Photo of the Week

This and more can be found at my 365 Project.

Picture of the Week

Rest of the photo-a-day can be found over at http://www.photoblog.com/ayenforcraft

Up To My Usual Tricks

And I'm back, *ish*, and back up to my usual tricks. Meaning, of course, lots of close-ups of nature and random ramblings about whatever irrelevent topics happen to be floating around the head at the moment. We're going to try to take up the Photo-A-Day challenge again after a hiatus that was supposed to be brief but turned into ... well, almost 100 days, it would appear. 1/3 of a year. Geez. Where did the time go? Let's hope I can maintain this the second time around. Things may get kindof sporadic around here, although I have to say, I think I can see some improvement in my photography even as I flip back through the blog archives, so that, if anything, should be motivation to continue.


144. More of the Same. I seem to like taking photos of purple flowers. This was taken at the park near work. I think I stopped becaue I liked the unusual shape of the petals.


145. Calling Out. What could that be?


Oh look, a close-up of this! My camera died [sniff, sniff] so dad's is on 'permanent loan' for the time-being. Of course, it might be a good number of months before I can afford to replace my old trusty point-and-shoot with a new one ... and I was so familiar with that camera; I'm still getting used to all the settings and functions on this one.

So anyways, what is this? I went and massacred a book is what I did. Awhile ago I picked up some books at a thrift shop with the intent of turning them into art journals, and late last month I finally got around to it - tearing out pages, glueing pages together [if you keep all the pages in the book, the collage will make it too fat and ruin the book. Of course, I forgot that you're supposed to look for books with sewn spines and not glued ones, I was just so taken with the plant illustrations and science textbook feel of the book], and now, every couple of days or so, I take it out and do some art journaling.

Sometimes I like to use it as much for journaling as for anything, forget about 'art' ...

Or just to play with colors and themes ...



Yes. Relaxing, fun; I may teach a class this summer on collage. How awesome is that?


146: Make Do With What You've Got.This is what laundry days around the apartment look like, at least the view from the bathroom [the toilet seat, to be exact. No, I wasn't multitasking when I took this photo, but it did offer the best vantage point for the shot.] I usually wind up drying about half of my clothes and lugging the rest back to the apartment while those are in the dryer [this neighborhood seriously has everything you need - I love it] and hanging them up around my room on clothes racks and hangars. A couple get relegated to the shared bathroom.

I do this for environmental reasons, but also because a lot of my clothes are from China [<3<3] and frankly, most clothes sold there are not made for the dryer. Nobody uses a dryer in China, and as I had the sad misfortune of discovering, if you dry clothes that weren't intended to be dried, they shrink in the funkiest ways, and this is not a good 'funky' that we're talking about. Sometimes a little inconvenient, but I don't really mind since it coincides with my personal values anyways. If it wasn't China-clothes, there would definitely be other clothes that would get air-dried instead.


My poor roommate, he's always gotta push my pants and miscellaneous other clothes aside whenever he wakes up in the morning for his shower [cuz he leaves before I do and I am usually not a morning-shower-person, unless I've been out for a run, in which case my coworkers greatly thank me for showering.]


When I cook, I generally don't follow any recipes. Which ... turns out mediocre most of the time, occasionally surprises me, and sometimes makes me very glad that I am not cooking for anybody but me. This pasta salad here is no exception. Steamed broccoli, fresh tomatoes, olives, a little shredded cheese, pasta, a little olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Small things like, hm, maybe you should test out the pasta before removing it from the water - never really occurs to me. But luckily it came out well enough in the end, it cooked up really quickly, and best of all, LEFTOVERS.

The olives are from the grocery store down the street [literally; I love this place!]. They carry quite a number of Mediterranean goods, and while I'm often tempted to 'hm, let's try something totally new and exotic,' when you're epicurean-adventuring while blindly creating recipes with no previous experience, even though it may be tempting to try all three types of olives each packaged and preserved in a different way, really, in the end, it is probably best to reach for the one tin can because that looks closest to what you're used to. Although - foiled anyways! - these aren't pitted, so that's a little extra entertainment when munching away.

