trying to make art again

last weekend was purge weekend in preparation for our upcoming move. as i was cleaning out my craft closet, i realized i'd had my gocco for almost 5 months and only made 2 prints with it.

so i gathered up some inspiration and set to work. then i ruined two screens and got to a dead end. i will try again tomorrow. i had a feeling it might backfire on me, but the fear of making a mistake or failing is what was holding me back anyway, so i guess i just need to press through it. i want to make more art again. i hate that my walls aren't covered in paintings and drawings anymore. i think i just need a little structure for myself, or a theme to investigate.

i'm going to do a series on death. the image above that i'm working on has ghost people behind the main character... and i like the direction of that. we'll see where it heads.

cheers!
sam

we finally know...

we're headed to the big apple!

twitter and my utter lack of news

so i put a twitter updater on the left side of the page. it's sort of a micro-blogging thing... it's a little easier for me to post what i'm up to with it than to feel the need to compose a well-written witty entry for this main page part. check it out to see my daily commentaries on life. also, not that witty, but at least you'll feel that you're in the loop.

also, russ and i are in that impossible wait stage that happens in life. i have no news. also, i have made no art. i have gone almost primal in my online t.v. watching. it started with the week russ was finishing his thesis (btw he defended and amazed a whole room of people with his mad math skills... no revisions even!)... i was bored and started watching the office on netflix streaming. i have now seen all of them. all four seasons. then this past weekend i took some vacation days and started watching 30 rock because everyone had said it was great and i have a secret admiration for tina fey. i'm pretty sure my brain has become mush. also, my conversational vernacular has been replaced with television quotes. my sense of what is funny has been shaped by nbc.

how frightening.

-sam

telling secrets...

i'm still around. just in case you're wondering. it's just been insanely busy these past few weeks and i haven't had time to sit and write on here. i really don't have time now, as i should be getting to bed.

i'll try to write again soon with more news. soon meaning this week.

-s.e.w.

shop update

the bird print has been added to the shop. yay!

weekly update no. 3

this is week 3, i'm going to ignore the fact that i never got around to posting last weekend.

the internet "fasting" is still going well. it's been entertaining to try and explain it to people around me. they usually end up looking at me as though i've contracted some sort of disease, but then they clearly haven't understood the level of internet-time-wasting i was engaged in prior to the fast.

i've loved doing daily yoga. i've also done a bit of sewing and print-making. i posted some of my newest projects on my flickr. we had some seat cushions at our dining table that were seriously gross. they were off-white and had more than one stain on each side. i contemplated making whole new cushions by cutting out the foam and starting from scratch, but then as i planned it out i realized part of what i hated about those ikea cushions was that they weren't washable. so instead, i made slip-cover type envelopes for the cushions. that way, if i spill an entire mug of chai all over them (not that i would EVER do that...) i can pop them in the wash.

i started teaching a sewing class on every third weekend and have been reminded of how much i love teaching. it is so fun to be able to transfer knowledge and watch someone pass from trepidation to confidence at any given skill. russ and i have agreed that when we produce some minions, i'll teach sewing, knitting and art classes out of our house. that way i can stay home and have time to be that pretentious hippie mom i always dream of being... you know the one who sews all her children's clothes and grows her own veggies. but sans dreadlocks.

i'm feeling a bit under the weather at the moment, but am hoping i recover quickly. i can't miss any work this week and hate being less than 100%.

i guess that's all the news i have for now.
hope everyone's had a great weekend!
cheers,
sam

weekly update no. 1

picture: russ rolling cord. we recorded a few songs tonight, which was really fun. we don't have space to leave the stuff out all the time, so russ cleaned up after.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

this week went really well. i found the fasting from the internet to be really healthy for me. i didn't necessarily make a lot of art this past week, but i felt better about myself and more emotionally honest.

doing the yoga daily was refreshing and i actually felt like time was passing at a reasonable pace, rather than the blur it had become. i was able to breathe. to hear myself think. to be inspired.

and i baked! i didn't take pictures, but i made chocolate chip banana bread this week, which was so yummy! and peach cobbler last night. i feel like myself again. i hadn't cooked with pleasure in months.

i also listened to two podcasts this week that were really enlightening and inspiring to me:

krista tippett talking to rachel naomi remen

and

grace and peace - a talk by rob bell

both of these targeted issues of identity and purpose, things with which i often struggle. they were both encouraging and both brought a sense of clarity. so i thought i'd share. they're really both worth listening to.

i also posted some new pictures online. i made a new painting recently that i hadn't photographed, and some around the house shots too.

