Kristen Orser's Blog, page 13

sketch a day: day one

may 9 2011

at the time of the sun coming around the corner

The blogging break was fruitful. Fruitful in the sense that I let myself do nothing, absolutely nothing for a few hours at least. 
After starting meditation classes lately, I've been trying to practice more stillness. Maybe not surprisingly, trying to visually document moments and trying to recognize each day with a blog has helped me develop more mindfulness and slowness. 
A slower moment outside of the new "office." After running around to get some photocopies for a pr event, I got a chance to look at the waterfront, watch some shadows.
This might be why people prefer ritual, even seek them out. I've been thinking about rituals like having "indoor" shoes that I slip on right when I get home or having a cup of tea closer to bed. I think it would change the way I interact with the day and with time. This goes for the sketch a day too, which officially starts today. 
Either way, we've been interacting with time differently since moving from the city to the town. People walk slower, people walk arm in arm more often, and people stop to talk about how high the water is or some other "local" sentiment. 
I made my coworkers some macaroons--pistachio macaroons this time--and it was surprising to see them, even the day after and the day after that, recall the sentiment and extend some thanks. Things just seem to last a bit longer.
Imperfectly shaped pistachio macaroons. The pale color they get is really stunning,  almost regal in the way that disturbingly pale things are often fancy. The crunch of these was better than my first attempt at macaroons and I halved the filling recipe to have a bit less waste and more texture balance.
I've planted everything too early. I'm an impatient green thumb.Winter lasted a bit too long, but it looks like we've started to see spring and some time to put our faces towards the sun. 

a little break, a big list

I'll be taking a blog break until the weekend while I assimilate into my new path / career.



It's been an interesting detour (and detour and detour) to get here and I hope "here" is where I feel good and comfortable. I've been reading, quite a bit, about WWII and the "invention of stress" or "being broken by modern life"--how ads and journal reporting started naming a sense of American fatigue or dissatisfaction. An interesting sense of this comes from the idea of "future shock":

"Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in a short time."                                                               
      --Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970

I might have experienced this--both Jesse and I might have experienced this--with marriage, a move, career changes, and our new rural experience.

Luckily, there's the better and more meaningful idea of transcendence:

"O my friends there are resources in us on which we have not drawn."
      --Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838



Some things I'll be working on and hope to update you all about:


a sketch a day: inspired by a print a day, I'm hoping to get back into the practice of making a sketch a day and remembering to document the day visually.trying to dress as amazingly--or at least closer to and better than i do now--as this lady over at atlantic-pacific. Bee is just a stunning woman who understands how to make basic pieces look different or unique with good accessories and clean lines. I have a total girl crush on here and I doubt I'm alone in thinking that.looking for an old chair to make some more storage room in the house--what a clever idea for turning a chair upside down. This reminds me of how I used to tell my students that creativity just means looking at something that's already there and making it into something that wasn't there before. Of course, I probably had a new definition the next day, but it's still a good self quotation...makes me sound a bit bright.collecting sticks to make my jewelry (the little bit I've got) into a display piece for the bedroom like this. Our bedroom, after spring cleaning, is in serious need of a headboard (still) and some light and loveliness.spotted on MJ Porter DesignSomeone beat me and Jesse to the plant book idea, but I still want to make them soon. Now that Jesse's back, he's got a list of house chores to do (I think this is called a "honey do list"--at least, that's what my sister says) and he's promised promised promised to help me build some things I've been dreaming up.

grateful saturday: really

When I moved to Ithaca, I left my job. I had some strange, feminist feelings--like feminist guilt. I tried to wrap my head around why, considering we decided on the move together, I felt guilty or, somehow, like a small woman walking behind a man. Sure, Jesse had the job and I was losing my own job, my own income, and whatever odd "prestige" comes with teaching college, but we were moving towards my family, towards my home and the East Coast...a lot of it was my decision.

I still feel strange--small still--about it all.

