Tomorrow I'm playing for one of the first dances of this year's Northwest Folklife Festival, the gigantic cultural shindig in Seattle that a friend of mine once called "The high holy days of our sect."

This is the FIRST year I'm 'officially' performing, instead of just busking, so it's the first year I officially get all the official perks instead of borrowing a friends badge and unofficially getting all the official perks.

I'm playing with my friend Jesse (whom I've been jamming with for ages) and old-pro guitarist Jay, who has more years than both of us put together and provies rock solid rhythm*. We've had a BLAST at rehearsals (All three of them, not counting the spur-of-the-moment 'ah, why not?' 2 hour one where we recorded the demo); it's gonna be GREAT. And we're only playing four contras and a waltz (A WALTZ WHICH I WROTE HOT DAMN), so it's not the endurance event playing for a 'real' contra dance is.

Anyway.

Anyway.

Things to pack. Things to do. Mend the tie-dye dress. Mend the tie-dye thigh-highs. Reassure tumblr that I do not, in fact, plan on wearing two clashing tie-dye articles at the same time, and that the dress is really very tasteful. (The thigh-highs are another matter, but who could possibly resist rainbow tie-dye thigh-high socks? NO ONE REASONABLE, THAT'S WHO).


*He can tell metronome numbers by watching his hand move while strumming. Dude's serious.

Sometimes someone pays to to paint something.



acrylic on board, 12"x12"

I just spent an enjoyable half hour talking to the buyer in the parking lot at my work (because art deals, like drug deals, should go down in a parking lot. In cash). She said she was a patron of my art; I told her she was The Patron of my art, as far as I could tell -- other people have bought my work, but the only other people with more than one painting are my aunt'n'uncle (commissioned nursery art, again) and my parents (who're storing the stuff that's too big).

Really, I've been very lucky. Not only did a gallery downtown agree to show my Sheep in Space a few years ago, the one person who totally fell in love with them happened to visit the gallery at the right time and happened to be married to an orthodontist (orthodontists make bank). She bought about half the work I had up, then commissioned me to do a painting for her then-on-the-way first kid's room (a black sheep, white sheep, and little gray -- well, violet -- baby, to match their family). This is the second commission, for kid number 2, in which she stretched my artistic limits by asking me to paint them on the ground.

They don't even have helmets. It is not the natural order of things.

My weekend was shorter than normal (I went in to work Friday to play music for a retirement party) but I made up for it by spending the ENTIRE THING outside (except for two hours watching The Avengers).

Outside of human-made enclosures, anyhow -- I spent a large part of Saturday inside a rhododendron.

This 'rhody' may actually be a giant azalea. The branches are smaller and grow more densely than you'd expect. It had been sheared* more than once before I bought it, so it was an almost impenetrable giant pom-pom. That bloomed hot-pink.

My housemate and I both hate the color, but it's a big healthy plant that gives the front bedrooms a lot more privacy, so I decided to do something about the shape instead. Last year I spent two brutally hot, sticky days crawling underneath and managed to create about a foot of space between the lowest branches and the ground, transforming it from a hot pink pom-pom to a hot pink giant mushroom. This winter we had heavy snows and an ice storm, and the weight pushed it right back down and clove it in twain. It looked like someone had taken a giant sky-cleaver to it, and it didn't bounce all the way back when the snow melted. My main goal was to lighten it up enough that it could spring back and repair the chasm, but that meant removing a LOT of material, so I reminded myself that I prefer arborized rhodies and commenced shrub butchery.

At one point neighbors (whom I don't know) were walking a dog by my yard while I crawled out from under the Rhody, clutching a reciprocating saw and absolutely covered in rhododendron guts.** The look on their face when a monster crawled out from under the bright pink shrubbery clutching a reciprocating saw was pretty fantastic. I'm pretty sure they hadn't realized I was IN there.

Anyway, now you can see the trunks a bit, the cleft is partially closed, and my front lawn is covered in dying rhododendron bones.

On Sunday, I bought NEW plants! and left the rhododendron bones as a warning to others.

Well, first E and I bought yummy pastries from the Bread Peddler and melon, prosciutto, and cheese (Tomme de Savoie and St. Nectare, I think), and brought the whole lot to mom's for her mother's day work break. See, we asked what she wanted to do for mother's day, and she said "Keep pouring the patio", so she and dad slaved over wet cement all day (We mentioned this to the lady at the bread peddler and she said "Wow. I wouldn't want to get in a fight with your mom").

Then we hit the farmer's market, and Erik patiently followed me around while I bought various edible plants (garlic chives, bloody dock, and cilantro), making occasional comments to amuse the vendors and serving as plant-choice consultant (he doesn't know anything about plants, but knows a lot about cooking, so the consulting was basically "If I grow this, will you use it? Y/N").

