Confidantes

Alright, so I'm in over my head. I've decided that I need to quit my job in order to have time for all my projects, commissions and chilling. But in order to pay for all that, I need my job, cause all the other stuff only brings in juice box money.

Here's what I'm doing right now (or, what I SHOULD be doing...)

* Sculpting and painting a custom order for two clay garden gnomes made to look like the young married couple who ordered it from me.
* Painting a custom for one of the moms at work, a canvas painting of four giraffes.
* Making a huge order of Skelebuddies for a wedding in September.
* Painting an order of 25 wooden fish for a shop in the Dominican.
* Scanning my old Snap Crackle Pop strips to re-size them for the upcoming book.
* Working on illustrations for my three children's books.
* Inking a comic page that I started over a year ago.
* Drawing new SCP strips.

Uhm... I think that's it. There may be more. But I forgot. Occasionally I have to shower, but you know. Not that often. Meanwhile I'm also running the etsy shop and putting up new things. I'm doing a new series of Claymates that resemble different animals -- specifically, animals that need some attention and love -- and I'm donating 25% of whatever I make to the World Wildlife Fund. Here are some of the candidates for adoption...


Broderick.

Nigel.

Orson. He's my newest guy. He has an argyle sweatervest.

These two that follow are my favorites. Sold as a pair, they are the ultimate team, molded so they can fight or hug or breakdance together.


Yeti and Sasquatch. How I love them.

All these and more can be purchased here!



Now, regarding the elusive Snap Crackle Pop, help me out, here...

Poll #1507913 Le Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

I have a few new SCPs drawn, but not as many as I'd like, and I'm still not finished putting together the SCP book. What should I do?

Thanks! I miss you guys!

Our New Year's was fun, despite the cold and rain that totally obscured the blue moon and fireworks. The neighborhoods around here are like goddamn demilitarized zones for like a week around any holiday; from the sound of it, you'd think it was Beirut. Kind of cool, as long as you don't think about it too closely.

The family came over and Andrew taught us all how to make tamales, which turned out AMAZING. I broiled pork all night long for the filling, and we made masa from scratch. J marinated some steak in salsa verde the way Andrew showed him and grilled it, and it was so fucking delicious. We ate it with tomatoes and avocados Mom picked in the field. Poor Andrew got blotto, but we all had a pretty awesome time once we hit our second wind. I never thought I'd be struggling to stay awake past midnight. Jeez.

That afternoon, Kit and I took Mom to see Avatar. I haven't cried at a movie like that since Letters From Iwo Jima, when I had to leave the theater and dunk my head in the restroom sink. I feel so strongly about this flick, but I'm not gonna bore everybody. It deserves all the good things people are saying about it.

J's been talking about traveling again, and I reflexively dig my heels in. I'm a housecat. I don't want to travel. I like it here. Which is a really unpopular opinion, I know, and like a lot of things in my life, I'm against it until I go ahead and do it. But really, you ask me where I want to go most of all? Cleveland. Any hour of any day. I feel like my heart is bungeed to Cleveland.

Watching Avatar made me think about traveling to places where I'd be that kind of stranger, where everything is utterly foreign to me, and that scares me. I hate being the outsider, I hate not belonging, not understanding. Like... I couldn't go to India, for example. Aside from the fear of a language barrier and all, I couldn't handle it emotionally. Being in a place where faith is a part of everything the people do? I can't even handle going to church on Easter -- I end up crying so hard it disrupts the congregation. Which is a big fat issue all by itself. In India, I feel like I'd lose my mind, like I would break the fuck down. An overinflated balloon. Bang!

Blahhh. Enough of that.
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I'm having this little love affair with super bulky-gauge knitting, especially hats. Giles Deacon did a Fall collection some years ago that blew me away, and some of his pieces included gigantic, lustrous knits. (Also feathered shoes and corsets made from porcupine quills.) shuraiya showed me a photo of a bulky-knit hat that I just loved, so I tried to recreate it, thus:





soviet sweetheart hat: I LOVE Soviet-style hats. When I knit Claire her giant red riding hood, I found this great yarn: Classic Elite Aspen, and knit it on US 19's, which are hilariously cumbersome. Aspen is so soft and fat, I heard some knitter say it was like knitting with soft-serve ice cream, and that's right on.

This hat is for warmsound, because I love you, Lis, and because you need a gigantic hat that says LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL I AM.
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home again hat: I usually scorn Lion Brand yarn, but they've put out some good stuff. This is Hometown USA yarn, and did a nice job. I love that robin's-egg twill ribbon. Martha Stewart Craft stuff is glorious. God, I'm such an indoctrinated capitalist swine. Brand names! Target! DON'T LISTEN TO ME. SHOP ETSY.
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It is powerful and disturbing and entirely too familiar, this sharp little feeling that comes and goes and upsets the balance of my life. The Itch is back; that nasty little pull in me, making me want to drop everything and just get gone. It's not a fear of responsibility or commitment, or even an emotional allergic reaction to my shitty apartment (which would be a fair inducement on its own). I just feel -- like I often do -- like I need to get out of here.

