esprit de l'escalier

Snow and art

Weatherwise, we've had it more than good the past couple of weeks here in Chicago. Instead of snow on Thanksgiving day, we have 60+ degrees! December, however, wants to make sure we haven't gone soft or forgotten what winter in the midwest means. Yes, at the best yesterday it was 60 degrees and today the world is covered in snow and the temperature is somewhere in the low thirties, but it is December, right? Shouldn't we be pleased with the weather we've had up to now?

In honor of today's weather, the roommate left a Billy Collins poem up on the internet for me. It begins like this:

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

Read the rest of "Snow Day" here.

Also, today is the last day of diptychs over at the Compound Word Project. I contributed a picture, you can see it on Monday's post. Each photo pair creates a compound word and we're supposed to guess the word the pictures create. I'm really happy I was able to participate this round. Thanks Shari for putting this together again!

I just got an email saying that those who can work from home should do so. Unfortunately everything I need to do I need fresh data from yesterday. Damn! (Plus there's been another fire on the Red Line, so I think I'm going to be late today.)

After the break is a picture of my still life from last night.

Let's start at the very beginning

Tonight I had my first session for my 4 week "first time drawing" class at Lillstreet. I'm taking it because I realized when I took my painting class this summer that I jumped in too quickly and needed to start at the basics. We started off with a couple of different exercises and then did a still life. I have definitely improved with the still life. Which is good. It's fun to get all smudgy with the charcoal and I have a tic where I squish the squishy eraser as I'm contemplating the scene and sort of bounce at intervals. Plus I think I have a drawing face (akin to the running face or the singing face— faces made when concentrating), and I'm pretty sure I stick out my tongue a little. All of this I find hilarious.

My teacher had her 13 week old puppy with her, Gypsy, who had big bat ears and was adorable. I told her about little Franklin and how he wakes me up every two hours with his omnipresent claws. She countered with the fact that every two hours she has to get up, dressed and get her dog out the door to do its business. I told her she won. That definitely put Frank's antics in perspective. And I know I sound a little cranky to some of you, but it's the lack of sleep. I do love the little hairball.

Beautiful Chicago Saturday

Yesterday I had a wonderful Chicago Saturday. The weather was beautiful (if a bit too warm) and it involved the Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park. I had been looking forward to this for a while, because it meant I was going to meet Ashley G of Kitty Genius in person (she's great, although a cramped vendor booth is not the optimal place to friend some one). I went with my crafty friend Shana (who had a booth last year) and we both spent more money than we had originally intended. I bought a print from Jaime Zollars, whose art I have been admiring for quite a while (though I can't remember how I found her originally, probably somehow through Tiny Showcase). She's also really nice— it was really neat to be able to talk to the artists, since I'm so used to looking at their work online. Shana and I both bought something from Jill Bliss, who is really great. Inside I was squealing like a teenaged fan because I think she's so great. I bought a datebook from her and she signed it for me (because I am such a nerd). I had my camera with me to take pictures of the fair but felt my nerdiness too acutely to take photos.

Shana and I lunched at Earwax (which has the flashiest website I've ever seen for a cafe/dvd rental place) and ended our afternoon with bubble tea. Fantastic.

The night included a viewing of Half Nelson at the Music Box. The movie was well made and heartbreaking. The main characters were played by Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps and they were marvelous. It's not a movie to wrap up things neatly or to give you an ending to have the audience walk out pleased with themselves and the moral of the film, but it's one that had my friend Allison and I talking about continually through our evening. It's a movie that makes you think without beating you on the head with it. Plus, Gosling, even as a basehead, is so pretty. As is Anthony Mackie, who seems to be sneaking into lots of films lately and is just great.

My first relief print (almost)

I had my first first-time relief print making class tonight, and boy are my arms tired. No really, they're exhausted, between the carving of a linoleum block and carrying a large oak armoire up the stairs the other day, my right arm is ready to go out to pasture. My class was really fun, though, regardless of my noodle arm. It consists of me, my friend Shana and another woman. Our teacher teaches various printmaking techniques at the Art Institute school and does a lot of woodblock and linoleum block prints. He's pretty cool. I jumped into this class because it piqued both my and Shana's interests, though I had no idea what I was getting into. I'm very excited. My simplistic doodles (I like to think I draw like a sophisticated 3rd grader) may lend itself to more simple prints. At least they'll be easy to start with. I decided to make a print of our dearly departed pooch, Miss Ivy. I drew my little shorthand sketch of her on the linoleum and now I'm chipping away wherever I didn't draw. We made rubbings after we'd been working for a while to check out our progress. Fun.

