Crafting philosophy, Part 1

This summer had been very crafty for me, and with all this extra time, I have applied another love to my craft- research. I came across Craftivism, DIY ethics, guerrilla crafting.. the connections between third wave feminism and the re-claiming of crafts, to name a few. I stay up late resewing a thrift store skirt and wake up early to rev up the sewing machine on a re-used fabric grocery bag, feeling a statement against wasteful culture flowing beneath my fingertips. On the bus, i knit a rubber band shaped scarf on bamboo chopsticks, holding the project up high and looped around my knees so people can't help but notice, reminding them that all things are made, and that the power to make complexity and beauty is in their hands too- reclaiming an ancient shunned art as a form of public transportation self empowerment.

I first picked up craft at the age of seven, when my aunt taught me to crochet a dolls sweater. Materials haven't left my hands since then, and more and more, my hands itch to move yarn and my mind analyzes any manufactured product to see if its making could be restored to human creators. I like the smooth movements and dexterities I have trained into my fingers flow from my grandparents and other ancestors, who fought their way through life with their hands, building their own homes, weaving their own blankets, sewing their own clothing, raising their own food. In our society, 'arts and crafts' brings up images of hokey homemade jewelry, or shrink wrapped craft kits that produce styrofoam raindeer or ugly cross stitch pillows- but for my family, arts and crafts were an important part of daily life.

I think its time to bring it back to that.

Blasted fuse

Sometimes its felt like being frozen in place, like frantic uncontrollable movement, in the same moment, like being trapped in a barrel that's crashing down a the tallest cliff in the world.

Sometimes its felt like drowning, or like the numbness of deep exhaustion, arrived at after days of swimming vast ocean waters, never once sighting land.

most of all, I have felt like the electricity caught behind a blasted fuse, where my longing and inability to flow through that burned connector and take part in the world make moments into millenia

love is my connection, and when the last stronghold of it broke, the world and I found ourselves at odds.


Its so strange to be in place with it now.

DIY mouthwash- no cancer-causing alcohols included

I read somewhere that the alcohol in regular mouthwash can cause cancer in the mouth tissues. Plus, Listerine is bright green because of 'D&C yellow no. 10' and 'FD&C green no.3'. And the active ingredients are eucalyptus extract, mint extracts, and thyme extract. Hm! Sounds like I could make it myself!

My recipe--

2 drops peppermint oil
2 drops tea tree oil
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup warm water

Mix in a cup and stir with a spoon to mix up oils and water. Enough for two uses. It is colorless and tastes more salty while in your mouth, but afterwards you feel the peppermint and tea tree tingly sensation.

ANDAND if you use this homemade mouth wash, you will protect the oceans from pollution. The two ounces of mouthwash you use everyday might seem like nothing in the grand scheme of things, but imagine the supermarket aisle of mouthwash- a whole wall of green chemical-laced alcohol. Each bottle will eventually get bought, swished, and spit out into a drain that leads into the ocean. Iono about you, but I'd rather be swimming in a little peppermint oil than alot of 'Poloxamer 407'.

I gots ladybug pupa on my guava tree!!!

Thanks to Kyle Meyer for tipping me off on what they are- I have a fear of anything with an exoskeleton (except for butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and bees, to some extent) and probably would've allowed my parents to spray soapy water on them and wash 'em out. Here they are!


Well, thats only one of them, but multiply by two on one cute little leaf =) They will be ready to emerge in about a week!

We also have ladybug larvae in lots of different stages and ladybug eggs on a leaf or two. I'm really excited to watch the eggs hatch. How exciting! ... I'm getting excited over ladybugs. Typical =)

BUTBUTBUT some other insect has also chosen my guava tree to host its young. The eggs are everywhere! I'm scared that its some tree-destroying insect or a threatening species to Southern California. Can anyone help me identify?

omgosh this picture gives me the absolute heebie jeebies. that yellow egg looks alot like a lady bug egg, but those insects dont look anything like a ladybug larvae at any stage. seems like there is a larvae right in the midst of them, and seems like those little white things are eggs.. eggs that have been hatched out of?

I noticed one climbing over my hand after these pictures and stifled the 'scream and run' instinct to take a picture. My guava tree BETTER love me!



this one had lost one of its fake back *antenna*

HALP!!!

