Monday, March 30, 2009

sewing to keep from writing

i have two articles due on wednesday. it's been stressing me out all week. and when i'm actively procrastinating i tend to be much more productive in anything but the thing i need to be doing.

one of the articles is kind of exciting actually...it's about mccall's snowdon wildlife sanctuary. today i finally got my shit together and did a phone interview with the woman who runs it. she's an extremely friendly and awesome person and we had a very interesting conversation about the work she does. in a way i'm looking forward to writing the article, but in a way i'm still pretty stressed out, which is why i'm here posting pictures and writing bullshit rather than article.

i made the tiniest sock monkey ever--it's only about 1 1/2" tall, and it's got a magnet in its belly.

this is a monkey i made for my aunt for her upcoming birthday. she lives in australia, and my mom is going to visit her next week so she's bringing the monkey along. i'm trying to convince her to take pictures of the monkey in all the airports--although who knows, that might arouse suspicion. anyway, it will be a very well-travelled monkey, photographic evidence or no.

this is a painting i did the other day. i have a few other half-finished paintings and other projects and i'm afraid it will take me forever to finish them once i no longer have these articles hanging over my head for motivation.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

call to artists

i hope we actually get some submissions--i think so far i'm the only person who's made anything for it. we could also use a venue......

Friday, March 27, 2009

last day of spring break...

i went for a lovely bike ride to the mk nature center today. mmmm navigated.

a better picture of my new seat cover:

the weather was gorgeous. a little windy but nice and warm.

i'm really happy with how this b&w picture turned out. the original full-size version looks super neat blown up.








creature quadruple feature

this has been one of those rare days where i’m actually patient enough to hand-sew things, so i’ve taken full advantage by making a number of monstrosities. first we have cuddle-monster:

cuddle-monster will kill you with kindness. or genital blood-draining. next we have a cycloptic socksquatch:


socksquatch was initially going to be a socktopus, then it was going to be a sock monkey, but neither of those was meant to be. i used the scraps from socksquatch to make mini mutant monkey magnet (a.k.a. “mmmm”), who has a tiny but strong magnet inside the tip of each limb:

up against the wall, monster!

monkey bars! how many dumb jokes can i make in one post? also check out the sparkly vinyl seat cover i made a few days ago. no more carrying around protective plastic bags for me!



the following creature was actually made a couple weeks ago, for my friend amber’s birthday. i don’t know its name, but it’s wearing the best pair of monkey ears i’ve ever made.


Friday, March 20, 2009

happy spring equinox/international earth day!


it's officially springtime! and it could not be more gorgeous. i went on a walk and a bike ride wearing a tshirt! the windows have been open all day and a little while ago the temperature inside was 67...amazing.

my mom and i went to the flower & garden show at the grove earlier. i got a beautiful orchid plant and a praying mantis egg sac. i can't wait for it to hatch. i hope i actually get to see it...there's supposed to be like 200 little babies. so exciting!

my mom's getting a compost tumbler for her retirement present from work. she didn't exactly retire, she got laid off, but she was still eligible for some retirement benefits i guess. she's been ordering little plants from some mail order catalogue--she got a blueberry plant and two pomegranite plants today. we're going to clear a patch of land out by the creek that runs through the back yard and plant rows and rows of vegetables once the weather's warm enough.

i need to locate some damned alfalfa seeds. so far no luck anywhere...i probably have to try the co-op. at savers the other day i scored a fabulous biosnacky 3-tiered sprout tray for only $2. it was a little incredible, i was checking out this very same kind online just a day or two before, completely scandalized by the prices. i never thought i'd find one used.




