Summer Rut

...Or, the opposite. I haven't felt especially creative, but I have felt really good otherwise. A picture of the recipe below, and a typical summer evening.

Recipe: Baby Onions, yellow squash, greens and beer!

This recipe was invented tonight, and it was so good. I am sorry for no pictures (as the camera is in COLOMBIA WITH JACOB), but I promise it was GORGEOUS, as well as being damn good.

8-12 Pearl onions, white and purple, peeled but not cut up
1 Cup Yellow squash, pattypan squash or zucchini cut up into 1 cm cubes
Handful or two of mixed greens (I used kale, arugula, frisee, spinach and chard)
1-4 Cloves of garlic (just depending on how much you love garlic), coarsely chopped
Beer: I recommend an ale...something sweet and hoppy
Olive oil

Heat oil over medium-high heat, add onions and saute for about five minutes, till they start to get a little soft, then add your squash and saute for another five minutes. Add garlic and saute for another minute, then the greens. As they begin to get fairly wilted (after about two minutes), give the dish a good rinsing of beer (um...somewhere in the range of a quarter cup), and stir until it has cooked away, and your greens are nicely wilted. Remove from heat, salt and pepper to taste!

The end, ENJOY!

me and my man

El Senior Mick went to Columbia yesterday....for seven weeks. Ekkks. Sigh. I'll be attending lots of yoga classes and boulder a lot, I imagine.

This is what I bet we'd look like if we were Japanese rockers and decided to get together (which we would, of course). From dropsnap.

From the Sartorialist, which I haven't been to in a while.

weird...

I was chatting with my brother last night, and he sent me a link to this page. So odd. I am not putting up pictures because I think the page in general is totally wrong (though yes, I did look at all the pictures).

Colorado REALLY is the most beautiful state, ya know.

These are from our most recent 2-day outing to Shelf Road, outside of Canon City, CO. The train is from I-25 between Castle Rock and Colorado Springs, the rest are all from Shelf.

Right now I have strep throat. Weren't you supposed to not get strep throat after the age of nine? Ugh. It's really painful. Penicillin is on the way, though, thank God.

Cigarette, beer in hand (speedo on bottom)

This article killed me.

My Bags!

Hi there, I haven't posted in a while. It's because Jacob is about to leave for the summer, so we've been spending lots of time together, getting out a lot. It's been nice. A few weeks ago I made this bag, and have been so flattered by a couple friends and some random people asking if I could make them one like it! Yay! Hopefully they meant it...

Anyway, the pattern isn't really a pattern (I just measured it), so I'm working on a new "real" one (you know, out of paper, that you can see and pick up and use). It will include pockets and some sort of closure method...thinking a zipper at the top. I made the strap out of an old belt, and I might look for some other woven belts, or might talk to Liz about making my own (I hope it works and they're not really ugly and/or weak and break).

Maybe I could open up a shop on etsy or something...

From Danken. I love rocks, and I miss the West Coast. Boulder has been getting me down lately. If I'm going to spend this much money on rent I wish I could be closer to the ocean. We have been talking about moving to Longmont, the next town over, where Jacob works (and rent is half what it is here). But then it's further from the mountains. I might as well be in Denver. Wah.

Jeans!

I finished my first ever pair of jeans. Or, I am so close to being done that I might as well call it finished because it was SUCH A TASK. The pattern was 1/3 Simplicity (zipper, fly), 2/3 me (pockets, legs, waistband). I am really happy about them, though I still need to sew the button on and line the seams inside. It was such a long, hard pull to finish them, so I am going to wait a little bit to do that. I also haven't unpacked my button foot for my sewing machine, so that might have something to do with it...

Though it was really difficult to make these, I really want to try again. I found a seamstress to help me out with fly closures, as that was the most difficult part for me (the rest actually wasn't bad, except attaching the waistband for some reason). So, maybe there will be some more projects to come.

In terms of school, I am reading a lot of Itten books, and making the pattern for my first 100% mine piece of clothing (a shift dress). In truth I am kind of being a slacker, though. Something about Spring....

Recession amounts

Job: Whole Foods.

I can't wait to spend all my money on fancy butter and honey.

