At the arena

I've spent the past decade ferrying kids to various sports venues all around my city, area and province - and sometimes, outside of that, too. My kids have variously been divers, soccer players, karate devotees, badminton players, wrestlers and ringette players - the latter being the sport that draws the most "??" reactions from people unfamiliar with this most Canadian of sports.

The easiest way to explain ringette is that it's just like hockey, yet completely different. It's played on an ice surface, with 5 players and a goalie on each team; but that's about where the similarities end.

Ringette is a fast, non-contact game that requires a player not simply to push a puck with a curved stick. Instead, the girls (only girls can play this sport) have to spear a rubber ring with the flat end of a stick, and pass it over 2 blue lines to their teammates. It requires lightning- quick reflexes, excellent skating skills and precise hand-eye coordination.

My daughter's been playing ringette for half her life. This afternoon, we traveled to a rink in the northern part of the island to watch her team's last regular-season game. When we arrived, a group of pre-novice (5 and 6-year-old) girls were just finishing up a practice.

I remember how, years ago, I loved seeing these tiny girls looking so fierce and determined in their full regalia, and how these adorable munchkins turned into the ferocious competitors that would step on the ice half an hour later.

Of course, when you are 6 years old, sometimes practice just goes on a little too long...

In winter's grip

Winter isn't just a season around here. It's a state of mind.

It's also a mighty and primal force of its own, which often humbles me with its careless power.

My little wooden house was rocked this week by strong winds that caused the siding to creak and protest, and the thin glass in my ancient sash windows to rattle about like loose coins in a poor man's piggy bank. I also freely admit to panicking a little when I spotted a rather significant quantity of black shingles on my front lawn ... then I noticed they were actually from my neighbour's roof. A selfish "whew" and a neighbourly "oh dear" ensued simultaneously.

We've been pummeled by freezing temperatures and arctic winds for the past two weeks or so. By early February, we often (and falsely) feel as though the worst of the season is behind us, and we start anticipating those balmy temperatures and first hesitant shoots of green (not to mention the mud puddles and fossilized remains of fall trash) that act as signposts to our Eastern spring.

Today, however, I was struck by the casual ferocity of our cold, cold season.

I was snapping a few outdoor pics when I noticed something that clearly did not belong. A stack of neatly piled firewood sat on the side of a neighbouring family's driveway. Nothing unusual, right? But when I looked up, I saw what looked like a Dutch wooden clog glued to an electrical cable strung diagonally in front of this house.

I figured it was just a chunk of wood that had fallen during the family's recent tree-trimming exercise and had somehow gotten caught on the cable. When I looked more closely, however, I noticed it wasn't dangling on the cable. The back of the wood chunk was firmly attached to the cable... by a thick, clear layer of ice.

Wow, Mother Nature. What a whimsical way to prove you have dominion over ALL the land, even the unfortunate bits of flotsam and jetsam that prosaically litter our day. Not to mention the breathtaking sense of timing involved in adhering wood to steel cable with frozen water, in just the right amount to set it overhead like a timber Sword of Damocles (kind of like training wheels, but for medieval weaponry).

Colour me impressed.

Now what?

Day Four of Project 365, and I'm already at a loss how to approach this project. Do I develop a theme and run with it? Do I snap randomly and hope something turns out well once I download and view the daily pics?

A writer friend once complained to me that people would ask "How do you find your inspiration?" at every single party he ever attended. That was his least favourite question, he told me, because "how do you explain that pretty much everything anyone says and does, and everything I see, hear, notice or experience, is grist for the mill?"

Thus, his conversation with his mother, the sandwich he eats at lunch, his argument with his idiot boss (don't we all have those?), and the walk to the Metro after work all get worked into his evolving fiction in some way. Granted, maybe his mother's words come out of the mouth of the love interest in his latest short story, or the Montreal Metro ride gets moved to Paris - but the experiences ring more true in his fiction when they've been experienced in his (or his dear ones) own lives.

