Dispatch From LA

screams & squeals

a friend gave me the little orla kiely journal.  it's just the right size to have some more fun with my new tape!

my regular camera battery was dead so i grabbed my ipad and used hipstamatic for these quick snapshots.  it's one of the apps that i use the absolute most. 

another one i love is the i-Qi clock alarm i wake up to every morning. worth every one of the 199 cents i paid for it.  and then some!

my sister got an ipad!!!!!!!!!!!!

we talked today on her way home from the apple store.  basically a series of screams and squeals and exclamation marks.  one after another.

happy friday!

walked in the door after school.  i'm settling in for a quiet evening at the art table...

happy friday.  

whoever you are.  

however you got here.  

wherever in the great big world you happen to be...

hipstamatic saturday

 didn't feel like fussing with the big nikon this weekend and i went off and forgot the little fuji so i used my ipad!  works great in a pinch especially if you have a photo app.  the photo apps really made a grainy pic sort of spectacular.   

i printed these mosaics out 7x7 inches for my inspiration bulletin board because the colors make me happy.  they'd also be cool cut into strips 3 pics long in a photobookesque style.

back to the oscars now and my crochet!  pics of that coming v.v. soon.  prepare to be underwhelmed. 

a white slate of possibility

there is an inverse relationship between my enthusiasm for playing WORDS WITH FRIENDS and my skill at said game.

if you are one of the unfortunate scrabble playing souls who has gotten stuck in a game with me.

i'm.  sorry.

i know it's like playing with a 6 year old.

a kind friend who is 200 points ahead of me told me i just need practice.  then she asked me what letters i had and suggested some moves.

instagram i just can't quit you.  i'm stuck.  it's your own fault for making the crappity crappiest crap photos look way less crappy.  which is why i'm taking the pics with my tiny fuji point & shoot. 

the embroidery above are budapest flea market finds.

speaking of...if you want to borrow my instagram button (i made in photoshop) and use it to link to your own followgram page please feel free!!!  

thank you for the birthday wishes.  and for coming here and visiting.  and caring about my latest creative hijinx.  you're nice, i like you.

i'm working on my 49 things list.  taking my time.  here are my 48 things from last year.  i'm not a natural list maker, but this one is sort of fun to do.  there are plenty of things i didn't do, but i'll still use my giant mental eraser to clear it all away.  start fresh with a gleaming surface for my 49th year.  a white slate of possibility.

if i can just stop playing bad scrabble long enough...and making instagram photos.

Hello World

Goodbye 2011.  You were a good year.

I tried to narrow you down to 12 photos, but needed 16 instead.  You were just TOO BIG!  

I wanted each photo to represent something significant.   

Life.  In 16 photos.  

Magic, wonder, sorrow, contemplation, pleasure, new experiences.

In the last 12 months I...

donned my new polka dotted swim costume and played in the Szchenyi baths with my sister,

spent a week with my long lost brother,

found a sweet little reading retreat cabin next to a babbling brook,

made 3 travel journals & filled them up,

somehow convinced water from the Siene & Danube to come live with me at Moss Cottage,  

met a stranger for dinner in Paris,

enjoyed some fun playdates with a local blogger i adore,

roamed around the city with my head out the window,

successfully hid my cache of pine needles and red brick dirt from the customs agent who pulled me over at LAX,

spent 2 blissful weeks at a dreamy casita in San Cristobal de Las Casas where i met a new friend (hello wickie!)

(and even though my uncle montezuma met me at the airport on the way home i didn't care)

rode a scary chairlift in Hungary with my sister and didn't fall off and break either of my legs or kneecaps,

wrote a movie in my mind while riding Budapest public transportation,  

drank lots of fizzy elderflower soda cocktails on my back patio,

lived through an epic windstorm hurricane nightmare thing and survived a brownout for 3 days,

roadtripped to a little beach town where i was upgraded to an ocean front room,

had the pleasure of meeting my very own stranger in paris (chrissy!)

watched the Eiffel Tower lights come twinkiling on with Suzanne,

got a new fence around Moss Cottage,

cried while my cat Buck died in my arms,

started going on walks more regularly in my neighborhood,

got an iPad & discovered a whole new world,

created FULL TILT BOOGIE,

made a lot of books,

slept in the twin bed at Mama Moss' pad in Kansas for 5 nights,

read lots of good stories,

dreamt lots of big dreams & took good notes,

met a nice preying mantis in my back patio,

got stuck in the Guadalajara airport with a planeful of pushers and shovers, 

had my heart warmed many times over by all the nice people who read this blog.

