I knew that once Real Life started setting in again that I’d have a little harder time getting things done with the Listybits.  And I know that the day’s not over yet.  But in true List-Ho fashion, I’m planning on celebrating tomorrow, since it’ll kick off the year of holidays task.  I’m good with that.

Plus, my assistant’s back from her holiday trip to Georgia, which meant I had to think about work, no matter how briefly. :)

I still managed to do a bit on the list, though.  Spun a bit of fiber toward task #2, and watched one of the Netflix queue (#46).  I also drew three more ATCs, nailing down more of both #19 and #21, all at once.  From top to bottom, “Make it So”, “All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go”, and “Nevermind Takes Me Back Home”, respectively.

This last one isn’t as dark as it looks here — my photoeditorware hated it.  I think it’s all the red.

As this project goes forward, I’m finding that I’m having a little more trouble sitting still.  (Well, today it’s not so bad, since I found out why my stomach was hurting the other day.  Let’s just say it was not my gallbladder, but a more…uh…regular visitor, if you catch my drift…)   If I’m not feeling like I’m making progress, I’m getting antsy and want to pick up the ATC blanks (procured, also, from Turtle Press, by the way) and make a boatload of cards to keep me productive.

I’m also noticing, ironically, that when I’m making things and have the pen or brush in hand, I’m getting that same suspended time feeling that I used to get.  I forget about the clock.  I forget the mundane concerns.  Hell, I even forget to smoke, and that’s progress toward goal #33.  (Maybe the key to quitting will lie fully in keeping a brush in my hand at all times.  We’ll see.)  There is no time when I’m working and I’m in the Flow of it all.  It’s just me and a piece of paper.

I  like that.

Off to attempt to get all glitzed up for a night out.  I’m taking my ATC blanks with me, believe it or not, and my little bag of supplies.  (Glu-stick, two Micron pens, a Niji waterbrush in Large, and the tiny box of Windsor & Newton watercolors I got for Christmas from J.)  I figure if I get bored, I can draw stuff to pass the time.  I used to do that — not when I was bored, I mean, but ALL THE TIME — and my journals were much more full and active back then.

I feel, just a litle bit, like this is a kind of Personal Rennaissance.

I really like that.

These are crayon cupcakes.  They’re not just for breakfast anymore.

Actually, they’re project #3 in the “Collage Unleashed” book, and she gives a metric ton of ideas for what to do with them.  Unfortunately, you need two special kinds of irons (and one hotplate if you don’t have an iron), and I have neither of them.  So instead, I broke out the heat gun and promptly tried to burn the house down.

Luckily, water is plentiful.  So I ended up with these backgrounds for future collage and an intact home instead:

I kind of hate them.  A little bit.  I’ll use them if I have to, but honestly?  My kind of art is relatively clean and uncluttered, and these, if stared at for a few moments, could put me into some kind of panic-stricken apoplectic fit.  Same goes for these, which were project #2 in the book, based on a scraped paint technique:

Though I have to say, I’ll probably use these before the crayon ones.  Even though they kind of remind me of those shirts we all wore in the ’80’s with the paint splatters on them.  My hair gets bigger just thinking about them.  Where’s my Aquanet?

Actually, they go in progression from right to left.  The first one, I blended a bit too much in some places and it all greyed out.  The second one’s much better, but the Today’s Hits of the 80’s is stuck in my head.  The third is a little better still, but still makes me think of Duran Duran album covers.  (Great.  Now “Girls on Film” is on repeat in my head.  Ah, the good ol’ days…)

So while today was a resounding success from the standpoint that I’ve now done the whole first chapter of the book’s exercises, it’s kind of disappointing to find out that I kind of prefer my own art style better.  Or reassuring.  Maybe I really *do* have my own artistic voice and just never bothered to acknowledge that it was a preferred voice at all.

Ah, the lessons we learn from bad ’80’s hair-band artworkings….

I dug around a bit after this and found two full packs of watercolor postcard books (!!!), which means I don’t have to go buy anything for the mail art item of my list.  (#47)  Not wanting any dust to settle on my head, I whipped up this for a friend of mine who said she’s allergic to codeine and I’m not sending any of THAT to her, am I…?  Oh, but I am:

Watercolor and pen and ink on paper.  It’s looking a little bit splotchier in this scan than it really is — it’s still a little wet in places.  It’s already been stamped and dropped in the mail.  I hope she gets a smile out of it at least.  (No codeine were harmed in the making of this mail art.)

