malangelene

As of November-December 2011: My post office has been going through some changes, apparently and that translates to some of my mail not going out properly and some of my mail not getting to me. If you do not receive a swap from me, please let me know so I can resend. I have sent every swap I signed up for and marked as sent. So if you do not receive from me it is because the USPS is having trouble getting their business right. I will resend and make sure it gets there.
If I haven't rated you, it is probably for the same reason. Just message me and I will check on it.

My profile is sort of long; it's been growing for four years. I know I use a lot of words. I hear that a lot. Occupational hazard, I guess. Feel free to skip around or just look at the pictures or just read the lists.

I really like lists. They remind me of things I am or was—of things I like and like to be surprised by. I saw a little girl on an Arthur episode once, she said, "If you follow the map of my heart, you'll find what I love." Sometimes, for some people, lists really are a way to know a person, maybe mine is too.

When I was little I thought I would be a writer in New York, then an artist in Los Angeles, then a writer in Mexico, and then a doctor in Philadelphia. Now I'm an artist living in Bethlehem, working at a medical history museum, writing a book about strangers and heartbreak. Life is funny sometimes.

I study anthropology. People mostly confuse the living heck out of me. I guess I figure if I study them I might catch on someday.

I am vegan. I generally don't join in candy and food swaps but if it's ever an issue, or you're dying to send me chocolate and you're not sure...just ask. I'm real nice, I swear.

generalikes

• surprises. things i've never thought of, seen or tried before
• robots and machines
• stereograms and other optical illusions
• handcrafted, homemade, altered things
• big, chunky jewelry you find in thrift and dollar stores
• strange, beautiful and/or ugly dolls and toys
• cheap-o tissue paper lamps you clip to bare lightbulbs
• ephemera, old postcards and cabinet cards, old photographs
• vintage pin-up and nose art
• sharks, giraffes, snakes, especially cobras. camels. rats, doves, barn owls and bees
• bones, medical imagery, teratology. sideshow culture. freaks
• insanely big sunglasses for keeping in-cog-neato
• crazy-fun socks. also bare feet
• clean scents. eucalyptus, grass, fresh linen
• blueberry, gardenia and pink grapefruit
• knives, blades. beautiful in their efficiency
• chopsticks, especially ones I can stick in my hair
• small, plain spoons and toasters
• breakfast! and fake food
• (vegan) dark chocolate, red plum soda, homemade green tea ice cream, coconut, ginger...sea salt and vinegar kettle chips
• vintage print ads, especially for food, and retro & vintage cloth oddments
• typefaces, typewriters
• bikes, road and mountain and vintage...just bikes.
• old cameras, polaroids
• Mary. Mary Magdalen
• iconography and milagros
• Dia de Los Muertos
• screen and block prints
• interesting t-shirts

I have a cat; her hobbies include shedding, throwing my pens and pencils under the bed where I can't find them, and play-hunting her pet rabbit, Prof. Charles Xavier.

I peek in people's houses when the doors or windows are open. I'll let anyone read my journal. I don't lie despite being really good at it. I feel a kinship with crows. I'll try anything twice. I'll put almost anything in my mouth; I ate a button once. I use little kid toothbrushes, the kind with spiderman climbing up the handle. I have a problem with driving which I blame on all the accidents I've been in. I have a four-inch dent in my head and fall down a lot; these two things are probably connected. All of my tattoos are things I've learned to live by. I am pierced but not really part of the body modification culture.

I use exclamation points very sparingly.
I don't use the word 'love' unless I mean it.

My favorite swap I've taken part in here was a newbie swap way back when I first joined up. We just studied each others profiles, which helped make sure we had filled them out really well, and sent a little box of awesome things (amongst other things, I got a picture of two Spidermans kissing... rad).
Anyway, profile surprise swaps (especially when it involves something handmade) are my favorites and I am open to one-on-ones.

I am not a big fan of modern country and "cookie monster" heavy metal but I listen to almost everything else.

I really like surprising covers of well-known songs.
I am not a music snob. Few things can bring a smile to my face as easily as getting a mix cd full of someone else's favorite songs.

I call myself an artisan.

I do a lot of handcrafting:

• Knitting. I favor double-pointed wooden needles.
• Crochet. This is the one I've been doing the longest, since I was four or five. I wasn't good at it then. I am very good at it now. Amigurumi 4ever!
• Sewing (I'm better at hand than machine).
• Crewel, embroidery, candlewicking, needlepoint and cross-stitch.
• Soft sculpture. Right now I am working on a clastic model of my robot heart. I made a ghost squirrel the other day. You can really call almost anything "soft-sculpture."
• Papercraft. Karakuri and origami. Papel picado, and silhouette-style papercutting.

I'm always looking for new patterns for unique stuff, like prawns and platypusses and milk cartons. I like a challenge, have miles of yarn and like to keep my fingers nimble.

