If I had a couple of hundred bucks to spare ...

This artist is doing some really amazing things with the steampunked-out technology.  His USB drives incorporate small cabochons over the LED light so that the gemstone glows when the drive is in use.  They're not overdone or gear-conglomerated -- just wonderfully graceful, masculine tribal steampunk designs with beautiful metal tones.  Check him out.


Image copyright Weirdward Works.

Speaking of steampunk and things I'd like to buy (and indulge me, dear sirs and dear ladies, by allowing me to draw your attention to that so-graceful transition there), I'm currently trying to come up with a way to sort my lock washers and hinge plates and eyelets and keys and suchlike junk.  (It's really sublime junk.  I don't mean to denigrate its awesomeness by calling it junk.  Scrap metal!)  I really need a happy medium between "dump it in a basket," which is my pendants-and-components solution, and "sort it into a carefully labeled divider box," which is my (M's) bead solution.  Of course, M uses this stuff too, so the latter is probably what is required because she doesn't need the creative chaos I do.  Still.  I like to physically rummage for such things.  Though I also like to know how many of anything I have.  Sigh.

Garden Joy: Because I now live somewhere with seasons

So I finally got over my conviction that emails from me bother people sufficiently to have asked for some advice about gardening with natives on my deck from Carolina Wild nursery in my new hometown, and my favorite artist, Ursula Vernon, who was the second person ever to get me really invested in native plants (the first was my Envirothon advisor, Mr. Kelly, in sophomore year, and even then I thought it was a matter of rooting out the invasives rather than actually creating habitat for natives).

Dear God the response was awesome.  So much help, so many recommendations, so much patience with my naivete.  While most of the earnest native-habitat restoration Web sites will tell you that restoration is about landscapes, not gardens, not all of us are lucky enough to own a hundred acres of potential landscape -- so I will plant in pots with an eye to providing for small wildlife and hopefully establishing seeding specimens that might one day repopulate the little woodland on this property.

Preliminary garden plan: We've bought some apricot-colored violas and a red Japanese maple, a purple flowering kale, and some peas to take some color out onto the deck and give me something to take care of.  All of these are well-behaved non-invasives.  Hereafter, we're going to be doing all-natives with a focus on Piedmont Prairie wildflowers and butterfly hosts.  This coincides with our desire to go mostly purple.  We initially planned for two or three large pots, plus a pair of over-railing plant boxes: a wet bed and a dry bed.  However, our railings are an odd shape, so instead we're using pots in a variety of shades of aqua.

My working native-plant list comprises about a dozen species so far, but these are my favorites in terms of sheer drooling plant-want:

All images come from the USDA PLANTS database, here, or the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, here, both phenomenal resources, though the latter generally has more information for actually growing the plants.

American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)

Isn't that gorgeous?  That will occupy one of my pots.  American Beautyberry is supposed to be great for birds.

Liverleaf (Hepatica nobilis, Anemone americana)

This is both a spring ephemeral, which is very important to insects, and an evergreen -- the fuzzy leaves and stems turn dark red in the fall and winter.  It will probably edge a bed, along with:

Dwarf vernal iris (Iris verna)

A lovely traditional iris, a shade plant, and actually native to the Piedmont prairie!  Score!

Nodding onion (Allium cernuum)

Another Piedmont native wildflower, fairly rare in the Carolinas, this one attractive to birds and butterflies.  I'll have to divide the bulbs but that's okay, right?

Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium or E. aquaticum)

An awesome wetland native with thistle-like flowers and spiky globular heads.  So very cool.

I'm now working my way down a list of plants from a Piedmont restoration group in Georgia, so to anyone who doesn't enjoy the gardening posts ... I apologize.  I do.

I want to make purple and white flower jewelry.  Curse you, Pantone and your jelly-bean shades.  Curse you.

Adventures in housewifery

"I'm setting your cell phone alarm," M said to me this morning.  "While I'm gone, please scrub the colander of the remains of that evil-smelling turkey soup failure from Monday night, since you have been neglecting it, and also vaccuum up the popcorn remnants.  I'll set the alarm for a quarter to nine, because you are uselessly asleep at the moment, but remember, our stylish and put-together apartment manager and the polite, oddly diminutive bug guy will be coming to judge you and your inability to hold a bowl of popcorn without spilling it everywhere while we watch Masterpiece Theatre."

