Penultimate Pea

We got a surprise package in the mail yesterday from my aunt Maureen, filled with all sorts of goodies for Emmett. I absolutely love getting personal mail (even if it's not technically for me), and Maureen, who's an artist, always picks out such fun, creative gifts. I'm especially excited about the quilt she sent—I've really been wanting a handmade quilt for Emmett and had almost convinced myself that I was going to make one for him (oh yeah, I'm totally gonna teach myself to quilt in all of my abundant free time), but now I don't have to! It's the perfect colors too. Yay!

Emmett enjoying some of the bounty:

Okay, maybe just a tiny sneak peek…

I'm so excited about these and can't wait to show you the rest! I still have a lot of work to do on them though, and don't know when I'm gonna find the time! I'm off to run errands, gotta try to fit in some holiday planning asap, and my parents are coming over for dinner. ah, the holiday season…

Totally unrelated note: I realized that I could see the google search strings that people visiting my blog have used, and I am apparently the NUMBER ONE search result for when+where+peas+domesticated. haha.

I've been fighting off a cold for the past two days, and just trying to get lots of rest. Emmett helped out yesterday by taking two loooong naps. He is so sweet when he sleeps; I love it when he smiles—or even laughs—in his sleep.

He's still not rolling over, but seems to really be hitting a new physical stride over the past two days—he's "swimming" on his belly a lot, really lifting up on his arms, and has started to rotate himself around when he's on his stomach.

In art news, I'm starting to hit an awkward blogging point where I have tons of projects going and lots that I want to share…but recipients of said projects may be reading, so I can't really say too much. Sigh. I'll have to find a way to share little peeks here and there so I'm not totally silent for the next month.

I wanted to title this post "successes and failures", but I've already used that title; I think I could use that title for just about every other post (the remaining posts would be titled "in progress", also used already!) For every sculpture that I make that "works", there is at least one that has not worked. And even of the ones that I deem acceptable, only about half are ones that I actually like.

But I've really been appreciating the failures lately (no small feat considering what a perfectionist I am used to be). With every sculpture that doesn't work out, I'm learning. I'm figuring out what I like and what I don't, the facial proportions that match the vague image I have in my head of what these people "should" look like. It's difficult at this small scale -- a millimeter less between the eyes, a slightly different angle to the cheek, an accidental dent to the chin -- any little change has the ability to create a completely different, unintended or unwanted look. But these missteps are valuable. And with every success, I am, I think, committing these tiny strokes of finger and tool to muscle memory, developing patterns that I hope to be able to repeat again.

ganache covered chocolate cheesecake with marzipan leaves and acorns

Managed to finish up a bunch of eyes last night, which is good since I probably won't get to any more sculpting for the next few days. Still trying to figure out a way to make the eyes more regular (or at least have each pair be irregular in the same way). Thinking a lot about backgrounds for my little sculptures too, and will probably spend some time experimenting with that I soon as I can.

First snow today!

The past few months have flown by so quickly; it's almost winter and I'm still catching up to the idea that it's fall. I can't believe Thanksgiving is in two days. We're going out to Boston to see Ryan's (enormous) family, so I don't actually have to do much cooking (though I wouldn't really mind if I did). But Thanksgiving reminds me that Christmas is only a month away, and I haven't even begun to do any planning. There are cards to make and send, presents to make or buy, a tree to cut and decorate (and figure out where to put!), meals to think about…eep! Will try to delay stressing about the next holiday until after this one.

Well, we got all of the wood stacked! We still have a small pile of bark/kindling to get cleaned up, but it's nice to be finished with the majority of it. In the past, we've sometimes gone weeks before getting all of it away, so it's kind of amazing that we got it done in one day. I've noticed this with my art too — somehow having a kid makes us more productive (knock on wood, hardy har har); I guess something about having less free time means we're that much more careful to use it wisely.

I collected a little pile of birch bark during the stacking, I'm thinking of maybe using it for a collage of some sort. I have this habit of picking up these beautiful little nature remnants — pieces of moss, branches, river rocks, seaweed — but I haven't been good about finding a way to use them in my art or figuring out a pretty way to display them. Maybe this will be the year that I do!

Emmett had his four month check-up today and weighs a whopping 20lb 2oz, making him bigger than over 95% of other babies his age. We've got one pound and fourteen ounces to go before he's officially out of the weight range for his car seat, and all the 6-12mo clothes that I so cleverly got him when he was two months old, thinking they'd last through the winter, are becoming comically small. I have hatched a behemoth.

Emmett also got some shots today and he tends to get pretty upset a few hours after getting poked, so it's been a quiet day with lots of snuggling and nursing and napping (and some crying). Days like today remind me of how generally awesome and "easy" a baby he is: he really never cries and is just so happy and talkative and calm, and I'm actually able to get a good amount done around the house or on projects as he's content to watch me or play with whatever toy he's trying to figure out how to eat. We are so, so lucky.

Speaking of the awesome kid, why is it that all the pictures of him and Ryan look like this:

and all the pictures of him and me look like this???

Well, I stayed up waaay too late last night, and Emmett took a long nap today (which I should've used to take a nap myself), so I managed to finish this self portrait of sorts:

I was trying to mess around with the features and make them a little differently than I usually do, and I only had large-ish eyeballs left, so she looks a little weird. Apparently I envision myself as the love child of Ricky Gervais and Allison Janney.

It doesn't really look much like me, but I wasn't really going for accuracy as much as a kind of symbolic me. It works, I think.

We got our wood today, a mere two hours after we ordered it (now that's what I call customer service), so though I was looking forward to getting some sculpture work done this weekend while Ryan can watch Emmett, it looks like I'll be working on this instead:

Have a great weekend!

It's past midnight on a Thursday and I'm sitting here sculpting impossibly tiny glasses. Yeesh.

On a completely different note, does anyone have any recommendations for a decent, inexpensive tripod? I'm using a Nikon d40 and will mostly be using it to shoot indoors, so weight/compactness aren't necessarily issues.

Hello Maniacal Rage readers! Thanks for stopping by. I'm still just getting started with this here blog, so I hope you'll check back often as I tweak things here and there, add content, and figure out what I'm doing. I hope to post more about my working process, more finished projects, and more recipes. I'm also hoping to have an etsy shop up and running in early 2008, but I'll post more about that here first. In the meantime, if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or email me directly, penultimatepea{at}gmail.com

If you're not coming here from Maniacal Rage (um, hi mom!), go check it out. Garrett runs a beautiful (and frequently redesigned!) site and is cohost of the hilarious Maniacal Rage Podcast and Maniacal Rage TV.