[caption id=”attachment_657” align=”alignleft” width=”300” caption=”Yet another old lady past-time.”][/caption]

While I was in Chicago recently for a few work conferences that were back to back, conversations with girlfriends and boyfriends often turned to DIY and the crafting movement. All the cool kids are doing it, it seems. Now I’m no stranger to the DIY/crafting world as I’ve been dabbling on and off for a few years, including but not limited to the following:

• knitting
• caligraphy
• Excessively Diverting¹
• photography

 
But the one that seems to be all the rage in my circles is cross-stitch. I can name half a dozen people off the top of my head who currently count this as their number one crafting past-time. Their constant yammering about their projects, and since it seems you really don’t need to know how to do much other then thread a needle and sew, appealed to me. I like the idea that it is essentially paint by numbers, but with thread. (I will also admit TheHusband has asked me to put the knitting needles down as my hats keep getting more and more interesting. The latest one ended up shaped like a used condom.)

Since having an instant support group for any kind of activity appealed to me, I took myself off to Hobby Lobby tonight after work to get supplies. Since I was not fond of getting a pattern that was “of the lord” or of a fruit basket, I bought a bag of 150 colors of floss, rolled up tube of cross-stich fabric, a hoop, needles, and other accouterments as seen in the picture above. I figured I come home, have dinner, find a pattern, and go. And if I hated it, I would pawn the lot off to Kristin.

No. Not that simple.

The cross-stitch world is complicated. The surge for wanting things handmade has increased the amount of information on the topic, which makes sense since there are thousands nay millions of pages on just about any topic in the universe, according ye olde googles. But I’m a librarian! I should be able to find stuff easily. No, not quite true either. Bad taxonomy and tag stuffing also thwarted my plans. After an hour of looking for patterns, for an easy one I could do in a few hours, turned out to be horribly wrong. I had thought of coughing up a few bucks to Subversive Cross Stitch, whom I long amired, only to find as I was going through their patterns, nothing appealed.

Kristin suggested creating my own pattern, using something like MyPhotoStitch to generate the colors and patterns for me. But the problem is that I wanted to do something BIG AND FLASHY vroom vroom, when I still need training wheels. So instead of creating something that requires 44 different flavors of floss, I need something that has say, eight. Tomorrow when I’m not feeling so emotionally drained, I’ll probably create a TARDIS or something Doctor Who related.

And hopefully this time, nothing will come out shaped like a used condom.

1. The proof that I broke even on my investment with Excessively Diverting proved to me that I could make and sell something of my own creation, which is a huge confidence boost. Now only if could apply that to other things in my life.

I knew it was time to take a break after working steadily on cleaning my office for a few hours when I put the carbon copy of a check in the envelope and sealed it without thinking. And my brain has been throbbing for half that time. UFYH rules say you should take breaks every so often to keep your focus up and your mind engaged, brain fatigue is painful when attempting to accomplish something, and when finding the simplest of tasks become too mountainous, it’s time to rest. (But am I not superwoman, who can do everything?)

I noticed that I am finding myself struggle with brain fatigue quite a bit as of late. Conversations that require me to think beyond the shallow depths of my knowledge, books that require me to be more engaged then a passive reader, thoughts that I should have but somehow I can’t find the words to express. My inner world seems so rich and yet, when I go to articulate it, I sound uninformed or even worse, like an idiot.

I can physically feel this barrier that is pitting me against the world, I find it even in my superficial thoughts to be a skim over the edge but when I dig deep, and burrow myself in to find what I’m looking for, then I find myself scraping against the wall, my voice shouting on the inside to let me pass! But nothing happens, no break through and no release. So my words are strangled in my throat, in the elbows of my arm, for they cannot get to my finger tips, in the unknown reaches of neverwhere, where everything goes to live and yet nothing seems to come back alive.

The pug continues snoring on, her cadence is reassuring and at times, the most honest thing in the world.

