Something beautiful

Good news, everyone!

Things are a-brewin' here, chez Thiessen
With starting the business a few weeks ago, I've been getting my fingers into pies in more public ways.  One of those things is to start a YouTube channel of my very own.

If you've known us for any length of time, you'll know that our boys make films very regularly - and have almost 100 posted to their channel on the ubiquitous Tube.

There's no way I'll ever compete with THAT. And with the new biz, I thought a distinct identity from the humour of teenage boys would be, well, prudent (much as I love their movies and watch them).

So.  To make a long story short, my video experiments can be seen HERE

This is a little taste of what I've been up to:

Well, I'd better get back to the drawing board.

;)

Lisa

A little information for the curious...

There's going to be a rather interesting event coming up this summer...Michelle Laurie and Nancy White are putting together one last ROZVIZ workshop! If you've wanted to get a handle on Graphic Recording and are anywhere near this part of the country, you should go.  I attended last year, and found it exciting, interesting and full of information and opportunities for practice. Each year it's been offered, it's been sold out...

Full information here:

Michelle Laurie's Blog

A little update about life on the home front...

WHOA - I mean Whoa!  Things have been very busy here over the past few weeks.




Had the opportunity to travel with Ike and the Nelson Speed Skating Club team to Vernon for the winter games...hard to believe that's already a month ago! Ike did beautifully well, and we had tons of fun and many tales to tell when we came home.  Honestly, it was the best skating I've seen live in my life...with the added thrill of being in the coach's box and feeling the wind as the skaters flashed by.  It was inspiring and exciting!



We came home from the games to finish out our own club skating season.  Every year it's a bittersweet thing...the time we gain back from the arena each week is much appreciated and enjoyed, but it means that we can't skate for another 6 months.  Sigh.

The ShelterGuides pilot finished and was a great success.  I'm grateful every day for that project, the opportunities and people it has brought into my life.  What an absolute joy.

Since the last post here I've been working and playing, and often both at the same time.  Work for the school district continues to be a joy - I'm so grateful for the school community that I get to be a part of, for the students and staff alike. As the Teachers' job action escalates, I'm hoping for a good outcome.  I know that the teachers have our schools' and students' best interests at heart, and wish them all well in their continuing negotiations.

I've finally launched a new site to promote the other business that's been marching alongside my regular job for the past year+, at lisathiessen.ca .

Please take a peek over there to see what has been happening lately.  You'll find that some of the work on the 'Fine Art' page looks familiar if you've been reading this blog for any length of time.  Please bear with me as I get the pages fleshed out and play with the layout a little.  It will all settle into something useful and easy to navigate before TOO long, I promise.

I had the great fortune of joining a team last weekend for the CBT's Columbia River Treaty Young Leaders' Conference.  The recording was exciting and interesting, and I came away with a much greater understanding of just what is happening with the CRT, and a passionate belief that all residents of BC should be aware of it and the future ramifications of possible changes in the Treaty.  I loved the 'good neighbour' parts...how we really do scratch each other's backs (BC and the USA) in so many ways.  We are shared stewards of this water, of this land, of the industry and resources that spring from it.  We need to continue to work together, for certain, for the future.

I guess that sort of sums it up right now!I'd like to have more eye candy for you, but most of what I'm working on hasn't gone public yet.

Cheers,
Lisa

I've been home for a week now with the kind of flu that reminds a person how amazing it is that we have modern medicine...I'm sure that 200 years ago I would have coughed myself to death, or at least into some secondary infection that would take ages to recover from.  Thanks to a trip to my doc yesterday and a mittful of modern meds, I had my first full night's sleep in several days.

It's weird to have been away from work this long while classes are in session.  School board work often means chunks of time off, but it's pretty much always the same chunks of time for staff and students alike.

The last few days have left me in long stretches of low-energy consciousness...not so energetic that I could, say, do the laundry, but with enough percolation to sit and fiddle.

Of course, the foremost thing in my mind right now is the Sketchbook Project.