I put up two more pages over there at the side — the mail art gallery, of course, and one for item #2, the spinning everything from my stash item.   I made a list of what I have, and miraculously….it’s only just over fourteen pounds.  I know to some of you, that’s going to seem like one hell of a lot of fiber to have waiting.  But seriously, folks…two months ago?  That was at least triple from what it is now.  Between some spinning up of things, gifts to other spinners, and the big fat stash sale….it’s down 3/4 from where it was.  Seriously.

So for the rest of today, I’m planning on sitting very still here in the office, watching movies from my netflix queue (#46) and spinning on some of that fourteen pounds (#2), and possibly doing a few more ATCs (#21).  I updated all the other blogs today, so I’m 1/52nd of the way to that one. (#65), including starting to list my Plants on the letterboxing blog.   And I might nap a bit.  All this activity is fabulous, but a little bit exhausting.

I’m really going to be sad when Real Life kicks back in and I have to do other things all day.  Watching these numbers fly by and get checked off (or getting closer to being checked off) is enough to make me want to do more, y’know?

I know, I know. I’m rarely this yappy over here. But SSH went running off to play at some show, and time alone = more stuff on the list gets done. I should have waited and posted later. See how I am?

I dove into the ATCs tonight. I have this new box of watercolors, and some ATC blanks that I picked up at Turtle Arts (I may not live in Seattle anymore, but they’re still my favorite place for anything arty…) , and when the two converged…? Well…

Sometimes I Still Think of You
ATC 1/100

All Roads Lead to Home
ATC 2/100

How could I resist?

Project #3 from the art book is in the oven. Pictures of that whole mess tomorrow. (It’s making conglomerate crayons, in case you’re wondering. SSH already tried to eat one.) This is also my second day in a row of drawing something (yesterday’s was…uh…bad. I was way too tired to hold the pen, much less make anything come out of my head. It won’t be pictured here unless I’m held and gunpoint and forced.).

I can’t believe how easy it is to fall back into this life where my fingers are covered with paint and ink. They’ve been so dye-covered lately that I forgot how good this all feels.

Both of these will be over there at the right in that gallery thing, under “#21 – 100 ATCs”. The astute will note there’s also one for carved stamps, since I did one of THOSE tonight, too. Here’s your warning, though: If you letterbox, or you’re planning to come out here to Omaha to letterbox here, you might want to skip the carved stamp gallery. Most of those will be going right into boxes when the weather gets warmer, and there are some people for whom knowing what the stamp looks like ahead of time completely ruins the experience. So don’t look, if there’s a chance it might kill it for you. I’d rather have you come find it in person. :)

I’d like to think that I can keep up this level of production, but honestly — this weekend is kind of an anomaly. SSH has it off work and doesn’t have a gig until New Year’s Eve, and Carin’s on a 6-day run of shifts, so no yarn-dyeing marathons are scheduled. I’m still knitting two last Christmas gifts, but they’re coming along fine, so I don’t mind taking precious minutes away from them. (Plus, my wrists hurt a bit from one of them, so I have to do it in moderation anyway.)

The fact of the matter is really this: All the time that I used to spend kind of staring into space or reading a whole lot of blogs, all the wasted time spent on nothing in particular? I’m chanelling it into this. It’s like I have a purpose again, beyond work. (Not that I don’t love what I do. I love all the people and I love doing it, and I love what comes out of it.) But for a while now, if it wasn’t Lime & Violet-related, I didn’t do it. If I wasn’t working on L&V stuff, I was collapsing in a heap and trying to get motivated to do more, faster. Now, I’m splitting my time between Stuff For The Knitting World At Large, and Stuff For Me.

I feel much more energized and balanced now.

I tell people all the time, when they ask about flagging motivation, to remember to “fill their own wells” or there will be nothing left to draw on. Well, duh…now I’m just taking my own advice.

Know what this little stack of loveliness is?