I need a haircut. Desperately. And I don't know what to do. Probably nothing but a trim.

WPA Post

Detroit, Diego Rivera. NPR post.

Also, I am not going to see the Star Trek movie. Swear to it.

April 29, 2009

I am so tired. School, babysitting, volunteering and now working at Whole Foods is taking up substantial time, as is house-sitting for my mom (big house with lots of plants and animals). Again, I am so tired. There is not enough time to do it all. I really like to get 8 hours of sleep. Not tonight. Must....make...pattern....tonight.....zzzzz....

No pictures today because I am so tired and I just can't. I am reading a lot of Johannes Itten's writing. And Josef Albers. If I ever get a cat, I am naming it Bauhaus. Hopefully it'll be a tabby cat.

I've been enjoying all this reading up on color. I needed it now, after not really studying art for a few years. I find that the colors I surround myself with are white, black, gray and variations of puke and hunter green, which are so boring. Occasionally other desert-based colors. Boring, boring. Going back to basic theory is making things less boring. It's making me think again.

But at the moment, no matter what I was thinking about earlier, or will probably think about tomorrow and the next day, I am devoid of any ability to think....about....anything but sleep. Good night.

The Mama and the Daughter, no. 2

If you scroll down, you'll see that I posted a picture of Big and Little Edie on a post about my mom. A friend alerted me to an article in the NY Times about the house and its "new" (since 1979) owners. I saw part of the new movie the other day, and it was okay. Can't say I'm a huge Drew Barrymore fan. I think William (?) Baldwin was in it (the older one).

Anyway, I loved the pictures of the house that were taken just after it was bought. It looked pretty decrepit in the documentary, but not so much so. I guess they found a bunch of cat and raccoon carcasses amidst all the...things (trying not to swear so much). And seashells.

Reading that made me think of dissecting owl pellets in elementary school.

awwwww....

Rockabye Baby! is awesome. I just got back from Denver. 9 hours of class broken up by a confrontational meeting with my dean (yeah, no caps for you, you female dickweed, you), a soggy bagel (yes! it's possible,) and Samurai beers. I'm tired, but on my way to draping like a champ, serging like not a pathetic person that doesn't know how to serge, and creating my lookbook. Oh boy.

Also, I like that Yeasayer band. They were on Dark Was the Night comp, which is a great, kind of depressing, but for a great cause regardless album. So get one!

An Ode To Love And Hate

Mom. Ugh. I am so sorry that I can be such a little bitch sometimes. I honestly hate myself during the moments that my impatience and ingratitude lashes out at you—when the words are coming out of my mouth, when I'm thinking those awful thoughts, when I'm allowing my frustration to create snide comments about your lifestyle. So you're a little crazy and disorganized. So we all are. I deserve a slap on the wrist.

Note: I gave my mom those handwarmers I made.

Why are they so good?

I remember there being all sorts of small clothing stores in Taiwan with the cutest, most creative shit in the world. This is idea2lifestyle on Etsy.

Advice to Friends

I would not recommend using alpaca wool and a double moss stitch pattern for your first project on double-sided needles. It was really hard. Also, don't make them too wide.

Lost Mine Trail, a la Liz

This is one of Liz, our roommate/landlord's paintings. Really amazing, as is most of her work. I had her email this to me as we went on this hike and took a picture of this view in Big Bend National Park. Art: Liz Schoeberlein.

nest Robe

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck; I am drinking too much coffee and looking at the nest Robe website. I want all these things. I don't have any money. I don't know how to order it anyway. I don't have the patience to figure it out.

Tehas

West Texas is the biggest place ever. Seriously so big and full of desert and now I know where Dr. Seuss got many ideas for his illustration. I took so many pictures that it was hard to pick out what ones to put up. The trip consisted of Boulder-Santa Fe-Hueco Tanks-Marfa-Big Bend-Alpine-Taos-Boulder. Fun times. I want to live at the Hueco Tanks for a winter sometime soon. I left a lot of blood on the rocks there. We only had three days to climb because we wanted to see Big Bend, and my fingers have never felt more pain. I think it had something to do with the fact that we were out for an average of six hours every day bouldering pretty hard. The third day was pretty pathetic, but still really nice to be in the hot sun. No climbing pictures, because there were only two of us and we were usually pretty busy spotting each other to get anything good.

