little black journal

This clear, crisp weather we’ve been enjoying has reminded me how beautiful downtown Seattle can be, so I grabbed my camera on my way out the door yesterday, thinking I was due for a good hometown shoot.  I spent my lunchtime walking through downtown and Pioneer Square, armed with my warmest hat and fingerless gloves, snapping pictures left and right.  I’ve walked past some of these buildings hundreds of times, and yet somehow never really looked at them.  I suppose that’s the power of having a camera around your neck – your eyes are suddenly open so much wider, as you seek all those perfect photo-ops.  Ideally, especially as an architect, I would be consistently observant, but it seems that whenever I’m downtown, I’m just a woman on a mission, whether it’s to grab a quick lunch, rush to a meeting, hurry to catch my bus, etc.  It was good to consciously stop and pause, stand on a street corner, and look around in every direction, taking in the way sunlight warmed the tones of a brick facade, or bare tree limbs crawled toward the sky.  This is just a small sampling of what I’ve been missing out on…

Just a few randoms…

love in a mist (2009.11.09):

paper tree (2009.11.27):

snow princess (2009.12.09):

Despite yesterday being a pretty busy day for us, we made sure to carve out some time in the afternoon to keep the Schnell family winter tradition alive and cut down our Christmas tree at our favorite tree farm out in North Bend.  It was a chilly day, but the sun was shining and there were lots of beautiful trees to choose from – we walked away with a perfect 7-foot Grand Fir.

This one was meant to be my ‘action shot’ of Shane cutting the tree down, but somehow it looks more like the tree is eating him alive.  Prime Christmas card material:

Victorious!

There is nothing like the warm glow of a Christmas tree – I am sitting by it and sipping on my hot apple cider as I type.  This is the stuff December evenings are made of…

My printmaking class ended a couple of weeks ago, but I made the most of my final days of studio access and cranked out some good stuff.

The two images below are collographs, made by carving into a shellacked piece of cardboard, rubbing ink into the carved areas, then running it through the press.

My next focus was on paper lithography, using some of my photos of Paris to make prints.  I spent a few hours wrestling with this process one night in the studio, and still don’t feel like I got it right, but are some nuggets of quality in here…

I also put together several graphic monoprints that I was pretty happy with – a couple of them are being given as gifts, so for the sake of not ruining any surprises, I’ll post pics of those once they’ve been unwrapped.

In short, this class was amazing – I now see printmaking potential in all kinds of random things, from tangled netting to old photos to sketches I did 4 years ago.  I’m in the midst of figuring out how I’ll get back into the studio sometime soon – can’t let all that potential go to waste!

I’ve been on a bit of a knitting hiatus lately, but a little bird told me that a little girl was hoping for a scarf from Aunt Kelly for Christmas, so I happily picked up a few skeins of soft, brightly colored yarn to whip up a couple of scarves for our nieces, Shanay and Hayden.  They are both rib-knit, one with alternating blocks of a chunky green and yellow yarn, one with a double-strand of two shades of purple.  Hayden wore her purple scarf around the house all afternoon after we exchanged gifts, which tells me it was a hit.  I like to think I’ll be doing my small part to keep these girls warm during the freezing cold winter to come…

Yesterday was full of reminders that I truly have so much to be thankful for.  The sound of laughter coming from our nieces and nephew, the smell of fresh-baked apple pie, the coziness of a warm home, the beauty of sunlight sparkling on a lake, the joy of being surrounded by people that I have come to love as my very own family…  It was a good day, spent lounging around the house together, eating to the point of stuffed-ness, playing games, and laughing till our cheeks hurt.  Shane and I pulled ourselves out of our post-dinner food comas to take a drive and enjoy the sunshine, returning just in time to re-stuff ourselves with dessert.  Perfection.

May we all count and share our blessings throughout the year to come.

I was thrilled to look out the window yesterday morning and see that the ground had been covered with a fluffy blanket of white snow overnight.  I grabbed my camera and rushed outside to snap a few pictures and take in the pristine-ness of it all.  There are few things more beautiful than snow topped branches.

The rest of the day was lovely and low-key.  We spent the rest of the morning drinking coffee with Shane’s sister, picking up the last few things for the big Thanksgiving meal, and revisiting some of Shane’s favorite neighborhood spots.  This little park was the perfect place to snap a few more pictures of our white little wonderland.  I was sad to see that the snow was already disappearing (I suppose beauty really is fleeting), but I managed to get a couple of shots before I needed to hop back in the car and thaw my fingers in front of the heater.

