Good Thing Sixteen: Beginners

My favorite film of the year. . . because despite centering around a guy who is so quiet and so cut off from his feelings--or, at the very least, his ability to express them--it's a movie entirely about love in all of its forms.


Romantic love. Familial love. Love of animals and their returned affection. Love of the world and history and mysteries. In my world, creativity and its expression is also love.

And while having a bad year, Beginners felt like it was commiserating with me. But I was also jealous of how much time all of the characters had to explore each each other and themselves. It was like a fantasy of what life should be like--taking the time to know your parents, taking the time to fall in love, getting to take your dog with you everywhere you go.

I've been letting work eat me alive now for years, and I think Beginners has reminded me to slow it down. Beginners may be my only New Years resolution in 2012.



Thank you, Mike Mills. Really. I mean it.

Good Thing Fifteen: My Brother is a Farmer

My older brother--Richard Stewart--trained in college to be a graphic designer and we always thought he would be an artist. He was always drawing and painting and sculpting. But when the recession hit just after 9/11, he was the last hired at his design firm, and so was the first fired.

So, he went to work for my dad (also Richard Stewart) on the family farm. I don't know if he knew if it would stick or not, that it was his future. . . or if maybe it felt like just a temporary thing until he figured out his next step.

Ten years later, he's still going strong. He's built up a truck garden/organic/farmer's market presence in Cincinnati--selling veggies and honey at farmer's markets and to local restaurants. He's a bee keeper. He's become a sort of farmer celebrity in Cincy and northern Kentucky. Just yesterday at the Northside farmer's market, he was selling honey, dried black beans, corn meal, turnips, and carrots.


Once or twice a year, the farm, Carriage House Farm LLC, is a part of farm tours and my family gives lectures on growing things, keeping bees, foraging for food in the woods (have you eaten a pawpaw grown in the wild? yum).

He's happy. That makes me happy.


Plus I totally get free honey every time I come home for the holidays.

Good Thing Fourteen: Christmas Food Traditions

Monkey Bread--made by Dad.


Strata--made by Mama.


The family is capable of making real cranberry sauce. . . and we do. Even a really creepy creamy one that I think has horseradish in it. But we all love the canned cranberry sauce the best. Truly. And for the holidays we usually cut it into holiday specific shapes--turkeys for Thanksgiving, stars for Christmas. (My grandmother also always made bunnies out of pear halves for Easter. . . )


And then Pepper always hanging close by the table hoping for something to conveniently fall to the floor for her.

Good Thing Thirteen: Dinosaurs

Seriously. Is there anything cooler than dinosaurs? It's the first things that kids discover that are beyond belief. . . and yet are still real. Dragons used to live on this very earth and they were HUGE! And so they teach kids science and awe and linguistics (those are some long, complicated names those beasts have. Spell or pronounce this at 3 years of age: Dasygnathoides).

And if we're lucky, that awe and inquisitiveness sticks with us for the rest of our lives. . .

I'm lucky this year, because my niece and nephew have just hit their dinosaur phase. And so I got to spend time making dinosaurs just for them for Christmas. (*Shhhh, though. They don't open those gifts until tomorrow.)

Good Thing Twelve: The Future is Now

There's a stretch of 65 heading south through Indiana where I feel like I've slipped on to a set for some futuristic film. What the country looks like in Blade Runner? Or maybe this is what's behind all of the fences in Brazil?

Giant wind farms as far as the eye can see--and in prairie country, that's pretty far. I think the windmills are beautiful.


The other good thing here is outside of the frame. Considering that this is the future right now, I'm super glad that the future hasn't meant wearing silver skin tight clothing. I was wearing jeans and a wool sweater while taking these photos, thank you very much.

Good Thing Eleven: Raclette

Man. As long as there is raclette in the world--plus the tiny red potatoes and gherkins to eat with it--there will be a reason to be grateful.

