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I'm trying to teach myself to draw. my long term goals are to be able to sketch the birds and squirrels i see out my window, to paint my adorable pets, and to make line drawings for my embroidery. the other perks of being able to draw well are nice too. but I'm a beginner, and learning mostly from library books and drawsketch.about.com and it's slow going. drawing is the first art/craft I've come to that i have not been at least acceptable if not good at right away, and frankly I'm not used to it, and it's frustrating. everything I've read says "practice, practice, practice!" and while I'm not used to have to really work at this kind of thing, I'm going to make a go at it. as part of this I've decided to buy a sketchbook and starting on the first, draw something, anything, every single day. it's probably not going to be much at first, but we'll see. I'd ideally like to try something new at least once a month, (preferably week) and eventually work my way through pencil, charcoal, colored pencils/crayons, pen and ink, and watercolors. and i really would like my drawings to be more spontaneous, quick, and confident and less slow and labored (yet still good!) the other part is you, deviant art and Flickr. no matter how horrible or small my daily drawing journal entry may be, I am going to post it for the whole world to see, and hopefully offer up some encouragement and constructive criticism (and maybe a little obligational pressure to actually keep to my resolution.) so wish me luck, and please be gentile! (if yyou are on either deviant art or flickr, feel free to friend me or whatever.) Tags: art, artsycraftsy, links
Current Mood:  determined
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I mentioned it when I first started the other blog but that was a while ago. If you are interested in crafty type things, check out my crafts blog at http://akittenknits.blogspot.com/Its original focus was mostly knitting, but I'm slowly working on branching out my skills. At the moment I can knit, crochet, sew some, quilt some, tat some, embroider and am working on smocking. I post about things mostly as I do them, so lately there has been a lot of embroidery, and the most recent post is about a quilt I'm making for my mother. I obviously post about knitting when I've got something to show, as well as all my other crafts. So if you are interested, feel free to stop by! Tags: knitting, links
Current Mood:  crafty
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Here is my first finished Fair Isle, Norwegian style mitten! Yay! Made with a locally grown and handspun wool I got at my local farmers market, on size 7, 32 inch circulars I learned a lot while making this thing, and I feel quite proud of it. While I was making it I panicked that it wouldn't be long enough, so I fiddled with the pattern, then as I got farther along with it, I discovered that it in fact would have been just right, so I fiddled with the pattern MORE to fix my previous fiddling. I learned that when working Stranded Knitting two handed, you have to be very careful about tension, and when you think you are knitting too loose, it is just right. I learned that yes, everybody was indeed right and stitches in Fair Isle stretch to be almost perfectly square, and I should trust the experts. ( pictures ahoy )I've already cast on for the second and will have a wonderful new pair of mittens come wintertime! Tags: knitting, links
Current Mood:  chipper
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Well, almost anyways. Bill and I decided that since we were going to be in Watertown today, that we would take the Border's coupon that had pointed out by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mactavish and buy a new cook book (like we didn't have enough already) So up we go Arsenal street, but it was very busy and the traffic was horribly slow, even for a Saturday. So I decide to take a turn and go the back way to the mall via Coffeen Street. But it takes us even longer to even get on Coffeen that it would have to stay on Arsenal. Once we finally get there we barely got 100 feet before there was a trooper car blocking the way! He was letting people go towards downtown, but our way was completely blocked. Our only way out was to go the completely wrong way down I 81. So that is what we did. We got off at the next exit (Bradley St./Clayton) turn around and get right back on 81. we decide to give the Coffeen St. exit a pass (we assumed there must have been an accident farther up, and that was why we were blocked), and go straight for Arsenal. But don't you know it, but there were troopers all over the place blocking of the Arsenal St. exit too!! So we had to go WAY out of our way to the next exit (Watertown center) then drive all the way back home. Once home we turned on Grandma's scanner, and set dad to watching the news to figure out what all the hub-bub was. Apparently why doing some renovating for a new store in the mall, the construction workers hit a gas main, and the place had to be evacuated! Grandma called Aunt Mary, because she has her scanner on 24/7 and we though she might already have known what was going on, and Tasha had been there when they evacuated. Whoa. in the newsTags: bookworm, family, links, news, outside
Current Mood:  weird
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I think my good friend Tailsteak says it best From his web site: http://tailsteak.tk/
"Alright, I guess it's time I gave you guys my opinion on all this Atkins crap.
Oh, wait, I just did. That was easy.
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year and a half, Atkins is to diet as Satanism is to religion. In either case, you have a belief system that attempts to change people's behaviour. All the various major religions and dieting systems preach the importance of (virtue / low fat-high fiber), though they do so in very different ways. Then, very recently, along comes this young upstart (Aleister Crowley/Robert Atkins) who preaches the exact opposite (vice / high protein-low carbs).
Here's where the metaphor breaks down. Satanism was actually practised by very few people, and those who claim to practice it now are mostly black-clad teenagers trying to annoy their parents. Atkins has taken over the world.
All of a sudden, people have started enjoying their protein and cutting the carbs. Restaurants are offering bizarre low-carb treats for their fad-conscious clientele. Steak has become health food, and the baked potato that comes with it is a calorie-laden temptation.
The pendulum has swung.
Of course, weight loss has never been about high carbs or low carbs or low fat or high protein. You could eat nothing but butter for the rest of your (short) life, and you could still lose weight. Weight loss, as an end in itself, requires only one thing: that your calories in be less than your calories out.
That's it. That's the secret to dieting, right there. Eat less energy than you expend. Input must be less than output.
Chris Crosby, my role model and one-time patron, recently turned to Atkins in an attempt to shed the 350 pound girdle of fat that encases his torso and threatens his health. After a week or so, he wrote, with disappointment, that though he had been eating nothing but ribs for the past seven days, he had not lost weight. He claimed he was betrayed by a deceptively high-carb barbecue sauce.
It wasn't the sauce that screwed you up, Chris. You were betrayed by your own phenomenal efficiency at consuming ribs.
It's that efficiency that Atkins - or any other nutritional skew - attempts to override. It is difficult for you to obtain food, and it is difficult for your body to extract energy from that food, when some artificial standard has made one nutrient good and another evil.
You know what's making a comeback, as a result of this carnivorous chicanery? Gout. The kidneys of well-meaning Atkinsites around the world are being overwhelmed by lactic acid, and the natural uric acid they're supposed to filter out of the body is collecting and crystallizing in people's big toes. It's disfiguring, it's painful, and it's incurable.
That's a side effect, though, to any unbalanced diet. Sure, you get fewer calories, and that's good, but when your body gets too much of one nutrient and not enough of another, you get disorders. Scurvy, rickets, dizziness, heel spurs, anaemia, and corneal melting.
I'd rather be fat."
Tags: links, rant
Current Mood:  annoyed
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