fight or flight.

flight!

most of today's activities centred around my upcoming trip to europe. it is just over a month away, but this is the time for tickets to be purchased, itineraries to be confirmed and whatnot. this also meant a thrilling visit to the passport office.

above are my passport photos. aitor said they make me look like a spy. i hope the swiss, germans, french, austrians and/or slovenians don't think so.

a year in review.

i've been seeing a few year in review photo montages popping up in the blogs i read (karyn and anabela, for starters) but it was faythe's post that finally tipped me over the edge and inspired me to go back through my archives and do my own.

january - toronto, on


february - toronto, on


march - toronto, on


april - toronto, on


may - philadelphia, pa


june - indianapolis, in


july - belleville, il


august - eureka, ca


september - ljubljana, slovenia


october - fürth, germany


november - lousiville, ky


december - toronto, on

i still have yet to upload all my pictures from 2010. it's a big job. but looking back through all the places, people and projects i have been involved with in the last year is entirely worth it. i have a real problem with looking forward and living beyond the present. this says nothing of my near inability to take stock of my past accomplishments and feel satisfied. 2010 was not a year without difficulties (are there such years?) but it was all jammed full with beauty, adventure, creativity, other people, magic and growth.

thanks for inspiring me, pals!

here's the whole thing on flickr.

warnung!

uh oh. high toxic lure.

slovenly in slovenia.

no pictures.

after more than a whole day awake, i was too tired on the train from graz to even lean over and unpack my camera from the backpack. so i looked out the window, dreamily trying to take in the landscape while drifting in and out of nods. my back hurt a lot.

things i remember, pictures logged in my mind: chocolate coloured rivers near to (and sometimes all the way) bursting their banks; plaster fallen off brick walls; three perfectly complicated and askew antennae on the roof of a crumbly home; small, old train platforms in small, old towns; drizzle on the window. at one point, i looked hazily out the window and thought i was back in the smoky mountains.

right before we pulled into ljubljana, my nose started bleeding. it was time to rest.

the city is old and lovely and i look forward to exploring it more coherently and attentively in the coming week. but for now, i need my body and mind to catch up to their new location. this sort of travel is so far from natural.

cloudhopping.

i write this note from the cramped yet wifi-rich climes of pearson international airport. i have not said much about it, but i am on my way to a five week performance tour of europe. as this is mostly a performance tour, i probably won't be posting all the gory details here. i will leave this space for wild travel stories and art/craft related exploits (i feel my ten days in berlin with leah may yield some of the latter).

but as for now, i sit at the precipice of two flights, one train ride, sixteen plus hours and a whole heap of nervous crochet. by tomorrow night, i should be in ljubljana, slovenia. crazy!

i should also report that i forgot all my makeup at home (for shows more than life) so i am typing this with a fresh mac makeover of powders, sticks and creams. i am dressed like a greasy slob, so this must be quite ridiculous. i also wept after a last wave at aitor through the security screens. very unexpected, indeed. for all of our bickering on the road, this is the longest we have been apart in a long while. i guess...i am used to our closeness.

happy birthday, sweetie. have fun hiding my stuff and smoking in the shower while i am away.

oh, they are boarding the plane. adventure beckons!

my kind of tea party.

in preparation for my upcoming trip to europe (yes, it's crazy - i am on one tour and preparing for another) i have been converted to skype. other than finding myself yelling at a computer screen, i quite like it. i get to have tea parties and crochet dates with leah in berlin. today we discussed the finer points of transatlantic jury logistics for city of craft. the application deadline is looming.

it's like being part way to the time when leah lived downstairs from me and we sort of had a continuous stitch and bitch on the go.

i miss you leah, but this helps.

kilometerstone.

near seligman, arizona, this happened:

thank you, boris, for all of your faithful service and companionship. you have kept me moving, warm, and away from the elements on all these crazy tours. keep it up, slugger.

don't panic.

hello dear readers,

internet has been slim from brooklyn to atlanta (where i am now). i am hard at work but blogging has fallen by the wayside.

fear not! all of our amazing adventures will be filled in - somewhere between here, nashville and somewhere in kentucky, i hope.

i miss you and the blog.

check out the sidebar to see where we will next appear in person and/or slightly more current snippest from twitter. though the internet fails, our bodies persist.

love,

becky

ps - that photo up there is from the magnolia photo booth at renegade brooklyn. they will be at all the rest of the renegades, too. and are available for hire!

another pitt stop.

after a long, long day of driving we collapsed into the guest bed at pat and al's place last night. when we awoke, everything was perfect - there was soft light coming through stained glass and and offer of blueberry pancakes. it is enough to make a wayward hobo couple feel very spoiled, indeed.

i love visiting pat and al's home. it feels so comfortable and is filled with beautiful old things. al is the genius mind behind a zine called thrift score and her heyday thrifting finds are all around. they have been working to cull the collection (there is talk of a bargain-basement summer yard sale that i am both relieved and distressed to be missing) so everything in the house is distilling into shifting thematic clumps that seem to sing with the areas of patched wall and original wallpaper that have been left alone through home improvements.

i always wish we could stay longer here. overnight is not nearly enough. i love this town.

we also learned that on top of chronicling the sad discarded demises of lost toys, al has been spending her summer walking to new orleans two miles a day. the walk is virtual, but wikipedia, google maps, local errands, a pedometer and a good pair of walking shoes can make for a pretty awesome blog.

tonight we drive to columbus, ohio. it's another great town but i feel our relationship with pittsbugh needs some future investments.

scenic overlooks of new jersey.

