In Love, and Also Maybe Not

Have I mentioned that I have, of late, become totally obsessed with Old Crow Medicine Show? They may very well eventually join the upper echelons of My Favorite Musicians: Neutral Milk Hotel, Kimya Dawson, Rufus Wainwright, Bright Eyes, and the Pixies. Here's the very well-made and surprising video of my favorite of their songs, "Wagon Wheel."

Incredible.

In other news, I've spent most of my hours today prepping for a new semester--a daily schedule to write, the first week's lesson plans to update, a class Web site to post, videos to reserve, 50 copies of a 9-page syllabus to print and collate and staple, etc. Barf.

My Matt and I have also been goofing around, however, with the toy he bought me for Christmas: a Tamron AF75-300mm F/4-5.6 LD lens with a macro of 1:3.9. It's super-cool--

--but Matt was a little snowed by the marketing because really it's a telephoto lens with the capability of focusing on a subject at a little better than one-quarter life-size, which is one definition of macro, but not a true macro lens. A macro lens is what I've been wanting, and I like the way this one focuses, but the telephoto aspect of this lens means that even to get the macro focus I have to be at least 3.5 feet away from what I'm shooting, and it's a little weird, if not nigh on impossible, to get across the room from the thing I want to photograph. Shots from above are likely out, unless I put my stuff on the floor and then stand on the table?

I have a really poor sense of balance.

Scrappy Saturday

I woke up this morning in the middle of a little-girl sandwich (Matt had long ago escaped to the girls' bed, after they'd escaped to ours). Each little girl snuggled and snuggled up to me, and if I tried to roll from my stomach to my back, the space I left as I rolled would be filled by little girls before I could re-occupy it.

And then I woke up. And then Matt and Will went to their Lowe's Build-and-Grow workshop (do you go to these? They're awesome) while Syd got to watch The Land Before Time as a bribe for being left behind. And then I went to work out (If you ever want to see a bunch of ladies lose their shit, throw them all into Curves with another lady who doesn't change stations every 30 seconds when the intercom says, "Change stations now"). And then we got groceries. And then I ate sushi. And then Matt made me a big desk (out of a door, of course). And then the girls fought over a library book (The book had a giraffe in it--obviously, punches were thrown). And then I finished Ringworld. And then I worked on my syllabus because spring semester classes start on Monday (barf).

And then I made these:

Bear with me, because I'm kind of ridiculously excited about them. They're little, and cute, and made with scraps of paper that I was going to recycle, so that's, like, bonus points, and it's the first time I thought to layer the papers that I put in my button machine, although now I'm all, "Of course!"

And so I made, um... a lot. Some are for my girls, some are to give to Will's classmates on Valentine's Day, some are to save for go-to presents for birthdays and such, and some scrappy little heart pinbacks are up in the pumpkinbear etsy shop.

I'm super excited about the ones I'm going to make tomorrow out of old songbook sheets.

And check out the dinosaur sweater Willow is sporting in her etsy photo shoot--Salvation Army. Twenty-five cents.

If IHad a Wish

Friends, I am about to humiliate myself solely for your amusement.

The back story: When I was very little, I liked to write--well, I still like to write, obviously, but you know what I mean. I wrote stories and poems and product ideas and the rules for games in a succession of random notebooks.

Nearly all of it is utterly atrocious.

Imagine an overweight, unsocialized, extremely precocious, verbally abused, really well-behaved four-eyed girl with an infinite amount of free time on her hands because she was enrolled in no after-school activities (my mother still talks about the ONE Girl Scouts meeting we went to--she was forced to socialize with other mothers (gasp!) while I was forced to clean up after snack time and play a series of intricate games whose rules I was not taught. We did not return) except for Weight Watchers when I was in the sixth grade. My sixth grade teacher also went there, and sometimes I'd see her at weigh-ins.

Now imagine what that child would write:
["If I had a wish," thought Jason as he stared out of the view-screen in his bedroom, "I would be captain of a starship just like Daddy. I would be brave and strong and lead my crew into battles with the enemy. I'd travel the universe and be rich and famous."

Jason Robert Daniels was a small pale 12-year-old with long, softly curling blonde hair and big green eyes. His father, Michael Daniels, was a tall, rough-looking man who captained the U.S.S Empire. He was perfect for an exploratory vessel such as the Empire. The Empire was also one of the first ships to allow the families of crewmembers to live on board. This was hard on both Jason and Michael, since Jason had lived with an ancient-looking aunt for the last 10 years and until last week, had seen his father a total of 14 times. But now that was all to change. Jason and his dad were together, and hopes could run wild.

"Jace," said Michael as he interrupted his son's daydreams, "If you want a tour of the war deck you had better come now." ]

It goes on from there with a LOOOOOOT of description, some father-figure idealizing (Did I mention that I don't actually happen to know my own father? Hmmm...), etc., until...

[Suddenly, the lighting of the rooms turned red and sirens wailed loudly. Jason, now cowering unnoticed in his corner, watched the proceedings too panicked to move. The crew ran hurriedly but orderly to their stations.]

