I Found my Root!

This week was shaping up to be a pretty nice week but then I got sick! I've been getting sick too much. I work at a preschool and literally on my first day of my job, I got sick. it has been a month since then and now I'm sick again. I'm hoping it'll be a pretty minor cold and goes away fast enough so I can go to work on Monday!

While staying home today, I decided to go through the suitcase full of pictures of my grandma, my mom, and us. They all belonged to grandma but after she passed away, my mom inherited them and lent them to me so I can scan them. I just finished selecting pictures to scan for grandma's part two interview (which will be posted tomorrow).



While selecting, I came across a picture of me. It's totally my "root" for my love of creepy dolls! In the past few years, I became a bit fixated about buying dolls at thrift stores (the older, the better). Although, I've been better with that ever since my partner and I started living together as we don't have a lot of space. She was also slightly scared of the dolls, and it definitely doesn't help that I have a mannequin either! I think she has grown attached to them now though, or I like to think that she has.





I love how grandma made sure some of the dolls were looking at me. Haha.

After I finish this post, I think I'll go figure out something warm to eat and then watch a movie on the couch. Or read my book. I've been reading The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev. I've read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakuer several times so it's exciting to ready someone's else version of this event. For some reason, I adore books about mountaineering, along with challenging hiking/camping adventures. I do enjoy camping & hiking quite a bit and daydream about one day doing something challenging (for me, mind you), like going backpacking down the West Coast Trail. But mountaineering, however, is something I would never want to do. Heights really freak me out and climbing a mountain is something right out of my worst nightmare. Yet I love reading about it. Go figure.

Hope your day is going well.

Making Farmer's Cheese with Kefir Grains!

A good while ago when I was at my partner's parents house, we had some bread and soft cheese as a snack. The cheese was really good and the consistency reminded me of goat cheese but tasted slightly sour and her mom casually remarked that she made it. I pretty much responded like this: YOU MADE THIS CHEESE? HOW?!

Turns out, it's quite simple to make farmer's cheese! There are many types of farmer's cheese, but this particular kind is made with kefir, so you need to have kefir grains (a combination of yeast and bacteria). You can sometime obtain some from friends or family if they have any, or perhaps putting a call out on craigslist or something similar. The grains grow over time so people are often giving a portion away to others. Otherwise, you can buy cheese making kits that come with a starter.

To make the cheese, you need the following:

• clay or glass jar
• cheese cloth & elastic
• milk (we usually use 1% or 2%)
• kefir grains
• plastic or wood spoon, strainer (not metal), and a baking pan

Place the kefir grains in the jar and fill the jar up with milk. Cover with cheese cloth and secure with an elastic. Leave the jar somewhere where you don't get too much sun for one or two days (depending how strong or sour you want the cheese). My partner's mom has a really nice clay jar that we used this time but back at home, we just use a mason jar and it works fine. Less light exposure is just more ideal so look for a clay jar eventually if you don't have one.



After two days, the milk will become creamy (good job kefir grains!). You can then pour the mixture into a strainer (must be a plastic strainer. Metal will rob the keifer grains' nutrients, making them not good anymore!!) over a baking pan. Gently move the mixture through the strainer with a wood/plastic spoon until only the kefir grains are left. Put the grains aside and place the baking pan into the oven. Bake at 175°F for three hours (it actually doesn't really bake, but separates the curds and whey). At this point you can rinse the kefir grains under cold water and then start a new batch, or place them in a small container and fill it up with just enough milk so the kefir is covered to preserve it until you make a new batch. If you don't add any milk, the kefir will lose its nutrients and die.





Once done baking, turn the oven off and leave the pan in there overnight. Next morning, you will see how there is a thick layer of cheese floating on top and the bottom is some yellowish liquid (whey). Cover the strainer with some cheese cloth and pour the content out of the baking pan over a bowl. The whey will run right through. Make sure save it. After you're done pouring, scoop the cheese cloth and gently squeeze it to force the remaining liquid out.






