Ok, people. The weather in my part of the world is playing some serious tricks on us this week. On the weekend we had record highs in my town. We are talking wearing tank tops at 7pm on your deck warm. It rocked. And today? Dreary, gray, soggy, cold, Mossytown once more. Seriously. I'm sure you've heard that they are going to try and control the weather during the Summer Olympics in China? Freaky, yes. But if they want to test that out, I'd invite theme over here to Rainytown in a heartbeat to blow some of these rain clouds far, far away.
Seen on the internet: This awesome Walking Bike. Click here to see a video of it in motion!
Lesson learned: Don't wear a black boucle sweater out to a cafe and feed your 10 month old a banana while holding her. Boucle and banana don't mix, y'all.
Music:Here's 5 songs that have me tapping my toes this week. "Foux Du Fafa" is just so fun and funny, and in French. I love the part that goes "Camembert...Jacque Cousteau... baguette!". I don't speak French, but I understand that much at least. "We Used to be Friends" is catchy, and had me dancing about the house in kind of a cheerleader-y fashion. "When Water Comes to Life" has some crazy violin and strings in the beginning, so pretty! "Clover Over Dover" is just plain groovy, although I don't think I'd let anyone "push me over the white Cliffs of Dover". Although it rhymes, it still doesn't sound like a good idea. The cover of "Harvest Moon" by Cassandra Wilson is one I hadn't listened to in years, it is really pretty. Enjoy. (Player has been moved to most recent Weeklies installment).
Ok, and just in case you were needing a visual for the title of this post, a little Carpenter's love for you. Come on, you know you want it!
The prompt for this week's Sunday Scribblings is "Fearless". As I was reading other people's two cents on the topic I happened across a post by the Greenish Lady over in Ireland. She quoted a friend who once said to her "fear is in the future". Meaning that if you live in the present, there is really no fear. I remembered that my pal A had said nearly the same thing to me a few weeks ago.
All of a sudden it gelled for me.Lately, I've been having this vision that inside of me lives a very powerful version of myself. A superhero if you will. I think of her as "Super-Me". She is unafraid to try new things, wears great shoes, eats chocolate for breakfast, has a wild sense of adventure, and is never tired (I said she was a superhero, right)? Anyhow, I really don't think this vision is unique to me. I think everyone has that same person inside themselves, some people just let theirs out to play a little more often.
I remembered an exercise I did a few years back when I did The Artist's Way (an awesome experience I'd highly recommend). It asks you to make a list of things you would do or try if you weren't afraid. Not necessarily horror-movie style afraid; but afraid of failure, success, or judgement from yourself or others. It is a really powerful way of thinking. What would you try if fear were removed from the equation?
My hubby is a literal penny saver. He has a huge jar of pennies he's been adding to since he was little. One year, while he was away at college, his mom (a grade school teacher) dipped into his stash to have some coins to teach her kids a unit on counting money . When he returned home on break his mom mentioned casually that she'd taken some coins out of the jar. Hubby's face went pale. "How MANY pennies did you take?" he asked. "Oh, a handful", she replied. He went downstairs and came back with a long sheet of paper made of a patchwork of little pieces taped, glued and stapled together over the years. A tally. He'd been counting those pennies since he was a little kid! His mom felt terrible. He considered recounting them all, but it has seemed like too daunting of a task. Instead, he's stared a new jar at our house. And this time, no one's counting.
This week at Sunday Scribblings we are asked to share a photo and write a little something about it. I've got loads of photos, and so many of them are special to me, it was hard to chose!
This photo was snapped by my dad when I was 15, the summer before I startedhigh school. That's me on the right, with my $90 JCPenny spiral perm blowing in the breeze and my best pal S with the white Ray Ban knock offs on the left. When I look closely I can see a blurry image of my dad in his old varsity jacket reflected in S's glasses.
My dad had just taken us on a weekend camping trip at the end of a hot, perfect summer. We loaded up his speed boat and drove across a deep blue alpine lake to camp at a remote waterfront campground. We ate beans and hot dogs that we heated over the fire, put up a hammock between two trees, and S and I spent a lot of time swimming and washing our hair in the lake, while my dad read and hung out at the campsite. S and I weren't much into roughing it, and I wouldn't doubt if we both wore full makeup on that weekend excursion. At night S and I stayed up late laying on the cool rocks and looking up at the stars, laughing hard and talking until we got too cold to stay outside any longer.
