Tag: #atozchallenge

  • D Is For… Dogs

    D Is For… Dogs

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    Dogs, and the people who love them.  If you love dogs, then you get it.  If you don\’t, then you don\’t.  It\’s that simple, really.

    Our sixty-five-pound bundle of joy came to us eight years ago from the Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago.  She\’s gotten comfortable as a part of our family.  She likes to take her half of the bed out of the middle, leaving my husband and I to find what space we can in the remaining spaces.

    Author Lynda Barry, who wrote What It Is, suggests thinking about all the dogs you\’ve ever known.  Where did they all go?  That question rang like a bell to me.  I\’ve used it a couple times in prompt circles and the memories come back more strongly each time.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What\’s your first dog memory?

  • D Is For… Decoupage!

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    One of my favorite knitting books is by Leigh Radford, called Alterknits:  Imaginative Projects and Creativity Exercises.  She has a ton of really great ideas.  One of the last of them is the best use of yarn ball bands ever.  She covered a dress form with them.  I think the effect is surprising in its simple beauty.

    Until I read her suggestions, I didn\’t know what decoupage meant.  There\’s a whole artform out there surrounding it and you can get special glues and papers for it.  Basically, it\’s covering objects with glued paper, then applying something that gives it a high gloss.  There\’s a great tutorial at WikiHow and a bunch of other links that I didn\’t take the time to delve into, but if you google \”decoupage\” you\’ll find them.

    What I find particularly exciting about this particular type of art is that you can use ephemera and found objects from around the house.  This can create unique artwork that is also a snapshot in time – catalogs, magazines, newsletters, those circulars that come from big box stores each week – anything can become grist for the mill.  In today\’s day and age, finding art that we can make that\’s in line with the idea of \”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle\” is a positive thing.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What kinds of things might you memorialize like this?

  • C Is For… Calligraphy

    C Is For… Calligraphy

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    Before the printing press, there were pens and paper.  The art of calligraphy is from the Greek, Kallos graphos, or beautiful writing.  Like the printing press, there\’s an ancient history of calligraphy in Asia, and it\’s even tied to meditation practices.

    I discovered calligraphy when I was about ten years old, when one of my classmates\’ handwriting caught my eye.  She wrote so beautifully, letters that were even and round on the page.  I studied her writing for four years, endeavoring to copy it.  I finally succeeded and, in the process, discovered the art of calligraphy.  The Scheaffer calligraphy set that I was given as a gift opened a new world to me.

    Despite becoming good at it, I dropped its pursuit in college due to family opinion that I should focus on college and the necessity of making a living.  About eighteen months ago, I re-discovered the art.  The technology in felt-tipped pens is much better than when I was young.  In particular, my favorite is the Zig brand double-tipped pen.  I found a set of six of them and played for a few months, before buying one of each of the colors available.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What art did you play with as a child that you have picked up, or might like to, as an adult?

  • C Is For… Crochet!

    C Is For… Crochet!

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    Crochet.  All it takes is a hook.  The textile world seems divided into Knitters and Crocheters; I\’ve rarely met a Switch.  I decided to try learning and this scarf is my swatch that, well, grew.  The teacher provided us with a ball of bulky yarn and a hook, and I had a ball learning single crochet, half-double crochet, and double crochet (which really should be triple, since there are 3 chains, but treble is something else, and…)

    Yeah, I\’m a Knitter.

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    I mean, for one thing, I have a heck of a time keeping my stitches in order.  I somehow end up with more, or less, depending on where I am in the project.  I know it\’s a matter of practice, but my knitting seduces me.  I\’ll say this: I\’m really glad that I know some crochet now, because there\’s this sweater I knit that has 4 crocheted medallions up the center, and I really want to finish it.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What craft have you begun that you want to practice more?

     

  • B Is For… Books

    B Is For… Books

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    Books.

    They\’ve been around for a while now.  When I was younger, I thought that we Westerners invented them, but it was the Chinese who came up with the printing press 400 years before Gutenberg\’s bible.

    Whoever first did it, I\’m ever so grateful they did.