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies! {featuring guest chef, Ms Elise Smith}

So, I have gone strict pescetarian, which means no milk, no meat, and no eggs. The only animal products I eat are fish and bee products. Its for environmental reasons, if you're interested, I will talk your ear off about it =)

But anyways. Most cookies, cakes, muffins are off limits for strict pescetarians + My main sweet tooth is for baked yumminess = Marilyn's face looking like :'(

so I crossed dietary lines and asked Elise to teach me her vegan cooking secrets

in case you're wondering.. there is only one because turned cookie monster on my batch before ever taking a decent photo

2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
cinnamon, however much you want
vegan chocolate chips (dark chocolate, fairtrade is delcious =) )
1 cup raw sugar
1/2 cup canola/veggie oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup water

1. Mix Dry ingredients
















2. Mix sugar and oil so that sugar absorbs oil (very important! or else you will end up with oily, thin, burned cookies! learned that the hard way..).

3. Mix in vanilla and water to sugar-oil.

4. Mix in wet ingredients to dry.

5. shape into cute little blobs on an ungreased baking pan.

6. Bake for 9 minutes in an oven at 350 degreees. You can flip them over at the halfway point, but mine were all squished and pointed and I wanted to keep them that way.


These cookies are of the drier, crispy kind- perfect for my cookie-dunking ritual involving soy or homemade almond milk. They taste like french toast plus chocolate when you dump in alot of cinnamon.


We began our sugar highs with driveway chalk art


and rode it out by teaching Elise how to ride my Arbor sustainably made longboard



fun day!

more breakfast: sweet and savory granola

i love me some quinoa, but when i'm running late in the morning the extra forty seconds it microwave it up could make me miss the bus. a bowl of over-processed raisin bran has to do =(

so i made granola =)

forgot to mix in the raisins.. whoops.

Sweet, Savory, and Nutritious Granola

1/2 cup shredded coconut (in bulk, whole foods)

4 cups rolled oats (organic, in bulk, whole foods)
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ (in bulk, whole foods)
1/4 cup flax seeds (okay you can basically get this while recipe in bulk at whole foods!)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds (^)
1 cup chopped almonds or walnuts (sunday farmers market)
3 tbsp sesame seeds (^)
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
large pinch of sea salt
1/2 cup honey (farmers market vendors)
4 tbsp grapeseed (or canola) oil
2 cups dried fruit (whoops, forgot this part..)

This makes for a really nutritious granola. If you're looking for something that tastes less like health food, drop the flaxseed, sesame seed, seame seed, and substitute 6 tbsp butter for the oil. If you want to feel invincible, keep this recipe as is.

1. spread coconut on a baking pan, toast at 300 degrees till golden.
2. mix dry ingredients in big bowl, melt together wet ingredients in small bowl. The oil and honey stopped repelling each other after 40 seconds on high in the microwave.
3. Drizzle wet ingredients on top of dry ingredients, mixing as you go (or else half of your granola wil taste sweet and the other half will taste like oats with nuts in it).
4. Spread on two large baking pans and toast in the oven at 300 degrees until golden.
5. Mix in coconut and raisins. Serve yourself a bowl of it with some organic milk or rice milk, and feel the nutrient-driven buzz. Seriously. I feel like jumping rope and pumping some iron right now.

keeen-wah!!! (i.e. breakfast quinoa)

i love quinoa- its a slightly crunchy, all-purpose grain (but its not a grain..) that i used to pronounce kee-no-a

yummy as a complement to beans and such, but with some honey and raisins, it'd breakfast HEAVEN



here is my recipe:

Breakfast Quinoa


1/2 cup quinoa (whole foods bulk section)
1 1/4 cup boiling water
1 tbsp honey or other sweetener (farmer's market)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup dried fruit (raisins from sunday farmers market)
1/4 cup nuts, toasted and chopped (not pictured because they successfully hid from me)

1. Rinse quinoa. I rinse by pouring it into a fine mesh sieve and pouring some water over it.

2. Bring water to boiling and dump rinsed quinoa into it. Carefully. No burning yourself.

3. Cover and simmer over low heat until the water is absorbed and the quinoa is translucent, has the little ring around it, and is just a little bit crunchy.

4. Mix in the honey and vanilla extract and stir to distribute evenly. Sprinkle in cinnamon in small amounts, stirring until absorbed. Mix in raisins and chopped nuts (you can also put in the raisins about five minutes before the quinoa finishes cooking in the water, which makes them plump up almost like grapes).

Makes for about two servings of breakfast at one cup each!

eco-adventure of the day: lotion making!

I was looking for a recipe to make my own conditioner and stumbled upon a recipe for homemade lotion. The ingredients were oil, beeswax, and water and my mind began spinning on the possibilities of locally sourced, chemical free, fully customizable body care...