If you're wanting soft white cheese, you can start using the cheese immediately. If you prefer a bit more solid cheese, you can tie the cheese in the cheese cloth and let hang for several hours. We haven't tried doing this, we are usually too impatient and just want to start using the cheese and the consistency is just right for us. We usually don't add anything to the cheese afterwards but we have once added honey to it which was delicious. You can add pretty much anything you want. I'd like to experiment with adding herbs one day.

Remember the whey you saved? It has a ton of good nutrients and is super healthy. We like to use it in smoothies, and also in sauce and soup. Some people even drink the whey but that's a bit too much for me. I prefer to mix it with other things.



[My partner, the photographer for this post couldn't stop herself from taking a bite!]

BTW: Once I messed up and turned the oven to 425°F to bake some pizza and completely forgot that the kefir cheese was in there from last night! By the time I opened the oven to put the pizza in, I was devstated to realize the cheese was in there and it looked terrible. The layer of cheese was all crumbly with tons of boiling liquid. Yikes. We decided to just keep it and see what happened. The end result was very dry, crumbly cheese that actually reminded us of parmesan cheese! Obviously it didn't taste the same but the texture was very similar. I'm sure all the nutrients in the raw cheese and whey were gone but it was still good, and we put it on top of pasta.

Have you made anything like this? If so, I'd love to hear about it!

Zoee 101: How I got into Fibre Arts

Fibre arts has a special spot in my heart. My grandmother was a weaver (I have some of her woven towels, hand cloths, and rugs) and produced beautiful woven pieces of her own designs. She also was a master at sewing, knitting, and crocheting. Some of my best memories with her were spending time together going over her creations. I recall when she purchased me a little plastic weaving loom meant for children. My woven pieces would always end up way too tightly woven. She would also sew and knit all my barbie doll outfits. My grandpa made a little barbie closet suitcase where we could hang all the little outfits that grandma made for us and store our barbies in them as well. I really wish I still had some of these outfits.

[My grandmother in 1956]

My adventure with fibre arts didn't really kick off until I was a young adult though. As a child and teenager, I always was more into drawing, painting, pottery, and whatnot. Although I did get into batik dying and a little bit of sewing. It really started when I was about 20/21. My early adult years were actually pretty rough. My social anxiety was extremely severe to the point where I couldn't handle most interactions and avoided most places where I'd feel trapped with other people. I spent most of my time alone at my little bachelor pad with a whole lot of free time on my hands. This was when I got into learning HTML so I could design really hideous looking angelfire websites dedicated to Days of our Lives. Oh yes. True story. I also started to crochet. The next thing I knew, I was crocheting like a fiend. I made hats, scarves, gloves, and so on. It was all very experimental as I had no idea how to read a pattern.

[Left: My first computer, Trusty Phil. Right: My first crocheted hat!]

Crocheting brought a sense of peace in me. It also gave me a purpose. I wanted to keep learning. It also forced me to go out and buy supplies so I could keep creating. I always remember that time as a really good time in my life. I was having so much fun learning new stuff and connecting with like-minded people via the internet.

Two or three years later, I inherited a spinning wheel. I honestly cannot remember how I even got the thing. It was falling apart and I had to tie it together so I could use it, and boy did I ever use it. I was sold. It was so fun and so much went into it. Purchasing the fibre, dying it, carding it, and spinning it (and sometime plying it). I would then usually crochet with it. I made some pretty elaborate hats. Unfortunately at that time, my camera was a piece of crap but I would scan some of my yarn. I also got into needle felting as well but have no pictures of that, unfortunately

Later on, I discovered that I was spinning "the wrong way" and it was actually way more time consuming than it needed to be. Also, I found out that my spinning wheel (after consulting with a spinning guild) was not even supposed to be used. It was more meant for display. But hey, I used it! It fell apart after a while and I got a plastic spinning wheel that I ended up hating with a passion and I just gave up on it. I moved away from fibre arts and started to do more digital related stuff such as photography, digital manipulation, and website stuff. Around this time, I got an used spinning wheel, a traditional ashford, from a local spinning guild. I find it quite intimidating as it's so different from my beloved spinning wheel.