we got to see jenny today. it was a brief visit. more brief than usual, and the rest of the family was out, but a little catch-up session over mint iced tea is a welcome interlude in any driving day. getting out of new york city and into new jersey is hard enough. a moment of pleasant reacquaintance between that ordeal and the ordeal of driving to pittsburgh is a very happy happening. man, those kids are going to be huge next time we see them.

darn it!

attention citizens of columbus, ohio: the revrend and will be passing through and setting up in our favourite local shop, wholly craft, for an evening of revelry and craft attacks.

so what's going on? well, i will be teaching an informal by-donation workshop on darning your holey woollens, aitor will be doing unflattering portraits and we will both have trunks open with crafty goodness for your to peruse and/or purchase. you can also just come down and say hello.

for more information, check out this post on the wholly craft blog.

oh oh oh ohio. we can't wait!

reanimator.

cramming everything in is an impossible task in the boroughs, so for our last evening in town we had some decisions to make. we chose wisely and met up with dory for a special appointment at the reanimation library. the library is an institution we had just learned about on this visit when we saw proprietor/heap librarian/curator, andrew beccone, speak at the adult education lectures. his talk was great and we immediately knew we were interested in the project.

housed within the greater proteus gowanus gallery and resource project (pictured above), the library was founded to house what had been andrew's personal collection of books. the focus of the library is on books and publications that have fallen out of mainstream usefulness but which possess interesting, compelling and/or strange graphic content. andrew puts its philosophy and purpose much better than i do. we were all just exited to get a tour through some of his favourite weirdness and to discover some on our own.

as it is designed to serve (mostly) as a visual resource, i was entirely overstimulated and took a lot of photos. you now have to look at too many photos, too.

for a small half-room space, it is certainly filled with material beyond my ability to absorb it. we will need to return. the craft ideas alone were worth another peruse, not to mention ideas on face bandaging, random numbers, cosmetic application and gross cooking.

andrew, himself, is a great man to visit with. he is passionate and articulate about the library and the broader thoughts behind it - and he is funny and nice. we all walked back to the subway together and took the train home chatting about travel and new york and albuquerque and the toxic gowanus canal and other things.

my head is very full at the moment. i suggest you visit this place.

vestiges with a schmear.

finally, on our last day in new york, we managed to squeeze in a visit with our friend louie and squeeze some classic jewish deli fare into our bellies. two kinds of borscht! it's sad that this once ubiquitous type of establishment is disappearing from the manhattan landscape, but it's our good luck that louie knows where to find one of the remaining ones.

speaking of disappearances, jessica from miniature rhino sent us on the path of the gramercy typewriter co. in the flatrion district (i think). we saw her lovely letter writing service at renegade and started prodding her for ribbon sources. although founded as a typewriter repair company, gramercy now mostly deals in the repair of brother printers. they work out of a small office space but are very knowledgeable about all sorts of typewriter repair. i should have asked to take pictures inside the office but i got shy. i am not used to the close quarters of new york city and felt very much in their space already. we left with some new(ish) ribbon bought out from ko-rec-type. only time will tell if it has maintained its moisture. gramercy will also do things like replace your platens, too. it's nice to know that some old things can still be maintained. i could see a spring in the reverend's step as we walked out.

new digs (or squatting in a brooklyn park).

day two of renegade brooklyn, we found a new place to set up. yesterday's digs were a bit too dusty for us to deal with. these are the challenges that face outdoor shows; in the process of doing layout, it is nearly impossible to tell what spots will be in a dirt pile, or by a buggy shrub. speaking of shrubs, you may notice that our new set-up juts out. that is because there was a small tree behind us. i love this spot, though. cramming ourselves in here made this strip of the fair feel like a little village. and we got to visit with our friends from bettula.

i did not find too much time for browsing today. fighting the grime off our my stuff, chatting with people and drinking copious amounts of water took up most of my time. after the small explosion of rain and wind passed through (far less than expected), i did manage to take a walk around. based on the detritus strewn throughout the park, it seems that areas outside of some little patches like our new village were much more violently terrorized by the wind. the craftermath of these shows always gets to me - all the junk leftover and abandoned - but new yorkers have a way of absoring and using it immediately. plus, that boy below pulling a branch apart made me feel hopeful about our post-apocalyptic future in general.

but back to the point: among the vendors who stuck it out to renegade's sunny and warm conclusion, i found the totally lovely booth of miniature rhino. someone had asked at our booth about a woman typing letters, and our fancies were immediate piqued. i am so glad i happened up jessica at the end of the day. the sense of kindred outlook was palpable (although i find her aesthetic much cleaner than my own and she brings more bespoke work to fairs). check it:

over on that end of the park, the fair closed out with a country guitar/african drumming sing-along. i now understand that that is how all craft fairs should end.

donut or die.

the hipster coffee shop by the park (which i hear is awfully good) was closed at the early hour we trundled down yesterday so we went for a walk in search of morning liquids. a nice man with a fresh looking iced coffee directed us towards peter pan, our new favourite coffee shop in greenpoint (we didn't have an old one, but still...). it is a totally perfect donut and pastry shop one dollar coffee (decent by aitor's reports), one dollar tea (again, just lipton) and excellent donuts. they also have a small, winding counter to sit at, a staff of young uniformed polish ladies and a constant stream of police officer patrons (for real). peter pan became our two-day morning tradition while at renegade. our few daily moments at the counter sharing donuts (french twist, toasted coconut, and red velvet to date) and sipping hot, cheap things really takes the edge off the no sleep we have been getting. this place is the best.