I've wanted to travel my whole life and I've had a few opportunities of doing so, which I drank in greedily like a cranberry lemonade. Each time, few though they were, that I was able to take in some new place, the taste was delicious. Florida, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, O'ahu, Kauai -- I opened myself to those new places all the way to my pores, and loved it. I want more, possibly forever.

It's not enough for me to just read a travel narrative; if the writer is a hack it only makes me want to whack them upside their unappreciative noggin, and if the writer is brilliant (Maarten Troost, I'm talking to you) it only makes me want to go there myself and see what they saw. Reading about a place doesn't give my nomad soul any satisfaction. My mouth is watering, right this minute, to get the hell out of Dodge and see and feel and taste it all.

Of course, there's still a big part of me that wants to remain in relative comfort, however boring it is becoming, spending my days at my safe job, in my affordable apartment, with my enjoyable boyfriend, painting my semi-successful hodgepodge, but this other half of me is violently bucking against it, more so each day. I'm not the sort of person who equates a comfortable life with slow emotional death (and I actually believe that anyone who says they do is fibbing); I have no problem with building a happy life around myself one day, making up my own house and my own jungle yard, filling that house with my children, depending on a job I enjoy, these are all things that I look forward to and plan for. But this seems only to increase that feeling of panic, real panic, when I think of India or Scotland or Wellington. I need to travel now, right now, so I don't spend the rest of my life wishing I had.

Doing these things is possible, but only with major sacrifices. If I want to go to Madagascar, I could do it, as long as I scraped away all my savings for two years, gave up half our groceries, sold off half of my possessions and quit buying books. I do not live an independent life. I have to think about The Boyfriend, my sister, my mother, all of whom I love and need to consider before I just fly off to Thailand, Costa Rica, Borneo, Seychelles. I want to be able to do what I like without reference to others, but I've realized that, because of who I am, this isn't possible right now.

That nomad brain wishes I could live alone, shrug off or accept relationships as they come, move as I like, travel as I like, send postcards from Mexico or souvenirs from Greece or pictures from Italy or France, call my family when I get there and meet a dozen people wherever I go. The real me is firmly, grievously rooted right here, in gross and loud and treeless Wahiawa, rooted by my job, my man, my things, my bank account, my goldfish, my cat, my silly crafts. I'm stuck. It's possible to get un-stuck, certainly, but not easy.

I just want to go. Anywhere would do, I mean it. Send me to New Orleans, Munich, Bath, Delhi, Taipei, heck, even Portland. I have full-on got The Itch, I've caught it like the flu, it crawled up my sleeve and all over my skin, and it ain't going away. Not until I do, anyway.

I've got to get on a plane.

So while my wisdom tooth fiasco was goin' on, I did some knitting. Thought I'd take a break from doing hats and work on getting mitts down. I think I did! I'm pretty comfortable with the anatomy of the Mitt. Eventually I want to try some small-gauge gloves, but that's a ways away.





katie goodnight mitts: Elbow-length mitts with stars on. I'm really fond of the matching hat, so. For these I used the Communion Mitts pattern from Cosy's Knit One, Embellish Too, which has become the most useful book I've ever owned.
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rotogravure mitts: Rotogravure is a printing method involving an engraved cylinder. It's one of those words that's been haunting around my brain for like years, and I had no idea where I heard it or what it meant until I Googled it. (Other words include aileron, zymurgy and praetor, which became Eli's name, fortuitously.)
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ship to shore mitts: I love the phrase "ship to shore" for so many reasons. There's an old-fashioned sailor's love story in there.
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strawberry jam mitts: To match the Strawberry Jam hat. They need a little work, but they're charming, and they make me want a Fruit Roll-Up.
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auerbach mitts: These are the tops. This is Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton, which is among the softest stuff on the planet. These speak Ashley Bliss to me; the pumpkin pips and wood buttons, sort of fresh but cosy and delicious. I miss Ash Bliss. I named these for Dan Auerbach, whose album runs daily through my head.
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star foam cowl: This was made with Classic Elite Ariosa, which comes in little Tribble-sized balls that feel like you're holding a cloud in your hands. It's a cashmere blend, light as a feather, and I thought it would make a great cowl. I did a star pattern in, which always makes me happy.
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Some of these are still up on Etsy.

What else... Oh! Another moleskine journal, by request:





niangao asked for something with Sarah from Labyrinth on it, and I had a lot of fun doing this. I really love drawing dark hair with lots of flyaways. And that chandelier turned out pretty boss.
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And that's the show, pretty much. I'm knitting a hat for my Dad, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 as usual, braising some butt steaks for tomorrow (I ALWAYS wanted to say "I'm cooking butt steak"). The family's gonna come over and Andrew's gonna show us how to make tamales. Fiesta!

I got a great comment recently from somebody who said they followed this LJ as a craft blog, and that they were inspired by it, and that just made my day. :) I love knowing I'm not just circle jerking in my enthusiasm for crafty stuff.