More on China

This morning Laurie came by to film me for her her Digital TV class for her journalism program. Laurie is a friend from Beijing, and its amazing how much her little visit today reminded me of China and various dreams that I'd tucked away from that period of my life, a little reminder to get back with the program and get on with my life, to be fair to myself and my aspirations and what is important to me.

I credit China with first sparking my interest in photography. I'll admit that I never really thought much of the intricacies and difficulties of photography before China, before intense bouts of voyeurism and musings on life, before peering into a way of life and culture so different from my own, before bveing seized with a strange and touching desire to capture a rhythm of life that may be disappearing forever. Not to be melodramatic about it or anything. And therefore, in a way, I credit China with ultimatley sparking the PhotoADay challenge, among other things.

Some days China feels very close, eerily so, and some days it feels awfully foreign. And as much as I can describe a place in an email or my other blog, I think there's nothing like a photograph to really give you a sense of what I'm talking about. I've mentioned before that it took a year in Beijing for me to appreciate suburbia, something I never thought would happen. Living where i do now is practically the closest thing I'm going to get to China in this city, other than Chinatown [which, BTW, is rather touristy anyways, not that I don't love going there and wandering the renaoness and reminding myself that the good comes with the bad, let us not remember last year with rose-tinted glasses only!]

Yup, another stalking photo. It sometimes amazes me what a little patience can bring about.

I think this post is nowhere near where I intended to go with it when I first logged in to Blogger, but I don't much care. Finally had a day off work and it was lovely, catching up with an old friend, shopping in the new hood, a walk in Golden Gate Park and quietly watching fields of soccer players running about and remembering my days of sports and wishing those were still upon me, a nice loooooooooooooooong nap, reading Chinese comic books and laughing out loud, cooking for myself, and the random tooting-about-the-net that seems like such a luxury these days. Once upon a time it was almost a vice, that's how much I indulged myself, but these days, man, these days you gotta learn to fend for yourself.

There are more things to wish to do in this life time than are humanly possible [for me anyways, we have to be realistic about what we can accomplish], but cherish that ambition, Jessica, even if you can't pluck every single star from the sky upon which you've set your heart.

48-50: new perspectives, a new year, a new pad

48: A Fresh Perspective. And there I was, biking along at sunset and sadly bemoaning the fact that yet another day had passed where I had failed to take a single picture, the light was fading quickly, and just how often can you fail in an annual challenge?

Then I looked down. Loved the way my skirt matched my bike. How my black shoes reflected back into the black handlebars. A white button-down shirt is one of my favorite clothing items of all time. A series, a long series of photographs, ensued. I have deleted many so as not to bore you. Needless to say, I must apologize for the fuzziness; apparently these are not easy angles to photograph at, especially in fading light.

Really, I will try to bike in just about anything. Although I've discovered that much as I'd like will power to be the be-all-end-all when it comes to this, there are just some items of clothing that I can't bike in. Bohemian skirts, generally, too much fabric if they get past a certain length. Long skirts with no slits in them. I suppose I should mention I generally don't fare well in anything that ends above the knee - never quite sure what to do with myself [and at 5'2" finding skirts too SHORT is generally not my problem anyways]. But oh well. I am generally successful in the transportation endeavors, and extremely happy for it.

49: Happy New Year!

Gosh I miss lotus root. And yes, we had the customary fish. Steamed fish. Cantonese style. There's no beating that.

50: A New Place to Call Home. That's right, I moved! I'm renting out a room in the Sunset. Gosh what a great location. Just perfect for me, after what I learned to love and learned about myself in China. The room itself is a converted dining room, complete with fireplace and all - typical San Francisco, I think, and exquisitely quirky and one-of-a-kind. Small but cozy, I've already got myself a little perch from which to watch life ramble by on the streets below.

