Hopefully quick post of the day:

I'm watching you.

Erm, yes, upside down because that's how I was holding the camera.

And without make-up and windblown because it was the weekend when I took this and I'd been outside for a bit.



I'm so not into this selfie stuff...

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Ever fall in love with an album that's famous more or less for just one song? Falco 3 was like that for me. I mean, the radio was all over Rock Me Amadeus, but there was a time when I had the whole damned record memorised. I don't anymore, but it wouldn't take long to get it back if I tried.

I mention this because my latest earworms have been from from an album by an 80s band from Quebec that had one English hit. I loved the whole album, though, and it's driving me freaking nuts that I can't remember enough about either the band or the record to be able to search for it.

Of course, driving me nuts is, as a friend used to like to say, more like a short putt than a drive.



Ah well. Something tells me that I'll be diving into my old store of cassettes (yes, cassettes) just to satisfy my olf tendencies. Until then, go back and listen to Falco. Hey, it's cheesy but it's still a fun song.

Back to work now.

Chapter 2028: Wherein Dee considers a project

Yep, just as the post title says, I'm considering a project. An art project.

This oughta be good.

For those new to the program, I'm as weird about my "art" as I am about... well, most things, I suppose. First of all, you'll notice the quotes around art. I'm not an artist; I'm a dabbler. I doodle. And for any of you out there who get their backs up about that word doodle, I'd just like to say stuff it. I like the word, and it's a good reflection of the fact that I don't take what I do seriously. Seriously takes the fun out of it. I got serious about music for a while, for example, and now the only music I do is singing to myself. Music's still there and always will be, but it would take a pretty swift kick in the backside to get me to be more public about it again.

As far as art goes, until I had to start drawing for myself for work (non-profits don't generally have illustration budgets) no one really knew that I even did it. It was just doodles. It still is, mostly, and that's how I have to keep it in my mind even if some of my stuff has been shown in public and a bit's even been published.

Weirdly, I even furnished the title page picture for a conference on hibernation a while back. It's very odd what contacts the internet will bring you.

Anything else and things stop being fun. And then, if you're me, things stop. Full stop. I just get way too self-conscious about the whole matter. That, plus I start feeling the need to make pieces "right" or "perfect" and that... that's just too much pressure for what should just be a bunch of doodles.

So why is it exactly that I'm considering doing something involving a technique that I've never done before, a display method that I've never used before, and poems that I'm not sure I want the public to see? Sounds like a recipe for a full-on neurotic breakdown if you ask me.

Well, the fact of the matter is that there are a couple of things I'd like to try out, I've found a pretty good way to put them both together, and there's not really a snowball's chance in hell that the public will ever see it anyway.

That last bit I have to keep telling myself so that I don't freeze up. If things work out, yeah, it might make it past my apartment. The important thing for this one really is the process, though, so it really doesn't matter in the end if I'm the only person who ever lays eyes on it.

She says.



And mostly believes, I guess.

Anyway, that's where things stand. You'll get an update if there is one. For now, though, I think that I need to stop typing. The neck/shoulder thing has gotten much better, but it's obvious to me at the moment that it's still not great.

Catch you later, then.

Heeeyyy blog...

Long time no see and all of that stuff. What can I say? I've been busy.

With work, yes, but not just that. Busy doing things like organising, which really needed to be done. Organising my art stuff, amongst other things.

Yeah, the art stuff. I've mentioned before that I have a one-room apartment, and after so many years there the art stuff was starting to take over a bit from sheer spread. So, back in December I bought one of those cheap plastic drawer things, and I've finally got around to putting the art stuff in there.

It mostly fit, except for the paper which I put in a briefcase instead. Oh, and the few blank canvasses that I have left. And some bristol board that I can't decide what to do with. And a set of Crayola markers that I don't really want to take out of the box. And the...

Um, anyway. Most of the art stuff is now in the plastic drawer thing (technical term), and the good news is that I didn't find any surprises. Yes, I actually knew how much art stuff I had, and yes, I've used it.

Not all of it all at once, of course. That would be the ultimate in mixed media hell.

The devil in me wants to bore the snot out of all of you with an itemised list (it may happen yet -- we'll see if I get bored enough in the next while to get into list mode), but instead I thought I'd introduce you to some of this year's new Christmas art stuff with this bit from one of my sketch books. This was just doodling in front of the television and the proportions are all wrong, but for anyone out there who's unfamiliar with Koh-I-Noor's Tri-Tone pencils I thought I'd show you a bit of what they do. The idea is that the three tones combined in each lead give added richness and depth to sketches.

To be honest, when I opened them I thought that they looked like something that a twelve-year-old girl would decorate a school book with (New Direction in flowered hearts or something...), but as I've tried them out I see what they mean. The ones with three similar colours are extremely subtle, but contrasting ones like the one in the picture really do add something to even a rough sketch.

Cool surprise, that. And yes, my two fans may be figuring out that I'm gearing up my brain to do some doodling for work, so if I didn't think it would jinx things I'd say keep an eye on this space (well, more likely on the other blog) for some actual new artsy stuff.

Or things.

Choose your own non-committed-nif there.



As my two fans may have also predicted, I need to get back to work now. No me here tomorrow for sure, but I'll try for something later in the week.

Try being the operative word.

How to spend New Years when you're boring

Today's pointless photo? I dunno. I just liked it.

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So, I have plans for New year's Eve. Obviously, if I'm bringing it up, I'm about to tell you about them. Ready? I'll be...

Sitting by myself in my apartment and doodling.




Yay me.

Actually, that's not a bad thing because it means that I've made the annual trek with my gift card from my enablers brother and sister-in-law to get some new art toys. And beads. I have to admit that I got tempted into the 60% off Boxing Week sale on beads while I was there, so it won't be All Art All the Time this year. Unless you call beading art. Which some people do, I suppose, but I'm not sure that you can count the way I bead as anything close to art.

