überlist 2011
January 1, 2011
Last year I couldn’t even be arsed to make a list. Which means this year I’m already a better and more productive (or at least more optimistic) person! A person who MAKES LISTS. I should have put making lists on my list, maybe. Because I fear my list may be a little light in those cheaty ways to up my score at the end of the year.
So here is my list of the little and not so little things I’m hoping to accomplish in 2011. And if I don’t, WHATEVER. Presented in the same rambly order as they’re written into the front of my calendar, which is not in any way an indication of their relative importance. Or lack of importance! In many cases.
01. bake a pie (starting off with the easy and attainable)
02. visit Point Pelee (this is on the list every year. Will this be my year for Pointy adventures? I hope so!)
03. plant rhubarb (I promise, there won’t be parenthetical commentary for every item)
04. read all of the zines in my collection (it’s not that big)
05. make throw pillows for the living room
06. write letters (real ones, on paper)
07. finish painting the china cabinet
08. complete the one hundred push ups workout
09. make something awesome on the knitting machine
10. publish the gatsby girl pattern in a downloadable .pdf
11. keep a food diary
12. fold the laundry on the same day it’s washed
13. open a new etsy store (just for clothes and bags)
14. new updates in both etsy stores each week
15. five blog posts per week
16. upload a photo to flickr every day
17, wash the windows
18. insulate the basement rim joists (now we start getting into the huge stuff) (ugh)
19. learn to mix 5 classic cocktails (I already have a head start on this: the other night I learned how to make a Manhattan! And I drank it, too)
20. shoot a roll of film with every camera in my collection
21. knit something (or sew something) for every new baby
22. put up a bird feeder
23. build a cornhole for the back yard
24. put a new floor down in the attic (WHOA)
25. host a dinner party every month
26. try running (for at least one month) (I suspect I’ll hate running. But I’m determined to try it anyway, just as soon as the spring temperatures settle above zero)
27. organize the studio
28. get together with Shar
29. finish a new print or drawing every week
30. inbox zero at the end of each month (December 2010 not included because that was so last year, y’all. Giving myself January to get to zero, then maintaining after that)
31. finish the back porch stairs (the pieces are all there, they just need to be hammered together, really)
32. paint the back porch!
33. plant flower pots for the front porch
34. grow salad greens
35. go out to Phog more often: >2x per month!
36. make the bed in the morning
37. get my next tattoo
38. do something nice for the neighbour kids
39. do something nice for Donna (older, ailing neighbour on the other side)
40. invite new people over for listening project parties (by which I mean people we’ve never had over to our house before)
41. install the plastic dinosaur & animal collection in the front garden
42. house projects = living room ceiling (HUGE JOB: includes tearing down crumbling stucco, putting up drywall, then constructing some kind of awesome tin ceiling)
43. house projects = flagstone patio
44. house projects = pour new front sidewalk
45. make a curtain for the bathroom window
46. fix the dining room storm window
47. brush Cleo once a week
48. go to bed earlier (more sexy time!)
49. make big batches of pizza dough for the freezer (inspired by the awesome pizza crust I made for xmas eve supper at my mom’s house, which I now want to eat every day)
50. watch all of Sol the Clown on youtube (because I’m convinced that’ll be all I need to upgrade my knowledge of French from reading food packaging to holding my own in conversations, y’all)
51. sign up for a Spanish class
52. make a quilt
53. finish sewing the embroidered patches on my jacket
54. make a design for a matching tattoo with my brother
55. make dresses out of all the novelty bedsheets piled up in the studio
56. send some product (books) to rEvolution
57. wear my crocheted bra top at least once in public (ACK!) (doesn’t have to be without anything over top, but it has to show)
58. put all of the CDs in a binder for the car and throw out/recycle the jewel cases
59. dye the front of my hair an awesome colour (either blue again, or hot pink)
60. build a composter
61. fix the hole in the wall (ceiling) at the top of the stairs
62. paint the upstairs hall, stairs wall and front room (ALL YELLOW)
63. label the tiny drawers in the studio (dymo?)
