List-It Tuesday: Overheard

Yes, it's Thursday. I've had a couple of Weeks Like That, okay, and only two days late is actually pretty impressive, considering. The topic this week is overheard, and it's just too juicy to let slip by.

My daughter takes a preschool gymnastics class. Last year, when both my older kids were in school, I spent the 45 minutes sitting and knitting. Most parents stand at the viewing window and chit-chat, but I was too tired and achy from Lyme Disease to stand for more than ten minutes at a time. (Sad but true.) This year I have my eight-year-old with me. He does his math chapter and then we play some Uno, or he might read while I knit, or, usually, some of all of that. Today, I eavesdropped a bit. Some of these were said by parents, and some were said by the group leader who runs the before-school care for kindergarteners. In case you can't read the scan (the scanner doesn't like the spiral binding) or my handwriting, here is what it says:

* You're not being a nice boy. You're staying right here. Who's going to win this battle? [This was said by a caregiver--not sure if she was a nanny or a grandmother--but it seemed pretty clear to me the kid was winning.]

* Every single one is like chipped but a handful. I don't know what I was thinking when I registered for these. [Sigh. A few of the moms have a "like" speech impediment, as you'll notice. It like drives me like crazy.]

* They're like up the walls.

*Then it all like slowly unravels.

*I was feeling in control of my life for like a little second.

* It's definitely like guilt.

*I'll be making like 15 things for the school bake sale.

* Please sit down on your bum and eat. Sit down and finish your lunch. I'm going to have to glue you to that seat.

* Do not put that over your face like that EVER! You can see through plastic. You can't breathe through it.

*If you did say it don't say it again because it's not appropriate.

It's worth it to go back to Aimee's post and check out all the links...some good overheard stuff this week!!

List-It Tuesday: I Am A Sucker For...

 

When I saw the topic for this week's list, I knew I needed to put it on a lollipop background. I played around with some new watercolor pencils to make this (#2!!). Here's a bit more about the items on my list:

1. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, if one of my kids comes to me to offer a hug, or because they need a hug, well. That becomes my automatic priority, right? I'm still waking my youngest up for a bathroom trip before I go to bed, and those sleepy hugs and kisses she bestows as I carry her to and from bed...my goodness. Sometimes it's the highlight of my day, hands down.

2. Art supplies are like a Happy Drug. And books! Full of ideas! Techniques! Pretty pictures! I'm such a sucker.

3. Many a night I've agreed to this request against my better judgment, knowing that 6:45 is a better bedtime than 7, that everything will go just that much more smoothly if I don't read that one more story. And our marathon read-aloud sessions once the school bus is gone and my coffee is poured...one more story, Mama? Of course.

4. Bird seed costs a lot! But I love seeing the birds visiting the feeder. I will stop what I'm doing for a bird almost every time. Not too long ago the two youngest kids and I saw three--three!!--flickers grazing for insects on the grass. Joy! Over the weekend I spotted a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk in a beach parking lot in the pouring rain. Of course I stopped the car to watch and try and get a decent photo through my windshield. Whenever we run low on birdseed I go to the store and put another ginormous bag of it on the credit card because apparently, bird seed has become a line item here. I signed up for Cornell's Project FeederWatch this year. I can't wait to get my packet of information.

5. We get lots of requests for donations in the mail (because we donate). And when we are on a tighter budget, I can recycle most of them, but I can't pass by the appeals from the Food Bank. One day a couple years ago I received their report on the state of hunger in Rhode Island. I was so appalled (I read the whole thing) that I signed us up for a monthly automatic donation. There was no appeal envelope or request in with the report, just the cold, hard facts, but it was the biggest incentive for donating more that I'd ever read. I've recycled a lot of donation requests recently, but the Food Bank is also a line item.

Next week's topic is "what I love about where I live." I can't wait. Those of you who know me well know I love to list what I love about living here. I think next week's list might have to be a photographic one, hmm... maybe you'll play along too? 

Linking up with Aimee at Artsyville!

List-It Tuesday: 15-Minute Creativity

 

The topic this week is "creative things I could do in 15 minutes or less." This was a fun list to make, using a combination of watercolors and Pitt artist pens.