It has been a few years since I've spun and dyed. I miss it! I have a whole lot of wool just sitting around, waiting for me to finally come back to it. I'm hoping that this winter, I'll finally start experimenting again. I'd also love to start quilting again, but that's a whole another post!

Vintage Family Friday - My Grandmother: Part One

I've decided to start a weekly series that focuses on vintage photographs I have collected over the years. I don't have most of the original photographs, they all belong to my mother. She inherited them from her parents. Her dad, my grandpa, in particular was passionate about tracing his family tree so I know quite a lot about my ancestors on my mom's side. I'm now wanting to learn much more about my dad's side - this is very much a work in progress.

Every Friday, I will be sharing a favourite photograph (or two). Often I will not be able to give much of a backstory as for most of my ancestors  all I know are their names, where they lived, and maybe a little more but not much. Others, I may be able to give much more of a backstory.

This post is about my grandmother, Sheila - my mother's mom. My family are all hearing but my grandma was deaf. She identified as hard of hearing most of the time though. Despite the fact that we didn't have the best relationship (especially once I was a teenager), I always was grateful that I had someone who was deaf in my family. It was good for me to have someone to relate to in that way. In 2007, I did an interview with her about her experiences revolving her deafness as she grew up. I'm thankful I did the interview and wish I did more later on. I also really wish I interviewed my grandpa but I never did. If you have grandparents, go interview them! They have a lifetime worth of stories to share, and I'm betting they'd love to be interviewed.

Since the interview is quite long, I'm breaking it into two parts. Part two will come next Friday.

[My grandma on the left, with her older sister Ann.]

Where and when were you born? 
Nova Scotia, 1932

Were there any deaf members in your immediate family [excluding me of course]? 
No, but rumor was my granny (my father's mother) seemed slightly hard of hearing and often answered with an EH! and usually comments to her were repeated often. She was deaf in her old age and died at 91. Although my cousin Eddie in Nova Scotia, (my mom's nephew) has a grand-daughter who lost her hearing very young around 2 yrs of age from meningitis, and is around 12 or so yrs of age now.

How old were you when your parents realized you were deaf & how did they realize that? 
Parents noticed a change in me after I had my tonsils & adenoids removed at 3 1/2 but did not associate it with the operation. I'd always told people I couldn't hear good since the operation & thought people were playing games with me by whispering. Then at 7 yrs of age, I went to regular school (convent) for grades 1 & 2, but the sister (nun) kept moving me from the back to the middle, finally the 1st desk in front, so she guessed I couldn't hear well.

One day when I was 9 years old, I was making mud pies under my neighbour's tree. Her visitor who was a teacher of the deaf came up behind me talking until she was next to me & I was startled & jumped. She nodded & may have been in touch with my parents, later. Probably the whole village guessed I didn't hear well.

[My grandma, 6 years old.]

What did your parents decide to do once you were deaf? 
To find out for sure, my Father took me to an ear doctor for tests. The Dr. stood behind me and talking in a normal voice asked what's 4 x 2 = ? and i didn't hear or couldn't make out what he said. He kept raising his voice until I was able to give answers to the sums. He said Yes, she is hearing impaired and thought it was on-going and I'd probably been very slowly losing my hearing all along gradually that nobody noticed and probably the operation helped move it along a bit more and it was now noticeable.

In September, I went by train with the teacher to the school for the Deaf in Halifax, Nova Scotia as a boarder in 1941 and arrived at night while the kiddies, ages 6-10 were sleeping in their dorm. The school matron showed me my bed, and noticing I was hesitant to undress, turned her back to me to give me privacy and I undressed so fast my clothes were practically flying everywhere and got into my pyjamas before you could blink an eye.

[My grandma with her deaf classmates. She is the second one from the left, sitting down, wearing a bow in her hair.]