The Love Child

One of my longest ongoing problems is that I tend to lack the ability to communicate consistently with the people in my life; I can be a poor, poor correspondent for long periods of time when I am undergoing significant changes, and hence catching people up is kind of a hassle. Case and point: the dog. Most of my catch-up conversations include the phrase "me, Jacob and the dog are all happy doing....", or something along those lines, and this is often responded to with something along the lines of "What! You got a dog? When, why, what kind, etc, etc." SO, to bring an end to all this, I am going to explain the dog, or Fang (or Budders, or Mister Dillinger, or Nutter-Butters, or Nutterson, etc...).

First of all, this dog is technically JACOB'S dog. He was born about eight years ago in some crazy lady's backyard in the woods outside of Steamboat Springs, CO. This (crazy) lady (we'll call her Crazy Mountain Lady) had a passion for breeding wolf hybrid dogs and unfortunately could not really afford to feed them, so after six months of malnourishing them, she finally came to the realization that she had to give them away. However, to receive a wolf from her pack, one had to prove that they truly wanted one and could understand the animal. Jacob saw an ad in the paper for "Free Mountain Dogs," and as he had scowled at the price tags on and tradition of inbreeding dogs like St. Bernards, Great Pyrenees, and German Shepherds in his search for the perfect dog, he decided to see what the ad was about. So, Jacob ends up at Crazy Mountain Lady's trailer in the woods, where he finds a pack of nine small, crazy wolf-like dogs that she explains are a mix of 50% wolf, and 25% German Shepherd and 25% Great Pyrenees. She tells him to pick one out that he likes, which he does (baby-Fang). However, the catch is that he can't have it unless he gets it to come to him. Now, these dogs that have lived in the woods for six months with no human contact other than the Crazy Mountain Lady were not exactly the most friendly, loving, golden retriever-like animals around, in fact they were scared shitless of any human (including Crazy Mountain Lady). But Jacob really liked one of them, and had done some research on wolf hybrids, finding out that they can make amazing companions if you raise them well. So, two visits later, the very patient Jacob gets little Fang to approach him, and Crazy Mountain Lady lets him take him home. And thus begins a budding romance between boy and dog.

Fang was terrified of people for about two years, but Jacob worked to train him, socialize him and eventually get him into the realm of what could be considered a "safe" dog. In the meantime, Fang proves himself to be one of the most loyal, compassionate, and yes, thoughtful canines on the planet. He is good with other dogs, and though he shies away from most people, he doesn't show any signs of attacking, and in fact becomes quite warm to those who he spends time with. And his personality is the most amazing part. He makes different sounds and movements to express his mood. He responds to conversation. He cries occasionally.

When he was five and living in Nederland, CO, I met Fang. He ignored me most of the time, and after six months would wag his tail at me and sometimes come up to me. I don't think I had the best approach, but oh well. And then Jacob and I moved to Taiwan, leaving Fang behind with Jacob's parents, where he would miss Jacob (and not me) for the next ten months. When we got back, he moved down to Boulder with us (technically Jamestown, where our first house was). For about two or three months, he treated me the same as he always had, which can best be described as just-above-indifference. But then a gradual change started to occur, and now after nearly a year, he shows me much the same behavior as he does Jacob. He is still very much Jacob's dog, and his best friend, but I do love the dog too, and felt pangs of sadness when we left him with Jacob's parents for a week to go to Texas.

Fang is now almost eight, and he's gotten sentimental with age. He allows most people to pet him, and except for the days he's especially angry or annoyed with Jacob and me for whatever reason (I swear he has doggy pms), he heels like nobody's business.

Still Digressing

Okay, I seriously hope this is my last post for the day. I really like these a lot. I want one in canvas and one in light gray soft leather. That's what I want.

I digress...

Image from dropsnap.

Collection Item!

