prints exhibit

we went to see the special exhibit of prints at the baltimore museum of art (free art museum!) today and i LOVE some of the prints and they make me dream of printing my own textiles.  (i apologize in advance for my stinky pictures with my dirty grainy camera with lots of glare and reflection.  excited to browse further now?)

these prints were made in 1930 by sonia delaunay, a french artist.  i would love to make some dresses with textiles of these prints.  i'm not going to try to be all art history or art critic or something, but i love the blocks of color and the patterns and movement.

these really struck me too, prints by a russian artist el lissizky, made in the 1920's.  they were intended for a russian futurist opera based on "the ultimate triumph of modernism and technology, wherein the sun is replaced by a man-made source of energy."  the meaning behind them are as powerful as the images.  they remind me of metropolis by fritz lange.

and these are by a contemporary artist name julie mehretu who describes her images as "a little world that went beserk."  i love that.  i love these.

and these i liked before i even found out they were made by etching an ant's path around a box for hours. 

it's going to be forever and ever before i can afford a real camera and i will probably continue to complain about that in every post.  that sounds like fun, right?  until then, i should probably figure out how to clean my lens.  particularly because i spilled peach juice on it 3 1/2 years ago.

hopefully when i can afford a camera i can afford photography lessons too!

a new old dresser

before

here's my sad little dresser, bought on craiglist in 2006 for $35.  many things got coated in this shade of leftover brown paint back in those days, and i put on some fake-crystal-looking knobs from home depot.  those things are junk, as you can see from how many remained on the dresser five years later.

so, with inspiration from none other than pinterest (you're shocked) i did the baking soda and vinegar and steel wool thing and added some beautiful handpainted knobs from buckleberry on etsy and came up with this:

after!

i'm noticing now that i should have pushed the drawers all the way in, but it never looks like that in real life (actually this is pretty good) so, oh well.

i also hung up my necklaces after seeing the odette sneak peak.  this corner still needs some work, and one day the scarves might be hung on something other than the blue twine our christmas tree was wrapped in.

by the way, buckleberry is a great little shop and the designer was SO helpful and accommodating, helping me pick just the right color and shipping super fast even though it was christmas time and these were not a gift order.  here's the only knob close-up picture i took that wasn't terrible and blurry:

oh and this is funny.  much of the delay was due to this $#%#$ knob that would not come out because the screw was stripped.  MANY attempts by both ben and i, two different screw extractors, two different tantrums (moving has been stressful sometimes, ok?!) and finally i just drilled the heck out of the hole it was in and hammered it out.  that felt good.  and here is the little sucker:

i saved this knob for weeks to take a picture for this blog.  lame.

another project soon once i find the right color spray paint.  !  how exciting.

one line a day

i know this project has made the rounds of pinterest recently, via design*sponge, via ashley from under the sycamore - but i actually made this over a year ago!  i never used it, i didn't think it was the right gift for anyone else at the time, and then lo and behold, perusing pinterest a few weeks ago i saw that my lovely friend kim had pinned it!  just the right gift.  i surprised her with that one!  i will say i took virtually no creative liberties and copied this almost identically from the original.  i guess there was nothing to fix.

one reason i never used it was because i got this journal in 2011, and I LOVE IT.  and now i am loving filling in 2012 and seeing what was going on this time last year.  fun to see prophecies, such as pondering whether or not we will end up in baltimore when we were on a road trip last may, or wondering if elmore was getting sick back in july, a month before he died.  wait, that one was not fun.  but interesting, or maybe eerie to see i guess.

slowly but surely, home projects are to come...

the first sunrise of 2012

for the second year in a row, we pulled ourselves out of bed, bundled up with tea, cider, and treats and found a sunrise-watching spot... a little different than last year's spot...

an homage to our new, gritty city.  the sun rose over the domino sugar sign!  it was perfect, actually.

and bam, there it was!  even though the locale was very different, the sun didn't disappoint (as if the sun cares how i feel).

my favorite way to start the new year.

ironically, i guess this would fall under "personal," so soon after writing off the "personal."  a couple comments reminded me that the number of comments on a post doesn't always indicate interest, and i've had some reminders that real-life support isn't always what it's cracked up to be...  i'm still not sure i feel very satisfied or comfortable writing much "personal" and i guess what i want is for my creations, and hopefully one day my photos, to be more inspiring than whatever news i might have.

that's on me to push myself and step it up!  crafty dayeseye's recent post (particularly "eight") and her attention towards growth really inspired me.  but i couldn't figure out how to leave a comment!!

just my luck

right after i posted my mitts... i lost them.

should i knit new ones?  it's 27 degrees right now...   good god.  or i lost them in the basket we keep hats, mittens and gloves in.

::sigh::

a hundred posts?

well, this post was supposed to have pictures of today's sunrise, like last year's new years.  but i spent all day dueling with technology, forgetting to get the pictures off the camera before ben took off with it until wednesday.

woops.

this is my 100th post.  i can't tell if that's a lot or not - i've had this blog for two and half years... in those years i have learned a lot about knitting and sewing, but do you know what post got the most comments?  my cat dying.  that sucked, and i was hesitant to post anything because i typically avoid personal posts, but it verified my suspicion - that we're all just interested in getting into someone's life.

blogs are not real life, not even close, and i am absolutely guilty of doing the same.  i'm not really interested in changing my blog towards the more personal; as much as i love comments too much, posting that stuff here ends up being unsatisfying.   

so i guess what i'd like to do is push myself a little more, learn to take better pictures, and start coming up with more original designs.

this is way too much typing without a picture.

i don't really make new year's resolutions, but hopefully 2012 will bring a finished meredith.  because 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 didn't.  what?!  yes, this is a sweater of epic frogging and time-outs.  because apparently an 11-color fairisle isn't ideal for one's first sweater.

GAUGE.

these are the before pictures... the back is now unraveled for the 2nd (or maybe 3rd time).  i'm starting over.  again.  i don't think i even like this sweater anymore - it's about having knitting closure!!