Eat Healthy, Buy Local

Ramping up for the South Tacoma Farmers Market this summer!  Share it with every Foodie Locavore that you know!!!! Thank you so much!  

  

Iconic

I mentioned before the photograph project I'm doing.  One of my favorite pics was of a young tanned girl in an old fashioned bathing suit and swimming cap.  She was sitting on a large metal ice chest that had "Pepsi-Cola" written on the side in red.  What really pulled the whole thing together was that she was also drinking a Pepsi while sitting there.  The colors, the style, the Pepsi logo.....  we couldn't have created anything better to package all that is Pepsi in a single picture.  It's gotten the most hits out of any of the pictures of Chuck's that I've uploaded to flickr. 

Well, yesterday, I was looking at my stats for my account and noticed a few unusual referrers.  One I recognized because of the "pepsi" name in the site address - www.pepsimax.dk - obviously a Pepsi site of some sort.  And the other was www.sonico.com.  Upon further investigation, turns out this is also a Pepsi site, I just didn't recognize it by "sonico".  I discovered these sites were showing Chuck's Pepsi pic to their website visitors.  I LOVE THAT!  I got very excited about that and had to share....   More later....    :)

Photographic Documentary

Lately, I have been more into my photography than anything else.  I started using flickr and uploading my pics to share with anyone interested.  I joined various flickr groups, based on interest....One is a group for pictures of antique signs.  Another is a group for self-taught photographers.  And yet another for pictures of abandoned buildings.  There are literally millions of groups to choose from.  And now I have another photography project I'm passionate about.

Before I explain further about the project, however, I should set the background for how this came about.  After my husband's mother passed away last June, Lyle temporarily went to live with his step-dad Chuck to help him get stronger and back on his feet.  A few months ago, Lyle found some old slides of pictures Chuck had taken spanning from the fifties to late seventies using two different Zeiss Ikon 35mm cameras.  The pictures cover events from his college days at University of Idaho, time in the armed forces in Korea and Japan, as well as the first ten years or so he was married to Lyle's mom.   Lyle picked about 30 of his favorite slides and showed me the next time I was out to visit.  I absolutely fell in LOVE with these pictures.  We found many more slides after that, and they were ALL a very poignant photographic documentary of this man's life. 

And now we come to the photography project.  Chuck has given me permission to share the pictures on Flickr.  Here is the plan:  Lyle and I are going to have all the images transferred to CD.  The original slides and a CD set of the copied images will be retained by Lyle's family.  I will retain a second copy of the images and upload about half of them onto flickr.  I say 'half' because out of the lot, that's about how many I would comfortably share on flickr based on the content - i.e., the photos that are either iconic of the times or are of places and events that can be appreciated by a much wider audience than just myself, my husband and our immediate family.  The remaining half are private family photos that will and should be kept just for family and will not be uploaded to flickr.

It's Sunday night and I just came back from visiting Lyle and Chuck and I've brought all 700+ slides with me.  I will have them copied onto CDs sometime in the next few days, uploaded to flickr sometime within the next couple weeks and return the slides and copies the next time I visit.   I am very grateful to Chuck for trusting me with all the original slides and allowing me to share his phenomenal pictures.   I hope others enjoy the his pictures as much as I do.

New Life

I have a box that I keep my old jewelry in.  It sits on a shelf in my closet and I rarely take it out for a number of reasons.  The design or color of an item got 'old'.  A clasp might have broke.  Or in the case of earrings, I no longer have a pair because one of the two was lost.  For the longest time, I hesitated to get rid of the jewelry in this box because they were finely made using top notch materials or had some sort of sentimental value. 

But eventually I began to recycle my jewelry.  I've been gradually developing my jewelry making skills over the last year or two (beading, wire wrapping, metal-smithing, etc.) and I've found ways to incorporate pieces from this old jewelry box into the new items I make.  For example, I make lariats a lot and I sometimes use earrings to embellish the ends.  I've also done this with bracelets.  I had an old sterling silver chain in my jewelry box for the longest time.  It was worn, but its quality was apparent.  Left alone, it seemed a bit plain and maybe a bit masculine.  But then I attached a few beads of varying colors and lengths and suddenly it took on new life.  It no longer seemed masculine and I was excited to wear it.  

http://homini.etsy.com
http://toulecho.com

Farmers Market II

ok.  I've changed my mind again.  I WILL be applying to be a vendor at the South Tacoma Farmer's Market for 2010.  And..... I've already submitted the application!  Surprised?  Well, I went to a market committee meeting last night and wound up getting enthused about it all over again.  Darn that enthusiasm.  Went right home and completed the application right then.  It also gave me a couple ideas for new felting projects....!  (claps hands happily)  Good thing I got that business license a couple weeks back, uh?

The bag is coming along nicely...if I can ever find the time to crochet!  I have more time on the weekends for projects, just not during the week - full time job and all.  *sigh *  Maybe someday I'll be in a position to do this business full time, but right now it seems a million miles away....

Farmers Market

I'm about a third of the way through the bag.  I hope I judged the yarn right.   One of the colors I chose is actually a cotton instead of wool.  So it won't felt like the rest of the bag.  Now I've done this before, usually with flashy, fun materials (furry, sparkly, etc.), so I think it will work out.  But occasionally, it happens - the project doesn't turn out.  We'll see.  I think this one will be ok.  But won't know till I finish the project.

About the farmers market....  I don't think I'll be doing it after all this year.  Had too much going on last year and I'm pretty far behind in production.  I do this thing I call 'magical thinking' - its where you somehow imagine completely superhuman feats are possible.  I do this on a regular basis.  Only in later years I've started to recognize it as its happening.  I'm not sure this is helpful, although it seems like it should be.  Knowing what's happening doesn't stop it from happening, nor does it make it easier to deal with.  This time I didn't recognize it until after I started working on the felted bag I mention above.  As I began to work, reality came crashing in - it takes WAY longer to make than I remember.  It's very frustrating and disappointing.  I could always apply next year.  But this year was the first farmers market in the South Tacoma location - its possible my chances of being accepted as a vendor were better this year than ever before.  I guess vendors from other existing (already thriving) farmers markets in the area are reluctant to try to sell at a new market - never know it will flop or not.  A part of me wants to forego sleep, food and family to produce at a superhuman page to meet the challenge.  But, at least in regards to family, I'm not that selfish.

Love these colors.....

So tonight I started another felting project.  I am in turbo mode because I want to get a lot of these finished in a short amount of time.  I figure I crochet about a stitch every 3 seconds or 20 per minute (as long I'm not trying to do it while watching a movie or something - if I do, I get distracted).  I like the color pallette I chose - a cream color with muted lavender and light green.  I've attached the palette below.  Can't wait until its finished....


Color by COLOURlovers

Its good that I started felting again.  My last project about finished me off.  Too big, too long... lost patience.  I was forcing myself to try to finish it before starting other projects.  So nothing got done for a while.  I'm over it.