I needed that.

I did a bad thing. It was for the right reasons, though. I was just so tired of being good, I had to rebel against society for a little while, and do something because I wanted to do it. I really don’t regret doing it as much as I thought I would, because the world actually didn’t end- or hasn’t ended yet- as a repercussion for my actions. Nobody has died, no tests have been failed, and no deadlines have flown by (it’s early though- it’s not out of the question). I am, as of yet; alive, functioning, capable of rational thought, and quite happy. I feel liberated, and I feel like I might need to be rebellious more often. Guess what I did?

I knit a hat.

 

This, however, is not just any hat. This is Molly (by Erin Ruth, and which can be found on ravelry or at knitmeasong.blogspot.com) It also happens to be made of Malabrigo (Malabrigo Twist, colorway #98, Tuareg). Two things about this: First, knitting with this yarn like driving a Lamborghini down the Autobon  when nobody else is around to slow you down. This yarn is the softest, squooshiest, non wooliest- of all the wools, and it is amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I don’t want to knit with anything else. ever. If only its price didn’t reflect its stellar qualities as well as it does. Second, The color, Tuareg, has a story. The Tuareg people are a tribe of nomads that live in northern Africa (they speak a dialect of French)- they are also known as the blue people, because they wear head scarves that cover the entire face, except the eyes, and they are dyed, and dyed, and dyed with indigo- pounded into the fabric because there is very little water in the desert. The older and more wise they are, the darker their scarves get. The scarves are so saturated with dye that when they sweat it stains their skin, hence the blue men. Now, this color is pretty darn far from indigo- but I love it anyways. It’s more of a blueish teal. The picture is actually fairly accurate on my screen. Hah- check out my messy desk in the background- and all those sticky notes!

I guess I just needed a good instant gratification project for once this semester. I have been doing all these things that take such a long time to conceive and execute- and this was the perfect project for a day of unattached, glorious, no-strings-attached, knitting. I should point out that I modified the pattern slightly because I was 50 yards short of the desired yardage, and that’s quite a lot in a hat. It’s not as slouchy as it would have been, but it is slouchy enough to have crossed the line from oversize beanie to intentional slouch. There is a line, in case you were curious. Wearing an oversize beanie makes you look like a gangster. Not in a good gangster sort of way, though…like a gangster who also does not believe in belts… Fear not! This hat has intentional slouch. And happens to be the very softest of them all!…It also has a wonderful cable, which I had a very hard time taking a picture of with my phone, in this poorly lit dorm room, in my pajamas. but I did it. The cable shrinks into the crown of the hat with a few nearly-invisible decreases, which is a wonderful characteristic of this wonderful pattern. I still can’t believe my work got done. Next weekend, I should knit a sweater.

 

I wish I wasn’t kidding.

a day of reflection, a day of recuperation, or a day of production?

University conference day means different things to different people. There’s the crowd that thinks the day off means one must party hard the night before, and wake up just in time for dinner the next day- there’s the crowd that watches TV into the wee hours really really loud right on the other side of your wall into the wee hours, and then there’s me. We didn’t have class today, and I woke up the same time I always wake up. At 7. I wish that I could say I did this on purpose, but I did not. I really wanted to go back to sleep for twelve more hours, but I could not. It was probably a good thing though, because today was a day to get stuff done, and stuff got done alright. I made another flower (plus two from yesterday, which brings my total up to six, seven if you count the spazzy one, which we won’t), I prepared my plate for printmaking this weekend, I worked on the Theater poster for two hours in Fine Arts Publications, with nobody and nobody’s music there to distract me, I completely bossed the Smokey the bear ad series, I designed the society of physics students’ t-shirt, and I prepared some traditional Chinese silk, in the traditional Japanese resist method, for some traditional Indonesian indigo. I’ll be doing some more dyeing tomorrow afternoon- but would you like to see what came out of the dye baths yesterday?

This one, I folded up into a small square and used two small c-clamps to sandwich it between two quite large washers, which I found at wal mart. I purposely let the clamps constrict the fabric around the edges of the washer, so there would be some texture, and someone told me that the washers look like three dimensional doughnuts….I just think they look cool, doughnuts or not. The cool thing about this piece was that I had sandwiched the washers on so tightly that, when I removed them and the clamps 24 hours later, the underneath area was still green and I watched it darken before my eyes- that means that area was completely deprived of oxygen all that time…how cool!

