November 26, 2009
Today is Thanksgiving, so I’ve thought a bit about giving thanks. This is to you, Mom and Dad.
Thank you for loving us and for loving each other. Thank you for living so long as you both did, so that we had you in our lives a while. Thank you for your strengths and also your flaws. You weren’t perfect and that’s fine. It all made you human. It all defined you as the people I loved and love still, thinking of you every day, missing you both so much. Thank you for your support and your concern, for your pride and your worry, for your praise and your scolding. Thank you for your values and teaching. We disagreed about some things, but I still respect your opinions (not sure you understood that all the time). Thank you for the big things and the little things. Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you for sharing your lives with us.
I will always love you both.
November 23, 2009
I’ve been trying to think of something interesting to write about for over a week. I even started one post and deleted it. I want to post here more than I have been, for a lot of reasons. But being an exhibitionist is not one of the reasons and I don’t want to write just for the sake of seeing my post up in lights.
I’ve been following some interesting groups on Twitter lately, including a set of lovely people who use their blogs to share and support each other in artistic and creative work. I’m not really a member of the community, a friend is, but I find it interesting, challenging, comforting, and somewhat disheartening all at once. That last adjective is because they’re all way more talented than I am. They’re also a lot more creative….they seem to overflow with ideas, for art, for writing, for posting. I enjoy reading through it, but it’s been a little intimidating. It’s made me feel like anything I start to write and write about doesn’t measure up.
Anyway, I’m just writing this to get myself going again. I thought of the title this morning and liked it. So I decided to write about not writing. Kind of ironic, because I find those essays about how hard it was to write the essay or tweets about thinking of a tweet, etc. silly, and here I am doing a whole blog post like that. Maybe I will make a tag called silly-post just for this. But at least I wrote something and hopefully will follow with more soon.
November 10, 2009
In the last decade-plus, I’ve dabbled with rubberstamping, which is a nifty craft. You get to create nice looking things even if you don’t draw all that very well. I started down that road after visiting a rubber stamping store without knowing about it being a crafting activity. I was fascinated by the embossing samples on display. Mostly, I’ve played with stamping on paper, usually making cards and bookmarks.
For many months, I’ve been toying with the idea of covering some plastic pieces I’d saved and using that to create jewelry. So last week, I decided to finally get to it. I covered a piece with stamping sticker paper. Next, I took a half circle stamp of a sun that had worked well embossed in gold for a card last year and stamped it on, then embossed it in gold. Then I took markers and colored between the embossed lines. Trimmed it down to the shape of the stamp and embossed more around the edge. I coated it and embossed the edge a bit more and then glued on a pin back.
I liked how it came out, so I made another pin, too. This one started with a cat and bird I’d stamped and embossed a while ago for a card. The image was fine but I’d messed up the card, so I had cut out the embossed image and saved it. I glued it onto another piece of plastic. Decided it looked good uncolored, as is. But then I wanted to emboss around the edges with copper embossing and I kind of messed that up…made the edge wider than I’d planned. So given it was now a “failed” piece, I experimented further and widened the edge a bit more and coated over the top with goddess gold embossing powder. That comes out mostly clear with just flecks of shining iridescence over the image. My friends liked the piece, so I decided to finish it and keep it. I coated it and added a pinback.
These were really just first try pieces. I want to refine the idea a little. But it’s something new and I’m glad I finally stopped thinking about it and tried it. I should do that more often. Sometimes it works out just fine.
November 5, 2009
I’m not musical. I can’t carry a tune, I can’t count music, and I’m tone deaf. I’m not just saying this: I learned enough to read sheet music in school, but I can’t reproduce it picking on a piano or even in my mind, unless it’s a song I already know. And even then, the beat will be off and if I’m “singing” it, the tune will be off to anyone who hears me. I’ve been asked to stop singing along sometimes because I’m so bad. I also can’t dance very well, probably related to not getting the beat. And I have horrible music memory. I’m good at video trivia, often considered the reference among my friends when trying to think of who played what part in a movie or tv show, even ones I haven’t seen. But I generally can’t recall titles or artists for songs, and it takes me a while to learn a song.
But I enjoy music. I listen to a varied assortment of musical styles and artists. I like concerts. I love movie musicals, even the old kind where they all just burst into song. And I sing along with my albums and the radio when I’m alone. I also know how to pick out the notes on a keyboard. I never studied piano and I can’t play with both hands and all that. I just pick out tunes. One of my treasures is an old toy piano someone gave me in college so I could “play” songs.
I haven’t studied music and I don’t know what makes a well written piece musically. I tend to initially judge a song by the melody and ignore most lyrics at first. I still prefer a song to music without lyrics, though. I can’t explain why I prefer one song or one artist over another very well; I just know I do. I’ve been told I’m wrong, too. But I’m not wrong. I really do like this song and not that song. It’s not wrong. Maybe I have no taste, but I’m not wrong. :-)
It’s a little weird, my lack of music ability. One of my aunts is a concert pianist and other family members have a lot of talent, too. I used to be upset about not having musical ability, but it is what it is. And I enjoy it in the ways that I can. And if I want to sing out, I sing out…at least when I’m not bothering anyone else.
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