It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas - Updated

Although the calendar says it's still autumn, there is no doubt that we've already entered winter. Yesterday's steady drizzle brought a brief spell of snow flakes, and this morning we woke to clear skies that revealed snow blanketed hills north of the city. The air is bitingly cold, and smells like Christmas...and the mosquitoes finally seem to be gone. I can't believe it's already time to fare l'albero—decorate the tree—a ritual observed on the eighth of December in Italy. Coinciding with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, this reminds me, once again, of how traditions/schedules are so often organized around the religious calendar.

Before assembling our 'tree' (shown in the image at the top of this post—looking up from underneath...it's very difficult to photograph—you can read here about its 'conception' last December), my daughter and I went out to get some apple juice so we could make spiced cider tonight. Walking around Florence may be chilly at this time of year, but the cheerful decorations make even a simple outing feel magical. I brought along my camera, hoping to photograph some of the streets strung with lights, but the 'fresh' battery I thought I'd put in was in fact so low on charge that I only managed to get two pictures before it quit (above is Ponte Vecchio, and below the cathedral). At least they will remind me of our fun walk under the lights, complete with a few dozen random snow flakes (especially surprising since the stars were still visible!).

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I have been busy in the studio, tying up loose ends for some of the year's many projects—including a couple of 2013 calendars. Below are a few images of my Rose Garden-inspired calendar, which will be in my online shop in the coming week now! It's been hard to get decent photos of the things I've been working on since there's been little sun lately—even on days when there is sunshine, it reaches into the studio for just a few hours. Thankfully the days will start getting 'longer' in a mere couple of weeks...though I must admit that I'm finally starting to remember just how wonderful December in Florence can be...

Colorful things for gray days

The myriad—and unexpected—sources of inspiration never cease to amaze me. A few weeks ago, as I was watching how olive oil behaves when added to water (while making polenta), I got an idea that has led to a seemingly endless potential for decorative papers. Because of their spotted/marbled paper effect, the designs are perfect for my second A Letter a Week alphabet (which requires that dots/spots play some part in the design).

Here are some snippets of the decorative patterns (click for a larger view)...

I'll dedicate a post to more details on how these came about after I've done some more experimenting. But for now, here are some notes on things I've been doing with them so far...

Since this discovery coincided with preparations for my daughter's birthday, I wanted to incorporate some of the designs into something for her. My first thought was to use one for her birthday card, but that ended up taking another direction as I played around with some images my daughter been collecting (more on this in a moment). I also wanted to make some gift certificates for a few things that couldn't be given right away, and somehow those 'cootie catchers' (also called fortune tellers) that we used to make in school came to mind as a fun way to use the 'marbled' patterns and give the 'gifts'.

I folded a couple of square test papers first to help me in designing the layout, then cropped four of my colorful designs into triangles to create the template. I exported the file as a jpeg, then sized the jpeg to fit onto a sheet of A4 paper and added text boxes for each 'gift'. Below is the resulting 'folded gift card' before being trimmed/folded.

Click here for a refresher on the folds needed to make a fortune teller/cootie catcher.

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The design for the birthday card was inspired by this next image, which I found in a folder of my daughter's called 'Pictures to Print'. I wish I could credit it, but unfortunately she doesn't remember where it came from.

Somehow, from this creative music-inspired diagram, the birthday card began to take shape. I especially liked the overlapping multicolored curves, which gave me the idea to create eight ovals, each in a different color. I reduced the opacity so the colors would show through when layered, then 'grouped' the eight ovals, 'duplicated' the resulting 'group' so there were four different ones to work with, and altered their proportions and orientations to make them each unique. I realized later that the colorful ovals reminded me a lot of birthday balloons. In this season of little light and much rain, they have brightened my days as I've created a series of cards and postcards built on the initial concept. They will eventually be listed in my online shop, PaperSynthesis, although (with the backlog of things I'm working on for the shop) I'm not sure how much longer this may take.
 

