Right now, I have four other draft posts sitting unfinished (mind you, I just started posting again only a week ago). And about 100 unfinished craft projects. Not to mention the thousands of dollars worth of crafting/artistic supplies I one day had big (huge) dreams for. I read this article that one of my friends posted on Facebook, and I felt like I totally could relate (minus the immigrant references, but I think I somewhat understand).
The past nine days have been busy! I worked seven out of the nine days and only had last Sunday and today off. However, “off” means only off from work, as Sundays are football game days, which means I’m at the field for about five hours, leaving me just a few waking hours to have fun (aka time to myself) between or after having to be a responsible adult/Mom. I try to practice my lettering at the field, but the position of my hand and the size of my book on my lap makes it quite frustrating to get quality practice in.
So here’s some pics from this past week, starting with the best mochi from Two Ladies Kitchen in Hilo. My husband had to go to Hilo for the day last Saturday to deal with some tenant issues so he brought back the yummiest of treats for us… mochi stuffed with grapes, mandarin oranges, strawberries, and pears!
On Monday night, I took the managers out for a dual birthday celebration (two of the managers had February birthdays). We went to Doraku in Kaka’ako, which is one of my favorite restaurants to go to! Here’s a sample of some of the food and drink we enjoyed:
From the upper left corner going clockwise: Rising Sun cocktail (sake, plum wine, juices and rimmed with li hing mui powder) and a shot of Ozeki nigori sake, Spicy Crunchy Trio with only spicy tuna (my new FAVORITE!!!!!), Honey Toast, Ozeki nigori sake, Brownie Tempura, Tofu Poke, Bread Pudding (we got two of these huge bread pudding desserts for free since we were celebrating two birthdays), and East Meets West rolls. Along with all this yumminess, we also ordered Chicken Karaage, Tuna Tataki, Beef Tataki, Edamame, Garlic Steak, and various sushi rolls. Oh, and I really liked what was written on the hashi (chopsticks) wrapper: “Doraku in Japanese means ‘the road to happiness.’ DO means road or path and RAKU means happiness or pleasure. We are committed to live up to our name and hope you find happiness here as well!”
On Wednesday, I received a package of goodies from a calligrapher I met on Periscope. I sent him a predetermined payment and trusted him to put together an arsenal of calligraphy “toys” good for a beginner. Boy did he please! I received a couple of oblique pens, a handful of straight pens (including one that I believe I’m supposed to fill with ink… kind of like a fountain pen?), tons of various style nibs – broad point, French, modern, etc., and a package of walnut crystals to make walnut ink with. What I love the most is the hand written letter he calligraphed for me live on Periscope (although I’m so bummed I missed it) and included with the package. I will do a post on this later when I have a chance.
Thursday was Girls’ Day, or Hinamatsuri, and I had a blast (insert sarcastic emoji) going to SIX stores trying to buy traditional pink and white mochi for the residents at the Assisted Living Facility that I work at. I easily could’ve pre-ordered the mochi from this one place (Nisshodo) in town, but I did not want to drive all.the.way. to town from the Westside just to have to drive back to Central Oahu for work. But after my adventurous morning, I decided that next year, it actually may be easier and less time consuming to drive all.the.way. to town and back.
Photo courtesy of Yelp
We bought our girls some pineapple coconut balls and colored sweet rice treats for Girls’ Day and they received packages from both sets of Grandparents full of treats from Maui (strawberry mochi, pink arare, puffed colored rice, etc.) and the cutest shirts and pins ever from Hilo!
The Life is Wabi-Sabi pins came with an explanation about Wabi-Sabi: “Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese view of life that finds beauty in things that are imperfect, humble and simple, ordinary and unrefined. It is a way of living that peacefully accepts the natural cycle of life. Everything ages, nothing lasts forever, and sometimes things don’t work out as planned. Embrace the Wabi-Sabi concept and discover that life is “Purr-fectly Imperfect.”
That night, I had a chance sacrificed sleep to play with my new calligraphy goodies. I tried out the wooden oblique holder and two nibs: John Heaths Telephone Pen 0278F nib and a French Baignol and Farjon No. 803 nib. Here’s a pic of my drill attempts (note: it was VERY late at night and I was practically falling asleep while writing, but I just HAD to try out my new goodies):
After a long day of work on Friday and a barbecue with some friends for dinner, I retreated up to my room to write a little. That night, I didn’t feel like doing drills, so I just let my hand go and do what it wanted. I had to wake up early the next morning to go to work, so I had to cut it short, but here’s what my pen did when I just wrote without thinking too much:
Notice how I couldn’t even come up with what to write, so I just wrote the obvious… name, “I just wanna write!”, alphabet, date, and the materials I was using at that moment in time. Talk about lack of creativity! Oh, and I thought I’d take a shot of my working area as I thought it looked kind of like a beautiful mess.
I usually don’t work Saturdays, so after work yesterday, I was just too tired to do anything other than absorb inspiration from Periscope and Instagram.
So there you have it. The last nine days of my life in short. After writing this, I’m thinking that maybe it is easier to post more frequently than to try and compose one long post like this??? Well, we’ll see…
Remember how I was so stoked that I did my first scope yesterday at the park? Well, I must’ve left my ink a tad bit open, because today when I went to retrieve it from my bag before going to work, this is the mess I found! At least it was all contained in this Ziploc bag. Still, bummers…
On a high note, I completed my second scope! This time, I scoped the Hawaii Lion Dance Association dancing and blessing the residents at my workplace. The little lion was performed by a 6 year-old boy who was super adorable (seen here “eating” the money from my kids)!
