paper kite
November 2, 2011 | Filed Under inspired, ordinary | Leave a Comment
this week has been exhausting. i think it’s because i’m hungry because i’m on a terrible diet mostly consisting of lettuce and brussel sprouts and an occasional stolen kit-kat. sickness and school and housework are starting to get me down, but a farm trip for thanksgiving and a month of vacation from math and handwriting is coming soon enough.
this weekend: open studios. i have a couple of reindeer at art & light gallery (i didn’t get any finished pics, i’ll try to get some this weekend), if you’re local and in need of paper taxidermy. also, i’m going to be making some new animals this month: rabbits, anyone? possibly a black bear. we will see. so if you’re interested, i’m in the mood and mode for working on them, so send me a note.
i had a sneak peek of some of kent ambler’s work, also at art & light, and am about to die of covetousness. i honestly don’t have a long list of stuff that i want, i’m generally pretty content. but walls full of kent’s work? that’s on the top of my sort-of short list.
we’re also going to see barb blair of knack studios, lily pottery, diane kilgore, greg flint, paul flint (and the other fine folk at art bomb), and taking the drive up to the ambler’s amazing and peaceful house in the mountains. it’s a great way to be able to snoop and get inspired. are you going?
slashes of light
May 6, 2011 | Filed Under inspired | 1 Comment
these pics are from the house of the eleanors. there are two eleanors, one older, one younger. they live a few minutes away a great little house packed with curiosities and kitties. i want to go with a real camera and take real photographs but as i am camera lazy these days, my phone will have to do. eleanor thought i was sitting in her house texting but i was really taking pictures. i would never sit in her quaint little house and text people, FYI. but shamelessly photograph her stuff? of course.
eleanor the elder also makes some amazing sweet tea. you can watch a video of her making it here. i’m sure you can tell from these pictures that the tea will be all that it should be.
the weekend is here at last. ernie is playing his bass in evita last weekend, this weekend, next weekend. garden work, shrimp and grits, last minute shipping of a mother’s day gift for my mother that i made but did not make out of paper. jude’s last choir concert is on sunday night. he’s very glad to be done with choir. maybe there will be a nap! thrifting? maybe double nights of movies with my love. weekends, the best.
bread should be made
August 2, 2010 | Filed Under inspired | Leave a Comment
they asked ernie and me to take pictures at vbs this year. anyone who knows about the churchy opportunities project we’ve got going (but apologetically need to update; we do keep up on facebook) seemed to run from me when i came near with the camera. i really do try to make the churchy photos anonymous or at least not unflattering, but some people just have an aversion to the camera.
vbs at our church this year is called Marketplace something or other and it’s a beautiful thing. they were there baking bread, grinding spices, learning something hebrew, making bricks. who knows what else? i love it when a good thing is pulled off well. it’s one thing to plan a good thing, it’s another to do it well.
the vbs of my youth is hardly remembered. i recall red koolaid and generic oreos, a hot parking lot lined up with forgettable games, songs that required shouting in places, and a kind of shame for not bringing a friend along to get some extra points. this is not that kind of bible school. no koolaid, for starters, and getting your hands dirty makes you remember things, so i think they will.
you + me forever
June 24, 2010 | Filed Under inspired, ordinary | 3 Comments
old playground equipment, i just love the stuff. it reminds me of being free and having long hair and being made fun of for always being dirty in the summer. it’s not plastic, it’s wood and metal and you can get burns and splinters. the walls on the slides aren’t high. the swings are hung with chains that make your hands smell like oiled metal. this is a barrel that you stand in with your friends and walk in the same direction together and scream for awhile as you whirl the thing about. kids carve bad words and love promises in the planks of it. it was a shady place to sit in a U while you caught your breath and let the sunny place on the top of your head cool off for a minute until you ran off again.
i started a flickr set of my own to remember these things but i also found this old playground furniture pool. what a great elephant slide!
one slow hot summer
June 23, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary, inspired | 2 Comments
white butterflies, small and fast, in the garden, on the lantana in the front. jude tries to catch them with a shout and a pinching finger like ernie does but hasn’t gotten any yet. we can pin them like butterflies and beetles in a museum, he says and i see the hallway walls lined with white butterflies, ceiling to floor, their wings unfolded forever under the glass.
