The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Yes, I know: long time no blog. It happens sometimes. Okay, maybe it happens frequently or annually. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Since I last posted:

• Went to the Art Fair when it was 90˚F.
• I had a medical issue.
• Finished a project.
• Handed out candy on Halloween.
• Made Thanksgiving dinner.
• Took down the summer decorations & put up the winter decorations.
• Spent 3 months working on illustrations for the holiday calendar. 
• Made Christmas dinner.
• Finished the holiday calendar.
• Had one of my printers die while printing the pages for the calendar.
• And completed the wrapping of gifts at 4am on 12-25.

It's been an eventful half-year.

This was how my living room looked right before the hustle and bustle of calendar production & assembly and gift wrapping. It may not presently be that tidy...

This was the last scene of  the last bit of illustrating that took place at my desk. It was a long haul of drawing. You can take a look at my last 3 months of illustration work here.

Yes, I do manage to post a lot of things on Tumblr. It might seem much easier to use and more accessible to more random people... therefore it might get more attention. Or I might make more of an effort to make regular posts here. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

One of the things that I enjoy the most is when Christmas is over with. It's the time when I usually finally have a moment to myself. I can just sit at home and relax. I'm not trying to finish something or work on something for someone or prepare some sort of massive feast or schedule my off-time around get-togethers or whatnot. There's a moment when the 25th becomes the 26th when everything is just calm and nice and solitary. I like those moments.

I want a makeover

I think of it as my office / studio / living room... I would say it measures roughly 12 feet by 20 feet, and it contains 2 desks, 2 computers, 3 printers, 1 television, 1 television stand, 2 shelves, 2 rocking chairs, 1 couch, 2 end tables, a hutch for the expensive printer to sit on, my large paper cutter, and a lot of paper and paint and glue and otherwise miscellaneous art supplies and stacks of Rolling Stone magazines.

 This is where I spend a lot of time sitting...

Oh, and it's peachy-pink or pinky-peach. Technically, regardless of how that color looks in the pictures — it's peach. It wasn't until I forfeited 50 days of my life to the side effects of pills that I realized that I'm tired of looking at peach.  

It was a completely random and arbitrary color choice. The studio / office / living room — where I spend the vast majority of my non-sleeping, non-working, non-grocery shopping time — is in the basement, the unfinished basement.  So, technically, it has 3 walls. 2 of them are cement, and the other is made of fabric.  It was the fabric wall that determined the color scheme of the room.  See that panel of fabric in the first picture behind my computer? There are 3 of those that hang on the opposite end of the room.  The paint color on the wall is the same as the background of that fabric.

That fabric? I bought it in the clearance section of a JoAnn's like 10 years ago.  So, I've been looking at it for 10 years I guess, and now I'm tired of seeing it. Cement, btw, is hard to hang things on, hence the occasional fabric panel - like the one behind my computer.  Any artwork that hangs in the room is suspended via fishing line from nails that are fixed in the baseboard around the ceiling...

I know, I should go outdoors more (because it's been 94˚F to 103˚F for the last 2 weeks — heat stroke, awesome) and enjoy my crispy brown yard or the sweltering heat? My other option is basically the bedroom... and the bedroom is a technological negaverse where the most advanced technology is a tie between my stereo (cd AND cassette player, which is so old that I doubt that the cassette part works) or the alarm clock. I'm not really the type to lay in bed and read books... oh, and did I mention the lack of air conditioning?

Yeah, so I want an office / studio / living room makeover... something that isn't peach.

I like this color. I believe I could stare at it peripherally everyday without trying to imagine I was somewhere else. So, now apparently I have to go on a quest to find some fabric with a nice gaudy floral pattern (the more seventies looking the better) that involves the use of this color.

And in the mean time, I've been trying to work on the general 'chronic disorganization' that seems to plague the room.  Every flat surface somehow ends up cluttered up with piles of papers and drawings and art supplies and cardboard, and well, it looks a little like an episode of hoarders minus the animals, rotting food, and water damage... yeah, it just looks like a paper tornado came through here most of the time.

Anyway, in order to change the paint color — I have to move everything. So, now I have an excuse to waste endless hours of time rifling through stacks of papers and throwing things away. At least it's ten degrees cooler down here.

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!

Evidently today is Bob Dylan's birthday. Now, I'm not a relative or an acquaintance, nor have I ever even stood in the same city block as the man (yes, I shamefully admit I have never seen him in concert either)... but I have enjoyed my fair share of Bob Dylan's music.

So, Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!
We'll just pretend like we're having cake.

I probably first knowingly heard a Bob Dylan song by watching a rerun of "Fame" back when they used to show reruns of fame at like 4pm on UHF channels (which, if you have never owned a television that did not operate via remote control you may not be familiar with). I'm sure the cast of Fame was protesting something serious (yes, I'm being sarcastic) - anyway, someone was sitting on a lunch table with a guitar singing "Blowin' in the Wind." (At least that's how I remember it).

Before that, I think I only knew of Bob Dylan via parody - you know, things that sound like Bob Dylan singing - which, you know, isn't like smooth jazz...

I believe my second encounter was via an 8-track tape. If memory serves me correct it was "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." You know, the album that "Blowin' in the Wind" is on. I'm not sure I ever made it all the way through the 8-track, because quite frankly as a 12-year-old Styx's "The Grand Illusion" was a more palatable 8-track...

My first real "Dylan" musical encounter actually came via Dr. Demento. He played "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" on his show... and that was probably also the first time I ever went to the library (how antiquated) and looked up anything about communism...

Somewhere around the age of sixteen I think I bought "Greatest Hits 3." I think I bought it for "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Tangled Up In Blue." I was more interested in buying the Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull catalogs at the time, so, while every teenager is required to know a little rock history, well, priorities... It was via that album that I became very fond of "Changing of the Guards" and "The Groom's Still Waiting At the Alter."

When I went off to college, I bought "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits" and I was mostly interested in "Mr. Tambourine Man" — albeit not for off-beat drug references, but because I really liked the line:

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin' swingin' madly across the sun
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'

 I have a propensity for just liking a line of a song...

Anyway, around the year 2000 I finally bought "Blonde on Blonde." I remember bringing it home and popping it in the cassette player and not really feeling compelled to sit through an entire song... and I say this as someone who will listen to Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull albums all the way through.  It took a really long time for that album to grow on me.  But eventually I became very fond of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," "Visions of JoHanna" and "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

Next came "Blood on the Tracks" and "The Bootleg Series: Vol. 1-3." The Bootleg Series, as it turns out - was the only album that "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" had ever occurred on, and thus I had to own it. I've heard that Dylan isn't a fan of those Bootleg series albums - but I really love that one, particularly disc 2. It was probably via that album that I started to subsequently buy the rest of the Bob Dylan catalog...

Needless to say, I own more Dylan albums than I've actually listened to. I bought "Modern Times" when it came out, but still haven't exactly gotten around to listening to it some 7 years later... I'll get around to it someday.  I mean, hell, the man recorded 34 studio albums — that's a lot of music, plus the 13 live albums and all the compilations... plus, at 71 years of age — he does have 39 years on me.

Anyway, of all of the Dylan albums I have ever bought — "Desire" is my favorite, hands down. I enjoy "Isis," "Mozambique," "Romance in Durango," and "Black Diamond Bay." But for purely selfish reasons, my favorite Dylan song of all is "Sara." I know it's about his ex-wife... but it's still (phonetically) my name, and really, my favorite of all the 'Sarah' songs.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan! Thanks for the music.

long rambling post

I wonder sometimes why I bother to write blog entries. Is there really a point to it?

Not to insult whoever it is that comments on my blog, and wow, yes, those are sparse, but is anyone really reading this because they want to?

I mean, I assume someone from HR scrolls through this thing every once in a while to suffer the disappointment that while I occasionally mention that I have a full time job and it is relatively far from my house — otherwise nothing is ever said about who I work for or what I do; much less any sort of juicy gossip or comments or opinions or whatever. 

Like I imagine the HR person thinking: yeah, the blog is a slightly different shade of purple and has more pictures of flowers or trees or some painting of nothing or whatever, but is otherwise about nothing salacious and lacks anything interesting like drunken photos of partying at a bar or treasonous diatribes. Next!

Don't worry, I fucking hate captchas, so, you could actually comment, anonymously, I might add, even if you're secretly from human resources...

But anyway, back to the thought I was having: why am I doing this? I wonder that most of the time when I sit here in front of the computer and try to think of something to write.  I've wasted a goodly amount of time writing things that have never seen the light of day, because for a long time I tried to practice the ideology of "would grandma approve?"