Anyway.

I'll be quietly home playing with my new toys (and maaaybe a glass or two of wine. Haven't decided that part for sure yet), making a pseudoartsy mess, and, frankly, happy. I never did like the fuss of going out on New Year's Eve and being expected to have fun even when all I wanted to do was get out of a stuffy, noisy room. The only real exceptions to me preferring a quiet New Years were a) back in the dark ages when I used to babysit and knew that New Year's Eve meant some decent cash for a teenager, and b) when this city did First Night for a few years back around the turn of the century (makes me laugh to type that). Yeah, cheap, non-booze-based entertainment actually got me out of the house back then, and it's too bad that the event folded. Tonight, though, it'll be me, DVDs to avoid the vacuousness of TV MARATHONS (otherwise known as we didn't feel like actually programming anything over the holidays), and the new mixed media journal I started last night when I realised that the olf in me just couldn't take the mess of my old one any longer.

It, um, hit the garbage on my way to work this morning. Maybe one of our local dumpster divers will appreciate the sheer weight of the gessoed pages.

Oh, and the toys (but not the beads, because you'll probably see them in various forms on the blog later anyway)? These pencils, and these ones, and a lettering felt on a whim, and a something else that I'll tell you about later because it will also likely be starring in some pointless portraiture here as winter makes me increasingly desperate for things to take pictures of.

Bet you can't wait.

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Nothing like ending the blog year on a sad note, but I just had to mention Edward Hermann's passing. Funny that he's headlined as Gilmore Girls Actor... since I never even watched that show. I remember him more for one-offs and guest shots, really, but wherever he showed up he always seemed to make an impression.

I suppose that there should be some significance about his exit coinciding with the year's, but my two fans know that I don't buy into things like that. I'll just miss him being around, that's all.



See you in 2015.

Should I call this pointless cat photo?

Or are you getting tired of that?

I have to admit that I do appreciate the few seconds it saves me, not having to think of a post title. Of course, I've been blogging long enough that I can remember when posts didn't even have titles unless you specifically hand-coded a field for them.

I sort of miss hand-coding sometimes.

Sort of.

And only sometimes.

Oh, just go back and look at the kitten already.

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So, shall we talk about rocks today? We haven't talked about rocks for a while. I am, as usual, wearing a rock to work today. You may remember that I like wearing rocks.

The rock I'm wearing today is in a cage. It's the one on the left in this picture, and it's bugging the heck out of me that I can't remember what it's called. I'm usually more careful about that, since my olf brain has a pretty serious need to know the names of things. I've been like that for most of my life, to be honest. You couldn't go for a hike with me as a child (well, not a happy hike, at any rate) unless I had a plant field guide with me... or unless you could tell me the name of anything that caught my eye. If you couldn't, or if I didn't have a book that I could try to look things up in, well hellooo whiny kid.

I tend to call that side of myself my latent librarian, in case you wondered. I seem to have a basic need to catalogue.

Anyway, today's rock is currently nameless, but it's green with white banding and I'll try to look it up later if I have time. Until then, maybe I'll just call it George.

I can't believe that I actually forgot the name of the rock. It's so completely out of character.

The other caged rock is a blue tiger's eye, and you can see what it looks like worn in the photo to the left. Ok, so I don't normally wear it at a tilt. I was holding the camera so I was a little slanted. Give me a break.

These rock cage jewellery findings are great for someone like me who enjoys wearing interesting rocks but is too cheap to have them made into jewellery doesn't know anyone with a rock drill to make holes so that she can make them into actual jewellery. The other cool thing with these spring cages is that if you have small enough rocks that you don't stretch the spring you can interchange them whenever you want. I have three cages at the moment: the round one that you see above, the smaller oval one that the tiger's eye is currently in... and a round one that I accidentally put too big a rock into and stretched the spring.

Ah well. That particular rock has a permanent cage home, I guess.

Anyway, you can tell by now that I didn't really have a topic today. That is, after all, when we usually head to what weird thing is Dee wearing to work today? Everybody needs a default, right?

Oh, and word of warning: my favourite rock shop has its annual fall sale coming in a couple of weeks. And that means more rocks. And that means more rock posts.



And maybe I'll remember to check what the name of the pretty green rock was while I'm there. One less source of obsessive anxiety, after all...

Look! Look! Look!

I took this photo yesterday. Yes, yesterday. And it's not even plastic...

Gives me a slight flicker of hope that maybe at some point before October we might even see a little bit of spring.

Maybe.

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And in other news, my father's monitor screen is very dirty, and it's kind of driving me nuts. I've done the best I can to clean it a bit, but his container of electronic equipment wipes has nearly dried out so it isn't the easiest job in the world.

I'd imagine that it's just another manifestation of my life as an olf, but dirty screens really annoy me. There's no reason for a screen to be actively dirty, as opposed to dusty. And -- and pay attention here -- there is NO REASON for you to have your fingers on a screen if it's not a touch screen. Absolutely no reason.

Especially if it's my screen.

Um, get a feeling that it's a bit of an issue with me? Well, it's not. It's a lot of an issue with me.

If you want to get a nasty stare from me at work, go ahead and touch my screen while we're discussing something. I will get out the wipes, even if it means going to another room to find them. And why is this such a problem? Well, first of all I hate scrolling down a page and seeing things that aren't moving. It's very distracting. Kind of like having a bug crawling around the screen while you're trying to set out a document. Second, since I know how much I hate a dirty screen, if my screen's dirty I know someone else has had a hand in it. Not that I'm overly protective of my equipment and space; far from it. People are more than welcome to use my workspace when I'm not there, especially since I'm only part-time and the space is empty a fair bit. Just please don't touch my screen, ok?

I guess I just don't understand why people do that. If we're talking about something that's on the screen, isn't it enough to point towards the screen? It's enough for me. My eyes are going to be directed to where you're pointing even if your finger isn't physically distorting the surface of the flatscreen. Really, I'll see where you mean without the fingerprints.

