Could Someone Please Tell Me Why I Haven't Done This Yet?

Not really tempted to buy, just replicate. Harold and Maude paintings.

The Economy And Its Effects On My Hair.

Although Spencer and I are ironically doing a lot stronger, financially speaking, in spite of the current economic meltdown, the mentality still gets to me.

The reason is sad but logical: in times of financial hardship, shopping, going to the movies and etc, is the way we forget our troubles. And I find myself itching to spend money on frivolous things, like getting my hair styled.

And now that Spencer and I have our finances in order, savings accounts figured, bills kept on top of, there's an eensy-weensy well of savings we have to put towards a few things.

We have goals after all. A new computer monitor, a new computer. Spencer wants to get a Mac, I want a new iPod for work, I really want a Dyson vacuum. Oh yeah, and a car.

Even with these goals in mind though, I want to do something to my hair. Haaaaaiirrr.

I have been toying with the idea of a cut or a dye for the last couple weeks. Spencer and Karlie are voting that I dye my hair a light purple in some way. I considered doing a pixie again but having long hair is refreshing after years and years and years of short hair.
I thought about trying a platinum blond again.

But the upkeep of color is too much effort and too much money. Going to a salon, getting to the salon, and getting the cash month after month sounds like a bad habit to take up.

However working in a store where people who shop like to see and be seen, you get strange offers every now and then. On a couple of occasions, I've been asked to be a hair model, which I love to do; I have very little attachment to my hair.

Today marks the third time, when a customer I recognize came in and told me about how she was being hired at a new salon near here and asked if I'd mind letting her cut or dye my hair as a sort of audition for this new salon.

Bonus! I get a new look and no bill to pay?

I instantly agreed, and so this Thursday at three, I'm meeting her at the salon and letting her go crazy with my hair. We only talked about dying, but if she wants to cut or trim too, I'm down. Anything goes.

Maybe this will quench my desire to be frivolous and spend money on my hair when I know I have bigger and better things to save up for?
Maybe.

Man Decorates Basement with Sharpie

So lovely.

Or maybe it's this chocolate.

Maybe it's waking up with Spencer in the morning, or maybe it's something else but life is pretty wonderful right now.

Mark Mothersbaugh Invades My Music Quite Consistently

Former Devo member and accomplished film composer has invaded my mind again.

I was on Digg (big surprise) and was reading an article about historically notable video games, when there was a little note of info about the scores of Spyro and then a side note on the people responsible for the score of Crash Bandicoot, who are Mutato Muzika.

When the Playstation first came out in the 90's, my brother and my best friend Fi got one for Christmas that year and I played Spyro and Crash Bandicoot ALL THE TIME. Mostly Fi and I played Spyro, me roaming around the 3-D platform like a toddler, and handing her the controller whenever a particularly menacing enemy was confronted.

My brother Avery mostly played Oddworld and Crash Bandicoot during those first couple years and the one thing I remember most from Crash Bandicoot and Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is the music. I LOVED that music. Even back then, I always wondered if I could ever get a recording of the music because it was so relaxing and interesting and it's lingered in my mind since, if not in the very deepest, most nearly-forgotten corner.

And who should Mutato Muzika be comprised of? Mark Mothersbaugh among others.

What else has Mark Mothersbaugh done? Most notably for me in the score for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and most recently Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. He's done a bunch others, some good, some surprising but I'm not going to list them here.

Anyway, now that I know this about Mutato Muzika and all that jazz, maybe, just maybe, I can track down and purchase some sort of compiled album for the score for Crash Bandicoot? Is that weird?

Whatever, play it yourself and you will see.

The original Spyro The Dragon series (1 through 3) and Tekken (2 and 3, though 3 is far superior while 2 is mostly a sentimental love) along with Crash Bandicoot are all featured on the list.

I didn't realize they were so "historical" and I kind of think the article is silly but it makes sense. Anyway those three games are some of my absolute favorite games to play to this day.
Others could include pretty much anything Mario Brothers (Super Mario Brothers 2 on SNES is an absolute top 3) Psychonauts and Solitaire.

How weird is it that I get online at work and slack off, but I still feel too guilty to play Solitaire? What's the deal? I rock that game.

Kije's Ouija Board!

Well not much happened over my weekend except that it was PAYDAY!
Woo! Cash-money!

