Housefilk at Sally's

Urban Tapestry's new friend (and chocolate pusher), Franklin, is coming to FilKONtario next spring! We got to know Franklin better at Filkcontinental in Germany a couple of months ago. Not only is Franklin a talented singer and pianist, but also a sweet and good-natured individual with a wonderfully wicked sense of humour.



Our trip to Germany has affected our lives in so many ways. Not only did we leave with such wonderful memories and make new friends at Filkcontinental, but it's been great to see more German filk music influencing the North Americans.

In response to my recent songwriting poll, Michael Pereckas said he did some musical collaboration with Aryana, one of the new friends we made in Germany, as a result of a post in Allison's Livejournal.

From Michael: "I'm still boggling that three Canadian women whom I've seen in person exactly once went to Germany and as a result I'm making German friends."

:-D



At the housefilk at Sally Headford's tonight, German filk came up several times in conversation and music. Heather Borean sang "The Willow", a song by Aryana; you can find more information (in German :-)) and MP3 samples from this talented German filker here. Allison sang "Still Beautiful", another Aryana song, as well as a beautiful song by Steffi called "Remember Me."

The housefilk was much fun...thanks SO much to Sally for hosting it. The filk tonight captured much of what I believe is most important about filking: the community. The focus is not on who's the most talented or on selling CDs...those with this mindset will drop by from time to time, but they miss out on the real pay-offs.



People in this community make music for the pure joy of it. If not for the filk community (through which I met Allison and Jodi), I would never have started writing songs or singing in public. I love the mutual support and encouragement in the filk community, the creativity and collaboration, and feel incredibly lucky to be a part of it all.

I tried to capture this feeling when I wrote Home to FilKONtario, and was deeply touched when the convention committee decided to make it the closing song of FKO for the past few years.

If you're interested in finding out more about filk, please do check out Filking.net (The Dandelion Report), especially the Filk FAQ. And do consider coming to FilKONtario next March 31-April 2, 2006!


Above: Allison and her husband John, at the Pickle Barrel.

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holiday cheer

Above: My story is the one circled in red (I did the circling; it doesn't appear on the actual cover :-)). I think this should be on newsstands now.

Fun to read the responses to my Miss Squarehead comics post yesterday. I always love it when people commenting on one of my entries spin off a separate conversation thread in LJ, like the one between Teddy and Annie W. :-)

I bought Christmas lights yesterday! You experienced house owners out there are jaded about this, I'm sure, but this is new for me. I bought two sets of LED C-6 lights from Shopper's Drug Mart; they supposedly use 80% less energy and last up to 100,000 hours. I've hung them up in the Corkscrew Hazel in front of our house but can already tell I need another set.





I also bought an indoor set for our Christmas tree, which we're getting this weekend. VERY excited about this. Our condo building didn't allow live Christmas trees, probably because of the fire hazard. Jeff and I could tell that some people smuggled them in anyway, however, because of the pine needles in the elevator after the holidays.



Not sure if we're going to have time to unpack the locker before Christmas, to find the box of decorations we used many years ago. So I'm going to improvise some decorations for our tree this year instead. Say...if any of you are inspired to contribute a decoration, homemade or not, Jeff and I would be most grateful! Even a scribbled drawing on a paperclip will be eagerly received. :-)

If you decide to indulge this unbelieveably selfish plea, you can send it to our new home address, if you know it; I'd be happy to send the address to you if I know you in person -- else please send to my P.O. Box at:

Debbie Ridpath Ohi
34 Eglinton Ave W., POB 189
Toronto, ON
M4R 2H6

(If you're sending a package rather than something flat, I'd appreciate it being sent to my home address instead of the P.O. box so I don't have to pay an extra fee, thanks. :-))



Looking forward to the housefilk at Sally Headford's tomorrow! Allison's going, too; it's been a while since more than one member of Urban Tapestry has been able to attend a housefilk at the same time. :-)

Some more search engine traffic checks (using stats to check how people find me):

Ben & Jerry's Toronto: I'm #1 in Google.
the knights who sat ecky ecky ni monty: I'm #2 in Starware Search.
marmite and cholesterol: #1 in Google UK.
coping with plane flights: #2 in Google UK.
how to sleep with fractured arm: #1 in Google
want Asian eyes: #11 in Yahoo search

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miss squarehead

Above: I drew this NON-digital (*gasp) picture using my niece's pencil crayons. The carrot doesn't look quite right; I still need to work on perspective drawing.

