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.

Where have I been?

D'oh.

It is apparently exceptionally easy to get out of the habit of blogging. Probably because blogging is kind of hard. I mean, if I went out and took fabulous beautiful photos every week and spent a lot of time on "social media" making nice with everyone else - then people would visit here and leave nice comments.  Or if I was famous - well, I imagine that simply helps — assuming it's like good famous and not D-level reality tv also ran famous or something.  If I was into fashion — you know, I guess that's what the young ladies do... except that just not my thing.

So, I'm guilty of not blogging here and I do openly admit that not writing anything and just posting a something on tumblr seems to be a lot easier. That and tumblr is searchable so random people have a greater chance of finding your content. 

But anyway, it's September because I dropped off somewhere in August. It would be nice if I had some story or pictures about some fabulous vacation. But I don't. I didn't go anywhere. I was somehow busy between work and life and home.  There was a lot of overtime (aka 6 day work weeks), and some home drama. The latter I should have probably not mentioned, because apparently it's an unmentionable thing. It's not a divorce or domestic incident or fire or natural disaster, and no one is injured or ill or fired or boozing it up or anything particularly interesting... it's one of those dumb things that apparently you're never supposed to speak of. And I know this because I have mentioned it casually to a number of people that I know and they look at me as if I just told them that so-in-so is (insert scandalous thing). 

Let's just say that in the month of August, as I have been doing in very small increments for the past year, there was a sudden burst of cleaning... because someone seems to have a little problem parting ways with things that ought to be thrown away. Before there were tv shows we just called it the Mess. There's less of it now. There may have been some words exchanged and some strained faces every time Wednesday rolled around. And I may have gone on clandestine missions and snuck garbage bags out of the house, but there ought to be a clear path to the fuse box. And we are no longer not throwing out junk mail, because that was some moronic bullshit. If I am writing out a check every couple of months for the garbage man to come take away 3 bags of trash every week, then, 3 bags of trash are going to leave every week until I run out of stuff that needs to go.

Otherwise, in another 10 years we would have qualified for an episode of one of those shows, although we don't have any cats or rats or insect problems... although someone may be crushed to death someday by totes of craft supplies.

It's difficult to explain to non-relatives how there have been arguments and hurt feelings and dirty looks over throwing away empty shampoo bottles and milk jugs and  plastic bags.

So, that was August: work, cleaning, and exhaustion. Also, it was still too frigging hot.

And now it's September.

Anyway, I have been drawing and writing on and off when I'm not trying to catch up on sleep or think of how to better organize the thousands of things we have in this house... and one of the things that I endeavored upon was a new etsy account. Yeah, I know, like I really need another one.

esotericSarah — my photography will be slowly matriculating there because I actually opened the account with a completely different intention, and maybe, just like I thought last year - I'll get back on track with that project in January when my schedule clears out...

I laugh as I type that. But all the cleaning that I did in the month of August and throughout the past year was a bit of a journey in an attempt to live a happier, neater, better life; with some level or organization and planning. So, while I may look back on my summer and recall it being too hot to do anything and spending a lot of time with a the vacuum cleaner and a spray bottle of cleaning fluid - it was a path towards a more functional home and a more functional home life, where things get put away and there's a place to put things that we actually use.

Plus, I have 12 pictures to draw in less than 3 months. Eek! Good thing I have most of them sketched...

Hope everyone had a good summer!

inspiration and iphone cases

I don't actually have an iphone. In fact, I may be one of the last people on earth living in a first world country under the age of 40 and over the age of 8 who does not possess a cell phone.  I'm just not that kind of a person. The people who need to find me know how and where to do so.

However, seeing my illustrations and photography on an iphone case does kinda make me want one just because...

spring sycamore

ginkgo potpouri

intricate lace

sunshine flight

cardinal couple

You can find all these at http://society6.com/SarahKnight/

It was a decent week, the weather has finally cooled down.  There were way too many 90˚F+ days this summer for my liking. 65˚F to 80˚F is really ideal...

Anyway, in the sweltering sun of Monday morning I thoroughly washed the car, inside and out.  So, you know, if it rained - you know why.

And then I got the oil changed.

While I was sitting there is the waiting area at Chrysler I churned out 3 sketches.  I have less than 4 months to produce 12 illustrations for my calendar, and since I hadn't really been working on anything up to this point - well, it's time to get going on this yearly project.  At the very least, I have vague ideas for 8 graphics so far. Now I just need to sit down and draw them out.  Fun stuff, and possibly more obscure / quirky / eccentric stuff this year... I always had a penchant for out there kinda things.

