little black journal

It’s official – I’m back on the handcraft-wagon.  This was a fun project, easy but not too tedious, and a good re-introduction to knitting after a nearly two-year hiatus.  I was a little anxious about how it would all come together in the end, as it looked a bit strange on the needles (Shane kept asking me if I was knitting an octopus), but once I bound off that last stitch and slipped it over my head, I was (mostly) pleased with the finished piece.  I wish it had been a bit chunkier, and I’m not entirely sure about the color, but knitting season has just begun for me, so there’s plenty of time for round 2!

Pattern found here from kirsten johnstone.  I modified it slightly by adding an 8th loop and decreasing the amount of length variation between loops.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve picked up my knitting needles and rummaged through my yarn bin for the perfect skein of wool or cotton, but as of late, I’m feeling inspired.  Maybe it’s the cold weather, or the store displays of chunky, textured cowls, or maybe it’s just the desire to keep my hands busy as I plow through my usual line-up of holiday movies, but I’m ready for a project.  I’m also feeling the need to justify the yarn-buying binge I found myself caught up in a couple of years ago…

I spent a couple of hours online yesterday prowling for ideas and could easily bust out a super-simple loop scarf  (think Anthro minus the high price tag), but Lord knows I’ve knitted my fair share of scarves, so perhaps I’ll try something new (maybe a variation on this necklace/scarf thingy?).  Whatever I pick, I can assure you that I’ll be spending Sunday afternoon with a pile of yarn in my lap and Little Women playing on the TV.  ’Tis the season.

I have always dreamed of being one of those people that has time every morning to brew a pot of coffee and enjoy a half-grapefruit and slice of cinnamon toast while reading the paper in my plush terry bathrobe.  Instead, I am the person that flies out the door on my way to work with my tube of mascara in my pocket (to be applied while on the train) and a tangle of earrings and necklaces in hand (I have a talent for accessorizing on-the-go).  On the days when I really have things together, I remember to grab a yogurt out of the fridge and shove it in my bag before I head out.  And so I when I emerge from the lightrail tunnel and see that green and white Starbucks sign, I feel beckoned by the promise of sweet blueberry muffins or banana bread.  For both budgetary and caloric reasons, I usually resist the urge to carbo-load on these not-so-good goodies, but still, the urge is there.  So I came home yesterday and decided to one-up Starbucks with my own home-made muffins.  My own moist, flavorful, low-fat, banana-pumpkin-raisin-pecan muffins, complete with some stuff that’s actually good for you, like flax seed and wheat germ. And oh-my-gosh - these are good.  Now Shane and I have something tasty to bring to work with us for the next few mornings - I hardly even noticed the Starbucks sign on my way into the office today, knowing these little gems were tucked inside my purse.

Recipe from here, with my variations below:

Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas
2 eggs
1/3 cup canola oil
1 can pumpkin
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F.  Mix bananas, pumpkin, and eggs in a food processor.  Mix those wet ingredients with honey and oil.  Mix all dry ingredients.  Stir dry ingredients slowly into the wet.  Fold in raisins and pecans.  Insert paper liners into muffin pan. Fill each muffin tin 2/3 full.  Bake for 20 to 24 minutes (your house will smell like heaven on earth), or until a toothpick or knife comes out clean. Enjoy with a cup of coffee and the morning paper (set your alarm 20 minutes earlier if necessary).

One of my goals for 2011 was to stop considering cereal as typical and acceptable dinner fare.  Sure, in a pinch, a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats is better than say…a wedge of cheese with a side of potato chips (not that I’ve done that), but still, I’m a believer that dinner should be hearty, flavorful, and nutritious.  Shane and I have made great strides in our meal preparation this month, since it is indeed frugal month for us, and we cannot trade in our Cheerios for a yellow curry from our local Thai place, or burritos from our favorite taco stand.  The crock pot we bought the day after Christmas has proved invaluable in helping us prepare simple, delicious, multiple-serving meals.  Today I threw a whole mess of stuff into the crock pot, flipped it on, took care of a bunch of Sunday to-do’s, and come dinner-time, voila!  Vegetable beef stew.  Fabulous.