Shane and I had some time to kill last night before meeting up with a few of his friends for drinks, so we decided on a whim to check out the town’s bowling alley.  I was skeptical about how much fun it would be for just the two of us to bowl together, but after my third strike, I was having a blast, grinning ear to ear.  Yes, I came from behind and managed to crush Shane in our first game.

I was not so lucky in game 2, and Shane will probably give me a hard time for not posting those scores here, but I never claimed to be a fair and balanced reporter…

We ended the evening with a few of Shane’s old high school buddies at the local wine bar/ale house.  It was fun to listen to them reminisce – I obviously didn’t know Shane in high school, so I am always eager to gather more of the bits and pieces of memories from this time in his life.

Well, I’m off to prepare my first ever Thanksgiving apple pie – happy Thanksgiving to all of you!  God bless.

Yes, it’s been quiet here in blog-land lately…  My absence has been due to a general state of busy-ness, but with things that aren’t interesting enough to warrant a post.  Shane and I left Seattle for Minnesota yesterday and are enjoying a few days to relax and catch up with Shane’s family.  I slept in until 9:30 today, watched a couple of my favorite cooking shows, played Legos with my nieces and nephew, ate steak and potatoes…  It was a good day.  It’s not terribly cold here, but the landscape is definitely wintry, with bare-limbed trees and gray, misty mornings.  It’s nice to be cozied up indoors, savoring the blessings of family and a warm home.  Much to be thankful for.

One of the things that I value most about our church is their willingness to tackle and discuss ‘difficult’ issues, so Shane and I were quick to register for the latest series of depth classes entitled ‘Faith and Race’.  Race has always been one of those walking-on-eggshells kind of topics for me – out of fear of saying anything ignorant or offensive, I’ve usually chosen the path of avoidance when it comes to discussions on race.  It was nice to be in a room with so many people who were willing to step up take the risk of saying something that might rub someone else the wrong way, for the sake of us all learning about each other and about the realities of a racially unjust world.

There were a couple of topics in particular that really struck a chord with me.  One of these was the discussion on ‘white privilege’.  During our second evening together, we were all asked to fill out a questionnaire composed of true/false statements such as ‘I can choose a bandage in “flesh color” and know it will more or less match my skin color’, or ‘If a traffic cop pulls me over, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race’.  I answered ‘True’ to all 17 statements.  A perfect score.  But as other people in my group shared their scores of 10, 9, 8, etc, I became increasingly ashamed of my A+ paper.  I felt guilty that I couldn’t relate to other people’s stories of discrimination and inequality.  I was living in an easier, more comfortable kind of world, blissfully enjoying race as a total ‘non-issue’.  And so I was embarrassed by my privilege.  Then I read the questions again, stewed awhile, and the more I thought about it, my guilt transitioned into defensiveness.  I didn’t ask for these so-called ‘privileges’.  I wasn’t responsible for the production white-person Band-Aids, or fashion magazines filled with supermodels primarily of my same skin color.  These were things beyond my control, whether they were fair or not.  Sure, Shane and I certainly live privileged lives, but we have worked hard for things like our home, our well-stocked fridge, our clothes-filled closets.  So why should I feel guilty?  This period of defensiveness was thankfully short-lived as I reminded myself that the church leaders I value and trust were not intending to persecute me because of my race – there had to be a constructive lesson behind all of this.  And so I wrestled with this issue of ‘white privilege’ further.  And I came to recognize that I do regularly enjoy a number of unearned advantages based on the fact that I am part of the racial majority.  But what was I supposed to do with this realization?  I was happy to find that one of the topics up for discussion at the learning conference that took place at Quest yesterday was, ‘White Privilege – Now What?’  Jason read my thoughts as he expressed the difficulty in figuring out what to do with the knowledge that we still live in a very racially unjust world, where white people often enjoy certain benefits at the expense of racial minorities.  He didn’t give us a checklist of things we could do to right these wrongs, or a twelve-step process for obliterating white privilege, but his challenge to all of us was powerful: he asked us to allow ourselves to live in discomfort – to be ‘agitators for justice’, to be daily aware of and uncomfortable with the injustice of white privilege.  God has not called us to live blissfully ignorant lives.  No, I don’t know yet exactly how, where, or when I’ll be called to action, but I’m definitely walking around with wider, more aware eyes now.  That’s a start.

I’ve had a hard time really getting into my sketchbook lately, and as a result, haven’t really loved anything I’ve put down on paper.  But an art teacher once told me that whether or not you’re happy with your pieces, it’s still vitally important to get in the habit of regularly making something, so I’m taking his advice and sticking with it.  Without further excuses, these are the latest…

october (2009.10.19):

spider plants (2009.10.31):

bluebird (2009.11.01):

awkward girl (2009.11.07):