Speaking of which - this is my new work in progress: esotericSarah

I like satire, parody, comedy... motivational prints? Maybe not so much, hence satire.

Anyway, I spent the day vegging in front of the latest episodes of "The Closer" on onDemand. I'm going to miss that show.

10 things...

George Harrison — "Om Hare Om (Gopala Krishna)"

I washed my car today, so I guess you can expect rain.

Episodes is an awesome show, well worth a subscription to Showtime.

Redid my sarahkdesigns banner for the umpteenth time.

Made a treasury.

Folded laundry yesterday, significantly reducing the pile of non-matching striped socks atop the dryer.

Got up early yesterday to work on a project...

Ended up working on something else:

Finally made the appointment to get the oil changed in my car & maybe new tires.

Realized that I have less than 4 months to churn out 12 illustrations for the calendar. Eef.

so...

There was something that I was going to do this week. But I didn't get around to it. Things are like that sometimes...

I sent this off to a new destination:

I hope it is liked ; )

...

This was a week of wasted time, I guess.

I was told by one of my co-workers that no one likes me and that I have no friends... so, in real life it felt very ironic to discuss this conversation with my friends and wonder why this person has started to act like the character of an abusive husband in a lifetime movie. You know the cliche: you have no friends, no one likes you, so-in-so said this about you, this is something you did seven years ago (what do you mean you don't remember it clear as day?), whatever you do is wrong, it doesn't matter if our boss told you to do it - because you're doing it then it's wrong, you have your own agenda, you're such a disappointment, I like our other co-worker so much better...

You know, things that are completely inappropriate to say to someone.

I doubt this person knows what my favorite color is, let alone what I really do when I leave work — so making over-arching broad generalizations about me and my life is really phenomenally inappropriate; moreover trying to force the idea that everyone that I've ever worked with has despised or hated me is a just a mean thing to do. Like, really, you sit around in your spare time and call up people I worked with 10 years, 5 years, 8 years, 7 years ago — asking for salacious stories about me? Seriously?

On one hand, the rational part of me that is a college graduate sees this co-worker as trying one of the worst motivational techniques in the world — negative reinforcement. And that same rational part of me knows that people who act like that and say things like that have control issues and often need to take review of their own lives before giving other's a personal review.

It's funny, because the reason I don't spend oodles of time standing around and BSing at work is because I have a home life, and family, and (ironically) friends. I think I spent more time this week pointing out that I wasn't interested in wasting more time discussing this co-worker — the stereotype of the abusive husband from a Lifetime movie.

 So, there, now everyone knows - that according to some person who doesn't really know me - no one likes me. That's why you're reading this on the internet right now, right, because you come here and read these entries to remind yourself of how much you dislike me.

/sarcasm

...

In the mean time, I worked on a project, and in the background I caught up on episodes of Episodes, Leverage, Franklin & Bash, and Anger Management, and managed to half pay attention to a Kathy Griffin comedy special... she's not quite as grating as I once thought she was, I guess you never know until something is playing on the tv in the background and you find yourself chuckling at it. Plus, I finally caught part of the Daily Show for the first time in a long time... oh, and I watched a little bit of Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Not unlike how I don't care if I'm the most popular employee at work - because work is about work not about who likes so-in-so - for someone with a party affiliation, I don't watch every god damned second of political talk available on the television. Caring about it would probably drive me mad. I know who I'm voting for come November. I voted for him last time too.

Anyway, have a good weekend. I have a project to work on.

art fair, art experiments...

So, this week was the Ann Arbor Art Fair. Technically, there are like 3 or 4 separate art fairs going on at the same time — and different organizations jockeying for who is the original art fair... but really, I don't care about that.  I drive to the mall, park, and ride the bus into downtown, wander around in the blistering heat for 2-3 hours or until I can wander no more, and then get back on the bus and wander back to my car and wish there was someone there to drive me home, because I'm hot and exhausted, and home is like 30 miles away...

Oh, and somewhere in there — I buy stuff.

I actually started off the week having to go to the post office...

This is my Art Fair plunder. Yes, jewelry. And yes, those are all opals set in silver. I like what I like. And I buy a ring from the same guy every year (Alan Fisk)... and I buy something from Middle Earth every year as well...