I quit my job, a job I did love in an industry I'm worried and stressed about. For awhile, I've been assisting at a bakery in Ithaca. It's been rewarding to see home skills in a faster paced, higher volume setting. It's been amazing to see self taught ideas in practice. It's also been really difficult: a recipe doesn't work the same in higher volume and there's a lot that a home cook has to learn by trial and error. Oh, and let me tell you that four in the morning is a time I rarely want to see as often as I've seen it since doing bakery delivery.

From the bakery, I learned to value home skills and the idea of being self taught. It's given me a lot of confidence though it pushes into those stranger feelings about womanhood and what it means, in our culture, to be a woman.

Now I'm starting an even new chapter: I'm going to be working for a spa in town. While my job description and title are still being worked out, I'm grateful to report that I'll be giving myself time to pursue another self taught interest in inner and outer beauty / holistic health. I start at Rasa Spa on Monday, being trained for a full two weeks to better understand the wellness benefits of bodywork, energy work, aromatherapy, and other rejuvenation treatments.

A total spin in career, but a path that I've been interested in and that I've wondered how to pursue in a more realistic sense. Sure, I've made a lip balm here or there, given myself a hair steam even, but I've only recently started to understand the necessity to attend to circulation, relaxation, and my body as a part of my whole person. I'm really grateful.

I'm also grateful for this arrangement of rocks, wood, dried flowers, and a (I think) rusted hose handle I found in the garden. All of these items were sitting in the house, waiting to be arranged into something lovely for the back hallway. Spring cleaning is off to a good start this weekend.

Beeswax (from Ithaca Farmer's Market) and Mineral Oil (from Wegmans) were warmed up, stirred together, and made into a lovely wood polish.  Here it is all finished. I love how easy this was to make and it smells like honey, makes the wood look wonderful. I know I'm supposed to wipe it off the wood for a really effective polish, but the glow of leaving it on the wood for a couple days and letting it just naturally fade it way more appealing. I'm grateful for how easy it is to attend to and care for objects, to make them last longer. I see, all the time, how much better the house feel when items are cared for and enabled to age. Since Jesse's away this weekend--competing in Houston at the USBCBC, I've been reading about coffee flavors and doodling coffee sketches. I think I'll add some color to this black and white and take a better picture. Since the Kenya just came in to the shop, I've been excited about apricot flavors and citrus! My tongue must be getting ready for summer.

Project Object #3

I've wanted to do a remodeling of the apartment since we arrived here: more wood, more whites and browns, better frames and picture arrangements. Oh, most importantly, curtains. A headboard (I keep reminding myself by posting it over and over again).

I keep delaying this because, let's face it, renting is so temporary. I am feeling a bit nest-y, a bit ready to have a nest. Part of moving from Chicago was to start thinking about more permanent things: home, family, yadda yadda. That whole quarter life crisis thing--something my generation probably invented--hit me hard.

Before playing house, a spring cleaning is in order for the apartment, my mind, and my body. Thinking about the cleaning/purge, I retreated to the dining room where there is organization, some sense of calm and arrangement. Of course, work needs to be done in that room, but it feels like a room and it doesn't feel like an apartment, like something we can't change because we don't live here (funny how Jesse and I talk about our rentals as places "we don't live in").

One of my favorite pieces is in that room: an owl lamp from RR#1 Chicago. If you get a chance to visit Chicago, be sure to stop in here and say hello to the amazing people who work there too! The building is worth seeing--it's an old pharmacy and the cabinets and woodwork were maintained. Stunning.

There's always air plants all around the store too, they act like candy at the end of grocery shopping and I always end up buying at least five of them before leaving.

Anyway, Jesse and I spent some awkward Christmas seasons together considering that we started "courting" one another when we were both still in or ending relationships. Our first Christmas without that drama needed some really great gift giving. I'm kind of fanatic about gift giving--to the point that I'll actually wait past holidays and birthdays to give the "perfect gift" and I often over gift too. I bought Jesse a million small things that year, that "first" Christmas. Then, a few weeks later, I came home and wrapped up this pretty little object:


And this kind of started a collection of birds. Collection bordering on hoarding and coveting of bird like objects (sadly, not birdlike eating).
It was great though--it was after holidays, after gift giving, and it was something that was so "Jesse" to me. I remember him coming home after work to a pretty big box sitting smack dab in the middle of our teeny tiny apartment. We sat on the floor and he opened the gift.


