I is for ingenuiTEA

I’m still trudging forward with the ABC-Along with a tea related I for the ingenuiTEA from Adagio teas. Its a cool tea brewing gadget that I use for my morning cup of Earl Grey Creme tea – you just put your loose tea in the bottom, pour hot water over the top, and after it brews you set this gadget over your cup and the brewed tea pours out the bottom. Teavana (where I get my Earl Grey Creme tea..) also has a similar gadget, if you happen to live next to one of their stores. Its a great invention and makes my morning tea a little less time consuming. Its also the only “i” word I could think of.

(BTW.. I’m not pimping Adagio but if anyone is interested in ordering from the site, I can send out $5.00 discount coupons via email.. just let me know in the comments. I think I get points good toward freebies or something if anyone uses the coupon. )

H is for Home. This is a pre-move in photo of the kitchen of our “new” house… its one of my favorite rooms in the house because of the crazy handmade built ins and nifty range. From what we know at this point.. the original portions of the house (kitchen, living room & ‘master’ bedroom) was built in 1945. The rest of the house (2 more bedrooms, 2 baths & the dining room currently being used by my husband as an office..) is newer though the rooms are still much older than I am. Unfortunately one of the other bedrooms is currently unusable because of an unstable floor.. so we’re using it as storage.

This is my second favorite room.. the living room with huge working (we assume.. we’ll find out this winter..) fireplace. The hardwood floor (currently only in the living room) was also a plus – and were on my list of things I was hoping that our new home would have.

The last “room” I wanted to show is actually not a room at all.. but the huge covered wooden deck coming off our master bedroom which has a great view of the 6 acres the house is sitting on. We haven’t done much out there yet but dump our lawn furniture and hang my ‘seen better days’ wind-horse prayer flags but I hope to spend a LOT of time out here this fall with my spinning wheel.

(note: I’m trying to continue on with the ABC-Along even though I’m horribly behind. This post was originally written right after we moved in May but I was never able to post it and it got lost in my drafts folder)

G is for: The Grateful Dead. Now, I’m not the type of GD fan who has walls of recordings or even knows the names of the famous shows & I’ve never gone “on tour”.. but I do really enjoy their music because it never ceases to make me happy. My favorite Dead songs? Sugar Magnolia, Uncle John’s Band & Touch of Grey… I also really love the “Fire on the Mountain” Reggae tribute cds.

While I don’t have a huge collection of Dead related stuff.. I do have cds that I’ve bought to replace my worn out tapes, I still have a dancing bear sticker on my car & a large stuffed GD bear which is faded from the sun (he used to live in my car), and I even have two Dead Lot inspired cookbooks that I’ve actually made recipes out of. By far my favorite GD things are the shirts – my 3 favorites are pictured above (along with the cookbooks) and I have many more that I didn’t feel like unloading from the closet. The one on the far right is a long sleeve shirt and is the one with the most sentimental value… its the shirt I was wearing on the Wildwood NJ boardwalk the night (August 1995) that I was told that Jerry had died. *sigh*

F is for Fairies.. the beautiful book by Brian Froud who’s works have amazed and inspired me since I was a young child. The book itself belonged to my parents and I would look at it all the time… one day (hopefully sooner than later, right Dragon?) I hope to have this book autographed by the man himself. There are tons of things in my house that are faerie related.. including a tattoo on my shoulder of a faerie sitting in a purple rose – but I was having a hard time photographing my own back.. lol.

F is also for friendship – that’s a photograph of my “BFF” Dragon & I the last time I was home… doing our best OCC impression. lol. We’ve been friends for about 20 years now and our friendship is actually due to our shared love of all things faerie & Froud (Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, ..etc) on top of the fact that we share a brain and find humor in the same things.

E is for Earrings..  long dangly earrings that make a lot of noise when worn.  I’m not entirely sure how many pairs of earrings I have but its definitely a lot..  I’ve taken to using them as a wall-hanging just to have access to most of them. ( I couldn’t capture ALL of the earrings in one shot so this is just a portion of them)  I love natural stone, silver or brass, and exotic looking designs. Most of my favorites were bought in an imports shop when I was in high school..  I take serious measures to make sure I don’t loose my earrings because they are really sentimental.  I buy those little plastic  ‘grippers’ by the bag full every time I’m at the craft store and I always wear them on the ear wires so that I don’t loose my earrings when I’m out.  I’m pretty sure that those plastic thingies are actually to keep the earrings on the cards for sale.. but I found that they work great in my ears.

I have 12 holes in my ears.. 4 in the lobes & 2 in the cartilage of each ear.. and I wear small silver Bali-style hoops in them.  For a few years I had the holes in my earlobes stretched so that I could wear metal eyelets (I think they’re a 4 gauge) but I hated that I couldn’t wear my beautiful long earrings (without having to alter all of the hooks on the earrings) and I took them out again. I do love the look of large tribal style piercing jewelry but I’m afraid that I’d get bored entirely too quick with only having one pair of earrings.