If you've got any stitch markers you're dying to get rid of they'd be put to good use around here.

My relationship with books is complicated. I grew up with them lining the walls of my room, spilling out of the closets and heaped on my bed; a lot of the time I read instead of getting on with living life. They're my escape and just about my only addiction.
I read almost everything I can get my hands on though lately I've been partial to non-fiction texts about sociology and math.
It's really hard to lure me out of used book stores.

I think of comics and/or graphic novels as art and literature. I collect the Thunderbolts and I still have a thing for classic Excalibur.

I have a deep and special relationship with the main public library in Salt Lake City, UT. I've been gone for almost ten years and I still miss it.

• dense patterns. paisleys, pinstripes, non-christmassy plaids. anything described as "retro".
• corduroy. knobbly, knubbly things.
• brightly colored anything

my favorite colors come in groups and pairs.

red & white & gray.
this is at the top. my favorites of the favorites.

blue & brown; pink & brown; green & white; red & yellow. orange & olive & white. strange yet pleasing color combinations that make my eyes dance.

colors for me are easy. i can think of fifty things i like about every shade.

• back and foot pain. Nobody likes foot pain.
• dolphins. I'm a shark girl.
• glitter. A little isn't so bad but a big, loose pile of glitta spells bad news for everyone.
• southwestern art and berenstein bears-style country home. I don't necessarily hate it, I just grew up with the stuff and kind of got overexposed. I do like roosters and chickens though.
• kids acting and dressing like grown-ups
• accidentally hurting people's feelings with my blunt, sometimes brutal honesty. I'm working on that.
• licorice, especially black. Ugh.
• clowns. I have a deep-seated aversion...
  although I like to study the history of circuses, go figure. Also, I really liked the Cellophane number in Chicago—that was a clown, so... it seems I am an enigma; an enigma wrapped in a riddle, rolled in mystery and smothered with secret sauce.

I don't think I'm allergic to anything but I can't really use incense anymore or those wax tarts. My cat seems to be sexually attracted to fire and melted wax and I don't really handle smoke so well.
And of course, no animal products, please. I know they are pretty but that includes feathers too.

It's always good to know what makes the nerd in me (most of me) sit up and adjust her glasses.

V for Vendetta, William Shatner, dinosaurs, How to Train Your Dragon, Neil Gaiman, Nightmare Before Christmas. Serenity...
Oh, Firefly. Also, Invader Zim, the 2004 Battlestar Galactica, Big Bang Theory. Bones—I get a kick out of the fact that in the early days of that show I could actually pick out factual errors. I am a Star Trek geek though not a Trekkie. Star Wars also, though I cannot hold a lightsaber next to a real Star Wars Geek...though I really want a lightsaber, one of those double-ended jobs that the Sith seem to favor.

I like lots of anime. My favorite so far is "Elfen Lied" but most of them really. "Vampire Knight" was the closest thing I had to a guilty pleasure but then I remembered I don't feel guilty about it.
Comic books, I'm a unicorn.
I like a lot of graphics that are not from either of the big two but of them: Marvel, Excelsior! Nightcrawler and Wonderman...well, superheroes in general.

And the study of how to be kick-ass, really, what's the -ology for that?
I used to study staff-fighting until I broke my staff. Now I practice weaponizing everything in my environment. The Jason Bourne survival school...I like to think that when the ninjas come, I will survive a few seconds longer than everyone else.

Zombies, of course.

Anachronisms, I feel like one most of the time.

Logic and reasoning puzzles, crosswords, all of those sorts of things. And spatial orientation and acuity challenges.
Grammar. I'm a grammar nerd and, having studied them for fifteen years now, I really dig breaking the rules.

Classic arcade and video games, like Nintendo and Atari and such. I play some of the current stuff but most of the shooter games and the other ones I like all really emphasize online play which is not my style. I'm a lone-gamer, me.

XKCD, math and physics, the NASA feed, the HUDF, linguistic memes, lolcats, Strongbad and most of the crazy/stupid stuff spawned by the internet. I heard a cover of the Lincoln Park Rapist song, "Bed Intruder," being played on a piano at a market at Christmas last year. I tipped him five dollars.

I study them for work a lot. Anatomy, illustrations, folklore, bones, photographs—all of it.
Cephalopods! Cuttlefish, and I have a crush on the blue-ringed octopus.
Cryptozoology. Monsters and such. I spend a lot of my time drawing them and though they often come out creepy/cute, I like the scary ones too.

Most things described as "Morbid" or "Macabre."

Most steampunky things I like, and I really dig clockworks, I often use them in sculpture I make. Vacuum tubes and circuit boards, that sort of thing. I never know what I am going to do with them but I like having them around me. And old chemistry equipment, flasks and measuring weights and scales.
You can imagine: I like a good flea market.