First, the hobbies. As mentioned earlier, I've been trying to work on some homestyle screen printing down in the basement. It started out as a way to pass those non-smoking winter nights - hey tomorrow makes five months! Anyway, it's taken about five months to collect enough equipment and stumble through enough mistakes to have some tangible results. See my first design on two shirts below. In addition to a handful of thrift store shirts, I printed this design on a few canvas tote bags and sent them off as Christmas presents. Of course, I also have a bunch of totes with printing errors. When will I ever need seven shopping bags at once? Want one? Let me know. I've got some more designs in the works but I'm still running into new challenges here and there. I enjoy the hobby, though when things go awry, the time spent waiting for things to dry gets a bit frustrating. But most mistakes are also lessons and I truly feel like I'm improving all the time. Oh, and I've found surprising pleasure in trekking out to a large Goodwill a bit north of here to search through their racks upon racks of tees. Beth is fantastic at spotting hidden pit stains on otherwise new-looking shirts. I'll post photos as they come (of new printings, not pit stains).
The basement studio's vast drying room.
Interesting aside - my friend Shawn spotted a t-shirt with a similar design for sale in a local head shop. I checked it out. This other design was indeed a space needle but it was very rigid and had small, jagged roots coming out of the bottom. My design was intended to resemble tentacles (notice there are indeed eight) but I see the root resemblance. It was interesting to see a similar concept but quite different execution. And, yeah, my design is waaay more better.
Next, the farm box. Now that neither of us work at a grocery store, we decided to jump in to a farm box subscription. We chose Full Circle Farm based on recommendations from both Zoe and a coworker of mine. Even in the pacific northwest they deliver a box all year round, though not everything in the box is necessarily grown on their farm (or even in this country - note the avocados in the photo). But, it's all organic, they will fill in their own produce as it becomes seasonally available - and the grooviest thing - each week (well, we get a box every two weeks) we can go online, see exactly what's coming in the next box, and make changes as we desire. Even though we know what's in each box it's so exciting to get it home and open it up!
Those are shiitakes (pardon my French) in the brown bag, and there are some scrumptious carrots hiding under that lettuce.
What else? Got myself a promotion at work, along with a respectable raise. That's good news. Beth studies constantly and is seeing some fruits of those labors. I'm still engaged in that dastardly jogging habit, though only on the weekends. Perhaps I'll start to hit up evenings when there is a bit more light. I still walk to work three days a week and it's a pleasure watching the daylight shift. For a while there in the winter I was walking both to and from work in full darkness. Now I get sunlight both ways, though it is still in motion. Plants and trees can tell, and many of the local cherry blossoms are already bursting out in plant-porno fashion. Here's the emerald city, lit up by sunrise on a recent walk to work:
Crossing I-5 at 45th street on my way to work.
Speaking of light, last weekend we found ourselves in an unexpected warm, sunny paradise (well, warm as in no beanie required). Beth picked me up from work on Friday, we stopped at our food co-op for a few items and then we went out to Agua Verde - right off the UW campus - for some fantastic Friday evening margaritas on the shipping canal. Bliss. Absolute bliss.
Oddly long-necked birds in a tree near the shipping canal at dusk.
Shipping canal with the I-5 bridge in the background. From where I'm sitting, Lake union is beyond the bridge and downtown is beyond Lake Union. Our house is about 15 blocks to the right.
Friday.
Yep.
No comments:
Post a Comment