What did you think of the deaf students at the school when you first got there? 
Next morning a deaf teen (mother) woke me up with a gesture & a smile---"up". I saw all the other kids had a "mother", too. They helped dress the very small ones and we were led to the bathroom. Then downstairs to our large sitting room full of tables, chairs shelves of toys, books, and games till it was time (not a long wait) to go down another floor (basement level) to the large dining room. We filed down the stairs beginning with the smallest child and ended with the tallest ones.

Once there, I found more girls, pre-teens and older teens who had dorms a floor above our dorm. So far no one talked to me yet then I noticed the children waving their hands, while smiling and making gestures but not talking. I thought to my self, they can't talk. Hmm! I pondered over that and saw they would tap each other for attention and realized they could not hear either and thought ohhh, I'm in the wrong school, still not realizing I myself was deaf too.

I thought the teacher who brought me there made a mistake and Mom & Dad don't know. Wait until I tell them, and they will arrange to move me to the right school, not realizing I won't see them until the end of June. But I was not upset, just curious and watched and before I knew it not even a month I understood them and was communicating in sign language myself. I was happy & having fun on the large swings, slides, sled coasting on the very steep hills in winter plus the skating rink. It's true that children learn & adjust or adapt to new situations & languages fast. Meanwhile I met 3 girls my age just like me with some hearing and we talked and signed together with the other children, but they lived in the city and went home on the weekends.

How was it when you would visit your family during summers? 
In June, going home with my uncle and aunt by car for 2 months visit that 1st year, I was not sure if I could just walk in so I knocked on the front door, while they waited in the car. No answer, I looked back at them not wanting them to leave yet, just in case. I knocked again, and my Mom opened the door, smiled happily saying come in and called out to 2 of my sisters near my age, come say Hello to her. She's been away a long time & the older had to be coaxed.

Life at home was not the same as before I went away. So I was shy with them. The younger sister, by 1 & 1/2 yrs and I played together with no problem and the older one talked more to her & was resentful because I went to boarding school, as she was into reading children's novels - there was one titled "Nancy goes to Boarding School", and the story was exciting so she thinks parents favor me, forgetting it's for deaf children.

[My grandma (right) with her sisters Ann and Norma.]

What are your few most favorite memories about the school you attended? 
The Easter, xmas & valentine parties where boys & girls mingled & the 1st time I ever tasted delicious Christmas plum pudding, as once in a while during the war years, lots of us didn't go home for Xmas. That 1st year we gathered in the gym room to see piles of boxes from Santa on the stage. Each of us was called and when my name came up I went up and received a large parcel from Santa (Mom & Dad). On opening it, I found toys, books, games and some clothes.

Also fondly remember one evening weekly cooking & baking classes & we got to eat everything when done that evening. Entered at age 14, the Hobby show with all schools in the city and I won a trophy, 1st prize, senior girl's champion 1946 for my baking, sewing and weaving. With the most points. Still have it but minus one handle.

Us young teens in a group of 8 or 10, huddled around a hot radiator in the sitting room and made up scary, spooky stories. The best one was from Dolly, who made us so scared about ghosts, booing, sweeping, brushing past our faces while lunging at us with threatening looks... we would jump & snuggle together.

Being invited to a free movie at a local theatre or to the arena to watch Barbara Ann Scott skating. One xmas we were invited by a couple to their large house and we saw tracks & tracks of trains with blinking lights and all the works and the wife treated us to hot cocoa and cookies.

Me being crowned queen of the costume & skating competion in the school back yard. I dressed as a Hawaiian and made a grass skirt from an old potato sack, & one of the supervisors let me use some of her dark pancake makeup. I had my picture taken, which I still have. We also had to show our skating skills while in our costumes round and round the school rink. I was about 16 yrs old.


[Sheila in her skating costume.]
Were the teachers at the school deaf as well?
The teachers were all hearing except Donald - a former pupil who taught printing & shoe repairing to the boys after school hours. We girls had a deaf sewing teacher who taught us to make clothes, darn socks (every Monday, when brought up from the laundry room) all belonging to the boys. We made a fuss about them smelling if we came across a certain boy we were not fond of, (names were sewn in). also knitting. Plus a selected few including myself were chosen to learn to weave under another hearing teacher at a certain age, around 14.