 Last year - Art Fair was pretty miserable, largely because it was ninety degrees and there was utterly no wind, no breeze, no nothing. It was just hot and the sun was beating down like a relentless ball of fire... it was also pretty deserted.  This year, it was also hot, but on Thursday morning it managed to rain.  So, it was cooler (like mid-seventies / eighties) plus there was a breeze. It was nothing gusty, but it was flowy enough to be pleasant.  And yes, I pointlessly carried an umbrella in my bag the entire time. I was prepared for a downpour (as that has happened before).

I go to art fair for the jewelry.  I already have an art degree, and really, I'm not one of those people who goes there to get inspired. Nope, I go there for the jewelry... and I have never left there without making a purchase.  If I'm gonna drive 30 miles to walk the expanse of downtown Ann Arbor in the noonday sun, then I'm leaving with something silver and sparkly, preferably in a size 8. At the very least I will buy shoes...

Anyway, after Art Fair, I'm pretty fried. So, I spent a lot of time sleeping and staring at the television.  In the mean time, I apparently felt like painting something, so I decided to experiment with the watercolors and the gouache and some masking fluid... and some colors that maybe don't come that naturally.  I'm apparently not done playing yet.

Besides, the middle of the floor was all empty from where I put everything away last week, so, you know, I had to get out a bunch of stuff.

Oh, did you know that Mounds makes ice cream bars? Why, yes, they do. The only drawback is that there is no stick. Anyway, they're delicious even if my hands are a mess by the time I have consumed one.

Also, Homemade Coconut Almond Chip Ice Cream — that stuff is fabulous.

And have you heard that new song by Dawes — "If I wanted someone"? Yeah, I like that song.

Have a good weekend, and stay hydrated!

stuff...

I have a lot of stuff.

I know that. I've always had a lot of stuff. It happens when you do arts and crafts as a hobby. But sometimes the stuff gets a little out of control and things don't get put back the way they should and then everything is with everything and it just gets kind of stupid... particularly when you spend most of your non-sleeping, non-working, non-mundane activities such as housework or grocery acquisition in one room: the office / studio / living room.

It's where the computer is, it's where the desk is, it's where the tv is, and it's where most of my stuff is... and it got a little unruly during that period when I was taking that medication that made me want to sleep my days away or eat pizza or cry for hours at a time.

Apparently, I should be more ashamed of this than I am (which, quite frankly isn't very much)...

 It looked worse before I took this picture... this is halfway there.

 prismacolors, verithins, ball point pens, drawing pencils, markers, tape, and plastic storage bags...

 miscellaneous, make-up (why is that here?), hangers, doo-dads...

 I'm clearly set on mini clothespins, hole punches, tubes of glitter...

Even the worm jewelry needs a home.

But, the thing is that I'm in the middle of reorganizing all this stuff so that things do get put away or actually have a home. And on a basic level, since I have a lot of small things, my chosen method of storing them involves those little plastic pencil boxes; largely because I have a lot of pens and pencils or small things.

Anyway, I spent a goodly amount of time this week separating art supplies by kind, and going through all my containers to sort everything. Organizing does seem like a huge time suck, but sitting in my living room and not having the floor littered with piles of stuff — actually seeing large swaths of carpeting in the middle of the room is rewarding in it's own way: I actually feel like being there, instead of wishing I was somewhere else doing something else. It's a feeling I haven't had in a while.

Plus I sat there watching tv while I was doing it, so, technically, it was still multi-tasking.

I realize that my version of orderly is someone else's chaos... but eventually I'll have everything put away to my satisfaction. Of course, then it will be time to start a project and pull it all out again. It's a perpetual cycle.

But for now, all my plastic boxes are stacked neatly on the shelf.  Papers are sorted, and organized, and for the most part - in cabinets or on shelves... and more importantly, I can see the surface area of my desk again. It seems silly, even though I still have more organizing to do and stuff to neaten up, but it's so much nicer when things aren't everywhere on every flat surface.

Now that my desk has been liberated from disorder, it's probably time to get some stuff done.

Have a nice weekend! :D

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.

it's too hot to do anything

So, I just typed in "weather for Te" in google, and well, it completed my thought for me — "Tecumseh, MI." Apparently as I type this it is a mere 91˚F. I was just upstairs, sitting on the bed and pondering the fact that my bed was not as warm as a person, and thinking so maybe it was only in the eighties or something... Yeah, I just had to check.

Yesterday, this was the temperature:

The high was actually 103˚F. Global warming? Oh, it's real, it's damned real. There were a few scattered days of triple digit temps when I was a kid, and I remember the drought of 1988. But this oppressive heat? No, it wasn't this damned hot 5 years ago, let alone 10 or 20 years ago. I grew up in a house with no AC and I don't recall ever thinking as a child that my house (or the carpeting or the couches or the bed or chairs) was warmer than a person. 