And so it goes with photography, I suspect. Maybe it's not about finding that ZING! of inspiration and praying like hell that my rechargeable batteries don't fail me at that exact moment. Maybe it's more about taking the everyday things in life, the small moments and routine bits, and re-imagining them through the eyes of a different viewer.

I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone else. But in honour of this thought, you get... a picture of my breakfast. Enjoy!

Drama llama

Tonight was drama class - or rather, rehearsal for our upcoming play, David Campton's The Cagebirds. It's an avant-garde, strange little play about a (deranged) woman, the Mistress, who keeps a collection of birds/women in a cage. Each of the bird-women has a particular characteristic or personality quirk that distinguishes her from her cage mates.

I love this class so much. It's the one evening of the week that can be relied upon to provide laughs, emotion and a sense of belonging. Our core group of actresses has been together for three-and-a-half years, having performed the Female version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, and two thematic plays composed of various scenes and monologues, Depth Perception and Atmospheric Disturbances. We're closer than sisters and have an unbreakable bond forged through performance-night jitters and the emotional processes of becoming a different person in front of an audience without losing your identity.

Sadly, it looks like The Cagebirds will be our swan song. Our theatre closed down at the end of last November, leaving our troupe essentially homeless. We were able to find an alternative rehearsal location in a church basement, but it's a rather uninspiring space.

And it's cold - figuratively AND literally. Some nights, it's hard to emote when you're shivering and bundled in your parka while reading your lines...

Kim plays The Mistress. Tonight, she ran lines with us while our director spoke with each of us in turn about our character's background and relationships with the other birds and The Mistress. With her dance and art background, Kim's a natural at leading our group.

Looking...

Everything I've ever read tells me that being a good photographer is about changing how you see the world.

Most of us look at a scene and see... the scene. People. A sky. A series of items or objects in a particular arrangement.

A photographer sees differently, though. She sees the spaces between objects, the shadows they cast, the possibilities in the tiny details that the human eye captures that are often flattened or bypassed by the camera lens.

I'm trying to learn to see again. It's a challenge of training, of attention and of taking that one extra breath and letting my brain tell my eyes and shutter finger when to snap.

So far, so fun.

Today's photo is a tiny detail of a much larger (and more boring) photo of a table centrepiece arrangement I put together for my son's birthday party this past weekend. I've included the original photo (above), and then today's 365 Project photo is below. Can you tell which part of the photo it is?



Partly Christmas, partly birthday (a blingy ornament from the dollar store) it gave the table some sparkle. By enlarging the centrepiece and playing with contrast and colour intensity, I came up with this photo.

And yes, the de-decorating continues apace around here. Did I mention I chair the Procrastinator's Club in my community? No? I was going to tell you.... eventually. *grin*

I'm back! In many ways!

Ah, my poor dormant, dusty blog. How I have missed you (not, actually).

I'm back because more or less on a whim, I've decided to join my dear cross-country friend Lyn and do a 365 Project this year. Essentially, it's a promise to take one photo per day for the next 365. Lyn started on her birthday last Monday, January 25th and literally within minutes of watching her crystal-clear, evocative photos go up on Facebook, I felt a hankering to do the same.

Except in my case, crystal-clear and evocative, not so much.

As an acknowledged "word person" my double challenge is to develop as a photographer and give myself both the discipline and joy of fun writing on a daily basis. Hence my Swiffering of this old site, along with a bit of elbow grease on the old noggin, and away we go.

So - Feb 1 and Day 1 of the 365 Project:

As a master procrastinator, I only got the Christmas decorations wrangled and put away tonight. Partly it's the festive air they lend the house, partly it's a nod to my decidedly bad housekeeping; but I looked over at my Charlie-Brownesque fern and thought it was worth snapping a shot before everything was stored away for the next 11 months.

The reason the ornaments and lights were strung on a common household plant rather than a fragrant natural tree is that by the time I looked up from my workload and realized "Hey, I really need a tree for Christmas!", there was none to be found anywhere in my community. Or so I was told by the rather sharp-faced woman at the mall.