64. draw every day, in a sketchbook if I’m not working on drawings
65. scan peter’s grandparents’ slides
66. throw a slideshow party
67. visit Bob and Sandy
68. get my earlobes stretched
69. fix my motorcycle jacket and put the lining in
70. plant eryngium seeds (in the backyard and maybe some in the front as well)
71. clean and seal the floor around the basement workbench
72. cut 3 doily pattern woodblocks
73. print up all of my canvas stash for bags
74. finish Merouda’s stockings (it shames me that this is still on the list and not done already)
75. clean and paint and reassemble the Chandler & Price book chopper
76. fix the little iron plant shelf and install it in the dining room window seat
77. polish my boots
78. fix my green leather coat (or throw it away already)
79. put the new handlebars on my bike
80. take my G2 road test
81. make a zine
82. fix my broken rolling pin
83. learn to play the accordion
84. learn some rudimentary music theory! (ask Claire for help)
85. brush up my photography knowledge (read all the books, there’s a whole shelf of them here)
86. spend more time reading books for pleasure (instead of reading the internet)
87. plan my workouts in advance and keep records
88. drive to London and back
89. always have homemade soup stock in the freezer
90. bake something I’ve never baked before
91. transfer all of the recipes from slips of paper onto cards
92. make section dividers for the recipe box
93. take Marco’s boot camp (ALREADY SIGNED UP STARTING JANUARY 3 SO EXCITED!)
94. clean out the paper shelves and use stuff up
95. make warm shorts-length knickers (for winter protection for the part of my legs and arse in between underpants and the tops of gartered stockings)
96. make jersey fabric biking knickers for summer (YES OF COURSE THEY WILL BE FRILLY)
97. knit something with my handspun yarn
98. make homemade lemonade
99. finish Mana Borisova’s 2010 garb
100. fix MB’s green jacket janky lining problem
101. put out treats for the squirrels (Peter’s going to just love this one)
102. try something new from every cookbook we own (this one also makes the list every year and always gets half done, but we inherited a pile of cookbooks from Peter’s mom so now it’s a bigger task)
103. resurrect the Wyandotte Street Lunch Tour project
104. finish the braided rug
105. crochet a small rug for in front of the washing machine
106. apply for at least two artist residencies
107. new collaborative project with Jessica = get working!
108. organize another public event like pecha kucha
109. make one of my ceramic scouring pad frogs into a pincushion
110. build a shelf or rack to house the Japanese coffee cup collection
and. . . 111. teach someone a new skill
HOLY CRAP.
Because words without pictures are boring:
AWESOME.
Posted by jodi on January 1, 2011 at 10.47am
of flesh and blood I’m made
January 5, 2010
Here is my 2009 überlist wrap-up. Every year I write down my list of goals in the front of my year-of-the-what datebook, then promptly forget to ever check the list, pretty much ensuring that only the ones that are actually important to me get done. This year it was worse: I spent the year up against a profound creative block that I couldn’t shake, and even though I had the time to devote to my studio work, I didn’t have the energy or the emotional fortitude to take advantage of my situation. So the items on the list that were the most important, those that were work related, did not happen. As well, most of the work around the house type stuff didn’t happen. This year I’m going to repeat some of last year’s goals in hopes of really getting all new-leafy for reals this time, and I’m also going to try and make the list as a whole more realistic. As for the creative block: I have a feeling my new job is going to have a great impact on getting rid of that, and allow me to focus my energies on my studio practice again.
Because I want to dwell on the positive here (in fact, I think I’ll put that at the top of 2010′s list), I’m only listing the items I accomplished. All the others are just dust in the wind as far as I’m concerned. I’m also going to give myself half points for a few that I half-accomplished. As incentive!
Goals I met in 2009:
1. no refined sugar for at least a month: half points, because I don’t know if I ever managed to go a whole month in a row without slipping at all (I do occasionally use a small amount of sugar, usually demerara, in cooking), but I did limit my sugar intake to pretty close to nothing all year.