All well, everyone has their things. I just seem to have one or two too many some days.



That'll be it for now. I suppose since I'm feeling somewhat better today I really should do my taxes. And no, I'm not late. For any of my two fans who are American, tax deadline in Canada is the 30th, not the 15th. And because of the recent computer shenanigans, it's been extended to the... 5th, I think, this year. So maybe I don't have to do my taxes right this moment...





Nah, that's too easy an argument. Just do them and get them done, Dee.

And don't touch your father's screen.

Revisiting

I've been thinking that I need to get out the modelling clay again.

I went to post my doodle for this week's Illustration Friday prompt on the other blog (not really much of a work of art this time, since I was just playing), and one of the suggested links at the bottom of the post led me to one of my old modelling clay men submissions. Back when I was making an effort to post every week -- which I should probably get back to -- I didn't always feel like drawing. On those days I'd make little men out of modelling clay and put them in various situations that fitted the prompt. Hang on... here's some of them. Weird, but fun. I'm not sure why I stopped doing it. I even have fresh modelling clay, if I'm not mistaken.

I tend to be like that with hobbies. I'm a serial hobbyist. I'll go great guns at something for a while, then I'll drop it almost completely and move on to something else. Needlework moves to knitting moves to poetry moves to sketching, and so on and so on. That's not to say that I never come back to anything. Doodling's been with me for years, for example. It's just that sometimes I get more serious about it for a while, and then I back off a bit. Same thing goes for photography, although for a different reason (a different reason than the NO reason for the other stuff. Good one, Dee). I loved to take pictures as a kid, but as I've said before things slowed down a lot when I was expected to pay for my own film and processing. I still took photos; I just didn't really experiment with them at all. The advent of affordable digital, of course, changed all that. I take a stupid amount of photos now. Occasionally of very stupid things, even. It's great.

It's also great to come back to a hobby after you haven't done much with it for a while. It's fresh again, but at the same time you remember why you enjoyed it in the first place. I can always tell when a hobby's ready to be rebooted because it'll start nagging at the back of my mind. Anything can set it off. Putting on an old toque, for instance, and realising how many years ago I knitted it. That'll get me thinking about the other neat toque patterns that I have that haven't been tried yet, and that in turn gets me checking my yarn stocks "just out of curiosity", and once that happens you just know I'll be knitting another toque soon because I won't stop thinking about it.

In other words, yeah, I've been thinking about knitting a new toque or two for next winter.

Notice that I say next winter?

After the past couple of weeks of lows in the -20s and windchills in the -30s, yesterday was finally above 0C. It's supposed to be above 0C all week, actually. I'm living in quiet hope that spring might find us sometime before August.

In the meantime, though, I took the picture to the left yesterday. The melt has a long, long way to go.

This has been such a strange, strange year.

Anyway, I've distracted myself.

I suppose it's as good a time as any to wrap this up, then. In the world of rotating hobbies most things come back, is all I was really saying. Knitting will come back (probably soon), poetry will come back (because I don't seem to be able to stop it. My poetry ain't great, folks), playing the piano will come back (eventually), photography and doodling will never go away, and prepare for the return of the Little Modelling Clay Men because they're pretty much in my brain all the time anyway.

It's an odd brain.

See you in a day or two, all.

Summary of my week, pointless photo style

Otherwise known as: I Guess I Talk About Some Weird Things on the Blog.

So here it is, then. Silver rolling ring, pewter and brass Aquitaine sundial ring, brass candle extinguisher (yeah, I found a couple more brass things around the apartment after that post. Not too many, though. I'm not exactly brasstactic), and Kinder Surprise Spiderman because he was there and adds a bit of colour to the composition.

I have no idea why he has ears.

Note that I said candle extinguisher, not snuffer. I read enough 18th century literature to be bugged by the way that North Americans tend to say snuffer when they mean extinguisher, actually. That thing in the photo is an extinguisher, for putting out candles. A snuffer is more like scissors with a little box attached to one blade to catch debris (picture!). They were used to trim the wicks of (usually) tallow candles to keep the flame from getting too large and melting the tallow into a puddle. If you were bad at snuffing candles you could accidentally snuff the flame out... which is where the extinguisher/snuffer mix-up comes in for our non-candle-dependent society today.

And there's your olf information moment of the week. Aren't you lucky.

Anyway, it's late, and since Google's weirdness killed my attempt to blog earlier in the day this is all you're getting (it wasn't just Gmail that was affected, folks). I'll give it a better go tomorrow. I've got some purposely blue photos I can talk about, after all. What's that, Dee? Oh, you'll find out one way or another.





And for anyone who actually wondered, yes, I'm still having fun with the rolling ring. It's there on my finger begging to be played with even as I type this. I think I'll go do that now.

Fidgety

Today's pointless photo is well and truly pointless. And not fidgety.

I, on the other hand, am pointless AND fidgety.

I play with things. I play with things on my desk. I play with my jewellery as I'm talking to people. I play with just about anything when I need a distraction.

My hands need to be busy or they'll get into trouble, I suppose.

Today I'm wearing a pendant that's also a sundial (hang on... let me see if I can find you a picture... here's the kind of thing I mean. And now I really want the stardial to go with it). I've had mine for long enough that I can't remember where it came from now, and if you can picture it on a silk cord around my neck you can imagine that it's a fun thing to fidget with. One of my favourite things to fidget with, actually.

No longer THE favourite thing in the jewellery category, however.

I went to the mall yesterday, you see. That's an odd thing in itself, since I haven't been to a mall in almost two years. I needed a couple of things that I could find at the mall, though. Happily for my fidgetiness but not so much for my bank account I also found...

A rolling ring!

Um, rolling ring photos, for anyone not familiar.

