem to have much of a choice the way people have been hiring, or rather not hiring of late and I'll be degreed and all that at year end so oh well) anyway back to the children's book. It's called 'Hooray for Emperor Penguin' I googled it and it doesn't seem to be taken since it didn't have any title hits. It's going to be about how the penguins, or rather a penguin named Owen, drive the polar bears out of the south pole. (yeah sort of like st. patty driving the snakes out of ireland and St. Urho the grasshoppers out of Finland [I love St Urho's tay simply because the entire thing from the date to the grasshopper legend was invented by this Finnish exPat in Michigan who got tired of all the "everyone's Irish" on st Patty's day stuff.] and he happens to be named Owen after Owen Glendawr the last king of Wales because I am not Irish, I'm Welsh :) )

I decided to post a shot of a small bit of my painting so it would make sense why I complain about how it's slow going :) since it's kind of hard to explain verbally what it is. As far as my paintings go, I'm into a biology period, I really like microscopic organisms and cellular material. I'm usually between just the structural patterns and geometry of the cells and a simularity between cells and oriental minimalist design or textiles. which is all the pretentious artist statement sort of speak for I like to paint really repetitive and time consuming abstract patterns based on what I can see in a microscope. The current project is a 4'x3' canvas featuring a giant osteocyte, part of which you can see here, to get an idea of what I mean when I say I have to paint a lot of litle lines

25 July 2005

weekends decently spent

despite the heat I managed to be fairly productive (heat combined with humidity just makes me feel like doing nothing but sleeping through history programs on tv, even if inside in central air) I got a lot done on my painting , in fact there's enough of the meticulous linework done to be able to get an idea of how it's going to look finished now, which is quite a feat. It was beginning to feel a bit like I'd not make my goal of finishing it before fall semester starts up, I've never tried to do one of my paintings in such a huge size so it's quite a large change doing a 4 foot canvas with some 10,000 little lines on it compared to my usual 2 foot canvases.

I also busted forth and finally made a skirt out of the old pair of paratrooper pants I used to wear all the time in film school. I ended up chucking the idea of making them into a long skirt and lopped them off just under the big cargo pockets. Then I decided to sew a piece of this pink satiny material in the area where there's that triangle from where the crotch was, because I think it's sort of a nice contrast to the manly olive drab, then I embroidered some vines and pink flowers around the bottom. I decided not to hem it because I rather liked the rough edge and the embroidered line there still gives it kind of a finished look rather than just a lopped off one. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out for a sort of what the heck why not sort of project. Here's a few pictures (which came out absolute crap becuase the digital camera didn't seem to want to cooperate with the mirrors today which is another reason I don't like digitals all that much, but for just snapshots I guess I can stop being purist about it)


24 July 2005

extra: the cutest vintage kitchenware ever

yikes I wish I had spare cashola floating around to bid on these : vintage measuring cups that make a beehive when stacked on ebay. They are the frigging cutest things ever and would make cupcake baking even more fun.

I figure just in case anyone who is also addicted to cute kitchen goods is reading my blog in time to get in on bidding on these, I'd post a heads up.

sundays I write about art

I've been increasingly fascinated with the concept of public art, not so much the decently funded and group organised public art projects you see like the "painted figure" phenomonon that seems to have invaded a number of North American cities simultaneously (Toronto had it's painted moose, Hartford it's cows (why cows in someplace as urban as Hartford/West Hartford CT, I'll never know, maybe they got their figure shipments confused iwth Omaha) Omaha had its John Doe project, sort of shapeless little men. Somewhere else I think had bison, I'm sure there were countless others, those were just the cities I've seen the end result in. Oddly each city's figures though done quite independently by local artists seemed to have a really similar result in terms of decoration and themes for the most part.

I'm more interested in the guerrilla side of public art, and yes that includes grafitti, though I have a love hate relationship with graffitti because a lot of what goes up is not art just grafitti and a lot of the people doing graf art seem to have no respect for the art of architecture. I guess that's not so much a problem with actual graf artists as it is with a bunch of losers who try to hide behind the edifice of graf art when they aren't any better than uncreative vandals making it infinitely harder for real graf artists to both practice their art and to be taken seriously as artists.

I'm drawn to the whole temporary and democraticness of public art. How so much of it seems to be things that people just thought would be a cool thing, or how it's in a sense designed to make those who witness it rethink the area where they see it. It makes people at least for a couple minutes become more aware of their surroundings and the context of an area they probably passed through a thousand times without even looking at it, and maybe pay attention and take a look around the world they inhabit more often.

