Grand Schemes and Other Plans

Quilt in progress

June 16, 2010

So along with gallivanting through the countryside and embarking on complicated furniture builds, the other thing that kept me distracted from my typical blogging duties was this Mondrian quilt I finished designing last week.

I can. Not. tear myself away from it. I stopped making dinner, I ignored my family, I thought about it when I was trying to go to sleep. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was like when I was a kid and played so much Tetris on the nintendo that every time I closed my eyes I saw pieces falling into place. I was obsessed.

I am not a fast quilter, and this is a king sized quilt, so I was expecting this to take me ages. But thanks to the obsession, I already have all the blocks pieced. I forced myself to put it away at that step and actually remember what my family looks like, but I don’t think I’ll be able to ignore it for much longer. It’s like sewing myself a big puzzle. I can’t resist it.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make

Cherry picking on the farm

June 14, 2010

Sorry for my sudden mini-hiatus. I’ve been overwhelmed with good things and no time to keep track of them. I have two weeks of fun to share with you, and that’s always a nice development heading in to summer. We’re still getting used to the new climate, but I anticipate my posts a few weeks from now will consist of not much more than, “It’s hot. It’s so dang hot.”

Now that Atti’s getting older, we’ve been trying to have ourselves an adventure every weekend. We thought we were finally at a point where we could take him to a farm and he might actually care. Not so much.

We drove all over creation looking for a U-Pick farm, and only found one. The owner told us that nobody wants to pick anymore. She spends most of her time taking in field trips and girl scout troops. Several of the places we tried that were listed in our guide as U-Pick gave it up years ago and are just a farm stand now. It’s too bad, we’ve loved picking our own apples in the mountains outside San Diego, or blueberries up in New Hampshire.

The farm we found was still a really good place, though, and we set out to pick ourselves some cherries and strawberries. But as soon as Atti’s stroller hit the dirt road he started throwing a hissy fit. My child is a little vampire baby and while he likes going outside, he does not like the sun in his eyes. Or the existence of dirt or grass.

I remember when I was in second grade we lived in Texas. I spent the whole summer with a box of library books next to me. My siblings were so frustrated with my refusal to come out and play that they swiped my precious math workbook and burned it in the middle of the dirt road behind our house. To appease them, I’d walk outside with a book in hand, do a lap around the house, and then go back inside where it was cool. I’m afraid Atti might have developed my ‘indoor’ tendencies.

We shoved berries in our basket as fast as we could to make the trip worth our time and I left Bear to pay for everything while I got Atti back in the car and calmed down with a precious Elmo DVD (that he is only allowed to watch on very long car rides because I am a mean mom). While I was tending to Atti, Bear snuck off and found the blackberries and got me my very own pint. I ate them all in one sitting.

We stopped at a farm stand on the way home to get some apricots I had been craving, and couldn’t resist picking up some blueberries and peaches too. Summer has begun here, and the fruit is just divine.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, The Good Life

Modern Art in Quilt Form

June 9, 2010

Having so thoroughly expressed my love for midcentury design, it should probably come as no surprise that my favorite painters come from the modern art category. I love the art nouveau work of Klimt, I love the whimsy of late Kandinsky, the color fields of Rothko, the cubism of Picasso, and of course, the clean lines of Piet Mondrian.

When I look at so many of those modern painters, but ESPECIALLY Mondrian, I think of quilts. Around the internet you can mind lots of quilters that were inspired by him, but I wanted to make a full on reproduction. His work just seems to beg for it.

I mean, look at this one! Or this! And of course, his masterpiece, Broadway Boogie Woogie.

The piece I chose to start with is called Composition: Light Color Planes with Grey Contours. Painted in 1919. I love the subtle differences in color, and the grays will work perfectly in my bedroom.

I printed a copy out months ago, and every few weeks I’d glance at it to try and figure out how I was going to construct the whole thing. Then the other day, in my procrastination marathon, I finally cracked it. I figured out how to take the image, size it to the finished size, break it apart to make 12″ blocks, and make each block eventually come together to complete the work of art.