With a couple of drawings/paintings already ready to go for the Project, it was time to experiment with a bit of binding to see what is going to be useful and long-term functional for something that will be moved, opened, closed, shelved, packed, moved, flipped through again, etc.  I used a modified (mostly due to the size of my paper) version of Teesha Moore's Journal. My final book is pretty small, and the fold-flap pages are a bit abbreviated compared to Teesha's, but it was more about experimenting with the ideas than perfection.  Also wanted to answer some questions I had about how this particular paper would react to being heavily water coloured on both sides, and whether or not the markers would bleed (or if paint would want to creep through the stitching holes).

I used 3 pieces of paper, torn to approximate what Teesha did with her one large sheet.  My book has deckled edges on the top and bottom of each page, cover included.  The deckled edge allows for the handmade feel of the book, and those torn edges react to the paint differently, creating a natural border when the work runs all the way to the edges.

I used a waxed Egyptian cotton (not linen) thread to do the stitching, and found that I couldn't get it as tight as I wanted. It's because of this that I glued the pieces of mulberry paper to both the outside spine (as shown on the photos of the outside cover) and on the inmost signature.  They were fun, too, to play against with the paint, seeing how/if they would absorb the pigments in the same way as the rag papers, or not.  I was really quite happy with the way that the two papers complement each other.

Also, to play and experiment, I pre-painted all of the pages in random colours - just quick glazes, motley and spontaneous.  Having not painted in layers in quite this way before, it was interesting to see how the paint colour would suggest different subject matter.  The first page, with the portrait face, was pretty tricky, really.  It was my first time drawing on a surface that had nothing to do with the subject matter, and it took a lot of concentration.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.  

The page that I did this morning shows two handmade things that are precious gifts given me by friends over the Christmas holidays.  The page colour suggested this as topic, as the plate and the background colour have the same rare yellow/green hue to them.  It was painted so that the yellow/green could glow through the  over painting and give some cohesiveness to the whole picture.

The paper held up well, and you can plainly see in the pictures the bit of bleed-through at the stitch holes on the signature, but all in all it was more successful than expected.  I'll probably bind a couple more little wee books like this to get the stitching tension ironed out better, then jump in and do the actual book for submission.

The whole thing leaves me wondering...if I weren't me, what would I do with all this time on my hands?  What do other people do when they're at home sick for long stretches? I caught up on all of my website work, wrote the rough draft of my proposal for a work thing, hammered through a bunch of email that was waiting to be dealt with, read 3 books and watched 4 movies (oh, find time to watch 'Mary and Max', especially if you have Netflix). That, and managed to sleep long chunks of time away here and there, including all of last weekend. 

Oh, and for the people in the audience who love that technical stuff, the paper is some bottom rung 100 lb rag paper, the paint is Koi, the markers are Pitt and Staedtler, and the pencil is one of those ones made of recycled Chinese newspapers.  

In better health,

Lisa

The sketchbook project

In a few moments of decision over the Christmas Holiday, I signed up for the Sketchbook Project.  I went for it, the whole enchilada...and am so glad that I did.

When the sketchbook itself arrived, I was a bit disappointed.  It's a rather small and slim Moleskine with very light paper (suitable for drawing, but not for too much more).  The paper is a nice quality, and there are only 8 leaves in the (single) signature, making for about 15 double page spreads in total.  The cover is plain, recycled cardboard brown, and it has a little bar code on the back with my name and my theme, 'The Science Of Story'.

The plainness, the thinness of the sketchbook is part of the genius.  It really does represent the 'blank canvas', the emptiness on which we participants can improvise and riff our way to a completed book.  The 'rules' of the project allow for all kinds of shenanigans.  We can alter and replace, unbind and rebind, fold, cut and burn our books into almost anything we want...as long as the final closed/storage size is the same width and length, and no thicker than 1".

Once I started playing around with actual images, doing paint sketches for the parts that were already clear in my mind, I realized that the best course of action for me is going to be to make the book as individual pages, then to assemble and bind them into the existing (or a modified) cover, replacing the existing paper.

I've rediscovered watercolour.  The existing book pages are too light to take the water and paint, and I have a block of bright white 100lb watercolour paper here to play with...so, naturally I'll be making my book from the paper I have on hand.

I could probably fill over a hundred blog posts with all the things that I've forgotten about watercolour as a medium; the how-to's and all the little terminology items like, 'grisaille' and 'impasto'.  Been operating mostly on instinct, feeling my way around the medium again, relearning all the little things (like that I should have taped the dang paper down - fundamental, Lisa!!).

