Chocolate-covered is the #1 (soft is runner-up) kind of pretzel. Messes welcome.

Alex brought over his uke for me since I’ve been meaning to learn to play. It’s such instant gratification: at any time I’m four chords away from feeling like I have musical prowess! I have a long long way to go to improve my fingering and strumming. Until then, here’s one from Her that James taught me.

Ben is one of the few to own anything from the Dragonfly men’s collection. Granted, it’s a pretty limited collection.

1. Solitary filled with all of your worldly possessions would be an intensely self-actualizing experience.
   
2. A mud park. Mud slides, mud pies, mud tires: sprinklers everywhere.
   
3. An orchard is just the Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of fruits where Mother Nature is Gene Wilder.
   

I currently allocate a disproportionate amount of my food budget to The Study and Science of Baking Cookies. Assignments Chocolate Chip and Gingerbread (with what I guess I’ll call Regal Frosting: half buttercream, half royal icing) are pictured above.

[Aside  On the top of my list of Things To Buy Once I Have a Legitimate Disposable Income is a proper pastry bag. Until then, my ziploc-with-a-hole-in-it method will do. Anyways, the gingerbread looked fine and the guys absolutely demolished them. There is no higher compliment.]

Postscript. Keep up with my Instagram for a more complete chronicle of my baking adventures. I’m a millennial: you can’t expect me to use just ONE social media platform to share the mundanities of my life.

The ultimate glory and gluttony of bathing food items in molten, dark chocolate. We designed an epic spread: strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, pineapple, bananas, pretzels, marshmallows, pound cake, wafer cookies, black and white oreos, and lady fingers. Toppings included: sprinkles, chopped pecans, chopped almonds, coconut, and crushed candy canes.

Happy New Year, indeed.

I made waffles. And gave Ben some sass.

Got into the wrapping game this year.

Agate and sterling dangles made for Susan.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours begging every human I know to click a button and look at something that I did for a minute. I also think social media competitions are stupid.

Yeah, it’s ‘a' way for people to share around Filmic work, but it’s overwhelmingly a push for numbers. It’s the kind of thing that BAD social media campaigns attempt and that Facebook trolls fall for. Real, great content should just propagate itself (okay, with a nudge to get things rolling).

Still: click on the link, will you?

Filmic Production's entry for the 2015 Tinyshifts National Film Competition

Huila double chocolate.

Byzantine accents and black pearls: jewelry and autumn go nicely together.

Brainstormed for my collage piece with a couple of sketches… Channeled my inner-Wharhol, then pulled a Matisse on the skin-colour sitch. Either that or Old Gregg. Let’s all agree that my eyebrows should never be turquoise.

I think it’s smart that my art professor allows his students to redo/resubmit projects an infinite number of times. It makes for higher-quality work, it pushes us to hone our craftsmanship (and in this case, Illustrator skills,) and reinforces excellent life lessons to boot. Except for perfectionists like me, it also means unending nit-picking.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I told a friend he had to stop pilfering all of my pens and pencils. He pulled out his new rainbow set of pens and told me I could have a few as recompense. He pointed to the pink one and said “You can definitely have that one.”

Why not the pink one? If he wanted a set of highly visible inks, wouldn’t he have bought some black rollerballs? Is he embarrassed to be seen using a pink pen? What’s so embarrassing about a color?

What is so embarrassing about a color?

Blue is the color of water-bodies (and so much else); its meaning can’t be manipulated much because we already associate it with many things. Pink is fairly uncommon in nature, and thereby is more mouldable by businesses and social movements: without preexisting stuff to associate to pink, people have much more freedom to decide what pink SHOULD mean.

There are not that many naturally-occuring pink things. But there are some:

Flowers
Tourmaline, Spinel, and Other Gemstones
Flamingos
Axolotls
Triboniophorus Affinis Graeffei (aka Giant Pink Slug. Good one, evolution.)
The Pink Lake
Sunsets
Seashells
Apples
Underripe Strawberries
Dragonfruit
Lips, Cheeks, and Other Fleshy Things

…Or, the shorthand version:

Flowers
Fruits
Things in Australia

NPR blamed marketing for gendering pink. But I think pink kind of already had it coming. Pink is tied down to the real world by things of a sensuous nature (sights, smells, textures, tastes, etc.). If pink is inherently sensuous, and we deeply associate feminineness to sensuousness (not that we should, per se, but that we do)…transitive property?

[Aside: Aradhna Krishna differentiates sensuousness from the sexual connotation we often ascribe to it, calling it anything “of or related to the senses.” She deserves credit for my self-discovery as a sensuist: I experience and appreciate sensory experiences more strongly than most.]

1am and whipping up a hostess gift for Edawg.

First go-round I printed on the wrong side of the photo paper. The ink didn’t soak in at all, resulting in a fascinating watercolour effect. I precariously transported the wet page from class and (despite the wind blowing it into my face twice) it made it home relatively unscathed. I “printed” my own version on cardstock.

Step 1: Pick an emoji, and write down what it is.
Step 2: Open a different emoji tab, then repeat Step 1.
Step 3: Repeat Step 2.
Step 4: Combine everything you just wrote.
Step 5: Input your new password.

(Just don’t use “dragoncherrytractor”: it’s too obvious.)

In my mind this (as with pretty much most songs) has a 50s jazz swing and is backed by a 21st century pop band. I’d harmonize with Ella Fitzgerald and Justin Timberlake. It all makes perfect sense.

Exploring paper updates.