getting my flamingos in a row

i've been slow to get over my jetlag this time. i've been prolonging it by staying up late and sleeping in. days and days of dreary, ceaseless rain haven't helped. i've been curling up with elizabeth gilbert's city of girls, which i've now finished, so my excuses for inertia are running thin. the truth is, i don't really know what's next, so it's kind of hard to get started on it. but i really should be doing more to figure out what it is. but how to go about that? make lists? go for a walk? try to tune in to what my heart says? maybe just get on with actually doing something (perhaps tidying up that box room?) and letting it come to me. as always, i'm impatient, but i have to remember that you always just have to do the work. and sometimes doing the work means giving yourself a few days to do nothing at all. this summer has been a lot. and it's no wonder my flamingos aren't really in a line. well, they are in this picture, but less so in reality. and maybe that's ok for now.

procrastinating

as i often do with a deadline looming, i find myself procrastinating - making detailed lists, skimming a few chapters of "podcasts for dummies," updating the trello boards (yes, they are really just more lists), going through scads of photos to choose which ones should be sent for retouching (not a priority), writing this...doing things, but not the things i should be doing as i'm careening towards that deadline. doing things only tangentially related to the task at hand. doing things to prepare for doing the task at hand but not actually doing the task itself. why do i do this? why do i need to feel the sharp blade of the axe whispering against my skin in order to get to it? alas, it's not there yet, and so the procrastination continues...

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oh to be a poet of procrastination.

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i've been thinking that america looked like an empire in decline for some time now.
apparently i'm not alone.

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perhaps a reason to start running?

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i jumped on the fire & fury bandwagon and ordered the book.
maybe i shouldn't have.

personal trend tracking via flickr faves

i detected the other day while going through my flickr faves, a little obsession with garlands and things garland-y. clicking on the pic above will take you to my photostream where you can find the links to the good folks behind these beauties.

and here's the one i made with a bit of bamboo yarn and some leftover squares from my tanya whelan dolce quilt (which reminds me, i should be working on the binding for that).

oh, and i also discovered that i have a thing about thread:

the last four pics in the mosaic above are my own, so i won't post them separately. have you looked at your flickr faves lately? i'll betcha anything there's a theme (or themes). one more from me, plain spoken quilts:

weekend accomplishments

when the possibility of blog camp transitioned from fantasy to reality, i took at look at this little slice of hallway hell and panicked a bit:

but, thanks to the tidying frenzy which preceded my sitting down and getting to work, and an entire day of effort on the part of husband during which he put in a new floor, it now looks like this:

and i can tell you that is a big relief! and we now have our very own room in which to iron. which makes us feel strangely posh. but probably isn't really that posh as long as we're doing the ironing ourselves.  which are are.

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other than that, i invented a new recipe for rhubarb-strawberry cake. it was necessitated by discovering quite a ways into a rhubarb-strawberry crumble that i didn't really have enough brown sugar. i've never invented a cake recipe before, but it turned out pretty well. this is a shot before i discovered the thing with the brown sugar.

those two mangoes in the upper right of the picture (looking suspiciously breast-like) were diced together with some red onion and served over grilled halloumi as an appetizer last evening. they were the really good kind of southeast asian mangos and are almost buttery in texture. they kick those green ones from south america right out of the kitchen. no comparison. tho' there was a twinge of guilt involved in the carbon footprint of buying either one. however, that was eased by the taste of the velvety sweetness mingled with the salty halloumi all smoky from the grill. yum. and gone too fast to get a picture of it.

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after getting down to work this afternoon (thank you rain), i finished three articles and got a good start on three others. now there are only three to go (because yes, it was nine, not seven). but the night is young and there is much caffeine in the house, so i will soldier on.

but first an after-dinner walk in the evening sunshine, since the rain of the day cleared up around 4 p.m. the world was fragrant and green and so alive.  even the dandelion seeds were luminous.

thanks to all of my procrastination, the house is tidy, the laundry is done and put away, ditto the dishes and nearly half my work is done. i have that sunday evening feeling--when you feel relaxed and ready to face whatever the week brings and even have optimistic thoughts that you'll start running tomorrow. the sunday evening feeling is that good.

giving space for the madness

tons of writing to do (no less than seven pieces to finish), so what did i do today? of course, i cleaned and tidied like a madwoman. no more boxes in the upstairs hall. all of the laundry is done, folded and yes, even put away! i even made a dent in the exploded bomb crater that is my laundry room. but did i finish any of those articles? no, i i did not. did i work on them. yes, but only a little bit. i couldn't sit still when there was so much tidying up to do. tidying up of the kind my cleaning lady doesn't do--she cleans, she doesn't tidy up. there's a difference.

