Re-Use Journal #1 Socks

I know this is meant to be my art blog but I have come to realize I have more to talk about than my amateur art.  I have so many re-use ideas that I have incorporated into my life that I thought I should share a few of them from time to time.  Today's posting is about socks.

When I had a much better job than I currently have, I would buy socks whenever the sock collection seemed skimpy.  It was my habit to always purchase black socks.  Even when they don't quite match you can get away with odd pairs.  In my present state of under employment I have more time to deal with these issues.   Socks began to show up from all over the house.  I'm still finding socks.  I think all the socks you folks have lost in your washers have ended up at my house.

I began to match socks and fold them the way my mom taught me; something I haven't done in decades choosing the "put the two socks together and fold the tops over both pairs" method instead. I will post pics of my Mom's method which is working better for me these days.

I have more socks than will fit in a drawer now so I began putting pairs into recycled food storage bags of the zip-top genre.  I kept misplacing those gallon bags of socks in various niches around the house when I remembered a zipper bag from a Posturepedic mattress topper.  I began to gather those gallon bags and put them in the mattress bag, zipped it all up and found space in the closet for this enormous collection of socks.  Unmatched socks go in here too placed in those plastic bags from the grocery store.  

Sounds a bit like sock-hoarding, but never fear.  Once they are all paired I will pick out the usables from the lost causes and either reuse or toss.

Re-Use ideas:

Sew them all into a sock afghan.

Cut them up and crochet them into an afghan

Make a sock-shirt out of them.

Mail them to my congressman in protest of wastefulness.

This is the way my mother prepares socks for the sock drawer

The plus to this style of sock preparation is that you slip your foot 

into the opening and slide the rest of the sock over the heal 

and up the ankles.  With my current bad back this is a lot

easier.

This is what a paired set of socks looks like.

This is socks in a plastic gallon bag

This is a full gallon bag of socks

Here they all are in their full glory stuffed into a big zipper bag.

Yummy Grilled Cheese and Broccoli Cook Later Sandwiches

2 eggs

1/2 bag or so of broccoli and/or cauliflower 

Grated and or cubed cheese

(The pictured mix has grated cheddar, Parmesan and cubed Brie)

Put all contents into food processor and give it a good whirl.

Find a lid which is about the size of a slice of bread.

Line it with plastic wrap.

Now spoon a thin layer of the goop into the lid and use as a mold.

Shape it.

And fold plastic wrap around it.

This will make about 3 sandwich fillers.  There might be a little left over.

I go ahead and wrap the left-over bit because it is a nice extra

on a biscuit.

Somehow my pics got out of order even though I posted 

them sequentially.  I'm still learning this blog biz.

Slide wrapped sandwich stuffers into a zip bag and place

on a flat surface in the freezer.

When it is time to make your sandwiches, pull frozen

sandwich fixing from freezer and place between 2

slices of bread, butter both sides and grill.  I like to

put a little fresh rosemary from my garden on the bottom

slice.  This sandwich is very nice with chicken or tomato

soup.  

From Russia With Love, love of music that is

Today on Face Book, thanks to the aid of Google Translate, I had a lovely conversation with Maestro Vladimir Ponkin, a brilliant conductor in Russia.  He sent me some conducting master classes via YouTube.  I was impressed how the professor looked like a painter painting a masterpiece and a dancer performing a ballet.  I could see the students transform.

This is an amazing world we are living in when through my iPad I can communicate across the world in a language I don't even know, touch hearts with a person I never met and be enriched.  

When I was quite young my mother took a Russian class.  A few years later I found her text book and it disappeared off her shelf for years.  The language was too difficult for me to teach to myself but I did manage to learn the Cyrillic alphabet reasonably well.  Later I became a student of music and discovered how much I love Russian composers.  That little knack for languages has come in handy.  Composers write musical direction in their manuscripts in Italian and in their native tongue.  Their were times when I was reading Russian music and could make out the directions in Russian.

Years later I became interested in chamber music and to my delight I discovered the Borodin Quartet, named after the famous composer, Alexander Borodin.  I purchased a DVD of the Borodin Quartet and one of the extras was a Master Class by Valentin Berlinsky, the cellist of the Borodin Quartet.  There were subtitles and I learned a lot about chamber music and a little about Russian from this DVD.

As a general music teacher I taught my students a little section about rock music around the world.  I had to do some research and discovered the band DDT (ДДТ) much to my delight.  

So there has been this curiosity and appreciation for Russian music as a thread through out my life.

One of the things I have noticed from all these little glimpses of Russia is the beautiful artwork and architecture that is present in each glimpse.

My Art Shirt Today

Today I turned my shirt around backwards.  The front is getting quite full.  I've been experimenting with broader strokes in my paintings.  

For fun yesterday I broke an old CD in half, put 3 colors on the pallet, very close to one another and pulled color from pallet with the edge of the CD.  Someone who knew what they were doing would have made something nice.  I still freak at white space on the canvas and do odd things to fill it.  Still experimenting about that, too.  It feels much like learning to control the bow when playing the violin; sometimes more like playing the cello. 

 Pictured below is the back of the Art Shirt and the painting I started yesterday.  I hope I figure out how to make the extra picture go away.  

More about Elli Groninger

I am beginning to get the hang of this.  I would like to post one to two more images from Elli's work.

I will now try to say something about an artist I admire.

Last summer I was delighted to receive a package of posters that all add together and make one giant poster.  The intention of these is to color them yourself.  I chose watercolor, a new experience for me.  In the past I've mostly enjoyed oil paints and pastels.

OK, I lost the icon to post an image.  I wish "easy" were easier.

Now I will try to post an image. Fingers crossed

I watched a video on YouTube that made it look so easy.  I'm not finding the icons I saw on their tutorial.  They showed one where I could adjust the size.  Not finding it.