this week's illo friday topic is 'magic'. i've quickly sketched the queen of magic. can you guess who this is?
please excuse the bg texture, it wasn't done on purpose. being a clumsy person i spill a lot of liquid and my sketchbook has been a victim many times. the pages in my sketchbook, therefore, are very wrinkly.
mou, ikutsu neruto osshoogatsu?
back at work after a really nice, quiet and relaxing xmas long weekend. i'm almost 90% recovered. just in time to celebrate the new year and also to be able to hang out w/ my sista, who will be arriving this friday!! i'm soooo excited.
we are going to be flying over the 'pond' next week to visit our dear friend (and my partner in aozora crime) b. ... which is why i didn't take any vacation days off this week, if you are wondering why i'm one of the very few people at the office.
ps - from the blogger dashboard i found this link. there is a list further down the page of canadian aid agencies that are collecting donations for the tsunami victims: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/
i've had this dry cough for a week now and after a sleepless night (yes! a sleepless night for the resident narcoleptic). i went to see my doctor today. i don't have an infection and i just have to let this cough take its course. i'm tired of having to sit up while sleeping - yuck!
when i was still in vancouver, i used to think i had the strongest constitution - i rarely got sick and even if i did i rarely had to take a sick day off. now that i've moved to toronto, however, my confidence in my immune system has gone down the drain. this is the 4th cold i've had this year and the 4th sick day i've taken. ugh
s: have you ever had a threesome?
happy d: no i'm a threesome virgin
s: well, why not tonight? i'll bang 'a' and then i'll bang you as a token of sharing him with me
happy d: ahahaha ... no
today as 'a' was getting his haircut by our gallery owner friend, i experienced (for a short while) the lifestyle of a gallery owner. aaah what a lifestlye. smoking up and getting drunk on champagne, while flirting and horsing around with attractive artists ... on a weeknight.
's' and 'j' live in their gallery space which is on the 2nd floor of an old toronto building with floor to ceiling windows (paned windows b/c the building is old). the space is enormous (we rode bicycles around the gallery tonight) with exposed brick and beams. according to 'j', he wakes up between the hours of 11am to 1pm, does about 4-5 hours of work and then goes on to pursue his other interests - some of which include cutting hair and making art. man, i'm so jealous even if only for the bit about being able to talk about anything you want in your workplace part.
last night bday-'a' and i were walking towards the downtown theatres when we stumbled upon another memorable piece. it said:
if jesus knew what has happened to his birthday he'd probably wish that he had never been born
volunteering as part of the media team, i was the rep who stayed through the entire the meet and greet signing session with the new canadian idol, kalan porter. i must say, i got a little taste of what the whole celebrity industry must be like. the giggly girls i can handle and i actually find rather cute. it was the 30+, 50+ year old women who were going gaga over this teen pop star that really gave me goosebumps. these creepy women stood in line for over an hour to meet the canadian idol and they started acting all flustered when it was their turn to get their kalan porter headshot signed. these women were even sitting on the floor with all the other 10-13 year olds in front of the stage shrieking when he was performing (in between tables filled with c-level execs). yuck!
the other sad thing i witnessed was the management team of the new canadian idol. they seemed like bitter, jaded industry types. the minute all the fans left the media room, they started bad mouthing the fans, using 3-letter acronyms to label certain fans (although as mentioned above some were truly creepy). sad when you realize that these fans are paying for their salary.
last week i was getting a serious case of the winter blahs. the skies were consecutively grey and the temperatures were hovering around 0. to top it off, my day job was crazy. that all changed yesterday with beautiful blue skies (yes the temps were still in the negatives), a peek at a craft show and a nice walk home.
but today it finally snowed! cold temperatures somehow become quite bearable when it snows. i don't even mind the -4 because of the precipitation in the form of small ice crystals. it's so pretty when it comes down and it reveals all the hidden shapes in outdoor objects like plants, buildings and telephone poles.
i skipped into work singing, 'it's snowing! it's snowing!' work was even bearable b/c of the snow. aaaah lovely snow.
after nov. 29 please visit this link instead.
funny this happens when i lose interest but now i may be able to get a free camera!
ever since i discovered loobylu i can't stop reading her blog. i usually go through bouts of bloggie obsessions but this time the obsession is like none other. i've read every single loobylu entry since 2002.the original attraction of this site was her wonderful illustrations - which are very cute but sophisticated with shadowing and textile-ish patterns and textures. i was also very much intrigued with her craft and knitting projects, of which she is extremely prolific for a mother of a toddler and a freelance illustrator. but now, after reading all her blogs from 2002 - 2004, i've delved into the archives of her archives. i went to the very first entry of loobylu.