We've moved three times already with this fragile little guy and, each time, I worry he'll chip or something tragic. He hasn't and he's always ended up in the most organized room (good luck charm? feng shui wonder?).
Oh, did I mention he lights up?

Post Happy Hour Tornado and Internet Wandering

After looking for the library at Cornell and finding out that there are several libraries and I didn't know which was which, I called it a day and met some friends for happy hour. I think that seemed like a reasonable reason and a more than reasonable way to end a day.

It was a bit of a celebration as I've gotten a job! More details to come soon, but my earlier mornings at the bakery and my struggle to catch up to the skill sets needed to produce in high volumes are over. It was a great experience and it taught me and Jesse a lot about our future artisan bread bakery and what we want from it: smaller volume, more speciality products, and variation. I thought a lot about how you cultivate your own clientele and how you have to decide how much of your product will change based on feedback and how much will just stay the same and wait for customers to alter their own perceptions. My mind spins thinking about it, thinking about how difficult it is to make those decisions. Most importantly, I learned two things: I don't have much of a sweet tooth and I want to add salt and pepper to everything; if possible, onion and garlic too. Bread seems a better fit in this way. Also, I learned that it takes time to teach yourself a new skill and you have to make time for that learning. Jesse and I have a lot of work ahead to become self taught bread bakers--a lot of work.

This week was mother's day preparation: soap for moms, grandmoms, and fabulous ladies who are similar to moms.

Soap flavors were "pantry" based: oatmeal honey, ginger and honey, cinnamon and clove, lime and almond, lavender and vanilla, and coconut and lemon. There was a lot of zesting and grating.  I wanted to make tags that said "mother" but realized I never call my mother "mother" anyway. After the clay dried (this is just sculpting clay and it was "no bake"), I painted a bit of yellow paint and rubbed it off so it settled into the stamp groove. Some of my rubber stamps didn't take well to being in clay, they just weren't happy. I separated the varieties with craft paper, wrote the flavors on it. If this was more "professional," I would have liked to have print pressed the labels since my handwriting makes it look a bit homespun (though it is homespun). Then I added ribbon (from my grandma's old store, I love this ribbon and can't imagine what I'll do when the roll ends) and tied the labels on to the whole thing. I haven't decided how to box them yet so the tags don't crack, but much tissue paper will be involved. I rather like the individual one and am considering how I could use food coloring to "stamp" the paper design into the soap next time.Aside from packing, I feel ready for Mother's Day!

These soaps smell great and I added vitamin E or coconut oil (if there was a coconut flavor) to the batches so they're extra good for you. I'd like to learn how to make milk based soaps, I know glycerin is safe, but it just seems like a milk base would be even more natural. And I'm playing with more exfoliants like seeds and thicker zests next time too.

To give credit, I got the idea for the tags from Poppytalk's polymer gift tag tutorial; these are way more professional looking and she used higher quality clay (I suggest ones that can bake) and I love the smaller cutters she used for shapes whereas mine are just exacto knifed.

Otherwise, I've spent the week resting up for the new job and trying to practice, in my head, the new responsibilities...self actualization right?

Of course, I've been daydreaming too:

Summer leaf printing seems like an absolutely necessary craft: Here's a pretty example from ahyiyi

Of course, these large scale driftwood projects seem good too: Mitsuru Koga

I'm really glad there's still reason for spicy soup in warmer weather because this carrot and apple soup is something I'm going to make this weekend while Jesse's in Houston.

I did say that if I got this job, I'd detox or start to get healthier since I've been using uncertainty and job transitions as a reason for sundaes and peanut butter binges. So I'll be trying the Martha Stewart 28 Day Mind and Body cleanse. I'm starting Friday!

If we ever finish building the print press, this is our next project: Woven Leather Stool

There's a whole pile of wood that I want Jesse to bring home from work so we can play around and make something like a DIY pallet headboard or a spool table (for outside!).

from First Came Love
Spring cleaning and spring detoxing starting tomorrow! Looking forward to changes. Speaking of changes, my song of the moment surprised me: Jakob Dylan? You've changed, and it's for the better. I love this song.