If you've never had raclette, you may not allow me to convince you of it. It's a stinky swiss cheese meant solely for melting and eating with salty buttery potatoes. It's undoubtedly terrible for you and the raclette is about $18.00 a pound. . . so, it's also pricey. And really, it's the perfect dinner meal after you have either driven a herd of cows or a flock of sheep amid the Alps. . . or alternately skied all day long or lumberjacked your way through a few giant cedars using only one of those two-handled saws, back and forth, back and forth.

I do none of those things.

But Dan and I have it at least once a year. We eat less cheese now--to save money, I guess, and to leave room for other things. Now we have raclette (just melted in a non-stick fry pan. nobody needs one of those fancy raclette cookers) over buttery boiled potatoes, with gherkins (traditionally to cut the grease of the cheese and potatoes. . . seriously, you have to try this), sliced up brats, and salty/lemony broccoli.

We got some greens in there. See. Now it's healthy.

Good Thing Ten:Digital Cameras Allow for Unfocussed Picture Taking

I feel like this wasn't the case when I got my first digital camera. Everything was always in focus--unnaturally so--and so I had a very hard time giving up my film cameras. Nothing is as velvety or dreamy or beautiful as out of focus lights photographed through rain with a reflex camera. . . but digital cameras are giving it their best shot.

And that's a great thing, a fun thing, a thing that allows for experimentation and fun, that allows for capturing the dream version of the world, the memory version of the world, the softer, less literal version of the world. . .




And this year, I have needed a less literal version of the world. . . or at least, my photo library from the year seems to suggest that. 25% of all my photos from this year are blurred from speed or lack of focus or refusing to ever use a flash even in the lowest light imaginable. It's as if I never wanted to see this year clearly again. . . and it's all pretty beautiful as a result.

Good Thing Nine: Graffiti

In Columbia's neighborhood, graffiti continues to be weird and awesome and often beautiful--even though don't fret has left our community. Anywhere huge swathes of young people live, new ways of expression are bound to crop up. . .


embroidered wheat paste? shut the door, that's great.


A little ship's masthead maiden just appears attached to the most colorful wall in the neighborhood? I've been passing her for weeks. . . like a little saint, leaving us looking for the other new stations of the cross. . .

Good Thing Eight: Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell's Begonias

To be totally honest about this, I listened to this album over and over like a teenager wearing an album out all while rehabbing. While mom was visiting, the weeks afterwards. . . still, now, off and on.

This album is the soundtrack of Little, Big for me. They are inextricably linked and tied up with this summer and my childhood and magic and sadness.

But what Begonias sounds like is that party or the memory of that party from years ago. . . that party when you were really pretty and everyone else was pretty too, like everyone in the room literally had a shine to them that leached into you and warmed you right up. It was the first time you felt grown and free and like you could make choices just to make them about the shape of the night and your future and that boy sitting across the room. The party might have had lots of candles lit or maybe loads of small white strands of twinkling lights hanging overhead. You probably spent some time outside staring up at stars. There was definitely a balcony involved. . . or maybe a cobblestone paved courtyard. Someone you'd been crushing on for months smiled at you and smiled at you and at some point, said your name in just the way you'd been hoping they would say your name for weeks--on the edge of a laugh, like your name could be the answer to the most fascinating question someone ever asked.

Begonias sounds like the tenuous memory of that evening. It sounds like country music if country music had always been about porches and sunlight and love. . . and never hate or abuse or jingoistic nonsense or a boot up anyone's ass. It's a gorgeous and nostalgic album that on some level, a little, saved me this year.

Thanks, Caitlin and Thad.

Good Thing Seven: I made a perfect doll this year

her proportions are perfect for maximum cuteness. a slight upturn to the nose. the first time I tried those ears.



when she was done and I pulled her sweater dress over her head, I held her out to look at her and gasped. seriously. I'm super hard on all of my work. . . but this little girl was an achievement.

Good Thing Six: This is Still a World Where. . .

people store gold fish in bright turquoise lined tanks.


Totally showing off their gold-fishiness with great success.

