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I received help with whatever I’d done to my site to make it disappear. It did take me a while to ask for help, but I’m back to it now.

My mom stayed at my house for a month, to close out the summer with me in Anchorage, her first trip to Alaska. It was nice to around another person who likes to create. Regardless of what it was, we were all about making something new. We took a class on using natural dyes; we created a nature journal to preserve the many pressed flowers she collected while she was here; we collaborated on a scrapbook of her trip, so she won’t have to do it later; and we experimented with new recipes and new foods. I’ll get some of our shenanigans listed here.

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August is more than halfway over. Here in Anchorage summer has already conceded defeat to this in-between drippy season that is a sort of pre-autumn. I love it, as I do most weather. My mom is like that too — perhaps it is from her that I’ve taken this attitude. It doesn’t matter what is going on outside; everything has its own merits and it is all worthy of awe. Mind you, I’m overjoyed that I no longer experience the many many months of humidly hot days that are Oklahoma summers. But even a few days of that should be taken in every once in a while.

My semi-subterranean home has once again become a refugee camp for anything small enough to find a way in and away from the cooling temperatures and the wet. I don’t mind sharing my home with these tiny animals. Mosquitoes are not welcome, and I’m afraid are dealt with harshly. Flies are relentlessly shooed and may also be dealt with if they don’t take my hints that they’ve overstayed their welcome (which is quite short anyway). Beyond that, I don’t give trouble to anything that gives me none.

I was chasing flies around the bathroom, swatting them in the general direction of the open window, hoping they’d move along, when I noticed that this year has not brought a single insect in so much as pairs. It is as if the insect & spider community is sending delegates and are only individually represented. For days there has been a seemingly dumbfounded ant scooting his too big body in and out of the spaces just under the cabinets, always at times that are inconvenient for me to capture and release him outside. As far back as I can remember into my childhood, I’ve wondered about these individuals, about the lives they’ve lead until now. I was initially worried that this was a queen looking for a spot to start a new colony (oh, please! not my little bathroom!), but I think it is just a wayward member of a colony from the flower bed just beyond my porch.

Chances are very great that any ant won’t live long anyway. My house is host to a variety of harvesters and spiders all ready to prey on the other refugees. Spiders are amazing. Even at the times I believe my home is free of all crawly things, I’ll see one appear from nowhere and scuttle off to an again unknown place. This is again one of those instances when the ‘live and let live’ rule applies for me. In my book spiders are good. In a basement environment, the lack of more insects is likely thanks to the arachnid guardians who have set up snares at the entrances. I thank them.

All of this makes it sound as if my home is crawling with critters. Just the thought of that gives me chills. It isn’t like that. Anything that dares leave the sanctuaries of the laundry room or bathroom quickly becomes a brief plaything for the kitties, and then a light snack. Even in those relatively safe places, the insects and spiders have to be fairly clever at hiding. Bothering me definitely includes making yourself too well known. If a garden beetles plops himself in the middle of the bathroom floor, he’ll be excused onto the porch where sadly I’ll leave him to his fate.

But really, I like knowing that the world is alive around me. While it makes me feel increasingly small, it also makes me feel more connected to the world somehow. And allowing benign ecosystems to form in darkest corners of my basement apartment makes me feel a little bit benevolent.

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I’ve become terribly obsessed with Indian cinema, specifically Hindi (Bollywood). I feel like I’ve nothing but watch Hindi movies and listen to their soundtracks over the past month. This is all thanks to a guy I work with who loaned me a couple to get me hooked. That was bad enough, but discovering that DVDs are easy to obtain for less than $3 really sealed it.

I had a very specific idea of what Hindi cinema would be. While the stereotypical depictions come from somewhere, largely the movies were not what I expected them to be. I was surprised to see the range, which makes me sound horribly ethnocentric. But I feel the same way about American movies that are outside the conventions of American movie-making.

I have been unsuccessful in getting a friend or family member interested too, but I’m still trying. It’d be a tad more fun watching with someone else. For now, Andre will do. At least we can discuss and share the films while at work.

Recommended Films: Mughal-E-Azam, Umrao Jaan (2006), Kuch Naa Kaho, Pyare Mohan, Mr. & Mrs. 55.

Not convinced? Here are some solid reasons for watching Bollywood films: actors- Arjun Rampal, Abhishek Bachchan, Tusshar Kapoor, Upen Patel, Vivek Oberoi, Sunil Shetty, Ashmit Patel, Amitabh Bachchan; actresses- Aishwarya Rai, Rekha, Mahima Chaudhary, Madhubala. Look them up and you’ll understand.

Here’s what I’m up to film-wise.

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I’ve really tried to get on board with digital layouts. However, I have some fundamental issues with them that prevent me from getting there.

For myself, crafting is about escaping. I may turn on some music or throw in a DVD for background noise, but then I get into my project and enjoy it because of what it is. I like the textures of the papers and seeing what papers will work where. I like trying something big and having it fail, then I take it all apart and start over having learned what I could do better. In the end, my fingers are frequently covered in paint, chalk, ink, or glue. There are tiny bits of paper that will need to be vacuumed up scattered around my chair. I need all of that. Digital scrapbooking would certainly be neat and clean, but I wouldn’t be pulling away from the computer and it wouldn’t be nearly messy enough.

