spark

wordless wednesday

word of the day 73/365: grand

The prefix grand-, as in grandmother and grandfather, dates from the early 13th century.  In case you were wondering.

One of my earliest memories of my paternal grandparents' room includes this mysterious pear-shaped bank, which sat for decades (at least 30 years) on my grandfather's dresser.  I say mysterious because I never did learn: What the heck is it? Why is this bank shaped like a pear?  Why did my grandfather have it? Was it special to him? Did it remind him of somebody or something? Did he just like the whimsy of it?  After he died, when the house was being closed up, my parents asked if there were anything I'd like to have, and my mind went straight to the pear.  They had no idea what I was talking about, but there it was, right where I had described it. 

I have to wonder if my early exposure to this pear fostered my love of Mr. Potatohead and the fabulous operatic stop-animation orange who used to sing the aria from "Carmen" on Sesame Street.  I mean, I love that orange.  Love. Lurve. Looove.

Anyway, the bank now lives with me, and while the years have not been kind to her brittle plastic features, I still love her.  She was empty until today, when it occurred to me that she would be a great keeper of good fortunes.

In the absence of a grand contribution from Griff today, I give you Señora Naranja. I wonder if Pop-Pop ever saw her?

word of the day 63/365: vintage

I will admit: I cheated.  This is the second time that I missed a day, and the first time that I took a picture the day later and counted it for the previous day.  It's taking a while to get back on the horse.  I went almost 68 hours between the last photo I took and this one.  Just couldn't  bear to touch the camera. So this was actually taken on day 64 with day 63's word in mind.  I'm sure you'll forgive me, but I'm still bummed to have fallen off the horse.

Our house came equipped with two alarm systems, one of which is modern, while the other appears to be from the 50s or 60s.  I love the ancient resistors with their pretty stripes. 

word of the day 28/365: insidious

"I rejoice that there are owls," wrote Thoreau in Walden, and I could say the same, but I fear that they will be my undoing. I must have been infected by my exposure in the '70s - one of my mom's favorite coffee mugs (which is now in my cabinet) bore owls and I have a vague recollection of other owl paraphernalia or items bearing owl motifs. At any rate, the 70s seemed full of folkloric designs, quaint birds, gnomes, mushrooms, and pretty much anything that resembles a Waldorf school or vintage shop today.

First I adopted the mug, which my mom didn't seem to want or need any more. (A mushroom mug my dad used to use came with it.) My grandmother parted ways with an old owl necklace (incidentally, her kitchen was done in mushrooms for as long as I can remember). A friend found a little owl mug for me on Etsy as a surprise. I have been wishing for (but not purchased yet) a tiny owl figurine for the mantel. I wished for (and did purchase) a set of owl sheets for my bed. Then I was in an antique store the other day - the same day I impulse-purchased an eighty-year-old typewriter - and came upon the beaut you see at the top of the post. He's absolutely adorable and I knew he'd be coming home with me. He's so hungry and needs a bellyful of cookies.

Can you see where this is going? I never meant for this to happen. I'm in the danger zone at this point. I'm going to become the crazy owl lady. And even if I restrain myself, any second now people are going to start thinking of me as somebody who *collects* owls, and they will start gifting me with owls of their choosing. Which, I fear, I will then need to put up for adoption. Don't do it. Think of the owls.

On the other hand, the owls, those devils, they did this to me. See the glint in their beady little eyes as they watch me eyeball a vintage hook (shaped like an owl, natch) on which to hang my keys? Screw 'em. Every bird for herself.

Even if I manage to fight off the owls, I'm going to have to watch out for Griffin, who has apparently taken to designing traps. He really grokked with the "danger" aspect of the word insidious. He's been asking far too many questions about our alarm system lately, too. Hmmm.

PS: new wide-angle lens arrived today! w00t! Or maybe I should say h00t!

PPS: I seem to be working in two-day batches lately, with the photos taken on the actual assigned day but all the editing/posting work done every other day.  Hoping to get back to daily posts.

vintage pessimism

While I was in an antique store a couple of weeks ago, I overheard two women passing by one booth and declaring its contents to be "junk." This is like Jess bait. I glanced over and realized that the junk was pretty much the background clutter of my entire childhood - the pastry mat my mom used to use, wood building blocks, tacky handmade 1970s Christmas ornaments, lunchboxes, and lots and lots of vintage CorningWare.  In the piles I came across a Ziggy book printed the year I was born.  The shape, size, yellowed pages, and booky smell reminded me of things my parents had on their shelves when I was little.  Ziggy's woe-is-me ethos is familiar, too. I can't say that I share his outlook, but there's still something comfortable and familiar about sketches like these:

 

I feel ya, Zig.

word of the day 18/365: bliss

What bliss evokes for us

Jess

{colored glass}{memoriesof visiting my great-grandmother}{catching lizards}{candlelight}{the scent of vanilla}{peering through a macro lens}{a quiet house}

