you gotta feel this... in your duodenum.

yeah, this guy's amazing. our friend sent this video to jon and i'm re-posting cause i love it. reggie's voice rivals prince (which i don't say often)... and then... he's funny too. wait til he starts dancing. i'm crushin.

sharon who?

i've mentioned scherenschnitte, the art of papercutting, on this blog before.  the book below was given to me as a gift many years ago when i first became interested in doing paper cutting myself.  it is a collection of the paper cuttings of hans christian andersen, the brilliant and sad writer of beautifully devastating fairy tales.  as a child, i let him break my small heart as i listened to my mother read "the red shoes" and "the little match girl," and having often listened to danny kaye's lovely record of silly songs and andersen stories, i was so pleased to discover this little book.  andersen delighted children and adults not only with his stories but also by cutting paper while he told them, and at the end of the story would unfold these magical illustrations.  having attempted this art form for years while wielding an x-acto knife and pre-designed pattern (mine or someone else's), i find his art even more remarkable considering that his only tool was probably an awkward pair of scissors.

one of my favorite contemporary paper artists is an englishman called rob ryan and his work can be seen in the next two photographs.

paper dress

the intricacy is mind-boggling, especially when you consider that everything belonging to each image is connected and from one sheet of paper. (mine is too, at least in theory...)

below are examples of work by a local artist, cindy ferguson.

casting pearls before swine

cherry blossoms

cindy is a talented graphic designer and paper cutter and hilarious human to boot! and teaches occasional classes, one of which i have taken.

and here are a few examples of things i've done. it helps if you can do simple sketches so you have your own pattern, but if not, there are lots of places on the web that provide free patterns. what's great about paper cutting as a hobby is that while it's quite lovely, it's also CHEAP. all you need besides paper is that x-acto knife and mat... and maybe a lot of attention to detail. 

this design is martha stewart

the next two are my designs

all art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography. -federico fellini

i've mentioned before that i was lucky enough to go to jeweler's school in san francisco over 6 years ago. because my family had lived in palo alto when i was a child while my dad did his residency, we still have friends there, and while i attended school, i lived with the loveliest of all lovelies, pat robinson. i even lived on the same little street i used to live on, the first residence located on property where mark zuckerberg now humbly (seriously) resides. 

every day, monday through friday, i would wake up and walk past a tiny local library and then down a street smelling of orange blossoms and jasmine (palo alto is divine!) to the train and spend an hour snuggled up with a book commuting into the city. upon arriving, i would walk several city blocks past little shops and the big convention center there to market street. every day was spent in a lovely old triangular-shaped brick building called the phelan building, and every day was fun because i was learning new things, from soldering and fabrication to stone setting and mold making. our teachers would often leave the windows open, and at ten stories high, the most delicious san franciscan breezes would waft through the air. at lunch i would get fabulous sandwiches made by little chinese ladies at a deli down the street or the most divine brown sugar shortbread at a nearby bakery. and then at the end of the day, i would reluctantly leave my workspace and newly purchased tools and the euphoria of learning something new, and take the train home at night to eat dinner and sleep in my cozy little bed on amherst street. not to mention, one of my best ladies was there at the time too, and we had some fabulous times.... ("that beaver has rigor mortis!!")

it was a short but delightful spot of time in my life, being surrounded like beauty like that, and i feel so lucky to have gone. jewelry isn't something that i'm passionate about necessarily; certainly the world doesn't need any more of it. and i've never been drawn to the overtly showy or expensive. gemstones, precious or otherwise, are pretty, but the human and environmental costs just don't make them all that worthy to me. i would so much rather own something made of tin by a tiny peruvian woman who i might have met on my travels, or something intricately carved in tree resin by a grey-haired, hunched over ethiopian man-- because i can't help but believe that permeating those inanimate objects is something worth more than gold.  

anyhoo.... the things i make are not made in another country or out of anything really precious. but they're mine and i make them with looove.

some of my earliest, simplest pieces:

brass, one of my favorite metals to work with

a prism from one of grandma's old lamps

my sister's idea, made from a button

we sawed off the button backs and glued on soldered ring shanks with 2 part epoxy

upholster this!