Project 1 from “Collage Unleashed”, part of the 101list’s task #7.  Those are, believe it or not, dyed paper towels.  They’re “dyed” with diluted paint, and I have to say that I like the smooshed up ones better than the ones that I did folded.  I didn’t do the freezerpaper monoprinted ones, mainly because i don’t have any freezer paper, and quite honestly, I’ve done quite a bit of waxed-paper monoprinting in my life, so it wasn’t overly new or mind-expanding for me.  So I skipped that one tiny section, and did the other ones instead.

I did find that most of my acrylic paints have dried out, thanks to a mouse getting into my drawer and deciding to chew through the ones in plastic bottles.  (The golden ones, luckily, are in metal tubes, and the vermin didn’t get those.  But sadly, that’s less than 1/4 of what I had at one point.)  On the plus side, it’ll make ditching all of those chewed and/or old paints easier to get rid of when I get to the part where I get rid of 75% of my art supplies.  So it’s not all bad.  I’ll feel much less guilty about getting rid of things that aren’t functional.  (UNfortunately, the paints were one of the things I was going to keep, since I will be using them a lot more in the coming 2.75 years.  But they’re cheap.  I’m okay with that.  I needed an update on some of those anyway.)

So item #7 is well underway.  I’m going to try projects #2 and #3, probably tonight if I can stay awake.  I had a bit of a galbladder issue earlier today, and I’m pretty wiped out.  (I think it’s potatoes that are setting me off, believe it or not.  Yipes.)

Also done today:

• Filled out and had signed a new will and a durable power of attorney.  I haven’t had those updated since we got married two years ago, so it was time.  Just in case.  You never know what might happen, and I want there to be NO QUESTION about what happens to me or my stuff if I’m incapacitated or dead.  No machines, no caskets — just cook me down and spread my ashes on Mt. Rainier.  That’s it.  Give away my stuff.  It’s a pretty easy will, really.
• Item #47, sending out 25 pieces of random mail art to people, got a shot in the arm today, too.  I found mailart.org, which is like a GINORMOUS clearinghouse for All Things Mailarty.  Which is good, since it’s been literally years since I had anything to do with the mail art community, and I have no idea who to even contact about getting back in-network anymore.  Now I’m just chuffed.  If you head over there, check out the Small Art Project — 2″x 2″ squares of artstuff, all sent in from artists all over the world.  I like small.  I think I’ll have to contribute as one of my 25 things, for sure.

Which means that I have now checked off or started EIGHT things on that list.  Almost 1/10th, and it’s only day three!  Granted, from here they get harder, for the most part.  They’re long-term stuff, or stuff that requires multiple actions.  Or travel.  None of which will be checked off in a day.  But it’s so good to be able to see progress, and early — it should keep me going for a while.

I’m planning, by the way, on putting up pages for my multi-part projects.  Over there, on your right, in the sidebar at the top, there’s a category header for “pages”.  You can see the 101 in 1001 list is there right now, under the About link.  I’m hoping to have one over there as a kind of a gallery for things like the 50 carved stamps, the 100 ATCs, and even today’s project with item #7.  It’s a way for me to keep those entries that have a zillion different parts all together, so I can tell at a glance how much I’ve done and how much I have left to do.  Plus, with things like the mail art and ATCs, it’s a record for me, since those will be sent out and/or traded, and I won’t have the object anymore.

I still can’t believe how much this is motivating me.  I should’ve done this years ago.

So early this morning, I woke up to this:

A veritable winter wonderland. It even made the junkyard look kind of pretty. And it seemed like a perfect day to get started on the list of 101 things in earnest.

Which, of course, it was.

I was able to cross two things off my list entirely:

I submitted some handspun sock yarn to the Yarn Museum (having to bite my lip the entire time, because I’m completely freaked out by anything that has a judge. The Yarn Museum isn’t judged, per se, but I was all afraid that they’d send me an email back that told me not to bother. See how my lizard-brain works?), which means I crossed #5 off my list. Done.

This bolstered me and I moved on to #32. I proudly introduce Letterblog , which isn’t really all that exciting yet for you visitor-types. I have it in my calendar to update it weekly. And at first, I’ll be doing two changes a week instead of one — I’ll be adding background content and links to boxes I’ve placed, that kind of thing, along with a regular entry. Eventually, it’ll just chronicle what it is that I’ve done that week or what I’m thinking about on the trail, that kind of thing. It just needs more building before it’s really a fun thing to go look at, and I’m all about the fun things.

