The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner* can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.
Of course right now the stats helper monkeys would have to be towing the Dreamliner along the runway since they’ve been grounded!
Click here to view the Wordle I made using the Virtues Project cards I randomly selected throughout 2012. The size of the writing reflects which cards I pulled most frequently. No surprises there I would say. Or if you just click on the image you can embiggen it. (Hmmm, I wonder when embiggen will make it either into the dictionary or the list of words to be banished such as "world-class" and "spoiler alert"?) Lifelong learning is a theme which kept coming up over and over again through the year so I added it as an "extra" virtue although it's not in the original hundred virtues in the project. For this year I've also added Sisterhood, Self-Care, and Consolidation (in the sense of keeping one's affairs in order and generally being organized) What's special about the Virtues Project is that it's part of a global initiative "to inspire the practice of virtues in everyday life by helping people of all cultures to discover the transformative power of these universal gifts of character." As such the quotations are drawn from every faith tradition. The virtues are all positive and the cards themselves stress the importance of balance and common sense, i.e. truthfulness does not mean being hurtfully blunt, generosity does not mean giving away the grocery money. I've been continually amazed at how often the virtue I randomly choose for the day is exactly on point! Of course there are various other sets of cards out there, so I'm curious, do you use cards and if so which ones? What have you learned? do share, please! Wordle takes a bit of patience to get started but once you do it's great fun! I've used it in the past to create text on fabric through Spoonflower.
Baraka is when Allah/God/the universe blesses you with something wonderful. Just coincidentally today happens to be the first day of Ramadan, although there are blessings every day, you just have to be alert. Yesterday for example we found a perfectly good, solid, new looking wooden table abandoned (that’s it in the photo below holding up my Rolodex!)
To my amazement, today I am the grand prize winner of a signed copy of Quinn McDonald’s book Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art from tj’s blog.
As soon as I receive this, I will give away my own gently used copy of the book, which I had pre ordered before publication last week. And I do mean gently used, it’s been opened and perused but I haven’t written anything in it.
So you know the drill, post a comment to this post and when I receive the signed copy, I’ll do a random drawing and have Young Sprout pull a name out of a hat, so stay tuned. It will probably be a while based on recent experience with the mail up here to Canada.
Meanwhile, check out Quinn’s site here, and consider signing up for her very generous free online class working through the book chapter by chapter. Caveat: it starts on August 14 and you need a copy of the book plus the site through which the course is offered, Artists of the Round Table, is a moderated Yahoo group that you have to join first, so you wouldn’t want to leave it to the last minute! There’s also a Flickr group for posting images of your work based on the book.
And most importantly, give yourself permission to create!
Gotta say,
Moments after I published the previous post, UPS arrived with my long awaited copy of Quinn McDonald’s book Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.
So while I’m thinking about the tailor made M&Ms, the rice krispie squares, and the creative fun that will be happening tonight at Changing Hands bookstore in Phoenix, I can be creating alongside in virtual reality!
Here’s TJ Goerlitz demoing raw art journaling techniques from Quinn McDonald’s book Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art, which just coincidentally happens to be launching today.
If I were still in Phoenix that’s where I’d be tonight!
I met Quinn in Phoenix and have taken classes, both in person and online, and know that her book is a distillation of everything she’s been working on over the past few years. This is an exciting day!
Once I have my mitts on the book, I plan to challenge myself to translate some of the concepts and exercises into fibre art.
In a recent post about process I asked:
Am I just more of a verbal person than a visual one?
My career has dealt with the written word: translating, editing, writing, researching — things that were always encouraged, that came naturally without a lot of struggle. Certainly no one ever urged me to go to art school, nor did I think of it for myself.
My birth family placed great store on social activism, awareness of issues and politics. Although with a different perspective, so does Grandpa X, who was watching the news on TV when we first met.
My visual approach to life has made me look like a total airhead on a number of occasions.
When I was out with my father, I saw a line of clothes drying, stretched along a roof line between two chimneys. To me this was a very impressive image in itself, my father just said “How difficult it must be to raise children in those circumstances.”
Grandpa X and I were watching CNN one day and an interview with a turbaned Iraqi cleric came on. I immediately blurted out “I’ve already seen this the other day, I remember that wall!” (The wall in question was worn stucco with amazing weathering on it.)
But now I’m resolved not to feel inadequate because of this tendency. It’s just who I am, and really not to be taken as proof that I’m someone that doesn’t give a bleep.
Here is a better photo of Throne for a Loop, complete with (empty and well washed) Coke can. Until you try, you have no idea how hard it is to handle an empty soda can without it buckling. The days when strong men amused their fellow office inmates workers by crunching cans in one brawny fist are gone forever.
Happily when I dropped my pieces off at Tulista Park quilters from our guild were there setting up, and two of them spontaneously exclaimed that they love this one! I was so relieved I had to hug them1 Whenever I am planning to show anything controversial I always have a speech in my head about “You don’t have to show this, no problems, I can take it away,” but so far I’ve never had to actually give that speech.
