Prickly Pear Bloom

Thanks, ya’ll, for playing along with me yesterday. People must be as crazy busy as I am this week, but that’s alright. Busy happens. I did write down all three names on separate pieces of paper for the drawing, folded them up, and since there wasn’t a huge lot of them, I walked downstairs and tossed them on the couch next to The Husband, and he picked one randomly, to make it fair. And he picked… Sarah! And luckily, I already know her address! Actually, I know all three of those ladies’ addresses! So maybe they’ll all get a print from me in the post. Sarah, if you’d like to pick your favorite print, shoot me an email. Or if you want to let me choose, I’d be happy to!

Last Friday my photography class took a field trip out to Cherokee Marsh to shoot fall color. Well, the day was pretty dreary and damp, so the fall colors were more in the range of gray and brown, and the light was hardly there and fading fast, so I didn’t get the chance to shoot the fast shallow photos that I like. The light was so low to begin with that getting any shots by hand was almost impossible, and it was dusk so it was getting dark quickly. I borrowed a tripod from my instructor and did my first tripod shooting with longer exposures.

It was definitely an interesting hour, though. I don’t know how good any of these images are, necessarily. They are still a bit out of focus and odd. But I sort of like their oddness. They capture some of the foggy, sleepy hollow-esque feeling of that evening in the woods. It was misty all around, and the atmospheric perspective in these interests me a great deal. I’d like to get more shots of this, more experimentation.

I especially like the first one, fairly still and calm, yet with the one element in movement, imparting a surreal, ghostlike quality to it. And this last one, was taken at the end of the shoot, in pretty dark conditions, at a 3 second exposure. It almost looks like daytime. But not quite.

This is a form of photography that I have little experience in, even comparatively speaking, but I want to experiment more with it. Get to know it. Become its friend.

I’m off to Minneapolis tomorrow, for an overnight, to visit the Walker Museum, see a talk by Steven Heller, and visit 3 design houses, Duffy & Partners, DesignGuys, and Aesthetic Apparatus. Take a look at their work, it’s unbelievable, really. I’m hugely excited. I haven’t been to Minneapolis in years, and to be able to visit 3 amazing design agencies like these is an amazing opportunity, and I’m pretty interested to hear what Heller has to say. It will be fun to be in a new space for a bit, also. I will take the little camera, and shoot what there is to see.

After all of that, I will be heading north, to help my mother with a project, and then hopefully get some down time in the woods. I will return with stories and imagery for you, to be sure.

Well, I did actually get to bed at a reasonable time last night, I got everything done that had to get done, although I still have alot of work for tonight and tomorrow, and I even got to watch a bit of tv to unwind. So I’m not quite so worried any longer.

I received this lovely scarf yesterday afternoon. This lovely orange scarf. This lovely orange bumpy woolen scarf. From lovely Nicolette. In Holland. It is BEAUTIFUL. I love the bumpies. And she knitted it perfectly, loose and gestural, which is not what I expected, but it works so well with the handspun yarn, I think. It’s like a delicate orange woolen chainmail. Protecting me from the stinging sword of winters to come. Thank you, my friend. Your friendship is such a gift in itself, and your generosity is astounding.

As an aside, it just occurred to me yesterday when The Husband mentioned that I had gotten a package from Holland, that The Netherlands and Holland are one in the same. I guess I always knew that, but it never really sunk in that the country goes by two names. I wonder why that is? I thought I liked “Holland” better, it makes me think of tulips and wooden shoes, but now I am undecided. “The Netherlands” sounds so pretty and fanciful also. Yep, these are the things I ponder, every so often.

Thanks to The Husband who took this picture of me modeling. Wow, those arms are pale! And it’s not even February yet!

And hey! My photo of the washboard dude at the Farmer’s Market made Flickr’s explore…awhile ago, but I just noticed. That makes me excited. Maybe more excited than is necessary, but hey, why not? I should celebrate somehow. Whoever leaves a comment on this post by 8 pm CST Wednesday, I will draw one of those names and send the winner a print of their favorite of my photographs, either from my Etsy shop, or another if desired.

Have a great evening, friends!