    The first time I started using the library on my own, I wandered the stacks of my grammar school\’s library.  I didn\’t know how to find books I liked, and it was so hard to figure it out from the covers.  They were blank, hardbound books with dark covers that held secrets between their pages.  How do you dig into them, short of reading all of them, to find out which ones you enjoy?

    I remember their smell, these old books.  I read somewhere that the smell was a unique combination of a bug that eats paper and the decomposition of that same paper.  I don\’t know if that\’s true, but I love the idea of a real bookworm.  My favorite author back then was Phyllis A. Whitney, who wrote mysteries.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What is the first book you remember reading?

  • B Is For… Bargello!

    B Is For… Bargello!

    \"\"Today\’s letter, B, can mean many things. My favorite in terms of crafts is Bargello, the Italian needle art that resembles flames and waves. The image to the left is a common style, with the colors undulating back and forth across the canvas but all relating to each other in their pattern.

    It\’s a simple pattern to work, because it\’s essentially vertical or horizontal. There\’s no fancy stitchwork involved, just carefully placing the stitches neatly one beside the next, offset in order to create the characteristic wave or flame effect.

    A quick search of Google images reveals many, many modern interpretations of this relaxing art; I recommend wandering around or, if you\’re ready to take the plunge, grab a kit and try it for yourself. For the brave at heart, you don\’t even really need a kit. Just select some colors and play with the wave effect across a swath of mesh fabric.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What\’s your favorite craft that starts with the letter \”B\”?

  • A Is For… A. Catherine Noon! (Of course…)

    A Is For… A. Catherine Noon! (Of course…)

    \"Noony-Thumbnail\"Welcome to day one of the A-Z Blog Challenge.  I\’m your host for this stop on the tour, A. Catherine Noon.  I\’m glad you\’re here!

    I\’m an author, which you may have guessed by my site.  I love to write.  I wrote my first story at the age of nine and I\’ve written essays, novels, poems, short stories – you name it.  I\’d write on walls if I didn\’t get dirty looks from people.  (Okay, maybe not really the walls.)  (Unless I had permission.)  Together with my coauthor, Rachel Wilder, we write as the duo Noon and Wilder and have several books out – and more on the way.

    But I digress.  Writing is, for me, as necessary as breathing.  It\’s become more than a way to communicate.  It has, quite literally, saved my life and given me a life worth living.  But that\’s not my only passion.  I adore music and have played piano my whole life.  I love to sing and can play a pretty passable recorder.  My guitar skills, however, are sadly undeveloped.  Someday I\’ll invent a machine that gives me more than 24 hours in a day – or that lets me pursue my passions full time without the bothersome necessity of earning a living so I can pay my rent.

    I discovered knitting in the year 2000, coinciding with the Millenium.  My mother died that year and knitting gave me a way to express myself that didn\’t involve having to articulate anything.  I could grieve and process in silence.  Since then, knitting has become a beloved art form and I\’ve joined the happy conspiracy of avid textile addicts.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What brings you to the A-Z Blog Challenge?

  • A Is For… Alphabet

    A Is For… Alphabet

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    Alphabets are magical.  Before reading and writing became ubiquitous during the Renaissance, it was the province of specially-educated people, usually men, who spent their lives learning to be scribes.  The illuminated manuscripts they left behind are masterpieces of art, calligraphy, adornment, and design.

    I learned calligraphy as a child and spent many years away from it.  I\’ve recently rediscovered it and have been having a ball playing with it.  By \”play,\” I mean not taking it seriously.  I haven\’t used my dip pens, nor pulled out any of my instruction books, nor worked with my calligrapher\’s drawing table more than a couple times.  Instead, I\’ve been doing the calligrapher\’s equivalent of sketching – drawing designs on the page with quotes, or poems, or other things.

    Quite by accident, I stumbled on something that I\’ve been calling mandala; though, strictly speaking, it\’s not really a mandala (the word in Sanskrit that means wheel).  My designs are usually square or diamond-shaped, and are composed of words rather than shapes.  But they are meditative, ask questions, or seek to answer something.  Take this image, for instance:  I was seeking what meant \”home\” to me, and trying to answer the question of \”what makes a dwelling a home\”.

    What about you, Dear Reader?  What craft did you play with as a child or youngster that you either have already rediscovered now, or might want to play with again?