This one is my favorite. It is called Arashi Shibori, which is a technique of wrapping a piece of fabric around a wide-diameter pvc pipe, and then wrapping a piece of string around it while scrunching up the part that’s been wrapped. I wanted to make this into a skirt, but the color and pattern isn’t uniform enough, so I think it’s just going to hang out on my wall so I can stare at it all the time. I plan to do another piece this way as well. Doesn’t it look like the ocean?

The ones I have for tomorrow are all different techniques, so you’ll see those later, hopefully!

Now. I feel as though you’ve been very patient with me lately, so I have a reward for you: Vis Comm!

Smokey the bear

so. the idea is that there are three sequential ads in a magazine, and you flip to them in the order that they appear here. I actually really like this idea- I was kind of doing some random wikipedia wanderings, and I saw that smokey had been introduced in 1944. I then decided to look up the statistics of forest fires in the early 20th and the 21st century- and eureka! An ad was born!. We’ll see what rusty thinks tomorrow. I also have a lot of revisions to make to the other projects- but I’ve picked out the eight that I’m going to work on for the midterm- and that is all happening this weekend. (PS- the colors are insanely saturated because of the CMYK to RGB conversion. Sorry.)

How about a t shirt?

They came up with the concept, and an accompanying design, which Boy made the mistake of showing me. If you had seen last year’s society of physics students shirt, you would understand my intense desire to have input on this one. Especially at the frequency with which he wears it. Really, the traffic-cone orange color doomed that shirt from the start. Anyhow, the idea is that the equation that’s on the delorean is some kind of quantum mechanics time operator, that somehow does something with particles, but they call it the ‘time machine operator’- hence the time machine and the back to the future theme. Yes, I intend to get one of these shirts for myself. No, they did not pay me- but I did get half a pizza today, and this is apparently still enough to bribe me. It’s going to take chocolate next time, though…

So, the annual juried student show is taking submissions this weekend. I have a few things I’d like to enter, but one of them is a vis comm project from digital graphics last semester that I’d have to reprint:

IT COSTS SO MUCH MONEY TO PRINT THINGS. I have to decide between this and dinner. It could be worth it though. Everyone seemed to like this poster. I also have a particularly successful printmaking project to submit as well. You’ve probably noticed by now, my particular love of Helvetica…This will never change. it fit so perfectly here, anyways…Don’t question it.

an argument, a pocketwatch, and a realization.

The very beginning isn’t always the very best place to start. Sometimes, in order to fully understand something that you’re looking back on, you have to start in the very middle, and work your way out of that maze like a mouse after a block of cheddar. or Mozzarella. Whichever you prefer. I had a very long day today- I had class from 9 to 1:30 with no breaks, and then a three hour long workshop that started exactly at 1:30, that went an extra hour, until 5:30, and then a meeting at 5:30 until 6:30. After that, I settled in to do some homework- some of which worked, and some of which failed. During a small break between tasks, I stumbled across a video, which can be found here if you’re interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRELn2MbVkY

There is a band called Ludo- they’ve been around for a few years-at least since my early high school days- and they are well established, with four albums, albeit not a huge following of people. The name of the singer is Andrew Volpe, and he also happens to be the writer of all of their songs. The lyrics are positively brilliant- the vocabulary is astounding and the way that man can string a line of syllables together is positively captivating. The imagery that can come out of a single sentence is nothing short of a miracle with this guy. If you’re curious, a good one to look up is ‘skeletons on parade’- or possibly ‘rotten town’..really, they’re all good. Anyways, Ludo isn’t exactly mainstream, and Andrew decided to go and start another band with another guy and sing more ‘mainstream’ type music- the name of the band is Hot Problems, and that is their new single. Really, you should watch the video. It’s a compilation of the best youtube epic fails, epic wins, and celebrations. There are a lot of football dances, and epic things in general. Best of all, it’s all perfectly set to the song. Watch it. Go on, I’ll wait.

Now, you have the background, at least a little. I showed the video to the boy, and he was not impressed. He thought it was not on par with what Ludo does as a band, and that this was a step down for our friend Andrew. I disagree, though- I disagree entirely. You see, Ludo ad Hot Problems are on two different planes- two different levels entirely. One wants to satisfy the more mature musical tastes of the nerdy, literary or slightly morbid punky crowd, and one the mainstream get-up-and-dance party people crowd. Andrew’s songs for Ludo prove that he is capable of writing lyrical masterpieces, and his songs for Hot Problems prove that he knows very well how to adapt to the modern society. The boy thinks I am thinking of this too much like an artist, but music is art.