That little lamp, absolutely thrifty, from an estate sale that I spied on the way to a garage sale in my weekend of trolling up and down the peninsula in search of pieces to furnish my little room. I have to admit that there really hasn't been a February challenge [other than putting myself on a crafting budget], but I am keeping in the spirit of January and attempting, as much as possible, to furnish everything second-hand. I know some of my friends want to move away from the slapdash, mismatched look of a college apartment, but seeing as I never had the privelage of such an apartment, I'm perfectly happy to go with that for the time being. So is my wallet, and so is the environment.

I seem to be missing a couple days

But I guess that happens sometimes in life. Its been kinda a rough week. I think, if anything, this validates what I've been saying all along, that I really shouldn't drive in to work, certainly not 3 days in a row. On the bright side, I did manage to find parking most days that didn't require parallel parking. Its really bad when I drive, because I quasi-zone out most of the time.

The other night I realized, again, just how much I miss having Chinese in my life. Sure I use it at work sometimes, and I love it when I do, but ... I don't know, I miss having more, I guess. One of those themes that is inextricably intertwined into my life, I suppose. So I busted out the C-pop collection from the college days [a year in China did little to update that, sadly but slightly predictably] and started in on my Chinese history cartoons.


45: Suddenly Pink. Where have all the cherry blossoms sprung from? They are so beautiful. This coloring is awfully wonky, but anyways, beautiful blossom from around the apartment that have suddenly burst forth to greet us, each and every morning.

46: Walk With Me. Snapped from the Civic Center area. I love it when people are out and about in the city, walking around. One of the things I hate about suburbia, to be honest - that people don't walk as much, that you can't walk as much, all those little CO2's and NO2's and SO2's [um ... or SOx and NOx?] spewing into the atmosphere. I love that people might choose to walk, even if they need something to help them along their way.

47: The Way It Hangs. This is our wall-of-cards from Xmas time, still up, probably to remain up until we move out of here. That card on the left is the latest addition. Daddy, you are too cute.

This one's for the coworkers. Happy birthday C-H!

40, 41

40: For M. Sighs with contentment. Making things that turn out *about* how I wanted them to never ceases to make me happy, if just for a little bit. The bag is probably a little too floppy for its own good, but I'm not really into the interfacing I've got on hand at the moment, and there just wasn't quite the time to go out and get some more.

41: Vestiges of the Storm. Hm. Do we think that People would not like RandomGirl treading ever-so-slightly into their front yards to snap pictures she sees while out on a walk/run? Sorry People, I only mean it as a compliment to the little pieces of beauty that exist within the parameters of your abode. But yes, I will be more respectful in the future. My apologies.

This one I only tread as far as the apartment grounds. We've been quasi-droughting it so far ... will February be a month of nonstop rainfall as it was last year, or is this merely a teaser, to whet the appetite rather than quench the thirst?

38, 39: Small Moments with Friends

38: Along For The Ride. I kinda loved this street performer taking advantage of hour half-hour-long fire drill where 12 floors worth of workers are milling about the sidewalk, to perform his stuff and rustle up a little business. Life is really great like that sometimes. Ran into an oooooooold friend, very randomly, during the fire drill, as well as a girl I worked briefly with several years ago and have since run into in the oddest places.

39: Round Things. Breakfast with A. She very kindly let me crash with her last night. SEriously, I don't know where I"d be without the dear generous friends and coworkers who offer me lifts and let me crash. <3<3^10000000,>

Haven't been creating much of late. Haven't had the time. But the boss' birthday is coming up and I've got a tote in the WIP pile with work colors in it, which just so happen to be her favorite colors. She's having a dinner tomorrow night [I've taken the day off] and they're probably off to a bar afterwards ... we'll see if I make it up into the city. I do have to work weekends until Gala; I may relish a day to myself. My boss is sooperdooper and my coworkers are fantastic people ... but sometimes you need to take care of yourself. We'll see.

