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November 30, 2006
falling dark, rainy day
Damp, gray days like this one make me dislike Georgia a little less; any break from the relentless sun is a blessed relief. It feels like fall on a day like this, feels like I wish it had felt in September. Biking home in a t-shirt on the last day of November felt pleasant and unnatural at the same time, and while I could get used to mild weather like this, you just can't get mild weather like this without also having to take the oppressive heat that precedes it. A week from tomorrow I'll be back where I belong, and I hope it's snowing when I get there.
Posted by jodi at 08:27 PM | Comments (2) | categories: canadians love to talk about the weather
meathead, now with 100% more french fries
Hat pattern by Larissa Brown.
Buttons by Kate Bingaman.
Surly tired face by Yours Truly.
Posted by jodi at 08:14 PM | Comments (1) | categories: sticks and string
November 29, 2006
do it for science
Scott Eric Kaufman is measuring the speed of meme; the results will be presented in a panel discussion at the Modern Language Association. Help him out by first reading this post, then linking to it in your own blog and pinging Technorati so that he can track it. You know you want to. All the cool kids are doing it, and it won't give you lung cancer or get you knocked up.
Posted by jodi at 11:49 AM | Comments (2) | categories: projects
it's a grave mistake, and i'm wide awake
Thank you all, so much, for both the congratulations and the condolences. It's not been the free and easy week of slouching and slacking that I thought it would be; I haven't really begun to pay off any of my crushing pile of sleep debt, although I have made a tiny stab at the interest. I've been dreaming about Benny a lot. I'm having trouble concentrating, having trouble caring, and can think of little else but Friday next, when my good friends at airtran will be escorting me home to my family. I'm so grateful that my students, rather than just scraping by and showing the signs of late-in-the-semester stress in their work, are instead knocking my socks off with fantastic drawings and leaping improvements. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to muster the enthusiasm I need to finish out this last week and a half, and blowing off my teaching would be a very bad thing to do. I will show you some of those drawings soon; I hope to photograph them over the weekend.
Now that I've got a bit of time to pick up the sticks and knit something for myself, I can't focus on anything and instead am working in fits and starts (or rather, starting a lot of things and tossing them aside once it's apparent they're not going to fit). I wouldn't be able to finish anything were it not for Larissa and her amazing Meathead pattern, the Fastest Hat Ever(tm). When I sat down to start my first one in green Lamb's Pride Bulky, after first having to undo a horrible snarl after following Larissa's suggestion to work the doubled strands from either end of the ball (I'm a little too inept to manipulate such things without making a huge mess), I wound it up in a centre-pull ball and then wound half of that off into a new centre-pull ball, leaving the two conjoined in the middle and naming the one on the left Chang and the one on the right Eng. I was going to take a picture of Chang and Eng for y'all, seeing as they were so darned cute sitting there joined by a string, but I cast on first and then before I knew it Chang and Eng were gone and I had a hat in my hands, only it seemed a bit small so I unravelled it and knit it in the larger size and I swear the cup of tea I had sitting there when I started all this was still warm by the end. And I had a cute, warm hat.
A few days later I wound up a new pair of twins, this time in brown (um, Ang and Cheng). I cast on. I went to the kitchen, stuffed a sliced onion into a potato and threw it in the oven. Before I knew it I had a delicious, golden baked potato. . . and a new hat.
Part of the deal-i-o* in being in the meatheadalong is that you have to embellish the hat over the left ear any way you like (rather than the usual cow-ear-tag, which I love). I wanted my embellisments to be interchangeable, so for now this one is wearing a few of my "knit" and "stitch" buttons.
Yeah, those are scraps from the dress. I don't throw anything away. I'm going to use buttons on the green hat too, but I'm waiting for some buttons I ordered from Kate at obsessive consumption to arrive; I got 20 so I can change them every day if I want.