As for digital layouts I see in the world, I tend to not care much for them either. They can be very beautiful and elaborate, which has a lot of appeal initially. I always seem to be drawn to them at first, but when I look closer they are missing a certain je ne sais quoi. When a person has spent time touching, selecting, gluing, repositioning, stressing and fixing it shows in the final product. You can see the love they felt, the emotion they intended. That is when scrapbooking elevates itself to art for me — when one leaves a bit of soul on the work they’ve done. Digital layouts lack that. The focus is on using all the little pretty things that are not scraps of something else, on the “metal” embellishments that add no depth, on feeling free to use techniques that don’t need to be cleaned up after. I understand what sounds nice about that, but leaving out your heart doesn’t make for better memories. And besides, why would everyone want to create a page that looks so much like everyone else’s page that it looks like nobody in particular created it. That is as irritating in traditional scrapbooking as it is in digital.

That said, I have seen digital scrapbooking that is excellent. It happens when the artist truly expresses who she or he is, when they’ve left a bit of individual style on the page. And when the focus is on the memory and not trying to impress everyone else, things will always feel that much more beautiful.

Judge for yourself. Scrapbook.com has a digital layout gallery.

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Recently, I discovered this great resource page for students and teachers, Clipart, Etc. This page is full of royalty-free illustrations divided into themes. These have so many great uses. Give them a visit!

It’s summer! The insects are certainly out and about right now. For these guys, I started with pattered paper, which I cut down from the original 12×12 into 8.5×11 pages for use in the printer. My printer can’t handle even slightly heavy paper, so I had to make sure the weight was similar to normal printer paper. The best company I’ve found for that is Me & My Big Ideas. DCWV also has some pretty light weight papers in the numbered stacks available at Joann. I believe the current one is Stack 7.

I put several images on a page and printed them out. Then I cut the insects out. For some that requires extremely patient cutting. If your hand isn’t steady enough, get images without a lot of legs and antennae to cut out. Alternately, you could cut out a rectangle around the image, which would also be interesting.

As you can see in the image, some show the pattern really well, while some are only subtly patterned. The stick insect took on the correct color, but the pattern isn’t visible. Obviously, the more white area on your images, the more pattern you’ll get.

I now have several pages of patterned insects. I am going to use them for scrapbooking and cardmaking. They could also be used for collage or creating interesting framed art or whatever you might want to do with them.

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I’m so glad you asked.

Here’s 15 of my favorite dance songs at the moment… the order changes for me hourly:

1. Rocket in the Sky // Benny Benassi
2. Available // Flo Rida
3. Alors On Dance // Stormae
4. Fireflies // Owl City
5. Revolver // Madonna
6. Q.I. // Mylène Farmer
7. Bad Romance // Lady Gaga
8. Pour Un Infidele // Coeur De Pirate & Julien Dore
9. Caught // Ari Gold
10. Hush Hush // The Pussycat Dolls
11. I Love My Sex // Benny Benassi
12. I Am the Body Beautiful // Salt-n-Pepa
13. Big and Chunky // Will.I.Am
14. Inside of Me // Benny Benassi
15. The Look Of Love (Madison Park Vs. Lenny B Remix) // Nina Simone

Here are 15 other songs I can’t stop listening to right now:

1. I Can’t Give You Anything But Love // Ethel Waters & Duke Ellington
2. You’re the Top // Ella Fitzgerald
3. Let’s Do It // Ella Fitzgerald
4. Miss Otis Regrets // Ethel Waters
5. It’s Only a Paper Moon // Paul Whiteman
6. It’s a Bore (from Gigi) // Louis Jourdan & Maurice Chevalier
7. Kristofferson’s Theme // Alexandre Desplat
8. Honeysuckle Rose // Django Reinhardt
9. Waltz At Maxim’s (She’s Not Thinking of Me) (from Gigi) // Louis Jourdan
10. Happy Feet // Paul Whiteman
11. Django’s Tiger // Django Reinhardt
12. I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate // Madeleine Peyroux
13. Cette Chanson Est Pour Vous // Django Reinhardt & Jean Sablon
14. Gigi // Louis Jourdan
15. Mr. Fox In the Fields // Alexandre Desplat

I’m thinking of a reboot to my little blog universe here. Keep me in mind; I have not abandoned this exactly. 🙂

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I’m really over all of the horror-infused classics.  It was clever when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith was new. It was amusing and fun — Jane Austen’s original, but with zombie parts that seemed to work in well. We could all see what was coming next. The genie had been let out of the bottle and everyone who had the slightest way of jumping on the bandwagon was going to do so. Now it seems that nearly every classic novel will be reworked with zombies, vampires, werewolves, or some other horror staple. I can’t be the only one who thinks it has run its course. To Mr. Grahame-Smith’s credit, his fresh idea wasn’t his only one. His new book is promising, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Sure, it is in the same vein as his first work, but it is different. He’s moving forward, can’t everyone else already!?!

I’ve discovered music from the 1920s and 1930s. I’m hooked.