The Latest Craze: In Which I Explain My Little Fads, and Discuss the Newest One

I go through crazes, stages or fads, artwise. I think I'd have to make a chart to show how it works precisely, but suffice it to say that every month or two I develop some new and strange artistic interest and throw myself with much alacrity after said interest.
Some of these interests become new hobbies and never really go away, while some fade out after a day or two to be replaced by more exciting things.
My Roomie has said that one of the things she finds interesting about living with me is that she never knows what she'll come home and find me elbows-deep in. On one such occasion she arrived to find the entire kitchen strewn with fabric scraps in varying stages of drying, and me cackling gleefully over multiple pots simmering on the stove. That was the infamous beginning of my foray into fabric dyeing, which has yet to end.

Current fads include natural fabrics, and fabric embellishing, which includes fabric dyeing, natural dyestuffs, embroidery, applique and quilting, all with various fibers. So, fiber art in general. This is being expressed as I make clothes for my doll collection and for my reenacting, and I am also trying to make a big art quilt coat.

I've wanted to make such a coat for a long time. I'll use it for reenacting and special occasions like caroling or performing, and it will be covered every inch in applique and embellishments, all handworked and all medieval inspired. I'm not sure whether I should plan a color palette for it or just let be what will be. I do have a few rules in mind for the making of the coat:
1. Use no Plastic. This means buttons, beads, trims, or any fabric containing too much artificial fiber. I want this to have a more honest texture.
2. Use no prints. This one's kinda flexible, but also kinda not. Printed fabrics look fake, and I want this coat to look more... Real.
3. Take your time. Anything I rush just to see it Done never comes out as nice as I want it.

In which Photoshop Victory is MINE, and we discuss the role of Misanthropy in Social Networking

So the other night I stayed up entirely too late trying to combat the annoyingly sterile formatting permitted us- and by us I mean me especially- on this Blog thing. I made a banner in PS7 to replace the boring title text, so at least my corner of the blogosphere looks like "me" now. That's my minstrel guitar in the background on the banner there. ( I painted it myselfs)


I can't help wondering who this blog will ever reach. Maybe if I posted regular updates of artwork or fiction stuff it'd attract an audience of sorts, but I can't help thinking that it's unlikely to reach any further than my immediate friends and family... Who would ever read a blog just because they find someone else's daily life entertaining or of value? Is anybody's daily life really that interesting all the time? There was a movie about a guy who was always on tv and never knew it- Truman Show. Would people really follow something like that?

In this day and age I am led to believe that now more than ever citizens of technologically forward countries believe they have some kind of right to an inside knowledge of the lives of others, or that in some strange way, everyone they know and a lot of people they don't know need to be privy to their every waking thought. Case in point: Twitter. Who the frick wants to know what you ate for lunch, besides perhaps your Mom or your gastrointestinal health specialist? How interesting can the thoughts, opinions and ideas of others truly be?

This of course hinges upon one's view, overall, of one's social peers as a whole. If one tends to feel that 85% of the great american public, for example, are routine fed emotionally-reasoning idiots most of the time, then one is not likely to be all that excited at the prospect of daily intimate knowledge of their thoughts, having decided in judgement that they could not possibly have enough thoughts of worth to contribute to the discussion that is human experience.

If, on the other hand, one takes a more optimistic view of one's peers as a whole, one might be intrigued, from an anthropological, sociological, and simply emotional standpoint to have the opportunity to study human expression across such a wide spectrum as the miracle of social technology provides for us today.
(I am aware that this last was one single sentence. Be grateful I know my punctuation, and bear with me, I am going somewhere with this.)

It may be educational and even a lot of fun to see what someone else is thinking, as they are willing to present it to the world. Sure, their account is spun, but so is a bullet, and the caliber, target, trajectory and rate of spin are awfully revealing as to the make and model of the gun that fired the bullet, if I may extend a metaphor. By including social networking sites as a medium of human expression, one, or I, can come that much closer to understanding these strange creatures that we are.

"Customize" my little pink foot.

"Customize", they say. Bah, I say. And again, Bah. They have, like, six fonts I can choose. SIX!! That is not customizing. Oho no. Customizing would be SIXTY fonts to choose from, and more colors. COLORZ. I demandz dem.

... I doez not get dem.

Sad badger.

Sigh. The fonts they do have are, of course, the most boring ones. What if I want to put my title in Lucida Blackletter? Then what, Blogspot? Huh? Then what?

So far, all Blogspot has on LJ is the social approval that comes with having a "bahLOG", and the fact that I have a sister who uses this and not LJ.