     

  • A To Z Challenge: Reflections and Tue Cent Twosday

    A To Z Challenge: Reflections and Tue Cent Twosday

    It\’s May. How did April go by so fast? And yet, it didn\’t: it went by fully.  It wasn\’t so much the velocity as the content. Here\’s what I mean; my ten things list of what I learned from the April 2014 A to Z Blogging Challenge:

    1. Challenges stretch you. They push you to do better.
    2. I adore participating with others. As much as writing is a solitary activity, I\’m a group-oriented thinker and this suited my approach to writing, and life, perfectly.
    3. Daily discipline leads to changed habits.
    4. Sustainable growth is preferable to sudden expansion, because the latter is followed by the inevitable contraction.
    5. There are some damned fine bloggers out there.
    6. Optimism takes work.
    7. You\’ve got to give to get.  Social media is less about the media and more about the social.
    8. One blogger complained that it was too much work, she didn\’t really gain new friends, and that her sales didn\’t improve. I think this misses the point. To me, the Challenge is about the collective outpouring of effort focused around a common, shared, goal – to see if we can write 26 posts in a row and witness each other\’s birthing pains. It\’s not about \”gimme,\” it\’s about \”let\’s.\” Together, we are stronger: but together begins with me, reaching out of myself and visiting other places, other blogs, even other countries.
    9. Cultural sensitivity is key when blogging.  I\’ve met folks from India, New Zealand, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East…  The world is a big place, but the internet builds bridges.
    10. I am so grateful to the unsung heroes that did the early work of the internet, from 1969 and its beginnings as ARPANET/DARPANET, to the development of the Network Information Centers at places like Stanford Research Institute, to CERN and the World Wide Web. We stand on the shoulders of giants, my friends, and we are the better for it. When I feel down about the state of the economy or world peace, the internet quite literally reminds me that life will find a way. We humans are communicative creatures and the internet brings me hope that we will stumble on a way to find peace with each other, a common understanding and respect. Yes, even with lolcats.
    What did you learn from participating in the Challenge, either as a reader or also as a participating blogger?
  • Thursday 13 – 13 January Images

    Thursday 13 – 13 January Images

    It\’s snowing.  My husband is not amused.  🙂

    Boria napping in our new living room.  We had to get rid of the beanbag chair, but the cat loved it.

    Here comes the train.  It\’s snowy and they don\’t put salt down on the platform, but sand.  Yes, it\’s slippery.

    This is a path that leaves the corner of my usual lunch park.  Where does it go?

    This is the viaduct.  I love the cave-like hold under the train. Gorgeous.

    Waiting for the bus to the Purple Line to go downtown.

    Moon over train. Or, wait… is that a glare on the camera?

    Cloud ceiling under the plane.

    Peeking over the seats at the people ahead of me on the plane.  I am NOT creepy.  Just curious.

    Red Rock Canyon.  Actually, I think this is a canyon south of it.

    Bird.

    Creosote?

    Knot?
  • A to Z Challenge, Day 26: Z Is For Zen

    A to Z Challenge, Day 26: Z Is For Zen

    Image © 2014, A. Catherine Noon, All Rights Reserved
    Zen Koan

    Chao-Chu fell down in the snow

    and yelled, \”Help me up! Help me up!\”

    A Zen Monk came and laid down beside him.

    Chao-Chu got up and went away.

    Thank you for visiting and traveling with me during the April A-Z Blogging Challenge.  I\’ve enjoyed making new blogging friends and collecting new followers.  It\’s readers like you that make writing such a pleasure.  I appreciate your support!

    Happy blogging!

  • A to Z Challenge, Day 25: Y Is For Yesterday

    While the past can sometimes drag you under, and it\’s important to stay rooted in today, our yesterdays teach us about where we\’ve been, who we are, and where we want to go.  As author and filmmaker Julia Cameron puts it, in order to create original work, we have to be the origin from which it comes.

    Today, instead of letting the past haunt you, make peace with the fact that it happened.  It\’s over, and can\’t be changed.  Its story, however, can be told:  it can be written down, made into a poem, painted, sculpted, cooked, cleaned and ordered, any of a hundred other interpretations – and all from the same root material:  our own lives.

    In what city did you live when you were twelve?