coming of age

my birthday came and went. i am now closer to 40 than 30. years of age that is. i am 36. that's right. i admit it.

some co-workers/friends, including austin and james, took me out to lunch at vie de france (which has moved from one wing of south coast plaza to another since my last visit). i've always secretly wanted a mr. potato head, so it was with much delight that i received the darth tater from austin, as well as a cheshire cat mug & 3d drawing pad from james. in the afternoon, laura brought in cake, and we all celebrated. they sang happy birthday to me three times, which was three times too many. really, it was very thoughtful, and i'm thankful. they tried to get me to say how old i am, but i wouldn't, partly because it was more fun not to.

it's all very cliche, what i'm feeling. like a song about unrequited love. done to death, yet poignant because it's so pathetically sincere. why should i care how old i am? i don't look my age at all. that's not what i'm uneasy about. it's the old clock that's ticking away, and family members, friends and acquaintances rubbing it in my face. i'm sure they don't mean to be malicious, but what can i do about the fact that i only have a limited number of good baby-making years ahead of me.

friends and family around my age (and younger) are making babies left and right. austin had twins. julie had a baby a few years ago and is probably ready for another one. my cousin thierry had a baby last year. mike's sister is due in january. my cousin liz had a baby 3 months ago, and seeing her baby definitely had a "psychological" effect on me, as mike put it. my family is hinting, not so subtlely, that it's my turn, and to hurry up, i don't have much time left.

the thing is, i could have a baby in a year or two if i really wanted to. i'm not prepared now, but i could have a full time professional job that would prepare us financially. no, i have to want so badly to be an artist, and go to grad school, a "dream" still so remote, even though i do also want to have a baby and settle down and have a "normal" but lively life. i really do want my life, my desires to be simple, but something is pushing me to want something as uncertain as the underlying laws of the universe.

i don't know when i will go to grad school. i keep putting it off, because i don't think my work is quite to the level, and i keep changing directions and have a zillion excuses and insecurities that seem to distract me. i don't know when or if i will have a baby. mike wants to have kids some day in the distant future, and i share his thoughts, but i wonder if he considers that the some day in the future has to be within a certain time frame if it's to happen at all. sometimes i think that it will be fine either way, and other times, i feel a definite pull, even if it is mostly biological, when i see babies.

a corollary to this pull is a desire to have and take care of furry animals. the chinchillas & angora bunnies i recently saw at fiber fest were adorable and begging me to take them home. it would be nice to settle down in a house that could be a project with land for lots of furry animals.

...

other than the extra age-driven pensiveness, it's been a nice birthday. van, a friend from austin, emailed to wish me a happy birthday. i am amazed that she remembered! i haven't spoken to her in so long, and i have no idea when her birthday is or how she knew it was mine. it was a sweet surprise.

speaking of surprises, mike sprung a trip to san francisco for the weekend for my birthday on me last night. i was totally surprised. i didn't knit when i lived there, but am now excited to discover the city's lys-es(?). though i am happy for the trip, i am a little worried about our fish moraes. he has some serious swim bladder issues, and has been floating sideways in the tank. he still has lots of energy, and tries to swim around when we come up to the tank, but to no avail. we've tried given him peas, antibiotics, salt to the water, but nothing seems to be working. aviva will be checking in on the cats & fish. i hope all will be well.

if i really were as old as my mom says i am, i wouldn't be so worried, right? i should be wizened.

monkey sock

monkey sock
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

for about a week, i was mulling over whether the needle and yarn combination on the elegant ribbed stockings from interweave's 25 favorite socks was going to work well. the pattern calls for a sport weight yarn, which for some reason, i was having difficulty finding at the various lys.

i picked up some blue sky melange, made of 100% baby alpaca and recommended by anne at amano, for the pattern, but anne had thought the size 7 needles that were specified for the top portion of the calf and leg seemed large. not sure if it was the mere suggestion or my own paranoia, but i was trudging through the cables (my first time working cables), and finding them to be "holey."

