Space to create (and bonus kids' art 👩🏻🎨)
Unexpected creative outlets beyond writing
If you’re enjoying this free Tech and Tea post, please consider a paid subscription!
My kids made me promise that I would share subscription revenue with them if anyone subscribed after sharing their artwork… if you’ve been considering a paid subscription anyways, it would absolutely make their day!
My typical routine has been to post something on my non-kid weekends, but this past weekend I was down in Huntington Beach at the ultimate frisbee Beach Nationals tournament with a women’s masters team. After spending most of my life in the company of boys and men (social life, ultimate, Computer Science, and tech), I’m finding that I’m drawn more and more to spending time with women.
Amidst societal expectations of nonstop busy-ness and sacrificial motherhood, it was really meaningful that a bunch of moms had made the space in their lives to travel, play ultimate on the beach, and support each other — especially on Mother’s Day. Happy Belated Mother’s Day ❤️
Over the past few weeks, I’ve continued to explore and navigate my hierarchy of needs, from space to not be exhausted to space to create.
I had originally thought that space to create for me would mostly show up as the desire to write — delightfully, it hasn’t been limited to that. Here are some other ways creativity have shown up (if you read on, you’ll also get to see some of my kids’ creative works as well!).
Pen Plotting
For probably over a decade, I’ve been low-key curious about the world of generative art, but haven’t actually done anything to explore it. I’d occasionally visit #plottertwitter and marvel at the pen plotter videos, and think, wow so cool, I wish I could do that!
As part of a birthday present from Naveed, I ordered an AxiDraw v3 and have been playing around with it. I’ve just scratched the surface of tutorials and piping images through basic programs, but I’m excited to find a creative coding outlet to make generative plots.
Pink Eraser Art
About a month ago, someone in my Hackermoms Failure Club mentioned wanting to make some linocut prints and shared a link to PinkEraserArt. A few weeks later, I visited my friend Jhovany who was working on woodcut carvings for his upcoming show. A few days later, my 10 year-old Alina ran into the house, excitedly dragging me to our neighbor’s house for a stone carving demonstration. After an impressive demonstration of craftsmanship, Alina also tried their hand at stone carving.
Soon after, I resisted my tendency to feel bad spending money on myself and impulse-purchased an ink pad, a pack of pink erasers, and a speedball linocut kit.
The two on the left are erasers I carved during the last Warriors game. Third one is Alina’s first eraser carving.
If this sounds interesting at all to you, I found it very accessible, affordable (~$25 for everything), and easy to make something with no previous experience (except maybe I carved something in elementary school once). But remember to carve your letters backwards!
Kids’ Space to Create
Watching kids create when they are uninhibited is fascinating — they have fewer preconceptions of what good looks like, and whether or not they should try something because what if they’re bad at it. They just go for it.
Ever since I re-launched this newsletter, the kids have been telling me that they’re going to make something for Tech and Tea.
Here is what they asked me to share.
Jackson (7)
Alina (10)
Alina didn’t actually write this poem specifically for Tech and Tea, but gifted it to me for Mother’s Day with sunflower seeds and then asked me to share it here. They’ve been writing a lot of nature poetry, especially from the perspectives of animals. When I asked them how they wrote this poem, they said they just imagined what it would be like to a sunflower.
For more frequent updates of what we’re up to these days, and how we’re making space to create (or not!), you can also find me on Instagram @technteatime.
What we’ve been eating
We celebrated Mother’s Day on Monday, and with a little bit of help from Jackson, Naveed prepared a GRAND BREAKFAST.
We started having grand breakfasts during the early pandemic, when we were cooped up at home, and I was looking for literally anything to add a bit of variety to our lives.
It started one morning when Alina said, “Wow what a GRAND breakfast!”
So for many months, we’d chase that feeling every Saturday of looking out at the table and feeling delighted and abundant.
More specifically, it’s usually some eggs, some Trader Joe’s chocolate croissants, and fruit — waffles, french toast, smoked salmon, and avocado toast have also made guest appearances.
Here was Mother’s Day grand breakfast, featuring pastries from Trader Joe’s (popped in the air fryer), Belgium waffles (also TJ), berries and whipped cream, custardy eggs, cheese, smoked salmon, and edible borage flowers Jackson picked from the yard.
Not pictured are smoothies by Jackson and even more carbs in the form of bread and butter.
