Oh, has it been awhile? ;)

Hello my lovely followers.

I consider myself a halfway decent blogger, I really do. But I suppose leaving my bloggerly duties for two months isn't my best decision to date. Here's a picture-free post of what I've been up to.

1. A Giant doily shirt.

Kristin Omdahl has a book it's called Crochet So Fine. In that book, there is a pattern for the cover piece, and I decided to make it. Though I started it in April, it was during June that I got terribly obsessed with finishing it. And finish it, I did! It's a lovely piece that I'm very proud of, and I'm just waiting for an opportunity to get some semi-decent, semi-flattering pictures of me wearing it. This thing deserves some jsutice, more than a selfie in a full-length mirror can do.

2. Other crochet things.

Of course I'm still crocheting. I'm making a skirt, dabbling in filet crochet, and trying to bring my stash down to something manageable.

3. Duct tape art?

That's right. I decided to pick up a roll of duct tape for the first time in about a year. I have a few wallets for sale on my Etsy, and I'm hoping to focus on it for a little while before I put it back down. For awhile, I was feeling a lot of pressure to do more and more with my duct tape art than I was capable of, and now that I feel out of the lime light, I'm hoping I can pick it up again as an easy-going hobby without any pressure from friends and family.

4. Writing.

I've been attending weekly writers group, reading and writing poetry, as well as keeping up with constantly editing my screen play that I wrote back in April. I might have some up here, but we'll see about that ;)

5. Being geeky.

I've been focusing a lot on geeky, pop-culture-y art. I hope to hone a few things before I post them here.

Stay with me, guys! I'll be around :)

Beautiful Tarantula Photography - AshLee Loverin

Today, instead of showing you how to create something, or even showing you one of my own creations, I'm going to try to get some beautiful tarantula photography some exposure.

"Invertery Box"

As a tarantula enthusiast, I see picture after picture, photo after photo, of tarantula owners taking pictures of their beautiful pets in unflattering scenery: Their own cage. It's not that cages are particularly ugly, or that tarantula owners have ugly cages FOR their pets, it's that it doesn't do the animal justice. If you were a model, would you have all your photoshoots in your room?

"Statues"

AshLee is fearless. She takes her tarantulas (Fair Tease, Creech and Midreavus the Misfortunate are some of her favorite models), out and about into the world, on people, and in strange and beautiful items (A typewriter, large yellow flowers, and in mouths are just a few of her choices for locations), and does a magnificent job positioning them in beautiful and graceful ways. Where many tarantula owners are possibly nervous or worried about handling their spiders, or having something happen to them, she is very experienced and knowledgeable about their behavior and personalities.

"Five Records"

So maybe she has that advantage over everyone else. I have two tarantulas, one of whom is supposed to be 'tame' but tries to bite everything, whether it's alive or not, and the other one is so fast I am scared it's going to run off into the sunset like a racehorse. I am aware that I am not capable of handling my tarantulas, especially multiple ones at once, so I don't. I suggest you all do the same, unless you really know what you are doing.

"Wind Chimes"

A lot of people are frightened of spiders, tarantulas especially. I, personally, am not sure why anybody is afraid of them. Most of them are too scared to even come near a person, and those who are brave enough hardly ever think about biting them. Maybe they look scary, but with photography like this, how could anyone even think that? Ashlee captures personality, and gives people just one less reason to be afraid of these animals. She injects grace and beauty into a subject where those attributes were already overflowing, and she just happens to find a way to help everyone else see it.

"Old Fashioned"

So maybe tarantulas are scary. Maybe they are the things of your nightmares, and your greatest fear, but I think AshLee's photography is just another reason why that's not true. As a tarantula, and all-around spider, enthusiast I can tell you there's absolutely nothing to be afraid of when it comes to spiders, and there are pictures like this in the world that reinforce those feelings and thoughts. Beauty is present in all sorts of animals, even those we tend to find frightening or worrisome, and it truly shines in Ashlee's photography how incredibly elegant and gorgeous tarantulas really are.

"Bluemore"

For all of AshLee Loverin's photography, please visit her DeviantArt. She has many, many more tarantula pictures, as well as photography of other subjects.

Victory post, as promised.

See that graph? That's what victory really looks like. That's what difficult, seemingly impossible, absolutely ridiculous tasks look like. I won 4 out of 31 battles, and I still won the war. In 13 days I wrote 171 pages (50,035 words), and if I had had time to write on all 31 days, who knows how long that novel would be. Only four days out of the month did I make the daily goal, and I still got to the 50,000 word milestone.

