The Bowerbirds have put out an absolutely amazing stop-motion music video for their song “In Our Talons”. The video and song have a common, strong message that sank right into my heart. Thank you for sharing the video Brian!
Bowerbirds “In Our Talons” from Alan Poon on Vimeo.
Let’s make some beautiful musics together… but wait! I don’t have an instrument, or do I?
… you know who you are and this video/song is for you but I liked it so much that I thought I’d share with the whole class. This is a really beautiful song and video, I think I could listen to this all morning. The video reminds me of a Grimm’s fairy tale (I’ve been reading from a giant book of Grimm’s every night all summer to put little girls to sleep… there’s something about falling in love then being turned into a giant and then waking up to find your sweetheart in a forest growing out of your chest that makes sense to little kids and puts them to sleep).
Via: My Folk Lover
What have I been up to in the short short days since camp ended and I re-entered good old shiny civilization? I’ve taken a few showers, unpacked, eaten real people food and then started to contemplate repacking. Why am I repacking, you may ask yourself? Well… before I tell you I want you to sit down, put your head between your knees and take some good, deep breaths. Hah, I just wanted to imagine a small group of people doing that in awkward places like coffee shops or on their couches. Anywho I’m moving to Vermitt (that’s how I’ve been pronouncing Vermont lately) in about a week and a day (oh deary that sounds so soon!).
WHAT?! I know. I’ll be working at a place called Bonnieview Sheep Dairy in Craftsbury Common, VT. I spotted this farm in the WWOOFing book I ordered a few weeks ago and I immediately started to do my happy dance (you’ve probably seen this dance… it breaks itself out fairly often). I e-mailed them and it turns out they have an opening through the month of October. I’ll be living in a yurt, working with sheep and doing other farm-like things. Want to read a description? Yeah you do…
“470 acres of rolling pastures and fields surrounded by woods. Fresh water pond on the farm for fishing and swimming. description of organic activities: organic pastures, cropland, garden, 2 cows and 50 laying hens; 300 sheep and 7 pigs fed small amount of commercial grain. April- Oct we milk the sheep and make cheese on the farm. We feed the whey from the cheese plant to the pigs. Large farm garden feeds us and supplies vegetables to on farm dinners. Out door clay bread oven for pizzas and bread for farmers markets. Sheep are all rotationally grazed on our 100 acres of pastures. We heat only with firewood gathered from our land. All of the hay we used is harvested from our fields. Suggested length of stay is 2 week, months of year April-Nov. Two farm stay rooms when available, coming in June 09 24? Yurt or accommodations in hay loft expectations 5-8 hrs/day 6 days/wk Transportation available: on a limited basis. languages spoken are English and a little French, can host children no pets, special diets on a limited basis, we grow a majority of our food.”
Oh I’m so excited! Yes, I know it’s going to be cold and no, I think I probably won’t die from being to cold. I’ll just stop those comments right there. If you want to chat about how cold it’s going to be you can talk to my mummy and have a long, fascinating discussion about it. Boooorrrriiinnnggg… where’s your sense of adventure!? Anywho, I have some other motivations but I think that working on this farm is a pretty good one. Plus I’ve never lived outside of the Pacific Northwest (and really never been in a real winter) so this should be a pretty neat little adventure, no? I’ve wanted to live in a yurt and work with sheeps for a while and this kills both wants with one stone. I’ve been following a few blogs about suburban farming, living in yurts, gardening etc. that have made the whole idea sound glorious… curious about which ones I’m talking about? Well here’s a very short list then:
Mayaland – I love how this lady writes. She lives in a yurt with her family, they have goats and they have been adding a series of recycled buildings to their little compound. If I could fastforward ten years this is where I want to be and what I want life to look like.
Little House in the Suburbs – WHOA! She lives in Portland, has two goats, some chickens and a garden in her backyard AND she made her own bee hive? Yes, it is possible to be that wonderful.
That list is shorter than I remember it being… I think I’ve lumped in there the random assortment of books I’ve read about things like gardening, sheep, knitting, spinning, cooking and general do-it-yourselfness. Anyway, I’ve started packing and while I’ve been doing that silly nonsense (who needs to pack if you’re going to drive across the country? You could just shove is all in a car because, really, a car is like a giant box and boxes are what you pack things in and if I were to just pile things into the car they would naturally protect each other. Clothes would be like eco-friendly packing peanuts and everything would probably fit) I’ve been listening to the 61 again. What music has been on repeat, you might be asking? I was just getting to that, so you should really just be patient for a second, ok? Ok, good.