A couple of crock-pot tips and tricks, based on our limited experience:

-  If you are crock-potting on a weekday and plan on your dinner cooking while you are at work, make sure the crock pot is actually on when you leave the house.  Otherwise, you are due to come home to a pot of raw, devastatingly wasted pork loin.  Lesson learned the hard way.

-  I pulled ingredients from a few different stew recipes today, and threw in a couple of strips of orange zest on a whim.  The subtle tang was a nice addition.

-  Serve stews with a slice a crusty bread, and follow up with a piece of home-made carrot cake.  Your spouse will adore you.

Our p-patch plot, planted 10 weeks ago with tiny little plants in neat little rows, has recently turned into something of a jungle.  We’ve had boatloads of lettuce, summer squash that seems to double in size overnight, and crisp, sweet snap peas that are usually munched on as we make the walk from the garden back to our house.  Just call me Farmer Kelly…

The tomatoes and strawberries aren’t yet ripe for the pickin’, but they show definite promise.

All in all, we feel like we’ve done pretty well in our rookie year of veggie-gardening.  But there are definitely things we’ll do differently next year – a couple of words to the wise:

- Don’t assume that one of those dinky little 2-foot stakes is all you need for your peas – our vines outgrew those things in a matter of minutes, and everything would have been much simpler if we’d built a trellis from the get-go.

- 12 lettuce plants is far too many for a two-person household.  I’m sick of salad.  I was actually relieved when some of our plants started to bolt and needed to be removed.

- Squash and zucchini plants grow freakishly fast and get freakishly big.  Just sayin’.

- Gardening is rewarding and fun, but watch out – it can cause marital tensions; I got very defensive last week when Shane accused my squash plant of crowding his strawberries.  How dare he.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be seeing more signs of red next time we go out there!  I’m ready for a good, juicy tomato.

These are a few of my newer favorites, hung as part of the show.  The general theme was ‘mixing media’, as I have completely fallen in love the way that encaustics allow me to use everything from my photographs to bits of fabric to old maps from the glove compartment in new and interesting ways.

Note that my next exercise will be in learning how to properly photograph art, but these should give you the jest of things…

pdx, 24″x36″, mixed media encaustic (map on tissue paper, painted nylon netting, photo transfer of trees):

mountain creek, 16″x16″, mixed media encaustic (nylon netting, photo transfer of trees):

rue st martin, 12″x16″, mixed media encaustic (nylon netting, photo transfer of parisian rooftops):

porto, 36″x24″, mixed media encaustic (painted nylon netting, photo transfer of bridge and screen wall):

As is usually the case with any long weekend, I am sitting here with the knowledge that I have to return to work tomorrow and wondering, ‘Where did the past three days go?!’. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess…

I was up and at ‘em first thing on Saturday morning to head over to West Seattle for my work day at the encaustic studio. The instructors of the workshop I took in March have a great space set up over there for renters, where I had everything I needed right at my fingertips in order to make a lovely little mess. It was a productive day for me, as I finished a couple of pieces and got started on a couple of others, but still, even after nine hours in the studio, I wanted more. These sorts of intense art sessions are exhausting, but completely energizing at the same time. Can’t wait to get back in there. Here’s a sneak peek – more photos to come when I have the whole ‘collection’ done.

Yesterday we zipped down to Portland for a long-overdue visit with my brother and his family. As I’ve said after every trip down there over the past two years, I can’t believe how Elise has changed since I saw her last. She is taller, faster, chattier, and showing major signs of favoritism toward her Uncle Shane (I won’t hold this against her).  One of her favorite toys these days is the Magna-Doodle that Shane and I bought her for Christmas, and she spent quite a bit of time on my lap this weekend, drawing to her heart’s content.  Whatever I asked her to draw, whether it was an elephant, a penguin, or a picture of her Grandpa, she responded enthusiastically with, “OK, sure!” (her latest catch phrase), and proceeded to give it her best shot.  Granted, all of her doodles bear a striking a resemblance to one another, and I’m not sure I could differentiate her giraffe from her representation of Uncle Shane, but she gets an A+ for effort.  She also loves to read, and had a lot of fun pulling books off the shelves left and right during our visit to Powell’s this weekend.  I like to think of her as a future book club member-in-training.  Goodness, I love this little girl!