Sometimes I Dream Of Snowflakes

More  photo favs that I took in 2010.  And a lovely winter poem because sometimes I dream of snowflakes.

~

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and I loved
it so much and I kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
I reached to love them all
and I squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and I stood perfectly
still and was a flower

- nikki giovanni

Happy New Year

2010 List

started a new visual journal

celebrated my 47th birthday at an old hacienda in mérida, yucatan

planted a lemon tree

closed my eyes and listened to the call to prayer outside the blue mosque

tromped through a field with my sister looking for wagon ruts

visited mama moss in kansas

made a travel journal

hopped a ferry to asia minor

revamped my backyard patio

got spectacularly swindled at the grand bazaar in istanbul and loved every minute of it

made another travel journal

had hardwood floors installed at moss cottage

packed and unpacked ALL of my stuff

moved all of my stuff outside then inside then back outside then inside

lost some stuff

stayed in a teeny inn for 3 nights on the foggy mendocino headlands

started another visual journal

swam in the south agean sea

drove to cambria in the rain with my other sister

saw a mayan temple in uxmal with my friend suzanne

did about 345,678 other ordinary things that are too ordinary to list but that i deeply loved

Living

 

Violet skies.

I ate a snickerdoodle in the car with the windows rolled down.

Driving. Passing people: 1 old woman with a cane and floppy brown velvet hat walks across street in front of my car and sits next to girl with a red plaid scarf around her neck and black bow in her hair.. talking on her cellphone.

The girl screamed, "Yes, I am!" Someone somewhere being convinced of something.

A woman pedaling her bike down Figueroa with a poodle in the front basket. Chinatown. 2 old men inside a store.

Cake shops, pinatas. Flowers on the sidewalks. There is a festival in the streets every day. Every single day. It's called LIVING.

I Love Paris In The Springtime

 

Um.  Paris in March.  I'm going.  True story.

My friend Suzanne and I are buzzing and humming over our upcoming trip.  I've been once alone, and once with my sister.  Sadly, her work schedule prevents her from traveling again so soon after Istanbul. Suzanne has also been to the City of Light.  But we haven't been together! 

We found our lovely Marais apartment on VRBO (link listed in my sidebar). Conveniently located within walking distance of Angelina's.  Here's what I'm saying about that:  thick velvety hot chocolate served on a silver tray with a little dish of freshly whipped cream.  Seriously. A cup of heaven.

1. Paris - coffee at Angelina's, 2. Paris - coffee at Angelina's

We've secured our tickets and the apartment is booked!  This time I'm bringing my BIG camera. 

 

1. Untitled, 2. Puentes de París, 3. The perfect gray, 4. Window, Paris

And my laptop. Because..um..I will be blogging from Paris!  Sort of like I did from Mérida last winter.  Was that really a year ago?  Remember that horrible ear problem I had and how I almost couldn't fly?  Oy.

1. Paris - Roof, 2. Untitled

 I'll be gone for 2 whole weeks, but I'm taking you with me!  Armchair travelers put on your seatbelts and go check out a Paris travel guide from the library.  You'll need it for the ride.

It's going to be a sparkly one!

xo

Olymbus, Karpathos

 

Rainy LA

Waiting for more rain in Los Angeles.  And mining for more orange among my photos.

Journal Pages

Still off on my Istanbul adventure, but I'll be back in a few days!

Online class registration will open on September 14.

See you soon!

More Pages

Pages from my old visual journals.  2006-2007 ish

Lonny Magazine

Lonny is an online magazine that is filled to the brim with beautiful photos.  I surprised myself by looking at every single one of the pages in their latest issue.  There are over 100!  I wasn't looking because I'm an interior design hound, I'm not.  But the photos and graphic layout of this magazine is stunning.  If you're a visual journaler you'll find plenty here to keep your eye occupied.

Lonny Magazine.  Click on FULLSCREEN viewing.

Sewn

Sewn postcards 2008

Pages and Pages

Pages from last year.

I made quite a few of these visual journal page mosaics and scheduled them to post while I'm in Turkey.  Super simple and fast to make at Big Huge Labs. 