Muzzily, I told her, "Okay.  You look pretty," and went back to snoring.

Actually, that's not what she said.  What she said was, "I'm setting the alarm for 8:45 because pest control's coming, okay?  And try to get the dishwasher unloaded.  I'll be back around three.  I love you."

And indeed, I told her, "Okay.  You look pretty," and rolled over and went back to sleep.

I am not good at being a housewife, but I'm learning.  And screw Betty Friedan.  This shit is hard.  Which side of the sink should the dishes soak in?  Do they need to soak?  Which T-shirts from our shared wardrobe are M sufficiently unattached to that I can wear them while using Clorox?  How fast will I die if I Windex the floor and then wear tabi socks?  Can normal people do housework without having the iPod on so they can do frenetic swivel-hipped gyrating dances with the spatulas?  Questions arise.  No answers fulfill them.

See, learning how to do things like this:

Available here.

... doesn't leave a lot of mental space for learning how to do things like this:

Clipartguide.com.

Actually, the first time I was here in September, I sent my mother a long email detailing these questions and others.  She was kind enough to reply with her wisdom.  I expect that my mother, who is one of those brave third-wave feminists who said "Wait.  Wasn't the point here that I had a choice?" and decided that she had the right to prioritize a beautiful home and a relaxed family life over the High-Powered Career that she was told to want in college, was probably pleased to have me throw myself on her mercy and recognize what hard work all of this is.

Mom also reads this on occasion.  Maybe I should stop saying "shit" on my blog.  Maybe I should stop swearing on my blog anyway.

I could never be like Mom.  She has the patience and the task-breakdown abilities to keep a comfortable home and an incredibly gorgeous garden, and she would have brought them to bear in a day job if she'd chosen to remain in that path.  Mom is an educator without being dependent on a fragile education wage.  She actually would be much better than she thinks she would be at a High-Powered Career -- and she taught me that I don't have to have one to be happy, but I don't have to sacrifice that chance to be happy, either.  That there's no single way to be a woman.

Despite this important truth, it turns out that I have the attention span of a gnat, no ability to compartmentalize whatsoever, and am both intellectually bent and really frickin' weird, so there is no place for me but academia.  Hence the chagrin with which I regard my kitchen.

My family seems to be aware of this.  Among my Christmas presents were a second frilly apron and a number of cookbooks.  Here is a picture of me at Christmas:

While I look wholesome and competent in that photo, I assure you this is not the case.

Some of the cookbooks I'm holding there were from the 1950s.  This is awesome, because I am a Gallery of Regrettable Food addict, and also very touching, because a close look at the dates of them reveals that they're M's grandma's wedding cookbooks.

One of them is called "Dishes Men Like" and was printed by Lea & Perrin's.  It earnestly informs me that there is no better way to please my man (I'm quoting) than to get in the habit of keeping a bottle of Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce -- his familiar favorite from the country club -- on the dining table as well as in the kitchen.  This will also save me extra trips.

After I absorbed this well-meaning advice, I informed M, "You're fetching your own damn ketchup."  She seemed okay with this.

And then while I return to the breach of housewifery (not, I hasten to assure the world, in my apron and pearls) I find myself thinking, "Since we're always just over dishwasher capacity but not sufficiently to justify a second load, maybe I should prioritize items with more than one utility," and then I realize I just need to do the world a favor and stop using words, and then I go write a blog post which doesn't help with that goal while the white Formica countertops marinate in Comet, and here we are.

Being a housewife is hard.

Contemplating wording

There's this new-jewelry-business grant that I wish I could apply for, except that I have no documentation of actually having started my business in or after 2008 (which I must have, I think; it was about the time I met M and that was spring 2008).  However, that is not the point because I instead want to highlight one of their requirements:

"Their design companies must focus on 'bridge jewelry' which is the segment between costume jewelry and fine jewelry that includes accessories in sterling silver, semi-precious stones, crystal, freshwater pearls and other similar materials. This segment is also known as 'craft jewelry' or 'art jewelry.'"

