Smells Like Crone Spirit

It's Grunge week at Spy Girl' 52 Pick-me-up.

I lived in Seattle from 1987 to 1995, the grunge capital during the grunge era. The days before Tiffany's came to town, and when I could still rent an apartment for $500 a month (honest - and it had a view, too). So I had to get in on Grunge week.

Faded jeans, boots, plaid men's shirt over an undershirt, garage bands. And I look just like I did in 1990.

 Oh denial, oh denial, oh denial, oh denial, oh denial.

It's also Third Thursday (T3) at My Closet Catalogue and A Bibliophile's Style, and the prompt this month is to let your outfit be inspired by your best or worst high school read. I can't even remember what I read in high school (it was HIGH school, man). Seriously. I remember reading Herman Hesse books, and Carlos Casteneda, and some science fiction, but I'm not sure how many of those were read for school. I do remember wearing clothes that were pretty much the same as the grunge outfit. Paleo-grunge. So I'm just dressing like high school, not like a book.

Hey, far out! I get to hit two link-ups with one outfit! I love it when that happens.

Sunday update - third link-up at Visible Monday!

Peace.

Val

Thanks for reminding me!

The lovely Maricel was kind enough to nominate me for a Liebster award - and I forgot about it.

This is my second Liebster (no brag, just fact), and I'm sure most of you have heard of the Liebsters by now - answer 11 questions, nominate 11 bloggers, pose 11 questions for them. I think the part that tripped me up is nominating others, because it seems a lot of them have already been nominated recently!

Patti was also nominated by Maricel, and she responded in her recent post. That reminded me that Maricel had some very clever "questions" so I wanted to do my best. Here we go!

1.  I see … my very lovely, new home office, which I'm probably going to move out of.

This is the dining room, which is open to the hallway, my husband's workspace, and the family room/kitchen. Since Mr. S also works from home, and he does multimedia production, I think I'm going to need a quieter space. That means optimizing (cleaning!) my Craft Cave to make room in here where I can close the door.

Wish me luck.

2. I find … that my husband and I get a little fractious with each other now that we're together all the time!

3. I have … one baby tooth still.

4. I wish … I could play the saxophone.

Teresa Cunningham

5. I miss … my friends and my brother who live in other places.

6. I fear … loss of autonomy.

7. I feel …like I'm in limbo. Unemployed? Self-employed? Pre-retired?

8. I crave … solitude.

an unidentified old photo my mother has, probably from Denmark

9. I search … for answers in my dreams.

10. I wonder … where I'll be living in five years.

Prats de Mollo in southern France

11. I regret ... not training to be a French translator when I was 19. I really considered it, but I couldn't buckle down to studying. So short-sighted.

So, now it's your turn. Patti nominated all her readers, and I'm going to do the same. You're all Liebsters (beloved)! Now answer me this - you're going out on a special evening where you can have all your favorite things. What car are you taking? Where are you going? What are you eating and drinking? Who else is at the table?

Val

Heroes and Villains

SpyGirl's 52 Pick-me-up this week is Fairy Tale. It ties in perfectly with Maricel and Selah's T3 prompt to dress like your favorite literary villain. So I'm wearing black and white to represent good and evil, and I'll tell you my own fairy tale that transpired this week.

Once upon a time there were a boy and girl who went to visit a little cottage in the country. They walked up to the porch, which was piled with old boxes and plant pots, and they pulled the clapper on the brass bell hanging by the door. A little troll opened the heavy wooden door and led them inside, then down into the cellar. The room there was piled high with books and boxes and shelves and tools. It smelled horrible, and there were cobwebs covering the windows as thick as curtains. The troll asked them what they wanted, and when they told him he said he could grant their wish for eighty pieces of gold. They left their computer with him and went away.

The troll is the hero in this story. He loaded Windows 7 onto my computer so I can work on my new client's cloud server.

The thing is, heroes look like ordinary people. (Although computer nerds who work out of their own homes are generally a little, shall we say extraordinary. I wasn't kidding about the smell and the cobwebs.)