The rings are intertwined in such a way that they're able to roll over each other. A three band rolling ring is sometimes called a Celtic (or Russian) wedding band or a Trinity band, but my ring has five bands so you can forget all of the pseudosymbolism right now. As I mentioned the other day, I've been wanting one. I've been looking for a while, at least on the internet, but when I saw one in person (silver, nothing fancy, and considering the weight of it not terribly expensive. I'm too cheap for terribly expensive) I had to try it on. And of course once you've tried on the ultimate in fidgety jewellery you can't exactly walk away, can you?

Man, is it fun. It's really, really fun and tactile and did I mention fun?

I'm a five-year-old, yes. but you won't find any buyer's remorse here. No way. I'm enjoying it too much. and besides, it's dual purpose. If I don't feel like fidgeting with it on my finger, I could use it as a pendant and fidget with it on a chain instead.

You'll probably see a photo of it at some point (this is me, after all), but for now I'd better get back to playing with my ring work.



Ah, toys. I love me some toys...

On a more serious -- well, ish -- note, I've been itchy again lately which is a bit disheartening since my eczema had cleared up nicely. Here's hoping that a ring distraction will help keep me from idle scratching when I'm not paying attention. See, there's actually a reason for fidgety jewellery.

Some things make me stupidly happy

Snow, as you know, doesn't. The fact that I live in an area where it's common to find deer just wandering around does, though.

So what else is making me stupidly happy today? A few things, actually. The fact that we're not stuck in the polar vortex does, for sure. I'm genuinely sorry for the millions of you who are, but we get enough crap weather around here that it's nice for a change to not be freezing my behind off in January. And don't worry. That'll no doubt change. It's still Alberta, after all.

And what else? Yep, there's really a what else. You're catching me on a non- (or at least not-so-) grumpy day, I suppose. Anyway, I also found out today that I have a photo on display in our gallery. I know, I know, I always say that my pictures are pointless, and for the most part they are. Even a pointless photographer gets a good one every now and then, though, and when I do I'll admit that I'm proud of them. Well, when our public/special events/gallery coordinator (yep, she really does all of that) was looking for things for a last minute photo exhibit, I gave her the link to the blog's photo albums and told her that if anything was suitable she was welcome to use it. I'd say wanna guess which one she picked, but considering how many hundreds of pointless photos I've blogged I guess that's not fair. Check it out here then, if you want to. And I have to admit that even though I'm usually pretty leery of being recognised or having things on display, it's still pretty neat.

One last bit of happy, because I'm not sure the blog can take much more without turning into a pumpkin. I did some "art" last night. Nothing too exciting and nothing you're going to see because I was just defacing the inside covers of my new watercolour Moleskine (um... for those new to the program, I'm olf enough that I have to doodle on the covers of a new sketchbook to start them out as less than perfect, so that in my brain they're allowed to be less than perfect. Otherwise I start obsessing over the imperfections and stop using the book because I'm worried that it won't be perfect. Weird, I know, but it seems to work), but there was tracing around shapes involved. Tracing in pen. That's big. Since I buggered up my wrist I've been having trouble with pen work because too much concentration on fine muscle control makes the stupid wrist shaky. It's annoying and frustrating, but maybe -- just maybe -- last night's doodle session means that things are gradually getting better. Finally.



That would definitely make me stupidly happy.

So this happened.

Yesterday I was out taking fall pictures (which you'll see in the next while, such as they are).

Today, not so much.

Bugger.

I mean, don't get me wrong -- it's the end of October, it's Alberta, and this was bound to happen. They're saying it probably won't stay anyway, so what's the big deal, right?

Roads. Roads are the big deal.

Somehow, every year the first snowfall causes people to lose their minds as if they've never ever seen snow before and then take off down the highway in a big cloud of idiot. It doesn't help, of course, that this snowfall is creating a layer of ice that half of the population of the QEII (um, that'd be the major highway between Calgary and Edmonton, for those not familiar. Renamed in honour of Her Majesty for a royal visit a number of years ago, which always makes me wonder about the thought process: I know, let's take the stretch of Highway 2 where everyone drives like it's the Autobahn and leaves their collective brain at home and name it for the queen. I'm sure she'd like that) will think means DRIVE FASTER.

Personally, I'm staying here.

For a number of reasons, actually. The idiot factor is the big one, but there's also the problem of the stupid new rock chip that I got on the way here on Friday that looks likely to spread but I couldn't get fixed yesterday because hello? small town business hours (and that was too a sentence. Of some sort). And, since it's me, you can add lack of sleep to the mix. I have no need to make myself part of the problem today.

To be honest, the lack of sleep really kind of ticks me off today, because I'd had a really good sleep the night before and there was absolutely no reason for my brain to play the let's see how many things I can make you worry about all night game. I really, really, REALLY hate nights like that, because it's like I'm having my own self-contained argument. In a somewhat three-year-old style, sadly. It kind of goes like this:

You know... such-and-such might happen.
Shut up.
And if it does, whatsis is certain to happen afterwards.
Shut up.
And you just know that when whatsis happens, it's going to make whosis completely impossible to deal with.
SHUT UP.

Yeah, super productive, that internal discussion. Ah well, if it gives me another excuse to stay out of the idiot parade today then I guess it's not such a bad thing. Oh, and if you're here in Alberta and you're not already following @511Alberta and @AMARoadReports on twitter for updated road conditions, then you really should be.

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In other news, I finished a sketchbook yesterday. My watercolour sketchbook. Ok, maybe not technically finished since I could still use the backs of some of the not-so-good pages that I don't mind wrecking to play around with now and then, but finished enough that if I put it on the shelf tomorrow and never used it again I wouldn't consider any of the pages wasted.

I finished a sketchbook. I don't think that any of my two fans can realise just how big that statement is.

I never finish sketchbooks. I either get partway through and then stop using them because I'm sick of the paper, or I get partway through and put them aside because I can't bear the thought of the crappy artwork that's in them.