Besides, this is Michigan, where's my freak snowstorm? At this point I would settle for rain.

It did rain yesterday. And when I ran outside to roll the windows up on my car — I was thinking about how fun it would be to just stand there in the rain in my granny jammies...

It's too damned hot to do anything. So, I have done nothing really this week. I mean, I did some stuff and I ate and I showered and cooked some food... but above a basic level of functioning, there is nothing happening here except a lot of sitting down in the basement with the fan on and pondering how much it would cost to have central air installed in this place.

Oh, did I neglect to mention that 2 weeks into consistent 90˚F temps — there is no AC in this house?  

These are the days that necessitate the daily consumption of ice cream... this was some sort of cherry vanilla that is long gone. The last time I was shopping in the frozen food aisle — Hudsonville was on sale. I was hoping they would have some of that orange sherbet/vanilla concoction that they came up with last year, but it was sold out. I ended up with something with caramel and apples instead... I'd really rather have the orange sherbet/vanilla... 

Of course, I'd also really like to just go crawl into my freezer and sit there for a couple of hours.

 This completely jinxes my etsy sales, but to occupy some time I sat down at the computer and configured some new designs for business cards, and then printed out a couple sheets... and then was bored enough yesterday that I actually sat there at my desk and cut them apart while watching some movie about Larry Hillblom that kept popping up on hulu — Shadow Billionaire. I had to leave for work before I made it to the end of the movie, but well, I now have a neat new stack of business cards.

 Other than groceries or lotto tickets, having to ship something is probably the only thing that is going to compel me to leave the house. Yeah, that's what the boxes might look like, depending on what I pull out of the cardboard pile.

I guess I should stop staring at the computer screen and trying to think of a conclusion to this entry now... I do, after all, have an episode of "The Glades," "Franklin & Bash," and "Episodes" to watch, plus I need to muster the strength to fill that part of the dishwasher with powder cleaning solution and turn it on. We're out of clean plates. I know, it's a high tragedy.

Stay cool and hydrated, and stay out of the sun!

another lost week

Sometimes doing nothing is doing the most.

And nothing is pretty much what I did this week... I mean, not quite nothing in a nihilistic way, but nothing. I slept (poorly), I ate, I showered, I ran the dishwasher, I did laundry, I put on clothes and went to work... but I didn't sketch anything or draw anything or write anything, so I guess I didn't really do anything. And that's fine.

I was taking some medication, and it was affecting my thinking, and well, I stopped taking it... and I feel like myself again, relative to how long it would take for that kind of thing to wear off. To be vague - it made me feel tired and sleepy, so I'd go to bed and then wake up long before the alarm was set to go off and become unable to fall back asleep, so then I was zombie-awake and lethargic... there were times when I was at work and having one of those 'trapped in my body moments' where I would be shuffling down a hallway and thinking, "shit, I should be able to walk faster!" But I couldn't. I didn't have the energy to do it. It was like I was made out of sand.

I would cry for no particularly good reason...

And eventually I finally picked up the paperwork that came with the prescription and read it. There was a moment of ruefully sarcastic laughter when I scanned over my exact "side effects."

So, uh, yeah, that little boondoggle is drawing to a close.

I, like millions of other people, sat in my living room on Thursday night (well, technically Friday morning in my case) and watched "Brand X" and "Anger Management." I' 33, so technically, I'm too young to be a 'brat pack aficionado,' and I'm not. Charlie Sheen and his coke fueled meltdown or whatever that was last year — that was something that while I was aware of it, it just didn't really affect my daily life. I never watched "2 1/2 Men" — so the fate of the show wasn't really something that was bound to affect my entertainment... and it isn't exactly like I've seen more than 3 movies starring Charlie Sheen... but I watched "Anger Management," and it was funny, so, there's to winning.

I liked Brand X too.

I'm looking forward to the return of "Episodes" and to the July return of "Leverage." Sorry, book readers, but I do enjoy the television.

I have, however, in bits and pieces, been reading Keith Richard's autobiography "Life" in my spare time. People my parents age have that age old dilemma of 'Stones or Beatles? Well, I guess I come down on the Stones side. For the record, I also pick Zeppelin over the Who... but anyway, really, my favorite band it Pink Floyd, so it's irrelevant. Except, Keith was always my favorite Stone. "Happy," btw, is my favorite Stones song. So, even though I'm no groupie or superfan (and no, I don't own all their records) — and I know nothing about playing guitar — it's a good and genuine autobiography — and even reading it in bits and pieces out of order (which is how I prefer to read biographies) — it's been very interesting. The last part I read was something about the open G tuning of a guitar, and even though I know nothing about reading music, it's described in such a way that I don't feel like I'm reading Greek.