I just did my first scope. Jumped in with both feet and just did it. No planning. No plan. Very much unlike me.
And it reflects in the scope, but my goal was to just do it. Get over that first hurdle, similar to the pre-event social anxiety that I get. And it wasn’t that bad! I had a few super supportive scopers who I admire and look up to encourage me and provide very much needed feedback and tips. What a positive experience it ended up being all because of these wonderful folks! I wish I knew how to tag them from my phone (eating sushi with the kids right now). If I did, I would extend a very grateful and huge THANK YOU to Melinda, Stephanie, and Lance!!!
That’s one thing that really stands out about Periscope… everyone I’ve met so far are so positive and supportive. And to be able to connect with people around the world (during my scope, New Mexico, Germany, and Iowa) is priceless.
Maybe being on the other side of the scope is not so bad after all…
Let’s see if I can get this again… supposedly just point and click, right?!?
The start of my calligraphy journey:
2/11/16: New toys… slowly by slowly, one piece at a time, I received all my goodies except for the darn ink… so needless to say, I’m anxiously awaiting my ink when I took this pic:
2/12/16: Ink arrived!!! Here’s a pic of my cool setup before writing, my shaken ink (tip: DON’T.SHAKE.INK), and my first attempt at writing using my new dip pen:
2/13/16: By request of my kids, I wrote their names and experimented with some Tombows and my water brush pen for color:
2/13/16: Some Saturday fun with various pens and letter styles:
Then life got in the way for a week… did the Great Aloha Run (more like the Great Aloha Walk – 8.15 miles of w.a.l.k.i.n.g.) and then got sick.
2/22/16: Used a guide and attempted to copy some Copperplate letters for the first time:
So there you have it… not only am I starting a new adventure with calligraphy but I’m back to blogging!
So… I believe I’ve been MIA for waaay too long. As usual, life got in the way, kids, work, blah, blah, blah. Excuses, excuses. Well, I’m baaack!!!
I’ve currently been OBSESSED (can you say O.B.S.E.S.S.E.D.) with calligraphy and lettering and can’t get enough of it! Talk about an addiction to Instagram and Periscope! Maybe I’ll make a collage of what I’ve done so far and then use this blog again to post my journey. I’m home sick today so I figured I might as well be creative as only my throat, nose, head, and body are sick.
I need to get reoriented to WordPress (I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me some time to figure out how to login… scoured my blog looking for a “login” button). Then I’ll post some pics of my work. I’m so grateful that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some incredibly inspiring artists/people on Periscope and am pumped to learn and master the art of calligraphy!
Here we go, again!!!
meraki geek’s pinterest boards
I’m a self-proclaimed Pinterest fanatic. Who isn’t?!? If you wanna get to know me, check out my Pinterest boards. They say a lot more about me than my personal Facebook page (plastered with pictures of my kids and adventures) or LinkedIn profile (with details about my education and jobs over the past decade). And they’re out there for the whole entire world to see (except for my private board, of which I only have one). During this everlasting never-ending feels-like-forever journey to find myself, Pinterest helps me to not only identify and qualify what excites me, motivates me, and inspires me, but also categorizes and organizes these finds (two things I do very much love doing) and keeps them visually accessible for future reference (another thing I love doing… I have binders and folders full of pulled-out magazine pages, school handouts, etc.) Oh, and call me anal but I am a stickler about finding the source of each pin before repinning as I’m not fond of dead ends, broken links, or sites that redirect you to the original source. So, if any of the above applies to a pin, I’ll fix it before I pin it. Happy unbroken source links + happy repinners/followers = happy me!
Here are my top 10 recent Pinterest pins that speak to me and about me (in no particular order). I’m a highly visual person (I’m the type that usually only orders menu items with pictures) so in this quest to learn blogging and WordPress, I’ll attempt to insert picture links to my Pinterest pins:
me minus the pearl earrings (princess diamond earrings instead)
5 expert balance exercises
caramel apple cookie brittle
make your own crazy glasses – download, print, and decorate!
other ways to say… (synonyms)
crochet covered hangers – free pattern
10 ways to help kids get along
make a chalkboard effect in photoshop
quinoa with broccoli avocado pesto
peppermint sugar lip scrub (diy tutorial)
Okay, so I started this blog on 12/1/13 with all intentions of posting and maintaining it. Even relentlessly been taking pictures of all my creations and ideas for possible blog posts. However, big caveat here to being an OCD perfectionist: with all this planning and strive for perfection and feeling like I need a logo and this and that before I can start and in order to create a logo I need to perfect Photoshop first and when attempting to perfect Photoshop I realized the version I have (Photoshop 7.0) is over a decade old and that I need to upgrade but that I should sell some stuff on eBay to fund this upgrade, etc. etc. etc. (I think you get the picture)… I NEVER GOT STARTED ON ANYTHING (other than listing 22 items on eBay).
So here I am attempting to start again. Small simple steps and just trying stuff out…like inserting this photo of a honu (turtle) I painted last week at a “Paint the Night Away” (http://www.paintthenightaway.net) event that really challenged and impacted me (I’ll elaborate more on another post). There’s probably tricks and ways to link and tag this photo that I have yet to discover, but I didn’t let it stop me from posting this. My left brain has been in overdrive mode and I need to stop over thinking and just start doing!
1/23/14 – honu (first acrylic painting)
Thank you for sharing this journey with me. Oh, and if you have tips/tricks/words of wisdom, please feel free to share and comment below!
meraki geek 