things and stuff!

1) i just baked cookies! my mom used to make acorn cookies - oval-ish butter cookies with a pinched-point opposite a "cap" of chocolate and chopped pecans. not actually made from acorns, though you could try such a thing if you felt like going through all the steps necessary to make acorns less poisonous. :) anyway, i have been craving that almond flavor again, so i found and then heavily altered a recipe. the result is a soft, crumbly, nutty, almondy cookie. i doubt they will make it through the weekend!

here is my reinterpretation of the above recipe:

1/2 cup butter, melted (i figured there was no way around this)

1/2 cup sucanat

1T stevia (equivalent to 3 T sugar)

1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 t almond extract

1/2 cup almond meal

1/4 cup flax meal

1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 cup chocolate chips, melted (i used 1 cup, but this makes waaaay too much)

preheat oven to 375. whip butter and sweeteners, add milk and extract. combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl, add to wet ingredients. roll a tablespoonfull or so of dough in your hands, then flatten it slightly and pinch it in one spot along the edge. place on a buttered baking sheet. bake 10-12 minutes. transfer to wrack and let cool completely before dipping in chocolate. then let cool again. yield: 22 cookies (that's how many i got)

they really do look more like acorns with the chopped pecans sprinkled in the chocolate, but i never cared for them and don't have any on-hand anyway. as they are, i think they look more like this. hehehe.

2) bart and i played some frisbee again last night. we moved up a level to throwing it to each other while the other person jogged to the left or right. it was fun! after returning home, we went through several boxes of electronics/computer-related thingamabobs. there's going to be an e-waste collection at a nearby church in a week, and since bart has a lot of that sort of thing, mixed in with perfectly good and useful things, we set aside a half hour and ended up going through all of it. and designated a good 75% as e-waste! yay!

3) i have been doing my daily-drawings on a near-daily basis...sorry for the lack of posts.

4) i just finished listening to "1984" a couple days ago, and am now listening to "cooked". both are good and thought-provoking, but "1984" was a lot more intense than i thought it would be. i'm kind of surprised it's taught in so many high schools. i think i would have been slightly traumatized if we'd been forced to read it.

5) this post is quite long enough, thank you. happy weekend!

je heart...

google maps! i could browse it for hours- our planet is fascinating! i find myself particularly drawn to cold, remote places, for some reason.

le tres random!

1) i have been shirking my daily drawings. saaaad. i think i actually kind of burned myself out. but i've still been pursuing creative things this past week- got some prints made of my work at kinkos, made a few pairs of earrings, and finished a couple other little projects that have been on the back-burner for a while.

2) i just remembered a song from 4-H camp. it started like this: if i were not at 4-h camp, this is what i'd be! if i were not at 4-h caaaaaaaaaamp, a _____ i'd be! and then a little slogan-type thing from that "job", which was, of course, shouted more so than sung. my favorite was: if i were not at 4-h camp, this is what i'd be! if i were not at 4-h caaaaaaaaaamp, a carpenter i'd be! SIX! BY FOUR! YOU NAIL IT TO THE FLOOR! *BANG!* one of the other things "i'd be" was a poultry farmer or something like that (help me out here, marls and kel)- after which we shouted KILL THE CHICKEN! KILL THE CHICKEN! WRING ITS LITTLE NECK! *SQUAWK!* that was back in middle school. i wonder if they still sing that part. i remember some of my friends being a tad nauseated by it. meh! the only other one i can remember was "stewardess" (kinda weird- it was a co-ed camp...): "coffee, tea, or me, sir? here's your little bag. *BLAHGHG*" not very appropriate, now that i think about it...(do you remember any of the others?)

another favorite was SHARK ATTACK! doot-dooo doot-doot doot-doooo! accompanied by screaming and running around :) i often returned home from a week of camp with a raw throat from so much shouting. can you believe that? ;)

3) a new sleep-quote from bart!: "aw man, the quality control was back there! d'oh!"

4) bad idea: white tile floors. they never, ever look or stay clean. i guess the only good thing about white tile is that, unlike nasty white linoleum (hopefully no one out there is particularly attached to their white linoleum floors), it won't scratch or stain over time. my family in NY used to have white linoleum flooring in the kitchen, but this was a notably bad idea because the kitchen is a main thoroughfair (???) and in places like potsdam, which is to say, places where they sand the roads in winter, easily-scuffable flooring has about as much a chance for survival as...well, anyway, the floor looked really bad. when i was in ninth grade, we had it redone (and it looks awesome...wait- am i gushing about linoleum flooring??). shortly before that, though, my mom and my brother michael and i sat on the floor and drew allllll over it in permanent marker. so awesome!

5) bart just told me about this website: runpee.com. it arms you with valuable information for when you can safely "run pee" during a movie at the theater and not miss anything super awesome.

6) happy long weekend!

drawings...

l-r: jellyfish lady beckons lunch. bird lady and clay-colored thrush (not that you can tell ;) - from this website). flower.

