Welcome to my blog! This is a sketch book of things I'm drawing, photographing, writing, or just thinking about when I'm not busy designing fabric.
wendyslotboom@gmail.com
www.inthebeginningfabrics.com
Thank you for respecting my copyright! All photos, illustrations, and written content on this site are the sole property of Wendy Slotboom, and may not be used, copied, or transmitted without my permission. If you have any questions, please contact me at: wendyslotboom@gmail.com.
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of computers abandoned curbside. Sometimes there’s a sign saying, “FREE” or “Still Works!” More often there’s no message, just the air of abandonment and, every once in a while, a smashed-in monitor. You don’t know whether to stare or look away, because obviously something went badly wrong there.
Which got me thinking about my own relationships with the three computers in my life (one at work, two at home), and since the other thing I’ve been thinking about lately is Harry Potter, I started considering the intersection of computers and magic.
For instance (and for no special reason), I wondered if “Avada Kedavra,” the killing curse, would work on computers. As I was turning over the possibilities in my mind, it occurred to me that the truth was just the opposite.
My computer is able to use the Avada Kedavra curse on me. That explains me yelling at it, “You’re killing me!”
Or maybe it’s using the Cruciatus curse, which isn’t a killing curse, but just tortures you to the point of madness.
How to combat this evil? I decided that Transfiguration was the answer. What should I turn my computer into? How about a box of rocks.
Look! It worked! I know what you’re thinking. Anyone can turn one computer into a box of rocks. But can I do it again?
There. That takes care of all three of them. (OK, so I turned one into a bucket of rocks by accident. I was getting tired.)
I’ve been reading blogs for 3-4 years, long enough to have decided that if *I* ever had a blog, I’d never write a post about transferring the blog to another domain, because it just didn’t seem that interesting. So why did people keep writing about it?
I spent last weekend transferring my blog from Blogger to this new domain, and now I get it! When you’re inside it, it’s almost as dramatic as a near-death experience. Naturally, you can’t stop talking about all the gory details.
For instance, when I realized I’d actually committed to this changeover, the haze of panic descended and did not let go for over 24 hours. For the first time in my life, I “pulled an all-nighter,” a concept so foreign to me that I have to put it in quotes.
I drank gallons of diet coke, and ate a million M&Ms, and found myself thinking: I’ve got the stereotypical computer-nerd diet down cold, if only I had a computer-nerd brain I might be getting somewhere.
The weekend passed in a blur of Blue Host cPanel, and Wordpress templates, and CSS, and HTML, and PHP (which remains an impenetrable mystery to me), and poking around in codes, trying to make them do what I wanted, and consulting “HELP” whenever it appeared on my screen, and reading “Learning Web Design,” by Jennifer Niederst Robbins, and…and…and…
And you know how there sometimes comes a moment when you realize you are obsessing about something that is maybe not that big a deal? As in, it’s not REALLY a near-death experience?
So I dropped everything and went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I loved it. The dark, foreboding atmosphere (so much like the one I’d just left). Harry, Hermoine, and Ron growing up. And, well, my goodness. Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. His voice. The pauses. His presence. I could watch him all day long. He’s just so, so, so much more interesting than CSS, HTML, and PHP combined. Hey, look who just flew in!
It’s Hedwig!
There was such a long dry spell between Parts 1 and 2, and now, in no time at all, we’ve got Part 3 of Strange Things in Trees. Once again, Tom found this one. Too much of the time I totally miss seeing trees, because I’m usually looking at the ground when I’m out walking. The ground is strangely fascinating. So, when we walk together, Tom is kind enough to alert me to interesting things above ground level.
For instance, he’ll say: That tree is full of clocks. And that gets my attention, and I take a few pictures. Afterwards, I can only hope that nothing spectacular happened under my feet while I was looking up toward the sky.
I guess this is a strange thing in a tree only if you think Spiderman is strange. I haven’t thought too much about Spiderman lately (I like how that implies that I used to think about him all the time).