I've been spending more time with my sister's kids since we moved into their neighbourhood. Jeff and I both have our own different relationships with our nieces; mine, not surprisingly, tends to focus on creativestuff like music and art and crafts.

Years back, I introduced my nieces to comics as a different way of telling a story. They were both fascinated, and I encouraged them to make up their own comics. On the fly, I made up a character named Miss Squarehead that was purposely easy to draw so that I could draw my strip quickly, and to show them that the drawing didn't have to be complex and sophisticated to tell a story.

Since then, both of them have come up with their own comic strip characters as well as experimenting with different drawing styles. They're obviously influenced by their mother's artistic talents; both can already draw better than many adults I know. :-)

I think I must have drawn at least 50 Miss Squarehead strips over the years, during comic-drawing sessions with my nieces. The three of us will sit happily drawing for 20-30 minutes at a time, occasionally peering over at each other's progress and finally reading each other's completed strips at the end of the session. Sometimes we'll do up to three or four strips in a row this way.

Anyway, I decided to keep the most recent Miss Squarehead strip and scan it for Blatherings, just for fun, before tossing it. Please note that there is pretty much NO planning ahead re: plot...much of the challenge and fun of these sessions is from making the story up as we go along. I drew the first panel below, for example, with absolutely no idea what I was going to do for the rest of the strip.

Click on the image below for a bigger version; it's one I drew last night in the most recent comic-drawing session with my nieces:



I've been doing comic strips for as long as I can remember. I did a four-panel strip about a somewhat psychotic baby called "Boppy" for our homemade family newsletter when I was a child. I got paid to do Bible-themed comics for a Sunday School newsletter when I was in high school, and also won a typewriter and a couple of dictionaries in a comic strip contest for a country-wide high school newspaper called Sunshine News.

Update on my newest comic, Will Write For Chocolate...it launches in January! The URL will be http://www.willwriteforchocolate.com. Wordy, I know, but wwfc.com was already taken.

Hm...I might scan some of those ancient comics I've been Blathering about and post them for fun. I need to unpack my scrapbook first, though, and I also reserve the right to change my mind once I actually look at them again.

:-)

I also need to get some kind of illustration/cartoon portfolio online. I'm starting to get more requests for paid illustration these days (and an increasing number of requests for free art which I'm having to turn down more often, sorry) simply because of posting stuff on Blatherings and Flickr, so I -know- that it would be worth actively seeking clients.

My focus will always be on writing, but I'm realizing the wisdom of spending part of the time developing another source of income. When my tendinitis acts up -and at this point I have to admit to myself that my tendons may never recover fully-, I can still use the Wacom Artpad even I'm not able to type as much. And having two types of arm-use activities reduces the possibility of over-use of one type of tendon.

I know...that's a lot of tendon talk. But it's the way I've had to learn to think. Everything is in terms of "arm points," which refers to how much activity I can do with my arms each day before my tendons get tired out. I have a lot more daily arm points than I used to, but I still have to be careful of how I use them.

Thanks to those who were kind enough to participate in my songwriting poll yesterday. I'll be compiling your answers into an entry for the Filking.net FILK FAQ. I'll wait another week, though, just in case others want to contribute.

From my Sketchbook archives:

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songwriting poll

I did the above illustration using Corel Painter using several kinds of Pastel "brushes" at varying opacities, and also experimented a bit with paper textures. My habit these days is to write during the day, do some drawing in the evening or at the end of the work day.

Went out early this morning to take the bungee cords off our Green Bin and garbage can for 7:30 am collection. Jeff and I have made a deal in which he takes out the trash the night before, and I take the cords off in the morning. The cords are to keep the raccoons out of the trash during the night.

It was -8.3 degrees Celsius, according to our thermometer. Wrapped in my down-filled Tom Jeffers coat and handmade Beckett scarf, however, I felt pretty cozy...and I only needed one layer instead of my usual two. I guess I haven't yet become jaded about our new house -- I don't mind going out early in the morning at all. In fact, I still get a huge kick out of standing outside in the dark street and marvelling at how QUIET it is, compared to our old neighbourhood.

