Merry Animated GIF-mas

A snippet of decorating, as Kerry and I got ornamental Sunday night before getting our nog on. This year's star is a Fraser fir, a fine piece of coniferous-ness procured once more from the good chaps at Scouts Canada 66/67th Winnipeg A Troop in River Heights.

254: Felt Love

Kerry recently needle-felted these four birds.

 

I have no idea where they're headed next.

 

But I'm sure they'll land in the hands of loving recipients.

 

I'm just happy I had the chance to photograph them; give myself something constructive to do other than stare slack-jawed in amazement.

253: Vanity In Purple

I sketched this portrait of my now-seven-year-old niece (holy crap, it seems like only yesterday) in fits and starts over the last few days. 

I am rusty. It took me more than a few do-overs to arrive at the basis of something I could continue with. The source material was never in doubt: an incredibly brief moment I captured earlier this past summer at the beach. The reason for this epic pout long since forgotten, it's still a universal expression all kids learn to master – whether it works or not in getting what they want.

The layerings of purple, added digitally, come from an altogether different source of inspiration: my friend's three-year-old daughter who, like three-year-old daughters across this earth, is enamoured with all things purple and pink (despite her parents' consternation). But as the pinky-purply wash continued to accumulate, the more it began to take on overtones of summer storms around these parts – some of which even come close to matching the power of a little-girl tantrum.

Midway through creating this thing, Illustration Friday – that one-time bastion of inspiration for me in keeping this blog running – dropped in my Friday inbox their current theme of "vanity". I haven't dropped in on Illustration Friday in a year and a half, but am including it here since the whole creation would not have happened were it not for the brief moment of pouty vanity that inspired what you see here… which, you can click here, to see even bigger.

252: Hybridized

In an attempt to even draw a little bit these days, I signed up to make an appearance with my friend Mary's Doodle Swap Project, which previously I'd only done once before... wait, no – twice.

So yes, I joined in, tasked with producing seven small cards to be sent out across the universe, in exchange for seven in return, from various locations within the same universe (one keener had already arrived before mine even hit the post office).

I realize I'm cheating a bit by resorting to found art for half the concept, but during our trip in Chicago we popped into a paper/craft store and I stumbled on a whole bucket of 90-cent old-timey bird identification flashcards. And I knew then what I had to do.

I had to draw fish heads on them.

Shown here are six of the seven. I'd show the seventh one, but really, the gist is here. You'll have to trust me in that the seventh was of a bird, with a fish head.

I believe it was a rainbow trout.

251: What Happened To October

In October, we went to Minneapolis. Went on an artsy outing to the Walker, and saw a man dressed as a frog in a canoe on the way there. I have a photo, but I'm still coming to grips with it actually having happened. We witnessed the splendour of Nye's Polonaise Room. Buried our feet in beautiful fall leaves.

We went to Spring Green, Wisconsin, where my friend Erin took us under her wing. Arranged a reading for Kerry at the bookstore. Took us behind the behind-the-scenes at Frank Lloyd Wright's summer home, Taliesin. Sang Mazzy Star for us on karaoke night, and, a week later, displayed her own band's bad-assery at the Sh*tty Barn.

We went to Circus World, in nearby Baraboo. Off-season, the place was a shell of its bombastic summer self, I'm sure. But also, it was quiet and curious and serene, with the exception of a plays-for-25-cents monster calliope wagon. I bought a cap there. It says "Circus World" on it, and it's awesome.

…and later that same day, we saw whooping cranes.

We went to Madison, where my friends Tracy and Nate treated us like kings of all Wisconsin (or whatever they have there… governors, I guess, but they sure didn't treat us like the governor of Wisconsin). We drank local beers, ate some incredible extremely-local pancakes. Good, good people. Their cats were kind of meh about our visit.

Taking nowhere near our fill of Wisconsin, we also went to Chicago. In October, Americans do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But there's this thing called Columbus Day, and in Chicago it brings out enough pomp and lobster costumes for me to forget about turkey. Although later, I found a turkey sandwich for lunch.

In Chicago, we craned our necks for five days. Everything is tall in Chicago. And if it's not, it's probably big in some other way.