i asked two of my fellow knitsibs at the web night snb meeting what they thought, to which they asked if i knitted a gauge swatch. i didn't. they gave me a look that made me start to worry. they suggested i go down to size 6, which was specified for the bottom part of the leg. the pattern does not decrease, but instead uses 3 different needle sizes to change the size of the sock. i tried to go down, but goofed on some of the needles such that part of a row was knit in 6 and part in 7, so when i got home, i frogged the whole thing and knitted up a gauge swatch. turns out i was on the money as far as sts per in, so i started the sock over, but didn't get into the cabling portion before putting the sock away. i'm still not confident about knitting with the size 7 needles with the yarn.

after all that, i didn't want to think about it, so i started a different sock pattern, which went on quite smoothly and quickly. i'm digging the new pattern and and the colors in the yarn--lorna's laces sheperd sock yarn in colorway red rover.

tomorrow is my birthday, so i decided to take advantage of the birthday discount they have at my lys--alamitos bay yarn company--and went and bought a bunch of sock yarn--more lorna's laces, in vera, envy, mineshaft and more red rover--and some lace weight merino yarn. the lace style book i ordered arrived today, and i'm keen on doing a shawl from it.

photograph of my late father, enamel

photograph of my late father
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

i have begun to spray paint what will be the fronts of the boards where the leds will be visible. i don't think i've finished a third of the total, which is 6200, and already need to get more spray enamel.

photograph of my late father, a fresh start

photograph of my late father
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

the 7200 pcbs i ordered a month ago arrived last week. it's been a challenge and slow going to get momentum as the fear of failure looms ever present, but i am making a fresh start of it. 6200 will be used for photograph of my late father and the extra 1000 will go into the led suit i want to construct for a future project. that's right, i am going to make a suit out of leds. that won't even be the final piece. the final piece will consist of photographs of me dancing in the suit. fun, fun, fun.

meanwhile, i am continuing to edit and crop the photo squares that will become my heart, my mind, my soul... the number of photos is large, which will be great for the finished piece, but more time-consuming attempting to line things up and make sure i don't leave any part of my body out or duplicate. so far, i have cropped about 5600 squares, all of which, i will be hand sewing. more fun...

clyde elizabeth eberly

clyde elizabeth eberly
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

my cousin liz brought hers & ingrid's new baby girl--clyde elizabeth eberly--to the west coast to visit with the family. with only 25% asian blood (liz is half vietnamese), she understandably does not look very asian--not that there's anything wrong with that. I find the genetics interesting as i am vietnamese and my bf is caucasian and i wonder about these things.

clyde's slate grey eyes contrast with her reddish light brown hair. mike grew out of the blonde hair and blue eyes he had when he was a child. it's hard to tell now what the baby will look like later on. que sera sera...

she really is an adorable baby--super alert and curious and pretty solid. mike said she had psychological magic that she worked on all the women members of my family swooning over her, but i think the men were quite charmed by her as well. even my typical teenage boy macho cousin found her irresistible.

spinster

last tuesday, i took a hand spinning class with john pitblado at amano yarn in venice. i have tried (in my feeble and unsuccessful) way to not add any more hobbies/passions/distractions/money pits to my long list of already existing ones, but it's not like this is completely new. i did get an introduction at maker faire in 2006 to spinning using a couple cds, rubber washers, a dowel & hook. since the evolution of my new knitting life, i thought i would give it a go and hope that i not get too involved immediately. plus, how much roving could i go through? i am hand-spinning after all. as long as i don't even consider a big expensive, wheel, it should be fine?

it was a lot of fun, and relaxing in a get your groove, find your zen kind of way. i don't think i'll be doing a lot of spinning, but there's is definitely a certain magic that happens when the spindle sort of sucks the roving into the twist. if i could get to the point of spinning some yarn for socks, that would do me well.

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friday, mike & i caught the eden's edge show at ucla's hammer museum. if you haven't had a chance, you should check it out soon, as it is closing this weekend. the show consists of 15 LA artists whose work seems to embody the fractured and shifting LA experience. I liked most of the work, and thought it was well done. The theme wasn't something I am particularly passionate about, but among the things i observed were the skill and immersion the artists must possess in their chosen mediums.

i am envious, as i have not really felt immersed myself in any one medium and often wonder if that would help my work. i don't think one should feel limited by any particular medium, and i fear getting stuck doing a lot of the same work. after one makes a particular piece, why spend years doing variations on the same piece? on the difficult side, each new piece is an experiment and a learning experience. starting a piece wherein you don't know much about the materials can involve a lot of failures and frustration before you get close to what you are striving for. this is what i have learned about my big led project. oh, there have been other ideas for other led projects, but i have not gotten to those ideas because i am still trying to resolve this one. my ideas seem so much further ahead of where i am. maybe one never catches up, but it would be nice to have more knowledge/experience under my belt as i start my next piece...

pain in the arse

mike and i were snoozing along with the first murmurings of consciousness as mouse cuddled up to us this morning, hoping to get our attention as soon as we were cognizant for fresh food. not that he didn't still have dried food in his bowl. he was hoping for either fresher dried food or wet food, which i've been interspersing with the dried. since his last dental checkup wasn't great, and the cat "dentist" recommended dried food, we've been keeping him to the dried, which has made him persistent to no end at meowing and looking at the dried food then looking at me with sad eyes.

all of a sudden, we hear a loud crash, waking us to a start. we stared at each other, and i immediately yelled "henry!" and we both leapt out of bed. sure enough, henry had his paw in the literal fish tank...i have to back up to give some context.

we have a 25 or so gallon fish tank with 2 medium sized goldfish--a redcap oranda & a black moor--, 2 little white fish (not sure what kind, mike inherited from old office mate who had them at the office, but left the firm), a zebra fish and an albino algae eater. the redcap i asked mike to get in feb (actually the second one, the first one died after a week), was about 1/5 the size of the black moor. now they are almost the same size.

well, moraes, the black moor, has been sickly as of late, getting swim bladder and not enough food (i think). the redcap is quite aggressive and smart, (and poor moraes is by far not the brightest fish in the tank). when i drop food in the tank, moraes goes crazy and gulps blindly at the surface of the water. we had to separate him from the others twice now, once when he injured himself and lost some scales and again last week, so i could hand-feed him peas. that's right, i was literally hand feeding a goldfish peas from my finger tips directly to his mouth otherwise they would fall to the bottom, where he had trouble swimming to or he would swim about blindly having trouble finding the pea.

he rejoined the tank on sat. last night, i went to feed the fish, and noticed him floating listlessly sideways. he was breathing fairly heavily (the only sign he was alive), but not moving much. we were really worried, and didn't want to stress him by putting him in a tank by himself, so we had to separate the redcap, his main competition for food. i know. this all seems insane to be doing for fish. so on to the rest of the story...

henry has been eyeing the fish tanks, and we have caught him up on the counter. in fact, the last time moraes was in a separate tank, we noticed one morning that the top had been pushed off. this morning, i guess henry got more aggressive and must have stuck his paw and used some force, because he managed to push a small plastic fish tank with the redcap off the counter and onto the kitchen floor, causing the loud crash, waking us up and causing us to fear for our fishy's life. there was water everywhere, and henry ran off with no sign of the fish. we scrambled around, moving things and trying to figure out what happened to the fish (i really hoped/didn't think it was in henry's belly. he really doesn't eat much, and is rather picky. his main motivation was mainly to wreak havoc or rather, have some fun). after a few minutes, we found the poor thing at the bottom of the recycling bin adjacent to the counter. the fishy was in a bit of shock, and alive but not responsive for a bit, but was fine after about 15 min.

i was still sleepy and tired when i went to work this morning after all that. now it's time to give moraes more peas.

first socks

knitting fo
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

i finished these a couple weeks ago, but am only now getting around to posting a photo. i made no attempts to match the socks up. i'm not really bothered that they don't match. these will be great to wear around the house when mike & i visit his parents in maine over the winter holidays. they live in an historical home in a somewhat rural area - meaning no central heating and sparsely populated.

to dos

i decided to catch up on some house chores...the day flew by.