Griff

{vivid colors: yellow, purple, blue}{sniffing Mr. Sketch markers}{finding ways to symbolize his girlfriend in drawings}{an extra-snuggly day}

word of the day 14/365: bitchy

There are three things I need every morning: food, a shower, and a cup of coffee. I hate that I'm addicted to the bean and that I'm headache-y and surly without it, yet jittery and irritable under its spell. There is no happy balance, only a downward spiral, and I think there is nothing for me but to break the cycle of addiction. Until the next time. My poor husband hates it when I go off coffee, not because of my moods, but because I end up banishing the 10-cup coffeemaker from the kitchen.  I am helpless to defend myself against the aroma of drip-brewed joe. If it is there, I will pour it, I will doctor it lovingly with sugar and half-and-half, I will go back for more.  I cannot stay away from the java (sing it with me, "I like coffee, sweet and hot...").  Cradling a mug in my hands and sipping from it is both a social act and a private meditation.  It ties me to the other mothers who long to finish one cup before it goes cold, and it links me to my own first tastes from the bottom of my mother's mug, the remnants of her daily Maxwell House and CoffeeMate.  (Like my contemporaries, she often left her cup on a counter somewhere and said the first cup of coffee she had that was warm to the bottom was the one she drank after we bought our first microwave.)

There is something feminine about sweetened, creamy coffee and also about bitchiness.  Being bitchy is not just about being irritable, but also implies a certain cattiness, a coffee klatch gossipiness.  It's about looking pretty on the outside but being full of spite on the inside.  This, for some reason, reminded me of the doll-sized tea set in the attic and my beautiful but seldom-worn pearls.   Elegant tchotchkes, bitter beans.

At home, we use bitchy in a more general sense, to indicate that somebody is grumpy, stand-offish, and speaking sharply to people without any apparent cause.  Griff thought of photographing his brother Reese, who is often in a bitchy mood. His quick, barely-controlled pen strokes remind me of the snappish tone I use when feeling this way. 

Can I admit something? I'm on the edge of bitchiness.  Two weeks into this project, I'm feeling exhausted. I love the brainstorming, the intense focus of making an image, the learning process of editing, and, of course, the blogging...but it's also overwhelming and more than a little difficult to sustain. I'm very glad that the weekend is coming up and hope I can tackle some other (shamefully neglected) projects and responsibilities.  Will I make it through the year? If I do, what will I have given up in exchange?

word of the day 8/365: fantastic

Two were in school, one was at a friend's house, and for once I didn't have anything pressing to do during these rare child-free hours. No errands to run, no meetings to attend. I could finally visit the antique mall, a trip I'd been lusting after since September, and hunt for a mirror for the bare entryway wall.

I did not find a mirror, but something else found me. My hands, in fingerless gloves, ran across the keytops. "Oh, this is fantastic," I exhaled. Then smiled at the word I had just used and knew it would probably follow me home.

I adore antique malls. I love how every booth is just a little bit different, how this one has a library cabinet designed for a former senator and the next has nothing but kitchy '70s crockery. The something-for-everyone-ness of it inspires me. Uneeda biscuit tins, ancient cigarette cases, a sad stuffed fawn, a neglected hidden menorah (I moved it to a table, it needs a family), bejeweled lapel pins, Ziggy books, the plastic pastry mat my mom had when I was a kid, an Ansco Pioneer camera.

The typewriter, a Remington Standard 12, spoke to me and begged to be brought home. I listened, then spent the afternoon blissed out on introducing the kids to it, learning how it works, and researching it. Like our home (and maybe my soul?) it was born in the 1920s. It smells amazing, like old, old steel, ink, and oil.  It has mechanical mysteries to solve and the kind of keypads that people make into jewelry these days.  It has a decal that reads "To save time is to lengthen life." It is a thing of beauty. 

None of us could get enough of touching the keys and watching the typebars move to strike the ancient ribbon, which blessed us by having just enough ink left in it to leave ghostly words on the paper.

Griffin's amazement with the new writing instrument could be rivaled only by one thing: his belated birthday party, which is scheduled for tomorrow. 

"Parties. Fantastic." He would have used exclamation points, but the typewriter is missing a 1/! key. I can't wait to tell him tomorrow that it was made that way on purpose. Isn't that fantastic?

everything old is new

I'm swimming in '70s nostalgia at the moment, fueled in part by the fact that my parents have been helping my grandmother, who is downsizing from her 3+ bedroom home of nearly 40 years to a 1-2 bedroom apartment.  The clean-out effort has resulted in many treasures being sent home with her grandchildren.  I have inherited some boxes of recipe cards, which I mean to sift through soon.  Among the other items which have joined my home are several pieces of costume jewelry, which seem classically '60s and '70s to me.  I think these pieces fit really nicely with current retro trends.  My favorites:

This owl called to me - hooted to me? - from the box of cast-off jewelry my mother brought home.  His body parts are articulated so that he shimmies a bit.  I am not normally a big-pendant girl - he measures about 5" tall - but I think I can learn to accessorize more boldly.  He fits in with my current (and trend-timely) love of bird paraphanalia.  My Etsy favorites list is heavily populated with bird art.  And speaking of Etsy, I was browsing through recently-listed items today and found this exact owl!  No kidding.  Further searching revealed at least two like mine, and one more that had some additional enamel embellishments.  I wonder what his story is, where my grandmother found him, and who else had one like him.

I also wonder who out there has one of these daisy chains.  Each flower has a rhinestone center, dainty and quirky and vintage and somehow also very modern.  I think this one will see quite a bit of action this summer.  There are matching, screw-back earrings.  I will see what I can do with them.