Downloading Audiobooks from the Library

Did you know that you can download audiobooks from the library website?  This option existed in West Virginia and I see in Ohio they have the same system, which leads me to conclude you can probably do this EVERYWHERE. It is free, and there are no late fees.

Before Thanksgiving, I went to the (epically epic city block size giant marble museum-like) library in Columbus and rented 7 audiobooks, the kind that are on CD’s that you can hold in your hand. I listened to 4 books while driving and sewing and drawing and cooking, decided 2 were boring and mis-placed the last. Also while driving, I put all the cd’s back in the wrong cases and seem to have mis-placed a few.  Tomorrow, a large portion of my day will involve tracking down the 7 boxes and 30+ cd’s from all over my house and between the boyfriend and I’s 2 cars.

In short, I can’t borrow nice things.

However, I have found that it’s hard for me to break and/or lose mp3 files.

And lastly, they have all of Mary Roach‘s books available for download. Excuse me while I learn about how to pack for Mars.

Jerseyville.

My brother posted this map on his facebook page.

The route in this map is how to get to Wal-Mart from my dad’s house; to get there, you drive through a grocery store parking lot. I am from a small town (though it’s technically a city!), whose motto is “Close to the crowd, but not in it!” After living in West Virginia for the last 5 years, I can’t believe how flat it is. Look at the green water lines growing across it like vines, how lovely.

Now that I have lived far away for over 10 years,  in a place where mostly nobody has heard of my town, where no one misses seeing cornfield all the way to the horizon, looking at this picture I feel both homesick as well as an alien fascination.  I know so much about all the little streets in this map, yet, I’m a stranger there.

I love and hate driving home, and I wait for that moment in Indiana when the prairie opens up and you can look out across the cornfields to the curve of the earth. The scenery is silos, the outline of an occasional steeple, gas wells pumping lazily, and of course, the great big sky.

People in Appalachia talk about how exposed they feel under that huge sky, with nothing but nothing all the way as far as you can see. As for me, my eyes crave the sky, and too much time in a deep holler, or in the narrow spaces between city buildings, makes me feel claustrophobic. I’ve always thought that being able to see so much of the heavens and of the earth we live on is inspiring; it makes you feel small, but it also makes the far away seem within reach. If I can get to that horizon, why not the next one, and the next one?  I like to imagine that wide open spaces inspire a certain sense of introspection, a propensity to dream, and a feeling of connection with other humans.

At this distance, that pile of square fields with green creeks creeping over them is almost indistinguishable from the hundreds of other little communities that come together like puzzle pieces across the Midwest.  But when I glance at it, I see hundreds of stories. I know just where all those roads go, exactly what those fields looked like in 1998, and the precise smell of driving through them, of wet soil and motor oil at the steering wheel of an orange and white 1979 F-150.

Pattern Crazy.

I uploaded ten new patterns onto my Etsy shop today.

I spent a lot of time staring at a harmonica and thinking about how a sparrow would go about playing it.

When I was drawing all the gingerbread zombies I learned that it’s hard to accurately depict a gingerbread man in profile.  I now know that harmonica’s are similarly difficult object to get perspective on.

Oh Etsy Treasury

There are so many neat people on Etsy! Jillian Audrey Designs makes cool button jewelry and featured one of my Christmas Ornaments in her shop.

Dirty Hands

I came across the image to the right on a website that features series of random compelling images. I saw her hands were dirty with something white and thought, “Oh, how interesting, what has she been doing?”

What gets your hands dirty like that? Baking bread, pottery, hmm…playing in the snow, which she is obviously not dressed for.

On closer inspection, I realized she was just wearing white lace gloves.  The thought that this picture had captured someone in the middle of some kind of craft was a really interesting premise to me. In contrast, lace gloves are the opposite of interesting, a sign of a lack of activity, because, really, what useful things can happen while wearing a pair of white lace gloves?

Obviously this is supposed to be some kind of sexy picture, and I thought that I would like to innovate a genre of sexy pictures where people are doing interesting things that they are talented at (like baking bread, or making pottery).

Then I realized that such a genre exists – the sexy fireman photo.

DIY Exploding Outhouse

One of my fondest childhood memories (yes, really) is these exploding outhouse piggy banks my Grampa Russell used to make. I wonder if we still have one around? I found this tutorial to make your own by searching for “exploding outhouse.”

This video is not from my childhood, but it could be:

Featured in an Etsy Treasury!

Ha ha ha, this Etsy treasury has a bunch of hilarious Christmas decorations – and also, one from me!

Gingerbread Zombies

I’ve been drawing and re-drawing Gingerbread Zombies for the last several hours, and it’s filling me with tremendous joy. The final (for now?) project is on Etsy now!

All my life I’ve enjoyed drawing silly cartoon versions of things. At several points, I have tried to pretend that having fun equals actual artistic ability, and been promptly torn to bits.  For example, a drawing professor once told me, “I actually really like how the bark on that tree turned out, though clearly that was an accident, since everything else you drew was awful.” And, of course, she was right! I can’t draw tree bark.

However, if all my drawing class assignments had involved cartoon gingerbread zombies, my professor would have been all like, “Holy crap, that’s hilarious!” and I’d be all like, “I KNOW, right??”

Lesson for Today

No matter what commercials may suggest, candy is not a substitute for lunch.

Christmas Ornament Party!

As previously stated, I’ve been making a lot of Christmas Ornaments lately.

As a general rule, I strongly dislike decorating for holidays. Part of this is because it can be so wasteful, with all the junk people buy and hang for two weeks and throw away, but also because I am lazy.

Also, like many post-post-modern not quite Gen Xers, I am wary of sentiments and sweetness. But I’m really excited about these, because they combine stuff that is thrifted with stuff that is funny.

The first stage in the process is running to the thrift store and looking for weird old frames and used embroidery hoops. Because this is the easy stage, the pile of old frames is bigger than the pile of embroidered humor.

They are all going up for sale in my Etsy store – whatever doesn’t sell will be Christmas presents. I figure it is a low risk way to start playing around with selling.

I also want to do a series of gingerbread zombies. Other ideas?