 

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I had so much fun with these birthday-related projects that I wanted to share the files with anyone who might enjoy some color too. I explored several options for making them available online, since my former method for doing so (iDisk) has been phased out, but the only way to offer the files at their full size seems to be to send them via email. You can find my contact info in the sidebar at right (toward the top of the page), by clicking 'CONTACT'...I'd love to pass on the files for the folded gift card and/or the birthday card to anyone who's interested, so please feel free to email me.

 

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Here's a sneak peak at my second alphabet for the ALaW challenge, which incorporates some of the 'marbled' papers. The mini mockup cubes in the foreground are about a fifth of the final 7-cm size. One of the nine printed cubes, yet to be scored/cut out/assembled, can be seen in the background. This concept is considerably different from my original idea, but since the year is drawing to a close I decided to scale back from the twenty-seven-cube project I first had in mind. More on the alphabet as it comes together...

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And now, on a sweet note... Yesterday, in honor of my father's sixty-ninth birthday, I made caramel corn (he loves popcorn & caramel, so it seemed like a perfect melding of the two). Below is the way we make it, and of course you can customize it with your favorite nuts, popping techniques & personal touches. The caramel sauce is the one I've mentioned before (borrowed from the Simply Recipes website); click here if you'd like to see more detailed instructions for the method. I also like to add a little Himalayan sea salt to balance the sweetness of the caramel, and this works especially well with the popcorn.

A couple of final notes: You may not need to use all of the caramel sauce; after coating the popcorn there may be a few spoonfuls left over...store it in the fridge until you need some to drizzle on ice cream, fold into brownie batter, etc. Also, the caramel corn may seem a bit 'wet' as you stir it during the baking period, but it will harden once it's removed from the oven (so don't leave it in beyond the suggested hour in an attempt to dry it out).

This weekend we've also been busy getting ready for my daughter's birthday party with friends, which was finally today, and involved a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. My daughter normally asks for devil's food cake, but since that's what I made for her actual birthday (and also what she made for mine a few weeks earlier!), she thought a change would be nice.

The concept of the multi-layer cake with gobs of frosting is rather foreign here, but over the years my daughter's Italian friends have developed an appreciation for our traditional American-style cakes. I used this cake & frosting recipe, and it came out beautifully. I did make a few small changes, like adding ground cardamom, cloves & orange zest and substituting dark brown sugar for light and olive oil for vegetable oil in the batter + sprinkling cinnamon on the buttered pans instead of flour. I wanted the cream cheese flavor of the frosting to be a bit more pronounced, so I halved the amount of butter and reduced the powdered sugar to just under three cups, and also added a quick squeeze of orange juice.

I never seem to get many pictures of birthday celebrations, tending instead to focus on enjoying the occasion, but thought I'd include this photo since the candles are in keeping with the 'colorful things for gray days' theme of this post.

{Last year's cake recipe can be found here.}

Shades of violet

'Violet' is this month's color theme for the ROY G BIV photo challenge inspired by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. While in past months I have enjoyed looking through my photo archives for images, this time I had fun getting out there with my camera and finding some new pictures. They are all from my 'writing weekend' in Montepulciano a couple of weeks ago. It was mostly overcast during those few days, and the slightly eerie November light seemed to emphasize the violet cast all around.

There's a 'panoramic vista' near the ex-church of San Francesco, where my daughter and I always go for a look at the countryside; you really get a sense of the changing of seasons from there. This time the gentle hills & contours had turned shades of violet and mauve (I recall them as even more so than the images above show them to be). [Quartet #1] Pleased that even the hills were playing along this month, from there began an earnest search for more shades of violet...and the town did not disappoint!

Maledetti Toscani (which purports to be Montepulciano's oldest shop) is known for its unusual and creative displays. At the end of summer I remember they had painted several pairs of shoes bright yellowy-orange; serendipitously, lilac paint (& newspaper) seems to be their latest whacky whim. [Quartet #2]

Piazza Grande, the town's main square, inspired a few more shots when I noticed that some of the stones & bricks were tinged with purple. I must admit that they don't appear as pronouncedly purple as I remember, but I was quite struck by them at the time. [Quartet #3]

Following the Corso (Montepulciano's main road, which winds its way up through the town) led to a few more glimpses of violet: a poster featuring part of a fresco in rosy/purple-y tones (Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good Government), a purple plastic jack-o'-lantern 'bucket' (I was very surprised to see one in a color other than orange), and a shop window devoted to purple items. A woman with a winter coat and umbrella in stunning, rich shades of purple ducked into a shop before I could capture her look, but I did manage to surreptitiously photograph a man wearing violet pants. [Quartet #4]

It was fun, once again, to see where the ROY G BIV search took me. I think that Jennifer & Julie may be concluding with a bonus challenge of black & white next month; check their websites if you'd like to play along. And thank you for following my color explorations here over the last several months...