Flickr Favs

1. Untitled, 2. reading in bed, 3. Untitled, 4. Untitled, 5. Perfume, 6. Praiano, 7. Bird watching, 8. golden door, 9. peek

Summer is really giving us all she's got here in LA.  Bright days of scorching heat.  I'm tucked inside with the a/c.  Surfing the web, reading, decluttering my bookcases.  Getting rid of tons of books, magazines, stuff.  There are piles of everything everywhere.  I love going through my bookcases.  Tidying them, switching things around, finding things I thought I lost.  A good pruning once a year or so.

Oh...and making Flickr mosaics from my favs.  Starting Season 3 of Mad Men.  Goofing around in general.  Things you do on vacation from working life.

Reading articles like THIS one and THIS one about Ramadan.  We'll be visiting Istanbul during the holiest month in the Islamic calendar.  I've read it's like muslims from abroad visiting a christian country at Christmas.  Cool!

Flickr Faves

1. free, 2. meyer lemon gift, 3. Untitled, 4. Untitled, 5. Yellow rose against turquoise, 6. My favorite shade of green, 7. order here, 8. more strawberries, 9. Untitled

Saturday.  Still taking applications for live-in cat nanny.  One maybe, but no definites yet.  Next time I will do this 3-4 months in advance instead of 3-4 weeks.  Thanks for the emails.  The cat posse are impressed with your credentials.

More travel journal posts on their way down the pipeline...

Happy Friday

 

I made some random mosaics from my current VJ.   A different perspective than flipping through the pages.  I don't have a lot of writing on the pages.  In the last couple of books I've unconsciously moved away from the idea of VJ as diary.  Probably because I have a writing journal that I deposit most of my words into.  If I didn't have that, these pages would be full of inky words.  but mostly they're full of experiments.   I keep meaning to take some of these ideas back to my wood panels, but so far I haven't.  I will though.  I will

 

I made Visual Journal No. 11 last fall.  I wrote about it HERE  and  HERE and HERE.   Most of my VJ exploits can be found HERE.      I've also installed a search feature at the bottom of this here blog.  Think of it as ME only more efficient.  and faster!

~

Rhoda is selling one of her surplus REMAINS OF THE DAY inspired journals HERE.

 

I Simply Do Not Know What I Am Doing

1. bondibirds, 2. Yellow Painted Chandelier, 3. just peachy, 4. meyer lemon gift, 5. Untitled, 6. WHITE CHERRY BLOSSOM, 7. ..., 8. order here, 9. Stuck in Berlin

Recent Flickr faves.  And a poem.  Sometimes I favor humor over sentiment.  Okay.  Almost always.

Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams

 1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

 	2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

 	3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

 	4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

by Kenneth Koch

Spring Brain

1. Corridor mirror, 2. #404 黃腹展啄 (Ballerina Doing A Pirouette), 3. Untitled, 4. after a storm, 5. Untitled, 6. My happy bike, 7. Sunday bear, 8. Hyacinthes, 9. 57/365 Composition

How fun to pedal around town on a bike like the one above.   If I could pull if off without looking like a circus bear I would.

Spring brain is still dreaming about bubblegum, birds, and night air that smells like jasmine and lemon blossoms.  If a robin wanted to land in the tree outside my window and build a nest and lay 4 blue eggs inside, that would be okay with me.  Just saying.

p.s.  4.4 earthquake jolted me out of bed early this morning, but no aftershocks and no damage.  It was moderate, typical, nothing out of the ordinary for we who live in LA.  All is well.  Had there been 4 blue eggs in the tree outside I would have dashed outside to catch them.  Since there weren't,  I slipped back into bed instead.  zzzzzzz

That's Me On My Steed

Rain on succulents.   Clusters of sparkly globes balancing on the leaves.  Little worlds under each.

 

My Meyer lemon tree is budding for the first time.  Since it's my first lemon tree it could just as well be the only lemon tree on earth.  Getting ready to blossom. For the first time ever!  EVER.  Producing the world's first lemons!    Who cares that the entire city is practically a grove of lemon trees?  Psshaw!

Another panel.  From part...

 

to whole.  That's me on my steed galloping directly toward a lazy weekend.   Or my next super-hero assignment.  Either one.

 

Yes.  Once, you really looked this doe-eyed and fresh from a milk bath.  You glowed that brightly.  Your eyes held that much mischief and merry making.  It's true.  It really happened.

 

Please tell me you'll go get the book Matilda and read it every single night to your dumbstruck child.  Who will stare at you with equal parts confusion and hilarity.  Who will howl uncontrollably when you read the part about Matilda supergluing Mr. Wormwood's hat to his mean head.