Patronized

A while ago I told you about a series of drawings I did inspired by Dia de Los Muertos ofrendas, including a skeletal St. Catherine of Bologna. I always meant to come back and do more skeleton saints and apparently to make that happen I needed someone to say, 'I want that and two more like it and in exchange I'll give you dollars.'
Of course, said benefactor is a family member and while I know in my head he's just being a nice guy, I'm not going to look at it too hard. Also, if he'd asked for anything else, anything but colored pencil, I'd have given him the usual family discount of, 'take it, it's just cluttering up my house and one of the cats might wee on it.'
But as these things take forever and absolutely wreck me physically (went for a massage after finishing one and was promptly scolded for all the weird noises my bones and tendons were making really take a break and stretch out ever, god, what is that you're arm is doing, that doesn't even make sense) so I'm not really feeling the guilt of charging a relative. Also, we come back to he's being a nice guy and I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
As I'm playacting at being professional, I decided that I will mat and frame them. Which seems an excellent yet relatively simple idea, but I didn't really leave enough room for matting on St. Catherine and so I've had to redo her. Along with coming up with two more pieces. Way to go, self.
At ny rate, here's is St. Catherine v. 2:

Unfortunately, I'd don't like it as much as the first. I had some human faces, how do they work problems. The Boyfriend pointed out that they usually have skin, which was about as helpful as it sounds.
Up next was St. Luke:

Or, 'cross-dressing Ghandi in a Hello Kitty not wearing a windsor.' Which translates from the original Boyfriend to 'looks a bit like Ghandi, but he has a red smudge on his forehead, in a reliquary and he's not wearing a wimple because he wasn't a nun.'
I've currently sketched out the frame for the third but am stumped on which saint to do. I initially wanted to do St. Anthony but Pater pointed out a painting of St. Agnes in his Lives of the Saints book. She's typically depicted carrying a lamb, and a skeleton lamb tickles me greatly.
All of these were / are being done with Prismacolor colored pencils, which are notorious for their easily breakable leads. And it's not just the bit that pokes out of the wood, oh no, the leads will and do break inside the pencil leading to many frustrated attempts at sharpening which end with a lovely point that promptly falls out of the barrel.


Cue fit throwing.
I'm doing two things to help minimize the frustration. One, I'm making perhaps the longest pencil roll ever to keep them from rattling around and suffering indignities as the pretty tin they come in isn't so great at actually, you know, holding them. This won't magically piece back together what's already been broken, but I can at least now pack them up in a bag without having seventeen heart attacks every time they're jostled.
Two, I've ordered a new set. I've heard of people having better luck ordering sets from the internet than picking them up at a brick and mortar as far as internal breakage is concerned so I'm testing this theory out. That their largest set now comes in 132 colors is what finally tipped me over into switching my current collection to traveling mode. 132 colors! I can hardly imagine. Also purchased, two fancy pants pencil cases that I've heard wonderful things about as far as providing the coddling these pencils require.
Sensible!resa knows that she just ought to use her perfectly serviceable 72 colored pencils to finish this project up but waiting until I have 132 colors at my disposal is so tempting. I'm going to be coloring all the things when it gets here. It's a coloring party at my house.

Road Trip

This weekend was my grandfather's 95th birthday, an occasion decidedly worth driving out to El Paso for. That and the food. I'm pretty sure the only time I'm not eating whenever I'm out there is when I'm sleeping. Not positive though.

There's really not too much to say about a nine hour drive through pretty much nothing, but boy, I'mma give it a try anyway.


Here we are, on the road to El Paso. We're still pretty close to Austin, hence the trees still being, you know, existent.

First pit stop was in Fredericksburg. Food was, of course, consumed. I'm not the sort of person who can say no to potato pancakes with applesauce, much to my waistlines chagrin.


We might have also bought some truffles, and I might have eaten all of my share before we even made it to grandpa's house. I'm neither confirming or denying.


I promised Pater I would tell no one of his car related shame, but trust me when I say that this photo will always be hilarious. Also, that's a pretty decent attempt at trees for west Texas. Good effort!

