cottage factories

I've been trying to create more often and, like usual, I started my New Years Resolution a couple of months ago:

I FINISH THINGS!!

I will finish projects I start!

To understand what happened this week we first need to travel back twenty years or so ago. As a kid I must have heard of cottage industries which seemed like the best idea ever because I loved cottages and small things and drawing industrious worlds. I was always drawing ant farms that looked like people farms; elaborate tree houses that had liberal amounts of pulleys and trap doors; and cozy underground dens where animals or ants (I don't know what was with all the ants) were busy and safe from winter. All of these things also included hammocks because hammocks also seemed exceptionally cool. 

Cottage industries were translated to cottage factories which liked to imagine ran all the functions of the human body. There were little elfish beings who carried the saliva up to your mouth in tiny wheel barrows, tweaked all the right valves in your voice box, and then they had the supporting industries like the shops where shoes and clothing were made for all those cottage factory workers.

a recent drawing of cottage factories

I'd forgotten these factories until this past week. One sleepless night, I finally began imagining that as I was snuggled into my covers, if I breathed really deeply I could breathe in sleep. I just knew that as I was inhaling the sleep there were cottage factory workers to distribute it to my whole body.

And then I feel to sleep. 
Because I'm still essentially five and there are still cottage factories and ants are still cool.
But not as cool as worms.

Mixed media: cereal box, crayons, old library card catalog and check-out cards, Elmer's glue (it's acid free!), and a Toms catalog.

For some reason since I've moved home I've been getting Toms catalogs and I've found they're really great for making things. The paper is thick and matte with pictures of nicely textured and colored things. Last year they were incorporated into this (along with my BYU alumni magazine):

That silky, orangey thing you see hanging up is my mumu

(Isn't it so nice all these institutions are sending me free fodder for crafting?)

8 bit

Frequently choral directors tell you to sing with a lilt like you're dancing. On Tuesday practice our director asked us to rate ourselves personally on a scale of 1 to 10 how well we were doing. I imagined waltzing robots while we sang and then scored myself a 10.

I'll be driving by again in about a month

prairie 2.0

there's a cathedral in my mouth

snippets and picketsures

Remember when I was attacked by yarn/bought a fancy twist of alpaca wool and silk yarn and just ended up making a mess? My mom sorted it out! 

Perk # 553 of moving home.

Which meant that last week during my life reflection and rest time I could crotchet more slippers and play maracas for my nephew while we skyped.

Tonight we had Old Ladies Choir where we were supposed to imagine there were cathedrals inside our mouths while we sang songs about drowning in love's diadems.

The arm thing is part of Cathedral Mouth exercise not some new twitch I've picked up.

hand wash only, with any color

I have an idea, let's take this brain of mine––

No, let's take all of me.

Let's take this all of me and slit right down the middle, head to toe.

Let's run some water, cool and refreshing. A gentle pool of water, not just sloshing between my toes, let's get that gall bladder, my fibula and phalanges, my brain stem.

Use some lavender castille soap to clean everything out, then rince me off. Find a sunny mountainside and hang me out to dry. Clip my intestines and pancreas to the line, watch them flutter in the breeze.

Then take me down.

Put me back together.

And lay me down to sleep for a good long sleep.

And I'll wake up tomorrow, give you a nice smile, and make some breakfast.

i'm an ant and my dad is a centipede

This morning I've been remembering that time two years ago when my little nephew took a two hour nap on my chest and my sister was sleeping on the couch next to me and the remote was out of my reach so I was stuck watching whatever was on the food network which is how I discovered the Galloping Gourmet and I was quite overheated because holding babies makes wearing sweaters unnecessary but I didn't want to disturb that sweet, sleeping baby by trying to take off my heavy sweater.

It's one of my favorite memories.

e e cummings I love you, you dead beautiful soul you

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what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

excerpt from poem 75 in 100 selected poems 

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quotes taken out of context are fascinating

"Everyone worries about underarm
antiperspirants," Moynihan adds, "but
nobody quits smoking."

Timothy Moynihan, education chair and consultant for the division of medical oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as quoted in Scientific American.

i just want to look and listen forever

photo by Wendy Dunham via Cloud Appreciation Society Facebook page

The Carina Nebula via NASA

If you learn to play the dulcimer I'll marry you tomorrow.

something you should know

The girl with no name would like to suggest that plums look like night. Their deep purple skin is freckled with stars and a pale ghostly resin marks the Milkyway.