painting my office
August 16, 2011
I’ve got my Habitant apron on, so you know I mean business, y’all.
Actually only this one wall is getting painted, from this light-devouring red to a most excellent and glowy yellow.
The inside of the closet, which is kind of yucky at the moment, will also be yellow once I’ve replaced the tiny shelves (hidden around the corner) with shelves that go all the way across. Today I pulled out all of the coat hooks and the useless little shelves and pulled up the awful beige carpet, which had perfectly good (if slightly paint-spattered, which doesn’t matter! because it’s a closet!) hardwood flooring beneath it.
I like this light fixture a lot. It can stay. We had a fixture just like this in our kitchen growing up, and I’m just at the right time in my life (turning 40! soon!) to be nostalgic about every single unimportant object. It is a good time to use a snippet of a 1980s post punk song to try and sell me a chocolate bar or a midsize sedan as well. In case you wanted to try that.
Primer! I love the look of a blotchy primered wall. It holds so much promise. Promise of COLOUR, possibly in as few as two coats. I hope.
Tomorrow, hello yellow!
Posted by jodi on August 16, 2011 at 7.35pm
news
July 24, 2011
I didn’t work out at all last week, too exhausted from the double whammy of hideous chest cold and brutal heat wave, sleeping fitfully sitting upright on the couch on account of not being able to lie down for coughing. There was some skating, an hour and a half of lazily circling in the schoolyard on Tuesday morning (while chugging a half litre of iced ginger tea a neighbour/teammate brought me), and two more hours on Saturday when another friend booked the arena for her birthday. Peter came with me to that and we worked on my crossovers a bit.
In other skating news, Pennsic is coming up and since it encompasses 5 derby practices and that’s a long time to go without skating, I did a bit of online searching to see if I could find somebody out there who would fit into the slice of Venn diagramme crossover between Pennsic and roller derby and guess what? I found somebody, and after creepily lurking on her twitter and signing up for livejournal only to send her a message, she hooked me up with another person who’s also into derby and going to Pennsic and bam, just like that we have plans for a skateup, we’re email blasting SCA lists all over the Known World and of course there is already a heraldic badge in the works as well as a name (Sisterhood of the Four Axles) because nerds roll like that. And I am beyond excited at the prospect of skating at Pennsic with a bunch of derby people I don’t know even if I am the worst skater. Nerd crossover FTW!
Incidentally. I am not so very down with the idiomatic expressions of this internet, apparently. It recently came to my attention that this acronym, “FTW”, which I have used a bit in the same context that everyone else does, pretty much, means “for the win” and not “fuck the world” as I had previously thought. And all of those people with the faded old green-ink FTW tattoos from the 1970s now have to contend with The Kids These Days thinking their tattoos mean something different. Something perhaps interchangeable in a lot of contexts, but still different. Nerd crossover fuck the world! Yeah!
In actually NEWS news: soon I will be moving my studio out of the front room of our house, FINALLY, and into The House. More on this later as I get down to actually moving, but for now, I’m packing up my pencils and paper and getting ready for “studio” to be a full time job again, with hours and a commute and little opportunity to dick around in the kitchen or on the porch or in the garden during hours when I should be working, when I will now have to be working because I will have some rent to pay. Motivation and work ethic have been a serious problem for me since the end of grad school, and I’m looking forward to a change in routine and a step up in productivity, and excited to be in a new space surrounded by other creative people and activity. If anybody wants to help me move, or paint (because painting and moving are FUN, y’all) then hit me up. I won’t say no.
Posted by jodi on July 24, 2011 at 9.50pm
why so quiet
April 29, 2011
A deadline coming up means the usual scramble to finish some new work. These newly woodblock-printed fabrics are currently hanging up in the studio, waiting to become skirts:
Which I will be bringing, along with books and other wonderful and amazing things, to the Made in Windsor spring show on Sunday, May 1. If you’re down this way, you should come! I’m hoping to make a little bit of scratch so I can buy more tattoos, but don’t tell my mom.
Bonus: it’s happening in the God Loves Students church. Aw yeah.