Anyway, on the accomplishment front — I sent this painting off in the mail yesterday. Shhh, don't tell my other paintings, but it was one of my favorites. Particularly this part:

Technically, it's a gaff, really, that crinkly / crusty / lumpy paint right there. And how when it dried - chemically it was such that it repelled the pristine paint that it was sitting there on the surface with, which is why it looks all crackly like that. And yet, to me, it's perfectly catastrophic - this little gurgle of texture in the middle of the painting. As much as those paintings are about a play on color, and literally the shape that paint takes when it just pools and sits there even after it's been pushed in a direction — it's all the things that come together that make the picture.  That painting is just as much about the juxtaposition of color and the abstraction of shape as it is about that little gurgle of crackling paint... which reminds me of what I read about how notes reverberate as per how a guitar is tuned in Keith Richard's book...

So, I hope the new owner of sunkissed alchemy phantasmagoria likes the painting, for whatever reasons they may like it.

And now I guess I should try to get some work done ; )

the last day of vacation...

The last few moments of vacation, those final hours before everything has to go back to normal, those are always the best. There's something frantic and calm about them simultaneously. Don't get me wrong, I could sit at home and do nothing infinitely, because well, I have a lot of stuff and enjoy such infinite pursuits as art and writing and watching tv...

Today was a better morning than yesterday. I went for a bike ride, and while I was winded by the time I had completed the second lap — I wasn't winded nor had I significantly slowed down on the first lap. I wasn't thinking that maybe it was the prescription or the weather or messing with my sleep or that the tires needed air... nope, everything was just fine. So, fine that I decided to do the second lap using the route with the hill. The hill always kicks my ass. That's what it's there for.

Aside from cleaning the house, I just took a vacation of nothingness. My largest excursion was to drive to Adrian, mostly to put gas in the car and buy cleaning supplies for my impending house cleaning bender. Yes, we now have bathroom Lysol. Exciting, I know. Oh, and mostly everything is clean. 

We don't have a cat or a dog or any other furry house pet (this is a fish-only household), so, really, it was just dust and however crumbs get behind canisters that haven't moved in years, and the occasional cobweb. Everyone has spiders... and considering that they eat most undesirable bugs, other than destroying their less than ideally placed webs, there's really no point in hating them. Although, spiders, please beware that your life may depend on when you decide to suddenly appear in my vicinity. There are times when I am less apt to go get a cup and a sheet of paper and generously liberate you to the great outdoors (I know you really love that in the snowy winter)... I am not edible, and I am sometimes unapproachable, so be careful...

And really, spiders, if you see me turning the shower on, you have up to 2 minutes to vamoose! I'm waiting for the water to heat up, and when I am wet I do not perform animal relocations. You will find yourself in a rapid flow of water being directed at the drain... I love you for eating other bugs and all, but not when I'm naked.

So, yeah, the place is clean. And my vacation is almost over. And other than finally watching the last 4 episodes of Fringe — BTW, that time travel episode? Meh, — I can't really say that I did anything. Except that sometimes doing nothing is doing the most... in which case I declare myself the victor and champion of "not doing anything." Ironically, the level of nothingness is so high that there is no crown or medal or blue ribbon... victory is really just not doing anything.

Besides, I did stuff last week:

Yeah, it was father's day. So, not only did I have to come up with a gift (yes, I drew that), but I also spent 4 hours sifting through the hundreds of photos on my iphoto to make an album so that we had something to fill the time between sitting down at the table at Big Boy, half of us ordering the breakfast bar and then waiting for the food of the non-breakfast bar members of the party to arrive... Oh, look, pictures of flowers and leaves and the occasional insect or bird!

There's a collective sample of a couple of pages...

Anyway, I'm going to have some more chips and salsa and maybe some ice cream or orange sherbet (I have both: decisions, decisions...) and then call it a day and go to bed and get up and go back to work.

Play time is over.

Have a fun weekend : )

the dream about the house...

Often times I awake from sleep via my beeping alarm clock. Yes, I am a Luddite, and I actually do have an alarm clock.

 (And yes, I buy lotto tickets...)

I hear that nowadays the kids use their cell phones for everything. I don't have one, so, yeah, I have an actual alarm clock. And yes, that blue piece of plastic often dictates the end of happy fun sleepy time.

