Illustration Friday: Sour

…although, with the amount of coffee we consume, I don’t think creamer has ever soured in our house.  I also wanted to portray what a right-handed person would see when holding a cup designed for a left-hander.  I’ve had this silly cup for 22 years, purchased on Fisherman’s Wharf in S.F. at the left-handers’ store.

Glasses

My new glasses.  I order them on-line through this company recommended by my friend, Eve.  They were only $25 and arrived in 10 days.  It is taking me a bit to get used to them as I had worn the previous pair for 5 years.  They seem awfully bright, but I think they’ll match my increasingly greying hair nicely.

 

Commissioned art quilt

A friend commissioned an art quilt from me for her wedding anniversary.  She provided me with the basic design, while I fiddled with the composition a bit in the process of designing the quilt.  It is hand-appliqued, hand-embroidered and hand-quilted.  The two trees are linen while the rest is cotton. 

Illustration Friday: Fierce

 

The Giant House Spider is indigenous to NW Europe and the Pacific Northwest. Each summer a few male Tegenaria duellica are spotted streaking across our living room floor as they search for a mate. This spider held the Guinness Book of World Record for fastest spider at the speed of 1.73 ft/s. While it is intimidating to see this 4 inch spider up close, it poses no threat to humans or pets. It is helpful in controlling Hobo spiders, which look very similar but are smaller in size (I had mistakenly identified this spider from an earlier post).

 

“Motherhood don’t think”

Silly thing available on the Internet that is still interesting enough to try yourself:  Wordle

Here is a word cloud of the front page of my blog.  Useless, I know, but fun to do.  I like to think it is as my own version of magnetic poetry.

Practice makes for more practice

Inspired by the book The Undressed Art: Why We Draw  by Peter Steinhart, I enrolled in a life drawing class.  Having given up art for so many years, my drawing skills are really rusty. Each week I have a chance to just practice, without any thought of product.  

Because its aims are gradual and cumulative, drawing is a discipline, an organizing and training and honing of the imagination so that one may be ready to work spontaneously whenever called upon.  It is a discipline that requires constant exercise.

I always loved the life drawing classes I took in college.  While this class is really a practice session without an instructor, I find that I learn so much just by making drawings for two solid hours and looking at what the other participants create.  I seem to be really smitten with contour drawing, so I’ll have to shake up my technique next month.

 

 

Ooooh that smell

Can’t you smell that smell? 

Wow, I just quoted lyrics by Lynyrd Skynyrd!  Never thought I’d do that.

Every June we are visited by this crazy, bad smell of death.  Oh, it’s just our amorphophallus blooming!  I am always stunned by how bad this flower smells and I even forget it is there until the breeze shifts.  This year is the worst yet as the smell of dead rats creeps all the way up to our back door.  I am a bit embarrassed as to what our neighbor thinks–he probably is setting up rat traps as we speak.  I can’t get rid of the plant since it really is beautiful, but dear god, it’s bad. 

Wikipedia has some interesting information on the reproductive cycle of these guys.  The second image is what this beast’s belly looks like.  It acts as a temporary trap for insects to pollinate the flower.

 

Beach Day

We took our visiting family on a trip to the ocean today.  Our favorite WA beach is Westhaven State Park near Westport.  It’s a great surfing beach, although they have to wear full wetsuits all year.  We love watching the surfers and playing in the sand.  The best thing I noticed today was a young woman in a bikini and a wool knit hat with earflaps.  This was one of the few times I have been to our ocean beach when it wasn’t fogged in and drizzly.

 

Nothing is better than a cousin and an ice cream cone

 

Embroidered lettering on a fancy scarf

Embroidered lettering on a fancy scarf

Originally uploaded by wholeclothdesigns

I did a little embroidery on this vintage scarf. The letter looks nice, but is lost in the design. I think I should have used thicker thread? I was trying to make something snazzy for my blog banner photo. 

I have been focused on drawing for the past month or so, but I’ve also been working on a commissioned art quilt.  I hope to share photos of the final piece after I’ve delivered the quilt next week.  I have really been struggling with the hand quilting.  I think my fiber art vacation has made me a little less patient for this kind of detail work.  I did enjoy doing the lettering on this scarf, so I know I’ll get back to embroidery bigger projects of my own design soon.  Could it be the weather?  Sewing isn’t quite as appealing when the sunshine is calling me to come outside.

Illustration Friday topic: Hoard

 

Mogs lording over her strawberry plants.

I couldn’t believe it when I read what the theme was for the week. Last night I went to bed in an absolute panic having scared myself silly by watching the film A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash. It was made a few years ago and detailed the bell curve of worldwide oil consumption and how we are now on the downhill slide. I chuckled when someone mentioned in an interview that oil was hitting $50 a barrel…this was in 2006…crazy.  After the film I checked out this websitethat was mentioned in the film. Seriously grim…not for pre-bed reading.  I’m sure some of the info is a little too tinfoil hat for most people, but it did present some interesting information. One of the tools to cope with the coming economic crisis, according to this site, is self-sufficiency and food hoarding.

This makes me think of the months following 9/11.  I was working at a food coop at the time. A local group was told by their leader to purchase 200 lbs. of bulk non-perishables each to store in some bunker somewhere. We were flooded with orders for 50lb. bags of flour, 25 lb. bags of rice, etc. Our sales were really strong that quarter, but it made me sick to see so much food that would likely never be consumed.

I don’t foresee any bunker building around our house, but I do think we should plant a few more strawberry bushes and a couple more squash plants…all of which we definitely be eaten.