(sorry about the crap quality of the photo..  the weather is disagreeing with my need to take photos)

D is for dreads… about 3-4 months old at this point. I decided not to start out with my entire head dreaded because I know that they have a tendency to shrink as they get older and I wasn’t sure that I was willing to lose a lot of length – I also wanted to be able to “hide” the dreaded bits by pulling them up in a bun and having loose hair underneath. Admittedly I would probably have dreaded all of my hair if I had someone willing to backcomb my entire head of waist length hair… but since I had to do it myself I decided to start out with a few and let the rest form by themselves. At first I started out with only a handful of dreads & braids.. and now its about 50% dreaded & braided – I’m planning on letting the rest of it dread until there is no loose hair left or until I get sick of this.. whichever comes first. The photos are sort of in a time line – on the left is ‘day 1′ so I had a record of what I started with and the one on the far right was taken today after I cleaned everything up a bit and added a bunch of new beads to the back.

(I think its funny that I’ve gotten stumped by the same letter twice already… last ABC-Along I couldn’t think of anything for D either. It took me so long to come up with a “d” word that I actually am behind – the rest of the along are on “E” now. )

1. Ms. Kitty, 2. cheshire, 3. knitty kitties, 4. bastet, 5. buddha kitty, 6. brush stroke cat, 7. green cat & whisker jar, 8. egyptian cat

(clicking the links will take you to bigger photos on Flickr with descriptions)

C is for: Cats, Cats everywhere!  These are some of my favorite cat things around my house.. the ones that jumped out at me first anyway!  (Including Ms. Kitty.. who stopped to pose on the steps.. as if to say “You’d better include me in this cat collage or you’ll be sorry tomorrow!”) Looking around my office I spotted about 5 more things that I could have taken photos of – including a few ‘knitty kitty’ cards that aren’t up on the wall yet and my other plush cats (Artemis & Luna plush from Sailor Moon) that are on the bookshelf.

The other thing that didn’t make it into the collage is the cat that is constantly with me.. the tattoo on my arm of Bast taken from the D&D deity book illustrations.  Its my largest tattoo (taking up my right arm from shoulder to elbow..) and also the one I’m least happy with, hence the reason there are no photos here of it.  The artist and I clashed on the piece (regarding colors & his “artistic freedom” on MY skin) after the outline was completed and it was never finished.  I haven’t had the money to go to another artist and have it re-worked.. but its my first priority as far as tattoo work goes when the money does come through.

1. IMG_2215, 2. IMG_2218, 3. IMG_2217 4. Not on Flickr
A selection of the Buddha statues I have around my house.. all of various sizes & styles. (I realize that the #3 photo is actually a Tara statue but she’s also a bodhisattva.)  The largest one is the dark gray statue on the far right which fills the pass-through between my kitchen & living room  and was bought from Target’s outdoor section when the “World Bazaar” stuff was in stores a few years ago… its also admittedly my favorite one of the group.  Each one lives in its own room- the first in the photos resides just a few feet from where I’m sitting in my office, the second lives on the plant stand in my master bathroom window, and the Tara statue is in the bedroom.

1. A3-hooks, brushes, pens & needles, 2. A1- My spinning wheel and the table where I make jewelry & stitch markers, 3. A2- my computer screen says ” I will NOT draw as I’m told” 4. A4-handspun yarns, needles & spindles (clicking any one of these links will take you to a larger photo on Flickr)

I think that for me, part of being an artistic person is living with your tools of the trade all around you. I don’t “put away” my yarn because I love being surrounded by the colors and textures.. I enjoy seeing my spinning wheel, knitting needles, beads, hooks, brushes & paints. I’m sure its also partially because I’ve never learned to clean up my toys.. but the main reason its all out is because its inspiring to me.

Its taken me a long time to accept that I am an artist.. I create things.. its who I am.. and its a perfectly acceptable answer to “So.. what do you do?”. I’m so quick to bestow the title on other people “oh.. this? my friend made this.. she’s an artist” but when I’m asked what I do – I tend to flounder around with inane answers and make myself sound rather unimportant and boring. I don’t make resolutions, but if I did.. one of mine for 2008 would be to give myself more credit for my own creativity.

I realized while floating around in blog-land that there was to be a new ABC-Along for this year and decided to join. I started up a space for the posts and they will be housed in their own neat little category on the sidebar. I did crash and burn last time on the ABC-along sometime around P (for patchouli) but I’m going to attempt to redeem myself this year. I won’t be using any of last year’s words and am going to attempt to go in a different direction with the posts and the photos themselves.

I’m hoping that the ABC-along gets me using my camera more (I’m planning on carrying my old camera in my purse everywhere I go in case I see anything blog-worthy) and hopefully gets me to start posting more regularly.