 I ended up doing two parallel paintings, both from the same base image/reference photo.  I wanted to try something that used a lot of heavy black, that let it run all over, that took multiple glazes of colour to bring to life, and something completely controlled, almost 'comic book' style for the actual title page.

The photo of the black and white self above and the one above left are two stages of the same painting.  The one above right is the grisaille, the one at left is after multiple washes were applied and let run around, doing their wonderful damage to the base image.  The final painting is very gestural and warm, with a lot of dimension.  It was a good way to play and loosen up so that I didn't get to tight doing the other image, the one that will probably end up being the title page of the book.

 This one had more steps and stages, and many, many more washes.  Using a totally different approach (but one I'm far more comfortable with), this one began with dropping in the shadow areas of the sketch.  Each layer applied overlaps and deepens the colour of the existing layers, while is translucent on the paper and other exposed areas.

If you've been reading this blog for a few years, you will remember that this is the same method used for 'Bacchanalia' and 'Blossom Lady' quilts.

I love the under painting stages every bit as much as the finishing, when it comes to this method.

The second picture is an intermediate stage that shows a few more layers dropped in.

The last photo here, at right, is the finished image.  Once the painting was all done, I went in with some fine tipped markers (black and brown) and tightened up here and there, creating greater definition and doing the lettering. This one will get a little work yet, as I need to balance the composition a bit more.  I'll probably do some nice lettering borrowing from what the project has already established, dropping 'the sketchbook project' into the upper left hand corner.

Next, I need to make some real decisions about how this is all going to go.  I have a loose idea, but am at the 'rubber hitting the road' stage, and need to just get working on the more difficult stuff.  Can't wait.

:)
Lisa

A little experiment

I've been playing a bit here, on this sunny Canada Day morning.

Yesterday was the last day of work for me at school. True to form - I'm sick.  It would seem that every time we come up to a school holiday for the past two years I take the opportunity to grab whatever airborne bugs are out there and offer them a home in my upper respiratory system! I've had no voice since Tuesday, and now have a cough as well.

The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy with school ending for both boys and for me, and all the other things that seem to happen at this time of year.  Soccer ended (temporarily - it starts again in the fall).  Each of the boys and I all had different end-of-school activities (mostly field trips of one kind and another).

We had lovely company for a few days, with DH's sister and brother in law coming from Oman.  It was pretty special for us for them to come at this particular time of year and be part of all our different celebrations. They live so far away these days that we rarely get to share our milestones with them.  We not only got to do the big, important things (like see Youngest complete Elementary School), but little day to day things (like eating together, playing cards, hiking, visiting).  All in all, a really sweet time.

This morning found me up with nothing in particular on my agenda for the first time in a very long time.  I sat down with my little water colour set and played with painting a couple of special things that we've received as gifts over last year.  The table runner is indigo dyed (from Japan originally) given us by my Mom-in-Law last year at Christmas.  It seemed the perfect backdrop for the Koran stand that Sister-and-Brother-in-Law gave us last year when they visited from Oman.

I've wanted to try to paint or draw the stand for a long time, as it has such wonderful texture.  Each of the individual tool marks show on the carved part of the stand.  I love being able to see the actions of the artist in the art!  I had a drawing teacher once, years ago, who said we should only take photos of things no one would believe if they saw them in drawing form...and I have to say, that stuck with me.  There are many times that I take photos for reference for drawing only to sit down and discover that the photos cannot be interpreted that way.  There are places both for photos to record what we can not draw, and a place for drawing to record all the rest of what we see.  Sometimes the actions of the artist would obscure the art - then it is always better to simply take a picture.

The second half of the experiment was to try to use Gimp to edit my photo for posting.  I'm new to Gimp, but wanted to give it a whirl after all I've been reading about it.  It's open source, which seems to be the direction that I'm heading with all the programs in my life.  I missed using PhotoImpact10 (simply because I've used it for years and it's like second nature to me anymore), but it's not available in the form it used to be - maybe it's becoming obsolete?  Hmmm.  Gotta try to stay current, whether it's easy or not!