RECIPE OF THE MONTH: April and pasta

Flour marked the beginning, the first thing I knew in multitude: white, whole wheat, spelt, quinoa, rye, arrowroot and so forth. Only, I didn't know the difference. I just knew that there were rows and rows.
The co-op seemed to have more flour than the grocery store. The type of person buying the flours I didn't know or didn't understand were the type of women who could wear an L.L. Bean sweater and pull off that understated-beauty look; that I-just-went-for-a-hike-and-now-I'm-going-to-do-something-else-you-don't-have-time-for-and-still-turn-heads-without-putting-on-mascara look. I wanted to be that woman and I wanted to know those flours. I was, in fact, obsessed with knowing what those flours did, what they tasted like, and how they changed baking.
I knew flour mattered—it's gluten and proteins, its composition had physical and sensory effects that would spill over into the cookie, the quiche, the dumpling. The difficulty is the heritage of the baker, my own lineage of women: I come from a line of women who put flour on their faces to "pretend" time in the kitchen. As a child, picnics included a trip to Friendly's and my mother and I throwing away the bags, the evidence, and putting the food into a basket to surprise my father at work. An Easter meal was store bought, but we pretended the labor by dusting dried herbs and salt on the floor. We even dipped the rolling pin in the flour if there was a pie involved. Always, we put put our hands in the flour, patted our faces and clothes just a bit. Just enough for an effect.
In my childhood, I don't remember my mother buying a new bag of flour. I remember the flour, in the yellow tin labeled, in brown lettering, "FLOUR." If I think about it long enough, the flour was clumped, it smelled a bit like cinnamon or whatever else was on our hands when we dipped them in there. The flour was white, old, and ornamental.
Food making was performance art.
My mother's mother didn't even bother to perform or pretend. She left the can of canned spaghetti in full view, admitted to tuna in everything, and chewed on a butterscotch candy and a laxative instead of the meal anyway. It's no wonder my mother's relationship with food was performatory, was rooted in an idea of femininity that was exhausted by the labor of making a meal, so exhausted that she was always "too tired to eat."
It added up to this: women worked in the kitchen and women were tired from that work. To be a real woman, you had to be really tired. If you aren't working in the kitchen, you're less of a woman, but if you are really tired, you can gain some of the femininity you "lost". Being a woman in the age of easy and fast cooking meant being skinny, tired, and remembering to make your exhaustion seem caught up in the activities you weren't doing anymore (cooking).
This relationship with food, with femininity, and with the performance of both is something I didn't accurately notice until I left home, went to college, and made my first batch of homemade pasta. It's also something I haven't worked out in my head and something that might only be true for my own line of women—my mother and grandmother.
I never doubted, the way my mother did, my own relationship to my gender. I didn't feel an obligation to "do" anything specifically female. I didn't chew on laxatives to stay small and tired like my grandma and I didn't pretend to do domestic chores and feign exhaustion like my mother.
I did decide to make my own pasta because I moved into my first apartment. Because I went shopping and bought "basic" pantry and refrigerator items without even knowing what a basic pantry or fridge looked like. I bought flour, baking soda,butter, eggs, salt and pepper, and a few cans of tomatoes. That seemed "basic." None of this seemed "gendered" to me or caught up in gender issues; it seemed like a contemporary problem of not knowing or valuing food.
When it was time for dinner, I was helpless. I hadn't picked up anything to actually eat. The fridge had an open baking soda container (just like home), butter, and those eggs. The pantry was worse. I typed in the remnants of my basic grocery shopping into a google search to see what I could make, what recipe would come up. It was a recipe for egg pasta.
Viola! Pasta! Pasta, as I knew it, was an easy meal. An out of the box and onto the plate meal. Perfect.