So here’s my take on the Egyptian flag complete with golden eagle. It’s draped over a throne (actually a camping chair spray painted gold).
To fully appreciate the title
Throne for a Loop
you need to look at the back. It’s a Moebius strip so only has one edge and one side.
Now I just have to hope that somebody “gets it.” It’s going into an art show in Sidney and no one but family has seen it as yet. Feeling nervous. Doing something three-dimensional is a new departure for me. I even feel nervous about dropping it off on Monday afternoon, not just the weather and attendant family circumstances that I’m not getting into here, but how it will be received (this is a non juried show, but one of my quilts once didn’t get hung in a non juried show so you never know!)
Further musings on art, authenticity, value will follow — I seem to have hit a motherlode of synchronicity on this topic in reading, viewing, and thinking in the last little while.
Even making this had a LOT of synchronicity. Actually in Tutenkhamen’s tomb they found a surprisingly modern chair.
So, feel free to share your thoughts!
During the coverage of the Egyptian revolution I was struck by how flexible the design of their flag is, because it consists of three coloured stripes it can be as long as you want. Now I’m sure there are probably heraldic rules about proportions and so forth, but in Tahrir Square there were some super long ones.
Sometimes a whole bunch of little things disparate elements come together and inspiration strikes. I’m putting the finishing touches on what to me at least feels like one of these inspired creations, although I realize others may differ.
This has involved a lot of running around, networking with different people to get design hints and how-tos, Dumpster diving for supplies, tweaking the printer to convince it to print in yellow (the eagle on the right is a reject, not a statement about gender or anything!), spray painting, and even more ironing than a regular quilting project. I’m not ready to say a whole lot more about this one in case I jinx myself. It’s three-dimensional and I’m just hoping it turns out close to my concept, so stay tuned …
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The hours from Thursday morning to Friday lunchtime were among the most exciting and nerve-wracking of my life.
Since the unrest in Egypt began, our family has not had a moment’s tranquillity. Even without cable TV (a deliberate choice on our part) we have been following broadcasts and blogs online and trying to stay in touch with Egyptians we know around the world, including the relatives in Egypt who were completely cut off for several days as the regime tried to put a lid on the popular uprising.
On midday Thursday (Pacific time) Mubarak was supposed to give a speech. It was 40 minutes late, meaning that our prayer time came and went before he even started (although we prayed right after so it still counts). This is 10 p.m. Cairo time, so it was after 10:30 when he finally spoke.
The speech began with patronizing platitudes about “I am speaking to you as a father to his children.” Then, “the blood of the young people killed and injured in the unfortunate events will not be wasted because I have ordered a complete investigation and I will hold the guilty ones accountable.” (I’m paraphrasing here and based on what the interpreter said since my Arabic is less than basic.) At this point I’m thinking, no, wait, this is not good, this is going the wrong way. After a couple more minutes the crowds in Tahrir Square started growling and waving their shoes, which by now everyone knows is like giving the finger only worse.
At one point the interpreter started one sentence over three times. I thought it was the interpreter stumbling, but it may have been Mubarak because one commentator said he seemed to be disoriented.
Important to note that in Egypt, State television showed the speech and not the reactions in the square. And we had to phone our relatives in Alexandria to tell them to watch, because they didn’t know the speech was scheduled.
We were left absolutely fearful that he had outdone Machiavelli, that everything would end in a bloodbath with hundreds killed as they marched on presidential palaces (there are many to choose from), Army bases, and the television building, and that the regime would spin this as foreign agitators and inflamed students. On the other hand if the people just packed up and went home (as if!) the regime would say that there were no problems.
I left a window to a breaking news blog open and kept refreshing it to watch developments. Although we’ve probably had a lot more sleep than friends with cable, who have been getting by on two or three hours, I actually stayed up most of the night as I had to work. Frequent breaks to check on what was happening, e.g. “The Pyramids are open. But there are no tourists.”
Finally on Friday morning Pacific Time a relative called to say Mubarak had stepped down. After jumping up and down and shouting and crying we headed out for candies. No one had dared to hope for any kind of celebration, especially after the disappointment the day before, and of course red, black, and white don’t match the colours of any North American celebration, so we had to improvise. The white candies had to be hand picked out of the Valentine’s mix (Wearing a plastic bag as a makeshift glove). It’s installation art because they were loose in the dish, meaning it couldn’t be carried anywhere, except very carefully around the apartment. It’s currently disassembled but sorted by colour. I’m hoping for a party or get together of some kind that I can either reassemble it there or perhaps make sheet cakes and stick the beans on with butter frosting. We’ll see.
Umm Sprout improvised a bag for the candies we took to prayers, using a Body Shop bag which originally said “thank you Canada.” 
This is more exciting than a planned celebration where you have time to either buy or make decorations and favours, and it’s unrepeatable. Everyone is so euphoric, and yet calmer at the same time. I really see and hear a change in the people I know. Abu Sprout sweetly said that he felt sorry that I’m not Egyptian, but right now I almost feel Egyptian!