You know, like would I say "fuck" in front of my grandmother? Possibly, accidentally. But my grandmother doesn't have a computer or a smart phone or a tablet or the internet.  And my other grandmother is dead... plus she grew up on a farm in the mountains of PA, so, really, was there anything that I ever would have said that some much more colorful local yolkel hadn't already blistered through? Besides, I was / am fond of all 4 of my grandparents.  And everyone talks out-of-turn (as it were) about other people at some point.

Anyway, I assume my one remaining grandparent isn't reading this. Of course, you're never supposed to assume anything. But really, I do assume that when someone loads this blog and they see a giant block of text they probably make some face and then simply click away... because I do assume that a lot of you are drinking lattes or fancy flavored coffee while sitting in front of your computer (on looking at your phone or tablet) with the thought that some stranger on the internet is going to provide some level of entertainment... and since we're 6 paragraphs in, I assume very few people are actually reading this, because who the hell am I other than some faceless (avatar aside) stranger on the internet.

I was on vacation this week, and other than driving 17 miles to the doctor's office (and that is asinine, considering how many practices exist between my home on the one approved of by my health insurance — if you're American, then I implore you to vote for Democrats).  I probably should have made the appointment 3 months ago, but well, I didn't. I mean, I should have scheduled a teeth cleaning in February, but I didn't get around to that until the end of April... I should also probably floss more, but otherwise the electric toothbrush seems to be working out.

Anyway, skipping over the details, I have been physically ill. It isn't typhoid or lockjaw or shingles or whatever, so, it was just like one of those background nagging kinds of things (and yes, one person's version of nagging may vary wildly from someone else's; most of you probably would have made the appointment a lot sooner). But I work midnights and the doctor is far away — and those are my excuses, besides, maybe it'll just run its course, and I won't need to. Unless you're devoid of hope — I think we all consider that last one as a possibility.

Well, it didn't, and it wasn't going to just run its course... plus, it had started to wake me from my sleep. If you've never worked midnights — sleeping during the day is a chore, and as soon as you lay down there is always some moron vacuuming out their car or operating a leaf blower or a chainsaw or mowing their lawn or acting like poor white trash and doing doughnuts with their truck in the field out behind your house. You know what? That one day in the spring when it rained and you got your truck stuck in the mud? I laughed, a lot, particularly since it happened right behind my house. What would be really funny is if you went out there and your truck was swallowed up into a giant sinkhole. I would probably actually put down the binoculars and walk all the way out to the edge of the back yard and laugh and point and heckle...

Anyway, I don't thrive on less than 8 hours of sleep. I have a co-worker who thinks that like 2 or 3 is acceptable... it isn't. Of course, whenever you talk about sleep with people, the first thing that seems to happen is that they can prove that they need very little sleep and that you're a total pussy for wanting the full 8 hours. You know, shit, even my children sleep less than that. 

Well, congratulations, they're probably going to grow up to be spree killers or axe murderers; their prefrontal cortexes shrinking a bit more with each lost hour of sleep. People need sleep. I prefer mine in 8 hour+ increments, uninterrupted. So, waking up hours before the alarm clock was scheduled to go off was not rocking it. And it's not like I was waking up full of vigor and sprightliness. No, it was more like if "ugh" could encompass a state of being.

I would look at the alarm clock, blearily, and in my head would just let out a loud moaning "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Because even if I curled up in a ball and shut my eyes and thought about nothing, I was awake, and the remainder of my planned sleep was gone.

I have slept through thunderstorms, tornado warning sirens, more thunderstorms... but all of a sudden I couldn't sleep for more than 5 hours, and when I was awake — I was a freaking zombie. 

So, I just spent 5 days on vacation, and the furthest I went was to the doctor, ironically, not for sleeping pills, but for that thing that I presume kept waking me, otherwise, I guess we have ghost with an irritable personality...

I feel no more rested and relaxed today than I did on day 1 of my vacation. But I did watch a lot of tv and sleep for however long I wanted whenever I wanted, and I got some drawing done, so I guess it wasn't a total zero sum. It wasn't exactly like I had some calculated plan for the five days or something, aside from finally making that doctor's appointment.

I do feel like less of a zombie, but come tonight - the grind just starts again, and I suppose goes on until I finally just drop dead, although mortality isn't one of those things that I spend an awful lot of time thinking about. It's probably why I was never a goth, plus, I like colorful stuff, albeit not necessarily as part of my wardrobe.