I started to cook the pasta and it was my first experience with flour types: "Tipo 00 Flour." What? In other recipe searches it was called farina di grano tenero, which only made me panic more.
I didn't know, I couldn't have known that flour came in more varieties.
I used the white flour I bought, the flour that only said "White Flour" on the label and followed the directions. The recipe, as I remember it, was pretty basic, but it was the first time I learned that pasta was not something that just came in a box:
Place about 1lb and 6oz flour on a board, make a well in the center, and crack 6 eggs or 12 yolks into the center. I used 6 eggs because it seemed like a hassle to separate yolks. Beat the eggs with a fork until smooth, using the tips of fingers, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a little at a time until everything is combined.
I can't even explain how cool this was. The flour literally "acted," it took in the eggs and changed. I'd never seen this. Brownie mixes and cake mixes just don't act the same way the flour was acting. There was a reaction, there was some change, something to see, something happening. With a bit of work, everything bound together and I had a lump of dough. I was in love with that lump of dough and, without knowing what kneading was, I touched it enough that I probably ended up kneading it. I didn't understand the glutens or how this action was expanding the glutens, was helping the pasta firm up and become springy. I just wanted to keep touching this thing that I'd made and, every time I touched it, it changed a little. The dough started to feel silky instead of floury.
Of course, I ruined it after this because I didn't know that dough needs to rest and I didn't have a pasta machine or anything to help me shape it. I rolled out the dough and cut it into strips of pasta, stuck it all in some boiling water.
Everything stuck together. It was the most visually disastrous thing I'd ever made. I added a pat of butter to the top of the mound and ate the pasta.
I didn't care that it was terrible, incorrect, and ugly. I was so pleased with making my own pasta, so pleased with watching flour alter--to me, the meal tasted great.
After this first try, my first time really making anything from scratch, I felt really empowered. I think it usually happens around eighteen that we start to realize that our relationship with food is a mutual relationship: we have to give time to learn about food preparation, food ingredients, and flavor combinations. We have to give time and we can give time to the whole process of knowing our ingredients, even making or growing them. There's something empowering about our own hands and minds (sometimes tongues) being responsible for our own food and eighteen is a great time to recognize this responsibility, maybe even authority, over our own consumption.
What I liked about making my own pasta is what I still like about making food on my own: I developed an intimacy with an ingredient that I assumed was an ingredient on it's own. I thought pasta was pasta and didn't bother to think about what (or who) made pasta. Learning that the "ingredient" was composed of other ingredients instantly allowed me to think about eggs and flour, about how they also come from something else that I could learn more about.
This marked the beginning of my fascination with flour and flour types, with grains and how grains are grown. Since making this egg pasta, I've reached out to other types of pasta made from different grains and flours. I've also educated myself about flour components and how flour types influence a recipe in structure, texture, flavor, and aesthetics.
I don't know how this alters my understanding of a new kind of femininity, a new kind of domesticity, or any of the issues my mother was dealing with. I do, however, think that the idea that cooking is akin to knowledge, to making, and to having authority is affecting my understanding of what it means for me to be a woman. More importantly and more simple to unravel, I'm glad I've broken a pattern of sorts. I'm glad I've developed a camaraderie with food that was broken by my grandmother and isolated from my mother. Participating with food and food making has let me separate myself from the poor body image my grandmother and mother struggled with and it's let me enjoy the range of sensory experiences eating offers.