Here's to summer, here's to family, here's to time to play and learn.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!
Lisa

Bella and 'Surrender'

 Okay...so it's not a finished picture, but it's progress.  I think this one might end up being something that I work on digitally, using the tablet and Corel Painter. 

The idea of this is from the ruminations about the word 'surrender'...the idea of surrendering to the blank page, to the process of the work, not to work only with the finished product in mind.  Though I love having finished products (and producing them), having had the shop (Threads in Motion) for all those years helped to dissociate the joy of making things with the need to possess them.  To truly surrender to process, one must not need to possess the outcome. 

Culturally, here in North America, that's a pretty rebellious idea. 

It always amazes me that all the minuscule, incremental decisions and accidents that happen along the way are what ultimately add up to the final product, whatever it may be.  I had a drawing instructor 'way back in College (a College that's now a University...that's how long ago it was that I attended) who encouraged us to make every single line on our page one of intent.  He would not accept 'scribbles', and certainly not as an excuse for shading.  He was, however, the teacher who introduced me to the idea of the 'character of line': that the intentional mark on the page could have uncontrolled elements to it - thick and thin areas, slight meandering within the path, and lighter and darker points along the line.  This 'found' or 'accidental' element within the intent and decision making of drawing is really all about our surrender to the process of drawing...the cumulation of all those tiny decisions.  And ultimately, it's what gives a drawing it's dynamism, flow and personality.



 Speaking of surrender and of process...

(a little heavy-handed for a segue, but it will have to do! :) )

The fleece from last post's sheep is working up into wool of lovely character. 

The singles are about 12 WPI (wraps per inch).  I'm hoping to ply them together into an aran weight yarn.  The first project from this particular wool will be a beret for my neighbour's daughter, in black, as requested.  The ewe that this comes from is named 'Bella', making for a 'Bella Beret'! 

I've spun up 9 oz of the fleece so far, into about 208 M of yarn.  The soft undercoat of the fleece is a charcoal grey, the outer coat is a dense black.  They are coming together into a heathery black colour that is quite lovely.  I keep thinking that the icelandic wool would be beautiful knit up into this - especially in this gorgeous grey-black.

I've completely surrendered to the rhythm of spinning, the process of making yarn.  Each moment gives little chances at decision making for the final product, and opportunities for the yarn to dictate the way that things are going to go. 

As I spin, I can't help but think of the multitude of generations that had to rely on this fibre process, this hand-intensive process, for clothing and furnishings.  To completely outfit a family and home would be a huge undertaking, especially in a climate like this one.  That the health and welfare of the family would rely on the health of their animals is a foreign concept today.  The idea of the wealth of the family being expressed in the quality and quantity of their garments, and in the skill and speed of the family's clothiers...well, it is just not something that we think of in a first-world country where we are so dissociated from the origins of our possessions, the things that give us comfort and protect us from the elements.

Food for thought.

Lisa

Dusty...but not

 All right.  So it's not actually a good response to the 'Dusty' challenge, but it was a challenge to do - and filled my quota for the number of drawings I need to get done in order to stay with my resolution! 

I think I did anthropomorphize this ewe, though...it's her wool that is soaking in the tub and on the drying rack right now.  That hint of a smile is probably a little projection of how I feel about playing with fibre, and how grateful I am to my neighbour and this sheep for the opportunity.

As I've been following the Sketchbook Challenge blog since the beginning of the year, I thought I'd include a progress photo.

Many of the people formally participating in that challenge not only share finished drawings, but much of the messy stuff that leads up to them.

When I know I'm going to be doing a 'finished' style drawing, I will do a bit of a line map before drawing in earnest.  If you click on the drawing at left you'll see some thin, spidery lines here and there that are my visual code to guide the light, shadow, proportion and different 'planes' of the drawing.  I tend to think of the object I'm drawing (even from photos) in all three dimensions...mapping out the planes helps me to keep foreshortening, light and shadow all in the right places. 

In the case of the sheep, it was also about dividing the space between the different textures - there is a substantial amount of space on the sheep's face that has straight hair.  Part of the challenge in this drawing was to create different textures between the different types of coat, the horns, and the eye area.  As you can see in the progress photo, I'll often jump straight to the details that I think best characterize the subject once the initial mapping is done.  If I can get the eye area (often the part of a drawing that we will focus on right away) right along with any other important characterization, the rest of the drawing really only needs to be hinted at in order to be successful.  The viewer's eye will SEE the parts that are tight, drawn to describe the subject, then their mind will FILL IN all the other details.  My favorite drawings are certainly audience participation in nature - and I believe these are also the ones that hold the widest appeal.