Despite this state maintaining a rather disagreeable love affair with oil, windmills have been popping up. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a good photo of the field of pump jacks with windmills in the background.


I was encouraged to see that apparently the windmills aren't just a passing energy fad, as we passed a truck loaded with parts.


(Pater called this photo the random phalluses. As we're both perpetually twelve this provided more entertainment than is probably healthy.)

At one of the gas stations coming back home we were confronted by a trio of feral dogs, that weren't so feral that they wouldnt follow me around begging.


Poor pups.

Coming home the central Texas fires were already well underway. We were lucky enough that we didn't get stranded or rerouted through road closures, but approaching the ring of fire around Austin was pretty horrifying.

For most of the drive, the sky was absolutely cloudless. But as we approached Johnson we could see a rather disconcerting purple smudge low on the horizon.


While we were passing beneath the plume the light turned an eery red. Apparently Dante was wrong, the first circle of hell is central Texas.


Seriously, these fires are absolutely terrifying. Wild fire is something that you just sort of get used to with the prolonged droughts we have but this is one of the worst seasons I can think of. And it's not looking like it's going to be getting better any time soon.

Heaps of Kittens

Adoptions have been slow all summer, what with there being more available kittens than available homes. It happens and is something I ought to be used to by now, but damn does it make my life hard sometimes.

Like Sally. She's a very sweet, but very plain jane black cat. Her siblings were adopted soon after they were old enough, benefiting from irresistible kitten cuteness, but poor Sally didn't have the same luck. And now she's getting older and has to compete with other kittens still at the height of adorableness.

Though she has her moments.


But it isn't all bad news on the kitten front. As a group we've had four adoptions since Saturday, getting us closer to a manageable number of cats. Here's hoping we can get a few more so that we might be able to start taking in new ones.

Two of those four adoptions are our fosters Anna and Thomas. I can't say I'm terribly surprised - it's a little disturbing how cute they are.


I know (since I'm the one that took the photo) that she's yawning, but I always think I caught her mid cackle whenever I see it.


Sometimes we get kittens that just pose. Maybe he's part super model. The Monkey was kind enough to lend her bright pink knee as a prop.

Speaking of The Monkey, I let her name these two. Thomas as in Thomas the tank engine, and Anna (maybe it's Annie) is another one of the characters. Unfortunately, maybe because I let her name them, she's become more attached to these two than any of the previous fosters.

I told her today that Anna would be going to her new home on Tuesday and she sighed an announced that she would miss her. I just found out that Thomas is being delivered Wednesday, so there's another little surprise for tomorrow.

Hopefully, learning just what exactly auntie resa's job entails won't traumatize her too much. Though I did find this little scene when I came back from refilling my coffee:


At least it looks like Sally will be hanging around so she won't be immediately kittenless.

Latent Hipsterism

My iPhone is pretty much my primary camera since it's just about always nearby and for a phone the camera is actually pretty good. The problem is that there are a million apps that encourage my awkward love of filters. I resisted for so long because slapping a 'vintage' filter onto a mediocre photo doesn't do as much to improve it as I think it does.  But I love it so much.

I finally gave up the fight against hipster aesthetics (am I subverting the hipster paradigm if I love filters unironically?) and downloaded a million of them and have been entertaining myself by taking a million pictures non stop for the last few days.

Unsurprisingly, the first handy victims were the kittens:

Sally looking less than amused at my prodding

Sleepy babies.

We went out to The Boyfriend's parents' place this weekend and I took full advantage of the pretty scenery and his mom's flowers:

Drought's hitting the lake pretty hard this year.

The Monkey lined up her collection of Angry Birds plushies next to her and wanted to take a group photo. So, of course, I was only encouraged.

Apparently the holding out her feet/hands is a think now.

Making a picture I took this morning look faded, beat up and a million years old makes no sense, but I can't stop.

Oh, who's that at the door? Flowers? FILTER!

Thanks, Boyfriend!

I wonder if it's genetic, as Pater loves to antique things when dyeing leather, as is evidenced by this super awesome journal cover he made me for Christmas.