i envy people who live somewhere where there are no ongoing projects. no sauna going up behind their studio, no beds to be planted in the garden, no hallway to be finished, no pizza/bread oven being built their garden which requires the occasional consultation with husband and our fabulous polish contractor who we would like to adopt, no cords hanging from the ceiling where husband is putting up some lamps. people whose houses are in order. they can come home, sit down, relax. they can breathe. they can have a glass of wine and spend an hour with their book.

you'd think with all of the time i spend at home, since i do work at home quite a lot, that i'd be one of those people. but i'm not. most days, my working at home really is a lot of work. most days, i'm really quite focused. today, it wasn't as much work and focus as it should have been, but that's because the deadline looms. later this evening, or tomorrow, the right amount of panic will kick in and i'll sit down and finish all of those pieces.

i'm trying to be patient with myself, to just let this thing that i always do unfold. and hope that it becomes something beautiful...

#20 and #21 and the biorhythm begins to shift

#20 - an ikea jack, wherein i took a cheap silk ikea pillow cushion and embroidered felt flowers onto it.

#21 - wherein we (being sabin and myself) constructed paper robots and hung them on the ceiling:

and then, to amuse myself, i printed in A4 a picture taken on the beach at the north sea back in january and pretended to take my merfish to the beach to meet the rock i picked up near the great pyramid in 2000. i think they liked each other quite a bit.

and then i doodled a few things in my inspiration book, read an interesting article about sustainable cities,  chatted on the phone to the most creative, funniest person i know,

played around a bit with embroidery thread and tactile felt in my favorite colors:

and then inspiration struck. and not only did it strike, i acted on it:

the biorhythm must be coming into alignment between the intellectual and the physical so that my thoughts can now have accompanying actions. phew. either that or it's because the sun is shining and there's a whiff of spring in the air. whatever it is, i'm not fighting it.

from where i sit...

is it just me or is there a faulty planetary alignment going on this week? something's just off. i'm not sleeping well. and i just feel, well...blah. i'm reading a book that i hate and yet i persevere. what's strange is that i have surrounded myself with inspiration all week and actually feel very inspired on an intellectual level. my inspiration notebook is filled with notes and scribblings, and i'm constantly running to scribble another sketch or thought in it, but when it comes to sitting down and actually DOING any of them, it falls down for me. i can't really get up off the couch or out from in front of the computer. i'm all input and no output. what is it about this week? i can't put my finger on it.

in a way i'm in a holding pattern. i signed a contract for a new job last week and it starts next week. so this week has been the in between week. i should have been eager to get all kinds of things done (like all those half-finished sewing projects i've got going) , but strangely, i just feel i'm waiting. and it's not that good liminal space kind of waiting that i love and have waxed philosophical about on numerous occasions. it's just a really non-productive kind of waiting wherein i have retreated into giant sloth mode:

and i was feeling rather badly about it until i read this. it seems that leonardo davinci was a great procrastinator. he filled tons of notebooks with ideas, but executed very few of them in actuality. it's really only an ingrained weberian protestant capitalist thing that makes us think that procrastination is bad. in fact, procrastination gives you time to work things out in your mind. perhaps all this thinking about the artworks that i've sketched out will make them better in the long run. i mean, who wants to be mediocre? and there are times when productivity breeds mediocrity. as the article says, davinci understood the fleeting nature of the imagination...it's important to get your ideas down while they're there. working them out comes later. to quote the article, "if there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted--the things we truly want to do."

therefore, i procrastinate in order to get in touch with my innermost creative self. so there.

the spirit is willing, but the flesh...

..oh, the flesh. it's weak. and soooo delicious.

last night's dinner:

burger with bacon, avocado, pesto gouda and a drizzle of miso-sesame dressing

every sunday evening, i resolve that THIS week will be the week we eat less meat. we don't want to become full-blown vegetarians and definitely not vegan, but we would like to eat meals without meat several times a week--to be both healthier and more economical. and yet, we never really get around to doing it.

maybe being raised in the midwest in the heart of beef and pork country is part of it. you grow up feeling that a meal isn't a meal, especially at dinner (which we call supper where i grew up), without meat. and because you know someone who is butchering a cow or a hog or even hunting deer, there's always meat around. of course, i no longer know anyone with cows or pigs, so i get the meat in the grocery store these days (tho' someone did recently give me some some deer meat), so i don't really have that excuse anymore. but the notion is just so engrained.