1) I didn’t post a drawing yesterday (obviously), but I did do a lot of drawing! It was fun- I did several figure drawings, which is pretty unusual for me, but all of a sudden I had a bunch of ideas, and one idea led to another, and so on. I may post three of my favorites, once they’ve been finished. I’ve wanted to draw some of the characters from “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel” ever since listening to the audio book, and now Bart is reading it (in actual book-form), so it’d be really easy to go back and reference different passages.

2) Bart and I went to a nearby park yesterday evening so he could teach me how to throw a Frisbee. (Interesting tidbit- MS Word automatically capitalizes “Frisbee”.) Throwing a disc, much like kicking a soccer ball, has always been difficult for me. In fact, I was so hilariously awful at first- sending the Frisbee too high, or way to the left or right- that Bart jokingly accused me of having ulterior motives of trying to get him to do strenuous exercise. Heh. But I got better! B gave me some advice to use my wrist more than my whole arm, and that worked well. I also figured out that it helps if I say “pew!” as I wing the Frisbee. :) There was much improvement in the time we were out there, but then it started getting dark. I look forward to more Frisbee. :)

3) There is a teenage boy riding a tiny motorbike up and down and down and up the street. He has been at it for the past …hmmm… three hours. Hasn’t the novelty worn off by now? Why hasn’t he been hit by a car yet? I mean…uh…maybe someone should politely go request that he give the tiny whiny toot-bike a rest. It sounds like he’s riding a weed-whacker. And as it turns out, there is a group of them, taking turns (awww, isn’t that nice?). Gah.

4) Hmmm…other stuff? Oh yeah- I keep forgetting to write about how our water heater refused to work for the past two weeks. It’s fixed now, as of yesterday (yay!) - showers were pretty much unbearable.

Toodles!

PS- this is hilarious. (warning: contains cats) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLG2wtE7TM&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ficanhascheezburger%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded

#18

i have been trying to create more leafy-y shapes and patterns. the vines were fun to draw.

2) i am working on getting limited edition art prints made of some of these daily drawings that i think have turned out best. i went to kinkos today to do some test prints, and the guy working behind the counter (he had to print them from a cd) liked them a lot. so that's a good sign, i guess. which reminds me- i've been thinking about this some, and have decided that it's ok for you to download my drawings for use as desktop backgrounds only- anything else is stealing. not that i think anyone would steal :) but i was also wondering if you could tell me if you would let me know which image(s) you download for that one specific purpose listed above. since no one leaves comments anymore, it's hard for me to figure out how to improve my work, so if there's something you see that you like enough to stare at on a daily basis, that's very useful to me. :) though these drawings are experimental for the most part, comments/feedback are welcome...i guess i never really said that before...

3) there is really good ice cream at the 99 cents only store! breyers double-churned peanut butter fudge. for a dollar! i bought two, and will probably make bart go with me tomorrow to get five or six more tubs. :) yum. as bart pointed out, sometimes vons or albertsons has ice cream one sale 2 for $6- but never 6 for $6!

4) the scripps college press was in an article in print magazine last month- it was listed as one of the top 34 design programs in...the world. it shares a page with the university of texas at austin; the institute for book design, academy of visual arts (leipzig, germany); and center for book and paper arts, columbia college chicago. the press' blurb is short, though longer than u-tex and leipzig's. here's what it says ( * added by me): "at scripps, an all-women's liberal arts school*, a strong tradition of printmaking and bookbinding continues with the popular typography and the book arts course**. last semester, the class created 109 limited edition books to be sold through the scripps college press, which started in 1941 as an experimental studio for students. 'right from the beginning, students know someone else is going to see their work,' says kitty maryatt***, professor and director of the press. the students, including men from other claremont colleges, start with binding their own journals. they are required to write and illustrate a text on a topic discussed collectively in class, which are bound together in a book at the end of the semester. in addition to traditional printmaking and letterpress printing, the students learn digital printing. maryatt says, 'students do everything: make their own work, print their own pages , and bind the books. and if there are mistakes, those are their mistakes, and if there are glories, those are their glories.'"
* liberal arts school- not even an art school!
**note: course, singular. one class at a small liberal arts school, rubbing elbows with fancy-schmancy artsy-fartsy institutions from all over the world. goooooooooo scp!
***she is simply amazing.

columbia's blurb is kinda funny. here is a short quote: "...students can earn a master of fine arts in book and paper arts or in interdisciplinary arts and media, which incorporates performance art and installation art. one recent thesis explored gender issues in society by creating an army of blow-up dolls individually encased in translucent paper*. 'i'm confident in saying that our facilities are probably the best in the world,'** says [interdisciplinary arts professor melissa] potter."
* ????
** i shouldn't make fun, but seriously? confident in saying probably? the best in the world??

5) it's over! it's friday!

#17

#16 and some words

here's yesterday's drawing...a tiling, yet again. yay!

1) b and i have been married for three months! and we have been a couple for almost four years...that is kind of crazy (in an extremely awesome way) to think about. :)

2) on tuesday i noticed that the grout between the floor tiles in the kitchen was looking pretty gross. yesterday i scrubbed it, with a toothbrush and vinegar-water.