The thought of a tree-less Christmas was a little depressing, but the concurrent thought of driving downtown and scouring the sad Christmas-Eve-Eve offerings was even more depressing. So instead, we got creative with lights and dollar-store trimmings, and to top (or bottom) the whole thing, decided on a full-sized Italian flag as a tree skirt.

That, my friends, is how we ended up with a Friendship Fern instead of a holiday tree for Christmas 2009. And beyond.

Day 9 of NaNo...

Pretty cool, eh? ;)

36 hours in

and I've written 7,416 words, surprising even myself.

Yay!

2000 words and counting...

and I'm off on my NaNoWriMo adventure!

2002 words so far, to be precise.

Are they deathless prose? Gawd, no. In fact, I'd like to kill off paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6-22, and possibly 23-31.

But I won't. Because that's the point of NaNoWriMo - to write laughably awful prose together with nearly 90,000 others in the spirit of fun, encouragement, and "getting the darned thing down on paper" while pointing and laughing at our Inner Editors and scarfing enormous quantities of cookies.

I'm so excited I am almost giddy. Onward and upward, word count!

Where I've been, and what I've done

Terrifyingly enough, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month (which is actually the International Novel-Writing Month now).

During the month of November, nearly 80,000 participants from around the world, between the ages of 13 and ??, will attempt to write a 50,000 word first-draft novel. We have set quite a challenge for ourselves, but I think it will be GREAT fun - and the pressure to write "perfection" is off, since nobody in their right minds should actually think it will be anything but a working draft of our original idea.

Scary, fun, busy, exhilarating and utterly mad - and at 12:01 am on November 1st, it will all begin....

Watch this space for updates from the land of speed-writing insanity!

Making a house a home

I spent most of last week helping my daughter with a huge school project. She had to come up with "the house of my dreams" and had very definite plans on how that would look.

I used to love miniatures, so we dug up all my old supplies (and purchased a few more, some even on eBay!) and got to work.

Finished at 11:30 pm Sunday night (the poor tired little thing!) but I think it looks awesome!

Then, last night, it was my son's turn with those familiar words: "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM! Can you help me finish a project????"

ARGH! If I don't see duct tape and super glue for a while I will be VERY happy!!

I'm back!

Whew! I had a very busy Thanksgiving weekend, which included:

apple picking with the kids

dinner with my folks (just before their 2 week trip to the US west coast)

my daughter's soccer tryouts

a house visit (my landlady is selling - boo!)

a trip across town to watch an out-of-town friend's hockey game

a visit to the ophthalmologist to get my LAST eye treatment (yay!)

cooking an 11-lb turkey

a telephone job interview

3 visits to the post office for eBay stuff

putting all the documents together for my daughter's upcoming Grade 7 entrance exams

Reading that list, I got tired all over again.

Luckily, this week is a little more relaxed. Hopefully I'll have time to put a few more auctions up and MAKE SOME ART!

For now - was playing around in Museumr (thanks Kat! :)) and made this from our apple-picking afternoon on Friday.

Watch this space!

Finally putting up the rest of the watch parts for sale on eBay - whew! It's been a lot of work sorting through all the boxes, but I now know more about watches than I ever thought I would learn in this lifetime.

I've got one small toolbox and a box left... some nifty parts in little plastic containers, and some lovely "pre-antiqued" (teehee) watch faces in these lots.

Have a look at my auctions, and good luck!!

AFTER!

Here are the "after" pics. Sorry for the quality; I'm still figuring out how to use my new camera. I'm beginning to realize that "Kodak" is actually code for "does whatever the heck it wants and not what I ask".

I probably should have named my kids Kodak and Kodakette.

I used mulberry papers for the cover and a stamp by PSX. I blended the edges of the stamped paper with Pebbles chalks (I did a bit more since I took the pic) and added the bottle (Jolees) and a piece of actual driftwood from a log I dragged home from South Carolina about 10 years ago.