Anyway, often times I awake from my slumber and have utterly no recollection of what I dreamt.  Today was not one of those days. Today I had the dream about the house.

The "dream about the house" is fairly mundane. It always takes place in what was formerly my mother's bedroom in her childhood home (a.k.a. Grandma Duda's house).  From what I recall, my Grandfather built / refurbished the upstairs of the house (in the nineteen sixties). So, it had these acrylic tiles on the floor that sort of looked like wood and plastic at the same time, and square acoustical tiles on the ceiling.  And because it was a converted upstairs - some of the walls were slanted (like this) to match the shape of the roof. Plus, the extraneous area around the sides was the attic, so there were these door panels in the walls that led to these little storage areas.

Frankly, as a child, those attic doors scared me shitless. I was glad that the bed in my mother's old room was pushed up against the door there. Because I had been in the little attic area next to it, and irrationally as a child - there was a garden gnome statue somewhere in that house and I was convinced that it was evil or possessed or something and was going to come and get me in my sleep via that attic door. Obviously, I would hear the sound of the bed sliding across the floor tiles and at least be able to wake and scream like a banshee before the gnome got me!

*giggles*

You know, I slept through thunderstorms, but that gnome I would hear. Logic and children's fears have very little to do with each other. ; )

Anyway: the dream about the house.  It involves that back bedroom, except instead of it being the back bedroom it always turns into this giant open space via that attic door - like the ball room from "The Shining." Except it isn't a ballroom it's usually a giant restaurant (like an Olive Garden) but it's always decorated in this eighties style with very square yellow table tops and red and turquoise colored accents... and it's always filled with people, including my dead grandparents, specifically Grandma and Grandpa Duda (except they're very much alive). I have no idea why they're always there, I mean, I suppose technically, it is their house...

So, yes, I had the dream about the house. Except this time it was different. It was Grandma Duda's house, but someone had redecorated it, and I couldn't find the staircase leading upstairs. The staircase in their actual home was accessible via a doorway in the dining room. Well, I thought I finally found the doorway, but when I opened the door there was just another door that opened from the opposite side, and when I opened that door there was simply another door, and each door was smaller than the previous door, and I continued to open them even though I was thinking "this is completely pointless because by the time one of these actually opens to something besides another door - the hole is going to be so small that only a Barbie Doll would fit through here..."

Yes, I said all that stuff to get to that point, which isn't so much a point and yet it is. There are people who very much believe that dreams are symbolic or metaphoric or the human mind solving problems in an inexplicable way... When I have the dream about the house - I always remember being in the fantasy restaurant room, but I never have any recollection of what went on there with all those people. I just remember 'being there.'

So, I woke up from a recurring dream that failed to follow the script of all its previous incarnations, and I was struck by that difference. Metaphorically, I have no idea what the restaurant room really means, but tonight, I couldn't even go upstairs... I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Anyway, in real life - I've been working on a project for a while. I realized some time ago that I had stopped drawing people. I drew birds and trees and flowers and clotheslines and the occasional insect and more birds and trees and flowers... but not people. And that isn't to say that I stopped drawing people entirely. In fact, I have a couple sketchbooks just of drawings of figures or girls. It wasn't that I didn't draw people - I just never turned those drawings into illustrations.

I think that's because there's something 'safe' about animals and trees and flowers (and even clotheslines). No one really looks at an illustration of a bird and asks "who is that?" It might be some specific kind of bird, but it's not like I had to personally know the bird to justify drawing a picture of it, or then explain the bird's "story."

People are different. People are somehow more specific and have names and favorite things and likes and dislikes and stories... People - particularly when they're not someone you know in real life - are characters.

And I've been working on my sketchbooks with the drawings of people... although I don't really think that's why I had the dream about the house with the alternate ending. Yes, sometimes logical and metaphorical connections are tenuous and inexact.

Just in case anyone wondered what I was blathering on about - that's one of my sketches.  The yet undecided part of the project is how I'm going to convert the sketch to an illustration. Do I want to go through the process of scans and blue pages and inking and filling? Or do I want to do something different? And what's the rest of the picture? Sketches are a staring point, but the actual finished illustration is a journey and a destination...

As for that dream? Grandpa Duda did appear and he was remodeling the house (in spite of the fact that he died in 2004). And I finally found the door to the staircase that goes upstairs, but the dream ended before I got around to wandering up there... and it wasn't via my alarm clock. I simply woke up, as today was my day off so there was no reason to set an alarm.