7: 365 days flickr project: I did that, and ended up mostly hating it. In fact, I think it killed my other picture-taking-and-posting activities. I missed a lot of days but I’m still taking the point for sticking it out even after I was completely done with it in my mind.
9: use chopsticks once a week for practice: maybe not every week but pretty close to it, and often several times a week.
12: eat more greens (2 x or more a week): yup.
13: drink more whiskey: hell yes.
18: clean up my work table: Points for doing it once, since I didn’t specify otherwise. I did not, however, get points for the following item, which was to keep it clean.
21: try a new recipe from every cookbook we own: half point. I tried a lot of new recipes this year, some of them from books I hadn’t really cracked before. I tend to rely more on my favourite vegan food blogs for new recipes. I’m going to try this again for next year.
23: organize my fabrics and sewing stuff: It didn’t entirely stay organized, but I did do it in tandem with the filing cabinet clean-out.
30: update in progress section of website: done. Needs to be done again, though.
32: clean out basement built-in shelves (painting stuff): half point, since there are two equal-sized sections (one with doors, one without) and I fully cleaned out and organized the part with the doors. Which, unfortunately, is not the part where the painting supplies are kept.
33: get the rest of my student work onto flickr (spring 2008 lithography class)
34: water plants every week, no forgetting!
37: clean out filing cabinet
39: get a job: I did indeed get a job: a full-time limited term faculty position at Nipissing University for the spring 2010 semester, teaching two drawing classes and a printmaking class. I started yesterday!
59: finish wallpaper in bathroom: the sections I started were finished, and since it’s not my decision alone I deferred to Peter when he talked me into only papering the one wall because we don’t know when we’ll rip out those walls but we’d like to do it as soon as possible. I’m taking the full point, because I never put “don’t make inconsistent and arbitrary decisions” on my list.
63: make a new shower curtain: done. It looks exactly the same as the old curtain, but the problem was with grunginess, not with design.
65: have a picnic in a park with Peter: we don’t do this as often as I’d like but we do it once in a while, usually on trips when we don’t want to eat highway food. For 2010 I’ll aim for some picnics that are strictly for fun and not for convenience.
67: shoot a roll [of film] with the Canon AE-1: I shot two, one colour and one black and white, at Pennsic. Both are sitting unprocessed in the fridge.
69: shoot at least one roll of film with one of the other old cameras we have (the Brownies?): I did not use any of the Brownies, but I did shoot a couple of 12-exposure rolls of old Kodak Instamatic film that I found in Peter’s mom’s basement, expiry date 1976. Both were shot at Pennsic, one with an Instamatic that used to belong to my grandparents, the other in one that was Peter’s grandparents’. I’m not sure yet if I can even get it processed, since it’s colour film. They’re currently in the fridge.
70: join the Printmakers Forum board
71: join the Artcite board
73: get my next tattoo
78: can something I’ve never canned before: picked cauliflower, pickled rutabaga, peaches!
79: go see In the Pocket at the Vic tavern: we did, once or twice. As they play there every week, I’d like to go more often. In the Pocket is a sweet little blues/r&b cover band from Detroit who have been playing Saturdays at the Vic for years. Their signature song is Purple Rain, and you wouldn’t believe how hard they rock it.
80: host 4 dinner parties: half points because I can only remember two. But they were super fun, so this will be on next year’s list too.
82: go to the eye doctor: new glasses!
83: get hair cut at least 4 times (in order to grow it out awesome instead of growing it out gross like last time)
91: shred old files
95: organize craft materials
104: construct features for the front garden (metal bars, helms, hippo): half points. Nothing got built or installed yet, but we spent some time in thrift stores amassing a fantastic collection of plastic dinosaurs and ceramic squirrels, currently in the basement waiting to become lawn ornaments of awesomeness.
105: disassemble the back deck: this was a joint effort: Dylan took out a lot of the boards for us and then Peter and I knocked apart the rest together. Now we are down to the original back porch, which is really as much porch as we need. Now to plan the patio!
107: knit up the leftover yarn from finished socks into blanket squares: half points. I still have some scraps but I did make a heck of a lot of squares.