We picked up madalchemist, dropped off plants, and went to the Avengers. The movie put the guys in such a good mood that they happily agreed when I pointed out the big nursery is really near the movie theater and I really needed more potting soil. They didn't even complain when I stopped halfway down the second row of perennials, holding two pots, and said "What did I come here for?" Though madalchemist did suggest hitting me with a tazer when I got distracted. They actually got into it a little bit (the plants, NOT the tazer) madalchemist helped me comb through daylily tags and Erik surprised me with little moss ("This one! I like this one!") which is amazing, since he never expresses interest one way or another. I bought a Rocket City daylily, lithodora difusa 'Grace Ward', and the teeny spikemoss for Erik (plus the soil we'd come for). Thence home, already 4 o'clock with a huge amount of things to do.

It was 9:30 before we ate, but for once I actually planted everything I bought that day PLUS three others that had been languishing in pots. That doesn't mean I'm caught up -- I still have two snowberries, a red osier dogwood, and golden currants if-they're-not-dead, but it's still a first.

*If you do this to your shrubs or trees I hope bindweed crawls into your home and holds you down while death-weasels eat your nose and a squirrel nests in your sock drawer.

**They're sticky, and all the old leaves and park and petals and stamens and CRAP that falls out of the top when you bump the bush ends up glued to your skin.

My coworker Nancy plays polo and polocrosse, has enough horses that I keep an excel spreadsheet of them at work so I know which one she's talking about, and occasionally breeds them and raises/trains the bebbies. I went out to her place yesterday to see her week-old filly, tentatively named Squall:



I held the other current farm baby:

(btw, this is the barn where my kitties and <lj user="westrider">'s Eowyn came from, so this may well be a niece/aunt/cousin thing. It is very small and goes "mmeeeeeee!")

We wandered all over patting horses and seeing the various projects Nancy's been working on. I didn't get to scritch Snoot (who's been a favorite ever since I saw him as a baby) because he was out to pasture and a bossy gelding decided he didn't get to visit people, but I did meet Trinket, a 4-year-old mare who really, really likes her scritches.

( I made a scritch friend )
<small>Ooh I need a hair-cut.</small>

I've talked about depressing novels and grimdark games (and where the line is) with almost everyone on my f'list, it seems. You should all head over to read Elizabeth Bear's Dear Speculative Fiction, I'm glad we had this talk.

Personally, if I'm reading something novel length, I think there's no excuse for it to be entirely light or entirely dark. People argue about which is more realistic, but the world isn't endless suffering all the time, nor is it unicorn rainbow farts. If I'm reading a novel it may cover weeks or even years in a character's life; the unrealistic thing is to ask me to believe that they only experienced one half of the emotional spectrum in that time.

I was inspired by Charlie Bowater's tutorial/watch-me-paint thing floating around Tumblr, and a skin tone bit that evilsherbear posted. That, combined with a slight decrease in my stress-level, were just what I needed to pull out the art I abandoned months ago -- and change how I was working on it completely.

It's much, much easier, now.

The tutorials hit that perfect sweet stuff of "Enough new things to try without being overwhelming," and lead direction to a big realization (which, like many epiphanies it left me feeling slightly dumb) -- namely, that if I attempt to paint digitally more like I paint in, well, PAINT, I won't be trying to learn as many new things at once and it'll be much more natural, therefore I'll be better at it. I'm not sure now why I didn't start off that way -- maybe because I thought I'd be frustrated trying to make pixels behave like paint and that I should use the media to it's strengths or something -- but ah well. I was also terrified of opening the rabbit hole that is photoshop brushes, sure it'd be way too complex for me, and I was sick of managing all of my oh-shit-I'm-afraid-I'll-ruin-it-layers.

So I collapsed those damn layers. And I stuck with one brush -- but a much more natural one. And I made a skin tone chart (well, borrowed one for Joker, made one for Rhi, since she wasn't quite represented).

And, well...

( Cut for big artz )

The several month gap also made it much easier to notice things like the fact that I had his arm on backwards. There's still a hell of a lot to do (argh, hands! How do I paint open mouths? Will I be able to fit Marvin the Martian on his sock? etc), but I feel like I'm going somewhere. I'm excited to put the deep shadows back in, but I'm going to wait until I've got a rough background so I don't wander of into the wilds of screwed up lighting. Er, don't wander off more than I usually do, anyway.

And I had a lot of fun doing it!

On Sunday E came over early and made a delicious breakfast for westrider and I, which I suspect was partially by way of apology for the evening before. The three of us had a nice visit until he took off, at which point Westrider and I continued to have a nice visit. It was really low key, which was perfect after the prior few days. I got some cleaning and painting done while we chatted (yes, cleaning the living room is low key for me, and I'm fairly certain Westrider's used to that by now. Poor guy used to live with me).