How about you? What can you do in 15 minutes or less? Go!

Linking up with Aimee for List-It Tuesday.

List-It Tuesday: Nostalgia

It's List-It Tuesday, so here I am again with my list. This week's suggested topic was "things that make you nostalgic," which stumped me. So, like the good English major I used to be, I turned to the dictionary. The second definition, the one I incorporated into my list, is, I think, the one we all most associate with the word: "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition." No wonder I was having trouble! My husband has described me as the least sentimental person he knows. (I will get back to that in a moment...)

The first definition of the word also shed some light for me. "The state of being homesick: HOMESICKNESS." When I was ten, I lived away from home for about six months or so. It was not a good situation. (Hello, understatement, and backstory! It's not coming, sorry.) At the beginning, I was excessively and sentimentally homesick; I can't even think about how excessively and sentimentally. I got over it, because it wasn't changing anything. As hard as I've thought about it, I can't remember ever being homesick in that way again, not at college, not traveling by myself, not at all that I can think of. Safe to say I detached.

The excessively sentimental side of me went underground, too. The items from my childhood that I've thrown out or let slip through my fingers--you'd be appalled. (When I got engaged I threw out an entire box of letters from old boyfriends. I figured it was wrong to keep them, and I've never missed them, although I didn't realize at the time that letter writing would basically become extinct, and quite soon. At the very least, they'd make excellent collage fodder now.) I know people who are sentimental about houses...no. The house to which my firstborn came home from the hospital, where he took his first steps, was also filthy with lead paint, super duper tiny, and in a neighborhood where lawns were regularly sprayed with nasty chemicals. I was extremely happy to leave it. And while I do own special objects, I'm hard pressed to think of any loss of thing that would devastate me.

But I am sentimental about my children's childhoods...perhaps even excessively so. I've tucked away all manner of odd flotsam and jetsam, and they can decide, when they're older, if they want to keep any of it. I have tried, to the best of my ability, to take note of as many moments as I could, not just the highlight-reel moments but the everyday ones as well. While I danced with my first baby in the sling throughout the night in the dark living room of that old, small house, because he couldn't sleep otherwise for colic, I looked down at that sweet baby face and thought, I will remember this night, this song playing softly, this lullaby I sing to you, this beautiful, ordinary, just-us moment. Over and over and over I have repeated the attempt to cement a moment fast in my mind and my heart.

And thus, this week's list is more of a heart-wish than a list. I cannot be accused of living in the past, or even wanting to. But if I could jar up just one day from each year of each of my children's lives--if time travel existed, I'd visit them all again, even just briefly.

And see? I am sentimental, because just writing this post has made me tear up just a bit. And you? What makes you nostalgic?

List-It Tuesday

About all I've been "creating" lately is lists, so when I saw Aimee was starting up List-It Tuesday again I figured that, at least, was something I could do. This week's theme is resolutions for the remainder of the year, but instead I decided to take a few minutes (stolen between supervising the bedtime routine and packing my son's lunch for the following day) to write down all the things I'd like to make, when I can re-work this crazy schedule and find the time.

You can click on that to make it big enough to read, I'm pretty sure. I scanned it, so the far left edge is a little blurry in spots. The stamps were an impulse buy at Target yesterday, and I am so bad at stamping alphabet stamps; I have to work on getting the pressure just right so I get a nice stamp of the letter but none of the edge. My list is not as gorgeous as Aimee's, but it is written down now, so when I get those precious itty chunks of time, I don't wander around going, What did I want to do again?

Where have my creative energies been going instead? Mostly in getting ready for my co-op classes and supporting my kids' project-based learning (here and here, and I'm not up to date on posting about it all yet). I think I'd be doing a little better if we could ease into the day, but with one in school, too, that's not possible. So I'm just hanging in until things even out, which I hope they do soon. Meanwhile, I have the goal of at least once a week producing a slightly prettier list than my usual scrawled-in-the-daily-planner type of list. Although, I think those workaday lists are pretty fascinating and just might share some of those, too!