first upholstery project

upholstery is fun and relatively easy if you choose a simple piece of furniture to begin with. my friend erin had been taking community education classes several years ago and that's how i was first introduced.  my first project was the chair pictured.  it had belonged to my grandfather and he no longer wanted it, so i stripped the fabric, keeping the pieces as intact as possible.  this part can be kind of tedious because you have to pull out either a billion staples or tacks.  there is a special tool for this, but it's SHARP and i stabbed my left hand aplenty.  after it was stripped, i spray painted the exposed wood black, and because the chair was old enough, covered the skeleton with new burlap, which provides a kind of support for the cotton batting which pads the chair.  i provided several layers of fresh cotton batting (the older it is, the smellier) and using the fabric i had stripped, determined how much new fabric i would need.  the old fabric also helps you guesstimate the basic shapes of the fabric; you'll want to hang on to it til you're finished.  using a staple gun (an air gun makes it SO much easier, so be sure to make friends with someone who owns an air compressor!), i stapled the fabric to the wood as close to the inside edge as possible.  sometimes it's helpful to have 3 hands, because stretching the fabric to the proper tension can be challenging.  (it also helps not to staple your finger to the chair, which i've seen happen and is actually kind of cool, as long as it doesn't happen to YOU.)  it needs to be pretty tight but also kept even.  the back piece of fabric was stitched on by hand with clear, nylon upholstery thread and the trim is glued on.  it's kind of time-consuming but so much cheaper than buying a new piece of furniture, even if you take a class.  plus, for me, the satisfaction of being able to look at it and say, "yay me! i totally did that!" is so worth it.

 

(disclaimer:  why WHY did i choose this fabric? one, it's UGly.  and two, what if the french is just french jibberish like the tee shirts i used to see in brazil with english nonsense written on them?  c'est la vie...)

come to me, spring

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings-

really, e.e. cummings?  how does anyone write anything this beautiful?

happiness is not something i have ever really had a talent for, even as a child.  but when it comes, these lines are what it feels like.  what i love about mr. cummings is that he writes the way things feel, not the way we've learned to describe them. leaping greenly spirits of trees? don't they really seem that way on a perfect spring day? it's so much better and more accurate a description than talking about green branches blowing in clear air.... and i think this poem describes accurately the kind of saving god i believe in.  e.e. cummings, sometimes you make me want to weep for joy.

we all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving...

my brother-in-law, lloyd, is really one of the nicest, sunniest men you'll ever meet. super athletic, he also happens to be a weaver! several years ago, he decided he needed a hobby other than playing and watching sports, and upon researching, settled on weaving. someone in his family had a loom that wasn't being used, so he inherited it and started learning.  he and his wife keep the loom in the corner of their family room and it is really quite beautiful just as a kind of architectural addition. lloyd had made rugs for family members and because i'm interested in virtually anything handcrafted, lloyd said he would make a rug for jon and me and that i could help. i helped a bit with each step (there are more than you might think and i wish i had photographed them all), and we brought our rug home last night where it graces the floor of our teeny tiny kitchen. i don't remember any of the weaving terms, but i can tell you that weaving is far more involved than i ever would have thought. once the loom is set up, however, the actual weaving goes pretty quickly and is so fun! and like all handicraft, seeing the end product is so worth it! thanks, lloyd + mel for all the hang-out time and instruction. you guys are the best!

one ostrich 5 ways

ostriches are really cool.  did you know they can run up to 43 miles an hour and can run at this speed for up to half an hour?  did you know they are the second fastest animal living?  did you know their fossils date back over 120 million years?  just one of their eggs can equal up to 24 chicken eggs, and they do not bury their heads in the sand but they do lie low and press their necks into the ground in order to be less noticeable in defense, which kind of cracks me up.  (what?! ostrich? where?)  ostrich meat is a red meat and is really low in cholesterol, calories and is almost free of fat.  their immune systems are one of the most advanced known to mankind, and also, if you look up pictures of ostriches online and see the one where the ostrich has a mouthful of teeth...  it's not real.  :(  cause birds don't have teeth. but maybe someone thought it was.  and maybe her husband still teases her about it.  but the picture is pretty convincing.

 i gave these to sissy and she framed them and put them in her wee babe's room. i like.

what i love about thrift shopping is...

when this happens. and you find something so totally perfect. like it was made for you.

i'm so in love with the fabric of this handmade dress. requires losing 5 lbs for a perfect fit and if that doesn't happen, sell it on etsy i will.

modern love

i mentioned these silhouettes just a few posts ago. the first one i did- of myself- was for a school project-- we had to do a couple of non-traditional self-portraits, so i did a paper collage profile cause i'm in love with paper.  and husband's came along when i realized i needed to come up with decorations for the table where guests left us little notes.  my sister re-purposed our invitation (which had black silhouettes of us on it) and turned it into a 3d piece of framed artwork; by chance, they all totally fit together.

funky chicken

my sister is a better knitter than i am.  it's true.  i took a beginner's class at a local knitting shop many years ago and showed her how to make scarves, and then i ran out of knitting juice and she just took off.  luckily, we have enough aunts and cousins who are expert knitters who could help her out once i no longer could.  and like my late grandmother, she knits whilst watching movies and television, a trick i may never pick up.  she's made a handful of these cuties and baby clothes and such, and it's so fun to see what she produces.  yay, b!