Total score: 29 out of 109, or 27%. In the antiquated Beverly Hills 90210 scoring system my datebook offers, 29 points makes me a Kelly: “You accomplish a fair amount without much effort, then spend all your free time patting yourself on the back. It’s annoying. Also, you’re boring and nobody cares what you think”. Yup, sounds about right.
In a couple of days I’ll record here my all new list of smaller, more easily achievable goals for 2010. Because the level of boring self-absorption on this weblog isn’t nearly high enough (put it on the list!).
Posted by jodi on January 5, 2010 at 10.35am
there goes another rubbertree plant
January 2, 2009
Here is my 2009 überlist. It’s uncategorized, because I write my first draft directly into the space provided in my date book and my brain doesn’t really work in a categorized way. Some of these things are new, some are slightly less ambitious than last year’s (for that self-congratulatory easy-to-complete goodness), a few are repeats from last year that didn’t get realized. I’ll try to revisit the list here every quarter with progress on how I’m doing instead of leaving it until the end of December like I usually do. Darn, I should have put that on the list!
1: no refined sugar for at least one month (I’m looking at you, January!)
2: gym 2 x weekly
3: floss 2 x weekly
4: finish straight outta brompton sweater (January)
5: finish Alice/Bridie sweater (February)
6: finish lace nightie sweater (by summer)
7: 365 days flickr project
8: finish all socks currently on needles (that’s around six pairs, I think, or maybe eight)
9: use chopsticks once a week for practice
10: finish stockings for Merouda
11: try not to swear so much
12: eat more greens (2 x or more a week)
13: drink more whiskey
14: ride my bike more, min. 3 x per week, weather permitting
15: fix the broken beam in the basement
16: don’t stall on weekly chores so much
17: start the listening project and set a schedule for it
18: clean up my work table
19: keep my work table/area clean
20: take my vitamins every day
21: try a new recipe from every cookbook we own
22: post at least one photo to flickr every day
23: organize my fabrics and sewing stuff
24: design myself a new work uniform: skirt + shirt
25: sew up a week’s worth of uniform pieces
26: wear my uniform at all times while working (at printing or at job) (not that I have a job, but eventually)
27: apply for 2 shows per month (deadlines tend to cluster, so as long as I do 24 throughout the year, it counts)
28: apply to 4 residencies per cycle (spring, fall)
29: update sketchbooks section of website
30: update in progress section of website
31: blog studio work in progress at least once weekly
32: clean out basement built-in shelves (painting stuff)
33: get the rest of my student work onto flickr (spring 2008 lithography class)
34: water plants every week, no forgetting!
35: write up the pattern for Rosaleen’s scarf
36: make my first self-published pattern (the green lace cardigan I’ve stalled on, maybe?)
37: clean out filing cabinet
38: do the hundred pushups challenge
39: get a job! I can’t believe that didn’t show up here until number 39.
40: plant my purple tulips
41: consolidate boxes in the attic
42: clean and reorganize at least one side of the attic
43: wash the windows
44: new front sidewalk
45: new front porch!
46: finish 2 new drawings per week
47: start up sketchbook project again
48: scan old family photos
49: spend a day in Huron Park taking pictures
50: visit Point Pelee
51: visit Uncle Tom’s Cabin or one of the other local Underground Railroad historical sites
52: write at least six real letters
53: become the sort of person who sends thank you cards
54: design & print cards for thank yous (letterpress)
55: write on my weblog more often
56: rework and print all of my copper plates
57: read at least one book per month
58: make a flagstone path in the front garden
59: finish wallpaper in bathroom
60: strip the basement china cabinet & paint it black
61: replace dining room glasses shelves with (#60) cabinet
62: wash out entire inside of fridge really well at least once
63: make a new shower curtain
64: visit a zoo
65: have a picnic in a park with Peter
66: shoot a roll of film with the Iloca camera
67: shoot a roll with the Canon AE-1
68: shoot a roll with my old Pentax
69: shoot at least one roll of film with one of the other old cameras we have (the Brownies?)
