One of my favorite blogs is 1000 Awesome Things, which lists 1000 things that make life...well...awesome. I love it because it often makes me laugh because I can relate to the simplicity of the awesome things they point out. It just makes me happy that there's at least one other person out there who sees life for the simple joys and revels in them.
I have to admit that I normally just read the subject title to a post because I get it right away. Example: Christmas Hugs. Dude. I totally understand that one. I understood the title of the Getting Through It, too, but today I just had to read the whole post. It helped reaffirm things I've been feeling lately.
So, folks, I hope you're able to look at the tough times and realize how amazing you are for getting through it. Kudos to you.
I'm putting together a site for handmade wedding gifts. At the moment I'm calling the site The Fiber Between Us. I've just come to notice that a lot of my friends who have gotten married over the past five years have asked to make them something for their wedding and I really enjoy the process. I have listed items like handkerchiefs, chuppahs, embroidered detail on veils, fabric/crocheted garlands, banners and of course, custom orders. I'm still tweaking the site before I officially launch it and I'm looking for advice from brides and grooms on what kind of things they would like to see on such a site. If any of you have tips or suggestions I'd love to hear them. :)
2. I decided today that I'm going to submit my Badasses Drinking Through Straws series to the Textile Arts Center opening show. I just have to write an artist statement. Currently mulling over that one.
3. Going to see Toy Story 3 tonight and I've been texting my boyfriend with things like "toy story toy story toy story! I'm so excited!!! :D". I'm ready. I want to see it right friggin now.
4. I've started a new embroidery series. I'm stitching simple inspirational quotes, such as "When you throw dirt, you lose ground", but mixing up the letters within the words. The concept is that there are so many simple solutions to life's problems and we tend to over complicate those solutions and make things harder for ourselves. Hopefully, the series makes sense to people. That is the point after all. *wink wink*
5. Sunday is Father's Day. Don't forget to call yo' papa!
I've been thinking a lot about how I've never been one to think "I can't (fill in the blank)". It kills me when I see someone say that they can't do something. When I was younger I worked with this children's theatre company called The Treehouse Players in Detroit. The best thing they ever taught us was "Can't...is not an option." That phrase has stuck with me my entire life.
YOU are not so unimportant as to let such a small word like "can't" get in your way.
YOU are amazing.Wake up and deal with your amazingness.
We (Focal Point Theatre Company) had our first rehearsal for All in the Timing by David Ives this past week. The production consists of four ten minutes plays, one of which is called Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread. People seem to be very excited that we're attempting to perform this piece. Basically, the dialogue is written in the same vain as Glass' music. It's chaotic, simultaneous, sparse, intense, lovely and difficult. Melissa, our director, decided that for our first night of rehearsal we would focus on just that piece and thank God she did! We broke the script up into 28 movements, figured out the tempos and timing and by the end of it we were all fried. Happily fried. Happily, confidently, satisfyingly fried. This is one of the most challenging pieces I've ever done. I can see why people don't perform it often. And I can't wait to show our audiences that we can pull it off. :)
I've discovered that there is a documentary on Philip Glass on Netflix (that I'm watching as I type this). Within the first 4 minutes I had a better understanding of how his mind works. The opening interview follows his wife as she describes the chaos that is his office. How she hopes there's never a fire in their house because (while the originals of all his scores are in archives) his entire library of all his music was sitting on one shelf in that room. How his desk is covered in papers until he finishes a piece at which time he cleans everything only to have it a complete mess three days later. His sense of humor really surprised me. Not sure why. He also makes his own pizza dough. How can you not love that? :)
I'm pleased to announce that I am the new managing director for the Focal Point Theatre Company here in Chicago.! :) One of my best friends and I have been talking about starting our own company for a couple of years now and this is the year we're making it happen. We're about to go into rehearsals for our inaugural production of David Ives' All in the Timing. All the proceeds will go towards applying for our 501c3. If you're in the area the week of June 23-26th please come visit us at the historic Flat Iron Building in Wicker Park.
We'll soon have a blog up and running, but for the mean time please check out our new website: www.focalpointtheatre.comWe're also on Facebook, so please become our friend!