It took two solid days of photoshop drafting, but I’ve got the pattern. Now it should just take me another year or two to get it made.

And somehow I’ve got to keep all the blocks straight in the meantime.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make

Fine Art Beading Project

June 4, 2010

This is one of those ridiculously large scale projects I got underway last week. It’s something that’s been kicking around in my head forever but I can only now get around to it because I planned it all out, but also because I finally saved up enough money to pay for the thousands of seed beads I needed. Thank you to everyone who clicks on one of those ads over there, because without your help this project never would have seen the light of day. Beads are expensive, but especially for how many I needed.

I’ve been wanting to dip my toe in the water of the fine art world. I think of what I do as art in a sense, but to me, true fine art makes a comment on the larger world. I wanted to take these typically crafty mediums I love, and use them to make a true artistic statement.

I love weaving seed beads. And I especially love the off-loom stitches like peyote stitch. I don’t know what it is about images rendered in tiny little squares of color, but I just find it compelling. Crosstitch, mosaics, beadweaving, I spend way more time than I care to admit thinking about pixels.

In all my thinking about beads, I thought about the importance they’ve had throughout history. How they were some of the earliest units of money, about the legends that whole sections of the country were purchased with them, how they’ve adorned the clothing of the rich and powerful since before the times of pharaohs. Beads are a compelling symbol of wealth and power and worth.

So I wanted to take something that I think of as powerful, but isn’t always valued highly – like scenes from domestic life – and render the image in a beaded portrait. Using the symbol of the beads to elevate something often overlooked into something worthy of kings.

I see a whole series of these images: a growing seedling, eggs frying, bread rising, a baby and mother, and to start off I’m going to make a picture of the dream in my head. A beautiful house on a hill, surrounded by trees and farmland. Home.

I took a picture I took of a house on a hill and used software created for crosstitch designing to make up a pattern. It took me hours to render the image with as few colors as possible without making it look like a cartoon, and then more hours to try to find all the colors I needed reflected in seed beads, but I think I did it.

Now I just have to get to work. I have a whole lot of hours of weaving ahead of me.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make, The Good Life

Productivity in Procrastination

June 1, 2010

I spent all last week staring down the calendar and wishing I could ignore a deadline. I was very nearly successful, too.

Irreantum is a literary journal for a Latter Day Saint audience, and every year they hold a contest for short fiction and personal essays. I know some people who have entered the contest and it’s done great things for them. I’ve also heard from agents and book editors that contests like these mean a whole lot for getting through the fog of unsolicited manuscripts. So with one of my big yearly goals being to write the first draft of my memoir, I thought this would be a good place to start.

But it meant I would actually have to start.

So instead I cleaned the house.

And then I organized my closets.

And the garage.

Then when I ran out of stuff to clean I sat down at the computer. Where I found more things to keep me distracted.

I have had a few massive scale projects in my head for awhile, but I’ve been putting them off because they involved some pretty intense pattern drafting or serious planning, and I just haven’t been motivated to deal with it.

You know what’s really motivating for a project you’ve been putting off? A project you want to put off even more. I spent hours and hours and hours last week making a pattern for this really large scale beading project, shopping around online trying to find the best deal, trying to find beads that reflected the subtle different colors of green I needed, and then more hours and hours and hours drafting a king sized quilt pattern where every block is completely different and needed to be exactly to scale. These projects have been in my head for over a year, but they both required so much work I kept them on the back burner. This week I was so desperate for something to distract me from the writing contest, that suddenly they sounded pretty attractive.

Thanks to some last minute inspiration from some online friends who are awesome, I actually got myself together and wrote what I’d been meaning to write, right at the last minute for eligibility. So by putting off a task, I somehow managed to accomplish three.

I smell a self help movement in here somewhere.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make

The neverending move

May 14, 2010

As much fun as I had at MaxFunCon, and I had a ton and do not regret it one iota, it has made this move last forever. I’ve still got boxes in the livingroom, the silverware that got left behind has still not shown up in the mail, and every single day I wake up, put on the smelly grubby clothes and lift the paintbrush over my head.