Some of the stuff people have been doing that's caught my eye lately (on the web or through artist lectures anyway as there hasn't been too much of that stuff popping up lately where I live) has been graffitti painted ceramic decoy geese ("urban camoflauged geese") left in a park in Denver gnerally overpopulated by migrating geese(sorry no photos, the artist said he left them on his way out of town),
mario question blocks created and hung by a cool fellow from Toronto. (I've been seriously considering making some of these myself and hitting at a minimum campus in the fall), now pretty much world famous banksy's Met stunt. In fact to be honest beyond being amazingly cool, the stunt made Banksy one of my personal heroes. One day I'll write an entry explaining why, but it has to do with a sort of general, let's call it non-preference, I have for art museums. Also I'm totally Enamored with a capital E with the work of Songyi Kim, she happens to be in a residency at the Bemis Centre which is Omaha's progressive art centre, which is how I got hip to her. She's primarily a video artist and performance artist, but I to an extent consider it to be public art since some of her video projects have been about the same sorts of reactin from the public that I think the other projects I've mentioned are about.

Most recently I've been wowed by the storker project's clear babies Made out of clear tape, these infants have been dropped in several eastern cities. I like that sometimes they seem to be left quiet randomly, sometimes there is a really very powerful social context between their surroundings and them, and sometimes their placement is just sheer amusing whimsy like this:

21 July 2005

Thursday= project logjam

Today I'm having one of those days where there are too many possibilities for the day and in the end I end up not doing anything at all because I'm too busy trying to decide what to do. I could put in some more work on my painting, that progress seems to have ground to a halt on as soon as it got swelteringly hot out and I pulled out the sofa-bed in my old bedroom/ now studio of sorts because it's cooler to sleep there, plus it has a TV. I could finish up the carving for the first layer of the linocut I started working on a month or so ago. I could felt that wool I bought to play around with dying and felting. I could design a quilt to start. I could make that old pair of army pants into a skirt like I've been telling myself I was going to do since like November. I could work on that guerilla art project I declared was going to be my summer project.

So all in all I have too many projects I want to work on and what will end up happening is I'll end up not working on any of them, but just sitting around reading Ulysses instead. Well I guess as long as I do actually read instead of watching lousy daytime TV then something constructive will be occurring.

19 July 2005

introducing Alphonse Striperson, supermonkey

I was indeed motivated enough to not lay around too much, but to make my month of softies monkey whilst laying about. Therefore I would like to introduce you to Alphonse Striperson.

Alphonse is a super monkey, as such he has a very nifty stripey cape (partially because I made him out of knee socks and so I had an extra big chunk of sock left that happened to be cape shaped, lucky for him.


Here he is waiting for danger to call in his secret lair cum wicker swing


I've never made a stuffed animal, not even a sockmonkey so despite being worried the whole time that he was going to be lumpy or mishapen or ill proportioned during the process, I'm actually pretty pleased with how he came out in the end.

hooked on a feeling (and that feeling is undiluted mirth at the cheeseballness)

I just saw what is either the best thing ever or a crime against humanity,
the new David Hasslehof music video There is seriously nothing more ridiculous than Hasselhof's music career, even though, I know, I know the Germans love him. I might have said ok, William Shatner's music career, but then he did that album with Ben Folds where he did the brilliant cover of Pulp's common people (I do so love Jarvis Cocker.) Plus Shatner was always just bad, Hasselhof is cheesy in the most imaginably cheesy way and being that ridiculous is sort of his marketing gimmick. This video does not disappoint, it's almost more shamelessly cheesy than Bollywood musical numbers in the middle of police action dramas. and we make money not art is my hero for the day for posting the link.

I swore upon getting up that today I would be making my sock monkey for MOS, let's see if I can motivate myself to not be lazy. It is after all an imperative that someone with sockmonkeyrevolt as an email and aim name make a sock monkey I should think.

18 July 2005

postal adventures.

today I annoyed the post office by sitting down on the floor amidst a nest of mailing boxes and fabric scraps while I sorted out each package for mecozy's fabric scrap swap. I ended up deciding to raid the fabric room of my hoarder mother, becuase there's so much vintage fabris in there that won't ever go to good use, such a mess of a room, tipes. I found what has to be the ugliest fabric ever made, some odd brown and orage print from the 70s with jungle and baboons, so naturally I felt it was imperative to send everyone at least a scrap of it, it's sort of a trainwreck. :) I can't wait to start getting scraps from everyone else, I might actually have to start a new quilt when I do.

It's funny how everyone in the postal queue glares at you when you have a huge stack of parcels to mail.

15 July 2005

it's 100+ out, but I'm a knitting fool

I started my scarf set knitting in earnest a couple days ago, telling myself I'd get on the ball and get the shop up and running this fall, instead of just talking about how I was going to do it yet another year, but to be honest I think it probably isn't going to happen until at least after I've finished my degree and relocated, so I guess I'm merely in making stock and working on figuring out what things I like. And now that I'm starting a separate blog for all my adventures in crafting and handmade stuff, this would be a good place to post phtots of two toque and scarf sets I think came out pretty swell.


This one is called Oscar and Lucinda, I definitely bet it becomes my favourite to wear out this winter, I almost wish it was snowing already


this one's called raspberry cream. I was trying to break myself of the habit of trying to make perfect stripes, because the idea of really straight stripes just bored me, it's not quite uneven, but it's not quite perfect.

12 July 2005

first

as though I don't do enough blogging, I've decided to start my own crafty blog and future blog of my future webfront boutique.