No but it was really nice since Spencer and I were broke there for a couple weeks, what with moving into a new apartment, deposits to pay, deposits yet to be received, (not to mention my stimulus payment STILL has not arrived), bills overdue and all the joy that comes with marrying young and in debt.

But we get by. You know how, people? Love. Because love conquers all. Listen to this, because it's all true, too.

Aaaanyway, almost all of our bills are paid off, my phone, the electricity, the internet, credit cards, laundry is caught up, the pantry is filled, the fridge and freezer have neat packages of food and treats, not to mention I finally did a pay-out and stocked the store with cleaning supplies too. Thank you, Costco!

And not just Costco, Spencer and I managed to catch the last farmer's market of the season, grabbing some very ripe heirloom tomatoes for us and my mom, some figs, red and white onions and eggplant.

And after all that we have some money left over to maybe get a new monitor? I am trying to convince Spencer to spill for a flat-screened one as the ol' hunk of a monitor currently in our living room decided that, post-move, it would adopt a new look to match the new location. Our color range currently features exclusively varying shades of purple and orange. Oh, it's just dandy.

And what's more, we're still receiving wedding gifts (which reminds me we still need to do thank-you-cards YIKES) and that includes another couple gift cards to Target (yay!) and Wal-Mart (meh). NOT to be ungrateful of course! We'll use the Wal-Mart gift card and we'll be totally appreciative of the things here and there we still don't have (like, ironically, a toaster) that it can get us. But still, if we had everything we needed, I doubt I'd ever have want to use it. I'd maybe give it to my mother or something. Am I stuffy? "Oh, Wal-mart? Gag me!" Like that? Oh well.

Oh yeah! And my quilt is coming along nicely! The top piece is fully sewn and ready for batting, the backing, trim and tying. Since it's my first quilt and I've never given much attention to proper technique and instruction, there are a lot of mistakes that can possibly be hidden with tying. Despite those flaws, I love the thing. Can't wait to be able to curl up with it on my couch! Pictures soon, as soon as I find Spencer's camera so I don't have to keep using my phone.

Maybe I'll go get batting for it today.

It's like I'm looking RIGHT into the future! Lawlz!

Palin as President.

Thinking Halloween...

But first: by the way those rosettes in my last post were not made by me. They're just an example of how many I need to make. I made 16 over about 8 hours, 2/hour? I gotta pick it up.

Anyways, yes, Halloween.
I love Halloween, I love the costumes, the semi-annual home screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the lack of trick-or-treaters that come to my home (probably even less than ever now that Spencer and I have the very top-most apartment at the very back of the apartment lot) which leaves an adequate amount of candy leftover to bring to work.

But the best part, of course, is deciding what to dress up as. This year has been pretty difficult.
I've yet to talk Spencer into just wearing his suit with sneakers, carrying around the sonic screwdriver and slightly psychic paper he got me for Christmas one year and going as Doctor Who and me as (the best) Companion.


Throw some gel in his hair, get some glasses and Voila.

Then Karlie told me she wanted to be an indian for Halloween this year but didn't want it to be racist. I told her she should be Princess Tiger Lilly from Peter Pan and then I could be Wendy and Spencer could be Peter! It would be pretty sweet cause Spencer has that boyish look, and I happened to have a blue dress.

But since then, more ideas have floated around. Karlie is thinking maybe the Mad Hatter instead, in which I could still be Alice since she wears a blue dress as well. I could be Violet Baudelaire, but that's too obscure. Then I thought it would be funny to be Sarah Palin, but too many people could be planning on being her.
Then Spencer was trying to convince me to be Juno, and he would be the Michael Cera counterpart. I told him that was really, really unsexy and kind of depressing, but he LOVES the idea.
So now my Wendy idea is kind of not working, not just because Tiger Lilly is out, but also because Peter was never really in either.
Spencer works at the Children's Museum at the Gateway Mall and they're having a costume contest and we're thinking we're going to make him up as Max from Where The Wild Things Are.

A sure win.

So yeah. I may end up taking my Wendy dress and shortening it from ankle-length to below-the-knee and being Alice.

Or maybe I'll just go as Cherry Darling?
Yeah right.