The Best American Comics 2011 (anthology) | 3/5
Quick Summary: Collection of sequential art works by upcoming and established artists, edited by Alison Bechdel

tl;dr Summary: The book merits a “meh” and is recommended to buy used or to get from the library but not something you want to necessarily keep in your collection, even for reference.

The Best American series and I have an interesting relationship. Something compels me to think I have to read the damn things, thus year after year I buy copy after copy of titles in the series, used/new/eBook, on the premise that I’m going to read them and each year, the books get stacked higher and higher on my to be read shelves, taunting me and of course, never read. (But don’t I look smart with them on my shelves?) When Amazon recently had a one day sale of the Kindle versions of the entire 2011 Best American series for $.99 per title, I snapped up what was available save for Comics (not on Kindle format) and Sports (zzzz). Much like my groaning bookshelves taunting me with unread words, my Kindle app winks at me with updates at its growing collection of books that gather digital dust.¹

Now that we have started this review with an oddly charming, yet not terribly related back story of my passive aggressive affair with Best American, let me go into the review of the book.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Best American series, the purpose is to anthologize and introduce a wide range of work in a variety of genres that may go unnoticed (or unappreciated) by the public at large. Each year presents a celebrated guest editor, coupled with the regular series editors, that are big draws in that particular field. In a way Best American is a cheat sheet to being culturally educated. Don’t have time to read all the things? A Best American series has you covered!²

Edited this year by Alison Bechdel, known for Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Dykes to Watch Out For, this years entries ranged all the gamut from the existential to the profane to the heartwarming. As someone who is fairly new world of sequential art, new at least in the sense that I dipped my toes into the water and now safely wading in water up to my ankles, I’m naively expecting anthologies such as Best American to help me down that primrose path. When I sat in a panel at C2E2 a few weeks back, one of the presenters mentioned there was something like over a thousand new release titles for graphic novels per year, with most stores maybe getting in a hundred or two. This is, of course, not including single issue books of comics and other works such as manga, which for someone who is geting interested in this world, it is really overwhelming. It’s also exciting because of all the content that you could be missing

Best American Comics 2011 isn’t a bad book, I was enthralled and engaged on various levels, but it’s not an awesome book either. In some of the works, we’re given snippets of story rather then the entire story line, which can be jarring when the editing between artists is not made clear. So if you’re reading a page about rainbows and sunshine and the next page is about dragons and pillaging, and the work between the artists is similar enough, you get really confused on what story is ending and what story is beginning. Additionally, some of the work apparently required explanation, which is provided the back of the book in the introduction to the artists and writers section. Being lead by the artist/writer on what I should be thinking indicates they themselves don’t know what the hell they were doing³ and that irritates me to no end.

And other problem with the work, is that since some of the pieces are taken as snippets, and thus out of the original context, some of the meaning is lost. If this art form, for it is art, is to be understood with the images AND words, moving it from its orignal location, in some instances, loses the intent of the meaning. This wasn’t prevalent in all of the snippets, but in others it was definitely was noticeable.

Maybe, ultimately, I’m disappointed because I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters, writers, or artists in this anthology. I felt like, even ironically, there should be some kind of guarantee with Best American that I will love at least one thing, but I didn’t. My interest was piqued by some of the work showcased but I felt like overall it was too hit or miss. I felt like some of the editing choices were phoned in and as a reader, I picked up on that. I did, however, appreciate that the series editors added a list of notable works for the year, that were not included in the anthology, in the index. The sheer number of titles alone here, many highly regarded, does give me other options to explore.

1. This smells like a new project. And yes, I concede that I’m hoarding Kindle books but in my defense, they were (mostly all of them) free! And they are (mostly all of them) classics! Except for that bad free porn I downloaded, which scared my eyes and brain, but that is neither here nor there.
2. Which explains why I am totally into this series. A lot.
3. I have a vague crankypants attitude towards Salman Rushdie for this very reason, In a fairy recently interview, someone asked Rushdie his thoughts were on critics or people who were not fond of his work and he stated that he hoped one day their tastes would be sophisticated enough to enjoy him.