But it’s there, and I’m perfectly happy with that. It’s crossed off, even though the updates are an ongoing thing.

Lastly, I dug through my cookbooks. I have, like, eight of them, and I think I’ve used precisely two. For anything. Ever. I like to look at them, but looking and doing are two entirely different things. (Much like how I look at a whole lot of patterns on ravelry.com when I’m procrastinating with the actual knitting, I think. Looking makes me feel busy.)

I tried a crock-pot recipe from one of the Gooseberry Patch cookbooks for a chese and potato soup that Carin heartily recommended. (We have the same cookbook. I made her look at it after trying a few things from it before, and liking both of them. She, apparently, liked it, too…)

So after an afternoon of peeling and chopping and dicing…

We can haz s00p!

Ahem. Sorry. You know I had to.

Which brings my grand total for list item #26 to….*drumroll*….

One.

But it’s a start. Only 49 more to go, and I can cross that one off, too. This, my friends, is called Thinking Positively.

The last thing I’m about to work on before falling over into a fully productive-but-unconscious heap of girlflesh for the night is #7. I picked Traci Bautista’s book, “Collage Unleashed” for the art book I’m going to work straight through. And the first three exercises are all related and easy. Of course, now that I’m sitting here typing, I kind of want to go to bed, so I may leave those for tomorrow morning.

Either way, I’ll definitely post scans of the first three exercises tomorrow. It’s going to be strange, working in someone else’s style. I’m used to just standing at the canvas or page and deciding in the spur of the moment what to do. They all come out looking similar. Not repetitive, but with a kind of “voice”, so to speak. They always have. So I’m interested to see whether working from a book with this many step-by-step How To’s is going to end up looking more like Traci or like me, only with a new set of crayons.

I’m kind of hoping for the latter, but I suppose, like learning a new language by immersion, you’ll kind of sound like the person you’re mimicking for a while. And I’m okay with that, too.

* * *

So, to recap, #5 and #32 are done. #26 is 1/50th done. #7 will be well on its way by tomorrow morning. And #38, which I didn’t mention above, but should have, is getting there day by day. (I sort of cheated and started on it early, though I still can only do one a day, so I don’t feel guilty in the slightest. I still have to cull down the culled-down imps, even, so really, I needed the head start.)

I’m chuffed. There’s just something about lists that makes me all squishy.

Thank you, too, to all the people who volunteered, either here, on livejournal, or in email, to help me with your expertise. I’m going to be away from email all weekend, but I’ll definitely be writing back on Monday to take you up on some of those offers. It’s a big honkin’ list. :)

Squee!

I wish I had wonderful pictures to show you of all the fabulous things I ended up making for Christmas for the family. I worked really hard on some hats, a blanket for mom, a scarf that was supposed to be for Mother’s Day, but lapsed a bit into hibernation status for a while.

Instead, what I have is this:

The tradition of making vaguely insulting hats for my Father in Law (as he’s vaguely insulting himself…or, rather, overtly insulting and abusive) continues this year with the addition of the Sexy Turkey Hat.

He wore it to church. My life is complete.

* * *

I found this great site the other day. Day Zero is the home of a project called “101 in 1001″, which is where you make a list of 101 things you want to do in 1001 days. (Roughly 2.75 years.) There’s a group over on Livejournal starting on January 1, which I joined, and I made my list last night.

I have no idea if all 101 things will even be doable in 2.75 years. Honestly, I think some of them might take a little longer. But making the list, and trying to keep it entirely to personal things (versus Work Things, which comprise the majority of my life these days, or House Things, which will become largely irrelevant when/if we move or the house is sold from under us) was HARD. Like, harder than I expected, hard. I hadn’t realized until making it just HOW much of my goal-setting and action-making was work-related, since my work and my Life Outside of Work are pretty much one and the same.

It’s a long list, by definition. So I’m popping it here, behind a cut, for people who want to see. I’ll be putting it into a file on the sidebar at some point, just so I can find it easier to cross things off it over the next two-and-three-quarters years, too.

I did find it interesting, too, that this list took up the last three pages in my art journal. Like I was using that last little bit of space to plan for the future volumes. Because if I do everything on that list? There will be a LOT to journal about. Just sayin’.