There's an olive oil booth at my sunday farmer's market, but I wasn't sure about local beeswax.. so I made like a geek and researched it.


Found it at Honey Pacifica and almost jumped off of my floor cushion when I realized their warehouse was two blocks away from my school. It smells so strongly like honey that I nibbled off a piece to see if it tasted like honey too. It tastes like wax.

ooo pretty ingredients and vintage brooch in there for no good reason

My mom got interested in the mess I was making at this pont, and she took over by throwing things into the microwave and ugly bowls in bad lighting, so there are no more ingredient glamour photos =(

Lotion/ Cold Cream for Dry skin

1/2 cup Olive Oil
1 tsp Jojoba Oil
2 tbsp Beeswax
1/4 cup water
1/8 tsp borax (optional, I didn't mix it in. no chems, please..)
*you can probably substitute other oils or waxes in with no problem, just puh-lease stay away from fossil-fuel based ones (mineral oil, paraffin)

Grate beeswax block until you have two tbsp. Melt beeswax into oil in microwave or in a water bath on a stove. Heat water to almost boiling in either of those two methods. If you are using borax, stir it into the water. Pour oil/wax part into either bowl or blender. Add a few drops of water at a time while you whip the oil, do not add any more water until the drops added are invisible. Whip for another ten minutes after all water is absorbed. If you want it to have a scent, add a few drops of essential oil to the mixture while it blends. And, ta-da! You will have beautiful, locally-sourced, customized lotion! Play with the recipe until its the perfect lotion for you.



*homemade olive-oil based lotion in a re-used glass mason jar from the Treasure Hunt thrift*

i made a 'le sac' dress =DDD

copied from an american apparel design

this piece of fabric had been floating around my craft room for about two years in the form of a thirfted skirt. i had no idea what to do with it until i picked it up last night and said, Gasp! "Le Sac!"

i love sewing. 38$ dress for like.. $4

oh, procrastination, you Siren, you...

-_-

i am coming to the end of my twentieth trip around the sun on wednesday, which means that i will soon be in my twenties. i dont feel prepared.

i love watching myself change over time, so for my future self reading this, or for friends who stumbled upon my blogs/notes, here are some realizations and wisdoms i came across since "april 22nd, 2008"

romantic love is not a object. 'love' is a dedicated action AND a state of mind and heart. {thanks, hope for creating/ relaying this philosophy and ken for being the primary guinea pig for it =P. love y'all

no, you don't always have to be the best of the best, or even 'better'. the rat race makes you trip over your own feet, and plus you'd rather be hiking some forested mountain than running in rubber gravel circles.

the purpose of your life is to try and save humanity from the environmental apocalypse it is ensuring for itself

get over yourself. other people may have it more figured out than you. allow yourself to learn from them!

the world isn't as mean as you thought it was. sometimes its meaner. but it can't do more damage to you than you would do to yourself if you were to paralyze yourself in fear.

when good people are waiting with open arms, don't be stupid. accept their love.


that last one i'm still working on. "nineteen" was most definitely the best year of my life. sometimes it seems too good to be true.

'Who doesn't want to just disappear, at some point in the day, in a year, to just step off the map and float?'

-Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir by Nick Flynn

i woke up with a strange sense today, like a creeping crawling up my spine and nausea in the back of my brain. i felt uneasy in my queen sized bed piled with warm blankets and pillows, suspicious as i stepped into some flipflops and trudged across our redwood floors to draw the curtains open to the blinding light of day. i watched my movements as i swung open the refrigerator door and reached for a cold box of factory produced soymilk, processed with essential vitamins and minerals, and poured it into a mug. i tried to concentrate on the mug as it turned round in my lit microwave and tried to lose myself in its heat and steam while i sipped it. i booted up my computer and ran through my ritual, checking email, facebook, myspace, livejournal subscriptions... it would have been an average morning.

the soymilk hadn't satisfied my hunger. i found myself pulling the fridge door open again, and scanning it for something to eat. my hand reached for a brown plastic bag of whole grain bread. usually, my reaction would've included something about 300 million year old ferns trapped in the banal evil of water-tight packaging, but this time my thoughts were fixed on a spot a bit beyond the juices sitting on the top shelf. amid burgandy and purple liquids, in a sterile glowing white theatre, a television screen appeared. i watched it, mesmerized, as it advanced through fractured, saturated images, an informercial staticy after travelling through years of time. baked orange Earth hosts malnourished, large bellied children that forget to bat flies away from their faces//dark skinned mothers cry over infant bones in little bags of skin//five year old children hold up an empty bowl to me with a pained look in their sunken eyes//white-faced good christians ask me for pity, mercy, and help. i closed the fridge door i'd been hanging on to and popped brown slices of bread in my toaster. a girl's gotta eat.

it is not reason never to yield to reason

from "Antigone"

"I beg you, do not be unchangeable;
Do not believe that you alone can be right.
The man who thinks that,
The man who maintains that only he has the power
To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul-
A man like that, when you know him, turns out to be empty.