There is nothing quite like spending a sunny afternoon embroidering to your heart's content with a side of espresso readily available.
I've started a new embroidery series. Basically, I'll be taking images of nature from illustrated dictionaries and such and couple them with lyrics from rock songs.
This little guy is a Fire Weaver and his lyric will be "I'm a breathing time machine" -The Avett Brothers.
Vanishing Points is open and our first weekend went smashingly! With that said...I'm so happy to have a couple days off! We went through tech and dress rehearsals for almost two weeks straight and I. Am. POOPED.
Luckily, we're getting some good reviews. Yay for hard work paying off!
We open Vanishing Points tonight! POC had some company members sit in on our last dress rehearsal yesterday and we got a lot of positive feedback. Woo hoo! I'm so ready for this play to open. It feels like we've been working on it forever and now it's time for the public to see all our hard work. If you're in the Chicagoland area, please come check us out! www.pointofcontention.org
Well, we're less then a week from the opening of Vanishing Points!
The show has been coming together quite nicely. We're finally done with Q2Q and tonight we have our first run in the space. Costumes, lights, makeup, sound, the whole shebang.
If you're going to be in the Chicagoland area over the next month come check us out!
Boy, oh boy, have I been busy! Wooooooooo weeeeeeeeeeeee! My show, Vanishing Points, opens in less than two weeks. It's really coming together, but I really need to bare down and drill some of my lines into my head. There always seems to be those couple of lines that for whatever reason I can't get my mouth to wrap around correctly. It's really frustrating, but I'm getting it together. Slowly, but surely. I'm producing the next Babes With Blades show, A Gulag Mouse, which opens March 29th (-May 1st). I won't lie, it's been stressful producing a show while being in rehearsals for another one. Luckily, the cast is in rehearsals now and from what I've been hearing everything is going well. Thank ya Jeebus. My friend Melissa and I are starting a new theatre company called Focal Point Theatre and we'll be performing our first show at the end of June. We're going to do a series of David Ives ten minute plays. I'm really looking forward to it, but it's pretty daunting that it's coming up at a time when I'm already so stressed and so busy. I know it'll work out. I know it's going to be worth all the heavy breathing I'm undergoing. And just yesterday I got confirmation that a children's show that my friend Eric is writing and directing is a go and he wants me in it. I was freaking out a little yesterday because now I have to figure out how to balance a rehearsal schedule between that show and the ten minute plays. I'll be doing them one right after the other. Yes. I am insane. Aside from my theatre life keeping me busy, I'm about to open a new Etsy shop devoted to just my art work as opposed to my craft work, I'm finishing up my last submission for the Threadknits contest (and the deadline for that is March 1!), I'm trying to spend time with my sweetie, trying to see my friends (who I'm getting the impression think I'm putting them off or don't want to make time for them. This makes me sad as it's not about not wanting to be with them. It really is that I'm so busy and committed to so much right now that I'm barely able to get a full night's sleep these days. So, if you're one of those friends who I haven't seen for a while let me just say, I miss you, too. We'll hang out soon. I swears it.), and last but not least I might (hopefully not) need to think about finding a new job. I don't want to think or talk too much about it right now, but it's something that's weighing on me a lot these days.
I've also been listening to a lot of This American Life the past two weeks. Wouldn't you know...now I want to start recording podcasts. Will this desire to do everything ever cease? (Part of me hopes not!)
Happy Pre-Valentine's Day (if you're into that kind of thing), *M*
I'm pooped. I'm so tired that I've randomly burst into tears a couple times the past few days. Rehearsals for Vanishing Points are going well. So, at least it's worth being tired on that front. I've got some day job limbo going on at the moment which has put my life a little on edge. Last night my fella and roommate were giving me a hard time, telling me I shouldn't do anything this weekend. And they're right. I've canceled my plans and I'm staying home to be lazy. I don't want to see anyone or do anything. I might actually finish some projects, clean my house, snuggle with Sponge and, dear God....catch up on sleep!?!? Woooooooooooow. Dear readers, I hope you get to rest this weekend, too.
