adventures

of aplantfancier

Tag: writing

  • company @ christmas

    Yesterday the temperature rose above freezing for the first time in weeks, and the cat and I spent some time outside, investigating the rows of icicles forming along the new gutters, and the deepening tracks of the rabbit road. The snow was melting in soft, wet heaps, and the cat made nose prints and paw prints while the sun shone out of a clear, blue sky.

    We had company last week and through the weekend, which ratcheted both the cozy festivities and my usual holiday stress to new heights. I miss having that full house, but I think we’re all glad that things are back to normal.

    Whatever that means.

  • adventures in going overboard

    Company’s coming day after tomorrow and outside it’s still snowing and snowing and snowing. We usually don’t get much til late winter. All bets are off I think.

    The cat is over her cold, and we went out for a while this morning to stamp around in the backyard, marking out our pathways, stopping to observe where they intersect with the rabbit road.

    They’ve already eaten the raspberries down to the ground.

    That’s right reader, thorns and all.

  • content is king

    The sketchbook has not been as good for “helping me loosen up” as I had hoped.

    I’m not quoting anyone specific but I’m sure someone has said it.

    The snow is drifting down again outside, but it’s bright out, the cloud cover is absolute, but thin, so that the sun is visible like a pale yellow lamp in a white haze. It felt warmer today as soon as I woke up. Isn’t it funny how you can feel the colder days, even though the thermostat is just the same?

    I’m in sweats and slouchy, knobbly socks again. I’m going to have to shovel at some point but let’s not worry about that right now.

    It hasn’t even stopped snowing yet.

  • 10 reasons why no one’s reading your blog

    I’ve been continuing today in sorting through old paintings, and doing some writing in a pretty new A5 binder I started last week. It’s faux camel suede, with nice KOKUYO loose leaf paper inside, the same setup I’m using for my languishing novel.

    The blog needed its own space for notes and ideas and little chunks of prose. And of course I’m indexing it because I’m a freak for organization. Does anyone else write every other page in their binders upside down or is that just me? If you know you know.

    Or maybe it really is just me, because so far it’s not really working out.

    Come along now while I put some paint to paper, and have a few cups of tea in the furnace workshop. But first stare into that radioactive sky a while. Doesn’t that cloud look like Alaska?

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  • smth new

    I pulled out a few older paintings while organizing the workshop today and thought this one deserved another look. Yes, I know it’s not Thursday, July 24th.

    So go ahead and have a look while I get my thoughts together.

    Go on, drift away a minute on that viridian sea.

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  • thanksgiving three

    I wrote yesterday about making turkey stock and getting into a new blank MIDORI notebook. Today has turned out much the same. I think I’ll end up with some seven quarts of stock, all told. Not too shabby! Completed artwork and some discussion of bike life after the cut, please stick around:

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  • broth in progress

    Wouldn’t you say Thanksgiving Two is better than Thanksgiving One? I still spend all day in the kitchen, but mostly just making lovely stock and reading soup recipes and daydreaming.

    This week my entire housekeeping list has been supplanted by Thanksgiving tasks. Procure roasting pan. Bike to grocery store. And just in the nick of time, too, the snow came the next night. There was also a sock related side quest which expanded to include mall bao and a quick check of all the Barnes & Noble promo tables. Just the essentials.

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  • who is this even for?

    Someone told me recently that I should be working on my art for me, not to seek recognition. Huh. Does it mean something bad about me that I see no reason to make art that I don’t intend to share? To seek recognition implies, I think, a desire for accolades. I do seek recognition, but literally just that — to be recognized. I see no reason to tell this story to myself, as I already know it. I want to tell it to you.

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  • watching paint dry

    If you tuned in last time you already know that I’ve been making some upgrades to my travel paint kit after discovering Art Toolkit, which has apparently been there all along while I did years of fruitless searching. I was really excited to finally find something that could fit my full range of tube paints and take up almost no room in my bag.

    After I filled the pans and let them dry down overnight I found that a few colors needed another layer, so today I thought I’d boot up No Man’s Sky and do some painting while I finish my new palette.

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  • how I passed the morning

    I’m down in the furnace workshop again, forming a fragile alliance with this tall wooden barstool, through something I’m thinking of as yoga as I’m doing it, but now that I’m writing about it I realize is just stretching. I think the key is never to sit on it. I’ve just gone from a physically demanding job to a more officey job, helping fill orders for a small business, and instead of my body hurting less it just hurts the same amount but in new ways. And so, my workshop’s standing-height bench with round wood stool, already torturous to sit on for any amount of time, has become untenable. These are things I can’t possibly have thought about this much when I was younger.

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