If you have ever considered writing a novel, please please give me a reasonable excuse why you haven't done so yet. I'm 22. This is my 3rd novel. Why haven't you written one yet?

There were days I didn't want to write, there were days I spent an hour-long commute to and from work, with 12 hours days in between, but I still did it. I moved. I moved all of my things from one side of town to another, then I unpacked, then I spent long, long days at work to make up for the hours I lost. There were days I didn't work, but couldn't write. There were days my boyfriend said "I feel like I haven't seen you. Ignore your novel, come spend time with me" and I did, and I didn't want to leave him, because leaving him meant writing more, and writing more meant more headaches, more exasperated sighs, more junk food to keep my hands from compulsively checking my word count every 50 words. There were days I felt like i wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote....but nothing came of it. It went nowhere.

There were days I wrote scenes of people napping.

There were also days where I wrote one-liners that made me crack up so hard I had to stop writing, but didn't want to. There were days I looked back to a random page and read a sentence, and couldn't stop reading because...it was good, intriguing, really. There were days I couldn't stop thinking about my main character, and would have given anything just to go home and write about her. There were days were i wrote twists and turns even I didn't see coming, and my fingers couldn't keep up with my brain, and my eyes lit up with imagination and intrigue. There were days i couldn't stop talking about my novel, and days where I told Gabe something that happened and he would respond with "That...actually sounds really cool." There were days I wrote thousands and thousands of words, and I was invincible.

And there was the day I hit page 100. There's just something insanely magical about hitting page 100.

Yes, writing a novel in a month is scary, and awful, but it's wonderful and beautiful, and outstanding and above all...you can tell people you wrote a novel.

So what's stopping you? The actual NaNoWriMo event starts 2 months from today...and it's never too early to write down your seemingly 'stupid' idea, and turn it into an amazing outline, and possibly even an amazing book.

Inspiration Part 2 (Spiders and Princesses)

It's coming up on 3 AM, and I've done nothing artistic all day. I had a lot of things to do today, because some people have asked me to make them things (have PAID me to make them things) and I am neglecting them. It's not that I don't want to. It's not that I don't like these people, or that I don't like art. I am tired of making things right now. The same way people have weekends with work, people should have weekends with art. I hope they understand.

Here is some inspiration, and maybe a couple good reasons why arachnophobia is uneccesary.

 

The story behind this one is pretty neat. The man on the right was at Disney when Snow White came up to him and said "I made a wish today, a very special wish. Will you help me make it come true?" He replied with "I'll do my best", when to his surprise she put one of his hands on her hip, and grabbed the other one and began to waltz with him. 

Using this gorgeous Scorpio pin-up to bridge the gap between beautiful women and arachnids.

 

This is a colored pencil drawing of a P. Metallica, AKA the Gooty Sapphire Ornamental Tree Spider. This one definitely inspires me to maybe eventually draw/paint/color my own tarantula.

Juvenile Avicularia Versicolors are stunning. Its beautiful things like this that make me wonder how and why anybody could be afraid of spiders.

While this is not a princess nor a spider, I don't know who couldn't appreciate a chinchilla-sitting dog. Enjoy.

Inspiration Part 1

I recently heard a piece of advice, that I fully intend to take to heart:

"Feed your mind with the thoughts, words, and images that are most consistent with who you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to achieve."

And what better place to put those things than in this blog. My space for creations, and of course, the source for those creations: the inspirations. I'll be making a post full of beautiful things every so often in hopes of inspiring myself, and maybe even a few other people.

Arthur Rackham is a Victorian era artist that I just discovered, and absolutely adore.

This picture was my desktop until just yesterday. A beautiful, strong fiery woman...why not me? I need a stronger backbone, and some fire behind my actions when I move, talk, smile and laugh.

So maybe not exactly the "inspirational" woman any person would put on their list, but she's beautiful and strong...maybe I just need to start doing some push ups in the morning? *Chuckles*

"Better a creative mess than tidy idleness"

Eyjafjallajokull.

"And in the middle of winter, I found there was in within me, an invincible summer"

“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

If you, too, would like to be inspired, maybe improve an aspect or two of your life, and to see where I got this advice from you can go here.

"One Day" Poster

I got a magazine with this poster on it today, and I absolutely can not stop looking at it.