Sunlight and Yarn

I am constantly on the lookout for three things: new trails, bargain deals on ANYTHING and new art mediums. Oh and good books. That seems to go over my small limit of three, but I have narrowed it down to those. Of all those things there is a plethora of each. My search never ends. My new art medium this month is yarn and the art of crochet. I picked up a few handy books at the library (totally worth it) and now I am starting on a multicolored blanket and practicing with some flower headbands. It is one of those things that is mindless yet extremely entertaining. I love it already and its only been day two. My little sister (the 10-year-old) has picked it up as well. We are learning new stitches together. On top of this I have added another interest: photography.

I always enjoy taking good pictures and I took the opportunity to practice on my brother, Joe. He is a senior in high school and we all know what that means: SENIOR PICTURES! Instead of paying the ridiculous prices for sitting fees, studio time and a photographer who is just going to crop and photoshop your face, I took out my little/awesome Kodak digital to Lumiere Park in St. Louis. For those who don't know what it is...it an awesome sculpture park in St. Louis (off highway 44). Despite living in STL for 22 years, I had never been. It was a great field trip.

We started out our adventure with a pit stop at Plato's Closet. It is a thrift store that buys gently worn brand names for teens and twenty something people. We used that time to find some sweet shirts for Joe to wear on our photo shoot. He bought a few shirts and an awesome green/purple jacket (that I am def. going to post later). I was able to find some more running gear, a Columbia jacket and another jacket that I swear I will never stop wearing. This was all for under $35.

The awesome jacket that Joe found in the Men's section. It is worth every eight dollars I spent.

Nike running shirt, coolmax style.

Columbia jacket that I found for WAY less than what it's worth. It will keep me warm for winters to come.

The park is full of random sculptures. I could try to explain this, but you will just have to see it for yourself. Here are some of the best pics that we came up with. One will ultimately be his senior picture that he can hand out to all his friends...at least end up on our mantle.

The best picture ever, but alas might only make it to Facebook.

Well we all know that no parent would chose this as a picture to frame...but its still cool!

This will be the end of my photo career until the next sibling makes their way to senior year (two more years to go). So until then, this is the extent of my abilities with a digital.

Until my next shopping spree or craft project competed...

TTTTTshirt

Oh the sweet smell of fresh fabric paint. It has been awhile since I have picked those foam brushes, but I did come across some of the famous tees from the past few years. All the designs were made from freezer paper stencils that I sketched, cut out and then painted. Thank you to all the lovely models! ;)

From old to new. One of the first t-shirts I attempted. It has become a favorite.

Guitar shirt that I am almost positive took me three hours to make. It turned out really sweet though.

"Yoshimi" by the Flaming Lips Tee

Fluer de Lei Shirt. Added some glitter in there.

"Man walking away" Tee

Nothing like some 80's flashback t-shirts to make you smile!

Christmas T-shirt for my sister.

On those cloudy days.

Baby Jordan in her "Uncle Anton" onesie.

Babies should be fashionable too?!

For the girl who loves flowers.

"KBB" shirt for one hot boyfriend. Merry Xmas!

Tis NOT the Season

Pool season is officially over and now I move on to bigger and better things, at least that is my hope. So in hopes of moving past the always dreaded pool season, constant cigarette smoke and silly children, this blog is moving on. To what, is the real question. It is going to mixin's of fashion, my creative means for the day and my slowly improving sewing skills. I am sure I will always have more funny stories to put on display for the world to see.

This week I was busy ignoring the fact that I am an adult now still living in my parents house. I ran a total of 25 miles last week and worked out my abs for 40 mins ("8 minute Ab workout" check it out on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWjTnBmCHTY.) My logic is that I shouldn't let my physic decline along with my attitude. On top of this I have done my bargain shopping of the season, spending $80 total on 10 items. Why buy things at full price? I don't believe in it. After taking one to many textile courses, you come to realize how much a shirt from Abercrombie costs to make. Not $25. That much is the truth.

My crafting is up to full force right now. Yesterday I picked up Playdo. Who would of thought this is what I was capable of creating. I give props to all those Cake decorating shows on Food Network.

It is blue, but its still pretty. I should investigate in more colors besides just the primary.

Added a yellow Playdo rose too.