Drawing + Painting

A little of what I've been up to this weekend, not counting the knitting, which will get its own post soon, I'm sure. Part of what is making Pages and Paint pretty cool for an online course is that it's the first one I've taken that includes snail mail. Before the course began, we each received a little packet in the mail with some odds and ends, plus an envelope to open each week. (That's 200 packets that had to be compiled and mailed out--whew!) One of the odds and ends was a snippet of fabric, and this week's bonus assignment was to get out the paints and try to re-create the pattern on the fabric. What a great idea! What fun!

So this was my attempt. First off, I'd have liked some black to mix with the blue and white, because that background is really more of a blue grey, but the supply list had the primaries and white, so I'm sticking to those for now. (But yeah, I'm going to have to use some black. I like shades as well as tints.) Second, I didn't reproduce the fabric exactly. Once I had the white circles (made with my fingertip), I mixed colors and added them as I pleased, more trying to get the spirit of the thing rather than the thing itself. (With a nod to Wallace Stevens.)

I had fun. Also, I really like mixing paints. I've said before, yes? I'm realizing that this is one of those things that I think is easy because I can do it (a common way in which I don't appreciate my own skills or talents: I think if I can do it, it must be easy). Many people are relating how they are struggling with mixing paint colors, so that is another benefit of this workshop--I do not recognize my strengths, mostly. And while I still think if I can do something, certainly anyone can learn to do it too (and I do think this is a skill, not a talent; it is entirely learn-able, and my kids can all mix colors with varying degrees of success because they have been given the paint and the opportunity to do so), I'm going to take a moment and appreciate my love of color and willingness to experiment with it.

Okay then. So after doing that assignment, I decided to vary the theme, and came up with this.

Earlier in the week we were told to play with text and different ways of writing it. I used some letter stencils and some letter stamps (which is what you see here). In this instance, I stamped on tissue paper and then glued it over the painted background--squares instead of circles, different color palette, but still a direct descendant of the fabric assignment. This is the text, which might be hard to read:I have spread my dreams under your feet/tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

They are the final lines of a poem by W. B. Yeats, "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven." Would you like to take a minute to read it all? I'll wait.

Isn't it lovely? I'd written this fragment in one of my many notebooks a year or so ago, thinking I'd like to do something with it, something illustrative, with embroidery, clearly. And I moved on to other things, and forgot about it, and found the notebook while straightening up the studio the other day, and wanted to remember it again. (I need to get better at keeping all the ideas in one place.) I love poetry. You probably knew that already though.

One more picture for you. A couple of weeks ago, iHanna posted about mandalas, and she included a video. I watched the video, and not too long after began drawing one every night before bed in a small notebook. It's very soothing. I think it's perfect to do before bed. Here are some samples.

The one in the larger notebook was done one rainy afternoon when I thought I might interest my older kids in trying it if I sat and did one myself. They were only sort of interested, but that's okay. They may decide to try at some point. All it takes is paper, a fine-point marker, and patience.

And you? Did you find some time to be creative--or contemplative--this weekend?

Pages + Paint: Sketchbook

I've only taken a few online courses, but Pages and Paint is my favorite so far of the ones I've tried, mainly because it is getting me inspired to do. Last week, Week One, was mainly about setting up our studios and inspiration board/wall. The kids and I already have a great place for art-making--it's not perfect (I'd love some natural light), but it's by far the best set-up we've had in this house and I'm so grateful for it. The walls are filled with works by the kids and me, studies we've done together using different materials, to inspire us as we work. But lately I'd been thinking I needed a section of the wall to hang up the odds and ends I've collected that I want to have out so I can see them. So that's done now.

But I just couldn't wait to get into that sketchbook! So last week, after spending a day at the local salt pond with the kids, when I wanted to remember some of what we'd seen, I combined words and sketch.

I think if you click on that to make it bigger, you might be able to read what I wrote, too. And yes! We saw a BIG horseshoe crab, and it was so so cool! There is nothing like seeing creatures in their natural habitat--while sharing their natural habitat. I can't even explain how it fills me up to be able to give these experiences to my kids.

Combining words and sketches in one journal/sketchbook was a revelation for me. I don't have to have a journal OR a sketchbook OR an art journal (the last, quite frankly, I find intimidating). I can put it all in one place. Obvious, I know, but it was something that needed to click for me. And all those photos I take (because I always have my camera with me) of random things that catch my eye? I can print them out--regular computer paper is fine--and stick them in the book.