Good Thing Five: Our House Looks Like Christmas

Every year, we hem and haw over whether or not to decorate the house. We don't have kids yet and we're busy and we always spend Christmas in Cincinnati with my family. But it's so nice to have a decorated house, right? The house is a little cheerier. It break up the monotony of the appearance of the house that we spend a lot of time in in the winter's of Chicago.

Anyhoo. We rallied again this year and got it done.

Good Thing Four: My Husband made me listen to the Avett Brothers. . .

and they became my go to band for singing at the top of my lungs in the car. They're music is awesome, easy to harmonize with and perfect for car belting. This has been a big year for them, I think, and I am happy to have jumped on the band wagon.

Good Thing Three: Christine Hale

Time alone of course means a fair amount of time exploring the interwebs. And so I was lucky enough to find Christine Hale's illustration work.



I think I found her through a trail of blogs--one of my favorite blogs to one of their favorite blogs and so on. Her completely charming blog links away to a number of different Christine Hale centric sites and you should check them all out. But start here: http://christinehale.blogspot.com/.

I most love her doggies and her Triste elephant.

Her work was a joyful spot in 2011.

Good Thing Two: Best Book of the Year

Best book that I read this year, that is. I added it to the big stack of "books to read while rehabilitating" based entirely on reviews on Amazon--all which said something like, "This is my all time favorite book, but I can't begin to describe what it's about. . . impossible to put into words." Again and again the sense that the experience of this book was outside of language, and so I wanted to know what that experience would be like.

I can tell you that it's a dense book. It's about family and generations and the inexorable revolution of the planet and the way that the passage of time dismantles everything--from houses to tradition to beauty and love. . . to memory. But on every page, it's a book about something that it refuses to ever look directly at. It's writing with its eyes averted. It asks the reader to understand out of the corners of their eyes. I can't imagine the writing of it. . . even the reading of it, months later, seems unlikely.

I read it in the deep of my grandmother dying, after my own weeks of pressing fear. . . the stress test, the inconclusive or false test results, the angiogram, the back surgery, and so Little, Big was no doubt heightened by all of those things. But as a kid, my grandmother's house was like Narnia or Wonderland--an amazing house with nooks and crannies, and darkness and warmth on over an acre of green grass. My brother and I talked about it then, a place of adventure without any actual danger. It's weird to think of it now, because it seems so improbable, a place with almost no technology to speak of (I'm old enough, that that wasn't strange at the time), and so the house is a memory of food and games and picnics on the back lawn and reading books aloud. There was a blackboard in the hall off the dining room right next to the radiator, so you had to be careful not to be burned, but the sound of water rush and clank combining with adult voices filtering out from the remains of dinner while I drew in the darkness of the hallway. My brother and I spelunking under the dining room table, light dappled through the crocheted table cloth grandma had handmade years before, confined to bed with rickets. The front solarium filled to brimming with plants like some strange indoor office/jungle. Mozart's bust on the edge of the polished piano. A trunk upstairs on the top floor filled with nothing but costumes and dolls. . . even Japanese platform geisha sandles with thongs made of velvet. The golden starburst clock above the mantel in the living room. Everywhere, rugs of wool that prickled and burned bare feet and knees. Grandma in her night gown, letting me sit on the cool tiles in the bathroom while she unraveled her bun and brushed out her hair--a silver river flowing below her waist,

And this summer, grandma's and my last phone call--me sitting in Grant Park on carved steps next to the riotous gardens of sun and bright and whispering, and her in a bed in hospice in Cincinnati with the phone being held up to her ear. And the two of us just calling out things we remembered from the old house. The swing set. The old apple tree. The vegetable garden. The sandbox. Sheets sewn up on one side to keep kids from falling out. Croquet. Twelfth Night. . .

That was a good thing.

And so that's what Little, Big by John Crowley was for me--the way that families and the places attached to families shape you and break you and put you back together again. It's a magical book--both literally and figuratively. And it will always be a sad, bright spot in the midst of this dumb year.