1. fed the fishies; hand-fed moraes some peas for his swim bladder
2. washed dishes
3. made the bed
4. fed the cats
5. gave henry his fluids
6. wound 4 hanks of baby alpaca yarn for sock knitting
7. swept around the house & mopped the kitchen & bathroom
8. dropped off video at blockbuster
9. kinkos
10. dropped off some books at the library & picked up a new book
11. went to wild oats for a few groceries
12. fed aviva's cats & turtle
13. reorganized the fridge to make room for groceries
14. had some lunch
15. took down trash & recycling
16. repotted & watered a bunch of plants
17. showered
18. had an afternoon snack
19. took some photos

processing

processing
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

inspired by the polar rose equation. more examples on flickr.

processing

mike and i finished our first week (of two) of the processing workshop at machine project. having been somewhat versed in actionscript (by no means an expert), i was already familiar with some of the syntax/semantics and general programming. the language is a lot like as. since i've been using as in the context of work, it's nice to be able to experiment, and some of the things i have been doing for the class ( essentially programming drawings ) has been fun, and not so much utilitarian as the usual things for work.

all of this is also great programming practice. aside from the two computer science classes in high school in which i programmed in pascal, i have never had any formal schooling/training. all the web programming i have learned on the job and on my own, dissecting someone else's code, and figuring out how things work.

our instructor, mark allen, seems to have a lot of experience teaching, especially in demoing technical concepts to non-programmers.

moca la

moca la
Originally uploaded by bluepupae.

questioning from a neurotic artist-crafter wannabe

summer, once again, has proven itself to be a difficult time for me to "work" on art . i have a collection of excuses - "oh, but i worked so hard for months", "i did finish a piece in may", "the lazy days of summer inspires, well, laziness", "so many interests, so little time"...i really don't have an excuse. after all, i am only working part-time so that i can spend more time on art. there really is never enough time...

ironically, my girlfriend aviva remarked recently, when i showed her what i had been working on, "wow, you're so productive"--maybe not in those exact words, but i was surprised that she thought i had been so busy. of course, i showed her my knitting & woodturning, which does not (at least for now) fall into the art category, so doesn't count. sure, i have some vague plans of incorporating those skills into an art project at some point (soon, i hope). everything i do and learn is stored away for some future project. that's my justification and official response to the critical voice in my head. ok, so perhaps there is something to mike's point that i am spending too much time looking at, buying and touching yarn. being obsessive can have it's benefits and detriments.

i do wonder about art vs. craft. the exhibition mike and i went to on friday at moca-- poetics of the handmade--is fodder for thought. what is the difference between art and craft? i love getting into the details, working with my hands, embracing the obsessive side of my nature, finding the internal logic, developing and perfecting the skills and working it. this can be an experience shared by both, though not necessarily required by art. does the distinction have to do with intentionality? this is the thought that enters my brain when someone asks what makes something art. i don't really like to put vague thoughts into words for fear that it detract from my making art. among other things, i hope that my work incorporates my belief that art is defined by the maker, and begins, at least for me, as a personal endeavor.

with regards to craft, there exists a relationship with function. it seems in the film, Craft in America (which by the way is awesome and amazing), craft is defined by being useful, although some of the featured artists made things that only had the appearance of utility. does it matter? obviously, i'm thinking about it. i like making things, useful AND otherwise. it's not that one is better than the other, but when time is limited, i often have to make decisions about which of the many things on my want to do list has higher priority. my attempt to manage time involves compartmentalizing things.

the artists in the poetics show have managed to bring craft to their art, and art to their craft. i have to say i loved most of the pieces, which included 2200 (turned and/or cast) tubes of varying shades of lipstick in finely crafted shapes, what appeared to be a somewhat languishing and rotting vegetable garden (not real but looked damn real down to wilty asparagus and tomato plants), brightly colored plasticine mooshed together and finely sculpted into swirly psychedelic imagery (the photos of another piece by the same artist of birds made from plasticine looked like a beautiful oil painting), an installation of mechanistic-human figures, flowers, butterflies being gobbled up and trampled by war-like machines spewing fumes--all cut from colorful currency--that would be money in laymen's terms, abstract minimalist architectural landscapes cut from paper, drypoint (a printmaking process) done delicately and with obsessive detail on aluminum foil, a fascinating sculpture made from toothpicks and plasticine...

even if the making of art is as elusive as defining it for myself, i am "experiencing" it plenty to be inspired. i boxed up version "1.5" of photo of my late father, but am now thinking about how i can recycle/turn it into some sort of sculpture. i also have an idea for the leftover plywood squares from my 28 days project.