So now to go back and rinse out more of these lovely black locks, and to think about my challenge word for this coming week...'Surrender'. 

Happy Friday,

Lisa

Chicken (and skating!)

 

Better late than never - right?  It's my contribution to Illustration Friday's challenge, 'chicken'.  The last couple of weeks have been silly busy with life and skating.  This is the first chance I've had to get myself across the street to photograph some chickens at our neighbour's house - so my challenge entry is two weeks late.  Does this still count for keeping my resolution to draw more?  I hope so.  

Now to do 'Dusty' (last week's challenge) and 'Surrender' (which was in my inbox this morning).

It's going to be tough to focus on the drawing today as my neighbour sent me home with another one of his fleeces - black this time - and I'm looking forward to knitting his daughter a beret with part of it!

Last weekend I was not drawing on Saturday morning because I was here:

 

...at Nelson's first Speed Skating Comp. Our club hosted, and the day was fun and friendly.  We each skated 5 different races, the distances based on our age categories.  Both of our boys skated, too, and DH was an official timer.  It took all of the available parents, grandparents and friends of the club to make this happen - would the world still spin on its axis without volunteers to power it?

:)

 The boys and I combed through the 200 or so photos that were taken of us all out on the ice to analyze for body position, weight distribution and technical form.  It was fun to go through them and enlightening to see, with a critical eye, what we are ACTUALLY doing on the ice vs. what we THINK we are doing on the ice.  For myself, I know that I need to get lower and not allow my upper body to move as much...

Now - off I go to rinse out the soaking fleece, then figure out what I'm going to draw for 'Dusty'.  Hmm.  I have some lovely pictures of sheep here, maybe I want to draw one of them??

:)
Lisa

Unable to leave well enough alone

 I tried to be happy with the way the beginning of the book was...but I just wasn't.  January was messy...as any learning should be...and the rest of the book was clean and lovely.

I woke up this morning thinking,"I bet I could disassemble that book, print a new January, and reassemble it again". As it turns out, it's not so hard to take apart a coil bound book, if you're careful and don't try to take out too many pages at once!    I carefully slid the pages out, printed new ones, then put them back in.

You'd think I would have been happy with that.

But that's where you'd be wrong.

I kept thinking...it would be nice if there were some contact pages at the beginning for all those numbers  that our family needs to have close to the surface.  And some more pockets would be nice.  And some dividers - one at the end of June, one at the beginning of September....

I took it all apart again.  I folded and punched, stamped and glued, and put it all back together again into a really lovely book that I feel very good about. If I'd left it as it stood last night, I would have thought - this could be better... and never felt quite right about using it.

All things considered, it went together rather well.

Fave details:

• It doesn't necessarily look like a homemade planner, but definitely has a hand crafted feel
• It has pockets and dividers where I want them, where they will be used
• room for notes and miscellany in the back (no doubt also for notes on how to make next year's one even better yet!)
• The heaviness of the sketchbook paper
• The portable size
• The colours
• Little reminders here and there to 'do art'.  That's my main goal for the year...to do more art.

Cheers,

Lisa

As the year closes

 The last couple of months I've been rolling around an idea in my head. Well, okay, more than one idea...but this one is about my day planner.For the last several years I have bought the same planner - and loved it.  It has room for all the things I need, and more.  It's the 'and more' part that got me thinking. Much as I appreciate the organizational brilliance of these books, I rarely use the family profile pages, note pages or contact pages (except as grocery list paper).   After all these years of planner use (at least 20), I know what I need from a planner.  

So, typical of my personality, I decided to make one myself.  

After surfing the web looking at endless templates that weren't quite right, I decided to draw my own. Rather than attempt to print out all the pages from my computer in the proper order, double side them accurately and collate them, I opted to buy an existing book and play with some ideas.

The things I liked about the purchased planner were the hard cover and the coil binding (can't beat a book that will lie flat!), so I bought a 5.5 X 8" sketchbook and made a stencil template to rule the pages.  There were a bunch of letter and number stamps kicking around a drawer upstairs begging to be put to good use, so I employed them as my typeface.