to my surprise the loobylu of 1999 cursed in her blogs and each post had a scattering of disparate ideas jumbled into an entry (much like me!). to further my surprise, loobylu of 1999 was trying out freelancing and finding it extremely difficult (much like me of 2003). during this time she also had to come to terms w/ the failure of a start up ... hmmmmm. also, the illustrating style of the loobylu of 1999 wasn't as sophisticated as it is now (there's hope for me yet!).
i'm glad that there is still 2000 - 2002 to read. hopefully i can get some insight into how she became a successfull illustrator, who can purchase print goccos, fabric, yarn and blythe dolls without much hesitation. either way loobylu is very inspiring and infuses a lot of hope into me! can't... stop... reading.....
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wondering what these sketches in this post are? they are a preview of the 2004 happy d xmas card! if you want one, send me an email with your snail mail address and i will be happy to oblige.
we welcomed a's sister and her fiancé over as our first official dinner guests as a thank you for helping us move. a made his 'ernie' steaks (which were savoury) and i made mashed butternut squash and roasted veggies (really simple and after chatting w/ ernie i think i'll try olive oil drenched whole garlic cloves within their skin instead of mincing them next time). a's sister brought 'home sweet home' cupcakes from a cupcake store that uses the exact same colour scheme as 'cupcakes' on denman. the toronto cupcake shoppe, however, uses real butter icing. mmmmmm
so.. i've joined a book club! the group is mostly comprised of girls. there is only a small number of us and we had our first meeting on friday. it was really cool to be with a group of people who've read so much and love to read but aren't overly intellectual about it. during our meet up we decided on how and at what intervals we'll have our meetings and most importantly chose the first 6 books we'll be reading. since we're going to be meeting every 6 weeks we are set for the next 9 months!
unbeknownst to me all book clubs have a name. as a pun on my coworker/friend's name, i shouted out, 'the joy of reading' - the name stuck.
here's our booklist:
did a lot of things this weekend including learning how to knit 'continental' style (aka 'euro-style'), purl, increase and yarnover, going to see matt and ben and going to a silly top 40 club for my friend's birthday party.
sadly i came to the realization that i've spent my last 4 weekends working on the curtains for our large windows. 4 weekends! that's a month! the saddest part, though, is that when i went to put my finished curtains for our upstairs windows the curtains ended up being 15 cm too short. they look so ugly and cheap, even though b/c these were the 2nd set of curtains i sewed the workmanship was better. now i don't even want to look at my sewing machine. i'm a failed seamstress.
acutally no i'm not. i blame the guy who sold me the fabric. he said if i added an extra 2" onto my measurements it should account for shrinkage, since i wouldn't be able to prewash the 88' for fabric before cutting it. so i cut the fab before washing it adding a good 2" to each section and it still came out too short. it's all that guy's fault. i'm a good sewer dammit!
i'm finding all these really cool girls online (:
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i finally purchased a USB wacom tablet!!! YAY! i'm back.
phew! who knew that learning to knit would take this much brain power. the photo above shows how much i knit after 3 straight hours of trying to knit. ya, it's only about 1.5" high ... and ya, it's crooked ... to ho ho
'member that irving berlin song, 'anything you can do i can do better, i can do anything better than you'? for the longest time i would sing that song to encourage myself to be able to do things i knew other people could do. you can drive stick shift? i can drive stick. you can down shift before a turn? i can down shift before a turn AND double clutch.
i need to sing this song to myself until i can knit, but man! there are so many variables when you knit - tension, counting stitches, ensuring the needles don't flip flop around everywhere. also because when you knit you don't get a direct result from an action (rather you need to complete several actions before a connection from the actions create a result - if that made any sense at all), you may not realize that you've made a mistake until several actions later. hopefully the more i knit, i'll be able to catch mistakes as i make them!
my brain is so tired ... but i still want to knit. i want to call in sick to work tomorrow so i can knit.
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and hmm, i wonder how many people submit photos?
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oh yea! it was -1 and we had flurries today. it's only november...
