Amy Adoyzie Enjoys Life and Junk

The thing about traveling on a volunteer's budget is that it's a sad state of affairs when I agonize over spending $10 USD. You can imagine how I nearly pooped myself when I dropped a month's stipend ($250) on a Visa and plane ticket to Saigon. But I've convinced myself that money should the least of my concerns because I'll be in Vietnam just in time for the Tet/Chinese New Year's Eve celebration and I hope to go balls out! Yippee!

There was another splurge today, when I spent $10 so that I could weave for three hours at a local women's vocational training center. It's a non-profit organization that employs women from all over Laos and trains them in the art of old-school weaving, where they can make an honest and sustainable living. I couldn't resist the idea of weaving myself and even though I was sorely sleep deprived (Rick and I were on a 10-hour overnight bus trip from Luang Prabang where I was kept up by my uncomfortable seat and a mom and son team that kept gagging and vomiting during the entire ride). I'll be posting images of my little weavey ditty later on, but I just wanted to say that it was one of the best crafty experiences ever!

I am a true believer in keeping physical, tangible journals. Not just stuff constructed of binaries and exists only on this virtual superhighway of emo congestion on every on-ramp of blogtown. Since I was a wee thing, I've been keeping diaries, journals and sketchbooks that are so comforting and disconcerting to flip through- to remind yourself that you're holding someone from the past in your hands. In high school, most of my ramblings about boys and being so angst-ridden and depressed filled the pages of lined notebooks, so that my parents didn't know I was just mind vomiting and they thought I was doing homework. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of keeping journals as memories and reminders of where I've been and how it looked on paper.
Partly inspired by Julie Doucet's intricate designs on the covers of her sketchbook diaries, and my own OCD with aesthetics, I began experimenting with creating distinct covers for each of my journals of the past few years. See the evolution:



One of my favorites is this one:


The packaging of a the translucent spring roll wrapper case was sewn on top of the box for Asian French cookies! It just came together so perfectly.

Here is my latest journal:


I'm super proud of this one! The font face is inspired by Futura and I embroidered it all while working at Green Noise during one of my shifts. Corey got a new journal for his 27th birthday in April too! (Oma is his Gramma in German! She's one of the most raddest and sweetest ladies ever!)



These are very fun and easy to make, and I may crank out a couple more as gifts before I leave for Chiney Town. Oh! And I can't wait to finish the next batch of Lum Jums and show 'em all to ya'll, cause they're bangin'!

I can't think of a time where I've ever been without my lum-jum or baby pillow. They've remained a constant, waiting for me every night on my bed, so that I may snuggle and smoosh them. When I was a kid, I used to talk to them before I fell alseep and I even gave them good-night kisses.

Here's lum-jum:


He looks pretty deflated and beat up, but he's the sweetest pillow you'll ever know. I used to peruse JC Penney catalogs and look through their "Bed & Bath" section to see if they sold any sausage-shaped pillows because all my life I've called it a lum-jum, but I knew that there had to be an American name for it. Turns out they're bolster pillows. How utterly boring! Lum-jum is soooo manies more fun to say!

I asked mom why she made lum-jums for me and my brothers and she said that when we were little she wanted us to feel "secure," so she created these little pillows so that we can hold while sleeping. It wasn't until mom told me otherwise that I thought lum-jum was just some nonsense words she'd made up, it rhymed and it had a word that sounded like our Chinese last name. Mom says that it's called actually called a lahm-jum, literally translated means hug pillow. Isn't that shit enough to make your heart melt?!

So, before I depart for China this summer, I decided to make lum-jums for all my friends who I love and hold dearly to my heart. To date I've made about 15 of em and they are a joy to bestow upon my little buddies especially since I personalize them by embroidering names for their lum-jumz.







Every one of them is unique and I never use the same fabric combo twice. These are some of the first wave of lum-jums by moizes. I just finished one where I copied a friend's tag and another one that is more designed-out. Images will come soon and perhaps you might be visited by the lum-jum fairy tooz!