Day 64, 65, 66 of 365
Mar. 22nd, 2022 03:48 pmDay 64
Day 65
Day 66
Sometimes the materials at hand are just boring.
Sometimes the materials at hand are just boring.
Day 61, 62, 63 of 365
Mar. 17th, 2022 03:47 pmDay 61
Day 62
This calendar was still in the plastic wrap it came in.
Day 63
First the Lindt, now the Ghirardelli.
Day 55, 56, 57 of 365
Mar. 9th, 2022 03:48 pmDay 55
Day 56
I would like to thank my dear friend, L., who sent me some of her recyclables so I could make boxes from them. Savory, indeed.
Day 57
In honor of the premiere of Outlander Season 6 (March 6).
Day 52, 53, 54 of 365
Mar. 3rd, 2022 05:05 pmDay 52
See, it's not all Poptarts and mini muffins.
Day 53
Day 54
Bunny & Hare.
Day 49, 50, 51 of 365
Feb. 28th, 2022 04:22 pmAs I said before, I don't know how often I'll post these but here's the latest three.
Freehanding with a Sharpie: not recommended
Day 49
Day 50
Day 51
Freehanding with a Sharpie: not recommended
Boxes update
Feb. 24th, 2022 04:34 pmI have been folding boxes every day—I'm up to Box 47 as of today—but I got so far behind in blogging them that catching up grew rather daunting. If you're interested in the ones I've been doing, you can visit my Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/peajaythompson/
I may start blogging them again, but I make no guarantees.
https://www.instagram.com/peajaythompson/
I may start blogging them again, but I make no guarantees.
Day 24, 25, 26 of 365
Feb. 7th, 2022 02:02 pmI'm still running behind on "blogging" these. I'm up to day 30 in real time, but I got sick (nothing serious) the latter part of the week and didn't have the energy for much else than folding them and posting them on Twitter snd Instagram. I'll catch up eventually.
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 21, 22, 23 of 365
Feb. 2nd, 2022 04:54 pmI'm running a little behind due to computer kerfluffles. I spent most of Sunday and a call to the Helpdesk trying to download OS 12.1 Monterey and get it to finish configuring. That should not have happened. It might have been because I didn't bother with OS 11 and there was a lot to plow through. It kept getting stuck at the same point. I'd turn it off and on and it would start running again and get stuck at the same point. "Less than one minute left" turned into an hour, etc. The helpful Helpdesk guy got me unstuck and back to square one and told me to let it run for at least an hour and go have dinner and that's what I did. But my desktop didn't come back up until around 9 p.m. I was very relieved to see it. By that time, however, I was so fried I didn't want to start trying to set up my new HP wireless printer (which prompted the download in the first place). The next day I spent hours trying to make it work. I had to put the IP address into the print window for it to work at all and whenever I tried to print it would print one line of gibberish then start spitting page after page of blank paper. I went through all the online trouble-shooting before I tried to contact the HP Helpdesk. To talk to a live person they required me to input the serial number of my new device so I went to the back of the printer and wrote down the serial number, checking it twice with a magnifying glass, and input it. "That serial number does not appear to be valid." So I checked it a third time, with a magnifying glass. Re-input. Not valid. My options at this point were emailing them, checking in with the online forum, or go back to the unhelpful chat bot. So I gave up instead. My Epson wireless printer was so easy to configure and I'd still be using it if the black ink cartridge hadn't stopped working. Lots of trouble shooting involved there, too. Since I rarely need anything printed out that has to look official, I think I'll hook it back up and print the few things I need in brown ink or something. See if that works. I would send the HP back but I have this ridiculous habit of letting things sit in the front hall after they're delivered and I missed the 14 day return window. I suck.
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 12, 13, 14 of 365
Jan. 22nd, 2022 02:17 pmWarning: if you send me a card there's always a possibility it will end up as a part of a box. If there's correspondence associated with it I'll scan it and save it, but there's often a certain ruthlessness involved with arts and crafts projects.
(I welcome all cards. ;-D)
(I welcome all cards. ;-D)
Day12
Day13
Day 14
Day 1 and 2 of 365
Jan. 10th, 2022 02:18 pmWhat I posted to Twitter and Instagram: “Madness. Some years back when I was still caregiving I folded a box a day for a year to give myself something that was just for myself. One of the rules I set myself was that I could only use paper that came readily to hand--nothing that I'd bought: product boxes, Xmas cards, calendars, junk mail. I've punked the corner of this box, but product boxes are just slightly too thick for easy folding so I often seem to punk at least one corner. I plan to turn these into a textile mixed media piece. We'll see how that goes.”