He said, “this may be good art, but it’s not good music”

I stopped and thought about that. We all know that the definition of art is a long-argued upon question, but for the purposes of our discussion the interpretation is very broad.

I said, from nowhere, “Just because a painting is good art doesn’t make it a good painting.”

Whoa.

I realized the consequences of my words. We do classify things differently. If we think of the pile of scrap metal before us as a sculpture, and not as the collection of iron in a junk yard, we automatically start looking for things like negative space, composition, values, and all of those things. The boy was thinking of this music as nothing more than it the seconds playing through- the images and sounds. I was thinking of it combined with all my other knowledge of the artist, and my realization that he had not just thrown together a few pop culture references- but cleverly crafted a tune and a song that he knew would appeal to a particular crowd. As a Visual Communications major, I believe that is one of the very important qualities of art- being able to cater to a particular crowd- and along those same lines- being able to control what the viewer (or listener) thinks when they experience your work. That is ultimate control. Conventions can be skewed as much as you want- you don’t have to color within the lines, or compose symphonies in order to be a high artist- you just have to have an idea, and control over that idea. I’m not saying I know the meaning of art or anything now- but that string of events made me realize that there are a million different ways to think about one thing, and that everything is connected somehow.

On a significantly less deep note- the Indigo dye workshop was today!

this is an indigo bunting:

Cute, isn’t he! This has nothing to do with our dye workshop, but its one of the things that pops into my head whenever anyone says indigo.

This is an indigo plant!

Notice those non-indigo colored flowers…hehe. The indigo pigment comes from the leaves of the indigo plant (which, huh- aren’t the right color either), and you combine that with a lot of other things in order to make the indigo thing actually happen. The visiting artist who was leading our workshop was not very familiar with the chemistry of the whole process, so she just insisted that it was all magic. I know the processes, but I don’t very well know the chemicals or their names. Have you ever made your own beer? if you have, you know that all the ingredients get combined in a special way in this tub or bucket, and then you let it sit there and ferment for a while- and then you have beer. The same applies to indigo. The vat is very similar to the yeast in bread or beer, and you have to take special care not to kill it, because it is a living creature. You keep it alive by maintaining its temperature, not allowing too much exposure to sunlight, and not introducing too much oxygen into the vat- so no bubbles. Vats that are properly replenished and cared for can last indefinitely. you can just have one hangin’ out in your kitchen, if that suits you. Another interesting thing about indigo is the color- When you grind up all those leaves and mix them with the other chemicals, the liquid is a golden green color- it’s very similar to the color that the leaves are to begin with. when you dye with indigo, you immerse your fabric, and when it’s removed, its that crazy spring green color- and you can watch before your eyes- as the dye on the fabric reacts with the oxygen in the air- it turns darker and darker green, and then blue, all the way down to a deep shade of indigo, in just a few minutes. I suppose chemistry is fun after all…

here’s some Indigo dyed yarn I found on the internet- as well as the little cakes of powdered pigment, before they’ve been dissolved in water with the other chemicals:

what a pretty color!- before synthetic versions of this color were invented, indigo dye and fabrics that had been dyed with it were used as currency in Europe and Indonesia. It was a celestial symbol because with indigo, you can achieve many colors of the sky. It was so revered that one of the Indian gods is indigo in color- and in Europe, it was a color reserved only for royalty. History’s fun as well!

I shall hopefully be posting pictures of my own dyed fabrics in a few days- they need to finish drying, and I am still experimenting with some other shibori  binding techniques that will create new patterns on my fabrics.

Building off of that thought- really- the things that we can do with old technology really astounds me. It takes a lot for me to be impressed by new things these days- whoop de do, there’s a new version of the ipad- or someone’s finally gotten up to 5g on their phone- or that whole thing with the blue ray player? I’m just not impressed. But ancient Japanese fabric binding techniques combined with the rich history of Indonesian Indigo dye? or the pattern and clothing making skills of tailors and seamstresses in Victorian England? That is especially potent to me, because I recently failed at my third attempt to draft a sleeve that actually fits on a normal human being. Again. Also- this mechanical pocket watch that I received as a valentine’s gift:

The thought that went into the creation of this watch- the little visible gears turning inside of it- feels like much more of an accomplishment to me than a simple software upgrade. Maybe I’m alone in that mentality. Maybe not.

Small things.