For some time now, Kristin has been collecting Sheik romance novels, as a sub-collection for her Arab representation in popular fiction collection at her library. What’s made this particular collection development fun is that she’s crowd sourcing many of her acquisitions, from people such as myself, who pick them up for used/new as we find them to donate.¹  Thanks to people like me, she has almost 200 titles in the Sheik romance genre alone.

In the wake of a conversation held the other day between Alice and Kristin, Alice mentions she has some Sheik books for me to mule back to the States for Kristin when I head to England at the end of the month. Not long after, Alice creates the [Dear Reader]$_ Information Technology Romance! generator,  that pulls many of the keywords from the titles of Sheik romances (and other romances titles) and pairs them with IT terminology to create an IT romance title generator.

Just refresh the page for potential Harlequin/Mills&Boon romances hits such as:

• Curt Technical Architect, Captive Predicament
• Surly Network Administrator, Furtive Assignation
• The Bespectacled Desktop Support Analyst

I smell a potential book series in the making.

1. Where’s my bookplate?

[caption id=”” align=”alignleft” width=”300” caption=”2012 x-ray of my right ankle. Yay bone chips!”][/caption]I fear I am going insane.

The last couple of weeks, I have become an emotional hot mess. My mind, and my dreams, has been everywhere and nowhere at once, shifting the lines of reality and maybe madness. My thoughts have not been racing, as they were wont to do in the past, but I am having trouble focusing on any particular thing longer than a few seconds. I’ve come out of a dead sleep several times in the last month or two when I’ve thought I’ve seen or felt things in the dark, only to discover they weren’t there. Then I feel like a fool for when I tell people about what I see/heard, because I sound ridiculous. The other night, I had a nightmare bats were dive bombing the bed and I could feel the bed shiver as each bat landed on the mattress. But of course, after waking with a gulping start, there were no bats, there was nothing over head, and the only sounds in the bedroom were the teeter-tottering snores of TheHusband and the pug.

Tonight, I heard the sound of something scratching at the wood inside of the walls in my office, some kind of persistant “scratch, scratch, scratch” that sounded more like something was trying to free itself from its wooden prison, but I couldn’t find a source of the sound. The sound was coming near a joint in the window in my office, and it was loud!, but of course as soon as I called Justin in to investigate, the sound immediately disappeared. Justin reasoned it was probably a squirrel or some other varmint hanging out in the gutters and the noise was ricocheting down into the office, since my office is in a corner room. To appease me, Justin pounded on the wall around the source of the alleged noise but nothing stirred at his thumps, and nothing has stirred since he left.

In the past when I felt like I was going slightly insane, at least my insanity had a rational to it - I could manage the craziness. But this time is different, between the dreams and the sounds, because what if this all in my head? How do I manage that?

It hurts to think. Sometimes, it hurts to read. I feel like I am drowning in information, struggling to clutch on to what is important rather than what wanted. The air is murky here, because there are no clear paths for me to go, there is vague directions, and no real sign for which way for me to wander.

I need a purpose.

[If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately, you know that I’ve really gotten into comics in the last six or so months for personal reading as well as I’ve also been collecting graphic novels for work. Starting today, and every Wednesday, I’ll be reviewing comics and graphic novels that I’ve recently read. Some will be new stuff, some will be old, others will be about the theory and practice of sequential art, with the goal to not only learn more myself but to help other comic virgins navigate this world.]

House of Night (5 book miniseries) | 3.5/5
Quick Summary: Miniseries that takes place behind and between the scenes of Betrayed, the second novel in the HoN series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast.

I picked up House of Night for two reasons: Issue #1 was staring at me in my face AND I liked the cover art. Since House of Night was released in November, I was able to find all five issues fairly quickly and read the series in quick succession. The story was pretty simple: main protagonist, Zoey Redbird, has become the unwilling leader of the Dark Daughters, an elite society at her vampire boarding school. Each issue covers Zoey’s journey to leadership while she masters the five elements bestowed on her while figuring out the lesson behind each element. As each element has its own goddess attached to it, much of the comic is spent on that back history of the goddess and the lesson Zoey is to learn. Think of this as Hex mashed with Twilight.