 

travelogue

I mean, technically, this is me, although, thematically, this is not me. Traveling just ain't my bag. Although I do have an old blue suitcase. Plus, really, if that was me, that plain black t-shirt needs some Pink Floyd graphics smacked on the front of it...

I guess I'm dark and sardonic and maybe a little antisocial, and that isn't fun whimsical light fare for morning coffee... and maybe I had to inadvertently become a sleep deprived zombie to realize that I don't get any joy or delight or simply relish the idea of trying to play against type in order to offend the least amount of people. And my grandmother (living or dead) isn't reading this anyway.

I talk about myself on here (or if you know me online, wherever we are - I talk about myself mostly there too) and I lead a fairly mundane life — aside from making things that look like earthworms in dirt in my spare time...

 

worm assemblage plaque

C'mon, admit it, it's at least nominally humorous, even if it does take some sarcasm to appreciate.  Plus I photographed it outside on the rabbit hutch (which is the closest thing I have to the etsy canard of barnwood).

Anyway, I talk about myself mostly, because it's easy and it's the least argumentative thing.  In many respects I am a character, but I'm an obscure character and who really has strong feelings about me one way or the other? It's not like I'm some anti-women's-lib homophobe like Rick Santorum or something. Seriously, republicans, why do you hate gay marriage and universal healthcare? 

See, when we were just talking about me you could just roll your eyes and yawn, and since you're many many miles away, I'd never notice. But when we talk about stuff — that's when people start to get pissy and annoyed. So, for everyone who had ever taken the time to take a pot-shot or make some glib off-hand remark referencing just how much of me I tend to talk about — that's why. Aside from issues of quantity - me talking about me rarely offended you, and as it turns out - I live a fairly creative carefree life that mostly revolves around such inert things as watching tv, listening to music, occasionally being outraged by brazenly stupid shit, taking photos of flowers and trees and naturey stuff, and mostly making a lot of art that is neither political or offensive; and the rest of the time I'm sleeping or at work.

My pre-vacation illness-induced sleep deprivation zombie experience was the deal breaker. For reasons that were mostly unintentional or accidental or simply the path of circumstances — I realized I was someone that I didn't want to be.  It didn't really take five days of vacation to arrive at that conclusion, nor did I have to travel far to get there.  It simply is what it is.

I'm not a person of absolutes. There are things in life that are constant, and there are far more things in life that are variables.  And probably, mostly, I have tried reasonably hard to succeed at whatever happened to be in front of me... until I tried so hard to get a certain result that I failed to notice that in doing so I was no longer really me — and that's a thought that applies to a number of things.

I am not always a grandma-approved conversationalist, and I'm not an apologist. And the amount of time I've spent trying to offend the least amount of people hasn't really made me happy.

Against my better judgement, I wandered into town in the early morning a couple days ago with my camera to photograph whatever... but I wasn't really in the mood to do it, and my back hurt, and I wasn't feeling stellar, and it was hot out... and really, I just needed to go buy groceries, which I don't like to do when everyone else is out doing it — because working midnights you tend to be buying groceries at 7am when everyone else is asleep or eating breakfast — so the store is like a ghost town... anyway, I took 70 photos, and most of them were crap...

Except this one:

nosy gnome

I'm not big into gnomes, nor do I own one... but there was something about this particular random moment in time that amused me.  It's the trite, silly, and downright absurd that generally provides the memorable moments. Plus, it's just about time for me to put on 'people clothes' to go out and buy groceries for the coming work week...

Have a good week and pursue some happiness just because it's something to do.

so beautiful or so what

So beautiful or So what? So, I'm a little behind on my musical releases... that's just kind of how I am. You know what? I didn't go out and buy skinny jeans whenever those became "stylish" again. It is what it is. Right now I have this song —  so beautiful or so what — stuck in my head. So, that's so what.

 Paul Simon's website...

Truth be told, I just took a shower. So, as I type this I'm waiting for my hair to dry.  Normally, I default to TRESemmé shampoo and Pantene conditioner.  I'm a creature of habit. But every once in a while one must be adventurous, or just wash all the residue out of one's hair. So, I liked the way this smelled. Yes, as a consumer of hair care products, these 2 Herbal Essences products had all the necessary marketing tricks:

√  purple stuff comes out of the bottle

√  the bottle is purple

√  alleges to smell like "wild cherry"

√  use of the word "orchid"

Okay, so I actually think it kind of smells like grapes. But, well, it made my hair all snazzy when I used it. In the event that it's not apparent — violet (and by proxy all purple derivatives) is my favorite color. I love cherries, and I have long curly hair.