The apple orchard was just what we needed. We traipsed around the orchard, took lots of photos of the horses and goats and trees and apples and farm-y things, and came home with almost 20 pounds of apples, which are now sitting in various places around the house. Some of them made it into applesauce. The others are waiting for some other project. It’s amazing how quickly they add up when you’re picking them yourself, how easy it is to just keep picking.

As I ran errands yesterday I took a drive around my new soon-to-be neighborhood. I’m getting excited. I remember in college, years ago, wishing someday to live in that neighborhood. And now, soon, I will.

This week looks to be a high maintenance one, with a super short deadline on a project that didn’t get started until last night needing to go to print by Wednesday {panic!!}, a house inspection for our buyers today, and packing to get started, moving cards that need some serious fast work, and Christmas cards that are at a standstill as November creeps up on me in a couple of days. I am going out of town on Thursday for pretty much the entire weekend, so a photography assignment needs to be done early, and corporate ID project stages are due tomorrow. And there’s another Howiezine deadline coming up after Christmas, too. I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn’t get back to sleep with everything racing around in my brain, and I almost just got up and started working. I wonder if I will get any sleep tonight.

:: apple picking :: pumpkin coveting :: dusky ramblings :: tomorrow

I think all of your well wishes and good luck thoughts helped. I know I haven’t talked about it a whole lot, but your words have definitely been appreciated, and now I can share good news. We got an offer on our house last night, and we have accepted it. Which means We. Are. Actually. Going. To. Move.

Holy moly.

It seems unreal, somehow. I think we were starting to believe we would be trying to sell our house for months more.

This process has definitely been one of the crazier of my life, and now, after 65 days in the ocean of the housing market, swimming through seemingly endless open houses and yummy smelling candles, not knowing where half of our belongings are at any given moment for the sake of having an organized and spotless home to show off, shoving magazines behind couch cushions and sweeping fanatically. The Husband and I will start packing and saying goodbye to our little first home, and enter a new chapter of our lives. We will close and move between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which I am sure will serve up a positively stressful holiday season, but it will be worth it, for sure.

And here’s the spooky part. And, since it’s almost Halloween, it makes it extra spooky. I had done some sketches a couple of weeks ago for cards to send out to friends and family that will need our new address when we finally move, and as a placeholder I had used a certain date in December as our changeover date. As it turns out, we are looking to close in that very same week in reality. Odd coincidence? Or did I predict this somehow?

Thank you for your suggestions yesterday, I think we are going to try to stick around town this weekend, and go to the woods next weekend.

Inhale. Exhale.

My world is spinning around me, twirling too fast to keep up, once again. I can’t decide whether to retreat into the woods for a day, a trip to The Husband’s family cabin an hour north of Madison. Surrounded by trees and rustling leaves and quiet, where one can see the millions of stars at night, and listen to the birds, and seek pinecones and fungi to photograph. Work on the laptop on the deck in the chilly October air, but without access to email or a scanner.

Or to stay in the city for the one weekend that the Halloween parties fall on, go to see a favorite performer play, and go out apple picking and pumpkin coveting at a farm. I’ve been wanting to visit the apple orchard each fall for years and years. I think the last time I went was at least 8-9 years ago, when I was in college still. Every year I want to go, and every year we don’t get around to it. Goodness knows why, but we don’t

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday, pretending to be someone or something that you could never be, the energy of lots of people being rowdy and having fun. It seems as if it is the culmination of fall, and afterwards, it is November, and winter, and Christmas, and all that mess. Once the 31st passes, gone are my favorite shades of orange, the pumpkins begin to rot, the garden freezes, the flowers die, the leaves all are fallen and gone from the trees. There are certainly wonderful things about winter, but it seems that fall is so fleeting. Lately, though, I haven’t had the time to invest in getting a costume organized. We haven’t gone out to party the past few years either, as the Mad-town Halloween fest had gotten out of hand a few times, and after that they started selling tickets, and it was just too much work. And none of our friends is having a party this year.

I still do love Halloween, though. In my head, I hope that next year we throw a big ol’ Halloween party at the new house. I hope that we have the energy for it. That house needs to be a party house, it was built to have great parties, and I think we need to be the ones to throw them.

So, I could celebrate fall in the woods, or I could celebrate fall in the city. Both so different. Both so very much needed.