When he left in the afternoon I switched from acrylic painting (on the sheep commission) to digital painting (on one of those Rhi/Joker things I abandoned months ago). I started working on it again Saturday, with a total change in process and style that is going much, much better. A whole bunch of things just fell into place at once, and I'm really enjoying it again.

Anyway, I went into the week with a clean living room and an almost-clean kitchen, which is far better than normal, and a weekend that was productive both musically and artistically. If I hadn't stayed up until midnight I'd say it was a pretty damn perfect start!

Every year in Oly people dress up as plants, animals, fungi, bacteria etc, and parade/mosey/dance through downtown to the beat of not-quite-marching bands and samba drums.

I don't know why every city doesn't do this, but I suspect it's because they're boring.

I've only been in the actual parade twice*, but we've got a little tradition of showing up early and making use of my family's natural ability to be, basically, a mobile party kit. This year we brought my fiddle, dad's drum, the new face-paint kit I put together, and some indescribably hideous balls shaped vaguely like distended animals which mom found. She also gathered vetch from the side of the parking lot and made head-wreaths. Dad and I played a few tunes, then I painted Kiyoko's face, then two little kids I didn't know asked shyly if I'd paint THEIR faces, then a few more tunes, then mom is gives away the hideous elephant balls (heh) and everyone's having a pre-parade party.

Dad might have better pics, but until then, here're crappy ones from my phone. I don't take or post pictures of strangers' kids, so you just have to imagine lots of hello kitty cheek art, one faded cheetah, and a pretty spiffy dragon.

( Procession pics! )

The evening kinda fell apart after the parade -- there was a complete and total snafu** and the less said about that the better -- but I got to sit in with my friends' band at Cascadia for a few sets, and they had the place hopping. During their last set there was clapping and dancing in a cleared space.


*I have danced along with the parade for less than a block on numerous occasions. Audience participation is encouraged.

**The only reasons this isn't going down in history as my greatest failure as a host ever is A) I've been a truly craptacular host at least once in the past and it takes a lot to live that down and B) I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't actually my fault. I'm so sorry, westrider.

On Friday Pinniped played at Kitzel's Crazy Delicious Delicatessen to an awesome ArtsWalk crowd. We didn't get people really going until the last couple of tunes, but we had people up and stomping and clapping to two sets at the end, one of which we hadn't performed before, so that was awesome! I'm especially thankful to the group of ladies who'd been holding up the wall most of the show; for the last few tunes they came right up front, even though it meant sitting in tiny kindergarten-size chairs, and having people up front really helped get the energy going.

westrider and Kiyoko and a friend of hers made it down in time for the concert, and a whole bunch of our music friends dropped by.

The space is high and echoey, so we probably should have taken the time to set up a monitor, but once we'd played a few tunes and corrected the sound it was great! At the last minute E's coworker volunteered her husband to run sound for us, and it was just fantastic to have someone else focus on that part so we could focus on playing. We may have to find a way to bribe him to come to our next show, because he was great.

Also, I now know to start with the fiddle mic at ~60% compared to everything else for decent balance. The sound-guy was actually impressed that I figured that out -- probably because he's not used to people asking for less of themselves in the mix. :P

After the show one of the brave kindergarten-chair ladies approached Erik about this producer she knew in Seattle who we should really get in touch with. I heard the tail-end of the conversation, and, sure enough, the producer in question is Hearth Music, the brain-child of my music acquaintances Devon and Dejah Leger. I told her I knew them and occasionally played music with 'em, and it turns out Kindergarten-Chair Lady is Dejah's aunt. Small world!

Before the show I spent quite a bit of time coming up with new graphic ideas for the PinniPage and business cards, which I should be able to finalize fairly quickly, so things are moving right along.

Received an email back from the biomechanics guy in Arizona. He says that there are lots of self-styled fitters/biomechanics who don't know what they're doing (which is true; there's someone claiming to do that at every bike shop and REI), doesn't have any suggestions in the northwest, and says "I could fit you in in June if you fly to Tucson."

o_O

Yeah, no.

That kind of expense makes sense for people who're competitive, and maybe once you've exhausted all other options, but it sure as hell doesn't make sense for me.

I probably just need to stop being such an idiot about my boring leg-lift exercises and make time to do them every day. If I can get my knee somewhere up to snuff then the hip stuff should mellow out and then I can start thinking about ways to improve my bike set-up.

There are no magic bullets.

There are lots of leg lifts, the most boring exercise in existence. westrider, when you're down this weekend? You have my permission and request to harass me about doing my stupid exercises.

Bonus note for readers of aStSHB: Yes, I lifted my own most-neglected exercise whole-cloth and put it straight into the fic. Never accuse me of originality. :P It does fit with Joker's disability -- people with OI often have very loose ligaments, and strengthening the muscles around the knee helps make up for a weak ACL. Or, in my case, no ACL at all.