mad for mosaic (and knitting)!!

Or maybe just "mad"... (as in cloud cuckoo land crazy).

(by the way, there are two posts today to make up for one I missed last week. Aren't you thrilled! see below for #2 on the topic of mambos, sambas and wannabe 50s crooners)

The mosaic monster has corrupted me yet again. Last night I made the following after finding some old curry jars in the cupboard:

1. Coffee Mug with Cozy

Before and After


Curry sauce by Pataks (we are very fond of curry in a hurry in the JB household).
Up Close and Personal


The sleeve is made with Sari Silk gifted me by Holly as a surprise in an American chip gift pack. I thought it fit well with the curry theme. The buttons are vintage, 1940s. Fancy beads from Michaels craftstore.

Hopefully the household dishwashing job was better than usual. If not, I may get to sample the unique taste of vindaloo coffee this morning at the desk. Talk about "world coffee"!!

2. Paean to the Boygirl Goddess

A really fancy name for a pen holder which will hopefully help me restore order to my office highlighter collection.

1. Before and after

Curry sauce by the President. (an aside: why is it that native UK cuisine seems to treat black pepper as a spice to be used with suspicion and extreme caution, but Brits and Scots love curry? Especially after drinking copious amounts of beer? I don't get it. Tell my "old country" scottish/british friends, "Tonight it's Moroccan for dinner" and they screw up their faces in confusion and sniff every bite suspiciously before eating - kind of like I do with vegetables - hmm. But tell them "I know you've had Patak's the last ten times you were here, but... " and they practically lick the cooking pan clean!

Note also the elephant in the background. I thought that was a nice touch.

But I digress.

2. Up Close and Personal


The goddess was made for by a very dear departed friend of mine and resided on my fridge for many years.



The fridge magnets are arranged in my rather bizarre stab at poetry. Each line is a standalone poem. They read as follows (from the bottom, which is how I started composing it

******************************
please watch your magnetic musk
some more delirious pudding please

I crave his warm languid whisper
but want to sleep with...

why do mad passion and beauty make me cry with lust?

a naked moon must soar and build together

I need to be the divine and curvaceous fairy femme

love is a violent luscious spray of blue fire

outrageous trip through time a caress in a void

I feel like the slick aristocratic goddess who can spank you

straight boys rock but sausages wail pant and satisfy

************************************
I know, I know... don't give up my day job. However, I do like it better than the tenants rights haiku I penned during the last staff meeting. I won't bore you with those, although the coworkers got a kick out of them.

repurposed fridge magnets

Have you ever had that stuff called "fridge poetry" on your fridge at home? I had it for years and years, providing much hilarity at parties particularly after everyone had had a few - especially since someone had gifted me with the smutty version of fridge poetry.

In the time period since I first acquired the fridge poetry, I have moved apartments... er... six or seven times due to either wanderlust or the inevitable discontentment that comes from being a tenant advocate who is also a tenant! (I prefer the wanderlust reason myself - it sounds far more sweeping and majestic than "this landlord is never going to fix anything, so I might as well just move").

The last time I moved (which was a happy move in that we were upgrading to acquire a 32 foot balcony plus a second bedroom which has become the stash/craft room, library, etc) I finally said to myself "Enough!! I'm not putting up this fridge poetry ANY MORE!!". However, hoarder little me could not bear to toss it out. It sat in a tupperware container for some time and then I decided to deal with it once and for all.

So - here's what I came up with, about a year and a half ago:

Warning: due to the smutty fridge poetry used in part in this piece, viewer discretion is strongly advised regarding the resulting subject matter! ;-) don't say I didn't warn you!



The Box That Dreams Are Made Of!!!

Detail Shot:

You will note that I made no real attempt at creating poetry and that for the most part the words were placed at random (I really wish I had saved all the great stuff people had "written" over the years. I started to then lost the scraps of paper I was using to write them down during some move or other).

Please note also the very pleasing "sepia" effect on part of the fridge poetry. Second hand smoke can be a wonderful dyeing medium, I've learned. Looking at this box "in person" I could actually tell you which of two sets of fridge poetry each individual magnet came from, based on how nicotine-stained it is.

Smoking is SO glamorous! (any Canadians here who remember that poster campaign back in the 80s with the really ugly photo of a person with about 100 lit cigarettes jammed in his/her mouth, surrounded by smoke? Peculiar that I took up smoking approximately 35 minutes after first seeing that poster at the high school - it stressed me out!).

But I digress. To make a lovely heirloom poet's box, simply glue fridge magnets onto an old shoebox. The lovely sepia effect could be accomplished as well without years of smoking - by painting the magnets once dried with contact cement, which will also produce an extra layer of adhesive.

And now it strikes me that I could have made my life much easier by using a metal box. Oh well. This will give me an excuse to try to find the petty cash box at the office, as I just remembered I have more fridge poetry in sepia/white, pink and lavender as well (the latter two being queer fridge poetry). "Really, I wasn't stealing the money... I just wanted the box to use for another craft".

Hmm.