Even though it is never explicitly said, I was expecting to find the miniseries to be a standalone story. It reads as if it wants to be standalone - backstory is provided to fill in gaps of knowledge for some of the plot lines, yet the overall story seems to lack cohesiveness. I feel like the miniseries is trying to do two things at once: provide for the fans and the new readers at once, and this is where the miniseries fails. There are nuances and relationships between some of the characters in the comic that don’t quite make sense, that as a new reader we’re just supposed to accept without explanation, but probably make loads of sense in the novels. Choices were probably made of what story lines to keep and what to ditch, but some of the choices make the writing seem clunky and amateurish, not established and tight. This is frightening when considering the novel series is nearing its 12th book in the series.

The other red flag to me was House of Night novel series is marketed specifically for teens and young adults, however, the comic series have no maturity level or age notation anywhere on the front of the comics. This becomes a concern when there is are several explicit scenes of rape and gang rape. By explicit, let me clarify that the reader does not see penetration but we do see what is implied penetration, gang rape, and explicit physical abuse. I get the reason why they felt it was important to portray it that way, the story of Boudicca and her daughters is not a pretty one by any means, but maybe I’m wrong here I can’t help feeling that these scenes were out of place for the purpose of this comic.

Since I’m not intending to be miss complainypants all the time, what I did like about the series was the attention to detail to the historical backstory, which was exceptionally done. Minor plot lines tied into Zoey’s lessons were also done well and helped close some loose threads opened at the beginning of the series. I feel like if I had read the novel series, I would get more satisfaction out of this miniseries but as an uneducated reader in this world, as a standalone series, House of Nightis lacking. I know I haven’t mentioned art at all in this review, but I found it matched the the writing: It was really strong in some areas and sloppy in others.

I’m intrigued enough with the comic series to pick up another miniseries if one comes out, but will only pick up the first issue and not the complete run with the intent to see if the writing has gotten better or see if the transition to standalone is possible. I’m interested in the novel series, but honestly, will probably not read it any time soon. Overall, I found the comic series good but not exceptional.

I turn 40 in a couple of months.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!, I yell while shaking angry fists to the sky.

And there is no answer.

At least not one that I can audibly hear.

Before I started my undergrad, I never understood art. I never understood the appeal, the intricacies, why certain strokes of paint across the canvas were better than others, or why any of those things were important.

My discovery of Caravaggio changed all of this. So much so that I changed my singular major to a dual one with intent of heading to graduate school to get my MA in art history.

Which would have happened if I did not have an irrational fear of learning a new language, as you do.

When I went to Rome in 2005, I made it my mission to see all the Caravaggios available in the city, since the damned place is lousy with them. This sparked a bigger idea of tracking down and seeing, in person, all the Caravaggios available in the world. This is how The Caravaggio Project was born, and to date, I’ve seen Caravaggios in five or six countries and two continents, with many future trips planned around this theme.

I decided to keep track of the project online so that I can better figure out what I have and have not seen, plus I need to feel that certain sense of accomplishment. The chronology of Caravaggio’s work is from Wikipedia, but I plan to keep verify the entries once I get the data all established. It also helps that there has been a resurgence of interest in his work, such as the recent travelling exhibition, Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome and books such as The Lost Painting.

The listing for The Caravaggio Project isn’t complete yet, but should be soon.

If you’re wondering why Caravaggio, actually it’s pretty easy: He was a conflicted man that worshipped his own pleasures under the umbrella of the Catholic church. He was a hedonist, lecherous, bisexual, and narcissistic (many of his paintings feature his own likeness in steed of a model). He was the Byronic hero several centuries before Byron. His life was that of passion and torment, and the fact that he had an artistic ability that was almost supernatural is actually secondary to the man himself. He lead a tragic life and died quite young. If one could be a Caravaggio groupie, that would be me.