Oh, and those are some more sketches... every time the work weeks ends and my days off occur I think to myself about all the sketching and drawing and illustrating I could be doing. And then usually very little of it gets done. Sketching always seems to happen when it is least planned...

Anyway, sweet dreams, and have a pleasant weekend, and hopefully if the architect in your dreams moves your metaphorical staircase - you figure out the solution to whatever the problem was.

; )

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.

ephemeral easter eggs

I caught up on the last 2 episodes of Grimm while I was sitting in the recliner and sketching... Oh, that David Giuntoli is such a hottie. Even if he was less handsome (or his eyes were a less sparkly blue) the show would still be fascinating. Sometimes early Sunday mornings are just like that.  Time to relax, enjoy capricious things, but really, just not think about anything and get lost in the moment.

I spent a lot of time taking less than spectacular photos this weekend... meh.

I spent a lot of time cooking last weekend... and then we had ham for 6 days.

Yes, that was Easter dinner. Ham, baked beans, homemade stuffing, wheat rolls, carrot cake, and the most important holiday dish: pink jello salad.

Every year I go out and buy a carton of eggs to boil and dye. I'm not sure why, I just do.  And I like my eggs in wild colors and abstract patterns, not unlike my paintings...
Well, the eggs have been eaten now, so their colorful shells are but a memory.

Anyway, it was a sleepless week and I feel like in spite of the amount of time that I spent not resting - that I got nothing done. Maybe this week will be better.

ubiquity and tidings of Valentines

This song has no title, just words and a tune... well, okay, actually, it's an Elton John song from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." My Mom had that record. It was a double LP, those were a big deal back in the day. "This Song Has No Tittle" is one of my favorites from that album along with "Grey Seal" and "The Ballad of Danny Bailey." Anyway, I like that song and when I thought about presenting another blog entry - it popped into my head.

I'm not a religious person, and I've never taken much stock in the adage that everything happens for a reason. I think there is the explicable and the inexplicable, and someday what was once inexplicable will one day be explained. Time marches on, time stands still... Yeah, I'm one of those people who likes Warren Zevon. We can't all be the same, you know.

Anyway, I tend to come from the camp of thinking that often (but not always) things are relative, and discordant threads can be connected. So, let's give it a whirl, shall we?

I just spent 20 minutes re-working my banner for my etsy shop. If I was a different person, then I might plan to do this stuff and have everything coordinated and whatnot. But that's not me. I looked at the stuff I was working on, I looked at the way stuff was organized in my shop... and I thought it's time for a new banner... since I think I had the current one for like 3 whole weeks. I hear that's like centuries in internet time.

I like internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance - that kind of stuff. So, after I'd been on etsy for what felt like a century I looked at my one shop and thought "well, this thing needs a name, I guess." I mean, if you go on the etsy forums — a whole gaggle of people will tell you that your shop name is really important or some such thing... but they'll tell you a lot of things.

My shop is actually sarahknight, but I can slap whatever text I want (within the bounds of reason) on the banner. So, I was bored for 10 minutes or whatever, and I thought up "technicolor emporium." It's rhymey & Latinate-ish, the latter part redundantly indicating it's former...

I seem to have dropped the name. It was, after all, just some thing in my banner; some thing that rhymed. But it was there for about a year, and well, the earth didn't stop rotating around the sun, so, well, it is what it is.

I had this idea that I would do the basic design and then just rotate a segment of a painting or a photo in or out for the background. That was the simplest design... and that lasted for about a year. At least it did until I re-formatted the design early this morning. It's the same difference, just without the idea of a name.

I am Sarah Knight, and the items in the shop are what I make. In real life, as opposed to the internet where this isn't surveillance footage, I make a lot of things. But in addition to sleeping, eating, showering, and leaving the house to go to work or the post office or to buy necessities — I make a lot of stuff. I draw, I paint, I take photographs, I make jewelry, I play with sculpey or clay on occasion... and for whatever reason I have a lot of glitter. I did some cleaning recently, and it's always funny to find stuff that you stashed away in some bag or box somewhere... and virtually every time, for whatever reason, there was a tube of glitter. You'd think I'd have something with glitter in the shop... but I don't.

So, I'm back to having an etsy shop with no title. It's just me — sarahknight. Not that anything has changed, really, because I have the same items. I just have a new banner. As I type this it's the second one from the bottom in that graphic. The previous one was the picture of sprinkles. It's a fun picture, but I never formatted it for the shop, and well... I dunno, it's getting on Valentine's Day, so I guess I should act more Valentines-ish.

