« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »

February 26, 2008

there are two kinds of people in the world: my kind, and assholes.

These people are my kind:

Shannon, Jacey, Sweetpea, and me

Peter and I just got back from a weekend in Baltimore, where we helped out with a big secret project that Jacey's been working on, a big exciting project that's going to blow big holes in your socks, I promise. We'd never been to Baltimore before and to be honest, I can't tell you much about it because the bulk of our weekend was spent in Jacey's basement, working feverishly, huddling over space heaters, squinting into bright lights, making art and having fun. I can say that although I saw very little of it, Baltimore endeared itself to me right away in the drive from the airport with its abundance of Sears and Roebuck Castleton model mail-order houses, which is the same house we own. I think Jacey may have felt bad that we worked on her project pretty much all weekend and didn't have time to do any fun stuff in Baltimore, but when I got back to the studio on Monday and somebody asked me how my trip was, I said without hesitation, "fucking AWESOME". And it was. Fucking. Awesome. Rock-star awesome, in fact. We met a lot of fantastic people and had a blast, and can't wait to go back.

We did manage to get away for a lunchtime meetup with the always fabulous Mama E at Red Canoe. It was a day off from school due to icy roads, and so I got to meet the Cowboy as well! It was so great to see Erin again, even for a short time, that I completely spaced on my bloggerly duties: there I was in a cool bookstore/cafe in a town I've never before visited with my beloved and blog friends old and new AND the Cowboy, Little Bit and Sweetpea and did I take any photos? Well, yeah, I did. Of my lunch.

Wanker.

Erin had a surprise for me:

Some lovely sock yarn, her end of a swap we arranged back in December (you've gotta love yarn acquisition that doesn't break the rules of your stashbusting programme!); it's a special colour palette inspired by one of my airplane photos. It's gorgeous and soft and enough for knee socks.

Peter and I did take plenty of photos of the secret project, but those can't be revealed until the project is ready for launch. Too bad for you, because did I mention that the project is awesome?

Posted by jodi at 07:49 PM | Comments (13) | categories:  jet set

February 10, 2008

let it slide, yo *

I took yesterday off from working in the studio, but of course my idea of a "day off" isn't really a day OFF, but a day to do things like laundry, drawing, binding books and updating ye olde etsy shop. I didn't tell y'all about the big shop update right away because I don't want this to become one of those blogs where stuff is shilled constantly, and also I wanted to show some knitting first but by the time I'd finished with the shop and then got the knitting to the point at which I wanted to show it, the light for taking photographs wasn't good anymore. So.

Miss Henry now has her sleeves attached and we're in the home stretch, just the yoke and collar to go. This is the point at which I look hard at a sweater and then use all of my mental powers to will it to fit me. But I think it's just the little 3/4 sleeves that make it look so small, and I'm confident that it is, indeed, going to fit me.

It's already warming up enough in the afternoons that I wouldn't be able to wear this a lot, but the mornings are still just above freezing. I think I'm going to have this finished in time to take advantage of those cool mornings before they're gone. Then when I get back to Canada in May it'll be early spring again, two back-to-back lace sweater seasons!

So, here's a peek at what's new in the store. I promise that I am going to keep the update posts to no more than twice a month, which is how often I'm hoping to make a large-ish upload of new things in the shop. And I've got something totally new and exciting planned for next time, so it won't be just all the same stuff! But for now, more blotter notebooks, in lots of new cover designs:

some shirts:

and a few of my special books, the ones I use for my sketchbook project:

*can you guess what vintage CanCon I was listening to in the print shop this morning? I'll give you a hint: it's a showdown. And quite possibly also a throwdown.

Posted by jodi at 02:48 PM | Comments (5) | categories:  capitalist pig : sticks and string

February 07, 2008

write something, anything

I've been trying so hard to get here and say some things to y'all, but work got crazy this week, I've got deadlines up the wazoo (ouch!) and in fact just by taking the time to write this I might not have time to gather all of the stuff I need for the demos I'm doing in my class this morning (did I mention I'm teaching at 8 a.m. this semester?).

I should clarify that I chose that Sky Gilbert poem the other day because it struck me funny in a superficial way, and didn't really think about how it might look to my American friends until after. To me it was more about television, and spectacle, and falseness. Anyway, it did prompt a friend to ask me to focus on the positives of my American-grad-school experience a little more and I will, at some later date, take the time to put down here the things I love about being here in the States. There are some things, really, even if I do bitch all the time.

I also felt like a complete asshole because on the day I posted the poem, the Main Street Yarns newsletter came out with a whole list of links to Georgia bloggers and I was one of them, and here there might be people visiting for the first time and not only is the top item a bit of an anti-American rant but it has the phrase "fat, hairy dick" in it. Gah. Anyway, I'm an even bigger asshole for feeling like an asshole about it but still waiting until today to change it. Going about my day ignoring something and then lying awake at night worrying about it is always my M.O. in such situations.

Posted by jodi at 06:54 AM | Comments (8) | categories: 

February 02, 2008

bloggers (silent) poetry reading

Why Cathy Lee Gifford is just like the United States of America
by Sky Gilbert

She's mean
She's greedy
She's very very pretty
And of course she's a lying hypocrite
And of course she's on TV every morning
And just like America, Cathy Lee Gifford is a drag queen
And what's a drag queen?
Well someone who just can't stop drawing attention to how pretty they are I
mean Cathy Lee everytime she moves her legs or bats an eye or touches her
hair she reminds you, in that subtle way she has of how beautiful she is and
yes okay so she IS beautiful but more than that each gesture says I'm
beautiful, so beautiful, and that I'm barely, just barely conscious of it,
and on top of that I'm intelligent (questionable) and vicious. I can be
vicious. If I have to, I can defend myself against anything and I'll still
be beautiful, oooh I'm just stamping my little high heels right now and
removing a stray lock of hair with my long long dangerous fingernails yes I
can stand up for what I believe and be glamorous too
And I believe in America (which means myself) Cathy Lee Gifford
And I believe in fidelity and marriage and love (and all the other lies)
And even when you find my husbands fat hairy wrinkly old dick up some
forty-five year old Exercise Queen in a hotel I can pull my life back
together and lie
Like drag queens and the United States of America I can lie
I can exploit Latina women in sweat shops and then I can appear with
President Clinton and I can lie
And you will love me, Cathy Lee Gifford
You will
But most of all, you will watch me on TV
Because that's the way mornings are;
Inescapable, the beginning of all that treachery and drudgery and then
there's me, being more beautiful than you'll ever be
Look at me
I'm Cathy Lee
I'm some kind of an achievement

From Digressions of a Naked Party Girl, ECW Press, 1998

For information on the bloggers (silent) poetry reading tradition, go here.

Posted by jodi at 11:15 AM | Comments (6) | categories:  poetry