Donald started teaching the slightly slower pupils in sign language only, as the hearing teachers couldn't quite reach them, and did a super job. The rest of us had oral instructions and lip read in classes & at other times blackboard writing.

[My grandma ice skating with Neil, a big love of hers from her youth. See people signing with each other in the background?]

Oh wow I never knew you went to an oral school, I always assumed you were taught in sign language instead of orally.
The aim or goal was to teach speech I think. So they had to hear the child using the speech sounds, then words in order to coach and correct them, during the first couple of years. Some children did learn to talk eventually, (but I'm pretty sure they could hear a tiny bit enough to pick up sounds, but not able to learn to talk by themselves).

Also the teachers used special effects and drawings of the head showing how the tongue is placed when making L, the F, and so on & how to blow on a feather, and placing of hands on throats, etc. It was done over and over until they got the right sound. Of course some children at deaf school never did learn speech but others did.

Donald's pupils were mostly bright but very poor lip readers or simply harder to teach. Maybe the hearing teachers were not expected to learn sign language before they were hired or knew how but were too slow or awkward.. Anyway the kids lipread pretty well and the teachers did not speak too fast and often wrote on the blackboard.


[My grandma on the far right, with deaf friends, age 18.]

(To be continued next Friday - more about school, what she did after she graduated and her experiences with new technology that brought more accessibility in her life, such as hearing aids and closed captioning.)

Keeper of Dolls Portrait: Step by Step

I have never really written a post that gave insight about my photoshop process. I'm a big photoshop lover, all the way. I love photography but one of the things that truly made me fall in love with the possibilities that photography delivers is the fact that I can play with the photos in photoshop. So many images I have done in the past wouldn't have been possible without photoshop, for me at least. I thought it would be neat and a good way to kick off my new blog with a post that explained how I made my latest portrait.

For every portrait I do, I always shoot at least 100 images, if not more. In different outfits, space, positions, etc. If I learned anything from my 365 project, it was to shoot as many images as possible because often I'll get inspired by a specific image I shot and end up taking a completely different route. I really love that type of creative process because I end up exploring something new that I didn't originally have planned in my head. It feels really exciting. Honestly though, most of my portraits come from faint images in my head that is constantly changing as I work through the images after shooting. It's pretty rare when I have a very specific image in my head, usually it's more of a concept but the little details are ever-changing.

I shot about 100 images in natural light. I usually don't really use flash very much unless I feel that it's way too dark and I wouldn't be able to fix the light in photoshop well enough. I tried two outfits as I couldn't really decide which one I wanted. In my head I saw an isolated lady with dolls in her hair. I wanted the feel to be kind of haunting. I also just really wanted to play with my hair because it's finally long enough to do this sort of thing... and I was dying to do something with all the dolls I have collected over time. If you're a friend of mine, you know me and my love of creepy dolls. I used to have them displayed in my rooms, creeping my guests out. Now I live with my lover so I have to "compromise" by only displaying one or two, not all of them. Most of them are now in a box (which I sometime feel guilty about). So it's always a pleasure to take them out of the  box and using them for various reasons. In this case, I wrapped them all up in my hair and used a whole hella lot of hairspray and bobby pins to keep it together. After shooting for a little bit, I then looked at all the images on my computer and selected several images that I wanted to study more in photoshop.

 

After some studying, I selected a base image to work with, and saved some other images of the dolls in different angles so I could add them to my hair as I made my hair longer.

 

I began working on adding bits of other images of the dolls into the base image and deciding on what kind of shape I wanted my hair to be. This involves a lot of layering, rotating, re-sizing, etc. I decided I wanted the final image to have a square crop so I added some empty space above to eventually fill in.

 

After I felt pretty satisfied with the overall shape of the hair and all the dolls. I then started to fill in the missing pieces by cloning and airbrushing.