I have painted more than my share of houses before, and I am shocked at how different it is this time. This post pregnancy body of mine doesn’t have much in the common with the body I left behind. I move so much slower, I get aches and pains in places I never had before, I have to take things a lot easier. If I was doing this with the me from 3 years ago all the painting would be done by now. But in my current incarnation I’m only halfway done. It’s so stinking frustrating that I can’t pick up the pace.

By the end of the weekend we should (hopefully) be done with the bulk of the painting. We’ll still have a couple of bathrooms and Atti’s room, but we’ll have enough done that we can get settled. I can unpack the books and roll out the rugs and give everything a place and then I’m going to sit on the couch and not move for a couple of days. Probably with a heating pad on my old lady self.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, My Dreamhouse in Progress, The Good Life

Maximum Fun was had

May 11, 2010

“Papa Jesse, the benevolent colonel of the nerd plantation.” – Marc Maron

How do I even begin to explain this last weekend? I still feel all blissed out and dreamy about the whole thing.

Thursday night we left the house painting behind to drive down to Bear’s parents house, dropped off Atti with his grandparents, and kept on trucking out to the mountains of Lake Arrowhead to party with a bunch of people who care way too much about a variety of things, and all like to listen to the podcasts put out by the Maximum Fun organization.

I listen to a whole heck of a lot of podcasts during the week, and the ones that come out of Maximum Fun HQ never even make it to my ipod. They get listened to as soon as they show up in itunes. And I think what makes me like them so much is the thread of positivity that runs through all of them. Jesse Thorn is not a man afraid to criticize or call it how he sees, but he spends so much more of his time chasing after what he enjoys, rather than complain about what he doesn’t, and that kind of attitude is infectious.

The whole weekend was really an embarrassment of riches. Friday night there was a talk from Andrew WK, some hilarious sketch comedy from Kasper Hauser and Elephant Larry, then a concert from Jonathan Coulton. Saturday was podcast tapings from You Look Nice Today and Jordan Jesse Go, a variety of classes, a lecture from RadioLab savant Jad Abumrad, and then a standup show for the ages with Jimmy Pardo, Maria Bamford, Al Madrigal, and Marc Maron. And then Sunday brought more podcast tapings with the guys from Never Not Funny. I swear, someday I’ll be telling Atti about this as if it were woodstock.

Big social situations can be difficult for me, you know, with the anxiety and all, but by Saturday afternoon I felt like every person there was my friend. Everyone there was so creative and friendly and interested in other people’s creative endeavors. And what really blew me away was that the performers were the same way. I ate most of my meals with one or another of the performers and they were amazing.

People. I’m telling you. Try not to be jealous of me, but I ate dinner with three guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000. And when I say three guys, I mean Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow.

MST3K. The seminal comedy force that, along with Kids in the Hall, completely shaped what I find funny in this world. I managed to keep my comedy nerd-hood to myself during dinner, but that’s why I’m spilling it all over you now.

I took the afternoon craft class with Jenny Ryan of Home Ec, and they made the most adorable crosstitch patterns of the MaxFunCon logo. Jenny, Jessica and I had the best time letting our crafty nerd selves geek out all over the place, including giving an impromptu course on the importance of scissors and what types are best for each job. John Hodgman gave a welcome speech and gave a special shoutout to the craft nerds, and I was so excited to hear a huge WHOOP! come up from the crowd. Crafters are passionate people, even in a roomful of passionate people.

Bear was just the very best sport through all this. He’s not so much of an internet person, and not very much of a nerd. As most of us were discussing the inside jokes of fandom or our latest creative endeavor, Bear, totally out of his element, hung in like a trooper. I’m dragging him into this world whether he like it or not. It’s so rewarding, so full of uplifting, supportive, friendly and interesting people, that it’s for his own good. He still managed to have so much fun that before the second day was over he was talking financial planning to make it back the next year. And we will.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, The Good Life

The new digs

April 29, 2010

So, we’re here. And we have a roof over our heads. Which was kind of a miracle.