lost in (rob) france

 

now here's a guy you'd want to meet, if only he hadn't just flown across the pond for love. originally from wyoming but a resident of salt lake for a number of years, i discovered this gentleman because he was a friend of many acquaintances and somehow somewhere saw his work.  i was smitten at first glance.  he does pen drawings that more recently include a bit of flesh-toned watercolor, and they summon early 20th century fashion drawings and are pretty mannerist in style.... other than that, all i know is, this guy's got talent.  and a nicer, more genuine fellow he couldn't be.  i'm just sad my city has lost him.

a bench by any other name

here's how i ended up with this beauty.  i went to jeweler's school in san francisco over 6 years ago and have worked professionally since then.  i never had a space of my own to work (outside of my place of employment) and always knew i would eventually need one.  i had been looking into what it would take to build a jeweler's bench and was talking about it with my father-in-law since he is a carpenter by hobby and a pretty darn good one.  i think i said something like, "mason, if i were to build a bench, what kind of wood would you suggest?"  he immediately got all worked up about it and literally two days later- TWO DAYS later- i got a phone call from him saying that he was half-finished.  now the joke with my family is, "so mason, if you were going to build a china cabinet cradle sailboat, what kind of wood would you suggest?"

now all i need is a spaceheater.  and about 3 bajillion tools.

sew crafty

i have been scared of the sewing machine my whole life.  my WHOLE life.  my sisters all took sewing in junior high and i don't ever remember thinking, "oh come on, if they can do it you can too."  no.  i've always been afraid that somehow that scaryfreaky needle would sew my fingers together and i would have to go to the emergency room and they wouldn't be able to fix them and i'd end up like django reinhardt.  but then, this christmas, i asked for sewing lessons.  and i realized that i had been anxious for no reason.  (which makes me realize that probably most of my fears are like that.)  i went to the fabric store for quilting fabric, which is kind of like going to the candy store only much healthier for you, although maybe not so much for your wallet.  and then i cut out all the fabric according to the pattern.  and then i started sewing.  and it is SO MUCH FUN.  i haven't sewn my fingers together once.  (knock on wood.)  so my quilt, a crib quilt (modest goals, modest goals) is turning out quite nicely and with the scraps i've made pot holders, which i'm really quite proud of.  i even made them without a pattern.  maybe i'll sell them on etsy.

man cannot live by bread alone... or can he?

so maybe you've heard about this bread already. and maybe you haven't. but it might be one of the best things that will ever happen to you. husband's dad has been making two large loaves of  this boule pain weekly for several years, and it is so much cheaper and yummier than what you'd buy at the grocery store. it's perfectly chewy and crusty and basically just everything you could ever want in a bread. hailing from the famous sullivan street bakery, here is the recipe for oh-so-easy no-knead bread. the only thing you really need is a little forethought.

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour + more for dusting

1/4 tsp. instant yeast

1 1/4 tsp. salt

cornmeal or wheat bran as needed (i like cornmeal for ease and flour for taste)

see? easy.

1.  combine flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. add 1 5/8 cups water and stir until blended. cover bowl with plastic wrap. let it rest for at least 12 hours and up to 18, the longer the better, at room temp., about 70 degrees. (this is important. my apartment is colder than this so we have to find warm nooks to hide it, otherwise it doesn't rise as well.)

2. the dough is ready when the surface is covered with bubbles. flour a workspace lightly and place dough on it. sprinkle it with a little flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. (this is no-knead, remember? yay!) cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutos.

3. using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking, gently and quickly shape into a ball. generously coat a cotton towel (not terry) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more of the flour, wb or cornmeal. cover with another towel and let rise for about two hours. (i usually do this for less than that. just be careful that the dough doesn't fall.) it should be about twice the size and should not spring back much when poked with your finger.

4. at least a 1/2 hr before dough is ready, heat oven to 450. put a 6 to 8 quart heavy covered pot in the oven as it heats. (this pot should be cast iron, enamel, pyrex or ceramic. i use my le creuset.) when the dough is ready, remove the pot from the oven. turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. it might look crazy so give the pot a shake or two to even the dough out. i had to do this a few times before i got a pretty-looking loaf. but it will mostly even out as it bakes. put the lid on and bake for 30 minutes, then take the lid off and bake for another 15-30 until it's browned and gorgeous. cook it on a rack.

warning: you might eat half a loaf as toast for breakfast.

for gigi...

so i'm kind of in love with papercutting. i've been doing regular scherenschnitte (usually black cutouts on white paper) for several years, and then this year, for my wedding, i did some less traditional profiles of husband and me which turned out pretty well. i'm currently working on a project for my mama. here's what i did: first, i found a picture online that i liked that worked with mama's theme.

then i did a simple sketch of the image in the size i wanted it. i used an exacto knife and self-healing mat and scissors to cut out each item in the picture using the appropriate color paper. then i glued it all together and mounted it on white cardstock with gingham borders. you can't tell, but all of it is mounted on foam core covered in brown wrapping paper.