Recipe for Disaster, I mean, Chiles Rellenos

Step 1: Stand in Mexico City's central plaza next to Mexico's biggest cathedral on Mexican Independence Day until a chef walks up to you and asks you to take his picture.
Step 2: Wander the streets together talking in broken Spanish and broken English for several hours while drinking cans of blue colored vodka poured into empty 7-11 cups. Confirm that chef is actually a chef and works at the Hilton by looking at his resume he happened to be carrying with him.
Step 3: Try to understand when chef communicates that he wants you to meet his mother, his 3 dogs, and his brother only a few train stops away.  He might also make you dinner but you will not be certain.
Step 4: Follow him. Get onto subway, then get onto bus (colectivo) and then walk for 10 more minutes to his house and meet his mother, 3 dogs, and his brother.
Step 5: Sit on couch and talk about Mexican school systems with chef's mother and how you don't like eating meat using a combination of  the following 5 Spanish words you know: "No" "Carne" "Chemicos" "Me" "Gusta". Gesture how you like to see where your meat comes from. Listen as chef explains that they have eaten one of the pet fish from the tank and that they can do that tonight. Decline offer.
Step 6: Upon chef's insistence, put on proper chef attire. Black shirt for the lady. White shirt for the gentleman.

Step 7: Keep drinking the kool-aid in every sense of the phrase, preferably of the blue variety.
Step 8: Pour cream and cheese of the Philadelphia variety into blender. Add pecans and sugar.

Step 9: Cut open peppers and scoop the "meat-no really, it's okay-meat" from mysterious pot at back of stove inside of peppers.
Step 10: Walk to corner store and 'borrow' toothpicks and walk back. Don't forget to carry blue kool-aid with you for the evening stroll.
Step 11: Sew the peppers together with the toothpicks. Then flip over and pour cream and sprinkle dried cranberries on top.
Step 12: Eat the chef's stuffed pepper.
Step 13: Let chef drive you home and spend 10 minutes trying to communicate the concept of 'trust' without actually knowing the word in each other's language.
Step 14: Take a 14 hour bus ride to Chiapas the next day.

Optional step: Consider how you could have been eaten alive as shown at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia.

A few notes on language for the chef.

One-way ticket to Mexico

The idea to go to Mexico to teach -or at least learn- appeared as quietly and as logically to me as the idea to cross a street when the light turns green. I should go now.
In case I fell asleep at the wheel, I found a subletter, a car sitter, and a 1978 issue of National Geographic to remind me that I really was going. So this National Geographic (pictured below) featured this woman who trekked across the Australian outback by herself with 4 camels. I randomly found the issue and IT SPOKE TO ME. I found out this woman also wrote a whole book about her solo expedition. I immediately located it and devoured it. I have no intention of walking hundreds of miles in Australia or getting to know camels better but I think it was research for Mexico. Did I read books on living in Mexico? Do I speak Spanish? Absolutely not. Did I read a book on a woman in the desert for several months by herself? Obviously!

When I got to the end of the book, I sketched out a sculpture and finally "realized" that sculpture with what little supplies I haven't packed away and only hours before boarding the plane.

Someone already asked if the sculpture is a book. Yes, it is. You can read it and interact with it.

I have been joking that I have put more work into planning a good theme party than I have this move to Mexico.  So, dear friends, if this blog is how you are hearing about my departure, don't be offended. I barely got a chance to inform myself. Weeks after adopting the aging issue of a National Geographic as my bible, I just happened to notice the article on the next page: MEXICO.

The Fashion Nerve

 I'm writing today to share with you my latest sewing adventure. This project has little to do with my impending departure South of the border. That post is coming soon.  Instead, I'm going to tell you about something I made with my very own hands. My dear friend, Chelsea, is getting married and she became even more dear when she let all of her bridesmaids choose WHATEVER blue-ish, green-ish dress they wanted to wear. This was thrilling news because, to paraphrase from another friend of mine, the "fashion nerve", found directly beneath engagement rings, often gets pinched during these exciting times.  Many a bride, who would otherwise be a very reasonable person, ends up making, ahem, fascinating fashion decisions for her friends. Let it be known: Chelsea trusted her bridal party enough to dress themselves! So off I went to make a dress based on a pattern made by McCall's. Yes, it is the year 2011 and I am following a sewing pattern I purchased at the fabric store! (Shout out to  Ms. Natasha for the guidance in picking the dress pattern.)