70: join the Printmakers Forum board
71: join the Artcite board
72: go to a Windsor Spitfires game
73: get my next tattoo
74: make homemade pasta
75: get rid of things I hang onto but don’t need
76: put music cds in a binder and give/throw away jewel cases
77: bake something I’ve never baked before
78: can something I’ve never canned before
79: go see In the Pocket at the Vic tavern
80: host 4 dinner parties
81: go to the dentist
82: go to the eye doctor: new glasses!
83: get hair cut at least 4 times (in order to grow it out awesome instead of growing it out gross like last time)
84: clean out bedroom closet
85: finish that blue blouse I cut out last year
86: wear my contacts at least one day a week
87: get my learner’s permit
88: go bowling
89: new curtains for our bedroom
90: paint our bedroom
91: shred old files
92: visit (and borrow from) the public library
93: renew my library card!
94: clean/dust everything on the plate rail in the dining room
95: organize craft materials
96: take photos of the sculptures down by the river
97: get into an international exhibition
98: show my thesis work in a gallery
99: print fabrics for the corset project with Kelly
100: design skirts to go with corset project
101: organize a show for #99 & #100
102: get my ears pierced
103: start submitting knit designs again
104: construct features for the front garden (metal bars, helms, hippo)
105: disassemble the back deck
106: do our (overdue!) taxes
107: knit up the leftover yarn from finished socks into blanket squares
108: buy those green boots I can’t stop thinking about
109: finish the dresses I started last summer and sell them on etsy
Posted by jodi on January 2, 2009 at 5.45pm
no promises. . .
January 1, 2009
but you might start seeing me around here more often.
Here’s that sock again:
I decided to copy Caro and knit stripes alternating from both ends of the yarn ball. Ugly or beautiful, either way this is absolutely the last time I reknit this sock. So, no ripping.
In other news, I tallied up the things I accomplished on last year’s überlist, and. Well. Not so hot, I’m afraid, even though I gave myself half-marks for some things because I sort of did them, or because I did them but maybe not consistently and the terms might have been fuzzy. Anyway. The following are the übelist items for which I earned full marks:
#2: knit only from stash: no yarn buying! (hello, that’s a HUGE one right there, surely I should get some bonus points)
#8: get website up to date. Done. Several times.
#9: once up to date, update website twice monthly. I gave myself full marks for this even though there are some pages in the portfolio section that, as of December 31 2008, need updating again. That is a heck of a lot of boring cutting and pasting of html coding, people, plus I totally overhauled the entire site and also (with Peter’s help) switched the blog over to wordpress, so I’d say I get a point for this one.
#12: re-evaluate (yarn) stash; give some away. Totally decimated the stash, gave some to friends, sent some off in the mail, gave some to Goodwill, and even (gasp!) threw some in the garbage, all in preparation to pack up my whopping pile of grad school crap and carry it all home. I got rid of a lot of good stuff but we just barely got everything into the rental trailer as it is.
#16: ride my bike more. I get marks for this partly because I didn’t really define “more”, and once I got home from grad school I pretty much got around town entirely on my bike, not forking out any cash for the bus until the snowy weather hit.
#18: draw during meetings instead of knitting. A resounding success with a side effect: fewer annoyed looks shot my way. Because for some reason people think it’s less rude to draw than it is to knit while people are talking. Fools.
19: eat less junk. Pretty much up until about December 6th, I was awesome with this one.
20: examine hungers. I have no idea what I even meant with this one, but I think maybe it had something to do with being alone all the time (at grad school, away from home) and not taking care of myself and looking at what unhappinesses were making me abuse my body by eating, for example, popcorn for supper and then again for lunch the next day. So if that’s what I meant when I wrote this one, I get the marks for it.
22: Goodwill or refashion 30% of my clothes.
23: put up shelves in basement. I think here I was referring to some wooden shelves we were planning to put up along one wall, but Peter beat me to it and did this before I got home from school in the spring. When our basement flooded later in the summer it kicked our arses into building the storage island we’d been talking about, in the middle of the space with metal shelving and lockers and drawer units and built-in places to stow the long bits of our SCA pavilion and other hard-to-store crap. So for that, I get the points.