Posted by jodi on April 29, 2011 at 1.21pm
kitty + unicorn 4VR
January 25, 2011
In the window at Omeed’s Used Furniture, Wyandotte Street, Windsor, Ontario.
This picture, combined with a joke Peter made about an event we attended on the weekend, has given me an idea for a project. We’ve already secured a venue to exhibit the project, we just need to choose a date, rope in a few partners and, of course, make the work. Stay tuned!
Posted by jodi on January 25, 2011 at 4.07pm
introducing. . . the listening project
December 13, 2010
It’s been two years in the making, but Peter and I are finally ready to launch the listening project. And we’ll be hosting our first ever listening party this Friday night! The format will be as follows: we’ll choose a selection of 4 or more records (working through our collection in chronological order by release date), announce in advance what we’ll be listening to on a given date, and invite anyone who likes music (or talking about music) to join us in a conversation in the listening project weblog comments, which will open for each album as the needle drops. We’ll be posting images of the sleeves, discs and any ephemera found inside (the letter from a teenager to her brother in juvenile detention, found inside my used copy of Ozzy Osborne’s Bark at the Moon, is still thus far the most amazing such example). So if you don’t care about the music, come and talk about the cover art. Or tell us your remember-whens about that time when that music played a part in your life, or that awesome adventure you still associate in your mind with whatever was in the car’s tape deck at the time. We want it all.
We won’t be streaming the music or offering it for download, but we’ll try to provide links to online archived music when possible for anyone who wants to listen along. Of course if you have your own copies of the records we feature then you can cue them up and listen with us that way. And if you’re in our neighbourhood, you’re welcome to drop by to listen with us, sift through our record collection, or play along on the keyboard, accordion, drum machine, balalaika, air guitar, whatever (please bring your own air guitar). I’ll make snacks!
When we started planning two years ago we had just over 600 records in our collection, and since then we’ve been actively building the collection in anticipation of this project. There are currently 1067 records in the collection but we’ve still got some areas in which we hope to expand further, particularly the following: early Canadian country and female country vocalists, Motown, early funk and soul, lesser known new wave and punk, early electronica that is not disco, 60s underground psychedelia, and the core essentials of CanCon like the Tragically Hip and Rheostatics. We’re always open to offers of donations and trades (I’m looking at you, Dad, and all of those Skeeter Davis records I spotted on your shelves last week!).
You can read a little more about the inspiration for the project here: about the project.
Please feel free to browse the online database of our record collection here: browse the collection (there’s also a link in the sidebar to view the collection in chronological order).
View the first listening party announcement, and the list of records we’ll be listening to, here: listening party!
And add us to your RSS feed reader to get updates on other listening parties, coming soon.
Y’all should join us! All you need is an internet connection and something to say.
Posted by jodi on December 13, 2010 at 7.58pm
hands wet on the wheel
September 25, 2010
Today I drove a car for the first time in twenty-two years.
In Mario Cart I always spin out on the grass when I try to corner too tightly. Of course I was probably going about ten kilometres an hour here. For the record I did not spin out, or hit the curb, or pump up and down on the gas and brake like an old person and give everybody in the car whiplash. I even sort of remember how to drive, it’s just that the last time I drove it was in huge muscle cars with no power steering and you had to really reef on the brake and take wide corners.
Check it out. I am totally in control of this car. This very slow moving around an empty parking lot car.
I even went on the road (only a tiny bit). And here’s my first parking job! In what, appearances to the contrary, was NOT an empty parking lot and there were other cars moving around in there and everything. And after I took this picture I walked right out in front of a car, whoops.
I feel like such a grown up.
Posted by jodi on September 25, 2010 at 8.36pm
a visit
July 25, 2010
Drinking my coffee in the rainy coolness of the porch this morning, I sensed movement beneath my chair and looked down to see a streak of pale gray fur. At first I thought it was Cleo, since she’s slender and pale gray as well, but then I caught sight of her in my periphery, crouching at the top of the porch steps, glaring. And look over here at who was cowering under a chair in the corner of our porch!