Saturday, March 14, 2009

goods and/or services


i’m not actually starting a business, but i decided to print some business cards. i would’ve done it a long time ago if i had known how cheap they are. i had some made for my mom, too, along with a door magnet and pen and address labels to advertise this new website thing she started. vistaprint is so inexpensive and convenient, i love it.

sometime in the next couple months, the culminating project of my service learning with TCC is taking place. it’s going to be a big silent art/craft auction. i’ve already made about a gazillion pieces for it, so i’m thinking i’ll attach these business cards to those pieces and get my name out there a little bit. or i could just use these cards my aunt had made for me when i was a little one:

but damn, they don’t have my contact info on them. here’s one of the crafts i’ve been mass-producing for the auction:

i hope they’ll be popular. i know rainbow is kind of obvious and cliché but a lot of people in boise are pretty into pride, i think they’ll go well. here’s the piece i’m really proud of:

i altered “the lovers” tarot card so that both of the lovers are female. i was going to do a guy one too, but i discovered that in photoshop, as in life, it’s easier to dig a hole than build a pole. i’m probably also going to use this image for the postcards i’m making to advertise the auction…but first we need to nail down a venue. my group applied at the modern hotel for the first thursday art show thing but there were a lot of applications, so we might not get a room.

speaking of sex change operations, i’ve been reading middlesex, and it is awesome. i randomly ran into one of my ex-significant others the other day, one who i haven’t seen in like three years, and a few nights after the encounter i had a middlesex-related dream about him. in the dream he was transitioning and he wanted me to call him “amy.” i’m getting coffee with him tomorrow so i’m probably going to have to tell him “i had a middlesex dream about you” and see how he reacts. this coffee experience is going to be awkward no matter what, so i might as well have fun with it.

Monday, March 9, 2009

mixed messages

it’s sunny and cold. the crocuses are up and the pond is still frozen. insects are out and there’s snow on the ground. i love spring and i hate spring.


Friday, March 6, 2009

we did it!

and i am so proud of us. that’s ruth on the left, our former poetry teacher, then katherine then me. we all performed at the international women’s day poetry reading tonight. i was not looking forward to this! katherine attended last year and saw ruth read, and wanted to do it this year but wouldn’t do it alone…so she enlisted me…and i was pretty much dragging my feet about it for months. especially today; i didn’t even start picking what poems i’d read until late last night, then i slept in till 2pm and had a psychosomatic sore throat. katherine woke up with a gravelly voice too.

but we both did awesome at the reading! i’m particularly proud of her, she totally conquered her phobia and spoke very slowly and wonderfully instead of speeding through like she was afraid she might. everyone started out with a poem by another female poet, so katherine read a laurie anderson poem, then she read “over the water,” then “anesidora.”

i was proud of my voice, which was nice and loud and hardly wavered at all (when it briefly did, katherine assured me, it added to the intensity of the poem). i even made a decent amount of eye contact! i read a bunch of short poems, starting with diane ackerman’s “like your face,” then “patina,” “smelling fire,” “ouroboros,” “crocus cultivars,” then i ended with my poem “katherine” because she was the next person to read. “crocus cultivars” went over particularly well—it’s about the onset of springtime, written from the perspective of crocus flowers:

Our mighty faces are springtime.
Our hearts lie dormant in beds of ice
to awaken and laugh with you
at winter’s pathetic death-rattles.
Flocks of us gather to chase the last freeze,
some withered casualties falling heroically
to the battleground. We pull the Sun closer to Earth,
for you.
You’re welcome.

the last line got a big laugh, and after the reading people came up and quoted it to me…it was so cute and fun! one woman requested a copy of “smelling fire,” which i just wrote this week…i was pretty nervous about reading it because it hasn’t been workshopped yet, and i wrote it at five in the morning, and all signs point to it not making a whole lot of sense to anyone but me:

In a mountain range full of winter, a man’s face crops itself sharply from the black canvas of his inner cabin. It is rabbit, tonight, and vanishing. The clouds are whirling dervishes to block the moon. I hunch, waiting warmly for the eggs cradled in my clavicles to hatch. They fall apart despite me, freeze and fall apart as if they sensed the height. It is rabbit, tonight. The fog forms lines and we bend through them as light. I answered a question tonight.

but this woman actually seemed to get it. i gave her the copy i read from. she said my poetry is way too mature for my age, and that made me feel better, because i was the youngest person to read by at least a decade and i was feeling kind of juvenile. especially in the midst of so many extremely good poets who have so much of their work published in journals and things…i felt out of my league.