Another week, another to do list. My days are filled with one unfinished project after another. I’m sure you know what that’s like, though. Today, though-today was surprisingly productive. I pretty much hit the ground running this morning, and am only just beginning to settle in to my nest again. (when all you have is a bed and a desk in your half of a dorm room, you learn to improvise with space. I have a nest.) I suppose the most important accomplishments of my day have been dress-related. I finished the first flower for the dress yesterday, quite late- and, as requested, I put a picture online for my sister to see. Then I made another flower.

This is my life. It’s all the beading I’ve accomplished so far, and although it looks like a lot, I have quite a journey left ahead of me. Mostly, it’s the flowers. I only have one. I need a lot more than one.  The one in the picture is the first one. Here’s a close up:

Let’s keep in mind that what you see on your screen is probably a lot larger than life. Unless you have a tiny screen. So, like I said before- each petal is 40 minutes, and there are five petals per flower. this is not including leaves, of course. The second flower looks like this:

Just because the colors of this one showed up better in the picture doesn’t make the first one any less pretty. They’re both pretty in person. My sister wants to see different types of flowers, which was not planned, but is fine with me, because it’ll give me more room to experiment. Also, her favorite flower is a daisy, which I did not know- so there will be some daisies in our future. I’m spending tomorrow night working on the dress again, and tomorrow’s exciting because it’s zipper day, and also finish-tacking-the-skirt day. Short version, if we pretend that the flowers are a separate entity, the dress will be done tomorrow night. We really can’t pretend that for very long, though, can we? I won’t post a picture, because in a picture, it looks exactly the same as it has for two weeks. the difference is that now, it’s nearly a wearable dress- and two weeks ago, it was just a pile of pins pretending to be a wearable dress. Do you see that beautiful chocolatey brown knit background that the second flower is sitting on? ooh, how I love  surprises. That’s one of my new prototypes- and I’m hiding it from you for now because I need to get the second one finished and do an official photo shoot. I need to find someone with a motorcycle for that, too. Those colors just look so good together, though. Couldn’t resist. Also, she asked me today to make some flowers to go in her hair, and attach them to bobby pins. so I’ll be doing that as well. Those guys will be super tiny though- probably just over half an inch in diameter. I’ll use my super small seed beads, instead of the normal size 11s. And after prom, I’ll be stealing them back from her and wearing them in my own pair. You’ll see why. I have a picture in my head that will become reality this weekend. I will not be sleeping too terribly much this weekend.

Pamphlet!

okay. so only the first page of this wants to come up. I’ll work on that… There was not a lot of copy to work with in this project. it was painful. I refused to make the type bigger. so I just filled up space with that bar. plus the columns are so small, that pictures can really only stack unless they’re super tall and skinny or something. I’m hoping Rusty will have some suggestions for this one tomorrow.

There’s the web page. I just think that puppy picture is so cute. Someone probably played with that dog for hours before it was tired enough that it let them put that thing on its head. plus, there were different angles to choose from- so he was probably really really tired. When we first got Tanzie, we tired her out so bad the first night that she would just flop over and sleep-and we all kept waking her up because she was just so cute. There are pictures.

what, you don’t believe me?

This was a few days after we brought her home. The collar that she’s wearing fits around my wrist as a bracelet now.

See, I know there are cute puppies in the world, but I’m pretty sure this one is actually the cutest.

That’s Mr. Teddy in the corner. She still carries Mr. Teddy around with her, but he doesn’t have a face anymore, because while Tanzie was outside playing one day, Jasper took his pent up aggression towards her out on poor Mr. Teddy. It’s okay- she doesn’t seem to mind his faceless-ness. Also, she sleeps on her back like that all the time.

ps- She’s not that small anymore. Sometimes she thinks she is.

If you’re good, and I’m productive, you’ll see some more flowers soon!

Good Stress.

We learned in health class just last week that there are two kinds of stress- the good kind and the bad kind. I knew this from middle school health class, (and people wonder why I spend that class time working on other homework…) but it was still interesting that it came up on the same day that my new Vis Comm assignment did. And also very near the date of my Calculus test. As an artist, it is fairly unsurprising that math and I don’t get along too terribly well. However, as in many areas of my life- I’m special (special, in this case, not necessarily being a positive thing). I moved from Ohio to Illinois during the summer after third grade- and in my Ohio school district, algebra was taught in fourth grade. However, when I started fourth grade in Illinois, I was expected to already know algebra. This would have been an easily fixed problem, except that nobody realized it until I was a senior in high school. I’ve managed to do well enough-and it’s not like if I had learned algebra when I should have, that I would be a mathematician or anything-but for the years of fourth grade through senior year in high school, I just thought I wasn’t smart enough to understand math. For a very academically conscious child, that wasn’t very good for me. The result? I’m afraid of math the way some people are afraid of heights, or spiders, or snakes. Except geometry. There’s a positively astounding amount of fairly complex geometry involved in pretty much all of my hobbies. Knitting, sewing, design, all of it. I’m fine at anything as long as there are pictures to go with my numbers, but if you start putting x, y, and theta into those numbers, I freeze up like a frightened clam.