Settling into autumn II

It's that time of year when a pot of tea gets cold before it's finished, when laundry takes days to dry, when you can't wait to burrow under the feather duvet at bedtime. You savor every minute of sunshine, and every night that you can see the stars. I used to love autumn best of all the seasons, but after eight winters in Florence I realize this may have had something to do with spending the previous thirteen years in southern California. November is notoriously rainy here, and I think even simply the dread of strings of rainy days can dampen my spirits. I am always more creative and productive when the sun shines—a tendency that finds me in the studio even when most people are out enjoying the lovely weather.

After posting 'Settling into autumn' a few weeks ago, I realized that I'd barely mentioned the change of season and the new routine our household has settled into (hence this followup). School began in mid-September, but it always takes time for things to get organized; the kids only got their permanent schedules and started following the full orario in the second month! For my daughter, who is at a liceo artistico (a high school with an emphasis on visual arts/design), this means six-day school week. Having classes on Saturday is pretty typical in Italy, and while we were lucky that her middle school offered an option with Saturdays free, there's no escaping it now. For me, it means an extra day in the studio, which of course I don't mind, but I do emphathise with the students. At least my daughter spends part of her Saturday in front of an easel. One thing is for sure: between the two of us, we're getting a lot of studio time.

Because of All Saint's Day on November First, not only did the kids finally have a 'real' weekend, but a four-day weekend at that. We stayed in Florence for a couple of days before heading to Montepulciano, the small hilltop town where my parents have a cozy second home.

Other than the fact that it would be our only chance to visit this fall, another reason for the trip was so we could focus on the novels we're writing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). As we discovered last November, Montepulciano is the perfect place to make progress on the 50,000-words-in-30-days challenge. {A few notes on last year's writing weekend in Montepulciano can be found here.} 

It turned out to be a lovely weekend. By the time the two-hour bus ride had ended, I'd left everyday pressures behind and allowed the novel to work itself out a bit. Once there, we streamlined meals, got out for a daily walk around the town, did a bit of 'gardening' on my parents' little terrace...and made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to sustain our writing sessions/sprints {recipe here}.

I am still more comfortable with writing non-fiction (and even generally prefer to read non-fiction), but I found the process of working on the novel last year to be quite fascinating. After writing basically nonsense for the first several days, in an attempt to keep my hand moving across the page (as Natalie Goldberg counsels), a phrase came out of nowhere toward the end of the first week: "One thing was sure: she was not afraid of color." Not the most graceful of sentences, but that one line shifted my focus to a new character who intrigued me so much that she became the fixed point around which all of the other characters revolve. It drove home the importance of (to quote Natalie Goldberg again) 'showing up to write'...of going through the motions until you find that all of a sudden you find yourself immersed in the story. Last year's character is still with me, and in fact I am building on much of the material I wrote last November.

Since returning to Florence at the beginning of the week, most of my time in the studio has been spent with the found poem project I had begun last spring. And let me say that fine-tuning these approximately fifty-word pieces makes the NaNoWriMo average of 1667 words per day seem easy! I hope to put them in the shop some time in the next week or two, and will post some photos here as well.