2 of my co-workers and i are going to meet up next week to make some plans on how we can get the rest of the office to recycle more and become aware of our dying environment. we are going to talk about putting up signs, creating a short pamphlet on simple things like remembering to always photocopy double sided, getting third party recycling programs and such. very exciting! apparently not only individuals but whole companies can sign up for the nature challenge.
i've enrolled in two knitting classes! unfortunately my barter proposal fell through (i was hoping that i could create a small website for them in exchange for several classes), nonetheless i'll be learning to create a scarf and a lacy shawl! both classes are aimed for beginners and will be held at the toronto knit café - a really cute cafe which just opened up that sells wool, knitting needles, lattes and tea. every tuesday they have a 'stitch and bitch' session. hopefully i can become good enough to take their wool felting class. very cool stuff.
i've found some other things that i'd like to attempt in the near future:
picking up lots of photos tomorrow, including my world toy camera day shots (can you believe that some people took 40-60 shots on sat!?). i'm also going to finally be getting my last remaining wisdom tooth extracted. i've been plagued with teeth trouble recently and had a filling fixed. the sad thing is the tooth that was recently fixed is now a little wiggly! i hate having bad teeth, dentures are really appealing right now.
when i get older, losing my hair
many years from now
will you still be sending me a valentine
birthday wishes, bottles of wine
i think this weekend i'm going to hog the theatre room in our building and watch 'chunking express' and 'umbrellas of cherbourg' - that is if i can finish the curtains that will be 8' high by 7.5' wide...each. aaah
this is so cute! i can't wait for the us election, i'm more obsessed and interested in it than the canadian one. although in retrospect when the pundits were predicting that stephen harper would be the next PM i did have thoughts of leaving the country...ya~ i was pretty obsessed with our election too.
when i wasn't out and about roaming around manhattan my eyes were glued to the TV. not having cable i can't really verify this but i highly doubt that CNN aired a documentary called 'terrorism: made in canada' last night this side of the 49th parallel. CNN was advertising this 'news piece' quite a bit and the ad had shots of people in military garb scaling a rock face (supposedly in canada). too funny. i wish i could have watched it.
please, please god (even though i don't believe in you) let kerry be the next commander in chief.
today we were lazy lions sleeping in after a night of clubbing in chelsea. we split up during the day - a went record shopping while i spent the majority of my day at the international center of photography (my 2nd most favourite gallery/museum, tied for 2nd with the gagosian and 2nd only to the whitney).
as usual the ICP (int'l center of photography) had great exhibitions; the 2 most memorable was a documentary on ant farm's reinactment of the JFK assassination and 'inconvenient evidence' a collection of the infamous photos from abu ghraib and photos of the reactions to the publication of these photos (artists reproduced some of the photos as huge murals along busy iraq highways).
tonight dinner was at 'frank's' a small italian restaurant in east village that has taken over the first floor of an old (maybe turn of the previous century) building. the bevelled ceilings are thick with layers upon layers of paint. the food is always fresh and the pasta always al dente. people cram into this small space sitting shoulder to shoulder around small sqaure tables or opt to share the communal table with strangers. each meal starts with bread and orange infused virgin olive oil and ends with a tummy ready to burst.
tomorrow we head back home...every stay in nyc seems too short.
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today i was photo of the day at lalaland! what an honour!
i think i have to answer yes to this question. this year i have cried because of moving incidents more than ever. not a waa-waa bawling but more tear-rimmed-eyes-turning-red, don't-make-me-blink-or-the-tears-will-spill-over crying.
a couple of days ago a letter packed with photos arrived at our new address all the way from london! reading the letter my eyes were lined with tears... to think that despite being busy adjusting to a new environment, busy networking, busy trying to explore and busy trying finding a place for herself in a new city b had time to write to us. not only did she find the time to write to us and to develop photos, she bought a book of illustrations for me! all these selfless things she was doing at a time when she should be the most selfish.
during the middle of her set, lisa started to talk about how she couldn't believe 10 years had past since her song debuted on the reality bites sound track. then she played the first 2 notes of 'stay' and my eyes started to well up with tears. i couldn't believe lisa loeb was playing 'stay' in front of me, in real life! it was just too much and i couldn't stop crying. i won't get into the details of the things that were going through my mind - it was just a very bizarre experience.
perhaps creating a to do list will spark the blogger in me again.
during myae's stay here i had a weird revelation about how proud i am of my 2 sisters. this pride is in part because of who they are but also, i think, because of how happy and lucky i feel to have such strong relationships with them both.
muah! i love you both/london! heheheh