For some reason I am having a very hard time with this decision.

Sorry for the late post, it’s been a nutty day. Here’s some inspiration for today, since I haven’t posted much of that in a bit. Nice work at This Is A Wake Up Call, David Pearson Design, and Concrete. I Want Design has birds {even tweeting sounds!} and Saturday-London has some nice work too.

Birdies in the bush - taken by The Husband, processed by me.

Bird imagery seems to be very popular lately in the graphic design and crafting worlds. Birdies seem to be everywhere. I, myself, have been staying away from them, fearing their saturation levels, and not wanting to fall prey to popularity.

But this weekend, I caved. And I am now trying to get the birds out of my system, so that I can move on. I’m purging them, or attempting to, anyway. So if you get a holiday card from me with a bird on it, NOW YOU KNOW WHY.

I stayed away from the computer almost all weekend, and worked only with my hands, and I started, and almost finished this little birdie throw quilt. All it needs is for the wings {tiny pieces of some of my favorite Japanese fabrics, and a few stateside ones} to be sewn on and some beady eyes applied.

I will not, by any stretch of the imagination, take any credit for the cute idea, which was Amanda’s. I saw hers, and wanted one, and I didn’t really change anything except the fabric colors and patterns, and the size, to accomodate the slightly smaller width fabric that I have. It was sort of nice just making, without worrying about the result being super original. I didn’t do much thinking, save for working out how to do the edges and corners, I just let my hands do their work, and that was sort of nice too. I got a little lost in the acts of sewing, pinning, and cutting, finding a bit of the flow that Stefani wrote about this weekend. I do think that I’d like to make another of these simple little quilts, with leaves instead of birds, in gray and light green or orange.

Now that I know I can wrestle this size quilt through my machine, I believe I will surrender the handquilting of my little baby quilt and quilt it by machine instead, so that it can become a finished baby quilt rather than an inprogress baby quilt. I’ve also decided that I much prefer binding-free quilts, only because I just have too many projects to enjoy the extra step of binding a quilt at the end. I would rather it be done. And I can always bind later, if I choose to. I realize that binding is some extra protection against the wear and tear of a quilt, though, so it is not as if I am shunning the process completely. Just clipping it for the sake of my many projects and dwindling sanity.

With all of the getting lost in stitchery and birdies that happened weekend, I didn’t get to the experimental project that I wanted to do. But I still plan to, this week, maybe. That will likely involve birdies as well. I also didn’t go out and shoot landscapes like I had wanted to. I did, however, make applesauce from some farmer’s market apples, and white broccoli lasange with fresh spinach pasta sheets and fontiago {fontina+asiago cheese variety - mmmmm} and gruyere and fresh mozzerella cheeses, and it was delectable.

The weekend arrives. My list is long. An open house is on the horizon. The second to last trip around the square at the farmer’s market before it retreats inside from the impending winter, where I plan to buy some crazy Italian vegetable that I’m told is like celery that tastes like artichoke. Holiday cards must be made. Hot apple cider should be sipped. Brainstorming for a corporate identity package will be embarked upon.

And I think I am going to try an experimental art project, in an effort to spark my creativity. I need to make something with my hands. Feel the textures of paper or fabric, inhale the scent of ink and glue. I want to see things differently. Sew paper together, experiment with household cleaning products on magazine pages and photographs, cut things apart, and rebuild them differently. I have been meaning to do some experimentation for awhile now, but other things always get in the way. I hope to make this a priority this weekend.

When I first loaded this page to begin writing, an odd thing happened. The browser window went completely white, save for the blinking type cursor, and I felt sort of like I was going to start getting typed messages from some third party, like in The Matrix. But I didn’t. Whew! Good thing.

Stem Print

Anyhow. This is the first time that I can say I have updated the little shop, so I am saying it! I’ve added some photography, single prints and collections, and there are a couple of prints available that I have not published anywhere until now. You can get to the shop now by clicking on that icon for t Leaf Design over there in the right sidebar!

Autumn Leaves Print

I had alot more I wanted to do this evening, but I ended up wasting a bunch of time on a project that ultimately cannot proceed, which is disappointing. There is always something else, though, and new holiday cards are in the making!

Have a great night, friends!