this week, i felt more resolved than usual, but then the reality of the big-ass packages of leftover hamburger from the birthday party intervened. we had two unopened packages left. one went into a huge pot of bolognese sauce for spaghetti, which we ate on monday (and which i've had for lunch the past two days) and which i froze two dinner-sized portions of so we'd have a quick dinner another day. then, last evening, we had to use up the other package before its expiration date, so we made burgers. if you're going to eat a burger, it might as well be a good one. a bit posh even, so a bit of bacon, avocado and miso-sesame dressing did the trick. and piling on salad makes it seem healthier, right?

so, here we are, it's thursday and we haven't eaten a vegetarian meal all week. i have one of those big ugly knobs of celery root that came in our organic veggie box last friday just languishing in the drawer. and yesterday, i bought some portobellos as we stood in the grocery store and i had a fit of resistance to the hamburger that was home in the fridge. but then, back home, as i stood there before the burgers, my resolve faded and i didn't do the portobellos. so, perhaps today, we'll have a vegetarian dinner. if not, there's always tomorrow.

sorting diversions

i've spent the past hour sorting my scrap stash (no, i'm definitely not procrastinating, why do you say that?). and i discovered a few things.

a minor addiction to sassafrass lass products:

enough cool halloween-related stuff to make some decorations for sabin's upcoming halloween party:

and along the lines of sorting, i keep seeing sorted books stories in the blogosphere and so i had to give it a whirl. (no, i'm NOT procrastinating, why DO you keep saying that?)

first attempt:

and then this one:

and one more, i couldn't resist using "before i forget" again, it just starts things off so well:

you should give it a try too. i suspect it could get a bit addictive.

and i offer one more small diversion. an article about diagramming sarah palin's sentences. it's a doozy! :-)

so much for living a more intellectual life, eh?

procrastination with a capital "P"

why oh why oh why do i procrastinate? what is it that i think i get out of it? not much, truth be told. self-recrimination. panic (in the end). feelings of guilt for lack of productivity? but somehow, i am not able to work myself out of the procrastination rut i'm in this week. it doesn't make me feel the least bit good, so why do it?

i pondered this as i made gocco prints this morning for my latest swap. it seems that what i'm procrastinating is finishing several articles (all of which are open on my screen), not things like this, tho' the last time i participated in a swap, i also procrastinated it. so who knows what will trigger my tendency to procrastinate?

there's something so satisfying about little frosting peaks of ink in yummy colors.

(hmm, wonder if it's time for lunch.)

these are my most favorite colors..blues and greens. they make me feel relaxed.

sabin had doodled this design on a paper, so i snagged it.

i even made a couple of moleskine notebooks 

(perhaps one day i'll stop procrastinating that etsy shop)

this tree is one that sabin drew when she was 4.

i've long been wanting to do something fun with her drawing.

i decided that during october, we would eat a more vegetarian diet here at our house. less meat. we don't really need meat at every meal. it will be healthier and easier on the grocery bill. but now that october 1 is here, i'm already thinking, that seems like a lot of work, so maybe another time.  what is going on with me?

i have three half-finished articles open on my screen. i am now on day three of spending long stretches staring at them. what is it? why can't i wrap them up? i guess it's not so much procrastination as a block of some sort. but how do i clear it out? i thought perhaps indulging in creativity would help. the repetitive motion of printing gocco cards has given me plenty of time to think. so maybe it's time to give it another go. or perhaps i'll wait 'til tomorrow...

gocco swap: mission accomplished

i did it! i have completed my gocco cards for the swap. although  here this morning, at the eleventh hour, i decided to add some watercolor to the fish ones and then they had to dry. but, they are now, as we speak, residing in little puffy white envelopes at the local post office. it is such a relief to have them sent! i've only rec'd three so far from my swap group, so i'm not feeling THAT guilty, but it was just really unnecessary for me to wait. why do i procrastinate, especially when i LOVE doing this kind of stuff?

here are the green fish cards with some of the watercolor:

i put my "signature" on the back--a martini glass with a small "j."

i have a whole collection of martini glass stamps.

here are the packages, all wrapped up and ready. 

i included one of each color of the viking ships (2 of the neutral because it was coolest) and one fish in green. one package has two fish cards in it (one in green, one in purple), as i strangely had an odd number of black viking ships. not sure how that happened. i decided to give everyone a taste of the different colors, rather than doing one-color packages. that's just what struck me as right this morning as i packed them up.

now, i'm anxiously watching my own mailbox to see what more goodness is headed my way! this swap was great fun! i love seeing the creativity on the swap's flickr as well! there are so many creative people out there! it's fun to be part of the group! at least once in awhile! ;-)