my reluctant side kick and beloved boyfriend, ian, staggers beside me as we wander our neighborhood, looking for a suitable branch to use in my mock up.  he is in desperate need of coffee.



we pass this poor tree, which has been cut in half!  now that my mind is so fixated on this project, i notice the state and character of trees all around me.. i'm so distracted.



in our rush to the coffee house, we see this branch on the sidewalk.  hmm. 



much to our disdain, delores cafe is packed with hipsters.  we cross the street and walk down to faye's video for coffee.  they only have vanilla soymilk, which makes me grumpy, but i still like faye's.



we walk across the street to delores park, and i crochet a few leaves.  ian is now fully fueled with caffeine and keeps interrupting me.  for those of you who know ian, you will agree that this chatty behavior is very unusual for him!

anyway.

we walk back around the park, looking for branches, and decide the felled branch by our house was best. 



ian is pretending to struggle in breaking the branch.  he is strong.



this is ian's favorite neighborhood pigeon, and he asked me to take a picture of it.  this has nothing to do with my tree and i've completely lost focus by now.



back at the ranch, we take the branch into the backyard and strip it of its leaves.  we bicker a bit about how much branch to leave intact.  i win.  then ian suggests i use the branch as a divining rod.  ha ha.  good times.



inside the house, i set up shop on the ikea rug, and put on the second half of miranda july's 'you, me, and everyone we know'. 



i divise a plan.  first, i tie the leaf to the wire.  then i twist it all crazy like until the end of the yarn is mangled into the wire.  then i wrap the wire onto the branch.  i dig through my bag of leaves to find a nice variety of yarns, to test if they react differently at all.



the first wire i used was way too hardcore.  it was really hard to bend and i don't like how it looks.  i don't want the tree to be shiny.  bleh.  i am frustrated, and the little boy talking about poop in the movie is stressing me out for some reason.

i went downstairs into the garage and scoured for more kinds of wire.  i figured it would be good research to test out more than one kind, anyway.



here's my 'finished' branch.  'finished' in quotations, because the real branches will look much nicer.  the bark will be sanded off, and the wire twigs more artistically and strategically attached.  remember, this is just for scientific purposes.

the wire on the left is the way-too-thick 20 gauge galvanized wire. just above that, on the left, is a leaf that's just tied to the branch.  on the right we have 4 different kinds of wire.  the top is super expensive craft wire, then a few different gauges of galvanized wire, then some random piece of wire i found in my garage.

miranda july movie is over, and i decide that i like it, but that i like her other work better.

now, away we go!









and finally.. video!  excuse the very poor image and sound quality, and the goofy exclamation of 'aaaaaaaah'.. but it was very windy!