We had a house all lined up, arranged through friends of friends, it looked like it was going to be smooth sailing. Until we couldn’t get our phone calls returned or questions answered and we started feeling suspicious. The couple that owned that house are moving into a custom built home and their move in date was pushed back by the contractor. So instead of calling us and saying, “Shucks, looks like it’s not going to work out.” they strung us along until we had six days before the movers arrived and no place to have them bring our stuff.

I collapsed, hyperventilating, into a corner while Bear hit Craigslist and found this place. It’s going to be a great place to live, it’s in the area of town we wanted, it’s got tons of space and a backyard with roses, but it’s also going to need some TLC. I seem to be on a mission to rescue houses from bad paint. The houses call to me or something.

I’ve had a terrible time trying to get pictures that show the color, but here you can see that in one room you have a deep mustard yellow butted up to an acid green, with apricot on the third wall. The staircase wall is painted primary color yellow, and each bathroom has some weird faux treatment where it looks like somebody just took a paint brush and made big C’s all over the wall.

I can see what they were going for with the apricot and acid green. In the right light, they look nice for a nursery or something. But that light is very rarely present in this house. And I have absolutely no explanation for the mustard yellow.

We didn’t realize this until after we moved in, but not a single window has any kind of coverings on it. Every window, including the window in the bedroom closet, had curtain rods left hung in place, but not a single blind to be had. We’ve been living in a fishbowl all week. Luckily they’ve agreed to put up blinds in the bedrooms and the front of the house, so we’ll get to change our clothes in the light eventually.

Lighting is going to be an issue in this house. Every room has a central ceiling fan with lights, which means that every room is well lit, but with very harsh light. I might have to invest in some lower wattage bulbs or something. Trying to watch TV at night is like trying to watch it with a spotlight in your face.

But that’s all I really have to complain about. Which I recognize is kind of a miracle as a renter of any kind, let alone moving in from out of town with six days notice. Overall I think things have gone as smoothly as I could have hoped.

We’re about as unpacked as we’re going to get for a little while. There is NO WAY I am living with these colors on the walls, so as soon as the blinds are up and the landlord won’t be in and out of the house, I’ll be painting. I’m trying, and failing, to be patient.

The fridge gets delivered today (we haven’t had a fridge for a week! I am desperate for something to drink besides soda), but we still won’t be able to put this enormous kitchen to use for another week. The movers left all our utensils, not just silverware but my knives too, at our old house. Luckily the new renters are our friends, and luckily we’ll be back down in LA next week for a convention of things that are awesome, so we’ll be able to pick them up. But meanwhile, it’s more fast food for us. And boy howdy am I looking forward to that being over.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, Grand Schemes and Other Plans, My Dreamhouse in Progress

The daring young lady on the flying trapeze

February 3, 2010

One of the friends that came over last week is a fellow blogger from here in San Diego, but she is a PR professional, so she actually knows how to do all the stuff that I’m so bad at. Like returning emails. Or responding to comments. Or being polite.

Natalie told me about how many other bloggers exist in SD, which I knew nothing about, and what a great community they’ve developed. Then she told me that they had planned a get together where they were going trapezing, but it was full. Until Thursday when she emailed me that there were a couple spots open, so I jumped on the opportunity. This is, like, Bucket List material. It didn’t matter how overcommitted I was last week, when are you going to get another chance to ride a trapeze?

Heights have never really bothered me, so I didn’t expect to have a problem. Until I started climbing that rickety 30 ft ladder. The adrenalin and nerves were so overwhelming I could hardly move. They were trying to explain simple maneuvers to me, like “hold the bar over your head” and it took me a good 10 seconds to get that message communicated from my brain to my hands.

Even once I’d made the leap and was more flinging through the air than flying, all I could think was how fast I was going and how my hands were sweating so much I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hang on.

But I did it. I landed safely in that net and crawled out with every part of me shaking. It was exhilarating and crazy fun.