And in Chicago, at its absolute tallest, I had this fancypants glass of beer. And we watched the sun set, and Kerry and I rested our foreheads together and watched all the lights turn on.

In Chicago, we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. For eight hours on a rainy day. And for a rainy day, it was one hell of a rainy day. Maybe the most fantastic I've ever been a part of.

I celebrated my 36th birthday in Chicago. Kerry surprised us with a sunny-day jaunt on some Segways. And presented to me this needle-felted Chicago-style (no ketchup) hot dog.

Vile Bean

I wouldn't dare blame my mom for anything that's gone awry in my life – except my deep-seeded distaste for coffee.

My noob travels on Twitter this week informed me today is National Coffee Day. As a bespectacled, black-long-sleeved-shirt-wearing graphic designer, I should be elated. In fact, I should have known this weeks in advance. I should have sensed it, anticipated its arrival like a caffeinated Christmas. But no. I hate the stuff. I make no apologies. And it's all because of my mom.

When I was a tot I loved going places – as tots tend to do. Always wanted to be going. But like the ball-and-chain on an old-timey criminal, so to was my mom's slurgle of coffee.

Can we go now? Not until I have my slurgle of coffee.

Can we open our presents yet? Wait until I finish this slurgle of coffee.

It was excrutiating. First I'd wait all summer for it to get cool enough to go hiking in the Whiteshell on Saturdays. Then I'd wait for the Saturdays to come. Then I'd wait out the drive at the crack of dawn to get to the trailhead. Then all I'd want to do was find a piece of deadfall wood that looked like a Star Destroyer so I could run full-tilt down the path with the wood in front of me as it got pelted by X-wing fighter fire. And then bam! The slurgle strikes back.

Fast-forward to present day and I guess I'm still not over it. Mornings at my job with a cup of water, I head-scratch at the masses who. Can't. Work/Think/Talk/Blink. Until. They. Have. Their. Coffee. I visit coffee shops to meet about freelance and enjoy a delectable hot chocolate. Roll my eyes and gnash teeth at the stream of mindless Tim Hortons zombies in cars piled into the diamond lane. The coffee-lovers. The slurglers. They're everywhere. At work. On the streets. In my house. But they'll never get me.

Happy National Coffee Day? Humbug.

250: Don't Do What Donny Don't Does

I squeezed in a recent fun bit of freelance illustration for a poster concept, and while I hesitate showing the whole thing, these two excerpts were the best part – and an opportunity for me to get in some much-needed drawing time. The task was to illustrate four basic rules supplied by Parks Canada for tourists to abide by while riding the giant Tundra Buggies out of Churchill. I had nowhere to go but up; current "posters" plastered about the buggies are laminated letter-sized sheets simply listing the four rules aided by a bear silhouette.

Pretty straightforward: don't litter. Don't harass the bears, or lure the bears. The fourth rule, though – no using devices that enable cameras to be placed under or beside vehicles – seems oddly particular. I was told this happens; enough obviously, for a rule. The buggies are high, I know that. High enough to keep juicy tourists out of reach from Earth's largest land carnivores. Remembering that ultimately this required sign-off from government, I shelved concepts involving a fishing pole or elaborate steampunk contraption, and rolled with my big-schnozzed fella simply dangling a camera tied to his scarf.

249: Sweet One Hundred

Our house – as well as a huge swath of the neighbourhood – is turning 100 years old this summer. When we bought the place and moved in, it was a sprightly ninety-four. The ensuing half-dozen years have seen one burst pipe (show me a centenarian who doesn't um, dribble, once in awhile), one replaced rotten window (dental work) and one backyard overhaul (a little cosmetic surgery). Other than that, the odd crack here, the odd squeak there, we've little indication this place has even attained a state of mid-life crisis; the house is a solid, slightly uneven, solid, creaking, solid piece of craftsmanship.

Anyone who has sat in their house and contemplated all the goings-on since its inception can attest to the daydreaming I've done of late. Somebody lived here during the Great Depression. Through WWII. A family perhaps, with a giant tail-finned behemoth parked in the back, set up an aluminum Christmas tree. Someone taped shows on their VCR. A spry young couple married under its roof. I have a hard time even considering the street as a shadeless suburbia, complete with spindly, evenly-planted elms and the occasional awoooooga-tooting Model T. But what I wouldn't give for even just a glimpse.