The inside lid has another sticker by Jolees - you can actually shake the frame and the pebbles and starfish cutouts move around - cool! The inside compartments have 2 stickers and a pretty striped rock, more driftwood, some seaglass, a vial with white sand (from a real beach in Aruba), and a shell. The watch face has a tiny spiral seashell in it - hard to see from the pic.

Hope you like it! I know I enjoyed making it very much. Have a great weekend!

Before and after

A few weeks ago, a friend's Dad (a watch collector and local flea market vendor) gave me eight huge boxes of stuff ("garbage", he said) that he had already gone through. They were from the estate of a local watchmaker who had passed away in his early 90s.

My son and I stayed up very late 2 nights in a row sorting through everything. A lot of it was indeed garbage, but I salvaged quite a lot of watch bands, parts, faces and other items that I've slowly been selling off on eBay.

And then... there were these little boxes.

Mostly cardboard and some with plastic inserts, like compartments, to hold all the tiny watchmaker parts. Many had scribbled markings, broken bits and probably 30 years' worth of discoloration on them.

These little boxes attracted me like crazy! I've always loved miniatures and immediately thought they would be so much fun to alter.

To go back a step: I had sent an ATC to a friend in BC as part of a non-art-group swap with a Beach theme. The envelope came back here a few weeks later, torn and sodden from sitting in my mailbox all day, and the ATC was ruined (didn't know bubble mailers could tear, did you? Neither did I.) Sadness ensued.

Well, when I saw these little boxes, I immediately thought: "AHA! I can REPLACE the damp ATC with something in a beach theme!" and the wheels started turning...

Last night I finally put it all together. Pics coming up - I just put a final coat of sealer on it and am waiting for it to dry. :)

What's on your art calendar for today?

It's a stamp! It's a duck! It's the Loch Ness Monster!?!

These are a couple of the oddest little stamps I've ever seen.

I'm not sure what those top ones are supposed to be - the image on the wooden side is gone, so I had to stamp them once just to see what I would get. I think they're meant to be "bonbons" or truffles - personally, I think the one on the right looks like a distant shot of the Loch Ness Monster, but YMMV.

And the half-scrolls on the right in Pic 2 definitely look like ducks. DEFINITELY. With some deft colouring you could have a LOT of fun with these!

Loch Ness bonbons: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230175184914&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Duck scrolls: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230175123583&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Dare to share!

I completed this ATC as my first experiment with Twinkling H2Os - once I saw the lovely shimmer they produce, I just HAD to have some! It really isn't as crooked as the scan makes it look, either. :(

I matted it in lovely deep cinnamon brown handmade paper and mailed it off to a dear friend in Alabama as part of a Secret Pal exchange I belong to (on a non-art board).

Off to try colouring my hair today... hopefully I get some of that "shimmer" myself. ;)

Tag! You're it!

Found this absolutely gorgeous tag-shaped rubber stamp in the discon bin at a small stamping store I visited for the first time today. Isn't it great? Of course, it's up on eBay... :)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230175127617&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

She WON!

My girl's team won their final 2-0 - guess who scored the winning goal? Yep, lil smiley-face with the dark hair... In the second pic is the team captain hoisting the plaque and trophy as League Champions for 2007!

I'm closing out a bunch of my eBay auctions today and expecting a furniture delivery today, so this entry is short and sweet. ;

Boot straps?

No, actually. These are watch straps (or bands, I should say) that I'm currently auctioning off on ebay.

Since my photog skills are still developing (I made a camera joke, hee) I thought I would try to take some 'macro' shots of one of my auctions. Jewelry photography is an art form, as I am quickly coming to realize, and good photographers probably don't get the credit they deserve.

This is the auction: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230173129363&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Everything in the first 2 pics is in this lot! The remaining 3 pics are some detail shots - you can see the stampings "genuine leather" on a number of these. Grab 'em while you can! ;)