****
For a great post and recipes about homemade pasta, check out Leite's site

weekending, week beginning, and good news!

Thanks to the lovely Joslyn over at Simple Lovely, I've won a necklace! The necklace in question is a pretty little darling that my mother will be receiving for Mother's Day--rose gold chain with a gold kiss weight as the charm. f. is for Frank, Shannah and Casey, have an aesthetic that's moving past the contemporary overkill of "cutsey" and pushing to see how the strange and the organic can make new and interesting designs. They are making some jewelry that's unlike anything I've ever seen before--like this mixed hickory slice necklace:



I'm not going to lie, I got a bit bored--in Chicago--of seeing jewelry that wasn't trying to make a statement or was trying to make a statement that other designers were already making. I almost stopped going to craft / art fairs for awhile (almost, but I'm too much of a groupie to stop). I f. is for frank is refreshing for its ability to see how subtle changes and mixed tones / golds and metals can really alter a piece of jewelry and our orientation to how we wear accessories.

Winning a giveaway was a great way to start a week, especially a week where I'm starting to really think about jobs and direction. This was good motivation to look back at my children's books and work and think about what is collecting and what needs to be attended to so it isn't "just gathering." Time to consider DIY publishing?

Ending a weekend, one of the first weekends where I didn't have an early morning bakery delivery or any kind of "work," is much easier with this kind of goodwill and spirit. That doesn't mean I don't miss the weekend:

There were a lot of trees this weekend.

And all the trees looked eager for spring. 
Luckily, there are some early bloomers like lavender and sage. And this makes me, Jesse, and hopefully the winter-tired trees, think that we might soon be past the darker days. 
It helps to have a holiday, some chocolate, and any kind of game where you get to find plastic eggs. I'm awake enough, even after a 4:00 am morning, to attend trivia tonight and become familiar with Ithacans instead of just driving around and exploring our new home on my own. I hope I'm awake enough in a few hours when it's actually time for trivia.

gratitude Saturday: a practice in spring

Will be spending the week practicing sewing--napkins, hopefully, for Jesse's stint in Houston with the USBCBC--and then reminding myself about the possibilities and beauty of screen printing and printing. This tutorial from Poppytalk is wonderful for home printing, but I really want to go back and look at all the Lotta Jansdotter books I have that I haven't had time to really read.

The weekend was eventful! My folks came up, my sister and Jason came up (minus Willow sadly), and Jesse and I got a chance to eat good food, drink good drinks, and relax with our lovely family. I'm extremely grateful for that time and how it enabled me to see the Finger Lakes more fully, feel more optimistic, and think about my own goals and desires in this difficult flux and economy right now.

Actually, Jason and Tara reminded me--a few times--that I've done a lot and this sense of "not doing enough" is temporary, is probably not true, and will yield something good in the long run.

Gratitude Roll:

1. chickens and eggs

We forgot to hardboil eggs for Easter, but we did search around for plastic eggs filled with candies. Either way, I love eggs and how much their yolks change depending on season and chicken type. These little guys were at the market looking extremely proud of themselves.2. water and waterfronts
The market is right on the waterfront and you can watch the rowers, gather around the docks with warm tea and sandwiches, and enjoy a Saturday morning properly. Ithaca is a small city, which is new to me, and it's been nice to get to know the farmers at the market and to know that you'll run into the whole community right there, all in one place. Small town politics are something I'm just starting to understand, but everyone hears everything you say and everyone has an opinion--it's like a family. At first, I was a little startled by how much people were into people's business, but it's nurturing and it reminds you that things have consequences, that things matter.


3. photographs of strangers--specifically photographs of older men with amazing socks or shoes
It's popular in taverns here to have pictures of regal looking older men--love it! Look at these saddle shoes. For people who know me, I'm amazed at feet and how they are culturally and spiritually symbolic, something we care for enough to make looming metaphors about. This is slowly becoming a shoe fascination...a dangerous one for a penny bank account like my own.
I can't think of a better thing to feel grateful for than time with family, but the chocolate for the holiday helped make it even better. 
Scenes from a thankful weekend:
Architectural drawing to swoon over.

decorated window

Jesse walks past brick buildings

Project Object #1

Jewelry box sold to me as an herb box. It's the blues and whites that appeal to me--I've always had blue bedrooms, in every house I've ever lived in. Reminds me of traveling, reminds me that I don't have to be grounded in a way that's limiting. I can house or nest, but keep my head in the clouds or thinking of the next thing to do. 
Since it's small too, I don't feel tempted to buy more jewelry. My mother's mother collected charms, wore charm bracelets and you could hear her coming. She exclusively wore navy, black, and browns too. I imagine her sometimes and think about having some kind of "signature" piece, having something that's distinctly me. I wonder if that's still a practice in our culture or if it's somehow compromising to have a "thing" be a part of your identity, but there's something romantic or alluring about the idea of being "herd" coming. 
I'd love to see these necklaces popping out of the drawers.