My own knight in shining armor had already spent hours trying to install Windows 7 and then reloading all my other programs. As day turned to night, we found out that the copy of Windows 7 he had bought from eBay was counterfeit, sold to us by an evil villainess in North Miami Beach!

I imagine her with a bald head, bad skin and snaggly teeth (the bitch!), but she could just as easily look like a cheerleader or a soccer mom. Because villains can look like ordinary people, too, like Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird or Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca or Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Villains suck.

If you want to know the ending of my story, the evil bitch, I mean the seller, responded after about 36 hours with a poorly typed message saying she's sorry for our "bad experience" and she'll refund the money in a few days. Doesn't matter what she does now, we've reported her to eBay and Microsoft. They can throw her in a dungeon for all I care.

Because good always triumphs over evil.

Val

An Extraordinary Collage

I just read Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence, a story that's told in a trilogy of novelty books. The first book was published in 1991, and I was aware of it at that time, but never read it. Now I've just read all three.

If you don't know about the books, Griffin is a postcard designer and Sabine is a stamp designer – a match made in heaven, right? That match is manifested in letters and postcards within interactive books – some of the correspondence is in the form of letters that are tucked into envelopes.

All the pages are illustrated to show us the postcards, writing, envelopes and stamps. The books are works of art, and the cryptic love story is told from alternating points of view and various locations across the three, short books.

There's an inherent intensity to the writing, which you can feel in this quote from Sabine:

Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened. 
You do not dismiss a muse at whim.

So here's me in my collage room, writing furiously away on correspondence that will be stamped, postmarked, flown around the world to a mystery location where it will be handled by strangers and then put into someone's letterbox.

Or will it?

Does that address exist?

Is there someone there to read my missive?

And why do I have a goldfish on my head?

I think the author/illustrator, Nick Bantock, can easily be credited with creating the collage style that dominates paper craft these days (see Altered Pages, Altered Bits, Alpha Stamps, Piddix, Stampington magazines and products, etc., etc.). Those of you in western Canada will be interested to know that he lives on Saltspring Island.

And I can thank Maricel for bringing him to my attention in a comment she left me a few months ago. So I'm linking up with Maricel and Selah for Thoughtful Third Thursday - come check it out!

I've got some blogger meet-ups coming up soon in the "meat" life!

Val

Forwards and Backwards, maybe Sideways

Thank you for all your comments the last few weeks – well, all the time actually! I've enjoyed sharing some of my past exploits and reading about yours. I'll share more adventures in the future, but I can't tell you everything – I have to save something for my memoirs.

I've been feeling really inspired and creative lately – the muse is making fondue! I feel myself stretching my mind and thinking outside the box, and I owe a lot of credit to my fellow bloggers. I've mentioned Melanie, who gave me the idea of the paper dolls, and there's also Maricel, who has mentioned artists and authors who have stirred some of my creative juices. (I might even read a vampire novel.) And all you sewists and upcyclers have led me to my current phase of trying to customize my wardrobe. I've also been inspired in this regard by Suzi Click, who I found on Advanced Style, so now I have a big pile of unworn clothes in pretty fabrics that I hope to make into unique, wearable pieces. And Sue Kreitzman is also an amazing inspiration for her clothing and assemblages and use of color.

But at this moment I especially have to thank Anne of Spy Girl for her 52 Pick-me-up challenges. The prompt this week is to wear something back to front, and this has led me to wear an old dress in a new way.

I know, right? I love it!

And it was so easy! I bet a lot of you have done this with t-shirts, but have you tried it with anything else?

The dress is from Target, previously seen here and here (the same boots are in the second one, too, but you have to get past my rant to see the outfit). It's polyester so it's easy to wear and pack and wash. I wore it with leggings on the plane to Texas last summer (first link above). The tights are also from Target, and the boots and belt are thrifted.

The back/front puckers a little bit, but I could probably fiddle with the belt to make it look better.

Cowlicks all over my head

 Or just wear a jacket.

This suede jacket (previously seen here, also thrifted) reminds me so much of a similar jacket I had in my early 20s. Same cut, same pigskin suede, slightly different color. When I first bought this one I kept having déjà vu! Do you ever get that?

Come on over to Spy Girl for a pick-me-up!

Val