Then the night took a bit of a bittersweet turn for me. Everyone else moved on to start tackling tricks like knee hangs and backflips and catches, and I could. not. bring myself to get up there again. I’ve mentioned a couple of times lately how I’ve been struggling with my anxiety. I’m not currently medicated which means that I need to pay special attention to my emotional state and cling to my coping mechanisms. Once I got off the trapeze the adrenalin was so intense, and the fear of the rest of the tricks was so great, it just knocked me flat. I felt like if I pushed myself, I would launch straight into a panic attack. And that is the LAST thing I would want in front of a room full of delightful brand new acquaintances. So I decided that “chicken wet blanket who is still able to smile and laugh and hold conversations” would be a much better impression than “hysterical hyperventilating blur running from the room.”

By the end of the night, I was ready to go back for more. Watching everyone else continue to go up and accomplish all these amazing tricks gave me a sense of security I was missing earlier in the night, and the adrenalin rush had faded enough to clear my head. But, of course, by then we were out of time. So I’m eagerly awaiting the next get together when I can go in a whole lot more prepared and conquer all those anxious feelings.

Bloggers as a rule tend to be awesome, friendly, entertaining people, and this group was a ton of fun. It was hilarious to watch the trainers try to deal with a roomful of people attached to their smartphones and cameras. @EyeMusing, @MrsNatalie, @CandiceStone, @CathyNguyen, @EverydayMama, @GingerAnderson, @Hip_M0M, @iizLiz, @jboydSanDiego, @Karinayhmy, @RockOnMommies, @SugarJones and @NBCPhotog and @CaliforniaKara who recorded the whole thing. It was such a great night, and so so awesome to hang out with a bunch of people who get what I do. Not once in the whole night did I have to say, “Have you ever heard of a blog?”

The crazy pants we’re all wearing were donated by sponsor @Bskinz, so it looks like I’m going to be on the news flying through the air in my zebra spandex. Who wouldn’t have been anxious, right?

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, Grand Schemes and Other Plans, The Good Life

Finally!

February 1, 2010

I made these little makeup bags from this tutorial as presents for the outgoing presidency. I filled them with fancy soap and lotion and told them they all deserved a rest.

Eight weeks ago I was asked to serve as the Young Womens President, and yesterday it all finally happened. Eight weeks! For eight weeks I’ve been sitting around biting my nails and obsessing over everything I had to get done, but without being able to do anything about it. It’s made my anxiety go through the roof, but it’s also made it really hard to blog about what’s occupying my mind, because I couldn’t talk publicly about the only thing I could think about.

Young Womens is the organization at church that is over all girls 12 – 18. We teach them on Sunday and have youth group one night a week, and then there’s also a whole host of other activities and responsibilities that go with it. I’ll have a group of about 8 other women who will be working with me to get it all done, so that means planning meetings and phone calls and emails and a whole lot of work. I’ve been told by people who know that it’s a similar work load to being a PTA president. It’s slightly overwhelming.

I have been so anxious about how I’m going to fit everything in. Atti has this new therapy so he now goes to therapy four times a week, I’ll have meetings at the very least twice a week for YW, and I have the two different careers I’m juggling that I can’t bear the thought of giving up. Bear and I have talked about some changes we can make to make everything work but it’s a whole lot to manage.

Every time I look at what I’ve got on my plate, I just can’t imagine letting anything go. I can’t cut back on the blog, it’s my connection to the world. I can’t cut back on the work I’m doing in the Mormon Studies world, it keeps my brain engaged and keeps my faith in tact. I can’t do less for Atticus. And I love these girls. I can’t say no to them.

I had an old bishop who used to say, “A change is as good as a rest.” He used to listen to his kids whine about doing yardwork, so instead of letting them quit, he’d send them inside to fold laundry. He used to say that using different muscles was just as restful as using no muscles, and 100% more productive. So I’m clinging to that. When my toddler gets to be too much, I can go hang out with a bunch of teenagers who love me and tell me how great I am. When I get tired of writing, I can go make something. It will all just take some careful planning and a whole lot of discipline.

And ice cream. I think I’ll need a lot of ice cream.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make, The Good Life