Judith Beheading Holefrenes is probably my most favorite of his paintings, though I’m fond of his Bacchus series as well. I picked up a nice print at the Borghese Gallery of Judith Beheading Holefrenes that used to hang in my bedroom before it was nearly destroyed due to mold and damage from improper storage while I was in-between places.

I thought it sent a nice message to current and future suitors.

[Update: 19:21] Seems like I caught and found most of the errant pixels driving me batty, but everything is not perfect. If you or someone you know is a web developer, comfortable with WordPress & CSS, contact me ASAP. I’ve hacked the fuck out the CSS for this theme but my fixing the themes mistakes keeps breaking it! I know it’ll take 2-3 hours to fix the CSS (at max). The framework could also be tweaked as well to clean it up.

Currently tweaking the blog’s theme, which is causing it to morph in and out of various themes for the last hour or so, and will continue on and off for the rest of the day. If you find something isn’t where it was a moment ago, that is why!

-lisa

I never thought I’d write a post about my beauty process¹, however, a large number of my Twitter girlfriends and I haven taken to having unplanned and very random discussions lately on everything from being anxious to our periods to whatever else our vaginas demand we talk about on the twitters. As the conversations are often spontaneous², and it typically starts out with one writing a blog post, another commenting on said blog, then more entering the fray with their thoughts and the threads go on for ages. Thus, when Carolyn recently wrote about that she doesn’t use shampoo, I commented that at some point I should write about the fact that I wash my hair once a week. Several of them said I needed to do such a post because it would be very important, natch, to note that not all of us are created equal, hair wise.³ Since I’m a writer with consistant writer’s block, if writing about my girly acts gets me back to writing on a more regular basis, who am I to argue?

When I say “I wash my hair once a week,” I mean specifically that: I wet and lather my hair once a week. I do not wet or wash it during the course of the week, with the odd exceptions here or there, but usually I have to set aside time for THE WASHING not so much that I have so much hair but that it can be a fairly long process. When I first met my friend Jessica, this past January we were attending the same workshops together in California, and one night we were planning on doing something or another and I mentioned that I had to get back to our hotel early to wash my hair. She looked at me like I was crazy, as it does sound so damned ’50s. Though, to be fair, I have been toying with the idea of setting my hair in juice cans for curls that won’t quit but that is neither here nor there.

Let me back track a bit more here to say my hair likes to think it is ethnic. And by this I mean it does not seem to follow the conventions of Caucasian hair, specifically when it comes to hair products. I’ve spent a small fortune over the years on just about all the boutique, designer, and drug store brands designed for white people to no avail. Somewhere in my ’20s, I started using products designed for people of color to find out that those products worked beautifully on my hair. It was a goddamned revelation. My second revelation was recently finding a hairstylist who is well known for working with heads from all backgrounds, textures, and lengths and whom I adore. She knew EXACTLY what I meant when I told her my hair was confused.

It was Kateri who told me that I should wash my hair only once or twice a week for the following reasons:

• For people with wavy/curly hair, excessive washing strips natural oils to keep curls
• We’re under the delusion we need to wash our hair everyday to be “clean,” when we do not
• It is not environmentally friendly

For me, I’ll add in the following:

• I’m lazy
• I like things to be low maintainance. The idea of washing my hair every day AND styling it, drives me insane
• I hate the feel of product build up so I refrain from using it. Finding a way to do my hair without having to use products is TEH AWESOME
• I’m lazy

Here is how I do it:

[caption” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Towel dry.”]
[/caption]

[caption align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Shampoos and accouterments.”]
[/caption]

With the exception of when it got super dry this past winter and suddenly I was wafting dandruff like no one’s bidness, I usually use products that are natural and organic. [Explaining the unnaturalness that is Head and Shoulders, that is.] This means, usually, NO *cones or SLS’s (sodium lauryl sulfate) involved. I was dismayed, however, to find that the Sauve shampoo shown, its second ingredient is SLS. I’m a huge fan of Nature’s Gate shampoos, conditioners, and body shampoos.

