Sunday, July 30, 2017

correctitude heartily kickdown

“It is literally inexplicable.”  John Cleese on Creativity


Squirrel du jour, carved from wood.  My kind of taxidermy.


Audacity

Two days I spent bent over the new quilting machine.  Granted, I shoulda woulda coulds taken a lesson but I tried to go commando, as we say, and do it my way.  I sat with the brochure and followd the threading directions which were printed, but ununderstandable and also watched the built in video that moves at about 75 mph so I couldn't quite get the finer points.  The stupid machine has about a 20 point check for threading the needle.  And OF COURSE I got it wrong.  I eventually gave up and took a 24 hour break but returned with renewed vigor to find the point where I went rogue threader, and I finally did.

OF COURSE once it was threaded and the bobbin wound and I got the quilt all clipped up and managable I found that my starting point, the big circle off center, was territory I shouldn't transverse-  all my stitches were skipped and dropped until I got off the plasticized circle and onto regular cloth.  OI do have some interesting rows of needle punches now, but no actual stitching.  I then played with several of my circular rulers and did sort of a wonky clamshell thing in a spiral out from the circle but it looks crappy and I will probably (sigh) have to rip it out but they all tell me that practice is what makes it work.  Oy.  I don't have enough years left to get in the kind of practice they are talking about.  

But FIRST I need to work smaller.  A 90" quilt as a first time endeavor is just dumb.  So perhaps before I rip away with abandon I will set the whole friggin' thing aside and let it moulder

Sunday, I stayed home today and grilled a spatchcocked chicken, a giant old thing but I forgot to find my rocks to spatch him!  So he is kind of puffy and finally got done.  With it I found some of the rice I heard about on the internet machine-  it's grown in Florida in the Everglades as part of a crop rotation program with the Domino company-  rotating with sugar cane.  Sounds good to me, the soil is being enriched- so they tell me- and a whole new operation was born.  I'll report back if it doesn't taste like Basmati.  And I will write them a letter and I will boycott.  Or not.  Sometimes it just ain't worth rabbleing and rousing for things like rice.    Which BTW cost twice as much as my regular brand, but hey-  'local'.  What a scam.  I scoured the Publix and finally found a manager who didn't know what I was talking about until he looked it up on HIS internet machine and led me to the end cap where they keep all the Florida grown products.  I used to take maple syrup to friends, now I guess I haul along a bag o' rice...

So, Sunday is almost over, time to check on the rice, hack up the chicken, and call it a night.  Oh.  I forgot the ARTY PARTY!

This is sooo depressing!  Check out this guy's masterful sketchbook!  This is what we should all be doing in our spare moments.  




New York City-based artist Nicolas V. Sanchez (previously) creates masterful drawings with only the aid of a few ballpoint pens, rendering unbelievably realistic portraits and still lifes in his many sketchbooks. Due to his precise application of highlights and shadows several of his works seem three-dimensional, such as the fruit bowl seen below which looks placed on the page and not drawn.


hanging my head in shame.

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