Oh and this:

I also wanted to show a picture of a rosette-made quilt.
This is the type of quilt I was thinking I'd make my mom for this Christmas, but maybe next Christmas instead?
Whew, it would be a doozie. Doozy? Dictionary.com confirms: doozy or doozies plural.




That would/will be a time-consuming quilt. The rosettes are all handmade. Or yo-yo's as some call them. Or most. Whatever.
Or at least, they'll all be handmade when I make them. Lois, my mother-in-law, saw some pre-made ones at a craft store and she thought "that's kind of... cheap."
It's so much more rewarding when you make it yourself.

Quickly Quilting

As I may have mentioned before, I have quilting on the brain.

It happened shortly after my birthday, when my mother-in-law gave me a book on home decor on the cheap. It's actually kind of really awesome. There are some great up-to-date DIY projects, and some examples of some really gorgeous bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens.

My only criticism of the book is that unless it's suggesting Ikea or a thrift shop, it's not decorating on the cheap. It's decorating on the "holy crap they commissioned a stand-alone chimney to be built outside their house" expensive. And even their idea of "second hand" is expensive, with examples of second hand purchases that were "steals" being
-a $500 dollar headboard,
-a (very ugly) lamp at $400,
-getting a plain red roll of carpent for cheap but then paying a few thousand to have it custom-trimmed and finished to be shaped like a gigantic pool of blood (although that's a pretty cool idea, especially since the carpet spills down a case of stairs and pools out on the lower landing...)
-or buying a couch second hand for $150, but then dropping $2,000 to have it fitted with Lucite legs.
Yeah. That's just to name a few expensive things-- and those were only the examples of the "cheap" details.
Oh and also, they're not actually "thrifting." It may be second-hand, but honey, you are ANTIQUING. There's a difference.

In any case, there was a picture of the room that took homey-quilting to the extreme, and while this one blanket wasn't particularly mentioned and probably wasn't meant to be the focal point of the photo, it jumped out at me: a tied quilt pieced up of hexagons.

So simple and so attractive, I wanted one that INSTANT.
I like tied quilts a lot too, they have a more hand-made homey feel to me than the ones you pay someone else to sew all over with those gigantic free form sewing machines to hold the batting in place or just to embellish.
Tied quilt, by the way, are quilts that, when the top piece and back piece and batting are all sewing together, have yarn or thick string tied in little knots every few inches or so.

The idea was also attractive to me because I collect a lot of scrap fabric from the D.I. and other thrift shops. So I have a lot of pieces of fabric that are precut at odd shapes or lengths, pieces that have both limited and infinite potential. This gave me an opportunity to use all those fabrics, albeit, at least one hexagon from each.


Kind of what I'm making only not...

And the final reason I decided to make the hexagon quilt was that I also collect clothes and consistently do not wear them. I love clothes. I love their fabrics, their prints, or they have sentimental value and even though I haven't fit into it for years (some hoodies and shirts I've kept since I was 12 or even 9). In this case, I would take one hexagon from the garment and scrap the rest. Many shirts with Black Chandelier prints will be featured, so much so that I am a little bit afraid that people will just identify it as my Black Chandelier quilt, which, I guess, is fine too.

The choice to do hexagons with my scrapped tees also has an artistic factor. I like the idea of putting shirts you like but don't wear anymore into something else to give its function back, but when I looked at other peoples examples of tee-shirt quilts, I thought they were really ugly. It wasn't like they were trying to take the thing they liked about the tee-shirt and make it into a quilt, it was more like they were making a quilt that looked like it was made from a tee shirt, you know?


Like this. This is ugly.

Anyway, I am seeing hexagons everywhere. I didn't even make the connection that the Black Chandelier logo is a black chandelier WITH A HEXAGON AROUND IT. Great. Even more imagery to enforce a "black chandelieriness" with the quilt. Also, there are hexagons covering a wall at Spencer's work.
Once I get this quilt done, and my rosette-thing for my mom and any other quilting ideas I have for the holiday season, I'll probably ease up with the quilting and move on to other projects. I do this a lot.

I've been obsessed with writing once in a few years, joined a literary magazine and carried a writing notebook with me. I "gesso'd" Masonite boards and painted things. Or at least I planned to. I went CRAZY with charcoal and pastel drawings. I love them. I also got way into pottery and sculpture. I'm not so great with a kick wheel but a couple of my sculptures are still in my high school teachers office on display.
I've crocheted for days, making mini-scarves and cozies for just about anything, apples, water bottles, iPod cases, cats. Altering tees for friends (I need a serger before I do anymore tee altering though; no more ripped armpits.)