36, 37

36: Girl in the Television. Some days I dress ridiculously cute. Cute like a school girl cute. High school. This is quite a spring welcoming ensemble, very pastel and feminine. Yes, I repeat, I am quite the narcissist at times. We're breaking in the coworkers to the skirt collection. See those bunny ears on the TV? Them's on loan from the uncle. Love those. Love that we're so 20th Century in this household. You'd think that after the great dearth of American TV in China, I would be all over television programming here. But eh.

37: Breakfast With Daddy. Banana bread baked over the weekend. Dude, I slept really poorly last night, and then this morning I was up super early and unhappy about that, so off I went rushing into my parent's room hoping that my dad would be at his morning exercises already so that we could do them together. Instead it was a very nice bonding moment of LifeDiscussions, hence running late for breakfast hence the banana bread instead of our usual cereal. I am so glad I've got my little enzyme back, banana bread is so much nicer with milk.

29-35

29: Facilitation Tips From E. He's so much better at making presentation visuals than I am.

30: How I Love The Fog. Just having it billow over me makes me so happy.

30: Some Days Are Busier Than Others. Taking over intake for H and C-H.

My girls so far. We did the Draw A PIG activity. Blurred the photo for their anonymity.

34: Survival of the Fittest. The water has been shut off at the house, so we are carting plastic jugs over from the apartment to water the plants. Luckily most of them are drought tolerant, but still, it ain't pretty back there.

35: Sunday Morning Brunch. Yes, I skipped a couple days. I'm tired. I'm not always in the mood or have the time to hunt out interesting photos. But still we keep on swimming in this world.

28: The Happy Result of A Little Serendipity, also known as You Be The Judge

Today I bring you a number of variations on the same shot. Oh, nature.

28: The Happy Result of A Little Serendipity. Just happened to be walking down the road when I noticed this tree with the pretty purple flowers. Out came the camera, just as the cell phone rang. So as I'm talking to dad I'm also snapping off shots of this pretty scene, and a little bee comes out of nowhere and starts zooming around. Undeterred, I continue my one-handed-photography-while-brain-simultaneously-controls-mouth-and-attempts-coherent-thoughts. And this, my friends, is the happy result of that bit of serendipity.

Again I had too much fun with tinkering with the photos. May I present 3 more versions of this shot, all cropped and edited in various ways [by the by, the above version was edited as well. Never one to let well enough alone]:

Let me know which one you like best! Sometimes I think I might just get too fancy and simpler is better. If I had a super duper camera then I could do this focus/blur thing a whole lot better, but I think I have to wait at least a year to scratch together some money and hope that prices come down somewhat [a lot], as commodities tend to do as their appeal catches on and they get further away from their initial entry into the market.

27: A Matter of Logic; self photo plus the question of photography, revisited; wherein I repeat myself

27: A Matter of Logic. Now, when they have a sign that says, "$0.20/button or $5 for a cup of buttons," logic dictates that we would go for the cup [a good-sized cup, I might add], right? ... This is what I tell myself, anyways.

So back to the question of tinkering with photographs. After some thought, I realized that the point of the quasi-self-portrait from last time was not to showcase the flower pin, even though that was the original intent of taking the photo, or rather, that series of photos [I deleted most of the initial photos, and actually, its funny how these things evolve. Initially I was just straight-on taking a photo of myself in the mirror and focusing in on the flower pin. But everything kept coming out blurry, so then I tried propping the camera on my head and aiming it downwards, my stab at increased stability. From THAT the idea of using the triple mirrors in the bathroom to play with multiple images came into my mind, and that's how we ended up where we are now.] Really, the idea of the final photograph was the multiple 'selves' and what that says, so here's a revised version of last time's B/W version of 26:

And here it is with film grain. Not quite sure which one I like better, but I definitely like it better than my last B/W focal attempt. In fact, I might almost like them better than the all-color version.

And I know that nobody really cares about the millionth tote bag that I've made, but oh well:

This bag is to try to bribe my mom to use fewer disposable bags while grocery shopping. We're trying the 'reuse paper bags' method, but I thought a new tote might also do the trick.