It is not reason never to yield to reason!

In flood time you can see how some trees bend,
And because they bend, even their twigs are safe,
While stubborn trees are torn up, roots and all.
...
Forget you are angry! Let yourself be moved!
...
The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all too likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach."


if only i had listened to this earlier. *sigh*

MIDTERMS MIDTERMS MIDTERMS!!!!

necessity has no law

-william langland

a few of you know, most do not, that my dad was jumped by a gang when i was six, about a block away from my home. he spent two or three weeks in a coma and survived with mild brain damage and a few psychological issues.

i haven't really thought about how that event affected my life. i refused to think that the thoughtless actions of a few idiotic street thugs could even touch me.

it actually made things extraordinarily difficult for my family. my mom and dad had never gotten along, but after the beating, my dad became very emotional and easily angered, and also clinically paranoid. my mom could never understand why he changed and blamed his character on an unwillingness to be well. there was a year and a half were i didn't speak to my dad because of an emotional burst he had towards me, even though we lived on the same property. i'm a sensitive girl, not the kind of person who could be immersed in such a stressful home environment and NOT be affected by it.

but i don't blame the gang members. my family suspects that my dad was a target because he was fighting gang activity in our neighborhood. he was making business harder for the gang in its own ghetto.

necessity has no law. the people of the ghetto are there because they are denied the resources they need to live safely and comfortably. life in the ghetto is a constant competition for resources, and if the average man can't get what he needs by honest work, he will turn to fists and guns.

i don't blame the people. i blame the system, for denying secure shelter, food, and safety to groups of people based on their bad luck to be born into those groups. i blame a society that expects the poor to secure their resources on their own, without making as much help available to them as is needed.

what happened to my family is unfortunate, at first glance. it is mere chance that it happened to us- we just happened to be in a desperate neighborhood, with desperate people in a desperate time.

i inherited an indomitable tenacity from my mother, a need for independence and strength, and a love for justice and independent thought from my father. i have not allowed the system to make me its victim. it has influenced my family, making them afraid of its oppression and vigilance, and they have fallen victim to its empty symbols of wealth and prestige.

i feel uncomfortable claiming superiority over my parents, but i have so far been able to escape these extreme approaches. i can see the flaws in the system, and how they affect humanity. i can see what is useful in the system and what must change if we want to keep our society from self-destructing. i am using what resources and influences i have come across to subvert and re-create the system to work for those who came from necessity, but were not as fortunate as i.


there's no silver lining in a terrific thunderstorm, but that storm will disperse eventually
when it does, the Earth will be nourished, anew
you can abandon the land in fear that thunder will strike twice
or stay and cultivate the new Earth
and reap the benefits of your labor

I want goodness. I want sin.

But I dont want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger,
I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
-the Savage, Brave New World

I never really understood what this quote meant. I only had a vague idea, but it rang true to me.

I watched the movie Milk today, with Ken. Harvey Milk was an amazing activist/politician that was the first openly gay man to be elected to any major governmental office in the United States. The movie depicted Milk's fight for office and for gay rights until the moment of his death, when a former colleague, angered when denied his former office, murdered both the mayor of San Francisco and Harvey Milk. I have a heartache right now, like seriously. I held my breath for far too long and probably came close to breaking a few bones in Ken's hand. The movie was just... amazing. His life was amazing.

I've been thinking about ignorance lately, about how many privileged people in this society choose it as a way of life. Like the Matrix (phil 6H =D ). The choice is subconscious, and it is an easy one to make and a hard one to choose against. It seems that most every element in our popular culture and media encourage the people to choose ignorance. We are encouraged to not think for ourselves, to not feel with all our hearts, because it is too difficult, too passionate, too true of an existence. I have been fighting to choose against ignorance for years, but I haven't quite escaped the desire for the empty 'comfort' that ignorance affords those who choose it.