When I condition, I only condition the ends, I do NOT condition my roots. Ever. Most of the damage to my hair tends to be from braids, ponytails, getting caught in things, etc. Conditioning the roots also adds unnecessary weight and tends to grease up my scalp ten fold.

[caption” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Wet hair is wet.”]
[/caption]

[caption” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Moroccan oil, Curl Keeper, and wide tooth combs.”]
[/caption]

So after shampooing/conditioning, I usually run a wide tooth comb through my hair to get the conditioner through when I’m in the shower. This is the only time I use a comb on my hair ever. Yes, again, there are exceptions to the rule, but unless I need to part my hair for doing a ‘do of some sort, I never use a brush on my hair (damages the curls) and only use the comb about once a week.

Towel dry. Do not blow dry. Ever. Towel dry and then air dry. I do not care if you have the most ionic of ionicest available hair dryers and it has been approved by Paul Mitchell himself, do NOT blow dry your hair. This is why I ALWAYS wash my hair at night before I go to bed so that my hair has time to air dry. If I don’t have time to wash my hair that night, I resort to a bun or braids until my hair can be washed.

After I towel dry my hair, I then apply one of two products (sometimes mix them together depending on what I need my hair to do). Moroccan oil Curl Control Cream for Curly Wavy Hair ($25-30) and Curly Hair Solutions Curl Keeper (~$17). The Moroccan Oil is good for dryer periods of weather, where as the Curly Hair Solutions is a good all-over. Both are water based and clean products, which means that if my hair gets wet, the product is reactivated and does NOT get sticky/gunky. This to me was the selling point.

Kateri like to apply the Curl Keeper to my hair liberally when I get my hair did by her but at home, I’m more conservative with the application.

[caption” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Hair screws.”]
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[caption” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Lisa puffs.”][/caption]

Air dry 8 - 12 hours.

[caption” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Day 1 - Tada!”]
[/caption]

I washed my hair on a Sunday, so Day 1 is Monday. This was taken right before I left for work. No back combing, product, or any other fluffing was needed.

[caption id=”attachment_285” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Day 3”][/caption]

[caption id=”attachment_279” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Day 7”][/caption]

So here are day 3 and day 7 comparisons. Hair is slightly less fluffy and by day 7, my roots are finally getting greasy. In fact, sometimes my hair starts to dread by day 6 if I don’t at least finger comb it. I usually wear the crown pieces either back or to the side, on the rare occasion, actually wear my hair up. My hair, such as it is, has a lot of memory so if I braid it early in the week, the kinks from the braids stay and can sometimes flatten my hair so I try to avoid braiding it if necessary or unless it’s towards the end of the wash cycle.

I DO shower every day, and when I shower, my hair is usually up in a bun. The slight misting from the shower is enough to typically reactivate the product I put on the day of the washing of the hairs. Total time, including shower but not air dry time? About 30-40 minutes.

I finally embraced my wavy/curly hair within these last couple of years and this process has helped bring back a lot of wave/curl that was beaten to death by over styling and product from the last few decades. I’ve also noticed a huge improvement in hair health doing this method (overall less damage and split ends) and I always get a ton of compliments from people about my hair.

Is this method for everyone? No, but it does prove that a lot of the advertising aimed at women to have natural, fuller, healthier hair is more about selling the product then the claims of the product itself. You don’t NEED to wash your hair everyday, so you should find a solution that works for you.

To recap:

• Wash hair, using clean shampoo (no *cones or SLS)
• Condition, but only the ends
• Use a wide tooth comb to comb through conditioner
• Towel dry. DO NOT USE A BLOWDRYER
• Apply Curl Keeper/Moroccan Oil to damp hair, liberally as needed
• Wrap hair up in a bun or use hair screws
• Air dry 8-12 hours
• Take out of bun/hair screws, finger comb into shape

Repeat as necessary.

1. Or lack thereof.
2. This sounds like a good excuse to use Google Hangouts for virtual girl nights IN. Thoughts?
3. Okay, not much as very important in so much as “Hey, that is kind of interesting! Discuss!”