 

I knew from the beginning that I wanted the portrait to seem elegant but also slightly off and creepy. I felt that my neck looked way too short in this image so I decided to make it longer. Which felt a little bit challenging to me as I didn't have very much experience with stretching limbs and having it still look realistic. So this was a fun experiment for me! I also airbrushed away my cold sores on my lip. Only if I could do that in real life...

 

I obviously needed to work on the neck some more but took a break to smooth out the background/fill the empty space. I then twiddled around with the curves, colours, etc in photoshop before returning to the neck to do some more work. I also added some more doll parts.

 

I felt that there were perhaps too much space around the lady so I cropped in a little bit. Looking back now though I'm not completely sure if I made the right decision or not. It's interesting to look back on portraits and question what we were thinking during the process. Some of my 365 portraits, I find myself looking at them and going, I would've done it this way instead or why is this not brighter? Etc. I suppose over time our tastes change and also time constraints really plays into the picture for sure, there were times with the 365 project where I just wanted to finish the portrait so I could get out and do something else. Finally I worked on the colours some more to make it look the way I wanted it to look and did some final minor touches.

 

I felt that the background and my dress blended in too much so I replaced the background with something more textured. Tada, completed!

 

Zoée 101 - My 365 Project

As a part of getting to know each other, I thought I'd write a little bit about my 365 Days project that I did back in 2009/2010. It's quite hard to believe that it has already been almost 3 years since I completed the project! It remains to be one of the biggest accomplishments I have done so far. I usually post photography related stuff over at my personal photography facebook page, but I want this blog to also be about photography I do as it's such a big aspect of who I am.


[What's in a Name?]
[140/365]
I'm sure some of you have heard of the 365 project that a lot of people do. It can be about pretty much anything. Mine was about photography, or more specificially - self portraits. I started it on a whim, having no idea at all what I was getting myself into. I don't even remember wondering whether I'd actually finish it or not. I just pretty much dove right into it.


[The Mirror Series]
[What Lies Within]
At first it just was to inspire some creativity in me. At that time, I was working at a quilting shop, as a web admin. It was a great job and I got to have access to so many supplies, ideas, and creativity but I wasn't creating too much. I ended up purchasing a new camera (Nikon D40 that came with the kit 18-50mm lens) and thought, well why not?


[The Many Sides of Rory]
[Queer Greasers]
A few months into the project, I began to realize how much time I spent thinking about my project. Brainstorming new ideas. feeling constantly excited and inspired. Of course, I had some days where I was just not getting anything and became incredibly frustrated with myself. I think the hardest part of the project was pushing through the days where I just was simply getting nada. No ideas. Nothing looked good and I just had the hardest time letting myself post a simple portrait. The best part of the project was definitely seeing the entire process through, from brainstorming, to sketching, to shooting, to manipulating, and finally the final product. I still think back nostalgically about that time of my life. It was a really good time.


[Haunted]
[One]
I did also use the project as therapy in a way. I would write about each portrait, which often was about something I was figuring out. You can see all the written pieces along with the pictures over at the flickr set. After the project was complete, I could see how various portraits were about gender identity, sexuality, deafness, and language. Another common theme was just imagination. Experimenting. Exploring.


[Broken]
[235/365]
I was fortunate enough to have a show for my 365 Days project, which I ended up naming it 365 Degrees. It was a weekend photography show on a little island where my dad lived. It was really awesome to connect with people through my work and I was proud of how the show was set up (many thanks to my partner and family for helping me set it all up!). I displayed various props I used in my project as well as a selection of portraits. It was so very me.





I often think about doing another one someday. I probably will as I feel like it's such a great way to remember your life later on. I've changed a bit in the last 3 years too so it would be cool to show that through new self portraits. If you're curious about my editing process, I will be posting a step-by step digital manipulation I did with one of my self portraits (after the 365 days project) tomorrow!

Have you done one? If so, I'd love to see a link to your 365 set!