Next on my list is to finally finish the quilt I have been working on all summer. Of course, with every project there have been some glitches. I have overcome them all except for the recent problem. All stores in St. Charles are sold out of white double-folded bias tape. Who knew that it was such a hot commodity!? Until then, the quilt will be missing one side. I still enjoyed a wonderful nap under it yesterday.

While working at the pool long hours, I had enough time to embroider my initials by hand.

Finished quilt!

Don't Talk to Strangers

People like to talk. Most of all they like to talk about themselves. I have always thought of myself as a fairly good listener and I enjoy my curious nature to be fulfilled when people decide to bear their souls to me. What I can’t seem to understand is how people can tell complete strangers intimate details about their lives within the first two seconds of meeting them. I can’t say that I am a super private person, but some information I don’t give quite as freely.

As I was sitting in my chair looking at cookbooks (it was the book of the day) the lawn man, who was cautiously blowing all the newly cut shards of grass back into the yard, stopped in front of me. I simply lifted my head to smile, showing that I knew he was there but it was obvious that I was not looking for any kind of conversation. While his blower is still on and at his side he looks at me and says, “Well it looks like the season is coming to an end, huh?” I said that it sure was and that I had one more week. I thought it would be the end of it, but he had more to say.

“Well yea, we will be done in about a month or so too. I don’t know what we are going to do after that. I mean, we come back here to do some snow removal and stuff but that is about it.”

I tried to pretend like I was interested in what he was saying, but actually I was more interested that this 50 year-old man wanted to talk about his business with me. I kept silent and let him talk.

“My daughter is actually in Hawaii right now and I am thinking about going over there to work. Her fiancé is in the army and is stationed over there so maybe I could go over there. My brother is in the Virgin Islands and I could probably go over there too. My daughter is actually in town right now…but really its just a matter of getting the airfare and time to go over there. You know, I have never been to either of those places.”

At this point I was in awe. Here I was, listening patiently to this man ramble. He seemed to be enjoying the one-sided conversation so I let it continue. He started talking about what he was going to do. I simply wished him good luck and he was on his way.

I thought about starting to wear a Frankenstein mask to work tomorrow. Would people still approach me?

The Powers that be

Sometimes I am in awe at the powers that I hold by simply wearing a red suit with an itchy embroidered logo on the chest. The wildest of children can be controlled with a simple “tweet” and an intense glare. I rank higher than the babysitter and sometimes even higher than the parents themselves. I have reached the ultimate high place of power on the younger beings. Of course I have a few examples to prove my point.

I believe that they are CBMs (Crack Baby Mamma) children. I only assume so by the way that she blatantly ignores them until the point where her drunk friends cant take care of them anymore and she steps in with a booming order that they better listen…or else. Nothing ever follows the “or else”, so maybe that is why I have more power than she does. Although I must admit they listen to their mother, either out of love or fear (I would lean on the later). Well the pool always closes at the same time every night for children, while the adults are allowed to stay. I usually leave a window of time for the parents to round up their children, towels and scattered toys before I make ita point that their children must leave now. The window is roughly 15 minutes. When those minutes began to tick by, I realize that this might be one of those times where someone needed to step in. The children were running everywhere with their floaties still attached to their arms. They had blocked out all callings of their name and didn’t seem to feel anyone grab their arms to shake them into paying attention. Now, my sister Lisa (sometimes nicknamed “the Nazi”) was there with me and I could tell that her patience was slipping. No one should underestimate the temper of someone shorter than 5 foot. She may be short, but I am pretty sure she could pick me up over her head if she wanted to. I didn’t want to deal with the rowdy kids, so I sent Lisa to figure it out while I watched. At this point the little kids were in the baby pool and running away from any adult that tried to capture them. They didn’t see Lisa coming. I watched as they rammed into Lisa’s legs. She calmly looked at them, got on their level looking straight into their bewildered faces. “You need to walk and you need to go home with your mom.” It was simple. They didn’t turn, but seemed to be backing away from Lisa’s face. The woman saw her chance to grab them and did so. Her face showed a mixture of relief and exhaustion. It’s amazing what a lifeguard can do. Amazing.