later in the day, after the early dinner, after we’ve decided that it looks like rain so we’d better eat inside instead of across the grass and under the trees, after my hands smell of limes and the kids drink chocolate milk, after these it does rain, the sky is black and lola runs into the house for the thunder. the dog comes in, they all come in and pull the wet grass from their legs. rain, thunder, a puddle in the grass, water in streams like mercy from the sky.
boil fast
April 21, 2010 | Filed Under inspired, royal buffet | 1 Comment
i got these amazing strings from liane’s shop (who also has this amazing post of photos of perfectly messy interiors on the blog today) i love basically everything in her shop and have been looking for an opportunity to buy something. happily i ended up buying these at just the right moment because she sent a host of extra lovelies to me for being her 1000 sale. i can’t wait to make some new garlands with these.
today seems like a good day to tell you all about the indie craft parade in greenville. if you’re local you must at least go to the fair and buy something, but you may want to consider submitting your own work, too. the site just launched, check it!
free skies, glad, strong
February 4, 2010 | Filed Under inspired, ordinary | 1 Comment
something about february, gray and colorless, a month of endless rain and more cold than one would think such a puny little month could produce. today i saw flour pots, new rakes in shining lines and rows at the store. seeds in packages as long as a row can go. i was tempted, tried, (but did not fail as i sometimes do), for i will order from catalogs and plant in cups i’ve made myself. no over-priced big-box store seeds for me this year. i felt a sort of hope that i don’t usually find in february today, clay pots in rows organized by size, trowels, flowered gardening gloves, stakes for plants, garden hoses in stacks of yellow, black, green coils. hope that remained even when it snowed a bit of slush this afternoon, even when the forecast called for a cold, cold rain all day tomorrow, winter in droplets and gray for miles far, even then.
duet no. 1
February 4, 2010 | Filed Under inspired, project: duet | 8 Comments
ernie and i are working on a new project together. a photo a week taken without discussing the content or showing the photo to each other until we bring them together into one lovely pairing. they’re technically called diptychs, of course, but we’re calling ours duets.
my photo is on the right, ernie’s is on the left. you can read the rules we’ve set for ourselves here. a new duet every wednesday, there will be. and the project is almost as nice as if we were playing our instruments together every wednesday, lit by lamps, music in piles all around. this is much tidier and can be done late at night when everyone small is snoozing.
countenance enhancing
January 12, 2010 | Filed Under familial, inspired, ordinary | Leave a Comment
chris sent this to us and the kids think it’s hilarious. what is that tire-necklace for? framing the face? i really don’t know.
it’s kind of mind blowing that people have been having that kind of competition for 800 some years, in and out of centuries, humanity connected always by the simple and every day, even the making of faces just for a laugh.
so long, wiggy.
January 8, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial, inspired | 3 Comments
for a long time now, since his hair got darker and lost almost all hope of curl (good grief, he looks like lola there), we, being curly heads, have had trouble with cutting his hair ourselves. enough was enough, and jude danced his dancing pants into the chair and got a haircut by someone who knew what to do, who coincidentally does a fantastic job cutting my hair, and ernie’s hair, and, this isn’t a commercial or anything, but wilson himself of wilson’s on washington is a whiz of a hair stylist.
and now jude thinks he’s all that, as he probably should. i just want to kiss his forehead constantly. it’s a very good forehead. he is very much against anyone touching the hair, but he will have to get over that.
we were inspired by the cookie spread on good kid hair cuts, but when we went back to take a gander, we realized that we were merely inspired to get this poor kid a good haircut, and not necessarily inspired to give him a haircut as pictured in the mag. i do like that cute little bobbed hair with bangs. lola could rock that, and maybe she will. i just don’t know if i can give up having her in pigtails. and then we were totally glad that david beckham kicks and runs around with good hair and has his picture taken, because that made the whole explanation of what we were thinking that much easier: david beckham’s faux-hawk. or is it fohawk? more pics of jude loving his haircut can be seen here.
henry is a bit envious, he being a curl hater, having curls that everyone gushes over. any seven year old boy would want to cut his curls off after all of the hair tousling he’s put up with. we don’t blame him. but i really feel sad about that, as deeply and motherly sad as i was when jude’s hair went smooth and darker than the white gold blonde ringlets he had from the first. can i have two boys with rad hair that isn’t long and free and curling? oh, these boys: they grow in blinks and blurs and in the most terribly frightening lightning flashes.