Now, in Week Two, we are working in our sketchbooks as a class. One assignment was to make a double-page spread that felt "finished." Since I'm using an 8.5x11" sketchbook, I turned it sideways to do this.

The quote is from an e.e. cummings poem. Again, I think it'll be readable if you click on the photo. I was actually able to do this during the day (usually I get creative time at night). My boys were engrossed in their books, and my daughter was at the art table with me, working on her own composition, with crayons, stamps, and paint. Love working with her like that.

Also this week, we were given prompts. Mine was sunny*yellow*shady tree*try a sketch*happy. Because I'm trying to get more comfortable with materials I don't often use, I sketched this tree with chalk and oil pastels. The leaves were added with paint.

As a reference I used a photo of the enormous "fort tree" in a nearby park. I wanted to try approaching this prompt in a completely different way, too, so later I did this one.

This is more collage and mashing different things together, something that still feels so challenging to me. I think I drew here with conte crayons, which are always more chalky than I think they should be.

I'm excited about the "bonus" assignment for this week too...and that's what I mean about this course. It's got me doing. I'm really enjoying it.

Mighty Girls

You might have noticed the Mighty Girl Art button in my sidebar. I signed myself and my niece up for the e-session. It would be really cool if we could sit and create together, but she's ninety minutes away by car, so we'll have to settle for some distance sharing, which is also okay. Hopefully she doesn't mind if I share this little story about her and me. She's my older sister's first child, born a few months before I began dating my now-husband, in 1996. She was the first grandchild on either side of her family, and the next (on each side) was her brother, four years later. In 2001, when we let her know I was growing a baby, she got, well, upset. It turns out, she thought if I had my own baby, if I were a mama, I wouldn't be an auntie anymore--I wouldn't be her auntie anymore.

{Silly. I was her auntie first.}

I'm really glad she wanted to join along in this e-course, but I'll be honest--I'm doing it as much for me as for her! I think my girl-child self would have really enjoyed something like this, and probably needed it badly, although I can't think of any female adult in my life who might have wanted to do it with me at that time, with the exception of my older sister. And so, here is one of the many cool things about this course...Wendy has set it up so that one registration equals lots of girls doing it together. I'd checked with her about the distance: Would it be okay if my niece and I did it together but separately, or should I register us both? But no, one registration was still enough. And my niece is planning to do some of the activities with her younger sister, and I'm doing some with my daughter, and it's a Mighty Girl web just in our family, thanks to Wendy and her vision. Cool, right?

Wendy gives us art journal prompts each week. This is my response to the first one.

We were given the subject of a tree, I didn't choose it. Trees are just following me around lately.

This was created using conte crayon, ink and brush, and bleeding tissue paper. I will admit to struggling with the whole idea of art journaling in the past. Part of me just doesn't get it, probably because there are no rules at all. I tend to think of a journal as one thing, with words, and a sketchbook as something else, but slowly, I'm getting the hang of it. I want to get into an art journal habit, and I think with the help of this course, I just might. Here's my response to the second prompt.

The prompt was something along the lines of, What would your heart look like as it opens? I knew right away I wanted to start with a literal heart (found at The Graphics Fairy site, here). Oh, this was so much fun to doodle.

And here are a couple of the crafts. No forsythia blooms in our yard, sadly (I want some forsythia bushes!), but my daughter and I decorated a fallen maple branch with orange tissue paper--orange because it's currently her favorite color--and placed that in the center of our table. Below it is a wish bowl...along the same lines as the wish jar I put together earlier. I invited the whole family to write down any wish/dream/goal and add it. I'm not sure anyone will take me up on it...

...but it's a pretty little bowl, reminding us to wish. Those items inside right now? The heart-shaped polished stone, the rock that says "Dream," and the silver sand dollar were Christmas gifts to me from my oldest child. I picked up the pine cone one day because I really like its shape.

This post is already a bit long, so I will be back tomorrow with another poem post, sharing a particular favorite of mine. I hope you are doing mighty things, whether they be big or small.