And you don't even want to know where it goes from there. One hint: there is a very wordy, quite melodramatic funeral scene about four pages later.

If you're good to me, maybe sometime I'll show you the story I wrote in which the main character (who is totally me), is a professional racing-diver and finds some caves underneath her house which turns out to be a handy clubhouse for her dozens of super-smart pets.

Nana, 107 Years Later

My Nana was born in 1902 and died in 1999. For those of you who never tasted her apple fritters, too bad for you. I've been writing a series of posts on Crafting a Green World about finding my Nana's quilts stuffed away in a back closet in my Papa's house over Christmas; admiring, airing, fluffing, carefully re-folding them and putting them back nicely in that same closet (likely to be aired, fluffed, and carefully refolded every time I visit); and spending some time exploring the online quilt collections held by museums worldwide.

One of Nana's quilts, however, had apparently been put aside as a wedding present for me and long-lost (I've been married...um...I never can remember off of the top of my head on account of my wedding was a nightmare and I've repressed the majority of my memories of it). The huge fuss I made over Nana's quilts jogged my mother's memory, however, and one quilt that had been stuffed away unseen for probably 30 years now lives in the light on my daughters' bed.I taught myself to quilt a long time before I learned that it's a passion I shared with my great-grandmother. I just hope that ten years after I've died an old, old lady, all the quilts that I've ever made will still be danced upon by little girls in dress-up clothes:

On the Photo-Mosaic Bandwagon

I have to admit, I loooove all the crafty retrospective photo mosaics that I've seen on so many blogs this week. Grouping all the stuff you've made all year all together in one big collage speaks loudly to the power of the handmade and the human touch, I think, especially with the CPSIA looming over our shoulders and my concerned letters to my representatives about it going completely unanswered (Hello, Senator Lugar, can you hear me?).

In that spirit, here's a grouping of my handmade of 2008. Some of this I've sold, some I've given away, some was for me, some was for my girls (ONE thing was for my Matt), some was practical, some was fanciful, and friends, this wasn't even the half of it:
It was a happy year.

Holiday Fast-Forward

You'd think I'd be mellowing in the post-Christmas crash--a New Year begun, one babe back in school, my own semester yet to begin...I have magazines to read, a new Waldorf doll-making book from the library (finally!) to think about, and a DanceDanceRevolution resolution to conquer.

But no, my friends, I have not been "mellowing." I do not mellow. Instead, I have been doing this--

Yes, you with that look of horror upon your face, that is what you think it is--I HAVE been prepping for Valentine's Day.

I have an idea for a denim quilt with denim heart applique that I've been working on for my etsy shop, and a plan for another one but with all the heart appliques decorated by our family (ideally each topped with a red or pink vintage button, although I do not actually own any vintage buttons), and I'm doing some cardmaking for my Craftster swap, and the result of all this is...

Y'all, I ran out of stash. I am about two pairs of blue jeans shy of cutting out all the pieces for my second quilt, and I flat-out ran out of vintage songbook or poetry book pages dealing with the concept of love. So obviously I ran by the Recycling Center today, because their free Sidewalk Exchange is continually rife with ripped blue jeans and crazy old books (I found porn there once! Porn!). But the Recycling Center? Closed! With a big sign out front saying they're closed on Mondays now!

Stupid New Year.

When I found myself standing in the study earlier tonight eyeing my 1936 Kittredge Shakespeare, I was all, "Whoah, lady! Calm on down. You can find some real-live trash tomorrow."

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Soup-Chili Hybrid, and Other Adventures

Sundays have the potential to be so awesome, in a productive sort of way (You think productive=awesome, too, right? Um...right?).

Today, I cut out about a million denim hearts and squares for a couple of quilts I have planned. A certain little kiddo hung out with me and practiced her measuring:

(The trick, fellow four-year-olds, is to get the edge of your ruler flush with the edge of what you want to measure. Notice the impeccable form above).

I went to the library and got both a Voltron AND a Thundercats DVD set, but I did not get the book the library ordered and put on hold for me about how to make Waldorf dolls, on account of the librarian was being very weird ("But [my name] has to be present to pick up her hold item." "Um, I'm Julie." "Do you have an ID?" "I have my library card." "Well..."). I'm not kidding you, she looked exactly like the ballot judge who gave me the loopy voting machine intro on Election Day.

I put some nifty little Valentine gifties up on my etsy shop:

I added some New Years' Resolutions to my list (gardening, and seed sprouting).

I got my partners for Craftster's Valentine's Classroom Card swap.

I made this weird but delicious chili-soup thing: You put in the veggie chili mix stuff, but then you put in all your leftover and freezer veggies and fill the pot the rest of the way up with veggie broth, and you get your partner to make up a batch of Bob's Red Mill gluten-free cornbread. Then you mix it all up in a little Pyrex bowl just for you:

I played DanceDance Revolution. A lot.

I ate some more cornbread with ginger jam.

And the big kid is here now to remind me that it's Family Art time.

Ooh, and I think my coccyx has finally healed!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!