I'll tell you a secret, I'm totally in love with this hat. I thought it would look dorky on me with its pointy, smurfy top, but it's very cute. I also made one in a smaller yarn for an infant, and I'm scouring my stash for anything else I can use to make more, more, more! I left a bunch of hot pink bulky wool in my filing cabinet at home, and it's not the fact that everyone whose name I drew for xmess is male that stops me from making them all pink meatheads, but the fact that I don't think pink would be a good colour on any of them. Actually, that might not stop me.
*I only use words like this because I know it pisses Peter off. Does that make me an asshole?
Posted by jodi at 09:46 AM | Comments (4) | categories: self-absorbtion : sticks and string
November 21, 2006
sleep on, sweet babes
My beautiful Miss Benny followed her brother this morning, as gentle a passage as he had last February. I feel like a whole era of my life has ended; Benny was born in my bed almost fourteen years ago, and she and Fat Boy have been with me longer than Peter has. She rests beside her brother now, right where we'll plant our flowering crab in the spring.
This morning I wrote to my mom that in a few short weeks I would be snuggled on the couch back home with my head on Peter's shoulder and Benny curled in my lap, where I belong; when I wrote that, my baby girl was already gone. Goodbye, my darling girl.
Posted by jodi at 07:14 PM | Comments (55) | categories: crazy cat lady
November 20, 2006
there were children crying and colours flying
I passed.
Here's a few of the pieces I showed:
Twelve prints put together to form a textile pattern. Woodcut, digital print, chine colle and sumi ink drawing on rag paper.
Woodcut and letterpress on Japanese paper; the paper has been folded and re-folded numerous times to fit through the letterpress, giving it a soft, supple texture. I'm going to do a lot more prints like this, I love working this way with this paper.
The t-shirt I made to wear to my review; silkscreen and embroidery. It's a little hard to read but it says "breathe" down there amongst the raindrops. This was to serve as a reminder to me, and was inspired by a set of stitch markers that Bonnie sent me a while back which carried the messages: focus, stitch, create, breathe.
You can see more of the work on my flickr page.
Also, check out this beautiful finished Gatsby Girl pullover. I want mine in that colour now.
Posted by jodi at 10:23 PM | Comments (13) | categories: school
November 19, 2006
Holy cow, look at the time.
Also: look at my calendar! It's a good thing I didn't do anything foolish like sign up for that posting every day for the whole month thing; at least there's one area in which I've saved myself from being a miserable failure.
Tomorrow, friends. My Very Big Deadline is almost upon me, and that means it's almost slacking time. After my review tomorrow afternoon I'm going to go and gorge myself at The Grit and then get an early night; most of my colleagues go out drinking after their 30-hour review is over, but I'm really, really looking forward to paying off some of this sleep debt. And other than teaching my class, I'm not planning to do much work for the rest of the semester.
All of the work I'm going to show for the review is done, I'm sleepy as hell and just putting the finishing touches on the t-shirt I'm going to wear tomorrow (because, sleep debt or no, that's where my priorities lie). And then, to bed. Goodnight, all.
Posted by jodi at 10:49 PM | Comments (3) | categories: school
November 16, 2006
tiny baby feet
While Peter was visiting me last month, we spent many of our afternoons languishing in coffee shops; I lay back on the couch at Hot Corner day after day, listening to Peter read things to me from the newspaper and pausing occasionally in my knitting to hoist my gigantic clown mug of tea. That's the life for me, I'm telling you. I finished my Opal Tiger socks and used the leftovers to make a second pair for our friends Mats, which I can finally show you now that Mats' socks have been delivered to him. They're not really misshapen, my fingers just aren't a very good stand in for sturdy toddler feet.
Since then I have knitted nary a stitch (not counting a few stitches I can't tell you about until they hit your local magazine stand later in the year), being far too busy in the studio. But, as we all know, High Energy Jenny is in a family way, and I couldn't very well show up at her shower without some rocking baby socks, so I took some time from my backbreaking printmaking schedule to make these:
Socks that Rock, in the Fred Flintstone colourway.
