Wednesday, January 30, 2013

{video scrapbook: the UK}

I've been working on a little video scrapbooking project lately, taking all of the video clips from my computer, making them into wee iMovies, saving them on flash drives, and then deleting the clips. Because when am I ever going to go back and watch each 30 second video individually? Never ever. But I can't just get rid of them--I'm an extremely forgetful person; I need every bit of external memory available to me. This just seems like the thing to do.

Anyway, I just finished one from our trip to Scotland. And then I got all schmaltzy and have been obsessing about going back all week. Quick! Everyone send me airplane tickets!
{The song in the video is Grylukvaedi by Valgeir SigurĂ°sson.}

Monday, January 28, 2013

{balloons}

This morning, I am drinking coffee and painting balloons on pictures.

Because why not? It's what I feel like doing.

Besides: I have lots to get done today, but I always feel like if I start out with something relaxing, colourful, and a little ridiculous, I might see the rest of the day through that kind of lens. Which is nice, I think. Photobucket PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket

Thursday, January 24, 2013

{homemade stationary}

Every Christmas, I try to do at least a few homemade gifts. Because of money. Because of sentimentality. Because...honestly? Selfishly? It's fun.

This year, I decided way back in September (for me, that is miraculously early to have thought of a Christmas present for anyone) to make stationary for a few of the girls on my list. I got some brown paper from Michael's and doodled around with my new watercolour pencil crayons for days and days until I felt I had enough for a set.

Now it's all I want to do anymore. But Christmas is over. Rats about that.
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

{odds, and also: ends}

Photobucket It's currently colder in my city than on the North Pole. This gives me bragging rights, or maybe just frost bite, or something.

I'm hiding in my office/dining room/pantry/craft room/breakfast nook {our house has many multi-purpose rooms} writing and organizing and eating and working on some stuff {multi-tasking appears to be the sole perk of multi-purpose rooms}. I had some things of mine from around the internet to share, and will do so in short list form, as lists are all the rage these days. People like lists because they're easy to skim. People also like lists because our brains like things that make it easier to process information/input, since there's a lot (arguably to ∞) of input and only a limited capacity for attention. I read that somewhere.

1. The story of how I found a fat lady laying on an air mattress in a sketchy back alley covered in lettuce. Because I like this story and I haven't told it in a long time. 

2. Click here for a bunch of free songs by the likes of Andrew Bird, the Civil Wars, Freelance Whales, General Ghost, Katie Herzig, etc. 

3. Click here for a list of the ten best coffee shops I've found in my city. {Less useful for those of you who live in, say, Scotland.}

4. Free shipping until Sunday in the Soc6 shop. Look! I've made more throw pillows! {They are a little tacky.}
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Monday, January 21, 2013

{painting the town}

I feel like the longer I live in this city and the more I walk the streets, the more strange and fascinating and unfamiliar it becomes to me. Every time I tilt my head back, I see something new, something I hadn't noticed the last time I was here. Even the things that I recognize are somehow surprising and new each time I pass by.  photo watercoloursky_zps7db11bab.jpg In the years before I moved here, I didn't like to stay in one place for too long. I felt like a place got stagnant within a few months, the ripples around my feet disappeared too quickly; routine, to me, felt more like a straitjacket than a bathrobe. Not comfortable, not reassuring, but constricting and confining and ugly. I wanted to meet new people, walk around new neighbourhoods, learn new things. In fact, I was on my fourth move of the year and on my way to England when I met Barclay.

It might have just been a clever ploy on his part to make me stay in the city, in the country, but somehow he convinced me that putting down roots could be a good thing. My "short stay" with a friend turned into buying a house and getting married--the two most permanent things I'd done since that time I fell off a balcony in high school and chipped my front tooth. Photobucket And--surprise!--it's good. It's so good. I don't think I was made to float around the world like a captain-less ship. I think I was made for community and discipline and roots and deeper relationships, the kind that come with time, and even routine {which, clearly, has reached bathrobe status with me}.

But the point is not that. Photobucket The point is that when you put down roots, you don't need to sacrifice your curiosity.

You just need to learn to look at the world differently. I've learned that I don't need to be in a new place to see new things; I just need to open my eyes wider. When the ripples die down, I need to kick my feet a little. I've learned that it takes a long time to know a place completely. That you could spend hours and days and months and years and lifetimes in the same place and never know it entirely. {And that the same is true of people.} I've learned that it's good for your creativity, not limiting, to stick with something for a while. You're almost always forced to go deeper, to figure it out more thoroughly. You just have to get past your short attention span.
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Friday, January 18, 2013

{today}

 photo IMG_3587_zpsa67bccde.jpg Today was a day for brainstorming, thinking of a thousand possibilities and dreaming elephant ocean universe big and doing the opposite of narrowing down.