I didn't edit this at all and it was hard, let me tell you

Between this and my determination to sign up for every social networking site and then never use them, I think I may need to check myself into rehab for abusing technological time wasters. In semi-related news, google+? Eight and a half million times better than facebook. As soon as I have more than two friends on it I'm totally quitting facebook with their creepy privacy policies and sketchy views on intellectual property rights forever. I for one welcome our google overlords.

The Monkey

While summer is still eating my face (soooo hot. Why, Texas, why?) the best bit has to be summer vacation.

Not mine, though. Sensible!resa hasn't won the argument that going back to college and studying something not completely and totally useless is the best idea, so lazy!resa is still content to spend too much time with cats and syndicated television.

No, my niece is off for the summer and while her gramps can watch her most of the day in his semi-retirement, the semi bit means that she spends a couple of hours in the morning with me.

This is FANTASTIC. And not just because it gives me an excuse to drink juice boxes.*

She's six which means she's finally getting to the age where kids are kind of like tiny people only with weird and random ways of thinking that are just endlessly amusing.

I mean, she was a pretty cute baby and all, and toddlers are fun if completely exhausting, but, as she'll proudly remind you, she's six and a big girl now. That's why she has blue painted toe nails and awesome light up shoes with laces (that she can't quite manage to tie yet) and can play dominoes.

Even if it is a set with pictures instead of numbers. And SpongeBob themed. Soon, Monkey, soon, you'll be shuffling the bone pile and yelling 'domino' like a boss.

And now she finally likes to color. Before school she did a bit, but it wasn't exactly her favorite way to spend time. Now she's 'the best colorer' and likes to point out that auntie resa's box of crayons has 96 but hers has 120 and that's more.

Another new found common ground has been knitting. When I first started learning crochet I thought that having a niece would be a pretty safe bet as far as keeping me from having a surplus of toys in the house, just sitting around and taking up space and never being played with.

I was mistaken. Lumpy T was thoroughly rejected, as was the tiger ball:



Octavio was a hit though, especially after being introduced to the game, 'flying Octavio, the super quadropus':



Knit or crochet garments were a total non starter though. I don't think I've ever seen her in a hand crafter article of clothing since she was an infant and none too good at pulling off the hats Mater made her.

Not even tempting her with purple, 'the best color,' worked.

I'm not sure what changed, but on a lark I asked her if she wanted me to knit her some socks like the ones I was wearing and after years of saying no she thought about it and said yes.

A trip to the store immediately followed where she picked up every skein of sock yarn that had a decent amount of purple in it. After being assured several times that really, it would turn into stripes, she settled on a favorite and I cast on.



I'm not really sure why if I wanted a picture of her in her new socks it had to be like this, but I don't care because it's hilarious. Seriously. I know I'm biased, but it cracks me up ever time I see it.

Also, I'm pretty sure my first pair of glasses were dark purple plastic frames too. Clearly she's my nerd padawan.


*They just taster better than a regular glass of juice, ok? Don't ask me how nostalgia works.

Oh Dear

The holiday season was much crazier than I anticipated.  It ended up being an almost entirely hand made Christmas on my end, which ate way more of my time than I thought it would.  Thus, I fell out of the blogging habit.  So, not dead, just forgot how to internet.

But, new year, new start, or something.  Yay?

First things first:  Christmas card swap.  Here's my totally awesome card that I really should have posted about as soon as I received it from Sarah.  Thank you so much!

Front!

Inside!

And then on the back she included the first verse of a German carol along with the translation.  Again: totally awesome.

Here's a few of the things that have been keeping me busy.  Not all, because I'm relying on the cell phone for photos at the moment.

Here's the tote bag I sort of made for the Boyfriend's mother.  I say sort of made because I cut out the pieces, got grumpy, toodled off to raid my parents' kitchen (which was as delicious and de-grumpifying as always) and when I'd stuffed myself stupid returned to the dining room to find my mom had pretty much made it.  So, 'sort of' is a bit of a stretch - it'd be more accurate to say I had an idea and then didn't end up having to do any of the work myself.  Except the running upstairs to do the ironing which I don't think really counts at all.  Thanks Mater, you're the best!