Here is Queen Lizzie in all her glory. I was kind of intimidated to make this one. I knew going into it there would be an insane amount of detail. But I'm happy with how she turned out.
Tamed the beast. Long live the queen...and her Juicey Juice. *M*
I'm happy to report that I'm almost done with the next installment of my badass series. Queen Elizabeth is very close to being completed. Ha cha!
While I'm taking a break and letting my hands rest I came across two things of awesomeness.
1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze is on Netflix Instant Watch. While it's awful in it's 80s campiness, it's also extremely RAAAAAAAAD in it's 80s campiness. :)And now I'm craving pizza.
2. While perusing Flickr just now I came across a fellow crocheter, kidmissle, who has a "Yarn Octopus Army" she's working on. Yeah. You read that right....Yarn. Octopus. Army. Check it and bask in the awesome if'n you please.
I've tried to find a way to not make this sound boastful, but I'm not sure I can so....I've been featured on one of my favorite textile blogs, Mr. X Stitch! Beefranck, aka Bridget, is one of the fabulous, hilarious, creative minds behind the site and I've admired her work for a long time. A few months ago I approached her about doing a swap and, to my utter delight, she accepted!
This is what she made me:
And this is what I made her:
Since we made the swap pretty close to Christmas she asked if I would be willing to make her another MST3K for a friend of hers, to which I couldn't say no. A few weeks later she emailed me to say that she was going to feature me on Mr. X Stitch and I'm not gonna lie, I peed a little I was so thrilled. I love this site because they find some of the most creative and out-of-the-box textile work I've ever seen. In many many ways the work they feature there has inspired a lot of the work I do today. *tear* If you'd like to see the feature (and read the very kind words Beefranck has to say) you can find the article here.
I'm thinking about starting a separate blog devoted to my Picture a Day Project. I realize now that this project is overwhelming my regular blog, which is fine I suppose, but I kinda feel like it's a project that deserves it's own focus, ya know? Any thoughts about that?
January 13th, 2010: I'm submitting a couple crocheted items to a contest that Threadless shirts is hosting called Threadknits (cute, no?). This is the second piece I'm submitting. It's almost done. :)
January 11th, 2010: Ugh, a day late! Sorry to say, this might be happening for a while.
I had my first rehearsal last night for Vanishing Points. It's going to be directed by my good friend Dan Foss with Point of Contention. After the first read through I feel pretty confident saying that it's going to be a pretty awesome show. More details to come!
January 7th, 2010: There's a winter snow storm going on outside and I'm inside on a sick day. I probably shouldn't/won't venture out today, which is kinda sad considering how lovely the snow makes everything look. On the other hand, I get to be lazy, snuggle with Sponge and catch up on Netflix.
So, let me explain this piece....I made this for a very good friend of mine from college for Chrismas this year. We were in this class together called Great Ideas here we read books like Candide and Frankenstein and then discussed the philosophy behind those books...at 8:30 am! Our teacher was a character who often spit out little soundbites (I think) to see if we were paying attention. Well, one week we had to read The Communist Manifesto and at one point during our discussion (I'm sorry I can't recall exactly why we were on the topic of Jesus) our teacher said, "...so it's like, Jesus was the first socialist, which is...problematic." My friend and I burst out laughing in the middle of class. To this day it's one of our many inside jokes, so I felt that I should immortalize it in embroidery. :)
I finally finished the Tura Santana addition to my Badasses Drinking Through Straws series. She took a while because I was having a hard time with the size of the pop bottle she's drinking from. Eventually I got over it and just finished the piece.
So far in the series we have: -Darth Vader - Napolean - Pam Grier as Coffy - Genghis Kahn And now Tura. Next up is Queen Elizabeth drinking from a juice box.
Theatre, crochet, painting, embroidery, family/friends, dogs, elephants, green, tea cups, coffee, hand written letters, children, fanny shaking, Barack Obama, old photos, new photos, stencils, travel, chapstick, Mac Notebooks, British comedies, red nail polish, gentle men, strong broads, bleeding heart bakery, dressing up for no reason, plastic earrings...
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