Back to present day- If I successfully complete the math class that I’m in now, I’ll never have to take another math class again-ever. It’s nice because it’s half history and half calculus, but since it’s still taught by a math professor, who is pretty positive that math is beautiful, there are still a lot of x s, y s, and thetas. It’s scary, man… Anyways, I had my first test on Friday, and I turned it in hoping at best for a C-thinking to myself that I really only needed to pass it anyways. I was in such a state, that when I got to work right after the test, my boss felt so bad for me that he got me one of those huge boxes of gummy bears…We got our tests back on Monday, and I was probably just as nervous to get it back as I was when I was actually taking it-and he called my name first, which means he organized the tests when he was finished grading them (I know this because I turned my test in neither first nor last)-but the real question was, had he organized them by highest grade first, or, more likely, lowest grade first? My heart was pounding. This is not like a suspense novel where the author says ‘her heart was pounding, she had a flashlight in one hand and a baseball bat in the other’- no. There was literal heart pounding involved. He reached towards me, my test in his hand…I reached out to grab it. It was face down, so I couldn’t see the grade right away. I looked at the back. Several small red check marks, and a five point deduction wondering why I hadn’t finished the last problem (stupid short classes….). I thought, I’m going to have to look at the other side eventually- I flipped it over and scanned up to the top, stopped, and looked again. I got a 90 percent! I checked the test and counted points to make sure the number wasn’t lying to me. It wasn’t. I hope you understand how difficult it was for me to contain my internal happy dance. I’ve probably never been closer to exploding, ever. Exploding. I patiently sat through class while other people asked questions about their mistakes, and I wrote down information about the few things that I’d lost points on. Grinning. Like the Cheshire cat. A lot. I felt bad, because based on the other people’s faces-not everyone had experienced the miracle that I had. I couldn’t stop smiling though. I went back to my room afterwords, and shared the wonderful news with my roommate-waving it around like the first aced spelling test of first grade. Congratulations received, I ran off to show it to my boy-(ran, here, is not a figure of speech.) He is a physics major, and he has been there for three years of my pathological math-fears, so he was nearly as excited as I was about it. It’s wonderful to share that kind of excitement with someone who understands. After that, I called my mom- who told my dad, and all involved were very happy. The test is tacked up on the wall next to my bed. I’m sorry if that all seems like a crazy overreaction- but it’s kind of a big deal…

I learned recently that it’s not how long you think about something, so much as it is what you think about it. so I tried to think differently than usual for this assignment:

I’m sorry that’s tiny. It’s actually bigger in real life. I’ve actually found, though, that it sometimes helps to look at those things real small, and to look at small things real big. As long as you don’t forget the actual size, it can be quite effective. Rusty said we could use images, or illustrate or whatever, and I intended to-but given the length of the article and the amount of space that we had, I couldn’t find a way to work anything in. The only thing I came up with was stick figures battling each other with boxing gloves for the title of ‘most stressed’…but they would have to be stick figures, since the space I have to work with is…not plentiful…We’ll see if Rusty deems it acceptable to go down a point size…I’m already at 10 point though, so I kind of doubt it….

Stick figures. bah.

Since we seem to be on the general topics of stress and math- I have a word problem to leave you with. It goes like this:

Kat is making a prom dress for her little sister. The dress itself still needs approximately 3 hours of work-given there are no hiccups in the process. After finishing the dress, Kat needs to make leaves, vines, and flowers to put on the dress. there will be at least 20 flowers, each flower with three leaves, and vines running between all the flowers and leaves. each section of vine, petal of flower, and leaf takes 40 minutes to complete. there are five petals in each flower. Estimate how long Kat will spend on this dress.

part b: Kat has 25 days to finish this dress. How many hours per day will she have to work in order to finish the dress? Is it more than 24 hours?

part c: If so, how much money and time would it cost to buy or genetically engineer a minion? ten minions?

I do not wish to know the answer to parts a or b. Part c, I’d be curious.

ps- I’ll have pics of the first completed flower for tomorrow. I’m going to do some independent study work, and then bead like the end of the world is coming. Because if I don’t the end of the world will come…sooner than expected.

not your momma’s problems.