hope everyone's well. i'll be back next weekend!
namaste,
sam

for my own good....

my husband and i got rid of our tv when we moved from texas a few years ago and were really happy with our choice. we had more time for our hobbies (music and art/crafts) and more time with each other.

however, as my husband has been working on grad school so much lately, i've found that i spend more and more time on the internet during the week. i come home and he is spread out on our sofa with his laptop, so i sit in the only available seat at my drafting table, where my computer is.

then i become some sort of internet zombie. i've realized that i spend at least an hour or two every day looking at blogs, shopping websites, flickr, facebook, the news, and other random sites i end up at.

at the same time, i have felt a decrease in the amount and quality of time i spend on reading, making art and meditating/praying. after losing my dad last september, i've had a hard time dealing with my emotions. i spend a greater part of every week suppressing my feelings and slipping into an ever-deepening numbness that has made me feel isolated and lonely. i haven't struggled with depression in this way in a long time.

so... this weekend, after a refreshing cry and long talk with russ, i've decided to try some changes in my schedule.

first is to commit to doing a 30 minute yoga and 30 minute devotional/bible/praying time every day when i get home from work.

second is to move my computer from my desk to a small side table and unplug it. i will only be turning it on during the weekends. the hope is that through this discipline i will find more time to grieve and let my emotions surface and also get in touch with the things i love doing and have missed in the past few months, like reading, drawing, sewing, etc.

as a result, i will only be checking email on the weekends, so please know that if you have a more pressing need, you should probably call my cell phone or try emailing russ. i will also be processing all my etsy sales on the weekends, which will slow it down a bit, but hopefully will mean that i am actually making more things to sell, so i think it is a good thing in the end.

i will also try to post on this blog on the weekends, with more pictures of what i'm making and more of my writings and maybe some of the songs russ and i have written, if we can figure out how to stream them. :)

next week i'll post pics of the new living room and my desk.

cheers to all of you! see you next weekend!
sam

merry christmas and gocco!

so i posted some christmas pics over on flickr (link) for everyone to see. russ and i had christmas alone this year and i made gingerbread, pot roast with herb mashed potatoes and sour cream apple pie... all from scratch. i miss cooking. i've gotten so busy lately i hadn't been trying new things, but today reminded me how much fun it is.

so i only asked for one thing this year: gocco. today i made my first prints, an edition of 30 (in the shop). part of the girl's arm didn't come out all the way, but i'm pretty happy with them. i really love the clean-up process, which is pretty much non-existent thanks to the tidy gocco set up.

i'm hoping that this screen printer will help me distribute more art in an accessible way, while allowing me to stockpile originals for a show sometime in the future.

that said, please PLEASE let me know if there are any daily drawings or other drawings of mine that you'd like to see in print form....

merry christmas all!
sam

tagged: 5 things you may not know about me

sarah (http://hi--howareyou.blogspot.com/) tagged me for this, so here goes!

1. i don't own a t.v. i haven't had one in a few years and although i waste a good amount of time online, i enjoy not having it staring at me when i sit on my couch.

2. i don't like coffee. can't stand it really, unless i mix it with half water. i will always be a tea girl.

3. i am a slightly-more-intense-than-average-harry-potter-fan. i don't dress up, but i do read fan websites regularly and read the books through about once a year. i didn't even get into them until just after the 6th book came out and haven't been able to put them down since. i don't think i've written about it too much on here, although i think i posted a couple of times about it.

4. i have a "monica" closet. monica geller on friends, who is a total neat freak, has this one closet that is completely chaotic. (see pic above) i have a closet like this. no matter how many times i clean it out, it always remains dangerously close to taking out your eye if you open the door.

5. i don't "sketch" drawings out before i draw them. sometimes i sketch paintings. i just always found that sketching and working out the idea was the fun part and re-doing it all seemed boring to me. i have since learned that sometimes you really should sketch, but still on my little drawings and for my daily drawings, i always just shoot from the hip with my black pen. it's more fun for me to figure out how to make the mistakes look intentional than to trace pencil lines.

okay. so i also don't have a ton of friends doing this blog thing, so i tag michelle at freeandliving.

love to you all!
sam

little poem

the tinkling of glasses
the merriment of a group of friends
i hear it from afar
it cannot reach me
i am within.

site redesign

it was time for a fresh face. i'm not sure how long i will love the sunshine yellow, but for now it makes me happy.

i'm still ironing out some kinks with the blog layout. i'd like it to look a little more integrated with the site, but it's getting there.

also, i updated my ETSY shop (see the link on the left sidebar) with some plush. it's just in time for the holidays!

cheers!
sam