slightly wonky

Yay!  Spring is here!  Get out the lightweight mittens!  Get out the waterproof, yet non-bulky, knee-high boots!  Get out the gauzy, cotton scarves!

Just kidding…

It’s in the mid 20’s and I’m bundled up like an Eskimo.  Right now, I’m wearing a down coat in the house.  My feet feel cold.

Beyond the perpetual climate woes in the Northeast (did I mention that Boston broke its snowfall record this year?  Yay/Boo!), I sprained my knee recently, which is beyond annoying.  I’m not a good patient, as I avoid seeing the doctor, do internet research, and hope for the best.  I have a perfect excuse for laying on the couch all day eating bon-bons with my leg elevated, and yet that seems like a tedious way to spend the day.  Instead, I hobble around trying to do stuff, wondering WHY my leg doesn’t feel any better.  It’s kind of sad that I’m not even 50, and I’ve already started moaning about my aches and pains.  Would you like to discuss the pros/cons between three different types of knee brace?  No?  Do you think that if I wore all three at once, it would heal faster?

In spite of my aching leg, I’ve managed to play around a bit with sewing, printmaking, and painting.  I made a little pouch for my SIL:

It’s cute, right?

Here is one of the annoying things about photography that I struggle with…COLOR CORRECTION.  Here is the same pouch in direct sunlight:

Looks pretty different, right?  AAAARGH.  I hate dealing with trying to reproduce accurate colors.  It wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t listing things on Etsy.  But because I am, I’m constantly struggling to get accurate color.  It’s truly maddening.  Well, it’s not as bad as cooking and grocery shopping, but a close second.

I took a 6 hr printmaking class on reduction printing.  It was fun, even though I made some serious disaster prints.  We just used those cheap styrofoam plates to print with.  Here is a tutorial on this kind of printing.  I was sort of content with this print:

You can do this kind of printing at home without a press, so give it a try! Do not accidentally lean your elbow on your styrofoam plate because you will:

a. get ink on your elbow

b. make an indentation in your plate which will affect your print.

Unless, of course, you’re into elbow prints.  Who am I to judge?

I was also mucking around with watercolors too.  In grad school, I took a VERY ANAL RETENTIVE watercolor course.  We were doing Beaux Arts watercolors like this:

Michael Simeone

I know.  WHY was I learning this in architecture school, as it’s soooo stodgy and traditional?  I wanted to learn how to do this as it was an actual SKILL.  Have I used that skill since then?  No, but whatever.  ANYWAY…I brought this up because this is my only experience with watercolor.  Very rigid.  So, this week, I started to just play with watercolors…generally making a mess.

I kind of liked doing these!  Just blobs of color.  Look at the cool effects you get with watercolor:

Neat, right?

I have basically spent the majority of my life trying to be precise and perfect in what I do (except for cooking and cleaning).  Now, I’ve realized that this is total B.S., and it’s better to be messy.  Notice that my fish print is completely anal retentive, YET AGAIN.  Okay, so I fell of the wagon a bit.  Clearly, I am still struggling to stop being that way, but I am working on it.

There is a reason that I love Cy Twombly’s work:

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly

THE  MAN

I love his work because it is SO free.  That may not be the academic interpretation of what he does, but it’s mine.  I love how visceral and messy his work is.  LOVE IT.  As a recovering perfectionist, I yearn for this…

Cy Twombly

Sigh! (Cy!)