28: get fall 2007 student work up on Flickr. Done. Don’t ask me about the spring 2008 work though; that I’m still working on.
34: can tomatoes.
38: eat locally and in season. Well, I didn’t say exclusively, so I’d say I get the marks. And I did some preserving of local stuff when it was in season: strawberries, tomatoes, applesauce.
46: go to bed earlier. Yup.
54: cut down bead stash; give away 50%. I can probably give away most of the rest now too. I have no idea why I collected so many beads in the first place.
56: make a new satchel.
57: make satchels for the etsy shop.
58: start some new house plants. Well, we bought a couple. Same diff.
59: water them. So far, so good.
65: reorganize record collection. Hell, yeah. I even made a list of everything we have, looked up all of the release dates (the ones I could find), and entered them into a database that Peter prepared. Phase one of our evil plan.
68: socialize more with the other grad students. Again, a failure to define “more”, but since I socialized more in my last semester of grad school than I ever had before, I win.
69: clean up my studio and keep the table clear. Two tasks in one, really, and requiring totally different parts of the brain too. I mostly kept it clear. Then in May I cleaned it all up and shipped it all away. Score!
70: cut up all the paper littering the studio for binding into books. Done, but most of that is now sitting in my new work space, not made into books. Some of it is half made into books.
78: cook with Peter more often. We have a crazy schedule this year and everyone has days on which it’s their job to make supper. We don’t prepare meals together as often as we used to before I went away to school, but when I was away we didn’t at all, so I’d say in this case some = more.
81: volunteer at Artcite. I’m on the programming committee now, for starters.
84: go to art galleries more often.Again, what’s “more”? I go to art galleries.
85: don’t bitch about people. Whoa. Buried in amongst all these easy peasy little tasks, a biggie. I was specifically thinking here about not getting sucked into petty workplace bitchiness, and for the most part I managed that. I could use a lot more improvement in the general bitchiness area but I tried. Points for me. Maybe it should only be half points but if anybody suggests that I’ll only bitch about you so don’t bother.
94: get my next tattoo. Yup.
98: take pictures of all the place I lived in Athens before I leave.
99: take pictures of all the places I lived in London.
105: take my vitamins every day. I was better about this in Athens than I have been since coming home, but I’m getting better.
Things for which I’m giving myself half-marks:
66: listen to all of our records in alphabetical order. No, I didn’t do it. I did it once before, about ten years ago, and was going to do it again but Peter said it was a stupid idea and that organizing them some other way would be better. So we’ve done the whole database thing and as soon as we can track down some more release dates (and add in some new purchases to the list) we’re going to listen to all of our records in chrononogical order. And blog it. I get half-marks because I made this one way more awesomer and did a lot of work towards making it happen.
67: eat at least one meal at home per week with chopsticks, for practice. Some weeks in Athens I ate with chopsticks every day. Not so much since I came home, maybe only once a month.
#89: try a new recipe from every cookbook we own. I use some books more than others, and while I tried a lot of new things and cracked a few books for the first time, I’d say I probably only made something out of a third of the cookbooks we own. We’ve also acquired a lot of new cookbooks in the last year though.
#96: get rid of all the dead ballpoint pens in the house. I did this in my apartment in Athens, but not in our house back home. Yet.
No, I’m not going to list all of the things I didn’t accomplish, because this is supposed to be a self-congratulatory exercise, not a wallowing in disapproval one. Plus you can see the entire list here if you really give a rat’s arse. Anyway, my paltry 34 out of 108 doesn’t look so craptastically bad when you consider that I EARNED A MASTER’S DEGREE which wasn’t even on the list! So there.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll post 2009′s überlist, if I can get arsed to finish it. Yes, I know it’s 2009 already and the list should be done. Making 2009′s überlist before 2009 begins was #108 on 2008′s list. And I didn’t get it done. Bite me!
I am totally putting “tell people to bite me more often” on my 2009 list, by the way. The easier the tasks are the more I’ll accomplish, right?
Posted by jodi on January 1, 2009 at 7.51pm