Minilogue is a Swedish band with nice electronic music and absolutely fantastic music videos. I’d seen the video for their song Hitchhiker’s Choice a long time ago and I hadn’t realized at the time that it is a music video. I just liked the idea of animating using a white board and thought that it paralleled the music well. Chris sent me a link to a little video called Animals and I loved the creatures that were animated into real environments, the shaky camera and the quality of the video. I looked up Minilogue and realized that the same band was behind both videos! How cool is that? Answer: very.
This is what I’ve always imagined is around us in the bushes, under sidewalks and behind lamps and I’m glad someone else thinks so too.
If you go to Minilogue’s website, they have some lovely photos that you can download for free… check it out.
My friend Shawna took me to Bhangra night last month in Portland at the Fez. (Here’s a little video that roughly shows you what bhangra dancing is like… I’m sure you can surf on youtube and see more too) It was so much fun! Anywho, I’ve been listening to a bhangra mix she made me over and over since then. Well, yesterday I found an Indian Thriller video which seemed infinitely appropriate given certain recent developments. Michael commented on the blog yesterday, asking if I was going to talk about MJ, I wasn’t planning on it and I’m still not, but I am going to share this little video. Enjoy…
via: Poppalina
My neighbor Andy had a friend with sheep, but no reason to keep the wool. The lady he usually gives his fleece to didn’t want it this time. This all came up in casual conversation and I almost passed out when I realized that maybe, just maybe I could get my hands on this fleece. A month went by before I saw Andy again to ask him about it and when I finally did he said he’d look into it and bring them to me if his friend still had it. There were a lot of ifs and maybes so I didn’t get my hopes up. A whole fleece could fetch $30 or more raw and much more if it’s been processed into something you could spin right away so you can probably understand why I got a little excited.
I went on a camping trip this weekend on the coast, had fun and came home dirty and tired. My first stop was Monty’s cage (which has been relegated to the back deck now that the weather is nice). I had to step around this big blue tarp squatting on the deck to get to his cage and I thought “Well now, that’s a lot of disgusting insulation… I wonder how long THAT’S going to be here. Hurumph…” and didn’t think about it again until Mom and Dad came home. “Oh, so did you see your fleece out there?” Dad asked when they walked in the door. What I thought was a pile of nasty insulation was, in fact, a pile of skanky wool. Six fleeces, to be exact.
Now, I’ve never carded or washed a fleece before… and all I have is a little hand spindle for spinning it. I walked up to the tumorous mound very very carefully… I didn’t want to startle it in case it was really some sort of dead mountain beast hanging out on the porch. I opened the tarp and started picking through the pile, trying to determine where one fleece started and where the next ended. I couldn’t really, so I just pulled a large hank out onto the table. Underneath the… stuff… is some really really nice wool! I did a little research to figure out how exactly to go about making that huge pile into a nice, clean pile, and I found a nice little description on Fuzzy Galore. I went around the edges, pulling off the especially nasty bits and stuff about four pounds of fleece into a mesh laundry bag. Now I’ve got it soaking in the upstairs bathtub and hopefully, it’ll turn out well enough to card, spin, knit and then wear! How COOL would that be!? For free!
I don’t know what kind of sheep they are, or how much is here, but it’s probably just under 50 pounds.
I swear, it’s not a tumor.
This is where you can see the part of the wool that was closest to the sheep’s skin (the whiter half) and the part that was exposed to the elements and… other things less pleasant (the darker portion).
Look how crimpy the fibers are! So cool. Everything is covered in lanolin and a little bit damp but after I’m done washing it all (which will take all darn summer if I do it in the tub like I am now) it will be a big fluffy cloud of wonderful. Oh I’m so happy!
Holy CRIME Batman!!!! I think my brain exploded when I watched the… well, whatever this is (ad/intro/trailer) for the new Beatles: Rock Band game. Holy macaroons it’s beautiful! I think I’m drooling a little.
There is an AMAZING HD version of this trailer over here on their official homepage.
Brian got me started on The 61, an online music site where you can listen to things for free and even download a good chunk of their music. I haven’t had any trouble find things I like (very very much!) and the site does a really great job of recommending similar songs for me to listen to. You should check it out, let me know if you want to be my friendly friend on there and I can share my moosics with you! Here are some of the songs I’ve been listening to on there…
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