Harvey Milk lived with a sort of abandon. When he was faced with a decision between running for office for the billionth time (with a very good chance of being elected) and losing his lover, he choosed his cause. It was difficult, but he was devoted. He recieved a postcard before going on stage to speak at a rally that threatened him with death if he were to stand in front of the crowd and speak, but he went up and spoke anyway. I was on the edge of my seat, holding my breath, hiding behind my hands and waiting for the gunshots to ring when he finished his speech, still alive. He was devoted.

I have my cause. I have not devoted myself. Camus wrote that there is not one cause that is worth dying for, but I think he's wrong. If I choose ignorance- if I choose decieving comfort- I will not be able to fight for what calls for me, what calls for my devotion, what calls for my life.

At a few parts in the movie, scenes where Milk raised the spirits and hopes of his fellow activists, when they moved thousands of people to stand up and fight for their lives, I was overcome with emotion. I automatically detached from that emotion; I worried that the emotional make fools of themselves by letting that true feeling show. And I chose to cry. There's a fight within me that will not die, I can choose to let this fight loose on my causes, or keep it trapped until it makes its captor its victim.

I need to fight.

get up and dance around the room, my eyes are on you

woke up to pounding rain today, so i fell back asleep for a few hours. rain always puts me to sleep.
unless its in s.e. asia. whenever it rained there, i either watched it or stood out in it. warm rain was suchhh an oddity.

went to yoga at the gym. tevy and sophie know a girl that says its 'against her beliefs' to go to/teach gym yoga. i wonder what those beliefs are? i'm still in a post-yoga glow, even though it wasn't as great as some other classes i've done.

came home and COOKED. so today, my name is Chef Marilyn =) made mashed potatoes with kale

yumm potatoes and kale...

found recipe online

3 medium butterball potatoes , chopped with skin on (farmers market)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 bunch kale, large stems stripped and discarded, leaves chopped (farmers market)
1/3+ cup warm milk
freshly ground black pepper
some Parmesan

boiled potatoes about 20 min, till soft. in pan, sauteed kale with olive oil and garlic. mashed potatoes with milk when potatoes where cooked. mixed in lil salt and pepper. mixed kale and potatoes, drizzled with more olive oil, sprinkled with more pepper, added parmesan cheese

actually used wayyyy too much olive oil, according to the recipe, but it tasted guud. coulda used more garlic, more parmesan, maybe some chopped nuts or something crunchy.

Watchmen

It seems strange that there has not been more publicity on Watchmen. Maybe there has been, but.. I haven't watched TV in a year and haven't seen commercials, and most of the people i talk to don't really read comic books. Sometimes I feel like a hermit, trying to escape the culture that is built around me.

There's a chapter in Watchmen that describes Dr. Manhattan's view of space/time, it mimics Kurt Vonnegut's plot style in Slaughterhouse Five, a recent favorite of mine. Dr. Manhattan wonders if the universe is really just a watch without a watchmaker, alluding to and doubting the conclusion of Paley's Teleological argument. i dislike the teleological argument. i like determinism. although, now i've read somewhere that the findings of quantam mechanics make determinim impossible. i hope that someday i will get to understand why that is so. right now, i kindof like determinism.

the art in Watchmen is AMAZING. vannalyn, you need to read. before the movie comes out. move on it!

this is the best panel i could find online. read it in person, if you can. hit up a comic shop if you can, its worth the expense.

an itch to write

it is wednesday, february 11th, 2009. the spellcheck is telling me that i need to capitalize wednesday, february, and must put a space between the words spell, and check. i refuse!

its going to be valentines day. i've been feeling like writing warm, gushy things lately, but. maybe its the whole western 'dont show emotion in public'.

my myth prof (morse) today started talking about matriarchal societies today, and i said that my anthro prof (novotny) had said there where no matricarchal, only matrifocal. morse went... "ahhh, novotny..."

read a myth (which, by the way, is something that tries to explain how things came to be. i think. they can be true, or most likely untrue). anyways. read a myth from the Gnostics, which were kindof related to Christianity. it was sooooo difficult to understand, i'll have to attack it on a day i've slept and eaten well and with post its, pens, a notebook, and a couple of cups of coffee. It held that the God Christianity follows isn't really the most powerful god, but really a god that developed out of the shadow of a Goddess named Pistis-Sophia, who is light and wisdom, kindof. I think.

I am readin the comics Watchmen and The Last Man. graphic novels are a new sortof reading for me. art and text together. alot of the Watchmen's art is soooo brilliant. I want to make a huge print of a few frames and cover my walls with them.

I need to better my photo skills and drawing skills, so this isnt all text anymore. It hurts the eyes!