It probably took me about 4 hours to print up (to be honest, 2 of those hours were spent watching a spaghetti western movie with my husband, and the other two listening to a Jeffrey Archer book while printing).  I learned a LOT in the process (for example, mounted stamps are far easier to handle than unmounted ones...it took until about June to figure that out!).  My later pages are far prettier than my earlier ones, but that is to be expected, isn't it?

And here, my final picture of my sample page, will not load the way it should!!  This is my 3rd try to get this particular picture to load...and it will remain rotated, as I can not get it to go any other way.

It made most sense to put the month on the right page.  My weeks are all Mon - Friday on the left, the weekend on the right.  The lower right divided area is for 'to do' lists, and telephone messages.
My planner tends to spend most of it's life on the kitchen counter being consulted daily for meal planning and open for use and referral by other family members, so the loosely divided space on the lower right doesn't get formal designation...

It's hard to see in the picture, but I've put big gold stamps on family birthdays (Youngest's is Sept 29, shown at left).

 After all the stamping was done, I added some expandable pockets for receipts, etc. The whole works is sitting under a pile of books upstairs while the glue dries.  Tomorrow I begin the adventure of writing in all the different things we have already lined up for the coming year...not the least of which involves speed skating.

It's silly, but every year I have the same satisfaction with closing the previous year's planner, and opening the new year's one.  As we get older there are fewer milestones - and the ones we have tend to get further and further apart.  There's something about the ritual of literally closing the book on one year and opening a fresh new book on the new one that's so appealing.  All those blank pages will be filled with the story of our lives... the literal story, the minutiae. We have the stories we tell about our lives, the love, the memories, but these planners end up being the record of how we get from one day to the next.

Enjoy the rest of the year.  I hope your next year's book is filled with lovely things.

Lisa

Morning self-portrait

Things are pretty quiet around here.

I'm on call for work, which means right now that there's a very low chance that the phone will ring.  The beginning of the school year was tough last year, and I have to keep reminding myself that I didn't get a lot of work until mid-late September.  I'm so low on the seniority list that I can't expect much.  I did work one day last week (our first week of school), so that is somewhat hopeful.

There are other projects to keep me busy - I'm learning how to build a website using WordPress for a collaborative project (more about that as it emerges), and am getting the van ready to sell.  I'm working on some quilting patterns for Threadsongs, and doing a lot of cooking.

I keep wondering if I should just bite the bullet and continue with my schooling.  Selkirk College/UVIC will allow for someone with a Bachelor's Degree in Child and Youth care to go into the teacher's training program...which might be a really good idea.  It would mean picking up a few academic courses (English, Psych), then entering 3rd year online from UVIC.  My experience so far in the school system has been good, and I think I could see myself managing a classroom.  It seems like the right thing to do...

This fall feels like a new year - or a new beginning.  It's seldom in this stage of life that everything seems to slow down or stop at the same time like this.  I feel almost as if it's the deep breath before the next plunge...I just have to figure out what that plunge is going to look like.  I like it when life is busy, and am happiest when I can spend my day with people, working together and figuring things out.

Don't worry, I'll keep you posted.
:)
Lisa

Back again! With lots of knitty content!!

I guess the boys and I didn't get enough of camping with the family and had to - just HAD to - go back for more.
Much as we missed all the cousin action and the laughter, the lake was pretty tranquil with just the boys, one of their friends, and me.




The weather was gorgeous, not too much smoke made it down the valley, and we all got a lot of swimming time in!


When I wasn't swimming, I was beach sitting.  It gave me a great opportunity to get some knitting, journal writing and drawing done.   Every year, at least once over the past few years, I've drawn Saddleback from the vantage point of the beach.

Typically I've got watercolour pencil crayons in my bag, along with some coloured pens.







This year I also brought some pre-cut artist trading card sized cards of different weights and textures. 

And, because I'm that knitterly kind of girl, I finished up two projects that I've been working on for a while.







This shrug, from this pattern, has been on my needles for only about a week from start to finish - pretty big project considering the gauge!  The yarn is one of my all-time favorites, Noro Silk Garden Sock. It's a blend of wool, silk, angora and nylon meant for sock knitting, but I think it's far to lovely to hide in my shoes.