It was a day for a giant, sugary, whipping cream-capped mocha with equally sweet friends in a cozy coffee shop. It was a day for aimless wandering and having the time to stop and listen to an elderly violinist with cold fingers and a warm smile.

It was a day for long, meandering conversations and short, squirmy baby snuggles and gulps of crisp but not-too-cold winter air. For traffic lights and comfort food and slippers and piano music and smiles for and from strangers and thank-you prayers.

And as lame as it sounds, it was a day for staying home on a Friday night to sort my iTunes library and make sure everything has it's correct song title, artist, and album art. Because if that wasn't done first, I wouldn't have any fun going out tonight anyway.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

{mindless entertainment}

Photobucket I spent last night listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448), reading a paper titled "A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Perception of Emotion in Music: Psychophysical and Cultural Cues", and looking up words in the dictionary that I've been wondering about for a while now.

And then I watched 5 straight episodes of a geeky nineties TV show because I thought some mindless entertainment was in order and when you're flat on your back with the flu, what else are you gonna do?

Then, just now, I heard this quote on the radio: "You use that word, 'entertainment' as if entertainment were a thing that when we go to we don't have to think. Well, in fact, you can't be entertained unless you're taking in information, unless you're shaping it in your mind, unless you're judging it." (David Thomson, author of The Big Screen)

I scribbled down the quote on a sticky note as fast as I could, turned the radio off, read it again. I grimaced, inwardly. Because isn't that kind of a scary quote?

The fact that there is no such thing as "mindless entertainment"? The fact that I am 'learning' as much from an intelligent 19-page university study as I am from Boy Meets World? From the news, from every blog I read, from YouTube, from Facebook, magazines, advertisements...? So many opinions and world views and value systems that I don't hold to, that I'm taking in in much the same way that a drowning man takes in water instead of air. Yikes.

I mean, the concept isn't entirely new to me, it's not new to you, and I know it's not new to the people paying Beyonce 50 million bucks to be the brand ambassador for Pepsi: People are so easily influenced.  But still, it jarred me when I changed the word influenced in that sentence to taught. I'm not just being rubbed off on in the hallways, I'm willfully sitting in a classroom, taking notes, passing classes.

You give a lot of power to the people you allow to entertain you, "mindlessly" or otherwise.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

{2012}

Photobucket As my flu was settling on me yesterday, I laid on the couch and flipped through Instagram photos from 2012. There were a little over 500 of the colourful little picture tiles. A coffee date, an art project, a show, a trip.

I know people are often ragging on Instagram for being an evil tool of narcissism and for keeping people from just living their lives without worrying about pausing the moment to take a picture or think of a witty caption {and that's true sometimes, I guess}. But how cool is it to be able to sit back after a year has passed and see at least one moment from each of those 365 days?

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

{awards and stuff}

Photobucket I woke up this morning with the flu, so it's 10 something AM and I'm sitting here in my pyjamas hardcore glaring at my coffee because I want it so bad but every sip turns my stomach like a washing machine on the hurricane cycle. The only reason I'm not going back to bed is that I'm waiting to find out who made the shortlist in the Canadian Weblog Awards.

In my high school growing up, we had this awards ceremony at the end of every year called Colour Night, and it was basically my most and least favourite night of the year. Most before, least after.

It started in grade seven. I went to my first ever Colour Night, thinking that I might get an award. For my part in the school play, for being a nice person, for my good grades, for having a good attitude during volleyball games, I don't know. Something. My class had 17 kids in it, the grade above me had 6. Chances seemed good. And what 12 year-old doesn't want a trophy?

But, you know, the athletics awards only went to the kids who were actually athletic, and even though I was pulling off 90s on my tests, there were these two girls and one guy who were just that much more studious, and the nice person award went to my sister and the drama awards went to the older kids who actually had speaking parts.

I wasn't totally discouraged. Next year, probably.

But I went through the whole of high school going to every single Colour Night and never getting called up on the stage once except for a participation medal here or there. Which was fair enough since I completely gave up on even trying partway through grade 10. My volleyball coach told me I sucked and my baseball coach told my mom I sucked and my basketball coach didn't put me on the court even once the whole season, and I submitted a yearbook cover but they used someone else's and I completely choked on the night of the school play, and my grades went down like a sunken ship and even though I tried to be a nice person, they kept giving that award to my sister.

