Everybody's a Photographer--Except Me

Today's seemingly meaningless rambling is brought to you by Behr Ultra Exterior Semigloss Paint with built-in primer. Next time I'm sweating out what the magic formula was for this paint trim color, one of you fine readers be sure to chime in with, "Hey, dumbass, check your blog." Okay, this isn't the original paint color I chose, because I left the last part of the remaining bucket of paint out in the sun, which ruined the label, then, apparently, left it not quite sealed, which then got rained in. So the color below is the color of the stick that I stirred up the watery paint with to bring to the guy at Home Depot. After Tuesday's work dried, I realized that the new color is slightly darker than the old color, so, hey, I was going to put on two coats anyway. That "primer built right in so it only takes one coat" thing is bullshit anyway.

I've been trying to get the exterior surface of my house repainted for about, um, 4 years now, I think. Maybe longer. Considering the exterior surface is primarily NON-PAINTABLE BRICK, it doesn't, in theory, seem like that big of a job. Besides, it's a one-story ranch, so quit your whining, right?

So here you can see part of the painted trim, along with the old color, the sort of pinkish, pukey beige off to the right (there's just a little of it left above the furthest-right window). Can't imagine why I'd want to get rid of that.
As you can see, there's lots of trim right next to main body color (the light yellow) and plenty of opportunities to smear the one color into the other. I keep going to smaller and smaller brushes and getting less and less accomplished in each session. That back room, trim only, took two days. I'd get my kids to do it, but a) they'd demand compensation, whereas I'm free, and 2) they'd wind up getting paint everywhere but where I want it and I'd have to do it over again anyway. Or have bluish-greenish dogs. Speaking of dogs...Cassie said I should take some pictures of her and post it on my blog because I'm such a good photographer. Can I state for the record that I am the one person left on this planet who owns a nice digital camera, knows how to use it, but does not think nor say she's a photographer? One of my friends posted this humorous bit on Facebook the other day about a poor wedding photographer trying to negotiate with a new client about what she wants for her wedding versus what she's willing to pay, versus her uncle who owns a fancy digital camera. It's truly sad that even while I get that I (like everybody else) don't know Jack about photography, I (probably like everybody else) also don't really know how to appreciate a well-done photograph. Just like any type of artistic expression, most photographers out there have a body of work that they have solely created to impress other photographers. Painters do it, other visual artists do it, musicians do it. Regardless of the fact that those of us outside of your area of expertise don't give a crap. The rest of us just want to see your pretty pictures or hear your beautiful music. Probably writers do it too. Writers who know they can write will write these remarkably complicated story lines with sophisticated characters with complex lives and the deepest souls you can imagine, if only you can get past how darn sophisticated and chock full of context and meaning the writing is. That's why I write this blog in the style that I do. It entertains me a little bit, and I comprise about 33-50% of my audience. It's liberating to know that almost no one reads my blog, and then, every now and again someone stops by and leaves a comment, and it's a nice little surprise. Please enjoy my utterly non-professional snapshots and my own personal way of writing about it. Time to get back to the real world.

My First Successful Tatting Pattern Creation

I just finished the second half of this tonight, which was the real kicker as to whether I did it right or not. I wanted to invent something with a little crisscross in the middle, but have never tatted anything where I had to measure my picots (the long loopy things that I have crossed over in the middle). This is my second attempt--the first time I just eyeballed it and the picots were much too long, they wouldn't have laid flat once crossed over. I think maybe this pattern might make a nice bracelet or a Gothic choker with a cameo dangling from it. For now, I'm proud of myself for having figured out the fuzzy geometry well enough for it to work. It reminds me of a club from a deck of cards--perhaps this one will be called 'The Queen of Clubs'.

Back to proofreading now. I think my next few blog posts will have something to do with my husband's and my book. Stay tuned...

If They're Not Goat Heads, What Are They?

When we last met here at the Easily Distracted Blog, I was profoundly expounding on the freaky-looking weeds in my back yard that I did not know the name of. As it turns out, I did know the name (Goat Heads) , I was just using it to refer to a different plant, these bastards:

I know these look kind of like regular crabgrass from the first picture, and they are clearly related to crabgrass, but these are crabgrass with deadly spikey seeds coming off of the ends in clusters.

You can see from the branching of the blades and the root structure how much they look like normal crabgrass. The first time you bend down and attempt to yank one of these out of the ground you will think it's crabgrass, until you grab hold of it and get a whole palm-full of spikes in your hand. Check out the ends with the seeds themselves.

(Okay, also check out my awesome nails. I feel like I painted them with a flannel suit.) Each individual seed has (I think) 12 spikes coming out of it, and the seeds pop off one at a time and will lodge themselves into just about anything. The little spikes seem to have barbs on them, as they are difficult to get back out once they are stuck in your skin. After removal, the skin is irritated for a little while. I can only say that's true for humans, my dogs, once they stand there and refuse to move until I risk my own safety and pull them out, seem to get over it pretty quickly. As a further side note, Cassie, the Aussie Shepherd, won some serious respect from me the first time I saw her walk through a patch of it. Let's face it, she's walking Velcro, so ten or so of them lodged in the spaces between her toes as soon as she stepped near them. She sat down, turned that paw over and chewed each sticker out with her teeth and spit them out. It was like some old war movie where the hero chews the bullet out of his own flesh and spits it out like he's John Wayne or something.