For the curious, I used colourway 268 - colours that coincidentally completely match this season in this area.   Something that doesn't really show in the photos is the beading in the cuffs.  This was my first adventure with beading in knitting, and it's spawned loads of ideas for my next projects.  Now if I could just settle on one and get started!

The other major project that I finished was this big red cardigan.  It was originally started as something to keep my hands busy while I sat on my rear recovering from my broken toe.

Please excuse the cheezy self portraiture - it's hard to set the camera, run around to the front and quickly look natural!!

For those who are interested in the process and modification notes of either sweater (or in seeing more photos of how they go together), there is a great deal more information on my Ravelry page.  Look me up, if you care to - you'll need to be a member or become one to sign in - you'll find me there under the username Threadsongs.

Ciao!
Lisa

Reflecting on the last week

I spent most of this week in a workshop on Applied Behavioural Analysis...and it reminded me of how much B.F. Skinner contributed to the whole field of psychology. I recently read a book that talked about how true Darwinian philosophy (extrapolated into modern day) was anti-Skinner: that behaviouralism is a crock of s****.

I found that point of view to be pretty darn shocking, considering that my whole education is predicated on the idea that as individuals, we can learn new things based on the way these things are reinforced. If I were to stick with the idea that our genetics are all that makes us who we are (considering I've been a life-long evolutionist), then there is no reason to do the type of work that I do.

I'll have to spend some time thinking about all of this.

Maybe it's about the idea that the individual has potential, within the parameters of the genetics. Maybe we can each learn to be the best potential self we can be...but then we can not pass that down through our genes, only through our memes. Hmmm. Yes. I will have to spend time thinking about this.

:)
Lisa

Beginnings and endings

Let's start with the endings, shall we?


I realized as I was starting my new journal that I'd not yet finished the last few pages in my old journal...something I'm notorious for. I have many, many journals that don't end, but rather sort-of peter out. In my mind I rationalize that it's because the journals themselves really are only sections along a continuum, not fixed points, and that to have them end would mean that I ended!

This last journal, the one I finished yesterday, is especially close to my heart. In it are recorded the last 3+ years, and it was a gift from my Oldest for Christmas, 2006.


These have been some busy years, on many, many levels. This book travelled all over with me (even to New Hampshire and back, twice) and was comforting in it's weight and heft as much as in its pages. It deserved a proper ending.

The pages are creamy and thick, I was able to do almost anything to them. To close out the book, I did several pages of quotes about endings of various sorts, and this is my favorite. You can click on it to see a larger version (that goes for all the photos).




I couldn't leave yesterday's page alone (it just felt 'unfinished') and went in with one of my sepia toned pencil crayons with dictionary definitions of and synonyms for 'begin'. It's a good exercise to meditate on one word like that, to explore it fully. I'll have to remember to do that if I find myself in need of creativity exercise.

The page feels much more finished now, if still a little unbalanced.

And (because I'm completely hopeless once I get going) I added a bookplate page to the new journal. This piece of paper has been kicking around for at least a year, and it's high time that it found a home. It's in need of a much more elaborate frame than it has right now, and that is coming. I learned a little with this page (don't paint over glue, it cracks and then can't be written on), and am looking forward to working it up into something much more elaborate over the next while.

Oh yes, and I finished both of my school papers yesterday and sent them off. Whew.

I'm losing my steam for being a student right now, mostly because I'm not all that well suited to being an on-line student...there's something about a classroom full of people that makes it all more interesting, makes the subject matter make more sense. I'm a little past halfway on my current courses, then one more and I'll be done!

Happy Sunday, happy end of February. Bring on March!

Lisa

:)

Begin....

A gift recently got me going on something that I've wanted to get back to for a while now: journaling.

I spent a little quality time (in between working on the papers that are due this weekend) painting up the first pages. I find it's hardest to start, and I really didn't have a direction for this page until I got really going. It seems to reflect a lot of things that I have going on right now:
my work, the academic work, and the learning I've done in the last years about myself. Every day I have to remind myself to begin, not to avoid.
I've also recently had an opportunity to do a little illustration, which makes my heart happy. The little detail photo below is from a doodle I did during some quiet minutes at work yesterday - while thinking about the illustration op.