In this photo I am driving my dad's boat across the lake at the end of the trip. It was getting stormy and the water was really rough. To avoid bouncing violently home I had to drive the low slung boat really fast and at a right angle to the waves. Logs were floating everywhere and I had to navigate around them lest we hit one and gouge a big hole in dad's boat. Instead of being scared, I remember laughing all the way home as we bounced and bobbed along, hoping not to lose our camping gear or worse yet, our makeup bags.
This photo captures such a fleeting, perfect moment in time. So much was about to change for me and S, and we had no idea what lay ahead. Much like driving dad's boat across that uncertain and choppy water, the only way to get through it was to go fast, and hit the waves head on.
This week has zipped by! I'm having a hard time believing that it is time for The Weeklies again. Here's what's been going on around these parts.
Made this week:
Well, I made a few things this week. Again, both food. I promise someday I'll actually finish a craft and post it here, but until then a girl (and her family) gotta eat. Recently I've rediscovered my love for the crock pot. I mean, what could be better? You dump a bunch of stuff in, crank it on, and get to enjoy wafts of cooking food all day long while you happily go about doing other things. This week I made this Chicken Chili. It is hearty, spicy and filling. I love the addition of beer to the recipe. I always feel kinda deviant cracking open a Fat Tire Ale at 9 am. So naughty!
The next neat-o thing I made was something I can now scratch off my list of "Things I want to bake in 2008". My friend just earned her Ph.D, and moved back here to work, so we had a little celebration to welcome her back. This girl loves ice cream cake, and I've been dying to make one so I had the perfect reason. It was really quite simple. I baked my favorite chocolate cake recipe in a springform pan. After it cooled I lined the edges with waxed paper, melted a gallon of ice cream until it was soft-serve consistency, and spread it in the pan. I let that freeze overnight then "frosted" the entire thing with softened Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream. It rocked. I'll be making more ice cream cakes in the future for sure! Yum.
Seen on the internet:
One of my favorite mom-artist-designer-neat-lady bloggers is back! Her blog, Loobylu is one of the first blogs I ever read. I read it daily until she signed off for a much needed blogging break last year. I still checked in with her url from time to time hoping she'd come back, and what do you know? She did! Check her out.
Also, this clip via Uncle B over at The Bedlam of Beefy. This was cracking me up all week. I give you "Hugo The Cat of a Thousand Faces":
Can't live without:
Lunch, and I've been skipping it way too often this week. My sunglasses, which I still need to replace, and my watch which I seem to always forget to wear or look at (I've been running late everywhere). Ugh.
Music:
Oooh, 5 new songs! Ok, some are just fresh to my ears, as they've been around awhile. Lysergic Bliss has something do with acid I'd guess. It's a happy song nevertheless, and you won't go to jail for listening to it, and it has a neat flute solo. Soldier is a great new song from Erykah Badu. I've always liked her stuff, and the stories she tells in her songs. Cheap and Cheerful is catchy, but that cough in the beginning is a little too much. Yuck. That said, any song that mentions living on ice cream is a friend of mine. I like the sound of Abandon. And Sunrise has great clapping and drums, so you can't go wrong. Player has been moved to most recent Weeklies entry.
Last summer I participated in the Print Zero Print Exchange. It was my third time participating in the exchange. This time 764 artists participated from 52 different countries. It is a really great thing, and if you'd like to find out how to participate, I urge you to visit Print Zero Studios and drop the organizer, Brian, an email. He'll put you in their database and let you know when the next exchange comes around.
Here's a photo collage of the process of the 3 color silkscreen I did for the exchange. It was my first time silkscreening in a long long time. I don't own a gocco, so I did it all with cut paper stencils. The result was pretty good, but not as crisp as I remembered. Practice, practice, practice.
Anyhoo, I just got word that this show was recently shown in Denmark! Man, how I wish I could have been there for the opening. It it crazy to think about something I made hanging on a wall all the way over there. That's one of the cool things about art. Once you make it, and get it out there it really takes on a life of its own. Have fun in Denmark, little print!
Hi all! No, I'm not on vacation, but my pal The Pop Culture Librarian just took one and while she was cruising down the freeway headed for warmer weather she asked me to guest blog. It is sort of like house sitting, but for a blog. I wrote a post about becoming "fontastic". Curious? Have a looksie, and stay tuned for the Pop Culture Librarian to return to her fabulous domain.
Lesson learned: Don't wear a black boucle sweater out to a cafe and feed your 10 month old a banana while holding her. Boucle and banana don't mix, y'all. 