I also decorated a friend's school bag.  Which was one of those things where I could see what I wanted in my head but had difficulty actually making it happen.  This isn't the completed bag, but an in progress photo.  The finished bag had some rather blobby starfish-like flowers because the white paint pen kept not working, then changing it's mind and exploding.  We covered them up with some cute little buttons though, so I don't think she was too disappointed.

But the majority of the winter time crafting was spent on hats.  So many hats.  I don't know if I'm going to be able to even think about making another hat for a while.  I think the total count was nine, eight to be given away and then one for me, because I decided that I needed a hat too, to prevent me from stealing the ones meant for gifts.  I'm a little overdue for a hair cut and frankly slapping a hat on is way easier than spending several hours trying to convince my hair to stop acting like a Rorschach blob.

I would like to say that I made Mater's gift all by myself.  She never once saved me from my own ineptitude, yay!  Though she did seem pretty amused about the fact that the internet would know Mater's face since I had to show it off.  Pattern is Atarimae Beret (Ravelry link).

And here's the hat I made for Pater, since he was coveting my chullo.  Not pictured is the long bow that Mater gave him for Christmas, which if I had been thinking would've been the greatest illustration of our usual Christmas time ever.

There were more hats, obviously, but I don't currently have pictures of them.  But I will bother the recipients to let me take photos of them for great justice the blog.

There.  That's me back from the dead.  Maybe this is the year I can learn to stop being quite so useless about self imposed commitments.  Probably not though.

Zoo Madness

I've been meaning to post this entry for ages, but have been awfully lazy about getting the photos off of my phone.  So, close your eyes for a moment, pretend it's Monday and that I was clever enough to bring a real camera so that the following photographs don't, in the academic sense of the word, blow.

Sunday, Pater, my sister, my niece and I went down to San Antonio to meet up with my cousin and his family at the San Antonio Zoo. 

Oh, zoos.  I have a lot of opinions.  On the one hand, conservation and breeding programs are lovely and I would be a strange sort of person if I were to look at, say, a tiger and tell him that just because we as humans insisted on hunting him and destroying his habitat to the point of extinction doesn't mean that we should be doing anything about it.  Buck up, imaginary tiger, you had a good run.  Please don't rip my face off.

On the other hand, oh lord, what a truly terrible existence.  While improvements have been made in regards to how animals are kept in zoos (at least in the States - I refuse to think of the zoo I went to in Japan ever again because I am a giant softie and it makes me sniffle) they're still incredibly depressing places.  Here, let Rilke make my point (as translated by Stephen Mitchell):

The Panther

               In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—.  An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Enough of my very important feelings.  Let's jump straight to the bit where you get to scroll past a million crap photos. 

Sea Horses!

Canoodling Sea Horses!

He's torn his wing, poor guy.

Monkeys!

Fossa!

Napping Lemurs!

Cranky Jaguar!

 While the jaguar was cranky, he was nothing compared to the leopard.  Shortly before we got there, the keepers had pulled him out of his enclosure and we could here him rather loudly protesting whatever it was they were doing to him.  Not a happy kitty.

Hippo Butts!  Hee!

Is it a log?

Very much not a log.  Well done, camouflage!

Elephant!

Probably because they are so very clever, the effects of zoo madness are very easy to see in elephants.  We were camped out by the elephants while having lunch and this ladyphant spent her time pointedly ignoring all the 'distractions' that were in her enclosure to stand, facing that corner and shift from foot to foot.  There may have been a half-hearted dust bath.

Bath!

She did manage to rouse herself when one of the keepers came in with a hose.  I would like to say she cavorted in the water.  She did not.  Poor elephant.

Black Rhino!

There were two keepers attempting to lure the black rhinos into smaller pens.  As you can see, the rhino may have a reputation as being incredibly stupid, but he is not stupid enough to not give the side eye to someone holding a frighteningly huge syringe.

And thus concludes the trip to the zoo.  While it was wonderful to see the interest and joy in the kids and I'm glad they got the chance to ogle some fascinating creatures it was still all in all rather depressing.