The piece ended up being about starting the new journal (and ending the old one), but also about many other starts...the commencement of learning to read or count, the start of the day, the movement forward, the taking of risks.

From a technical point of view, there's a lot more I could play with (and perhaps will, over the next day or so). The space in the final piece does not quite seem to be effectively used, and I would love to have a sepia toned pen with which to fill in more of the background. Perhaps the art supply store is not yet closed......?

Cheers,

Lisa

Still here

I'm still around, just in school a whole bunch. I've been so lucky to have this opportunity, to re-connect with the whole 'school' thing...
I forgot how much I enjoy writing and learning.
Part of what we are doing in the Health and Wellness piece of what I'm doing involves doing ART each class! After not having access to any of my visual art supplies for a few months it was a lovely surprise to find that we were going to be spending time doing drawing and collage as part of the self-exploratory part of our class. I love, too, that the art is presented as an avenue anyone can participate in to find their own quiet inner space or to explore things in their own lives. The classroom teacher treats it all very respectfully and is aware that things can get emotional for people as they are moving through their own 'stuff'.

I'm moving into exam time soon, finishing one practicum and preparing to begin another.

I guess I'll have to keep doing art to keep my inner equilibrium! Aw, shucks. Well, anything for school....
:)

On the house front:
We're getting closer. I need to post photos of progress, I know. My DH is building our interior stairs out of maple - and they are absolutely beautiful. So classic, so strong, so beautiful. He'll be building all of the window and door moldings, baseboards...anything out of wood. I can't wait to see what it looks like all finished!

Almost all our lighting fixtures are in. One of our bathrooms is fully functional. All the little parts of civilized lifestyle are coming together bit by bit.

I admit that I do love the challenges and lifestyle that comes with our circumstances, but there are days when I'd like to have easy access to an oven, and hot running water in a kitchen setting.
Don't think I'm complaining, though - our family may never live so close to each other (in the same room like this) ever again, and with our boys moving toward adolescence, I try to treasure every day.

:)
Lisa

Mailed

A few of the final steps

Sorry that this is not the most thorough tutorial for bookbinding, but the original tutorial really has all you really need to know. I thought I'd just share the little bits that I do that might be different from the original.

One of the things I've found that simplifies everything is that instead of folding the cover over the cover guide (left) with my fingers, then folding the wax paper over and clamping it all in place, I grab the wax paper and fold it over to clamp. I end up not handling the glue areas at all, it makes everything tidier and more accurate.



When assembling the cover I've taken to gluing the corners first and letting them dry completely. It makes for a very nice, tidy corner.

Oh, and if you want to have a ribbon bookmark, the best time to add it is when you are clamping and gluing the signatures. Just lay it on top of the glue and smooth it out. Make sure it is long enough to go the length of your pages. I leave mine quite long, they can always be cut shorter later. In this book I used a woven tape-style ribbon. I'll add beads and embellishments to it in the final steps.

This is how I put the pocket in this book:

Once the signatures were in place and glued into the inside front cover, I glued the pocket in as though it were an endpaper. Normally one would glue the last page of the last signature in to the back cover before placing the endpaper. I didn't do that (that would have meant that the pocket could not sit in as snugly as the signatures). I glued the pocket side to the inside back cover, then the paper side to the last paper of the last signature.

Once the pocket was in place, I glued in the endpaper. I made custom endpapers for this book by collecting quotes that spoke to my heart about our friend's life and situation. I wrote them all in WORD, turned them all a co-ordinating purple, made each of the quotes slightly different sizes and fonts so that, though they ran together, they can also each be read individually.

As you can see in the picture there are a lot of pieces of wax paper interleaved with pages that have glue drying.

This is the point the book is at right now. I'll let it sit under a weight overnight to dry, and I'll check on it tomorrow. It will be handle-able by then, but probably not totally dry. I can do any finishing bits at that time, then leave it under a weight for another 10 or so hours so that it is completely dry and flat.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. Thanks to you, too, for the comments and well wishes for our friend. She is much like an Aunt to me, she and her family have been in our lives as long as I can remember. I'll always be grateful to her for letting the boys hold her newborn lambs. They will never forget it.

Lisa