Now it's quilting, and it's really fun. I was afraid I wouldn't finish this quilt... I like to get into stuff, projects, hobbies, and while a few of these infatuations produce some great work, a lot of the time it also produces some great but unfinished work. But it's coming along pretty quickly, even with my mother-in-law warning me that a hexagon quilt has no real short-cuts and may take awhile to piece.

This isn't to say it hasn't had some set-backs. A lot of the pieces I'm memorializing are screen-printed, which means they absolutely cannot be ironed! Which also means I can't press some of the seams down, which makes for a funky sitting block.

Also, I have never actually quilted before. Every. Well wait. There was this one time in the 4th grade where we all quilted pot-holders for our parents, and I sent my to my dad and I haven't really seen it since. I think I did ok with it, but it was all hand-done and square, SO... Not really the same here.

I will post pictures of the progress I've made tonight, if I can find Spencer's camera. If not I'll try to get some O.K. pictures with my phone. Sound good? Good.

Oh, just one more!

An elderly homeless lady came in with one of our $5 dollar shirts, asking to buy it, but also complaining to me that I was taking away her whiskey-money. "What is going on with kids today, hmm? What is with this shirt? Only 5 dollars though? I'll take it, I like to smell clean sometimes. Aw, shoot it'll be all my whiskey-money though. You're killing me!"
WTF?

Quickie

I love (clothing) fashion, obviously, I work at a small, local, humble fashion boutique and the majority of the blogs I visit are fashion-oriented, or have a fashion feature. But after awhile you see the same things coming from www.slcpomp.com or even the weekly street fashion round-up at www.threadbanger.com which is why I'm glad I stumbled on this little website: a fashion blog showcasing the impeccable style of the elderly, www.advancedstyle.blogspot.com
P.S. sorry about the lack of html, I am SO not snazzy or dedicated today.

Rosette Preview!

I have made 4 so far... I was thinking of making my mother a quilt composed of rosettes made from the scraps of the other quilts I'm working on. It's decidedly a lot of work though so we'll see.

Copying Karlie

Her list method is succinct and effective. And since it's been longer than I'd hoped between my posts, I'm going to try and get all the build up out of the way by adopting her method.

-Recently took an interest in quilting, first to get rid of colorful scraps that I can't bear to part with, now I'm thinking of Christmas gifts... a Rosette/yo-yo wall hanging for mom, a simple and similar throw quilt for my brother and Karlie.

-My interest in quilts has somewhat over-excited my mother-in-law who also loves quilting, albeit, traditional quilting where as I am more interested in... alternative forms.

-Moved into a new apartment! This one is roomier, even though it's a 1 bedroom instead of a 2 bedroom, and has far greater views and neighbors than the last one.

-Also it is down the street from the U and coincidentally, Karlie.

-I may be biting off more than I can chew with all this quilting business, but hey, when do I not bite off more than I can chew?

-Stayed over at the in-laws on Saturday night, decidedly weird and will not be repeating that unless it's Christmas or something (and even then... probably not.) Although it was fun to hang out with Spencer and his siblings... Awkward Sunday Dinner Laughing Fits occurred after there were strangely expressed comments about the flavor of the chicken... breasts... I mean thighs.

-Black Chandelier received a letter, a "notice of default" which could mean the end of us, although Richard (the president) is taking it all in as if it were nothing.

-Watched "Secretary" with Spencer last night... a secret favorite although I don't think he enjoyed it nearly as much as me. I don't remember the score being so... bad. Same guy who scored Twin Peaks if that tells you anything. I also forgot how much I love James Spader's performance, as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal. Fantastic. Shivers.

-At work, kind of not working (I at least took care of refolds and whatnot before slacking off) and this will probably be the only place I update at least until the internet finally switches over in the new apartment.

-Oh oh, also saw the Pushing Daisies Season 2 premier, still as enjoyable to watch as ever, with strange plot set-ups for the season to come. Strange. But looking forward to watching them unfold.

-Pictures of quilt progress (when some is truly made) to come!