My endeavors with painting

A while back I discovered this art center in Ravenswood called Lillstreet. I kept meaning to take a class, but I never acted on it. (I'm such a Taurus in that way, very reluctant to *start* new things, but then throw myself into it once I start.) Well, I finally started taking some classes. My beginning painting class is just wrapping up. (I also took a day long workshop on narrative embroidery a couple of weeks ago and I'm about to start a four week, first time relief print class, I'm very excited.) I was nervous about the painting class, but decided to just go into it as a total experiment. I love color and wish that I had taken more art classes growing up. The class has been fun. Challenging, but fun. Last week's class, though, almost had me giving up. We were doing our first still life in black and white and mine was just a disaster. Of course I had picked the worst spot in the room. I was facing a light dead on and had all the objects in poor angles. (That's what you get for getting there late.) This week was much better. We worked with color for the first time, which I really enjoyed. (Though I get too bogged down in mixing colors sometimes. I'm such a slow poke.) Anyhow, above is my painting from today. Not the greatest, but a MUCH better improvement on last week. Next week we have a free paint period, if we want to come. I think I will, just to test the waters some more. I don't think I have the time or energy that's needed to devote to painting. I hope I come back to it, though.

Port2Port on design*sponge podcast

I have been lurking around some design and crafty blogs since plunging headfirst into the blogosphere. I love seeing what people are creating. It makes me want to learn more and explore color and texture and different crafts. Of late, I've been making time to read Mav's blog Port2Port. She has her own letterpress (you can buy her stuff over on Etsy), and her daily writing has been really inspirational to me. Plus, through her comments I have found lots of other cool women and blogs to lurk around.

One design blog that I adore is design*sponge, and Grace, who runs the place, is now doing podcasts with different artists. She has interviews with Lotta Jansdotter, Jill Bliss and Amy Ruppel. This week she has an interview with Mav! It's great to hear both of their voices. Isn't it funny how your brain always fills in gaps on its own? It's nice to have the correct voices to go along with their words. Anyhow, check it out.

Finished baby blanket

I have finally finished a baby blanket for my cousin Helene's new baby. She had a baby girl, which she named Claire Josephine, just over a month ago. It is so wonderful having new little ones in the family. I'm really excited to meet the newest Claire in the family. I like to think that our sharing names makes me a sort of guardian over this little one. I have been dragging my hands (as it were), finishing this blanket. I just haven't been working on it. I decided to call it finished this weekend though. It's about the size of a small bath towel, and I hope it's big enough. I'm wishing now that I made it wider, but what can you do? It's really soft, made with a baby alpaca. It's my first foray into nice yarn, as opposed to just JoAnn yarn. I used a basic, open chevron stitch. Now I need to get going on another blanket, because I have another cousin due in early April! Which means I need to figure out what I want to do and commit to some yarn. Any crafty people out there have any suggestions for stitches or books to check out?

More Dickens and some yarn

I didn't feel much like blogging this past week. I was busy every night and tired when I got home and just didn't feel the blogging spirit move me. Sorry about the lapse.

Today I spent getting a leg up on a baby afghan for my cousin Helene. I finally bit the bullet and went in on some more high end yarn. A couple weeks ago my friend Anne and I went into Arcadia Knitting at Lawrence and Ashland, but we both chickened out. I won't speak for Anne, but I felt unworthy of the beautiful yarns. I did take a peek at Candy Blankies : Cuddly Crochet for Babies & Toddlers which gave me some new inspiration. I had crocheted the body of an afghan, but it was extremely dull (not to mention too small, I am much too tight with my stitches) and I was bored with it. I have decided to do a blanket made of chevron stripes in punchier colors. Based on how it's crocheting up, I think I'm going to need a couple more skeins, but it's going to be quite nice. I'm using a cornflower blue and a lime-ish green color of really soft baby alpaca. (I ended up going to my neighborhood's yarn shop, Nina.) I think the end result is going to be a lot of fun. I hope Helene (and the baby when it comes!) likes it.

