Month: January 2007

Art, Crankypantsing, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
Staff Meeting Doodle

We had an hour long presentation at work this week, and I spent my time, as usual, doodling. I’m glad I took a notebook, because even though I picked an out of the way seat in the back of the room, someone just had to sit right next to me. Why are some people unable to comprehend that someone who has gone out of their way to sit alone might want to be left alone? Grrr.

I’m used to taking crap from other people about being antisocial, but I’d occasionally like to see people who are overly social stop and think for a minute. You may think I’m abnormal, but I can assure you, you seem a little bizarre to me, too.

Art, Artist Books, Collage, Ladybusiness

It Was Always Adam’s Apple & Eve Reworked

Shelly

Hemp Bound Journal: Eve Was Born of a Peculiar Rib (reworked)
Eve Was Born of a Peculiar Rib (reworked)
collage (dress pattern, fragments from old books, T pins, oil pastel, gears, brass brads, sand paper, and poplar tree leaf)
8 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches

Hemp Bound Journal: It Was *Always* Adam's Apple
It Was Always Adam’s Apple
collage (book and magazine clippings)
8 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches

I felt like the poplar leaf in Eve was popping out too much, and that it either needed to be toned down or to be balanced in the opposite corner. So I played around with adding gesso, then oil pastel, which helped. Since this is a creation myth, I though some sand paper would be appropriate. And then I remembered the little gears I recently got from Ms. Lea, and applied them with some tarnished brass brads.

The lower image uses a graphic from a biology book, the back page from an Anthropologie catalog, and a magazine clipping. Like most of the glue book type collages I\’ve done, it was a stream of consciousness exercise. This one turned out pretty well, I think.

Crankypantsing

Grammar Rant o’ the Day

Shelly

On a few of my favorite blogs, I have noticed the same form of hyphen abuse. It is normally accepted practice to place a hyphen between two words to create a compound word. This is especially common when the two words precede a noun which they describe. For example, “a well-timed kick upside the head.” What is not acceptable is to hyphenate an adverb-adjective combo if the adverb ends in -ly. If you want to write about your “recently elected congresswoman” or your “freshly brewed coffee,” then please to be omitting the extraneous hyphen!

Thank you. Class dismissed.

(And, of course, every grammar rant is required to include numerous grammar mistakes. C’est la blogging.)

Postcard
Postcard: Cannes, Un Coin de la Croisette (from my ephemera stash)

Pets, Photography

Catblogging

Shelly

I woke up this morning to find that my furnace was not working properly. Again! This time, it cycled on, and even produced heat, but it would only run for 20-30 seconds before shutting off. So, I went to work for a few hours, came home, and called the repair guys.

This is the third time the same two guys have been to my apartment to fix stuff. Last time, Pandora sneaked into the furnace while they weren’t looking. This time, they were wise to her stealthy ways and averted her attempts to explore. The also both took time to pick her up and pet her, which was nice. She’s an awfully gregarious cat, so she really enjoys the extra attention.

She also spent some time playing with the dog’s toys (she has a death wish), including a tennis ball. Pandora rolled around on the floor with the ball between her front paws, kicking it mightily with her back feet. When she’d finally subdued the ball, she lay on her side and wrapped herself around it, then gave it a good wash. Clearly, she was feeling her oats this morning.

The antics reached a climax when she stole a wadded up piece of paper from the trash can in the studio. She knows she’s not supposed to take paper[1]. So I told her to drop it, and she took off running through the house like a bat out of hell, paper wad crammed firmly in her thieving little mouth. Now, I’ve been lured into the occasional ill advised and unintentional game of keep away by dogs, but never, ever, EVAR by a cat.

So what did she do when I caught up with her? She dropped the paper wad and instantly started to wash herself furiously. Like she had no idea that she’d just stolen the damned thing, nor that she’d flown the scene of the crime, nor that the evidence had just two seconds previously been in her mouth, and was now lying rightnexttoher. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?”

Pandora has always been a bad, bad seed. The photo below was taken in 1996, at about the time when she developed her paper/cloth fetish. Note the pure eeevil emanating from her.

C005

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[1] We–Pandora and I–have discussed her paper/cloth fetish on numerous occasions. I don’t mind so much that she’s a rotten little thief, but when she carries paper wads through the house, she meows. Because her mouth is stuffed full of paper, it’s difficult to tell whether she’s on a murderous rampage or she’s going to hork up a hairball. O ick. I can’t stand the sound, so I do my best to keep mouth-sized pieces of paper and cloth out of her reach.