Hi. I collect broken eye glasses. My collection started three years ago in Portland, OR when I found a pair of wire-rimmed glasses outside my work that had been smashed and flattened in the road. Since then I have amassed about 25 pairs (and countless eyeglass stems, but those don't really count because they're just not as good). At the moment, they're stored in a shoebox at my mom's house, but I've been trying to come up with a different storage solution. My friend's father, a French artist, did a project some years ago where he collected smashed coca-cola cans in the street and wrote the date and location, and later put them in 3D frames. It was beautiful. One that sticks out in my mind is one that he found on Rue de Republique with two straws in it...so precious and full of that sweet 70's we drink coke together holding hands love feeling (you know what I mean). However, I have not been recording dates or locations of my finds, nor do I want to rip off his idea (or partially rip it off, anyway), nor do I feel completely compelled to turn it into an art project (yet, but who knows). I thought at one point that it would be nice to make a big wooden box with type-case like shelves or drawers with a compartment for each pair (I lack a drawing at the moment, because I haven't actually thought about this very much). I have no idea how to do that (or anything related to woodmaking), though. But Jacob might. And he said he'd build me a box, so...would I actually have enough gall to ask him to do that, and would he even if I did? I'll get back to you.

Anyway, I found a great pair today...one of the rare all pieces are still there pairs. Fantastic. That makes my day.

A cold day for a wallet

Made this puppy today Brad's industrial Juki. (Note to self: buy an industrial sewing machine already.)

I'm not really much into bags and wallets, but it's interesting stuff to learn how to do. I guess I wouldn't mind being able to make my own leather bag every now and then. Brad has some bright orange leather that I can't picture anywhere but in the form of a hobo bag strung over my shoulder...

I really like Eatable of Many Orders' soft leather bags.





Too Bad they're so expensive.

Endurance

It was a tiring, but good weekend. Saturday we climbed at North Table Mountain, outside Golden, for the first time ever. It was okay. The routes were mostly pretty short, and there were definitely a lot of people around. However, there were a few longer routes, and everything we climbed was really fun. I took one little fall. I think I'd go back during winter, but will probably skip the spot for the rest of spring and summer. Oh, and I forgot to mention the view—Coors Brewery. Yeah, I think I'll skip that spot for a little while.

We capped the day off with a drive to Denver to go see Great American Taxi, getting home around 1am after a monumental 45-minute ride with the hiccups (too much red stripe). Jacob works with the keyboardist''s girlfriend, and we had been talking about going to one of their shows for a while. It was a jam band. I think their website describes them as "nothing short of pure American bliss," and I remember being told they wanted to stay away from the jam band categorization, opting instead for the Americana category, and they did have a gospel group on stage, but no, it was a jam band. But what the heck? There's nothing wrong with jam bands. They jam. You gotta respect that.

Sunday we drove up Magnolia road to Gross Reservoir, walked in the sun for an hour or so, detoured to Backcountry Pizza, where my perfect slice of pineapple-jalapeno was devastated by some asshole who unscrewed the top of the red pepper (I ate it anyway, as the New Year's resolution was to go with the flow, but I complained a lot and made a show of turning down one of Jacob's jalapeno-pepperoni slices). On the way back down the Canyon we stopped at Nip/Tuck and bouldered (not powerfully) for an hour or so as the sun went down.



This morning, tired and sore, I'm pretty impressed by our tenacity after some months of serious not getting out.

First post, First Sweatshirt

Hi there. This is my first post ever. Being that it is extremely awkward to sit down and describe myself and all my interests (also because I am in a hurry at the moment), I am going to skip the introduction in favor of showing you a picture of the sweatshirt I made yesterday. It's made out of a 100% cotton (um, er, not exactly organic). Mostly my pattern, but measurements for shoulders and length are borrowed from Stretch and Sew. Only because it's my first. From now on I'm only using my own patterns on sweatshirts. Seriously. Promise.

Kind of a funny story about this sweatshirt. I made it with florescent yellow thread, and as I was finishing up I was thinking that I wish I had found a way to incorporate the thread more into the outside appearance...as I was sewing one of the cuffs on inside out. I had to keep it that way. So, you can see in the detail, my lovely florescent yellow right cuff detail. Cheers!