I have a little bit of a problem remembering that a sketchbook is a sketchbook and not a this-has-to-be-perfect book.

I made a resolution with my last big sketchbook purchase, though, that I'd allow myself to be less than perfect. Good thing too, since I am less than perfect. And you know what? It stuck. Well... mostly it stuck. My little pocket sketchbook that I do pen & ink stuff in has had to take over from its bigger cousin in the less than perfect category (unfortunately, I had a few things turn out decently in the bigger book. I'm still using it, but not as much for casual doodling as slightly more finished ideas), but the watercolour book stayed as experimental as it was supposed to be.

And it's done! Woohoo! No, seriously. I finished a sketchbook AND in watercolours no less. I suck at painting, but I've kept plugging away at it long enough to finish a sketchbook. Who'd'a thunk?

I have its successor already waiting in the wings, even. And -- knock wood -- now that my wrist is finally starting to feel a bit more stable, it may even get used.

Hooray for small victories, then. And hooray for lunch when it's leftover pizza. In other words, time to stop typing and (sigh) watch the snow while I eat pizza.

Sigh, again.

At least I'll enjoy the pizza part of that.

Got nothing

Sorry about that. I always feel a bit of a cheat when I've been away from the blog for a few days and then come back with absolutely nothing to say.

But here I am all the same.

I guess I could tell you that I'm wearing my new bracelet and one of the pendants today. I can't give you an update on how successful the bracelet's been in the Quest for the Non-Scratching, unfortunately, because my apartment's been really hot and hot and sweaty tends to lead to more scratching. Too bad, too, because things had been looking a bit better before this past week.

Not much to say about the pendant either. It's a pendant. It looks nice. It's fun to play with. Yeah, play with. I'm a fidget when I'm talking to people or thinking about things, I'll admit. If it's one of the rare times when my hair's down, I'll play with my hair (and I hate seeing other people do that, so you can see how much of an unconscious habit it is with me). If my hair's up, I'll play with whatever's around my neck. Might be a pendant; might be my crocodile nerdstick (yep, still wearing that. Still a five-year-old girl. Still fun). In lieu of something around my neck, I play with my pinkie ring.

Never my watch, though. Watches aren't toys. They're for telling time, silly people.

Anyway, that's it. More on the weekend, maybe.

Especially if I wear a different pendant.

Pencils

Today's photo isn't new, and it isn't pointless.

It's memorial.



Sigh.

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Ok, back to pointless.

I had a bit of a weird moment the other day for an olf, and it concerned my -- well, I won't say vast collection, but there's plenty of them -- art pencils. I'm very fond of my art pencils, and I've been generally fussy about the way they've been kept. First of all, everything in its original case or container. Yes, even the blister-packed ones. I'd just peel open the top and keep the rest intact to hold the pencils. Second, everything had to be sharp. Note the past tense on that one because it's something I've got better about over the years. Even I had to eventually admit that oversharpening wastes an awful lot of material. Time was, though, that I couldn't even begin to make myself draw if every pencil in the set wasn't completely sharp.

Not obsessive at all, me.

So, yeah, I'd gotten over the need to spend hours sharpening things, but I was still carrying around a bunch of metal cases and blister packs any time I wanted to use a set of pencils. The other night, however, I had a very slight epiphany, which went as follows:

This is an awful lot of cases to carry around.
I bet it would be a lot less heavy if I weren't carrying these cases around.
Maybe I should stop carrying the cases around.

Sounds simple to most of you, I'm sure, but to me the thought of taking something pencilly out of its original packaging was akin to blasphemy. Shocking. Shocking enough, in fact, that I tried to make myself forget about the idea. Not carrying the cases? Ridiculous.




Or maybe not. The idea nagged at me to the point where I realised that maybe -- just maybe -- I should try taking my pencils out of their cases. Allow them a little freedom. Make them easier to cart around.

Last night I took the plunge.

I took the hot glue gun and some of my grandmother's sewing felt that I'd held onto for crafty things, and I made half a dozen simple pockets/rolls. AND I TOOK MY PENCILS OUT OF THEIR CASES.

And it didn't even feel weird, oddly enough.

Half a dozen cloth rolls allows me to still keep the sets separate, but should make it easier to store and haul them. And if it doesn't work... well, of course I've kept the cases. You can't just throw away the cases, after all.

A couple of observations from while I was deciding what should go where:

• I have a lot of money (and, erm, other people's money) invested in pencils.
• Apparently I like Derwent rather a lot. I think at this point they may owe me loyalty points.
• Water-soluble makes everything better. Graphite? Fine. Water-soluble graphite? Two pencils in one!...

Oh, and if anyone's curious as to the rundown, or if anyone out there is also an olf, here's the list of my rolls (or the roll of my lists? Whatever):

1. 12 Derwent watercolour pencils
2. 12 Derwent Graphitint & 3 Prismacolor water-soluble graphite pencils
3. 6 Derwent tinted charcoal & 4 Wolff's carbon pencils
4. 12 Derwent Inktense pencils
5. 12 Derwent water-soluble metallic pencils
6. 6 Conte crayons

There's also a set of 24 Derwent Aquatone pencils and a set of 24 Prismacolor Verithins, but I figured that sets that big may as well stay in their own cases.

You can't get rid of all of the cases.



I need to get back to work now, but I'll sheepishly admit that after I put the pencils in their new homes I did spend quite a while sharpening them. It's ok, though. It wasn't obsessive. It's just that some of the pencils were genuinely dull, and I figured I may as well take care of that en masse.

See? I'm an almost reformed pencil olf. That's coming a long way.



No, really.

Yeah, that weird thing

... is on the wall of the gallery here at work.

It's our annual staff show.

I did a painting.

Or I guess three paintings.

I might not have hung them this spread out, but it works so I don't mind.