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One thing I do welcome at this time of year is the produce: tart pomegranates, crisp, fragrant apples & pears, juicy citrus fruits—and persimmons! I picked up a box of them yesterday; they make such a delicious, easy snack or dessert. I don't think the sun is going to grace us with its presence today (and induce me to photograph them), but I've included a few photos I shot of the persimmon trees in the garden across from my parents' home in Montepucliano last weekend + one I took during a visit to the Rose Garden a few weeks ago (to help me recall the intense scent of fallen/overripe/split persimmons under the laden tree, but I love the late afternoon light in that photo also). {This link leads to a persimmon print that I offered in my provisory shop last year, and includes a few musings on persimmons + a couple of ideas for how to serve them.}

Yesterday I also brought home the ingredients for vegetable soup—another happy tradition that marks this season. Though it's cold enough that it smells like Christmas at night now, the past few days have been more like those signature golden days of October, but today's grey sky makes the idea of soup very appealing. I thought I'd share my version for those of you also experiencing 'soup weather' {recipe here}. I credit the mother of my friend Tessa Kiros for inspiring the use of pumpkin in my vegetable soup. Incidentally, Tessa continues to write cookbooks that are a treat to look through, dream with and cook from; the latest one, Limoncello and Linen Water, was released in Australia and the UK last month. (The American edition is due out next spring, under a different title/with a different cover.)

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One final note: After having gotten into the habit of introducing one item for my shop each day of last October, I decided to continue the 'visual calendar' concept by posting a little something every day of November as well. If you happen to be looking for a recipe for chocolate cake or stew, are in need of a book recommendation, or want to read what we usually do with our Halloween pumpkin, please have a look here.

Still-elusive indigo

Cubes have been more or less taking over the studio during the last several months—they are giving form to my second A Letter a Week alphabet and my Book Art Object edition, as well as guiding the design of a couple of items in the works for my shop. So, I decided to continue my exploration for the 'INDIGO' challenge by creating a series of four cubes, with faces each seven-centimeters square. A couple of the sides are composed of a single image that's been divided into four, while others are distinct but harmonize with others through theme, material or technique.

This project saw a general unfolding over a period of several days, and some of the steps are visible in the photos below. A few things still remain to be finished, but I finally got the cubes scored/cut/folded last week. Unfortunately we've lost the lovely light we had mid-October, but the weather doesn't seem to be getting any better... So, on this cold, grey, rainy Halloween—brightened only by our jack o' lantern and the brigade of my daughter's friends (who came over to prepare themselves to go out and scare everyone who sees them tonight with their creative use of paint, makeup, fake tattoos & hairspray)—I have decided to get this post finished up using the photos I took last week...

A brief inventory of the cube faces:

• A text taken from Littell's Living Age/Volume 145/Issue 1869/Definition of the Color Indigo, with scholarly objections disputing Newton's decision to name 'indigo' as a color (4 cube faces)
• A reproduction of the color wheel with Newton's placement of indigo (handpainted with indigo watercolor)
• A 'package' addressed, with indigo pencil, to Newton's family home, with an indigo stamp and tied with indigo string
• A 'letter' to Newton, written with an indigo water-soluble pencil over a wet background, and expressing some of the frustration over identifying the color 'indigo'
• A grouping of blue—some possibly even indigo—stamps from Studio Carta
• A map of Italy, with a sea painted with one of my indigo watercolors
• A print made with a design using Winsor & Newton's indigo (darker/cooler) over a background of Maimeri's version of indigo (richer/warmer)
• One of my photos of the Venetian lagoon (4 cube faces)
• Another of my photos, of a bird floating in the Venetian lagoon
• Butterflies in colors that I thought paired well with indigo (inspired by my previous post), against an indigo 'sky'
• The chemical formula of indigo (C₁₆H₁₀N₂O₂₎, with indigo sequins within each of the five-/six-sided 'cells' resulting from the arrangement of elements
• A pattern of indigo sequins
• A pattern of stitches made with indigo thread
• A 'book' stitched onto one face with indigo thread. (This idea came from a lovely Florentine marbled paper featuring indigo; it became the 'endpapers', and the 'pages' of the book are for notes/samples of some of the materials used for this project.)
• A weaving of indigo strips: denim, the indigo marbled paper & hand-colored indigo papers over a square of copper
• Copper bead 'stars' stitched onto an indigo 'sky'
• Copper wire & copper beads woven over a cutout that looks into the cube's indigo interior
• The twenty-fourth face/square remains blank...I may use it for the etymology and/or definition of indigo

Only after taking the first few rounds of photos did I remember that part of the inspiration for choosing the cube form in the first place was in fact to continue with the theme of presenting quartets of square images (which I used for past ROY G BIV posts). So below are a few more photos showing 1) the cubes arranged to recreate the full lagoon image; 2) the text contesting Newton's status for indigo; and 3) a mixed set.

Unfortunately, I liked this concept of arranging the cubes two-by-two better in theory than in practice; because of the '3D' additions (beads, wire, butterflies, the 'book'), I needed to use spacers when displaying them like this, and the effect is not very precise—certainly not consistent with what the very idea of a 'grid' means to me! (Part of this is also because I have not permanently attached the cubes yet—hence the little bulges and gaps.)

It's always interesting to see where an idea takes you, and I must admit that I wished I'd considered more where I was going before diving in. I feel the result is very 'literal', which is where most of my creative ideas tend to begin. In some ways I wish I had taken another direction and created more of a 'palette of indigos', with different materials & media, i.e. a square watercolored with indigo, another square comprised completely of indigo sequins, one of the indigo thread, etc., instead of getting involved with butterflies and books and such. I also might have experimented with papers more; while the decision to use Fabriano Artistico was deliberate and based on quite a bit of experimentation (I like its warm white color, sturdy weight, forgiving surface/ability to accept some manhandling), I don't think it brought out the best of the watercolors in particular. All in all, though, I am happy with the experience—I'm definitely more comfortable producing cubes now, and it's always valuable to conceive a project and see how it unfolds.

The last of these images (above) shows my favorite cube 'face'. Even with the fairly close-up shot, it's still difficult to make out the indigo interior (I painted the backside of this cube with indigo watercolors). The effect of the contrast of copper with indigo was one of my favorite discoveries along the way...

 

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{'VIOLET', November's color, should certainly be easier to identify next month! Click here for the guidelines if you'd like to play along by posting some violet-inpired photos.}

Enjoying the process

Today's post was supposed to be composed of photos I had taken of my indigo-inspired 'project'...but it seems this was simply not to be. Yesterday I found myself wondering how I would get from where I was then to the position of having everything finished and ready to photograph—and today I realized that, as usual, I imagined there were more hours in the day than there actually are. I feel so very behind with the dozen different projects I am trying to complete (which is one reason the blog posts have been so few in the last several months), but it has been fun to have this indigo diversion.





I must admit that I find the idea of a lot of indigo rather overwhelming. Although indigo is one of the shades of blue that I do like, as I'd mentioned in the 'Surrounded by blue' post last month, blue is still my least favorite color. So, while collecting supplies and materials for October's challenge, I've also been thinking about which other colors indigo pairs well with. After realizing that I wasn't going to have my original project ready by tonight's ROY G BIV deadline, I decided to capture some of these 'pairings' with my camera this afternoon instead. In fact, I barely caught a few images in time (still getting used to the effects of the sun's post-autumn solstice trajectory).

The jacket of Gayle Brandeis' Fruitflesh, with that luscious deep red pomegranate, is among my all-time favorite book covers and it occurred to me that it would go well with my daughter's best-loved blue jeans (first image below). I also find the deep blue and rusty-orange of Sue Bender's cover for Everyday Sacred very striking (second image). I had intended to photograph some of my past play with indigo & olive green, but only managed to get the fresh smudge of it on the palette (last image) this afternoon. Interestingly enough, those two brands of indigo watercolors next to the olive are very different from one another. I'm not sure yet if this is going to open up more possibilities or complicate things!

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On the whole 'color' topic, my sister-in-law told me about an app—Color Vacuum—which uses the camera of handheld Apple devices to collect colors. The app is aimed at kids, but I think it sounds like a lot of fun (how useful it would have been this month!). I'm not very gadget-crazy/savvy, but this is the kind of thing that makes me sort of want an iPhone/iPod with a camera. Click here for details on how it works & to check out the very appealing interface. One of the promotional images even fits in with the indigo theme:

This month I also discovered, in the 'Utilities' folder on my mac, the DigitalColor Meter. It isolates the color of anything that the mouse hovers over + shows the RGB composition. I have been creating a few calendars for the shop, and it's been helpful to be able to pull colors from the calendar images and use them for the fonts as well.

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May you all have a colorful weekend! I hope to be back with the results of my indigo explorations very soon...

Settling into autumn

 

After a period of temperamental skies and rain, Florence has had a week of classic autumn days ~

blue skied with a crisp bite

tempered by the warmth of

the kind of golden light that

goes hand-in-hand with

ever-shortening days

dissolving into indigo...

At least I think those dozens of gradations of blue at twilight culminate in indigo...though, in all honesty, I'm still not sure. With the latest ROY G BIV challenge at the back of my mind the last few weeks, I've kept my eyes open for the 'I'—which stands for indigo and is October's color. And it's brought up the question: What exactly is indigo?

The other artists participating in the challenge all commented that indigo was going to be a tough one. My perception of indigo shifts constantly, so I knew I needed to get a better grasp of what the color truly is. But trying to 'educate' myself only placed more doubts in my mind. Perusing the web didn't help much; I tried replicating the color 'formulas' I found for indigo, but the values that appeared on the computer screen each looked like shades of purple. In my mind, indigo more closely resembles the indigo dye that comes from the plant that originally inspired the name (which Wikipedia says is in fact closer to the 'Midnight Blue' used for the web).

As always, though, I enjoy the search. I was thrilled when, as I scrubbed the knees of my daughter's jeans one day, indigo dye began to run onto the washboard of the laundry sink. I grabbed my camera to preserve the watery lines of indigo, but in that darkest corner of the apartment the shots couldn't capture the color. It did remind me to find the scrap from a pair of jeans that I had spotted recently, as possible inspiration.

After the inconclusive research and the 'lost' dye, I decided to try something different this month. With the idea of creating some indigo-themed work in the studio, I visited a belle arti (art supplies) shop to calibrate my notion of the elusive shade. Fortunately, some brands conveniently define their colors with names, which made it easy to choose an indigo pencil and a couple of tubes of indigo watercolor paint. I also tried my luck at the only craft store I know of in Florence (a funny little place that never seems to have the items on my list—everything is always due to arrive 'in about ten days'), but I realized that many crafts companies code the colors of their products with numbers. I spent ages opening dozens of drawers as I searched for the embroidery thread that most resembled what I think indigo is, contemplated the bead rack before choosing a tiny container of sequins that may—or may not!—be indigo, and stood puzzling before displays of ribbons, paints, mosaics, glitter, papers, etc. I did walk away with a slightly larger collection of possibly- indigo-colored bits and pieces.

Each time I cleared up a pile, box or corner of the studio this month, I was on the lookout for indigo treasures; some are gathered on the tray in the photo at the top of this entry. Besides my small purchases, there's the scrap of old jeans, a postcard retrieved from a collage I made years ago, the book Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender, a sheet of locally marbled paper, and some vintage stamps—a thoughtful gift from Angela Liguori.

Building on a form that has guided several other projects currently in progress in the studio, the indigo things will be brought together and transformed into something new. I am hoping to have the project done in time to post photos before this month's ROY G BIV deadline (Saturday at midnight EST). Of course, colors don't necessarily translate accurately via the camera—which has proved to be another challenging aspect of this month's color...not to mention that colors show up differently from one monitor to the next. It only makes me want to laugh about this whole quest to find 'INDIGO'. Just another reminder of the importance of savoring the journey.

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As I was brainstorming about 'INDIGO' one night, I remembered the title of an Italian song: Indaco dagli occhi del cielo. Translating as the rather vague 'Indigo from the eyes of the sky', the lyrics of this so-called cover recorded by Zucchero don't seem to have anything in common with the original, Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime. (I still remember when The Korgies' came out with the single in 1980; I was just twelve, and even now, hearing the song recalls that first summer in the US after my family had moved back from Brazil.) 

I'll leave you with a 'video' of the Italian version from You Tube. The sound quality is good, but there's only a still image; unfortunately, the only videos I could find were shaky recordings made at concerts. Many of you will likely recognize the familiar melody...

{I imagine that, as usual, Jennifer & Julie (the artists who first inspired this ROY G BIV challenge) will be posting their own images + links to other participants. I'm very curious, but am saving my blog visits until I've completed mine!}