{She seriously is a nice person, though. DESERVING.}

I'm not whining, because it's not a big deal; I have since learned that recognition and praise from others isn't the most important. It isn't even important at all if you're not living your life in pursuit of it, and if you understand what actually gives your life value and meaning.

However.

They are still fun to get. Plus they let you know when you're on the right track in some area or another. Not a bad thing.

The results just came in. Yes. Made the list. 

Going to bed.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

{playing}

Photobucket Barclay got me a bunch of sweet coloured gel pens for Christmas.

I have not had coloured gel pens since grade 8. I hadn't thought of them since then. They don't sell them at my local pretentious art supply store.

I think adults think of art and art supplies much too seriously sometimes. You go down to the art supply store and the lady asks how long you've been into such and such and you stammer about how you're not "into it", yet, but you'd like to be and what would she recommend and she tells you how she's been into it for thirty years and you need to take a class to really understand it and here are some brushes and papers and miscellaneous tools that will cost you exactly three arms and a leg to pay for. And then you spend all that money and try it out and discover you can't make anything look the way it's supposed to. Rats.
Photobucket The way I see it, you can look at art like that. You can take the classes and be the professional and be really respected when you go into your local pretentious art supply store to pick up new paints. You'll probably learn a lot and be really good at stuff I'd never even thought of before. That's solid.
Photobucket Or you can play. Like, for fun. You don't have to be serious or naturally artistically inclined or even good. At all. You can buy stuff you've never used before simply because it's on sale at Michael's and you can put on a record or a TV show and visit with a friend while you throw paint at paper and doodle all over it with gel pens.
Photobucket Both are valid and good and right. And even if it turns out looking dodgy, at least you've enjoyed yourself and stretched some creative muscles.

That's the way I look at art. I'll never be an Artist. But I will always enjoy playing.Photobucket {PS: As per usual, I put these as iPhone cases and small prints in the soc6 shop. Free shipping till the 13th!}

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

{reflection}

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I think too many times, I've seen a place I wanted to get to and just assumed that, by simply wanting to get there, I'd be there. Soon. Eventually. Next week. And then I get confused when I realize another year has gone by and I don't even remember where I was going.

So last night, Barclay and I decided to take a pen and a notebook and a table at a coffee shop and write out some goals and aims and thoughts for 2013. We've never been big on new year's resolutions and all that, but this year we were talking about life and intentionally living it and decided that, much like grocery shopping or travelling or baking, if you want to remember to get/do/educe certain things, you should write them down.

We arrived at the coffee shop and ordered some drinks, but got distracted on the way to our table by a bookshelf with clearance stickers all over it. The complete collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was there, all of it, for twelve dollars. We abandoned our mission, bought the book, and went home, where Barclay read aloud to me until I fell asleep.

 You see? This is exactly my problem.

I'm distracted from things that need to be done by the things that are much more easy and fun.
{That rhymed, so you should probably get it tattooed on your forearm in a swirling script.}

The moral of the story is probably something about reflection and intentionality. Sigh.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

{my fish-eyed friend}

Photobucket I have no desire to be a 'real' photographer. There are so many of you, and you do it so well, with your cameras that cost as much as houses and weigh as much as horses. But I'm afraid of brides, and I don't like looking through the lens and trying to figure out how to make something that will impress someone else. I like picture taking in the same way that I like writing or doodling or playing music. I like the process of trying to get what I'm seeing in my head out in some physical form. Without worrying too much what the "right" way of doing it is.

That's why I love these little plastic Lomography cameras. They have enough settings and buttons and switches and flashes and filters to keep things interesting, without ever once making me feel like I'm doing something "wrong". I can take a million exposures on a single frame and I can leave the shutter open as long as I feel like and I can shoot in a dark room or outside in the middle of the day and it's all good. Plus, you have no digital view finder window to see if what you're doing is working. Surprises are my favourite. {Pictures from my La Sardina here.}

I got the little fisheye friend pictured above for Christmas this year {last Thursday, because we always celebrate way late}, and I've already shot a roll and gotten it developed. {Too excited to remember how expensive film developing really is.} These are a few of my favourite things...

1. multiple exposures + spinning the camera
Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket 2. looking straight at the sun Photobucket Photobucket 3. extreme close-ups Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket 4. leaving the shutter open for as long as i feel like it Photobucket Photobucket 5. making ghosts Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket 6. just letting the camera do its thing Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Oh! Ps! Erin wrote a very informative piece on the film pictured above. CHECK IT OUT BEFORE YOU BUY ANY.