Blocking

I started a new project a while ago...a book!

No, not a knitting book. I'm doing a set of alphabet wood block prints for kids, which will be available in my Super Fabulous Etsy store (which doesn't exist yet, because I don't have anything to sell there yet, but soon...). Anyhow. Back when I was a little little kid, one of my aunts made an alphabet book for my brothers and I. It was a collage book, with letters and pictures cut out of magazines and I thought it was so cool. A couple of weeks ago I was messing around with a lino block and ended up with my first letter on accident; thus a project is born.

I'll be doing a book of the full alphabet, but the individual stamps look good too...I'm thinking of doing some kids' clothes and maybe tote bags.



This was a proof print- I know the text needs more work to be legible...but I couldn't wait to see how it would look on fabric. I love the funky rustic look of the blocks, and the style reminds me of wooden alphabet blocks.

Simplicity and the house of lyssa

I used to be pretty bad with money. Not so bad as some people I've known, who were buried under a mountain of debt before they knew what hit them...but not so good either. I don't really like money. Sure, having it is nice, but I don't really like thinking about it, counting it, keeping track of all the bits of paper associated with it, all that stuff. When I got my first real job, I had really big amounts of money to play with for the first time ever...and play I did. I bought lots of stuff, spent a lot of money on entertainment and fun. I didn't really know where all my money was going for that first year, and frankly, I didn't really care. I gave myself that year to feel free and not think about money for the first time in my life.

One of the first things I did after getting a job was to destroy the physical copies of my credit cards. They were just causing trouble. I keep the accounts open so that I can build my credit score and in case I need one for travelling or other Grown-Up stuff, but now my card balances are zero and I like it that way.

After my year of play money, I got more responsible. I started spending less and dumping some money every month into a savings account, where I basically didn't ever look at it again. Forgot it was there, actually...so it was a pleasant surprise to sit down today to get my accounts in order, and find out that I had a credit balance of a few hundred bucks on one card, and more in the savings than I had thought. Whee! Counting money is a lot more fun when the numbers come up positive.

All this is part of a bit of overall life-simplifying. I'm driving less and walking more, cooking more and eating out less, and getting rid of stuff that isn't all that important to me. Yesterday I hauled six bags of stuff and a giant box of books to the thrift store and it felt so good.

What am I saving up for? Well, I have this:



which I would like to combine with this:



This will be my Arizona getaway house, a little sanctuary where I can stay when visiting family, store precious books in lovely low-humidity archives, and build equity and all that other grownup stuff. I can't wait to get started.

Wednesday

Class last night was awesome, but I have a ton of mosquito bites now, even with repellant on. I manage to forget about them for a while, but as soon as you scratch one they all start itching again.

I walked to the grocery store and bought lots of vegetables, then came home and cooked this:



It was an emergency: I needed something to work on over the weekend, but I'd gotten myself stuck in Glendale with no time to go home to get a project...so I bought some squeaky acrylic baby yarn and a hook, and started on a little blanket. I'm willing to crochet with yarns I can't stand to knit with, so it worked out just fine.



Not bad for a weekend's work :) I need to add a few more border rows before I call it done. I'm sure somebody I know will manage to get themselves knocked up soon.

Now, a bit more work, some cleanup on the house, and an art modelling session tonight. I'm going to be art, baby!

Too much stuff

I brought home a few more boxes from my Northern California storage unit last weekend, and got them unpacked last night. It's funny- when we first moved, we gave away/tossed tons of stuff, and this was what I wanted to save. Now that I've been away from it for a couple of years, I found myself stacking up half of this stuff for the thrift store pile or garbage. Oh well. Most of this batch was yarn, books, and art supplies. I'm trying to get all my art supplies gathered up so I'll stop buying duplicate things, especially since I'm trying to ramp up my work.

This is my favorite plant right now, and I'll be very sad when it outgrows its Cup O' Noodle pot.

Hey, it's all about the recycling here in my ghetto garden. I'm also prone to using ratty old newspapers as mulch and water the plants with water that drips from the AC unit on top of the building.


The squash plants are blooming like crazy, but so far I haven't gotten any veggies from them because I'll forget to water them for a while and all the blooms dry up and die. One of these days, though...



Pole beans are awesome and make you feel like you really grew something. I planted some more of these today, so hopefully I'll get another wave of them soon.

I took another photo of the tomatoes, but realized it looks exactly like the last few photos of the tomatoes. Not the most exciting plant in the world, but the tomatoes are tasty. So far the cherry tomatoes have been much better than whatever other tomato I planted (big girl or early boy or something like that). I started a new beefsteak tomato a couple of weeks ago, so we'll see how that one does.

Slow Art

This is the most ridiculously awesome thing:



Art. On live snails. Sort of a catch and release art form.

For more: Inner City Snail.

by bird, book or candle

I think I'll have a economic stimulus check waiting for me when I get home. Right now I'm thinking about stimulating the economy of my favorite tattoo shop.

My cats do this thing, where they lie on the bathroom floor in front of their timed food dispenser and reach one paw way up into the works of the thing and poke at it. Sasha was the first to figure out that by doing this, she could get the machine to drop one piece of kibble at a time, and now both of the other cats have learned it from her. This practice is referred to in our household with the delicate euphemism "fisting the robot". Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm on the last day of my Northern California trip, and on the last day of any trip I suddenly start to miss my home and my cats like crazy and wonder how they are, if they miss me, and what they're doing RIGHT NOW (the answer to at least one of those questions is generally fisting the robot. At least one cat is usually doing this at any given time).

Yes, I know that if I really wanted to, I could fix the robot so that this wouldn't work, either by making the chute longer or adding a grill to the front or something...but much like people who will binge if they can't snack, Artemis is much happier and eats less if she knows she can get one piece of kibble (a kib?) whenever she wants. Plus, that robot-fisting is quite the workout, like pilates for the modern feline. Yes, it will be good to be home again.

Grandma is awesome, as usual. I went to her monthly tea party on Saturday, where I re-encountered a lot of old family friends and met some new ones. I'd guess there were about forty people there, which she said was a smallish turnout. I believe it- Teddy throws a good party. I just found out, by googling my own grandmother, that she is the coauthor of a library science textbook. How awesome is that? I already have a copy of my grandfather's statistics text...now I'm thinking I should do some library reading too.

Last but not least, I bought a new sketchbook yesterday, and spent a few minutes last night smelling the paper (a heavy brown Kraft paper - it smells like fall in elementary school) but haven't drawn in it yet, though I did make a note in it of a paper I want to read that was recommended by Whit Diffie. I met him at a coffeehouse in Palo Alto this morning, and talked with him and Ingy for a while about cool wiki projects. I also met some cool arty people who got me even more excited about plunging back into creative madness.

Now...to work a bit more, go catch a plane, and daydream about drawing lots of little cartoon birds in my heavy brown-paper sketchbook.

The world according to lyssa

This week, I'm in Northern California for fun! I hear that my grandmother is having an afternoon tea on Saturday (very exciting). It should be cool; Grandma's friends are eclectic and interesting bunch of people.

I am feeling a little homesick for all my projects. Right before I left I really got back into the Boozemaidens project, did a bunch of sewing, and started a lot of other projects. Spice sweater, take 3, among them...but then I didn't bring anything with me. Instead, I'm reading The World According to Garp and hanging out with friends. Garp is kind of a dork; I'm hoping he will redeem himself soon. The book in general is good, though.

* This photo is actually from a prior trip north, but it's pretty much business as usual at the Mothership- bourbon and laptops.