An adolescent possum, still small enough to seem cute (everything is “cute” so long as it’s small, right?) but already on the verge of ugly with its long, ratty snout and dangerous claws and that horrible pink-skin wiry tail. I’ve seen baby possums, suckling-age, and they’re truly adorable, like mewling wobbling newborn puppies, their faces still flat and womb-crinkled. But that was in Georgia, and possum families aren’t all that common around here.
We never used to have possums in Ontario at all, not until around ten or fifteen years ago. The first ones came across the border from the States clinging to the bottoms of trucks. That sounds like a story you’d tell kids just to pull one over on them, but it’s true. I always used to imagine a great escape, a daring and adventurous young possum from a foreign land setting out from home, rucksack in hand, to make the dangerous trek to a new life in a new country. I’m sure the truth is more likely that they’re up under a truck for whatever reason and surprised there when the engine starts (like kittens who climb into engines for warmth in winter and wind up getting smooshed in fan belts), then cling to whatever they can for dear life until the truck stops moving and the terrified possum drops to the ground and bolts for safety, suddenly finding itself in Canada. Still, a storybook worthy journey, perhaps.
I gently shooed this little lady off while Claire held Cleo at bay (not that Cleo posed much danger; at 20 years old she knows her limits and might not even remember the hunter she once was). Here’s the wee wet thing, scuttling back out into the rain.
Posted by jodi on July 25, 2010 at 9.26am
camp project
July 13, 2010
Our big yearly camping trip takes us to an incredibly nerdy place, one we’ve been going to for so long it feels like a second home. Our idea of camping is pretty luxurious, with sprawling pavilions and real beds and places to hang our clothes and a shower with hot and cold running water that we assemble and disassemble each year. Our fancyass shower setup also provides hot water for dishwashing, which we’ve always done in a couple of plastic bins set on a platform that’s backbreakingly low. This year, as our contribution to camp luxury, Peter and I are building a proper height countertop dishwashing station with double steel sinks, which will drain directly into the sump hole (no more carrying heavy bins of dirty dishwater!).
We started with a set of double sinks (not pictured) purchased at the Habitat for Humanity store, and a nice big piece of plywood.
Our new countertop with a hole cut for the sinks, all sanded and stained a beautiful blue (we’re kind of in love with this blue stain right now and are using it on everything, including our bedroom shelves, a table we recently rebuilt and our wooden tent poles).
With that all ready it’s time for the important work. You might think the important part is the plumbing, or building a frame to support the thing, but that would be silly! That stuff can all be done at camp. The important part is decorating the thing with heraldry. Naturally.
Very Important Heraldry Placement.
Tracing the pheon template.
Painting them purple.
Pheon painted and with a carved outline, ready for clear coat. Oh, and plumbing and all that.
Posted by jodi on July 13, 2010 at 1.51pm
jethro tull at caesar’s windsor
July 1, 2010
June 19, 2010.
Posted by jodi on July 1, 2010 at 10.43pm
the sweater factory
June 17, 2010
11am to 5pm daily, June 14 to 25, 2010
406 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario
as part of Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, an initiative of Windsor-based arts research collective Broken City Lab.
The Sweater Factory is a trial run for a project I’ve been talking about doing for a while. Old sweaters are unraveled and knit on a machine into a long panel from which pattern pieces will be cut; these pieces will be sewn together on the serger to create new sweaters, which will be given away to visitors at the end of the project.
The first two days were taken up with setting up and getting to know the new knitting machine, which I hadn’t managed to get out of the case and try out before beginning the project (whoops). Now that we’re friends, new fabric is pouring off the thing at a pretty good clip, although the varying weights of the sweaters being recycled makes necessary constant little adjustments to tension. I hope to stop knitting and start sewing by the end of the weekend. Due to the short time frame and the summer heat, I’ll be making sweater vests instead of full sweaters (so far most of the visitors to the project who’ve been really excited about the prospect of a free sweater vest have been artists and various other types of nerd anyway, so striped sweater vests could become our NERD UNIFORM). The last few days will be devoted to hand finishing (ribbing!) and giving vests away.
Posted by jodi on June 17, 2010 at 9.29pm