I like chocolate and chocolates, I think you might have to be suffering from a medical disorder to not like chocolate or candy or sweet things... that's just not normal. But, I'm not a big Valentine's person. So, every year it rolls around, and I'm like, "oh, yeah, that."

This year I decided to make some Valentine's for people like myself slightly less committed to the conventions of Valentine's Day. I wanted to do something with collage, but I got halfway through that project and just kind of stalled into "meh" territory. It sits in a pile next to the paper cutter. Instead, I was cleaning and I have all these old books hanging around, and well, on etsy everyone prints stuff on old book pages. So, I decided to engage my inner hipster and I too would print stuff on old book pages and make Valentines...

As it turns out - my old book was a psychology text book, and the first page I ripped out - almost at random, since my criteria for a page was something with no pictures and mostly text - was about drugs and the brain. It felt ironically humorous, since I was printing the shape of a heart filled with a selection of one of my photos. Hallucinogen Hydrangea was actually the first one I printed. It seemed adroit. It still makes me chuckle. And well, I am that kind of person, I guess. We couldn't all be Martha Stewart or someone's wonderful mother.
People less committed to 19th century poets and Victorian era decor need Valentines too...

So, while watching "The Finder" I glued my hearts to some poster-board that I cut to size and scored and folded, and then added a coat of varnish... and well, they're done. At least I can cross that off the "things I never got around to doing" list.

So, what does that have to do with my banner? Well, that red-winged blackbird photo is on one of my Valentines, since in order to make them I took a little trip down memory lane and sifted through my photos... the rest of it? Maybe not so much.

I changed up the font. I like Century Gothic. I like Coke, I like the color Violet. Pink Floyd is my favorite band, and I wear a lot of black concert t-shirts. Some things are just ubiquitous. But every once in a while you gotta change something up, or everything just turns into background noise.

So, I nixed Technicolor Emporium and picked a new font. I wanted something in a handwriting style. My go-to font is usually Bickley - because it's just a pretty font. But it wasn't fitting the mood... so I picked something different. Font geeks probably know what that's called. Basically, it's fancy, but it's not too pretty or too uniform. Looks a little less like script and a little more like handwriting - the fancy kind.

I'm totally guilty of being a casual devotee of fancy penmanship. For whatever reason I found making letters in certain shapes or styles to be entertaining way back when we were doing primers in elementary school. I'm quite fond of my own handwriting... you can see me being neat and uniform with my penmanship on my name on my business cards:

And you can see my unyielding fondness for Century Gothic. I like Century Gothic mostly for the circle shape of the "o" and the "e" but also for the "a." You see, my name is Sarah, and no one writes an "a" with that goofy little glyph thing on it (except maybe Lisa Bellamy in fifth grade). It's a relic, is really what I'm saying, and I'm not hipster enough to think it's cool.
Anyway, sometimes people being snarky confuse Century Gothic with Helvetica... if you're having one of those moments — look at the "a" and you'll know which it is.

You probably know me as this face... well, also in my shiny new banner - yeah, those are my eyes. Yes, I do have green eyes. No, I'm not Irish, or descended from Irish people. I've eaten too much goulash to hold onto any such inclinations. Mom had green eyes, and so did Grandma Duda (nee Hajos)... of course, it also has something to do with the bey2 gene and the gey gene... Dad had brown eyes, and Grandma Knight has blue eyes. Yes, go make a punnet square now ; )

Anyway, the photo is one of the product shots I took for the lizard barrettes. Yeah, I'm a weird rock'n'roll kind of girl like that.
In the event that you ever wondered...

That's me.

Mind you, it's a blurry shot, and since I'm trying to smile-ish for the photo I have sort of a dumb look on my face. I do not have glamorous teeth; thanks, Mom. So, yeah, I don't go for the toothy grin or the idea of spending $30,000.00 on dental work. And yes, I am wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt, and my favorite violet colored shirt with the little red flowers on it from the Gap which I bought at a thrift store like more than 10 years ago. Slackers represent.

Anyway, I spent the last couple of hours sifting through photos... it might not have been the most productive night, since other than a new banner and a new potential banner I didn't make anything per se. But well, it's January, and yesterday we had the coldest day so far this winter. Yes, it was a balmy 9˚F here in Michigan. Obviously that's why I scheduled my appointment to get the oil change yesterday. Brrrrrr.

Anyway, I look forward to April or May when it's warm enough to leave the house, because I'll probably go back to the marsh where I took that photo of the red-winged blackbird...