My mind minds that it's on the wall at all, but you've been hearing about that already. If you want to hear more for some reason, check the other blog. It's linked on the sidebar. I talked (or typed, I guess) too much over there already and I need to get back to work, so check there for more angst.

I'm such a neurotic freak.

Well, that was odd

I just did something that I don't think I've ever done before in my life.

I ordered a couple of new sketchbooks.

I can't express to you how weird that is.

All my adult life I've started sketchbooks, got a page or two in, and that was that. And here I am reordering, all of a sudden? Weird.

I should explain a bit, I guess. When I say all my adult life, I'm only talking about two or three sketchbooks. I've never been very good at sketchbooks. Oh, I start out with the best of intentions -- you know, trying to keep things loose, not caring if things are exactly what I'd hoped, reminding myself that I'm doing this for practice and not for show -- but it never seems to take long before my OLF self gets dissatisfied and starts to get all perfectionist. That's never a good thing with sketchbooks, because if you start wanting to make the sketchbook perfect and it isn't you soon find yourself not wanting to open the sketchbook at all.

There's also the problem of paper. I've mentioned this before, but I'm a very tactile person when it comes to playing with art stuff, and for me one of the worst sins a sketchbook can commit is having boring paper. Case in point? My field sketchbook, which is currently being cannibalised bit by bit for other projects. I was full of enthusiasm when I started because I'd never really done much field sketching, and to be fair I did end up doing a little. The paper in the book, though, was sooo boooring that I found myself doodling on anything BUT the sketchbook when I went outside on the trails.

So, yeah. Between perfectionism and boredom, sketchbooks have never gone all that well for me. So can anybody explain to me, then, why I only have one page left in my watercolour sketchbook and three in my pocket sketchbook? What, exactly, changed?

I suppose pocket sketchbook might be a clue. It's small. It's always in my purse, along with a set of Prismacolor pigment pens. It's no pressure to fill a page while I'm sitting around waiting for something. Plus (and this may be a big insight into my warped brain, I don't know), the first thing I did when I got it was doodle all over the inside covers to make sure that it wasn't pristine. There, weirdo. Just try to make this perfect. It's already not perfect, and you can't change that. Pressure's off.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But you do what you have to, I guess.

The watercolour book is a little harder to fathom, because I'm most emphatically not a painter. I don't have the foggiest clue what I'm doing when it comes to painting. Getting a watercolour book to begin with was a leap of... I was going to say faith, but stupidity might be a better word. How have I managed to finish a book? Plodding along, mostly. And it became a place to experiment. That's what it was supposed to be, really, but this is the first time that something like this has worked out that way for me. Not everything in the book is great (in fact, most of the book is pretty awful), but even I have to admit that there are a couple or three things that I'd save if I decided to take the book apart.

Ah, now there's a question. Will the finished books stay intact, or will I rip them to pieces? Honestly, I don't know. I've never finished one sketchbook before, let alone two. The pocket book will likely stay together (whether I keep it or chuck it is the question there) because I've drawn across the fold each time so it's pretty much impossible to remove those doodles. The watercolour book, though. Actually, there's at least one thing in there that I might consider framing.

Yes, framing a watercolour. Done by me. Told you this was odd.

Anyway. I've made my online order since it's cheaper to get what's apparently become my book of choice that way (and might I just say here, rather theatrically, DAAAMN YOU MOLESKINE! I so desperately wanted to not like the first moleskine I bought because they're comparatively expensive and I didn't want to get sucked in by the hype, but... sigh. Paper, did I mention? And it's amazing how important a simple piece of elastic can be), and in a little while I will actually be starting new sketchbooks because my old ones are finished.



I don't know who I am anymore.

How do you doodle?

I'm going to try to make this quick since I'm sort of in the middle of work things. That, of course, means that it won't be quick.

What you're looking at in today's pointless scan (ha! You thought I was going to say photo, didn't you?) is a page from the small moleskine sketchbook that travels in my purse. I was manning a booth at some event or other (can't even remember what, now), and there were long periods of nothing. Nothing isn't good for those of use with short attention spans, so I got out the sketchbook. I did do a couple of actual sketches which you're not seeing here, but after a while my brain went into pattern mode, which is a pretty normal tendency for Yours OLFly. The result is what you see here. And if you're thinking it's suggestive of of anything, well, that says more about your brain than mine. I was just making random shapes and filling them with checked patterns.

In case you're wondering, the inclusion of the ribbon in the scan was entirely deliberate. Now it's black and white and red all over...

Anyway.

The reason you're seeing this particular pointless pattern is because of this article about the value of doodling. It's worth a read. And you should also check out this link, which is from the bottom of the first one. Doodles by famous authors. It's pretty cool.

So, ok. Doodling's a good thing. But is it a good thing that if I'm doodling-doodling as opposed to sketching-doodling, it's almost always a pattern of some sort? It's been that way my entire life, really. My old grade school binders didn't have cats and flowers and possible boyfriends' names in them; they had patterns. Often the same patterns show up again and again. One you see above (this is the front inside cover of the same sketchbook. I was trying to make sure it was already "wrecked" before I started it. Otherwise I try to keep things too pretty. And the date? Well, I go through on and off periods with sketchbooks, so this one's been on the go for a bit. It's almost done, though. And if you wondered, I am, indeed, a doofus). One I've called The Brain because that's sort of what it ends up looking like. You've already see the checks; there's also a whole series of branching patterns where I set myself up some general branching rules beforehand and then see what comes of it.

I'm... kind of weird? Well hey, there's no surprise.

No grand conclusion's coming out of this, by the way. It was just a question I had. And if what you see here gives you more of an insight into my psychology, well then... um... good? Or bad, I don't know. After all, I am, in fact, a self-professed doofus.

----------

Congrats to today's medallists. I was able to see most of the trampoline competition before I left for work (including our gold medallist, who absolutely deserved it), but I'll have to watch the medal ceremony replay when I get home.