I worked on this new project while watching Masterpiece Theatre's latest take on Dickens' Bleak House. Jeanne over at Bluestocking Knits had predicted that I was about to go through a Dickens period. I thought she was wrong, because I don't have a lot time for pleasure reading while I'm taking a class and working full time, but she was right! She must sensed I was likely to be drawn into a Masterpiece Theatre mini series. Everything is still unfolding in the story, and I'm keenly interested to see how everything is related. It's very moodily shot, though I can't say I love some of the quick cuts to and from things. It's a little too much. Gillian Anderson seems to hardly be breathing the entire time she was on screen, which I find very effective. I am drawn to Esther, as many characters seem to be, and wonder why John Jarndyce is being so kind. I'm happy to see a couple of young actresses who I've seen in some films this past year (Carey Mulligan in Pride and Prejudice and Natalie Press in My Summer of Love.) I am also marveling after the names of some of the characters. Jellby and Turveydrop. I'll have to keep myself in yarn and new projects to keep up with series.

On a side note, according to IMDB, the actress that plays Esther played Lyra in the stage production of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. I badly wanted to see that, but missed it by a week when I was in London a couple of years ago. I like the actress, Anna Maxwell Martin, but think she's a little old for Lyra. It only underlines my wish of seeing it. Oh well.

Knitting/crocheting helps your brain!

(The following is from an email I just received from Yarn Market.)

Knitting Your New Year's Resolution & Your Health Will Benefit

Whether you’re an experienced knitter of 30+ years or a newbie just learning the craft, you know what you find fun & exciting about the knitting & crocheting you’ve come to love. But did you know modern science continues to research such leisure activities and find long-lasting mental & physical health advantages that will benefit you from youth through your twilight years?

One of the most significant studies in the past 5 years concerns the role of “active intellectual activities” such as knitting in preventing or slowing down the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Robert Friedland, a neurologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, and his colleagues have collected lifestyle histories of almost 200 Alzheimer’s patients and compared them to those of a control group of over 350 mentally acute senior citizens.

One of their primary findings is that “A relative increase in the amount of time devoted to intellectual activities from early adulthood (ages 20-39) to mid-adulthood (ages 40-60) was associated with a significant decrease in having Alzheimer’s later in life,” says Friedland.

Another study by scientists at Columbia University in New York cites that those with high levels of such leisure activities are 38% less likely to develop dementia. And one other study by a group of sociologists of patients with mild Alzheimer’s found that knitting helped improve even these patients’ depression & generalized apathy.

Research also shows that even though it’s never too late to start, the younger you start knitting, the sooner you’ll benefit from all of the health advantages. Take the children at Seth Boyden Elementary School in Maplewood, New Jersey, and the instructional aide who started the "Knitting Together a Community" program. Now in less than a year almost half of the students are involved in the program, and teachers are recommending it for various types of benefits: “The program teaches the children persistence, concentration & control and improves fine-motor skills, hand-eye coordination & brain development.” Or as one student puts it, “I’m usually very jittery, but when I knit, I calm down.”

See! It's not just fun! It's good for you!

Marble magnets

I wanted to post something quick, because I'm really exhausted today. I went to Indy for a wedding this weekend. I don't have much to say about it, except that I have a bunch of cute pictures of the group I went with to share at a later date. Friday night I spent a couple of hours making about 100 marble magnets. It was fun and they turned out really nicely. I actually only had 50 magnets, but that's okay. I wrapped them up in festive holiday fabric and they are ready to be given out tomorrow to my co-workers.

I have about 30 pages left in David Copperfield, I hope I have the energy to finish it. I've really loved it. It deserves my entire attention.

UPDATE: I forgot to cite my sources! My high school teachers would be so disappointed, not to remember something that was drilled in our heads time and time again. Anyhow, I got the idea from various Craftster message boards, but I found Not Martha's instructions the most helpful of all.