Kerry and I are celebrating the grand palace's 100th birthday. Ordered a cake, even. I spent time yesterday concocting this designerly ode to the house, having much fun in the process. Two weeks from now we'll do our darnedest to tear the roof off… without tearing the roof off.

248: Backyard 2.0

If I'm at loose ends, I no longer want to be sitting around the house. I want to be in our backyard with my camera, taking pictures of the beautiful things that weren't there before.


As much as we fell in love with our perfect house, it came with baggage: a not-so-secret shame, in a weed-patch backyard fit for the dogs – which our neighbour reported, was previously the case – surrounded by rotting scraps of mismatched fences. Four summers we tolerated it, an uneasy truce with the green menace out the window (sometimes, you know, it looked kinda OK after a mow, with dandelions evened out nicely with the patches of sharp grass).


Nightcrawlers bored canyons, neighbourhood cats pooped, ants erected sandy temples. A tentacled mystery shrub that took a hole two feet deep to uproot and ultimately halt. We eventually carved a happy patch of dirt for a few summers of happy tomatoes. We found a hotspot where they were foolproof.


At the end of our fourth year we hid our secret shame from the outside world, erecting a fence – a wedding present from my brother. The ensuing winter, we could stand no more. Our hired landscaping crew brought in a digger-ma-jig one rainy day last June and scraped the whole damned thing clean. At work while the deed was done, I would love to have watched; I would have danced on the muck and gumbo left in its wake.


A few short weeks later the crew left, leaving behind a blank slate – a squeaky-clean mat of grass, patio and dirt beds waiting for a purpose. Already well into July, we stuffed the soil with garden-centre scraps and seeds. Things grew. The year was not a total gardening write-off.


Neither was this year, not by the longest of long-shots. Raised veggie beds were stuffed – mebbe too stuffed (our bad) – with chard, lettuce, eggplants, beets, peas, beans, corn, basil, carrots, peppers, sunflowers and high, high holy mounds of atomic tomato plants. A spindly rogue of yellow Sweet 100s shot up between the beets and carrots, uninvited but wholly welcome. Yard beds were packed with raspberry canes, a start-up rhubarb, ferns, wild strawberries, lupins and a native plant community of prairie grasses, coneflowers, asters, false sunflowers and a purplish jobbie the bumblebees go ape-shit for.

And in and amidst all of this, we sit, drink wine and have dinners. Or read newspapers with beers, and look out on all of the beautiful things that weren't there before.

247: Sweet Nothing

Kerry and I were at a backyard dinner party tonight with friends, all of us in solid agreement: it's been the greatest summer in years. An unending spell of mosquito-dashing dryness, sunshine and heat has rolled into its eighth resplendent week. Glorious. This was no more evident than during a sublime week of pure vacation-based bliss the two of us spent at her sister's cabin up north near Flin Flon.


Sunday highlight: scurrying, panicky loons as Peter and I zip over smooth-as-glass Lake Athapapuskow scouring for Fishing Derby contestants – marking their good-luck spots on a map. Special highlight: epic nap.


Monday highlight: shootin' cans with the Gamo (it's fun to shoot things!), paddlin' the canoe.


Tuesday highlight: Cranberry Lakes boat excursion, lunch in the bush and more wild blueberries to pick than you can bait a bear with.


Wednesday highlight: dusty gravel road with Duncan, biking to the creek and back with two stops – one, check out the Goose River dam and throw stuff off of it; two, poke at a dead snake with a stick.


Thursday highlight: endless bouts of Scrabble, Qwirkle, drinking, reading, side jaunt to Wekusko Falls (when you drive 1500 kilometres to get away from it all, 250 more seems a drop in the boreal bucket) and hotdog cookout.


Friday highlight: hopping in the kayak, wondering what took me so long (to hop in said kayak) – followed by neck-craning Northern Lights gawkery.


Bonus highlight: this is what a loon jam looks and sounds like at sunset (below). Warning: video contains excessive doses of Canadiana.