Good Thing One: Hayao Miyazaki

If you live in NYC, you have the luck of being able to go to a Miyazaki retrospective. The man Dan and I have been fans for years. Studio Ghibli is the best animation studio in the world. (Okay, tying with Pixar. . . though Pixar has never experimented or dabbled with more adult films, and I doubt they will ever make anything that comes close to "My Neighbors the Yamadas").

The movie that probably introduced most Americans to Studio Ghibli's films was "My Neighbor Totoro". At the time it was released, there was no animation feature length film that was more beautifully rendered, more imaginative, or more moving. Two young girls living in the country, being comforted by the magic of forest spirits while their mother convalesces in a hospital in the city.



Above is a poster made by Mondo in time for the retrospective, unfortunately, they sold out, almost the moment they went on sale.

Miyazaki's work always makes me want to be creative in return. It fills me with wonder and jealousy and after finishing watching one of his films, I want to quickly go and make something to answer his work. He's a world treasure.

The Year is Winding Down

That's the phrase everyone uses, but I don't get it. Like a music box running out of steam? Like a wind-up toy slowly stuttering to a stop. Both would mean that the year slows down. . .

It always feels to me like the year is unspooling, rushing to a close, like a thread bobbin on a sewing machine, wobbling and jittering as it spins madly with the thread rushing away. It flies past faster and faster each day until the year just flies away.

So, I'm going to try to write a post a day here until the end of 2011. It was--and continues to be--a pretty terrible year. But good things happened in there--good books, good music, good food, fun with friends, good art--and so I'm going to do a little wrap up on those things to salvage what's left of this junky calendar year, before it floats off into history.

How is Christmas two weeks away?

We've been so busy this year that the whole Holiday season has sort of crept up on us.

But this weekend, we went shopping in town to all of our favorite groceries and butchers to pick up food we don't get out in the suburbs. The Vietnamese grocery on Argyle, the Greek shop just off Clark on Foster, the German grocer/butcher in Lincoln Square.

And as weird as that sounds, that will put me in the holiday mood. The holidays are all about love and gift giving and community and eating well. . . well, we're going to eat well all week!

Renegade 2011

It feels like Dan and I have been going and going and going for months straight--traveling for the holidays, Dan's shows, friends' rock shows, weekend work for me--all in funnel down to the Chicago Holiday Renegade Craft Fair. And every bit of it was worth it.

The fair went really well. I met loads of lovely, charming folks (both sellers and buyers!) and I sold a good chunk of rattles and mitts and scarflettes. . . even a little luchador.

Here's the gorgeous booth my man built for me (that a few other vendors claimed jealousy of) with the new name banner I put together this fall.



On both sides of us were incredibly nice, incredibly talented artists.

To our left was the Anne Benjamin of Mok Duk, whose illustrations and posters were some of the best at the fair (she, Jay Ryan, and Laura George are neck and neck for me). She also makes beautiful bespoke wedding invitations:

I totally got some of these small prints as Christmas gifts for my niece and nephew (which I can totally say here, because they are too tiny to read yet. . . )



To our right was Reuse First--a couple that also prints illustration work, makes creatively bound blank books. . . and the total hit at Renegade, succulents and cacti and candles in recycled fine alcohol bottles. They source their bottles from local bars, and as beautiful as liquor bottles are, it makes total sense. They were swamped by customers all week.


And then across the way was a Minnesotan beekeeper--Worker-b--selling all things bee-related: honey, lip balm, wax, etc. Their booth bee was ridiculously cute. I don't feel like I can cheat on my brother bee keeper with other keeper's stuff, but it's still always encouraging to see other keepers out there doing their thing!


And then upstairs, I was knocked out by Rachelle Vasquez's scarves. Truth be told, I'm not sure I would wear them as scarves. They're pretty expensive as scarves go and I'm such a wuss in the cold that I need a scarf that covers every inch of my neck and lower chest and ears and. . .

But these are totally cheap for what I think they actually might be, which is fine art. Just crochet the animals and then frame these up in gorgeous barn wood shadow frames, and this artist could sell these for $700 to $900 in a gallery show. Easy. The craftsmanship is amazing and I was totally jealous of her skills.