 

I also like cake. Strawberry with cream cheese frosting... mostly because that's what I found in the cupboards. Mmm, cake.

I decided, on a whim, that I wanted to do some watercolors... which might have something to do with the sudden influx of watercolors to my sarahknight etsy shop.  You know, when I list them I have to leaf through the pile and make sure that I've scanned them, and then I'm probably day dreaming about my fantasy house with all my paintings on the wall or something.

Anyway, yesterday  when I got home from work I sat down and caught up on the last 2 episodes of Californication and cleared off a good area on the floor in order to get out my case of paints, the box of watercolors, the box of gouache, the set of gouaches, the watercolor palette, the gouache palette, the bowl of salt... and then I spent a good 10 minutes cleaning up paintbrushes so that I would have something with which to fling wet pigment at the parchment...

I highly recommend Californication as a series.  I always enjoy being surprised by the plot twists on this show... and like Hank, I can't exactly say I have any fondness for Tyler...

I painted 14 yesterday, and four so far today. And now I'm waiting for them to dry. That's probably the hardest part.  There's a difference between the way they look when they're wet and how they look when they're dry. And even though I've been using this painting technique for 12 years — there's always an element of surprise, and it's usually the good kind.  I already scraped the salt off the 14 I painted yesterday, and it's going to be hard to not put most of them in the "keep pile."

Some notable keep pile escapees... here, and here, and here, and here...

It's unseasonably warm here in Michigan right now. A couple days ago I got my bike out of the shed and pumped up the tires. The first ride after the winter lay off is always the toughest... anyway, the crocuses have already bloomed, and now the daffodils, the forsythia, and the magnolia are going at it. I'm convinced it's going to snow tomorrow, even if the calendar indicates that spring has now begun.

Anyway, I recommend having a nice slice of cake and then going out to wander about and look at all the springy things popping up here and there... and maybe catch up on some Paul Simon too.
: )

the lost post...

The weekend seems to have whizzed by without a blog post... whoops.

Which is funny, because I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer. But I was typing, and well, screen captures of text just aren't that dynamic when it comes to blog posts...

I did, however, go shopping. I mean, I went shopping to buy conditioner and garbage bags and napkins... and somehow ended up in Hobby Lobby. Yeah, I have no idea, right? ; )

Anyway, I snagged the remainder of these 2 bolts of awesome fabric.  Ecograda Rose on the left & Ecograda Lattice on the right.  If I've never mentioned this, I love gaudy retro floral patterns and color schemes from the seventies.  I have an entire stash of what I think of as "future curtains." You know, for that window-licious house I'm going to buy when I win the lotto one of these days.  These colors & this pattern were just too much to pass up.

I have plans for new things in my "sarahknight" shop on etsy coming up in April.  This is one of my projects...

And I've been working on sketches of people... actually, I've been working on this project on and off for a couple of years now. I already have an entire sketchbook of "the girls." I just need to find the time to actually get past the sketching phase of the project and move on to the next phase...

In the mean time I immensely enjoyed Archer this last week. Katya as a cyborg was priceless.

However, I think Grimm left a bigger impression on me. I may have already copped to having a school girl crush on David Giuntoli. And really, who wouldn't? Just look at those sparkly baby blues.  Which reminds me of one of my favorite Jackson Browne songs... yes, that was a non sequitur.

Anyway, last Friday's episode was The Plumed Serpent. I think maybe it should have been called, "wow, that is a lot of shirtless Nick Burkhardt," but, you know, that's me. And, yeah, there was a lot of shirtlessness there.

: )

Not that I'm complaining.

Oh, and OMG, there's a tumblr called MONROELICIOUS, ha! The things you find when you google "shirtless Nick Burkhardt."

Anyway, hope everyone is having a good week :D

4 random things...

macro shot of the living room carpet | frost on the rear window 

me | paper hearts

I'm trying to be more spontaneous and concise, I guess. It's February, it's chilly outside - too chilly to do anything, so I'm stuck indoors. And this last Friday I finally got around to working on the project that involved making art out of used tea bags... it was kind of a spontaneous project, since I had no real idea of how it would turn out. It turned out pretty cool in my own estimation.

Enjoy your President's Day : )