Month of Miscellaneous Interests

Wow, another month flew by. Actually this whole year seems to have gone by pretty damn fast.

Let's see, what have I been doing since that last post?

Various things that I've considered posting but just never got around to. So how about some bullet points & pictures?

• Drinking tea: After BFF Brenda email-mentioned that "oat straw tea" has been touted as nature's Xanax, I looked into it and ordered some online. I've never been much of a tea drinker, but have enjoyed this little experiment so far. A more informative "review & how to" type post is forthcoming, eventually.

• Reading: Gabaldon's latest Jaime & Claire book came out on Sept. 22nd, and a couple months ago I'd made it a goal to reread the series. I zipped through the first 3 pretty quickly but got bogged down in the 4th (but eventually finished it) and completely hit a wall trying to get past the first couple chapters of the 5th. Plus I seemed to forget there was a 6th that came out in 2005, and upon that discovery, realized I have something like 2000 pages to read before I can start the new one. Might be a while though, because I seem to have moved out of my reading phase for the moment.

• Doodling: I designed and submitted two more repeated fabric designs into Spoonflower's "Fabric of the Week" contest. They've started implementing themes now, which is more inspiring to me, as I sometimes need a prompt to start working on something. My "leaves" design was basically the only non-Hallmarky entry in their Halloween theme, and I think it ended up placing somewhere in the middle of the group. Thanks to those who voted.
  
  Next up was a "spoons & flowers" theme for which I emptied our kitchen drawers, photographed our spoons, and then played with them in Photoshop to make some funky "spoon flowers." This one had to make it through a semi-final round, in which it placed 9th out of 70 entries! It stayed a favorite in the finals, respectfully ending in 5th out of 16. I ordered a "fat quarter" of this one printed on quilting weight fabric and it came in the mail yesterday, so we'll see if I ever make anything with it. Still fun though, and thanks again to voters.
  
  The current week's theme is "numbers" and I did enter a design again, but I purposefully only gave myself a couple hours to design & submit, resulting in it being kind of rough draft and conceptual as an experiment. They aren't sharing the realtime voting results this week though, so I can't watch as it likely flounders amongst the cute scattered numeric font competition. Bummer. Stew says the next time I enter I should intentionally design something cutesy to see what happens, and I was like "you mean, sellout?" Ha ha. Differing tastes in design and "style" are interesting to me, so I'm not bothered too much that I haven't designed any winners... :) What is cooler to me is the fact that Spoonflower just made it possible to purchase fabric printed with other people's designs... so I've listed for sale my watches and spoon flowers and will probably offer more eventually. The 10% commission won't mean early retirement, but like selling vintage on etsy, it could happily add to the 'ole virtual pocketbook (PayPal).
  
  
• Sewing/Mending: Spurred on by the necessity of sewing on Wiley's Cub Scout badges, I've since dug out a few things from the mending pile and holy shit, actually mended them. Possibly I'm entering a little "hand sewing" renaissance, and other than mending, might start a small patchwork type project that I can work on while we wait outside the school to pick up Wiley (about 40 minutes everyday).

• Enjoying music: In the past month or so I've used up the iTunes gift certificates we'd bought off our cousin by downloading several albums and burned a few CDs to listen to in the car. My old brick of a First Generation iPod got unearthed recently and I've been using it to tune into a mix of both old and new stuff as a way to drown out the boys when they get rowdy during the witching hours.
  
  As my Aunt-inlaw Linda wisely advises, with boys at play, the best thing is to just let them work things out and to only be concerned when someone comes up to you bleeding. The only way I'm capable of doing that is by zoning out in my own little world, which really isn't all that hard for me to do, especially if I'm grooving to my own personal soundtrack. Recent downloads = Carbon Leaf's "Nothing Rhymes with Woman" and "Ether-Electrified Porch Music" albums; Stephen K & the Sixers "The Bear"; Juno movie soundtrack; Whip It movie soundtrack; Tepetricy; Fever Ray; and Dawn Landes.
  
  Stew and I also got to go on another "live music" date night this week, venturing out to Carrboro, NC on Tuesday night to catch a stop on the "Bear Rhymes with Woman" tour featuring Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers & Carbon Leaf. We got there early enough to enjoy dinner & beers at a conveniently located BBQ joint (The Q Shack) and then to snag a nice back wall, raised corner table spot at the venue, Cat's Cradle. The environment wasn't as conducive to point-n-shoot photography as was the Kid Rock show, but the experience was WAY more enjoyable. We had a good time, worthy of the late night driving and Stew even said it was one of his top concert experiences. On the way out, he got to shake hands with one of Carbon Leaf's guitarists, the longhaired dude, Terry, who said "Thanks for coming." Cool. Here is what I wore; where we sat; and what we saw:
  
  
  
  
  
  Next month I've signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo, a project/pursuit I've always thought would be fun but never saw anyone mention until like the middle of November when it is basically too late to start. The premise is that during the month of November, you challenge yourself to write a 50,000 word (like 175 page) novel. They encourage quantity over quality and suggest you not even edit while you write, just churn it out. Before November 1st it is okay prep by working out an outline or doing character sketches. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to write about, but even if it ends up being a trashy romance, I'm excited.
  
  
  Now I need to back-up some files and clean up my laptop, because somewhere in the process of working on images for this post I apparently ran my hard drive space to down to the bare minimum. Hate when that happens. And yes, it has happened before, I'm a pack rat digitally too...
  
  
  
  Oh yeah, and I've got laundry to put away...
  
  
  
  So you probably won't see anything here until next month! :)