Anyway. I am now asking myself: Is Spiderman strange?
And I think…
Yes.
Wednesdays are UFO Days
Here’s another felted clutch from that original UFO post. It’s finished, but…I can’t tell if it’s Retro Chic or Just Plain Ugly. In fact, I’m not in love with either of the two felted clutches I’ve finished and I still have seven more clutches to go.
Those seven are not only unfinished, they are also in the way of my starting any new projects. Because of a promise I made to myself.
My dilemma is:
But! I think I might have a solution.
Here’s Tom drawing in a U-District intersection during a Seattle Summer Streets event a couple of weekends ago. This was a spur of the moment thing, where Tom saw the bucket of chalk and the blank pavement, and started to draw.
I’d taken a bunch of still photos before I remembered that I can make movies! (It’s still not second nature to me.) And now I have a movie of Tom drawing in the street, but I’m not showing it here because, while I think it’s the perfect blend of character study, plot, and action, I worry that to everyone else it’s just some guy drawing in the street.
Although. Now that I think about it, isn’t that inherently interesting? Some guy drawing in the street? I mean, it’s not something really dumb like, I overheard two women saying, “It was just one frickin’” (not the word they used), “giant robot fight after another. For over two frickin’ hours.”
My movie can’t be as bad as an over-two-hour-long giant robot fight. My movie is only four minutes long. It’s a frickin’ guy frickin’ drawing in the frickin’ street!
Probably, I should sell tickets.
(Not This Kind)
I was at Baskin Robbins, where they now put the calorie count of a single scoop of ice cream on the label of each flavor. So you see something like “Double Chocolate Delite, 280 calories.” (Example is made up.) And then you make a wise decision about your calorie intake because that’s why you came to an ice cream shop in the first place.
So there was a man, pacing back and forth, looking at all the cartons of ice cream on display. He started talking to himself, and with a Tom Waits-type gravelly voice, said:
“300 calories, 300 calories! Who cares, who cares? Get a cone! Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah.”
Yeah! What he said! I’ll have a scoop of Raspberry Cheese Louise in a waffle cone!
(Sorry about the picture. It’s a stretch, I know.)
Wednesdays are UFO Days
This purse, using my Feathered Friends fabric, was technically finished a few months ago, but it still felt unfinished (and so preserved its UFO status in my mind) because I didn’t like the handles. Actually, I would’ve liked the handles just fine, if only they were red.
Luckily, the excellent design of this purse (”Xine,” by Cheryl Kuczek for Paradiso Designs) allows the handles to be switched out, so I went with the slightly unsatisfactory ones, while still keeping an eye out for the perfect red ones which had to be out there somewhere.
And sure enough!
So now, it’s really done.
Aside from the felted clutches (eight to go), I have at least two more purses on my UFO list. Plus a couple of purse patterns waiting for me to get started on them so that they too can be unfinished. I’ve had quite a purse thing going on for the past year (or more) without fully realizing it until now.
I had a post a while back about last year’s classic car show, which is held each summer in our neighborhood. A few years ago, I did actually take pictures of cars at the car show, but then I realized that something more interesting was going on, and that was the unofficial Parade of Dogs. (Also, when I review my car show photos at home, it’s the only time I really notice what Seattleites are wearing on their feet.)
I kept trying to edit my photos down to a representative three or four, but I got to these eight dogs and which one of them doesn’t deserve to be in the parade?
It turns out that Goodwill’s recent Textile Sale was a clothing-and-linens sale, and not the giant stash sale I was hoping for.
So there I was, experiencing a fabric-sale adrenaline rush. All that energy needed someplace to go…how about the knick-knack aisle? This is normally the Aisle of Despair, home of Precious Moments figurines, chipped-ear monkeys, and paint-your-own-pottery disasters.
But then…
“How was the fabric sale?” Tom asked when I got home.
It was like this:
