out of the lower 48 plus two big sea faring mammals

this year i visited three states that i had never been to before.  cool.  cooler still?  two thirds of the three were out of the lower 48.  that's right.  i went to both alaska and hawaii this year.  some of you may have seen my disparaging post about the big island, hawaii.  yeah, it was a bunch of rocks.  but in all fairness, they were lava rocks. and i wasn't fair to the ocean.  it was gorgeous.  and i didn't tell you that i swam with the dolphins.  what the heck was wrong with me?  i was a crabapple about that trip, wasn't i?  anyway, lee and i swam with the dolphins.  they had party plans that day though, so we really swam after the dolphins who probably thought we were crazy.

anyway, back to alaska.  alaska is beautiful--crazy beautiful.  big grand beautiful.  gaspingly beautiful.  go there right now.  and look out for the insanely big potted petunias.  anchorage gets a lot of light this time a year.  everything in alaska is huge.  the eagles, the salmon, the mountains, the potted plants, the ocean, the glaciers.  joey my bro and g-ham met a moose at the laundromat, and the moose was huge.  they also saw a bear having a little salmon snack--he really wasn't that huge.  oh well, can't have them all.  but we went whale spotting and saw whales.  whales are unfathomly (i know it's not a word.) huge.  we only saw bits of the whales.  their tails or a swoop of back as they dove to eat.  those parts of them were ridiculous, so i cannot even imagine the entire whale.  trufact:  whales lose 10000 pounds while nursing.  wha?

in the span of a few months--two ocean dwelling mammals.  a pod of dolphins and three whales.  dude.  fish are eerie and otherworldly anyway, but these two species are amazing. a-freakin-mazing.  dude.  they live in the water and nurse their young.  dolphins goof around and play and don't sleep.  whales who are as big as a school bus and weigh a gazillion pounds can't eat anything but teeny tiny plankton.

what a world, right?

i'll get you some pics soon.  and tell you about the water.

don't tell me to follow no schedule

i gotta tell you.  i freakin suck at sticking to a schedule.  i am a rebel in the very heart and soul of my being.  i jaywalk, and i don't whisper in libraries.  i am forever urging lee to "just do it".  (not talking about shoplifting here.  geez. more like crossing the street when the light says not to cross.)  anyway, about that schedule i made for myself early in the summer.

i knew i was setting myself up.  i can always put of til tomorrow what doesn't have to be done til, say, october.  there are a lot of tomorrows til october, amirite?  so, i haven't been following my dyeing schedule at all.  i did it for about half a week, but then i just went right back to playing.  don't tell me to follow no schedule.  the only part about schedules i like is making the schedule. 

the one time lee lied to me, afaik, was to keep me from being late to the airport.  see?

anyway, since i haven't been sticking to my dyeing schedule, i have serendipitously come up with a cool way of dyeing pastels that i like.  here goes:

so, i have been running around the country a ton this summer.  (not teal deer.)  on one of those trips, it rained a river in madison.  of course, i hadn't had time before i left to clean up all my dye stuff or even to take the yarn that i had put off dyeing off the dye table.  i work outside in the summer.  (yeah, i wear sunscreen, monique. yes teal deer.)  so it rained.  and rained.  and all my dye flooded out of their little buckets and ran onto the yarn.  when i got home there was this gorgeous mint chocolate skein on the table.  the emerald and teal flooded and mixed to a jade-y color and the brown had flooded.  so there was the first "hit" on the skein of serious saturated color.  then it ran and faded into nothing.  it was so cool.
watercolor!  rain dyeing!  mother nature!

anyway, i am trying to be the rain.  my reproduction isn't perfect yet, but it's fun to dye with the water hose!

this is the closest thing to a teal deer in the rain i could find that i could use.  (threadless design)  so, it's really a not-teal-deer walking in the clouds in the not-teal-sky.  but it's a cute t-design, so like it for what it is.

somebody stop me!

i can't keep away from the blue dyepot! 

i love puppies.

when i am walking down the street, i am always on the lookout for a pup to pet.  i am surely an annoyance to owners who want to get back to whatever zombie tv series they are watching.  but i just can't help myself.  sometimes i even kiss pictures of puppies.  just ask my friend dave whose cell phone was recently kissed.

i can't have a doglet though.  i have 5 cats who can barely contain themselves as it is.  a dog would be absolutely miserable in my house.  i have seen my cats chase dogs down the street.  i baby sat a poor little beagle that got treed (on the sofa) by my cats.  nope, no pups for me.  unless it was a pocket pup.  but i much prefer big ole dogs.  big ole goofy lolly gagging dogs.  i just want to snuggle up to them and love love love.

please forgive me if i pet your dog too long on the street.

anyway...my rav friend grittyknits  (http://www.grittyknits.com/) volunteers for treat em right rescue in texas.  it's a rescue for so called bully breeds. if you are so inclined, check out this ravelry post for the deets and give a little bit for sugar and the other sweet baby dogs there.

colors and colors and colors

y'all.  i like colors.  no, wait, i f'ing love color!  i like bright strong true colors.  my house is painted 76 shades of blue with a little green, yellow, orange thrown in just for fun. my yarn is rainbows and clown barf.  when you see my booth at a yarn show, you will be drawn in my the seductive voice of color...but...i also like whisper-y pastels.  

i feel like i should stand behind a tree when i say that so i don't get pelted with tomatoes.  i am the color queen.  but the palest of pales are colors too.  it's really hard to dye pale colors--now when i say pale, i don't mean pastel.  i mean the softest of soft.  although pastels aren't that easy to dye either--at least for me.  (i try occasionally, but i am overcome by my love for yellow and turquoise.)

it's been raining a lot lately.  i mean a whole lot.  buckets.  in my laziness, i didn't take my dyes inside.  (nor did i take my laundry, but that's another story.) the bowls of dye were diluted with lotsa rain water, so i thought i would give whisper dyeing another shot.  might as well, right?

i wish i could say it went really well.  but i am not sure.  i think i got sherbet instead of whisper.  i hope there are people who like sherbet.

sharing the sherbet with you! 


big ups to those of you that know the song! 

and away we go

i've made a lot of personal commitments in the last few days.  some i mentioned--and btw, i did yoga twice last week--even went to a class.  i also did all of my couch to 5k walk/jog sessions.  pretty good, huh?  another of my commitments was to blog twice a week.  did it last week.  going for week 2 by getting started on monday.  even if i don't really have much to say.

lee spent yesterday dreaming about remodeling our house. for some reason, he really really really doesn't like the peak in the front.  i never really noticed it.  we have a pretty traditional cape cod, and it has some great features.  i love the upstairs with our peaked bedroom and landing.  i love the blue walls. since we put in new windows, i love the big living room with lots of light and the other room that we call the dining room--though no one has ever dined in there since we've lived here, but that's the way the previous owners had it set up--and the realty folks call the third bedroom.  we have a nice sofa and a bunch of yarn in there.  actually in here, cause that's where i am. 

anyway, lee even started a pinterest board for his day dreaming.  we have a lot of remodeling we want to do.  we want to somehow open up the first floor choppiness, do something about our ridiculous kitchen layout, add solar panels/light upstairs. add a porch/deck/balcony. more windows.  maybe a little more space with a front entryway or a build off the back for a bigger kitchen and bathroom.  maybe both.  a lot. 

this got started because we were seriously considering moving to warmer climes.  cold sucks.  but we realized that we have at least 5 years til deon is 18.  we might as well do something to make this house more what we want.  so off lee went...yesterday we walked around and looked at other cape cods that have been remodeled.  lee searched pinterest.  he found some sight where you put down your ideas and architects compete for a prize but offering designs and hoping you choose theirs.  he even found an idea on a friend's facebook page.  i mainly nodded and said um, i like it, or huh?

here's to someday, right?

my blue dining room--new windows with unfinished wall.  lots of bright stuff and a coconut head purse--above.

a parrot pillow and a peace plant, blue walls, blue sofa, top of starburst bag.





a lot of cds on a blue shelf, a cool pastel, a starfish and an orange candle stick.  a couple of ship floater balls and another ship thing, but i can't remember what it is.  a piece of driftwood and a cardboard box.

 

bye now.

are creative people naturally artistic? are artistic people naturally creative?

so i used to think that if you could draw well then you had beautiful handwriting--though maybe not the vice versa.  i absolutely don't have beautiful handwriting, and i don't draw particularly well.  my mom has pretty hand writing, but she doesn't draw particularly well either. 

just like the difference in craft and art is ambiguous and often based solely on the type of value the object in question holds--so is the difference in artists and creatives.  craft is practically valuable, say some, while art is valuable on some "higher" level. there is this idea that artists are born, but crafters are made.  in fact, there is even a word for the crafter artist--the artisan.

i don't believe that (or i don't wanna believe that) --as a knitter wannabe, i have seen some knit work, that while practical and useful, is beyond gorgeous in the artistry of the knitter.  sometimes this happens even when a pattern/recipe is used.

i can be pretty creative. i love decorating, and i am pretty good at figuring out how to make things work without the proper parts/tools.  i can also make cool stuff sometimes--even from stuff that is originally not so cool.  i like glue guns and binder clips.  definitely creative.  but, am i an artista?  i am a whiz with color, but does that make me an artist?  i "paint" on yarn, but i can't draw a pretty flower or write funky music.  i can't balance a pot on a wheel, but i can hand build some cool stuff.  my jewelry is pretty good because of the colors and textures used.  my yarn is sometimes really gorgeous--the color palettes and the hand painting sometimes add up just right to make something magical. 

but i don't really think of myself as an artist.  i think of my friend phoebe as an artist even though she doesn't have my color sense nor does she like to decorate.  but she has beautiful hand writing and paints and draws wonderfully.  she has a good "eye".  (ftr, i have a good eye too.)  i think of my friend robert (actually two of my robert friends) as artists.  both are talented.  both have nice handwriting, though one is a potter and one is a painter.  my friend all--also a painter--also beautiful handwriting.  all paints these genius pop scenes that make you think.  i can stare at one for hours. 

so?  when you think of the "artist", do you think of a more elite space than that of the crafter?  a more discriminate club?  i think i probably do.  i mean art hangs in galleries right?  or is played in beautiful concert halls--maybe with a maestro....is some transcendental beauty something or nother.  my friend robert the potter does not want his pottery to ever be used in practical ways.

but i am trying not to think this way.  first and foremost, i am a big believer in wabi sabi--or the beauty of the imperfection.  i don't want to be so snobby.  i think beautiful is beautiful whether it is crafted or drawn.  we need to recognize the beauty; its value and worth--as is.

right? if anyone's out there ;), i'd love to hear what you think.