As summer goes on, the older seeds dry into little brown, hard versions of the same thing, which is when they become truly indestructible and can lodge themselves in your flesh with wood-splinter-like tenacity. Even after the spikes break off (like after they've punctured your bicycle tire) the core of the seed is still rock hard, getting lodged in tire and shoe tread grooves everywhere, thus furthering they're dissemination throughout the Westside of Albuquerque. I'm not sure why these haven't completely taken over the world yet, as they seem to come back all up and down our street with the slightest rain. If any of my Southwest-savvy readers have any idea what these are called, I'd love to know. Now that I know what a goat head really is, I have discovered that there's actually a fairly specific weevil that eats them. I'd love to know what, short of Godzilla, eats these.

Funky Spaceship Weeds in my Back Yard!

I just pulled up a bunch of weeds in my yard yesterday and decided to take some pictures of them because they are so bizarre looking. The plant has a woody, rather fragile tap root and the plant sprawls out in all directions with pinnately compound leaves (each leaf has a stem off of which come several leaflets, like a fern), little yellow flowers and these green

seeds with spikes on them.

It is the seeds that take this plant over the top from "hey, that's a kind of cool looking weed, I think I'll let it live," to "WTF!!?? Tiny invaders from another planet are here to violate our housepets (and possibly explain the origins of Velcro)!"

There is an artist named Kathleen Dustin who creates purses and other decorative, functional objects from polymer clay in the style of strange seed pods and whatnot. She came to The Wooden Cow and gave a talk about her work. I need to send her these pictures because I totally need a purse like that seed. Don't you think? Nobody would f**k with me in line at the bank, that's for sure.

In fact, it reminds me of an illustration by Patrick Woodroffe that I have in a book somewhere... I think the one I was thinking of was from his book "Mythopoeikon" and is called "The Thorn Apple Tree." Here's a snapshot of it from my book.

It is a beautiful book, by the way. You can go buy a copy of this fantastic art book on Amazon here.

Win a $20 Gift Certificate Towards Lovely Handmade Jewelry!

One of my favorite jewelry makers, Bits 'n Beads by Gilliauna, is having a promotional blog contest on a blog called IndieSpotting. I just clicked out a bunch of entries for myself, but now you can too! Gilliauna makes some lovely jewelry with semiprecious stones, silver and gold. Go check out her lovely shop and perhaps you will find something you would like to spend your $20 gift certificate on.

Here's the link to the contest:

http://www.indiespotting.com/giveaways-sales/win-bits-n-beads-by-gilliauna-giveaway/

Trying to create a new tatting design!

Okay, yes, I know I really need to get back to drawing, which is what I do, right? But in the meanwhile, tatting has become a fun distraction. I think between that and the shrink plastic stuff and the limited amount of wire-wrapping I've tried, I could open a new shop with jewelry, almost as scatter-brained in focus as my art shop!

My latest project is an attempt to design my own pattern simply based on ideas from others' works that I have seen. The flower motif that is stained with purple around the edges was my first attempt, and while I think it looks pretty, it doesn't lay flat and the petals of the outer flower motif overlap, which wasn't what I wanted. Still pretty though, so I was going to use it as an experimental piece and perhaps add that pretty crystal sitting next to it, maybe as a dangle coming out of the middle. The piece that is still white is my second attempt and only has a couple of mistakes. It seems to lay flat a little better, and I think it looks like a pansy, so I will probably stain the middle yellow and put some purple and blue around the edges.

I wish I knew someone in the area who also needle tatted; it would be nice to be able to look over someone's shoulder or ask questions at key points to see if there is a tidier way to do certain things. Without that benefit, I will just have to continue combing the internet for advice.

Tatting--Another Distraction

Tatting is a form of lacemaking that dates back to the early 19th century, and, according to Wikipedia, is inexplicably thought to be derived from the French word frivolité, reflecting its complete lack of usefulness. The only other remotely interesting thing Wikipedia had to say about it was that it has been used for occupational therapy, to give recovering patients something to do with their hands. I totally get that.

I learned shuttle tatting as a bored kid from some old craft instruction booklet my Mom had, and that method of lacemaking is a fairly annoying tangle of Cat's Cradle-like knots and holding your hands and fingers just so and getting lots of knots that were not part of the instructions that

require a magnifying glass and a needle to undo (if you aren't willing to simply throw the piece away and start over). This pastime was quickly and wisely set aside for crochet and knitting and, well, art.

When I started selling my fine art on Etsy, I wandered randomly through all the categories of

handmade stuff to see what was there, and amongst all that stuff, I found

people who did tatting.

They made the usual useless doilies and lace collars, but then some of them made jewelry--really hot, Goth, steampunk, kick-ass jewelry. So I looked up some of these artists to see how they did it, and they mentioned this term called "needle tatting". I bought some tatting needles (long, straight needles with no points on the ends), procrastinated a while longer, then finally hunkered down, read the instructions, and figured it out. I had had this idea rattling around in my head that this type of lace might look really cool hand-dyed with permanent inks, so, after finding some patterns I liked, I tried my idea. Apparently, it was a fairly good one, or at least I think so. I'm not sure if I am going to sell these items in my same store or if I'm going to take them over to The Wooden Cow here in Albuquerque to see if they sell, but I'm building up quite a collection, so I guess I'd better share it. With that thought in mind, I'm sharing it here to see how it does. This last photo is the first set I made, a choker and earring set, hand dyed with turquoise ink to make a gradient going across each piece. My husband also thought it was a really nice picture, despite Mimi having her tongue stuck out.