Since posting that, all the way back to yesterday, I’ve discovered that I’m a total liar. Or, at least, that my memory has holes in it. In fact, my mother had already passed away when I last did this project, but I was still working at a job that was busy and half-killing me and still a ways away from retirement. So it just felt like I was still a caregiver. I guess, in a way, I was. I was taking care of myself, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to stay alive and viable until I could make an exit.
It’s funny how memory plays tricks on you, which is why I generally try to verify my own recall before posting anything publicly. But, you know, the computer which had the information on it was a whole fifteen feet away from where I was sitting last night and I didn’t want to cover such an arduous distance. Hoist on my own faulty petard. Boom boom.
I suspect no one cares, but at least my conscience is clear.
Since posting that, all the way back to yesterday, I’ve discovered that I’m a total liar. Or, at least, that my memory has holes in it. In fact, my mother had already passed away when I last did this project, but I was still working at a job that was busy and half-killing me and still a ways away from retirement. So it just felt like I was still a caregiver. I guess, in a way, I was. I was taking care of myself, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to stay alive and viable until I could make an exit.
It’s funny how memory plays tricks on you, which is why I generally try to verify my own recall before posting anything publicly. But, you know, the computer which had the information on it was a whole fifteen feet away from where I was sitting last night and I didn’t want to cover such an arduous distance. Hoist on my own faulty petard. Boom boom.
I suspect no one cares, but at least my conscience is clear.
Day 1
Day 2
Random quote of the day:
“I've spent my whole career trying to stay out of any box that anyone could put me in. 'I'm going to do a play now.' 'Now I'll do a musical.' That was my instinct. So I don't feel boxed in. But 'African-American woman' is part of my identity. I don't want to relinquish that—especially as a mother, helping my daughter find her identity.”
—Audra McDonald, The New York Times, July 10, 2016
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
“I've spent my whole career trying to stay out of any box that anyone could put me in. 'I'm going to do a play now.' 'Now I'll do a musical.' That was my instinct. So I don't feel boxed in. But 'African-American woman' is part of my identity. I don't want to relinquish that—especially as a mother, helping my daughter find her identity.”
—Audra McDonald, The New York Times, July 10, 2016
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Tales of a box folder
Aug. 20th, 2019 01:59 pmI was having a conversation with my friend ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wayfaringwordhack in the comments section of one of my older posts and she asked me whatever became of the found paper box folding project that I mentioned here. Because I know everyone has been desperately curious about this (haha), I’m posting about it here.
Mainly, I said to my friend, I’m feeling shame about this. I did complete my mission of folding one box a day for a year but all the little boxes are now sitting in a large box waiting for me to do something with them. I've had several ideas, but whatever I produce to incorporate them all is going to be rather large so I haven't had the drive or the will for the next phase.
I had thought to weave them all together with fine copper wire, even bought some wire and started that process—and it promised to look quite smashing! But I soon realized that 1) it would take an entire wall to display, and 2) I don't currently have a large enough workspace to incorporate that process.
Then I bought a small airplane propeller (like one does) with the idea of hanging them from it and suspending it from the ceiling. But again, so many small boxes and not enough room to work on it. I hung the propeller on the wall instead.
Propeller in situ
(In case anyone is wondering about the rocks in that big basket—because sometimes people do—I found these lovely slate grey pebbles and these lovely snow-white pebbles and they looked so lovely sitting side by side that I filled the basket with them sitting side by side. ;-) My cleaning people gave me the side-eye the first time they saw them, but they didn’t say much. They have long-since given up questioning my many odd decorating choices. And they’ve been much happier since I told them not to bother dusting the mantelpiece.)
After the propeller debacle, I remembered that I had an old Japanese-style three pane folding screen covered in rice paper which had been damaged (the rice paper) in the Great Rat Invasion. (Apparently, rice paper is tasty?) It was composed of many small wood-framed rectangles. I thought I could remove the rice paper and display the boxes in the rectangles. It would be compact enough for display, plus I wouldn't need to lay it flat to work on it. I got most of the rice paper off—though not as much as I remembered (as I saw when I photographed it) (Did I mention what a pain in the butt it is to cut out hundreds on small rice paper squares?) (It was one large sheet of rice paper, but glued thoroughly to each square so I couldn’t remove it all at once.) (And it occurred to me just now that I might have been able to steam it off, but oh well.) The problem with the screen was that there were only 200-something rectangles and 365 boxes, plus some of the boxes were bigger than the rectangles. So that stalled.