I've had these two fabrics for awhile, and they're both thrifted finds that make me smile. Thrifted ~> Recycle ~> to Reduce Waste = :-). When I first finished the bag I wasn't nearly as crazy about the fabric combination as I thought I was going to be, but its slowly growing on me. The inside is lined with the same fabric as the handles. Let me tell you, that is a stunning print [you can also see it here but a little 1" strip doesn't really do it justice]. It was one of those TriplyHappy thrifting finds [1) a king-sized comforter with pillow cases = tons of fabric; 2) 100% cotton!; 3) half-priced day at Goodwill, score] ... expect it to show up in lots of places [see 1].

I gotta say, the bag's definitely got its imperfections [why is it that I don't always get better at things as I make more of them?] including the fact that one of the handles is twisted. Now, the old me would have gritted my teeth and picked out the stitches. The new me is learning to accept the imperfections and see them as 'character,' instead. Quirky. Adds to the charm. As a perfectionist who has always had a very specific asthetic that appeals to me, I'm really trying to learn to appreciate the character and quirkiness that comes with handmade. That comes with this blog - like that picture up there, #27? Yeah, the fabric's technically upside-down, but am I going to rotate the picture? Nah. Whatever dude. So yeah. Acceptance. Something to work on in the coming year.

24-26

24: Because We Like Red Doors. From my walk with E during lunch. Yeay lunchtime walks. I think I am officially behind on the 500 Mile Goal.

Also from that evening, fruit for Alice. A small token of appreciation for taking me in so often during this past month. I brought some of these from home, and then since at work we sometimes get food from the food bank and I am the only one in the office to eat the green apples [remember those?], I loaded up on some more to give to Alice.

25: The Evening Commute Home. Shot of the civic center area. I'm not crazy about this shot, but hey, some days you only snap a couple shots. S is totally right, this is an awesome place to walk by on the way back from work. Just like I hike a mile up Van Ness most mornings to start off my day, often I hike a mile back down to catch the bus right after everyone gets off at Market and the 47 is blissfully empty on its way to deadending at the Caltrain depot.

26: Mirror, Mirror On the Wall. Actually the original purpose of this shot was to highlight my gorgeous flower pin, a great garage sale find that I found as part of my January challenge. The woman said she thought it might be from the 60s. I love accessories, I really do, and this one ... well, I love the statement that it makes. Definitely on the lookout for more outfits to carry the color and boldness. I love those things but I also love feminine and bohemian-skirt-slightly-ethnic-chic looks, as well as the TotalClashing look [more like TOTALclashing look], and then there's the GeneralImpracticalnessLook. Almost too many personalities to be contained in one wardrobe. Really, I know it sometimes seems shallow in this society to be very into clothing [not much for fashion, but I do love putting outfits together], but I can't help it, its something I like. Now personal grooming on the other hand, I still need a lot of work on. Makeup? *looks around wildly.* Those eyebrows? Eh. Oh well. Maybe one of these decades.

See now this is a great example of how much I still need to learn about photography. This was another effect that I went for via Picasa, and I have to say that I'm rather conflicted about the result. I think I like the first version better. I mean, sure this focuses in on the flower, which was the point [and I guess if it was on the other side then you could be melodramatic and say it was symbolic of the heart, etc.etc.etc.] ... but I dunno. I think it doesn't quite work as well. But maybe other people think otherwise.

Hehe. Laundry nights at the apartment. Being the slight-environmental-freak that I am, I've been convincing the parents to hang dry a lot of their clothing. Elsa and I did it all the time in China cuz dryers just didn't really exist there. But I used to do it in college too, with some of my clothing, even though it might be a pain to run up and down between the laundry and my room, carrying baskets of wet clothing and then hunting around for every bare spot in my room to hang up damp socks and underwear and assorted t's and jeans and whatnot. I dunno. I kinda like it. And I'm sure the environment thanks me too. Kinda makes up for the other ways I'm not so environmentally conscious.