And with that, the list:

(more…)

Kerrie, half of the Treehugger Books/Turtle Arts outfit I mentioned in the last post, emailed me thusly:

Eliza, you are too kind. You really made my day! I’m all teary eyed.
Thank you for reminding me why we’re doing Important Things.

I have a bribe back for you. I *think* (Zencart is still a bit of a
puzzle for me sometimes) that I have created a coupon that you can post
to your blog or forward to anyone who you’d like to, for a “Friends of
Eliza” discount. Just a little thank you for the nice post! This will
give any of your readers 15% off an order of $10 or more. They can use
it as much as they’d like until the end of December.

If they’d rather that their 15% go to Washington State flood relief
efforts, they can just let us know and we’ll do that instead. If that
is the case, they should just not use the coupon, but let us know in
the special messages field that they’d like 15% of their order to go to
flood relief.

Anyway, here’s the coupon code:

The coupon code is 94c60a310e

So not only can you get a faboo art journal, but you can get it cheaper, or donate money to charity. :)

See why I love these people?

Okay, before I even start this, I want to add a disclaimer.

Kerrie, the girl behind these journals, is a friend of mine.  In fact, if I ever get back to Seattle, I’m probably going to ploy her with much coffee and probably some cookies to come over so I can keep her and make her play with me.

But that said, i wanted to relay a little bit about art journaling, and mention a book that I’m really, really digging:

I’ve been using the Treehugger Books journals as my art journals for more than two years now.   I’ve got a couple of the sketchbooks (on thick-ish cardstock pages) that I’m down to my last four pages in, and a little smaller one (I think it’s 5.5″ x 8″, but don’t hold me to that — I’m bad with measurement estimation.) that i’m about to start in when this one’s all full up.

They’re fabulous journals.  No, seriously.  The one I’m using now has been in my bag on more trips than I want to count, and it’s held up like a dream.  The coils aren’t all bendy (they’re some kind of squishy plastic rather than the metal ones that I always seem to destroy and bend out of shape), the cardboard covers are mostly blank so you can tart ‘em up however you wish, and the pages have held up to all kinds of crazy crap I’ve stuffed in there over the years.  And trust me — my art journals get a workout with water media, colored pencils, strange things glu-sticked to the pages.  I don’t just buy blank books.  I use them to death.

I love the fact that they lay flat, so I can work in them either one page at a time, or on a two-page spread.  I love the way they take color and ink without bleeding through, even when all I’ve got with me is a bunch of sharpies.  And best of all, I love the philosophy behind them.

They use 100% post-consumer recycled paper.  Which means you’re not just keeping a journal, you’re also saving the earth, one blank book at a time.

(picture shamelessly stolen from the treehugger site.  pretty, isn’t it?)

According to their website , in the first 2.5 years of production, they’ve saved 4.269 gallons of water,  5813 BTUs of energy, 455 lbs of solid waste, 29 lbs of water-borne waste, 883 lbs of atmospheric emissions, and a FULL 25 TREES.   And considering that it’s a relatively small, two-person company, that’s saying something.  Just imagine if everybody used them for their blank books…?  We might *all* have better air and water, just from journalling on something that’s awesome to journal in ANYWAY.

There are two sizes to choose from (medium and large) and two weights to choose from (sketch, with heavy duty paper like cardstock, or journal, with lighter weight paper that’s still pretty darned heavy), and all the covers are that thick cardboard-like stuff.  (All recycled, too.)  The medium sketch will set you back $12, while the large one comes in at $20, and unless you’re one of those every-day journalers (I wish I was you!), they’ll last a couple months, easily.

One of these days (shortly, hopefully) I’ll get some scans of some of the pages in mine and put ‘em up.  With Lime & Violet’s relative fame, I’ve been a little reluctant to get too overly personal in some places, though.  (Yes, I realize all the listeners know far too much about my girlparts for me to be too concerned with privacy at this point.  But you know how it is.)  But since re-finding letterboxing and all its related hoopla, I’ve also been finding my way back to the pages of my paper journals, and the pen fetish that ruled my life for so long.

It’s kind of nice, too.

So go buy a journal, save a tree, and write or collage or draw yourself some brilliance already. :)