Posted by jodi at 09:38 PM | Comments (12) | categories: sticks and string
November 11, 2006
in memoriam
I remembered, during my long, long day of letterpress printing today, to shut down the Vandercook and observe two minutes of silence; I didn't think about my granddad, lucky enough to be drafted (into the mines, but he made a deal to go into the British army instead) so late in the game that by the time he was out of basic training the war was over; nor did I think about my step-grandpa, who broke his own elbow with a hammer in a work camp in Holland in order to go to the infirmary, which was easier to escape from, and spent the remainder of the war in a cellar whose trap door was hidden by a heavy dining-room rug. I didn't think of them because both of them survived (although both are gone now, and missed). Instead I thought about a stranger, someone from the other side of the lines, who wore a tiny battered bronze medal that has lain in my mom's tin treasure box all my life. Although my mom later cast doubt upon it, the story I remember being told is that of one of my great-uncles plucking the medal from the cold breast of a dead German soldier, hastily pocketing it for a souvenir, perhaps a cynical act of greed or perhaps a loving act of brotherhood, who knows. As a child, on rainy days when the tin box was brought down from the closet shelf, I would touch the medal and wonder about the man (or boy?) who wore it, whether he suffered much, whether he left a sweetheart or a child behind, what he did to earn this decoration. I wanted to know (still want to know) who he was, what his hopes and dreams had been, and whether the tiny, tiny connection I felt with him was just in my imagination. Much later I tried to find out what that medal was, to give myself one little scrap of knowledge of who this man might have been, but could find nothing. All I will ever have of him is this: a tiny cross dangling from a faded and grimy blue ribbon, the date it was given him inscribed in cursive on the back: 16 Dezember, my birthday.
Posted by jodi at 07:59 PM | Comments (7) | categories:
November 10, 2006
nothing but pretty pictures
Posted by jodi at 08:49 PM | Comments (1) | categories: in the studio
November 07, 2006
nice rack
5 hours: 68 prints today. I might have printed more if we had another one of these racks, but I pretty much filled this one (the last print had to be hung up in my studio to dry; no room!).
Working intuitively rather than pre-planning prints makes for self-doubt at every step of the process, and I'm not as excited about most of these prints right now as I was when I put the last layer on them. In general I'm not really feeling as confident in this work as I was, oh, say last week. It's not due to a bad critique or anything anyone said or did, or even the fact that my review is a week and a half away, just that pendulum that constantly swings between raging ego and crushing self-doubt, picking up speed in the other direction again. I'll be okay, I just need to crank out this work and move forward on some of the large, labour-intensive projects I'm in the middle of. And fast.
Posted by jodi at 07:22 PM | Comments (3) | categories: in the studio
November 06, 2006
killing time
While cleaning out some folders I came across this photo of a corner in our dining room, and it made me homesick. Peter swiped this statue from the trash when a Catholic school he worked for was demolished.
(we really need to paint that wall)
I wake up restless these days and can't lie still; I've been getting up earlier and earlier every day, biking to the studio with frost still on the ground, bundled in an assortment of ragged knits and scraps (cut-off knee socks to warm my arms, cut-off sweater-sleeve legwarmers) that make me look like a boxcar-hopping hobo from an old movie. The alarm is set for six, but today I had to pee so badly at 5:40 that I couldn't hold out, and rather than get back into bed for twenty minutes I just got in the shower. Now I'm finding things to do, to force myself to at least not leave the house before seven. That's just crazy.
It has come to my attention that I've been a bit neglectful of some of my friends in the e-mail department. I'm so distracted right now that I just scan my messages in the morning and leave them to answer later, a system that's only as reliable as my own memory, clearly not a very reliable system at all. If you're waiting to hear from me about something, please send me a gentle reminder, and I promise that after the 20th I'll be more attentive, more present and a little less fuzzy around the edges. Pinky swear.
