Spotted in a Book

To whoever owned that red pen and took it to this new library book, Julia Cameron's Faith and Will, thank you for the good giggle and for offering such a perfect demonstration of the point of that paragraph.



Good Music: The Joe - Float or Flail

I first met Joe Gurba - aka The Joe - around 6 years ago as a fresh-faced kid with a streak of geek and a love of hip-hop music. Back then he was pushing his rough, but engaging debut album and performing for church youth groups. Since that time, Joe has transformed himself into a sharp slinger of intricate, and sometimes surreal wordplay, an indie music warrior, and a tireless champion of fellow artists. To get there Joe went subversive, working the indie rock scene from the bottom up. He played every show he could find with whatever bands would share the stage. He began promoting shows as Robot Human and joined with friends to found the Old Ugly Recording Co. whose roster includes rising local indie acts like Mitchmatic, Doug Hoyer, and Kumon Plaza.

Between 2006 and 2008, Joe wrote and recorded Float or Flail, a slick collection of electro-beats, crisp bleeps and bloops, and creamy synth washes that perfectly match his seemingly endless poetic energy. Sadly, the album was shelved until Joe could raise the necessary funds to free the master recordings. Three years later he's succeeded and his labour of love is finally seeing the light of day. Joe has expressed some mild embarrassment about releasing the album so late as he feels that he's grown beyond it as an artist and a person, but there's nothing to be ashamed of here. From rapid-fire fun jams like "Spaceman", "What Not", or "On My Right Shoulder", to the contemplative spoken-word flow of "Sorry If It Singed You", Joe's lyrical prowess is indisputable. He displays a complete mastery of vocabulary which he pours into a frenetic torrent of truly unique metaphor, simile, and pop-reference. Equal parts party and genuine poetry, Float or Flail is entertainment that both feeds your mind and bobs your head and Joe has made it's 15 tracks available to the world for a mere $7.50. I heartily encourage you to check it out.

Reindeer, Really

At my house, we have our very own Max, but with less energy.

The Snowflake Cutter's Omnibus

Keely's rainbow avalanche, cut from magazine pagesI mentioned that I'd been cutting paper snowflakes on Twitter the other day, and it accidentally snowballed into something good.  

(I should have posted a pun warning before starting this post, right?)

Keeley started finding and sharing links to tutorials for all sorts of paper snowflakes, and then she went ahead and wrote up a blog post of her own.  She cut the beauties you see above from magazine pages, which takes frugal to free and throws in a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just for the fun of it.

If you'd like to indulge in an afternoon of cutting your own avalanche, here are some great how-to's:

• how to cut a six-pointed snowflake
• ...and how to make it look 'lacy'
• how to cut the elusive five-pointed snowflake
• how to make a three-dimensional snowflake
• how to make a caribou or maple leaf snowflake (if you need more Canadiana in your Christmas)
• how to make Star Wars snowflakes, (if you need more Darth in your Christmas)

Of course, the great fun of making paper snowflakes is sometimes just the diving-in-and-seeing-what-happens, in which case no tutorials are necessary.  

Thank you, Keeley, for sharing and making and being such a good sport.  

Now: go get your scissors.  Don't run.

Card me for Kiva!

 Smoking Kangaroo letterpress card by Pistachio Press

Just say, "Card me!" and $1 will go to Kiva.

I love letterpress. And you'll be seeing more of it now that I have sent a few projects on their way and I'm able to focus on the Hedge's year-end calendar roundup. Hurray for small presses where people lovingly press their designs into beautiful tactile papers. I encourage Hedgies of all kinds to support letterpress makers and send beautiful papery things into the world.

If you remember, when this blog was first launched we held The Great Paper Exchange where perfect and imperfect strangers sent papery things to each other just for the great fun of it all. I'm thinking we need to do that again - maybe to combat the February blues.

Christmas is one of the opportunities to send letterpress but this year, I am not sending cards. Part of this has to do with choosing to celebrate a different kind of holiday - not one that needs to battle consumerism, or save money or hold up the banner of Buy Nothing Christmas although those are all interesting choices. It just feels different to me. Every once in a while, I need to rethink traditions and notions of celebration.

I find it a necessary corrective but also somehow soothing, to be able to change, to look at things differently every so often and offer myself another perspective. For now, this is something that is too hard to explain in bloggish format. It seems like anytime you choose something you are passing judgement on someone choosing something else and so I will leave my different choice to my own mind.

That being said, i would like to send something out into the world during this time of year. So here's the deal: let me know that you'd like a Christmas card and I'll send $1 to Kiva, the online microfinancing platform with the motto "loans that change lives".  For the last few years, I've loaned money through Kiva to women in South America, Africa, and Asia. It's good fun and as someone who often works independently, I'm happy to be a part of the small businesses that other women in  the world are operating.

Here's how it works:

Just say, "Card me!" and $1 will go to Kiva.

You can email (hedgesociety at gmail dot com), DM (@kr_wolfe), use facebook, leave a message in the comments, or use tin cans and string.  Just for the great fun of it all.

Infographic: Little Red Riding Hood

As mentioned in the animated poetry post, I'm working on a few things that make me clunk my head on the desk at regular intervals. I think if you have to treat ideas like they are doomed Grade 9 Biology frogs, they should at least have the elegance of Tomas Nilsson's Little Red Riding Hood.

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Our Daily Smeagol

Birds and hobbits are both known to be tricksy/ But there's nothing but good in a bite of raw fishy.

Our Daily Bird(s) 32: Big and Little, Silly