I picked up a new blog to follow, besides the yarn harlot’s blog (www.yarnharlot.ca if you’re interested)..it’s Kate Davies’ blog, Needled, at textisles.com. And it all started with Alice. I’m sure by now anyone who knows me knows of my love for Alice in wonderland. Anything related to Alice’s Adventures gets primary attention whenever I have it to give. Everything except Disney’s interpretation. That’s kind of off-putting. but so iconic…it’s a struggle. Anyways, I’ve wanted to make something that I could wear that would be reminiscent of Alice, but a little more low profile than the dress that Mia Wasikowska wears in Tim Burton’s latest interpretation. Although C0lleen Atwood is a brilliant costume designer, the dress isn’t suited for daily 21st century wear. I did, however, win quite a prize for the version I recreated at the costume contest last year. Anyhow, my solution fell warmly into my lap upon the discovery of Kate Davies’ Tortoise  and the Hare sweater:

Kate’s blog is incredibly inspirational. Two years ago, she suffered a stroke, and she’s had to teach her brain how to do most daily things, which, as one might imagine, has been quite an experience for her. My problems can’t even begin to compare to hers, and she is yet such an inspiration. She makes me happy, and hopeful. Now, since I’ve never been too attached to the story of the Tortoise and the Hare (not that I don’t like it, I just don’t like it enough to devote a whole sweater’s worth of time to it…), I decided, wouldn’t it be a positively brilliant idea to make it an Alice in Wonderland sweater? with little white late rabbits, and teacups? or hearts? or hats, maybe? I haven’t quite worked out the details. I do know that it’s going to generally take the same form- a few imagery adjustments, and longer sleeves will probably be required. Also, I want to put the Cheshire cat on one of the back shoulder blades, or somewhere strange hanging out, because that’s what he does. I don’t particularly want to use the pink and purple colors that Disney used, but they are the most recognizable colors…I need to do a bit of research and see if Carroll said anything in the books about his coloring. I do know he’s supposed to be a shetland shorthair, and most of those little kitties are tabby, so he may be orange- but who will recognize him if he’s not crazy colors? I have time to think about this, as a yet-unfinished prom dress still stands in the corner of my room. A girl who lives a few rooms down asked me if I’d make her wedding dress a few days ago. I said yes. I would love to make a wedding dress. I just have to do a few things first. I don’t think she’s planning on getting married in the next few years though, so it shouldn’t be a conflict. I want some pretty dresses of my own first. and the sweater. and other sweaters.

It’s generally not been a great week for me, and in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think anything was too terrible, but it’s certainly not been great. I had a calculus test on friday, which went as calculus tests are prone to go, but my boss felt sorry for me afterwords and bought me one of those tubs of gummy bears, which I proceeded to inhale as quickly as one can inhale gummy bears. the thing I like about them is that since they’re so chewy, they force you to stop and enjoy them, rather than just stuffing your face with them. there’s also gummy transplants.

I cannot take credit for this photo-I just googled an example.

This week has also not been so great on my old-lady body. I may look like a 19 year old girl, but I have the body of a 90 year old woman. The rain makes me sleep-it doesn’t make me tired, it makes me fall asleep. and if I can’t fall asleep, it doesn’t allow me to think about anything besides falling asleep. No amount of caffeine will make me stay awake-it just makes my dreams trippy. it also makes my body feel like one giant bruise. It’s been raining a lot lately. On a less weather-related note, my hands are being positively uncooperative lately. I seem to have damaged my nerves a little more severely than originally thought, because they seem rather fond of going numb at inopportune moments. This could be related to the weather, or general season changes, or it could be something I’ve been doing lately, or it could be that they just decided they’ve had enough of being normal for a while. Don’t know. Also, aside from not being able to touch things for fear of reacting to the soaps and sanitizers which my skin has recently decided it will no longer tolerate, I now can’t touch things with the backs of my hands, because either the nerves will react, or whatever it is will just be too abrasive. I must always wear my special protective gloves, but I don’t have time to make enough to have some to wear whilst the others are being washed. It really is amazing, the stuff that our hands touch every day. I don’t like to think about it. Maybe I’ll have time for gloves soon.

so who wants to see some vis comm!

Yay for Native American Heritage Month! I find it slightly entertaining that this was assigned during black history month…but whatever. some of you may recall that I’ve already done this project for illustration last semester but hey. I guess we really aren’t sure sometimes whether the horse really is dead…At least I came up with a tag line. Looking at it now, I believe it may be suffering from some hierarchy issues, but nothing that cannot be fixed. I’ll see what Rusty has to say before I do anything too drastic. the pictures that we got for this project were pretty neat, but all so SMALL! so sad. So I just did a nice little picture band across the upperish middle. I did make some a touch smaller, but some are pretty close to the original size…especially the one I liked the most. Tiny. Oh well-such are the trials and tribulations of a design student under the merciless wrath of the likes of Rusty. (I kid. It’s not as bad as…some other people I know…)

Anyways. This week, I hope some things will happen: I hope to make it through a whole hour with the complete use of my hands. I hope to sleep. I hope to make progress on the dress, which shall hopefully be done in just a few short weeks. I hope that the lovely people who are in charge of Joseph Baldwin Academy let me know that I’ve been hired for the summer. and lastly, I hope that everything goes according to plan.

 

 

Everything is certainly not going to go according to plan. it never does.

 

 

not quite the machine we’d all hoped for…

Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?

Andy Warhol was a freakin’ genius. I mean, that dude had life Figured. Out. I do love his art, but what I really mean is that he did what he wanted. exactly what he wanted. All the time. Marilyn Monroe’s face over and over? Yes. Campbell’s soup? Heck yes. America’s most wanted? Why not? Andy did whatever he wanted to do, all the time. and he loved it. he lived life well. he was also a crazy person, but hey-aren’t we all?

Sometimes, I think it’d be good to just be a machine. I think, if I could just knock all this stuff off my to do list, I wouldn’t have any more stressful 2am internal meltdowns. It always seems as though, as soon as whatever it is makes its way on to my to do list, I don’t want to have anything to do with it anymore. beading on the list? all I want to do is knit. Knitting on the list? So not happening. and it seems, of course, that some kind of class-related assignment always makes it on to the list. I end up doing calculus instead, because it’s only really halfheartedly on the list to begin with..I really need to find a new place to sit in that classroom. there’s a draft.

I’m working, right now, on approximately six projects related to my chosen career path, and one project related to my pretend-career path. I’m much more fond of the latter. I can’t show you pictures any more, because someone might see them, and there has to be a grand unveiling, otherwise one little sister will be quite unhappy- and we wouldn’t want that. I think that dressmaking is probably the least mechanical of all the arts- or at least one of them. Even the sewing machines that we use are, in all reality, far from people’s initial first impressions of them. My machines each have their own distinct personalities, and some have more defined personalities than a few people that I know. My perceived notion of this mechanical lack, however, is probably mostly due to the subject its self- you can’t make repetition after repetition of a garment and expect it to fit everyone perfectly. Even if you’re going to try and pull a ‘sisterhood of the traveling pants’ reference out of your misspent youth, those pants fit each girl differently. In the industry, arbitrary sizes are assigned to the different measurements of a body, and those measurements are used to mass produce clothes that have a significant amount of positive ease, in order to accommodate half sizes. Any respectably stinkin’ rich businessman knows that the very best suits are the ones tailored to their individual bodies, and the same even more widely applies to women. The only way something will fit is if it is made for your specific measurements, not the ideal measurements of factory clothing. After all this, I haven’t touched at all on the process that goes into such a custom garment-that’s got enough non-mechanical aspects to get me talking for another three weeks. I wouldn’t do that to you, though. At least not today.

wanna see a poster? I thought you might.

how do you feel about the layout of the type? I’m not sure about it. I like my type to behave mechanically- to fit perfectly into the exact space that I’ve laid out for it, and although I like future below mountainous, it throws down the rest of the copy, which bothers me a little on the left side. I may mess with that a teensy bit more. I do like the illustration though. its all painty! it’s a wacom tablet painting, in case you were curious. probably not.

what else is going on in this great wonderful life? not much, I tell you. or a lot, depending on how you look at it. I’ve been knitting during my gen ed classes, using my daily allowances of relaxation time to work on the dress, and spending time either sleeping, forgetting to eat, or doing my homework. there’s a lot of homework. hypothetically half as much as there was last semester, because I’m in half as many studio classes, and yet….not. I need to actually get stuff done and learn from it, not just get it done so I can turn it in. there’s no learning there! I need time to stop and examine what’s going on. must…work…on…time turner….

I guess that’s the difference between us and machines. we learn. I wish to just know, like a machine does, but more of me wants to be able to learn.

happiness is….

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.” – Billy, age 4

Just something random I found today while I wasn’t doing my homework. Here’s version 1 (yet to encounter the red pen….) of my happiness is…newspaper layout. I really enjoyed the article, actually. especially the part that says that optimistic people are happier, but pessimistic people have a more realistic view of the world.

firstly, I know there’s a load of blank space at the bottom. I’m just going to leave it, because I assumed that some other kind of newspapery business might go in there somewhere. also..color? I’m just not sure, maybe I’ll redo it before it actually gets printed for tomorrow. some kind of something? I don’t know that the average newspaper article would have a second color, so I’m not really sure what to do with one. but yeah, there’s that. I’m sure it’ll be different when it’s done-done. but for now, I feel compelled to move on to calculus. or flat patterning. or both. the night is young.

In other news, Joann Fabrics has officially announced that they will not be holding the prom dress contest this year. This makes me, and everyone else on the internet very sad, but I think I’m dealing with it a little better than they are. This is about the dress. sure, it’d be nice to win and have the dress paid for, and be able to tell people that I’m not the only person that thinks I’m awesome- but it’s really about the dress. and I love this one so much- In my opinion, it’s going to be the best one. better than the last one. I am fearful of one thing, though- what will I do when I’m done? I don’t have another sister to make a dress for- I’m out of sisters! I have to come up with an excuse. I need my friends to start getting married. or maybe I’ll just start making 50′s period dresses, and wearing them every day. that would confuse people. I also ordered beads for this prom dress today, so if I have a heart attack in 4-9 days, you know why. I will probably carry the box around with me everywhere, and refuse to concentrate on anything that is not inside the box. That’s the only part of me that requires 21st century technology- the ability to order beads, yarn, dye, fabric, and everything else online is an integral part of my creativity. as well as the ability to do research and google inspiration. other than that, I feel as though I would function a lot better in a 1950s type society a lot better. Mad Men, anyone?

do you think I should have center justified that text?…I don’t think so . center justified bothers me.

Let me tell you something…

let me tell you something…because I finally figured it out for myself. Posters suck. I’m not limiting myself to the ones here on campus, and I’m not saying I don’t like them, I’m saying I don’t like making them. I know I’m probably going to be doing that for the next two to three years of my life, but seriously, people. I would rather spend ten hours typesetting a political science thesis than designing a poster. I’ll deal with it, that’s fine, I just needed to say that to prepare you for the mess below.

yeah. I don’t think you understand how long I spent trying to think of a concept. DAYS. like, way past the budgeted time span. I just couldn’t do it. I don’t even know. performance anxiety? pressure? stress? whatever. I have no excuse. We shall not speak of this again.

Meanwhile, in the world where I am not a complete fool…. guess who made a successful body block yesterday? this girl! that’s right. I’ve waited nearly ten years to be able to draft patterns, and I finally have. its nearly perfect. I just have to adjust the darts, and change the arm holes a teensy bit. It just makes me want to jump into a great pile of yarn and fabric, laughing maniacally as I rummage through the colors and textures of pure happiness. What? Yes. you did, in fact, need to know that.

you know you want this

first order of business: finish the Missouri statute online government class. Today I’m taking the final exam, which is good, because I did the rest of the course yesterday and the day before, so I have a whole bunch of US government running around in my head. I did learn some things, though- like that the final congressional vote that passed the amendment that allowed women to vote came from a young man from Tennessee, who changed his vote at the request of his mother. If you think about it, how many men in the United States were already voting the way their wives wanted them to anyhow? regardless of weather or not they knew it, ‘The man may be the head of a family, but the woman is his neck” (from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but don’t watch that movie, it’s really not that great)…I also learned that some people really suck at spell check. The textbook has made it to the fifth edition, and, having read the whole thing, there are at least 3 or 4 typos per chapter. extra words, omitted spaces, and I wasn’t even reading for grammar! good grief. on a related note- Hyphenation! there was apparently nobody in charge of the…whatever it is they call when you put text on pages, and then make sure there aren’t hyphens. or widows. or orphans. or whatever. copy editors isn’t right…layout person? meh. It really did make that book very difficult to read. I can sort of understand why nobody bothered, though. I wouldn’t want to go through 700 pages of constitution and supreme court rulings to find hyphens….and yet it would seem as though I have.. having nearly finished that, I shall finally be able to move on to more exciting things. printmaking woodcut anyone? I have some concepting done for the jazz combo poster, and it’s pretty much planned out- I just have to do it. the problem is that all I want to do is typography and book covers… All The Typography! hehe…