And so, another weekend come and gone (sigh).  But it was so, so good while it lasted!

Three or four months ago, I started thinking about a blog redesign – Little Black Journal is now over two years old, and has been in need of a little refresh for awhile now.  For any of you readers that follow me via Google Reader and haven’t been to the site in awhile, this is LBJ, circa yesterday:

As I was laid up on the couch last night with a mild case of the cold flu, motivation took the place of procrastination, and I spent several hours tracking down a decent template, tweaking the heck out of the one that came closest to my ideal, redesigning my header, and testing it all out on the beta site that my uber-techy husband set up for me.  And now…Voila!  I’m pretty happy with the direction I’m moving in – the new site seems cleaner, fresher, and allows for larger photos than my old layout could support.  The header is also a great place for me to ‘showcase’ some of latest artwork and will be updated periodically.  Also, FYI, I have started linking my photos to my Flickr page, so if you want a larger-format photo, just click on the image in the body of my blog.

I’m still fiddling around with a couple of minor things – fonts, text color, margins, etc., but I’m gettin’ there.  Don’t hesitate to leave me a comment if something seems funky – I am by no means a web designer or graphic guru, so feedback is always welcome (I just spent a couple minutes opening my blog on 5 different web browsers and it looks different on every single one – I feel your pain, J!).

It’s an improvement, though, no?

My encaustic workshop wrapped up on Monday, and I’m just getting around to taking photos of my work and processing my thoughts on the whole experience.  I had some anxiety about being able to make it through four straight eight-hour days of art-making, but once I got into the swing of things, I caught myself checking the clock regularly in hopes of actually slowing down time.   I was totally bummed when Monday evening rolled around, and my short-lived experience as a full-time artist was over.  But my bummed-ness was offset by the fact that I was walking away with a pretty cool collection of work and a renewed passion for art-making.  Below are a few of the highlights…

This is one of my favorite pieces, made with wax, thread, and tissue paper printed with one of my images of Paris:

This pattern was woven with thread, then cast in a mixture of clear and white wax.  As the class progressed, I became known as the girl with all the white wax – a lot of my work was fairly muted, and I was one of the few that allowed the color of the wood panel underneath to really show through.  I loved the color and grain of the birch veneer, and so I figured, why hide it?

More white and clear, set over a tissue transfer of one of my sketches:

I brought a couple of the ‘seed pod’ sketches that I used for my food art back out for these two pieces:

One of the things I liked most about the class was the opportunity to experiment with different media.  My instructors brought all kinds of new ideas on how to achieve unusual effects with every-day materials.  This is what happens when wax is coated with shellac, then heated with a torch – lovely:

And this is shellac sprayed with India ink.  This charred effect comes from some kind of chemical reaction between the two elements – no fire necessary.  I love it – I never knew painting could feel so much like a chemistry class!:

I am vowing not to let this new-found interest fizzle like so many of my other artistic intrigues, so hopefully I’ll be posting more encaustic work in the future.  Aaaaagh!  So many possibilities, so little time…

I am now in the midst of a four-day intensive encaustic workshop at a local art school.  Eight hours a day of slopping wax on pieces of plywood, melting it with my new blow torch, layering on sheets of tissue paper, coatings of shellac, or whatever other random materials my experimental instructors have on hand, and generally just making a lovely mess of things.  It’s all a bit overwhelming, and my inability to really control this new medium can be frustrating, but I love it.  It’s been awhile since I’ve really been immersed in an art project, and it feels good.  Here’s a small sneak peak of things…