I must admit I have abused these powers once or twice, but for good reason. Some days I just don’t want to deal with anyone’s crap, so I whip out the sitting out card. This card for me is as good as a “get out of jail free” card in Monopoly. I get that giddy feeling whenever I use it. Like it is sly trick that everyone knows is there but they don’t think I will ever use it. Well, I do. There are certain children that annoy me. I try to ignore them, while obviously watching to make sure they don’t do anything too stupid. But there are days where they just push my buttons. There are so many ways that I can scream “WALK!”. My most recent example is of the twin boys who pretend that they can’t hear me. Really, its super cute how they jog around the pool at half speed and slam their bodies into the water, only to go under right when I realize that they might have crushed their skulls against the side of the pool. They obviously don’t see this, nor do they care. So instead of my usual ignoring-until-they-get-hurt plan, (that works miracles) I decided to pull the kid out the water and give him a talking to. As he was climbing out of the pool I said “Hey, Kevin.” He glanced up, frozen in mid-climb to stare at me. He either wondered how I knew his name or why he was about to get into trouble. “ Listen. I have told you not to run. If you do it one more time, you will sit out. Do you understand?” He looked at me not moving. I asked again, “Do you understand?” He nodded and swam gloomily away. Maybe I shouldn’t of used my quiet harsh tone with him, but you know what: some kids need it.

Activity for the Mindless

Again, I just want to emphasize that I underestimate the pool people. This is how my day began:

Opening up the skimmers after two whole days is a horrible idea. You should always check them daily, just in case there is a deadly present waiting, floating and contaminating the water. Today was the day for that. I found a very large and very dead mouse swirling around in the skimmer. I always have to gear myself up for dealing with this sort of thing. It's not that I am faint of heart or can't handle it, its just the fact that there is a dead animal that close my face. I don't like it one bit. I walked around for a few minutes, telling myself just to close my eyes and swoop it up in the net. It's hard when you can feel the wait of that poor animal in the net and then the "plop" into the empty trash can. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.

After that incident was taken care of, I sat down with my book and prepared myself for a boring day. While the sun was shining, it was still only 74 degrees outside. To my surprise one of my regulars pulled up in his shiny red Pontiac. The man always wears red shorts, a red surfer shirt and black tennis shoes. He usually shows up around 4:30pm on weekdays (only) and falls asleep in a lawn chair for exactly one hour. He is a man of routine. What threw me for a loop was when he showed in a white T-shirt, jeans and some white tennies. I didn't know what to think. I glanced at my watch and realized that it was only 10:15am. He walked over to me and asked me how was I doing. Assuming that our regular conversation would follow I said I was fine and told him about not worrying about having his pass with him. He smiled and instead gave me a sheet of paper that had a Six-Flags logo on it. I was too shocked for words. He said that he had found this coupon this morning and thought I could use it. With that he left. I was still sitting there with the coupon in my hand, unable to get anything but a "thank you" out of my dropped jaw.

Later on, a woman came to lay out in the not-so-hot weather. She made small talk with me, asking if it was really boring working all week with no one to watch swim. I laughed but told her that I just do a lot of reading. She wondered how I was able to work in the middle of the day. I told her that I was "done with school." She eyed me suspiciously and asked me what I was going to do once the pool closed. My stomach dropped at the thought of yet another job hunt that needed to happen. I told her that I would just wait and see what happens. Her reply: "Well don't wait too long." Grandmother advice with a bit of punch. She then decided to leave me with one more bit of advice: "Have you ever thought about going to college?" Bite me.

Lastly, I would like to leave every pool person out there with a bit of advice. If the lifeguard is wearing pants, a sweatshirt and actual socks then it just might be a little too cold to swim. Just a thought.

Veer left

The desk in its original state. Not such a purrty sight.

Taking a break from the "pool life" I have decided to reenter my world of crafting. It has been a while since I have had any projects underway. I thought that buying a desk for my room might cure my itch for a good project. I was right. Here are the pics that I promised of the phases that I went through with this beat up desk. I bought it from Goodwill for about $40 and then did my own thing. Took me about a week to finish it all, thanks to the pool being open ridiculously long hours. I am getting back into the grove of it all.

PS. The library has a whole section dedicated to crafting and painting books!!!! It is amazing. It is like a children picture book...only better.

Took it apart and sanded it all down. Took more arm power than I thought.

Primed it, sanded some more and let it dry.

The base color is a bright turquoise. A little too bright just to be the finished desk.

With a light blue wash on top, I would say that it is complete! I added some new black knobs to it too.