ill!

I was feeling guilty for sleeping all day (from 11am to 6pm), until I realized that a well person couldn't do that anyway. Maaaybe I should have bought Dayquil instead of Nyquil, but it was a frightening orange color, and the mint Nyquil was bad enough. Now I am missing the dinner my house is having to welcome the person who is taking over my room. I am going to do laundry and return library books like a champion. (a champion sews her socks together and returns more than a hundred library books at once).

cleaning

I like deep cleaning the house. Much nicer than the daily pick up I have to do to keep my shambles livable. My housemates very gently asked if I might help them clean up the common spaces and I agreed even though that's the most difficult way to clean, for me. Xiaona likes to do things together as a group. It's hard for me to listen to the ongoing negotiations about what to do with an empty ketchup bottle or whether corners need to be wiped down. Since we do this so infrequently and none of us have compatible standards the exercise in domestic hygiene takes eons. But I was firm with myself that since I've neglected my patience and let it whither away, I would enjoy this opportunity to develop it. And then, at the agreed upon start time, no one was about and I locked myself in the bathroom and cleaned it. A while later my housemate knocked on the bathroom and I opened the door in my cleaning rags and gloves. He thought I had been in my room and was looking about for something to clean. He joked as he walked away, "somebody tell me what to doooo!" I was locked back into the bathroom by then so it was easy not to say, "find something dirty and wipe it or wash it." Then I wore myself out cleaning under the clawfoot bathtub.

Letterbox for Disneyland

I made a little letterbox that fastens to steel with strong magnets, because one of my friends might go to Disneyland soon. If she does, and if she wants to bother planting this, I might recarve the stamp. I made it a tiny, tiny logbook too.

Big Sur Topo Map

I went to Big Sur for the first time two weeks ago.

It is exactly the kind of nature I like, unrelenting beauty. Pescadero was really nice, but there was nowhere to stand and survey it so it all felt like a jumble of greenery to me. I was surprised when I looked at my pictures that it had been so pretty. Anyway, I went to Ventana Camp on a two night backpacking trip. We stayed at the same camp both days, because I needed to rest my back. It was really nice not to have to break camp and hike, even though I like doing that, because it gave me a chance to work on my art in the woods.

I made a letterbox for Big Sur and it didn't quite turn out. I noticed most of the stamps I find are off white, so they must not be the pink colored speedy carve that I use. So I bought some speedy cut, even though I heard it is terrible to work with. And, it was terrible to work with. I took it real slow, and got something I was happy with (Casey would disagree, because I wouldn't stop saying how disappointed I was), and then for no reason in the world it fell apart in half. So I trimmed it up and planted it anyway. Casey said I shouldn't plant something I was unhappy with, but I reasoned that I would be really excited to find this stamp, so I should plant it.

This is the impression I took before it fell apart.

Library

I was discussing Alzheimer's with a friend and I said I wouldn't be frightened of Alzheimer's because I could live in a perfect, sun filled room, with a rocking chair and a grey cat and shelf upon shelf of my favorite books, which I could read as though they were new to me. That is not strictly true, I am sure, but I have held the comforting image of this library close to my heart this week amongst unusual stressors. I like the idea of cultivating a library around myself like a broken in shoe, a lifelong friend (in the form of a musical instrument), or a garden. So, I've started. I have several sketchbooks and journals, as well as dozens of books I love. Here are some of the threads I am considering working in as series or one offs.

Hollow books to hold my kits and supplies:
-stationary and stamps
-hand sewing
-office supplies
-bookbinding
-letterboxing
-earthquake preparedness
-drawing; pen and ink
like the idea of thick book spines on display, concealing my personal things. A possible iteration of this concept is a bedroom with no personal effects stored in drawers, because they are stored in bookcases in books.

Extant documents bound for permanence and accessibility:
-syllabi, readings, and selected coursework from my undergraduate classes
-a year's worth of grocery receipts or other receipts
-Japanese notes
-letterboxing stamps and journal entries

Altered books:
-Annotated, illustrated, overflowing dictionary
-a book about wyoming I made ages ago

Copyright Ethics

I am getting pretty good at stamp carving because my fine motor skills and aesthetic judgement are very developed but I went letterboxing today and one of the stamps was just cunningly executed and I want to get to that level. It was the Valencia Post stamp in Aptos. The print lines were consistent, the depth of the removed portion was very consistent and the cuts were shallow. Also the logbook had loads of entries so I know the stamp was used plenty but it wasn't worn out. So I looked online for more advanced stamp carving techniques and found a page with good content and ethics I disagree with.

I know I am a little on the permissive side when it comes to copyrighted works. But I feel like noncommercial use of transferring digital images to handiwork- embroidery, stampcarving, drawing, and so on- is incredibly innocuous and a legitimate use of the images. I use copying constantly in my sketchbook and I don't see how else I could develop. I usually don't make fan art but now that I have I don't feel that the Doctor Who franchise is diminished by it in the slightest.

TARDIS Letterbook

My second letterbook is a TARDIS. It's going to Vermont with Casey to live in his school library. This is the second in my series of letterbooks.

Here is the book open, with dalek, Tom Baker scarf, and TARDIS. The bottom half of the letterbook is blank pages I glued in to use as a logbook.

I already stamped them all into my personal logbook, like I stamp everything I make, but if I make it to the TARDIS at Marlboro I shall stamp them all again.

This project was time consuming because there was so much to carve out from the book and so many small details, but it was easy because I didn't have to plan out any designs since I cribbed everything from the Whoniverse.