3) also yesterday, i bought a dress from target for $6.25. even if it falls apart (which it inevitably will- the clothes at target are made with the fabric equivalent of tissue paper), i can use the pieces to make a pattern for a dress of the same style.

4) i am reading (listening to) "a free life" by ha jin. it's about a fictional chinese couple and their son who live in the u.s. and what it's like for them- their relationship with and attitudes toward china and their family/former lives there, their work situation, interacting with their community, and so on. in some ways, it's incredibly boring and mundane- the author goes into sometimes excruciating detail about minor events that seemingly have no relevance and progress the plot in no way. but in a way, that makes the story enjoyable, too. i read another one of jin's novels, "waiting", a few years ago, and it was very much in the same style, so i knew what to expect. both books centered around a male character (who ages considerably during the story) of good integrity and work ethic, and his relationship with two women, his child/ren, his work, and his own thoughts about education, government, and literature (which plays an important role in each book as a place of solace and inspiration). it reminds me a little of "the good earth". but i'm only about half way through it...i really don't know what to expect for the chapters to come.

5) sometimes idiomatic sayings look really weird written/typed out. like...well, hmmm. i can't think of any right now, but usually when i put them in, say, an email, it just starts to look really weird and i end up writing something else instead.

6) for some reason (maybe just curiosity), yesterday i began compiling a list of every videogame i have ever played. it was fun- ah, nostalgia.

#15; word

green leafies :)

also, here're some pictures of the new scripps college press book (the one i was helping finish), entitled "WORD":

#13 and #14

...both in tiled form. i drew each of these over a period of a couple days on the train earlier this week.
13-

14-

updates:

1) the books i've been helping with at scripps are done! students were actually able to start boxing up the dry ones (there's a lot of gluing at the end, and it's supposed to be allowed to dry for three days, minimum) to send to the standing order patrons (people/institutions/booksellers who buy a book every semester sight-unseen). this happens very rarely, but with fourteen students in the class this semester (twice the usual number), things get done pretty fast! i forgot/didn't have time to take pictures...maybe i'll be able to do that on monday.

2) ummm, 2)? no, there is no 2). this entry is finished :) happy friday.

#12!

these are fun. also, i am enjoying this daily drawing regimen.

also: i DID eat (cookies and cream) ice cream and work on the (wall street journal) crossword puzzle on saturday. it was highly enjoyable. and while i filled in wee boxen, b read a book. this simple leisure time felt incredibly luxurious after months upon months of no and/or stolen leisure time. yay!

#11 and some updates...

here is #11, which took me two days to finish due to lack of time and the train being too bumpy to draw on most of the time:i've been having fun with these tile-able images, so i tried to make this one conducive to tiling. i think it worked pretty well:so if you're wondering why i've been attempting to draw on a train, it's because i've been commuting to scripps to do some work (yay work!) these past few days and it is a LONG commute when you take public transportation, no matter how you do it. i take the goldline (light rail) west into LA, and then the metrolink (train) east to claremont. i could do any number of bus/lightrail/train combinations, but they all take the same amount of time: two hours each way (for a grand total of four hours roundtrip. bleh). this is all because i am not an experienced driver- i have driven only two or three times a year for the past three or four years. i just don't like it very much. anyway, the point is i've been taking the train to claremont and use that time as efficiently as possible.

if that was 1), then this is 2)

i discovered that i don't like ice cream. ice cream made with goat's milk, that is! b and i bought some laloo's deep chocolate goat-milk ice cream last week and it was deliciously chocolatey but unpleasantly strong on the goat milk flavor. i've had (and dislike) goat cheese and thought that the strong flavor came about at some point in the cheese-making process, but no. le sigh. it's too bad- their packaging is quite pretty. confession: i clean and keep pint-sized ice cream containers after having consumed its contents. c'mon- it's not that weird - they're useful and pretty storage containers. and, heh, i like to reminisce about delicious ice creams i've had in the past. confession: i do the same with chocolate bar wrappings (though i have yet to figure out something really smart and functional to use them for).

3) returning to 1) for a moment: i'm working at scripps in the art department, specifically for the book arts class, which always needs help finishing its semester-long limited-edition collaborative book project. not that i mind! anyway, this semester's book is beautiful- definitely, i think, within the top ten coolest books made at the press in the past twenty-something years/40+ books (and i have seen them all) . if you have $250 lying around, i would highly recommend it. (that, by the way, is a bargain. don't even argue with me.) i'll describe it later and try to snag a few exclusive pre-publication pictures (i'm pretty sure that's allowed, actually). the title is "word". subjectmatter: words and meaning. visiting artists sam winston and ron king came to provide some initial direction.

4) the scripps senior art exhibit opened on friday. it was fun.

5) i want to eat ice cream (we bought cookies and [cow] cream to make up for the unfortunate goat ice cream incident) and work on the wsj crossword puzzle. maybe i will do so.