• Mood: happy
• Music: Low, "Death of a Salesman"

China Girl

As I've probably mentioned a couple or ten times, I have kind of a Thanksgiving fetish. Some people like Christmas better, but Thanksgiving is my holiday. Mostly it's the simplicity: all you have to do is get together with your family and eat a lot of food and then maybe watch some football, with none of the angst of giftgiving and Advent calendars and sitting on Santa's lap. Part of it too is the fact that I like Thanksgiving food better. Thanksgiving food is a little lighter, earthier and more vegetable-y and more authentically American, less about European dishes of pork and chocolate and whipped cream the way Christmas food is (in my mind at least).

So somehow this Thanksgiving fetish got to such a point that I started to covet some Spode china, in the harvest-y Woodland pattern. I know, the design hasn't changed since 1828. It's got floofetty scrolly shit all around the edges. It would make Norman Rockwell run away screaming (actually, that's not such a bad thing). But my Thanksgiving obsession was such that I actually coveted some of this stuff, to use in serving up future imaginary Thanksgiving dinners. I got to the point of shopping for it on the interwebs, going back and forth between the Spode site and places like AnOfferYouCantRefuse.com. The pricey prices didn't even faze me. I was on the verge of making a tacky Christmas list of nothing but Spode china. And then I was stopped dead in my tracks by... oh, the horror. The Spode Thomas Kinkade collection. Spode has teamed up with the Painter of Light (aka Hobbits on Acid) to create a fine... giftware... bleargh. Check it out for yourselves:



Oh, Spode. Have you no pride left at all? Well, the upside is that it totally put me off my appetite for the Woodland stuff. Call me a snob, but one degree of separation from Thomas Kinkade is just not enough.

I'm in Chicago. The weather is gorgeous. I'd forgotten how much I liked it here. I'm having a good time.

Inspired by melydia and katcolorado, I just bought a copy of The Artist's Way. Aside from dabbling in piano, writing and drawing, I have no special claim to being an artist, but this thing looks awfully interesting. I've started on the Morning Pages already, and I think I might have to do the whole thing.