Which I have the option of. I don't know how you American fans can possibly put up with the NBC mess you've got on your hands. Here in Canada we're getting nearly twenty-four hour coverage, and on several channels. The live stuff's been keeping me great company on those sleepless nights (much better today, thanks). I'm almost glad for the difference in time zones, as inconvenient as it's making it for everyone else in North America.



Well? What other attitude would you expect from a sleepless doofus?

Lily love

My two fans know that I've made no secret of my love of pattern and symmetry. It's probably connected with the obsessive part of my OLF self, but noticing patterns pleases my brain. Especially, oddly enough considering what I just said, when what initially seems to be a simple pattern is broken up by chance or some factor unknown to the quick glance into something that appears to be much more random... and then, upon closer examination, turns out to be a more complex pattern rather than an accident.

Yeah, I like fractals. And Lichtenberg figures (although, obviously not the struck by lightning part. I wouldn't like that at all). And the branching patterns in leaves, in case the pointless photography found here hasn't made that terribly clear already.

You'll notice that I said that I love pattern and symmetry above. Patterns don't have to be symmetrical to attract my attention, but I'll admit that a good bit of apparent symmetry certainly catches my eye.

Apparent symmetry, yes. A lot of the symmetry that we think we see out there isn't. Case in point? Us. I've brought this up before, but our apparent symmetry (which really isn't symmetry at all. We're all lopsided, whether we want to see it or not) is only skin deep. A quick look at our internal workings is enough to show that the outside appearance is all ha ha fooled you. There's barely a damned thing symmetrical about us at all.

I'm so distracting myself from my point. Ah... good, then. I guess that means that things are headed back to normal on the blog for a bit. And, of course, that the blog won't turn into a pumpkin, which is exactly what will happen if it ever comes to a point.

Either that, or the second coming.

Um, anyway. I was headed to lilies, I think. Judging from the photos and the post title, at least.

I like lilies. Members of the lily family have always had an attraction for me, especially when it comes to drawing. The clean, bold lines, the simple symmetry...

Apparent simple symmetry...

See? I got myself back on track.

It's not nearly as simple as it looks, my friend. Six simple petals in a basic radial symmetry? No way. To begin with, three petals.

Yep.

Three petals, three sepals. If they weren't flower-coloured, you'd be able to tell a lot easier that those bottom three "petals" were actually the covers that were protecting the flower before it opened. The outside of the bud, as it were. In a lot of plants, the sepals are green and form sort of a ring at the base of the flower. Here, they become a part of things, colour and all. We call all the members -- petals and sepals -- tepals when that happens.

I know, who really cares if they're petals or not? Botanists. And anal-retentives, I guess. And people who like it when things aren't as simple as they first appear.

I like being surprised by nature.

Although I can't quite figure out the surprise of the flower in the bottom photo deciding to grow along the ground instead of standing upright. It's a healthy plant; just has a prostrate stem. Bend over by something early in the growing season, I suppose. Not that it matters.

Just like sepals and petals? Yeah, in the end I guess that's right. It's not going to change my interest in finding out that things aren't really as they might seem, though. There's too much of a cool factor in it for me.

And that makes me happy.





And now? Well, now that I have some new reference photos I should probably get off my lazy behind and... erm... back on my lazy behind and draw a lily. It has been pretty much sheer laziness lately, the lack of drawing. I get that way sometimes.

Kind of like with blogging. I'll try to do better this week.

Stewing

The pointless photo is not, of course, of stewing. It wouldn't be a pointless photo if it was.

Actually, it would be pretty much a miracle if it was, because the kind of stewing I'm thinking of is the kind that goes on inside rather than the kind you can take a pointless photo of.

Yeah, I'm stewing. Stewing about something.

You see, I tend to stew about things when I don't have all the facts or details. I hate driving someplace if I don't know exactly where the place is, for example (and that can be a bit of a problem when I'm programming out at schools rather than here at the nature centre). I hate being put into unfamiliar situations if I don't have at least an outline of what's supposed to be going on.

I guess you could call it a slight touch of OCD. Or just plain neurosis.

Either way, I'm stewing.

I have a program tonight, you see. Well, two of us have. It's for a group we haven't programmed for before.

AND I KNOW NEXT TO NOTHING ABOUT IT.

I know that the booking sheet has very little information that's useful for me so far as prep goes. I know that there's supposed to be a "social" after the walk. I'm hoping that the "social" part is being taken care of by the organisers, because I certainly know nothing about what's apparently happening.

I hate knowing nothing. It makes me... uncomfortable.

And I still have over an hour of stewing left before I can officially declare that there's nothing to be done about it.



Some days I'd give quite a lot to be a little less OLF, really.

And now, back to stewing. Um, yay?

The non-collector

What you see in the not-quite-pointless photo to the left is a fan. Excuse the weird angle and the dust; it's high up on the wall in my room here at my father's place, as it has been for years. it was from the China Pavilion at Expo 86 (we took a class trip out to Vancouver for Expo. It was a lot of fun, and the first trip I'd ever taken without my parents. I... brought home a fan. So adventurous, me). It shares the wall with a few other cheap fans that I've picked up from various places.

It was part of a fan collection that never really happened.

Thank goodness.

You see, I used to collect things -- the important word there being used to. I don't anymore and I have no desire to, but back in the day I had collections of buttons (pin-on badges, more properly, but we always called them buttons around here), stuffed animals, the aforementioned fans, books, porcelain dolls...

I wish they'd go away now.

The problem with being a reformed collector is that when you decide you've had enough of collecting the collections don't just disappear. They stay around to clutter your life until you finally get so frustrated that you either start collecting again or just get rid of the whole shooting match.

For years I've been leaning towards the latter. Doing something about it, even.

The stuffed animals went first. I donated a lot to a couple of preschool programs, and most of the rest to a charity drop-box. The maybe half-dozen that are left have specific meanings to me, so for the moment they're not going anywhere. Do you think I'd really give up my first teddy bear, even though I don't remember it and it has no face because I apparently chewed the leather nose off when I was teething? Not yet, anyway. It's enough that the rest are keepsakes rather than a mindless collection, especially because they don't take up the wads of space that they used to.

The buttons are on a bulletin board in my room here. They don't take up much space either, which is why they're still around (same for the fans, really. They're just decorating the place). If anyone out there knows someone who collects badges and might like a free box-load of them, let me know. I'd be happy to send them along, and they wouldn't be missed.

The books were a bit harder, because they're of value to me for their contents rather than just their sheer numbers. For a long time it was almost sacrilege to me to willingly part with a book. That changed about ten years ago, though. I got fed up with the way my one-room apartment looked more like my one-room library, and I actually sorted out a whole bunch of them and threw them in the same charity drop-box that received the stuffed animals. It felt... surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting it to, but it was nice to have the space back.

For more books. I need to sort again. To be fair, though, even the casual book buyer tends to accumulate things over the space of ten years, right?

Which brings us to the pickle of the porcelain dolls. I have lots of dolls, and I totally blame my mother for it. Mom was, unfortunately, massively into collecting. Bells, in her case. And brass objects. And when, as a teenager, I decided to spend what was probably too much money on a porcelain doll dressed in a kimono (I'd been admiring it for a while), she latched onto the possibilities of a new collection. I have probably over thirty dolls, and I think I bought four of them myself. She used to give me dolls for birthdays, Christmas... yeah, lots of dolls.

I'm tired of the dolls.

Some of them I'm fond of and would likely keep, yes, but most of them need to find new homes.

How do I do that? Some of them are worth a little money, so I should really sell them rather than give them away. I'm not too anxious about becoming an ebay seller at this point in my life, and something like kijiji means that I would have to put up with people calling me about bloody dolls at the worst times. I guess I want to see the dolls go without actually having to be involved? Yeah, I suppose.

Auction, maybe. I could just take them to auction.

Ah well. I'm not likely to do anything at all with them in the near future, since I'm not tripping over them every day. I'm open to suggestions, though. For the dolls and the buttons. And, for that matter, Mom's bell collection...





You know, I've mentioned before that as I get older I get less and less connected to my "stuff", and that's really true. If you'd told the teenager who bought that fan at Expo that one day she'd be wishing she had less stuff, though, she would have wondered if you were trying to teach her some sort of Wonderful-Life-type lesson. Funny how things change, isn't it?

I wish I'd brought back more than just a fan from Expo...

Empty cards and condiment loyalty

The two aren't related, if you wondered. They're two separate topics that I'm going to blather briefly about. Yep, two topics on a blog that doesn't usually have any. What can I say? Even I can recognise when my material is so thin that it needs a hand.

Condiments first, then. I read a thing on generics and brand-name loyalty the other day, the gist of which was that for most things the generic or store brand is just as good as the advertised brand, as hard as it is to convince the average consumer otherwise. I wasn't terribly surprised. With very few exceptions I'm willing to buy generic, but that's not because I'm too good to be won over by ad campaigns or anything snooty like that. It's because I'm cheap, and I admit it. I'm generally willing to give almost any generic product at least one try before I shell out for the more expensive item. There are a few time that I lose out that way, but overall not very often. Generics make sense in my brain.

Except when we get to condiments. I'm realising I'm pretty weird about condiments.

I use the same name brand ketchup I grew up with, even though I'm probably paying too much for it. Aren't other ketchups just as good? Dunno. Haven't tried them. My father currently has a different brand of mustard than my usual. He bought it for me since he doesn't generally use it. It tastes fine. Nothing wrong with it at all. Would I buy it for myself? No. It's not my brand of mustard.

Defies logic, doesn't it? Yep, and I know it.

I know it, and yet it's one of the few areas of my shopping life that I'm stubborn about. I use the same name brand worcestershire sauce that I've used for years, and if the store was out of it I'd wait until they got more rather than buy another type. Same goes for soy sauce. And hot sauce... no, wait. I take that one back. I'm willing to try other hot sauces, really. It's just that I don't go through humongous gobs of the stuff (I tend to add heat to the cooking, rather than on top afterwards) so I end up using the same bottle for a while. Buying the same one again after that is probably more reflex than anything. Point me to a different one that I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for, and I'll give it a go.

I suppose a person could say that we look for very specific tastes in our condiments, and I think that's probably true. Still, it says something for old habit that even a cheapy like me doesn't look for alternatives when it comes to the added dash of flavour, don't you think?

----------

And now, cards. What you see in today's pointless photo above is a package of Artist Trading Cards, otherwise known as ATCs. As you might guess, they're traded amongst artists and their friends, and occasionally also sold. They come blank, if that part wasn't obvious, and you make your own art on them. I took the picture on the keyboard just to give you an idea of the size of them.

Not terribly big, right? Shouldn't be much of a problem to do some little doodles. Then why are mine still empty?

I got this package as part of my annual Christmas habit-enabling gift card to the art store (ah yes. What would life be without enablers? In my case, less fun), and it's been sitting around unused ever since. It's not unopened -- I've felt up the different papers, yes, because that's a usual thing for me -- but it hasn't seen a hint of a pen or paint or anything.

Something about them has blocked me, I guess.

So here's the deal: tell me what to do. Suggest things. Drop me a comment or an e-mail. Or here's a thought... do you want one? Would you like me to send you an ATC for some reason? Then TELL ME. Maybe it'll help me get off my artistic arse and start doing something about these bloody cards.

As you can tell, it's starting to bug me a bit.

Ah well. If you want to help, drop me a line. If you want to do it by e-mail rather than comment, there's an address on the sidebar of the other blog. Just scroll down a bit and you'll find it.





Jeez, I hate it when my brain goes weird on things for no reason.