... well.

I don't really like "craft jewelry," because "craft" has connotations of Vacation Bible Schools and little old ladies with Styrofoam and Froot Loops ... which is weird.  I'm a Lord of the Rings nut engaged to an ordained pagan minister, I should immediately think witchcraft and smithcraft and wicked craftiness. Yet it makes me twitch a little.  "Crafter" is better, "craftsman" (used as a gender-neutral term) is awesome, but "craft" is squirmy.  Maybe I just went to way, way too many Vacation Bible Schools.

Still, though.  "Bridge jewelry."  I like that.  Will anyone know what I'm talking about?  Because it beats the hell out of my demented little construction of "fine high-end fashion jewelry."

Sketching, for a given value of sketching

Still in a haze of trying to get the business going again, so a quick post today.  But here are the "sketches" for my current custom order, a pair of earrings and some bridesmaid-and-flower girl bracelets for a vintage-Hollywood-glamour-style wedding where the colors are black and burgundy and the bride will be wearing this lovely gown in silver and pale gold:

The designs will probably be in silver-plated pewter with black onyx and Bordeaux Swarovski crystal pearls.

And yes, this is how I "sketch" for almost all my custom orders.  I'm a pretty fair artist, as long as I don't try to draw feet, but I find it easier for both the client and I to see what I'm trying to show them given clear differentiation and being able to type into the sketch.

An insightful remark from someone else

My last word-choice article, which dealt with the words beautiful, pretty and lovely, got this awesome comment from Barbara MacDougall of Artefaccio, which read in part:

"There is a war I fight between my black-tee-shirt-and-jeans-no-jewellery-clad, hard-nosed, concrete view of the world, a world divided by practical needs versus impractical wants, and remember what it's like to be awe-struck by whimsy and impracticality and overcome by irrational desire for something so beautiful my brains go out the window."

And I kind of had a "Eureka!" moment, because that's it.  That's why writing online copy to describe your own work is so damnably hard. We carefully cultivate a business-minded toughness so that it's difficult to connect the "I am managing my business" neurons to the "pretty words are pretty!" neurons.  That's also why writing this series has helped me so much -- in addition to the paranoia that people are going to come to my shop and say "You hypocrite!  You said 'beautiful,' 'elegant,' AND 'authentic' in that one description!", I'm weaving connections between those parts of my brain so it comes much easier.  Dr. Kawashima would be chuckling proudly right now.

My Old South Carolina Home

So we got here juuust in time for a massive snowstorm, so the car is still packed because we were afraid of the steps, but we've hung pictures and installed the Wii my parents gave us for Christmas (it's RED), so life is good.  The Etsy shop, consequent to the weather, is still closed, but should be returning shortly.

It's a stunning day, clear and crisp and exactly one degree above freezing at a quarter to noon, and I'm watching the snow melt slowly off the pine trees from where I'm curled up with Frosted Flakes and a lap quilt on my orange loveseat.

Things I have learned both on the trip and since I arrived:

1. I now understand why so many people refuse to leave New Orleans.  Under the tourist crap and the heavy dusting of powdered sugar, in a way that somehow incorporates both, that city is alive.
2. Unsurprisingly?  The company on New Orleans vampire tours is a.) young and b.) freaking scary.
3. People look at you funny when you genuflect before the altar even in a minor basilica.  I have mentioned I'm a weird fusion of pagan and Catholic, right?
4. Crawfish.  Oh my GOD crawfish.  Fried.  Etouffee.  Gimme.
5. Texas is really freakin' huge.  It constituted well over a third of our trip.
6. Much of the upstate used to be prairie.  Seriously.  Who knew?
7. If the cheese, milk and bread in the local Ingles are down to "Cheasy Product," whole milk, and hoagie rolls, it's not because it's Sunday.  Check the weather.

M is off teaching Business Writing and I need to clean the kitchen and start some laundry before she gets back (housework is so much easier by oneself than with a partner at home), so off to put on my frilly apron!  And clean my kitchen.  Mine.

Squee.