Raggedy screen
You can see at the bottom of the center screen the damage the rats did.
But that idea may be coming back around again. I think I can come up with a work around. It's just a question of my ambition coming back around again.
So many projects, so little ambition.
wayfaringwordhack in the comments section of one of my older posts and she asked me whatever became of the found paper box folding project that I mentioned here. Because I know everyone has been desperately curious about this (haha), I’m posting about it here.Mainly, I said to my friend, I’m feeling shame about this. I did complete my mission of folding one box a day for a year but all the little boxes are now sitting in a large box waiting for me to do something with them. I've had several ideas, but whatever I produce to incorporate them all is going to be rather large so I haven't had the drive or the will for the next phase.
I had thought to weave them all together with fine copper wire, even bought some wire and started that process—and it promised to look quite smashing! But I soon realized that 1) it would take an entire wall to display, and 2) I don't currently have a large enough workspace to incorporate that process.
Then I bought a small airplane propeller (like one does) with the idea of hanging them from it and suspending it from the ceiling. But again, so many small boxes and not enough room to work on it. I hung the propeller on the wall instead.
(In case anyone is wondering about the rocks in that big basket—because sometimes people do—I found these lovely slate grey pebbles and these lovely snow-white pebbles and they looked so lovely sitting side by side that I filled the basket with them sitting side by side. ;-) My cleaning people gave me the side-eye the first time they saw them, but they didn’t say much. They have long-since given up questioning my many odd decorating choices. And they’ve been much happier since I told them not to bother dusting the mantelpiece.)
After the propeller debacle, I remembered that I had an old Japanese-style three pane folding screen covered in rice paper which had been damaged (the rice paper) in the Great Rat Invasion. (Apparently, rice paper is tasty?) It was composed of many small wood-framed rectangles. I thought I could remove the rice paper and display the boxes in the rectangles. It would be compact enough for display, plus I wouldn't need to lay it flat to work on it. I got most of the rice paper off—though not as much as I remembered (as I saw when I photographed it) (Did I mention what a pain in the butt it is to cut out hundreds on small rice paper squares?) (It was one large sheet of rice paper, but glued thoroughly to each square so I couldn’t remove it all at once.) (And it occurred to me just now that I might have been able to steam it off, but oh well.) The problem with the screen was that there were only 200-something rectangles and 365 boxes, plus some of the boxes were bigger than the rectangles. So that stalled.
But that idea may be coming back around again. I think I can come up with a work around. It's just a question of my ambition coming back around again.
So many projects, so little ambition.
Poetry project, Phase 2*
Mar. 19th, 2018 02:17 pmIf you’ve been following this project at all, you may remember that it started as a recreation of a classroom experience. After five weeks of only allowing us to do shorter form poetry like haiku and tanka, the teacher allowed us to move on to longer poems: one poem a week, at least 20 lines, any form. So I think I’m going to try that for the next five weeks.
Now, these will be little more than working poems, nothing to set the world afire, and the only reason I am doing this exercise publicly is to force my own hand. The object is to produce something, anything on a regular basis. I have seen some positive things coming from the short poem exercise, so I’m hoping that trend continues.
Since it’s Monday, my week for this phase of the project will go from Monday to Monday. So here’s number one, actually inspired by one of the shorter poems:
***
Who can know the soul of rivers?
I don’t. They turned our rivers to concrete
long before I was born, choking them
and channeling them on their journey
homeward to the sea, floodtide or flow.
We think they are tame, yet they fool us,
routinely eating children and the unwary.
Oceans I have seen and lived beside,
and no one would mistake them for tame.
Yet who can know the soul of such a vast,
primordial giant, changing with every glance,
moving moment by moment, hour by hour,
the protean mother surrounding the world?
Who can know the soul of rivers?
Wild or contained, channeled or flooding,
they flow through us but are hidden,
on their way home to the mother of us all.
***
ETA: Oops. I just realized I only made it to 17 lines above.
ETA #2: I remembered that the teacher was asking for poems to be at least as long as a sonnet and assumed that was 20 lines, but it’s actually 16. So I’m good!
And just for the hell of it, here’s a random box from my found paper one-a-day box folding project:
*For the poetry project, phase one go here.
*To see all the poems in one place go here.
