Lilly, I am sorry you have to see a surgeon but I hope your appointment goes well…
Ontario, Canada. They have interesting postal codes…
RE = Reduced Emissions and Sikkens is a brand of wood finish apparently.
You must have moved, Ollie the dog. I hope your owner is getting you your kennel cough (Bordetella) and Distemper vaccinations wherever you are now. The internet shows that those can be quite harmful illnesses.
Last weekend my family came in town for a football game and my sister spent a couple extra days with me. One rainy day we made and decorated gingerbread cookies after searching the entirety of the new river valley for a gingerbread-man shaped cookie cutter. We were unsuccessful. Apparently they don’t sell those pre-halloween.
and last week I also baked my second pie from scratch:
It was apple and it was delicious.
The End.
He was everything that has roots in the cracks of my skin that are sidewalk scars – the bleeding wrinkles of time in my soul that had scabbed over but ripped open anew – and I hate him for it.
He was the middle school girl in science class
Too high in the social strata to acknowledge her
Unless it was a partner lab day and the other popular girls were out sick.
And then they were best friends.
He was her father’s anger
and her parents’ fighting
Unaffected by her perfect grades
(And the voluntary additional chores
And resume-building
And extra curriculars)
And she was still sitting helplessly at the top of the stairs,
listening.
He was the boy who asked her to go swimming
At the empty house
And then cornered her in the pool
And left her feeling guilty for not seeing the signs earlier
And thinking she was the one at fault.
To pull a weed with a system of roots so deep can tear up entire worlds.
6.5 x 10.5 // analog collage // magazine + dictionary + thread
6 x 9 // analog collage // thank you merriam webster
6 x 9 // analog collage // magazine + paper
There’s a sickness in my soul
It’s filled with self-creating holes
The blood both paint and soap
washing painting losing hope
Entropic forces rip apart
Tear the wholeness of the heart
Ceaseless void and darkened eye
Deep and never-ending sigh
(abstractrelationsvi)
October 10, 2017
Inktober was initially started by Jake Parker, an illustrator who wanted to become more consistent with his drawing habits. Now it is basically a worldwide, social media event. Basically, the goal is to do one ink drawing a day. And while it may seem like it is just a way to gain more social media attention or to have pressure to produce vast amounts of work in one month, I think it really ends up being so much more than that. Even though this is my first year doing it, so far I can already see how a challenge like this can help to spur on new ideas and reduce creative block. Every drawing doesn’t have to be amazing or beautiful. They don’t necessarily have to be complex and intricate. But they are supposed to BE. And honestly, one of the biggest things about being in any creative field is bringing things from ideas into BE-ing… getting past that fear of the blank page, the fear of what-if-it-doesn’t-turn-out-like-I-hope, the insecurity of I-am-not-good-enough, and the paralyzing I-don’t-know-what-to-make. So here’s to pushing past all of those things.
I definitely hope to see some improvement and skill development over the month. I have already been reminded of how much I love drawing!
I have gone a couple different paths and here are a few of the results thus far:
Fun Fact: As you can definitely tell if you look, the last one was drawn on the day when I actually had to Google what year it was because I could absolutely not remember. I had written ’18 and then something in me said ‘hmm… I’m not entirely sure if that’s correct…’ Turns out, it wasn’t. Definitely still 2017 here. So. That made me feel old and/or crazy. And made me wonder: what did people used to do when they forgot what year it was before the internet…?
Happy Inking!
October 15, 2017
Part 2. Inktober continues…
I bought new pens… Trying out lineweight differences.
She loves Madeline… 
Who we are versus who we want to be:
October 17, 2017
Part 3 // Just keep drawing // Inktober continued…
Any favorites so far?
October 18, 2017
Part 4 // Probably a children’s book in the making.
I’ve been using my experiences as a nanny and my love of kiddos for these. It has been fun to go back to those memories. Fun and a little painful. I miss those times.
. . .
She was always so freaked out by the noise of planes and even moreso by drones:
We definitely did this a few times:
(Note for my father’s sake: I have never let a child be this close to a turtle before.)
The good ‘ol tree swing. We spent many an afternoon looking at the trees and leaves from that swing. It was especially great when she was just a little baby…
An attempt at adding color with watercolor. This was basically every time we went to the library.
October 31, 2017
Well, October is over today and while I definitely didn’t do one drawing a day, I do feel like I made a decent amount of progress this month. I have generated a lot of ideas for the children’s book I would like to write and now I have some momentum. From a personal standpoint, too, this has been a really helpful month. It has been hard to know how to grieve this loss of the little one I nanny-ed for… I still get to call her and I will get to visit soon too (which is amazing!!), so it’s not the same grief they talk about on most grieving websites. And she’s not biologically my little girl… but that hasn’t meant that I haven’t had to deal with the hole in my heart and the grief of being without her. These drawings, though, have helped me to remember all the fun we had together and to dwell on those memories instead of the fact that we aren’t together anymore. Plus, knowing that I will hopefully get to read her our story from a book that I made is definitely a motivator to keep going.
Tea parties feat. Koala, Giraffe-e, Big Baby, Rab’t, Sheepy, & Patches
sunny days + catching rays + water play…s
(also chickens.)
I am not entirely sure where, when, or why Autumn’s hard hat was in need of a name tag, or why the name tag still remains on its backing. However, the cat looks quite happy so it must not have been a tragic reason.
Christopher Mitchell, born in 1999, just had his 18th birthday (which was on a Tuesday this year). Hope you did something fun Christopher! I assume you’re a freshmen… so I hope you made some new friends to celebrate with. Unfortunately you left your Hokie Passport outside of the Christiansburg Wal-mart. I have tried contacting you every way I can think of to get this back to you so you don’t have to pay that dastardly fee to get it replaced. I think I’ll give you a couple more days to respond before I take it over to the office that will inevitably charge you for a new one anyway.
Fantoga is apparently a screen printing company in Blacksburg, VA. “Custom apparel and print services for Blacksburg and beyond.” $3.99 seems pretty cheap for a t-shirt, but given their bulk prices on their website looks like that could be what this tag was from. I doubt a tag of this type and size would have been attached to a button, magnet, postcard, poster, or sticker. I think I found this in the Main Street Kroger parking lot. And it’s football season, so not shocking.
Hope someone didn’t need that phone number…
One of the many reasons I loved used books (and library books) is that you never know what you will find tucked away in the pages, unintentionally left by the previous owner.
Oh Cheyenne, how sweet you were to write this, and how desperately I hope Mrs. Millrum (?) was not your English teacher.
abstract relations vi 