Beckett has Winnipeg trip pics up in her Flickr account, if you're interested. I especially like this one she took of me and Dave. You can also read her trip report on LJ.

And here's a picture that Tom took of Dave and me when we were working on a song together (our first songwriting collaboration!):



I'm holding my music Moleskine, a gift from Jeff a while back. The pages are all filled with standard 5-line staffs, and I now have a handful of songs scribbled down, some complete but quite a few fragments.

Songwriting with Dave is fun. Not surprisingly, he has a great ear, and had several chord substitution suggestions for the ones I had in my first draft of the song. We did some brainstorming in e-mail before the weekend, and then went through the song a bit at a time, dissecting and improving. We're hoping to have this ready to perform in open filk at GAfilk!

Songwriting with another person takes a great deal of trust, and you both have to be equally excited about the project as well as being willing to put in the time/effort. You have to be willing to relinquish some control...that's where the trust comes in. And you have to be willing to modify your own songwriting habits; I find it's well worth it because I always learn something from the other songwriter in the process. It's one reason I've been purposely seeking out different songwriters to collaborate with these days; I like the challenge, and I also find it can be wonderfully inspiring, creatively. The main limitation is time, which is why I generally work on one collab at a time.

A few examples: When I co-wrote Sex and Chocolate with Jodi, I wrote the words but asked Jodi to come up with the music; I was curious about what would happen. Believe it or not, I had a sort of waltz idea in my head when I first envisioned how the song would turn out. Jodi came up with an a capella jazzy/bluesy (and definitely NON-waltz) tune that I LOVED.

In Another Story, I wrote the words and music for the verses and counterpoint section. It originally started out as a children's song, but then (as often happens with me for some reason) started to get a bit too dark. I got stuck at the chorus, and asked Allison for help. She came up with words and music that fit PERFECTLY; I was so happy with how it turned out.

I've also co-written with Andrea Dale in her song, Saxophone in Spring...she brought the words to me, I added music and fiddled with the words a bit, then she did the final editing of words and music. I ended up adding harmonies to this song on Andrea's Zen Cappucino CD as well as playing flute --- my first time singing on any recording. We did the collaboration by e-mail and snailmail, sending lyrics and tapes back and forth.

Steve Macdonald and I have started collaborating on a song as well; he's written the music, and I'll be working on the words. On the other hand, Rand Bellavia and I tried songwriting at least half a dozen times but all our attempts fizzled out pretty quickly for one reason or another; I guess some musical partnerships are just not meant to be, no matter how much the would-be co-writers like each other's music. :-)

Hm...maybe I should turn this into an entry for the Filking.net FILK FAQ. To you songwriters out there who have collaborated with other people: Any advice to share from your own experiences? Do's and don'ts? What has worked for you and what hasn't? Please post in Livejournal if possible; I've enabled anonymous posting (those posts will be screened before appearing).

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Franklin chocolate!

(The photo above is courtesy Tom Jeffers, taken at the Bhigg House.)

As I was unpacking from my Winnipeg trip yesterday, the doorbell rang. It was Canada Post, with a big package from Germany (!). Inside the box was a card from Urban Tapestry's friend Franklin, who kept presenting us with chocolate when we were Guests of Honor at Filkcontinental.

Also inside the box: three large and fairly hefty gift bags, one for each of Jodi, Allison and me. I opened mine, and here's what it contained:



Woohoo, more Franklin chocolate! The accompanying note from Franklin said it was in celebration of St. Nicholas Day (thanks to Allison for the link). THANK YOU, FRANKLIN! Jeff thanks you, too.

:-D



The above photo is of Beckett on her harmonica, jamming with Dandelion Wine.

I forgot to mention yesterday, by the way, that if you'd like to find out more about Dandelion Wine you can check out their Web site, which was created by Beckett.

One of the many things I love about Dandelion Wine is that these two guys are just as nice off-stage as they are on-stage. So many musicians and groups seem super-friendly and approachable when they're performing, but are wrapped up in the whole rock/folk star ego-persona when they're not. Dave and Tom are just as good-hearted and sweet-natured as they seem on-stage. Both of them are on Livejournal; Tom tends to post more often, and you can find his LJ here.

Dave and Tom the Guests of Honour at GAfilk next month; if you're attending the convention and have never had the pleasure of hearing Dandelion Wine before, you're in for a treat!

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