Posted by jodi at 06:58 AM | Comments (5) | categories: self-absorbtion
November 05, 2006
chipping away at the flesh
Posted by jodi at 11:01 PM | Comments (2) | categories: in the studio
November 03, 2006
with aching hands
Posted by jodi at 10:24 PM | Comments (4) | categories: in the studio
November 02, 2006
as a child I must have read more books than I had conversations, because I think I was at least 20 before I realized that "misled" was not pronounced "my-zulled".
Sorry if I caused any confusion yesterday, but I didn't mean to imply that I'm crazy enough to try posting here every day when I have that huge list of things to do in the next seventeen days; I only meant to say that I hope people post lots of pictures so I don't have to look at all the words every day. However I can try, although I promise nothing, to put up a picture every day, how's that? Let's start with this lovely shot taken this summer at Dru and Em's wedding, which I just know my mom will want to frame for the living room. I mean, who wouldn't?
Peter, when he saw this one, said that it illustrates perfectly the true nature of our relationship. Just for the record, he's totally full of shite.
Posted by jodi at 08:53 PM | Comments (13) | categories: general
November 01, 2006
hi there
I've decided to participate in NaBloGAH!Mo this November. You know, that thing where you try desperately to keep up with reading the weblogs of all of your friends who are crazy fool enough to be composing blog fodder every single day for the entire month. And, you know, resist the temptation to skim it all, and actually read, all the while cheering on those other friends who are writing novels (y'all are nuts).
I'm not sure who I'm trying to kid. My continuance examination is scheduled for the 20th; I'm not too stressed about how it's going to go, but here's a list of what I need to have finished for it:
* finish this dress* make a second dress of woodblock and letterpress printed Japanese paper; so far I've only done the woodblock printing, and the paper will have to be folded and refolded to print a small section of text over a large surface (I'll be printing the text both in iron oxide powder and transparent ink). Then after that it needs to be cut and sewn into a dress.
* a bunch of pillows (I'm shooting for six), appliqued, woodblock printed and embroidered. I'm working on the applique now and it's going fairly quickly.
* more prints. I don't know how many, six maybe? eight? These all have several layers printed already and just need to be resolved somehow.
* a new wall installation similar to the one I exhibited last week, only different. I'll reuse some of the components and make some new stuff.
* a small grouping (six or eight) of these drawings. I don't want to spend too much effort on these because while they're quick and easy I'm tiring of them; I really like them aesthetically but conceptually they're pretty one-dimensional, and I'm sort of over them already.
Can that really be all? It's so much work, and yet it all fits so neatly into six little bullet points. Those of you who knew me two years ago know just how crazy I am, and also how much I can pull off. So, let's wait and see. At any rate, reading will be a rare luxury for the next few weeks, so if you love me, post a few pictures I can skim to, eh?
My last knit design job for this fall has been delivered, and once I've finished up the math for the sizes I've got nothing new on the horizon; I haven't been submitting designs because I have to get through this hump of studio work first. Next semester will be much easier in the studio, and so I likely will have the time for knitting work. But I can't spare the time to put submissions together right now, so I can't see myself lining up any new work in the next little while. These two jobs are tough to balance because they both use the same mental skills and the same muscle groups, so when I burn out creatively from one, or give myself hand cramps with one, it's impossible to just take a break and turn to the other for a while. So. I have a few things coming out in the spring and then, I don't know. Perhaps I'll take a break, perhaps I'll start work on some things to self-publish (looser deadline, there) or perhaps I'll spend the entire Americanthanksgiving weekend swatching new designs and line up some new work. But don't all hold your breath, just in case.
While Peter was here over the weekend I indulged in a little bit of non-deadline knitting; I finished a pair of socks for myself and a matching pair for a friend, but can't show them off until my friend's socks have been received (so as not to spoil any surprises). I started a new pair as well and am 2/3 through the first, thanks to my three-times-weekly bus ride across campus to teach my class. At the rate I'm going perhaps I can wear them to my review on the 20th, if the applique-ing doesn't chew all of the skin off my fingertips first.
Posted by jodi at 09:20 PM | Comments (2) | categories: in the studio : knit design : school