 This pattern was "easy" as it could be made with a jersey knit (aka t-shirt material and aka no fraying fabric!) It also required no zippers or buttons...just an elastic band and a million yards of fabric. The whole project only took me (ha-CHOO)# %$@# hours and 34 minutes. EASY!

 No, really, it was a pretty forgiving  pattern because-as you can see-I had sewn two long tails that I could twist and wrap around all the crooked stitching. It's a unique dress in that I can re-twist it into different styles to suit the mood and occasion.

 Which style is the best?! Maybe one for the ceremony and one for the dance floor?

Style #1

Style #3

Style #2

Style #4

Style #5

Experimenting with iPhone Drawing Apps

I continue my digital drawing journey. This time I used the app SketchbookX Mobile - Free version. Its greatest feature so far is that it makes me want to draw with a pencil.

Summer Pocket Palette

Art at its laziest.

Here's another good "post-grad school" activity where you don't even have to get out of bed to do it. Draw stuff on your iphone. I made my first painting today and--well--it felt good. I'm ready to tell you that I did it and none of my analog works have fallen off the wall and punched me in my digitally-glazed face...yet. I do believe my oil paintings are staring from across the room, peeling with envy. They smelled an iTunes download. I imagine my paintbrushes and my pencils get together at night (all Toy Story style) and talk about how to win back my love.  I heartlessly downloaded the free app called DrawCast right in front of those fat tubes of paint.
I'm now accepting recommendations for other free painting/drawing applications to download on my phone. But it better be good because in DrawCast you can even mix colors by tapping your finger on two different digital swatches to come up with a new swatch. Who knew you could have so much fun without turpentine?

I'd say the glass is half FULL today. Drink it up, David Hockney!

My July River that I Skated Away On

Question: What's beyond graduate school? Answer: Things you've been wanting to do for a long time. I began "post-grad school" by running for the 3rd time on the Jungle Rot team in the Great Lakes Relay. I had some extra beautiful blisters this year which was one way of keeping me from trying to do everything as usual. I HAD to relax. I did just that in Traverse City immediately after running almost 30 miles across the state of Michigan with 9 other fabulous relay team members. I spent a couple days with one of my favorite gals in the world, Chelsea Bay Wills, by throwing a bridal shower for her and getting to know other great people in her gorgeous Northern Michigan world at Left Foot Charley Winery.  The yellow paper drawing pictured here was our attempt to figure out how we all know each other. All lines point to Chelsea! It was great to visit the ever-growing artsy corners of Traverse City, including a gallery where a special dress was being made and some jewelry was being custom made for a special occasion...

 I soon traveled down to suburban Detroit to try out motherhood for 10 seconds. Elliot looks uncertain in his shopping cart seat. Stacie and Greg graced me with their Royal Oak hospitality and a trip to Hamtramck for meat (oops!) and Polish beer... and later a Gillian Welch concert randomly enough in Royal Oak, Michigan.

The best additions to metro Detroit this year.

The grand staircase with cheese being made below.

 Then, I drove on the hottest day of the year yet to Pittsburgh to see an old college friend Becky and her husband Jon. I was told that if I got into Pittsburgh fast enough, I could ride in Jon's cheese delivery truck. That's right, I sweated through 110 degrees in a car with no A/C to see sweaty cheese balls. All the while, I had a wine bottle exploding in the back seat -It was so hot that when I presented a bottle of wine to my hosts, I had discovered that the heat in the backseat of my car had uncorked the bottle-I did end up getting to witness local cheese, Arsenal Cheese to be exact, get delivered to bars around town after all. It was worth it!
 

The street where Arsenal Cheese is made and Becky and Jon live. The white truck is the delivery truck! I should also note their was no hipstomatic filter used to create this photo. This part of Pittsburgh is naturally hip.

Jon, the cheesemaker, samples his cheese at a local bar.

Arsenal Cheese is a prominent item on this bar's menu!

My great great great great uncle Franz?!

We escaped to air conditioning for a large part of my time in Pittsburgh. I had a personal tour by the great art educator, Ms. Becky Utech Gaugler at the Carnegie Museum, giving special attention to the decorative arts collection and to a special Dutch painter Franz Hals. Who needs Vermeer when you've got Franz Hals?! I took note of the peculiar similarities of Vermeer paintings and Pittsburgh backyards.

The cheesemaker and art educator in their backyard.

Little Street by Vermeer. (Not in Pittsburgh)

It was such a treat to stay with friends who make their own sinks in a house from the 1890s. Becky and Jon rock! Eat local cheese!