Lara Blanchard 魏嘉麗

—some of this week’s Intro to Drawing classwork, #charcoal on #newsprint. Tilted round forms are giving me some trouble, even though I have a math background and still understand geometry pretty well! The third #drawing took over two hours. We also drew boxes, less visually interesting.

#sabbatical

—yet another mend to the front of this T-shirt. I wish I could say my #mending pile is shrinking, but it remains substantial, with four items of clothing that I wear regularly currently in exile. Button craft thread held double on rayon.

#neverendingmending #visiblemending #sabbatical

—adventures in Intro to Drawing from this past week: blind contour #drawings of a shoe and a pine cone, plus a preview of the homework due Monday.

#sabbatical

—second session of Intro to Drawing happened today. After the crit of last week’s homework, we practiced #gesture #lines and #contour lines. Here are three gesture drawings I did and one blind contour #drawing of my own hand.

#sabbatical

—I spent much of my snow day yesterday #repairing the holes in these #oldjeans (made in 2005) with internal #patches (sourced from another run-down pair) and button & craft thread in slate. Almost the entire surface above the knees, front and back, is now a double layer of #denim. #visiblemending

—more #mending on my flip-top #mittens. Last night I noticed that one area was getting threadbare. I still wore the mittens today while shoveling snow, only to find halfway through that I had created two new holes. But now I’m ready for the coming cold snap.

#Noro #Kureyon #wool #sabbatical

Thank you!

—a perfect #sabbatical day: morning getting reacquainted with my research, then an afternoon in the drawing studio. Because I want to get better at #drawing, I’m sitting in on Intro to Drawing this term. First assignment: spend three hours, uninstructed, drawing a still life. We’ll see if I improve!

—just now: it’s 13 degrees F and I nearly froze my fingers even with flip-top mittens. But my camera caught the #NorthernLights in my own backyard, so I headed out to the pier at the north end of #SenecaLake. I couldn’t see them with my own eyes but I’m still so pleased with these photos. #Aurora!

—small #mending projects take next to no time and yet I let them pile up. Finally got to the four small holes where the label attaches to the back of this shirt, trying to keep it harmonious with the bigger woven patch on the front. Embroidery thread on cotton.

#visiblemending #reducereuserepair

—my mittens are in heavy rotation this winter and they keep developing new holes. The new areas of #darning this week are the pink area on the flip-top of the left mitten, the olive green area on the left thumb, and the pink area on the right middle finger. Duplicate stitch in #Noro #Kureyon #wool.

I also have a solid start on the second course (Arts of Modern Japan). I still need to do a lot of reading and write a full-on new course proposal, but I have the topics mapped out. The course will meet twice a week and have more time for discussion.

2/2

—I’m on #sabbatical! And I have a lot of projects on deck. The first (and easiest) is to split my Japanese Art & Culture course into two courses. I started today and made great progress: I have a new course description and syllabus for the first course (Arts & Culture of Premodern Japan).

1/2

—cran-raspberry filling for #slabpie: 3 c. fresh cranberries, sliced in half and macerated in 1 1/4 c. sugar for 1 hr.; 3 c. raspberries; zest of 2 clementines; 1 tablespoon clementine juice; 1/4 c. cornstarch; sprinkle of sea salt; plus a quadruple crust rolled out to cookie sheet proportions.

—I took a break from the incessant grading to make some #focaccia for my family’s lunch! It’s very easy: yeast, sugar, lukewarm water, olive oil, bread flour, coarse sea salt, and rosemary.

#academicfall #homebaking #fromscratch

—the last of the apple-pear pie bars.

#homebaked #fromscratch #pieinthesky

Yes! Regrettably I have a ton of work to do today.

Days that I have eaten pie for breakfast: 1
Days that we ate waffles: 1
Days that we ate pancakes: 1
Quarts of turkey soup made on Saturday: 2
Saturday morning games of ‘There’s a Moose in the House’: 3
Pounds of butter used over four days: 2.5
Gratitude for family togetherness: ♾️

7/

Traditional Friday dumpling-making sessions: 1
Hours spent making dumplings entirely from scratch: 1.5
People who assisted with making dumplings: 6
Miles my fitness tracker thinks I walked on Friday, despite being almost entirely in my kitchen and dining room: 5.2
Dumplings eaten: 59

6/

Cups of hand-whipped cream with vanilla: 1
Percentage of pie eaten on Thursday: 60
Quarts of turkey stock made after dinner: 3
Bowls of dog food generously laced with turkey that the dog ate on Friday: 4
Apple-pear pie bars made from scratch on Friday afternoon: 24

5/

Pounds of turkey roasted: 11.3
Times my brother-in-law hand-washed all the dishes (thank you!): 6+
Miles my fitness tracker thinks I walked on Thursday, despite being almost entirely in my kitchen and dining room: 4.8
Pumpkin pies baked after we ate dinner: 1

4/

Meat dishes (if you count gravy, which had chicken stock): 2
Starchy dishes: 4
Vegetable dishes (if you count cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie): 4
Dishes made entirely from scratch by my niece and daughter: (thank you!): 2
Pounds of potatoes mashed by my brother-in-law (thank you!): ~3

3/

Hours spent in the kitchen baking and cooking on Thursday: 7
Hours my sister spent assisting me (thank you!): 7
Traditional roll-baking sessions at my mother-in-law’s place (thank you!): 1
Adorable turkey pine cone favors made by my sister and niece that were reused this year: 7

2/

—Thanksgiving break round-up:

Houseguests: 3
Days of togetherness: 4
Hours my sister and brother-in-law spent driving the 21-year-old to and from college (thank you!): ~8.5
Nights we got carry-out from our local Thai restaurant: 1
People at Thanksgiving dinner: 7

1/7

—procrastinating with #mending yet again. But I really did need to get these jeans wearable again, because the other pair I’ve been working on suddenly needs a full back-end #patch job. Now I really do need to get back to grading…

#reducereuserecyclerepair #visiblemending #oldjeans #academicfall

—just submitted, with an hour to spare, revisions for a forthcoming essay on the lost #paintings of the (female) Banana Garden Poets of 17th-century #China. I have been working on them for a month, but I still needed to make a big push yesterday and today.

#academicfall #sinologists #arthistory

—because I #mend clothes all the time, I don’t ever have to hunt for my needles or the right color of thread—they’re already on the end table in my living room. This leotard made it through nine years before developing holes near its side seams. Button craft thread on cotton.

#reducereuserepair

—it’s getting to the point in the semester where I have very little free time, barely even time to post. I #mended this #AlabamaChanin shirt on Sunday, just before the grading marathon started. Button craft thread on cotton.

#visiblemending #reducereuserepair #handstitching #academicfall

—the last two nights have been very cloudy in the Finger Lakes, so the Northern Lights were very faint in my backyard. Of course if I had gotten to a darker place I might have had better views! The first three photos are from Tuesday and the last is from Wednesday.

—I’ve mended my #glittens! The thumb of one just needed a loose stitch secured, but the pinkie on the other had a hole that took me an hour to fix. #Noro #Kureyon #wool and a #darning needle. Ready for winter! They are really warm.

#visiblemending #reducereuserepair #handknitting