New Things

This, above is my newest medium...... I have been wanting to try silk screening forever. It's always seemed like something beyond me, too complicated and too toxic. Well it's certainly not complicated and it can be toxic but it doesn't have to be if your willing to do it the old fashioned way. Now days people use a technique call photo emulsion, which more or less burns whatever image you want onto the screen, it's really time efficient and easy. But of course you must use toxic chemicals to do this. So we're just doing it by hand, literally. Which means tracing the image onto the screen and than painting all the negative space. Making it quite time consuming and you must have a steady hand, which thankfully I have. In the end it is worth it because than have a silk screen that you can use over and over. The one above is my first so it's just test, sort of, to practice pulling prints, before I try it on fabric. Oh I have so many idea running through my brain about this.... Endless possibilities.

The other new obsession (and this will make me an official dork) is Battlestar Galactica. Not the original!! The new one on the SciFi channel, though we don't have the SciFi channel, we don't even have a TV. A friend first recommended it when we were discussing our mutual love for Firefly. He said we must see it. That was over a year ago, since than we kept reading about it here and there so we finally broke down and rented it over the holiday.

We are officially obsessed! It is so good..... Must see it from the beginning, in my opinion. Great story, really great actors and not your typical scifi show. A little dark a little sexy and really deep and not very cheesy at all. Thank the Gods it's on the SciFi channel or it wouldn't make it. Good shows with a lot of underlining meaning, that make you think and fall in love with the characters (like Firefly) don't make it on regular channels like Fox. It''s like the general audience only wants tranparent shows like The OC. I'm surprised Lost is still on, it's so different than the usual. I haven't seen since middle of last season so it may have changed but at least it makes ya think a little and the actors are good. Can't stand bad acting, really.

My favorite shows let's see..... Buffy - big time Buffy fans, go ahead laugh but it's the best show I've every episode but one. That was last springs obsession. We watched seven years of Buffy in four months. Yep, big dorks here. Firefly is the absolutely best sicfi show ever. Both Buffy and Firefly were produced and written by Joss Wedon, love his stuff. Carnivale was a great show on HBO, weird and creepy not scarey just a little creepy. And now I'll add Battlestar Galactica, trust me it's good..... So as you can see none but one of these shows are still on. Buffy ran for a long time surprisingly but both Firefly and Carnivale were dropped. And Firefly had a huge fan base but Fox still dropped even after the fans raised money and bagged, yes they begged.

Bee Thankful

Disclaimer:: I don't exactly believe in all the "Indian" and Pilgrim part of Thanksgiving. It makes me quite sad thinking about it and certainly makes me not very excited about celebrating the day. But I do believe in giving thanks, although this should happen everyday not just once a year. It is good to celebrate all that you are thankful for.

Some things that come to mind that I am thankful for since I could go on forever I'll just do a few instead of writing my life story.

1. My boss calling me at 12:00 today and telling me to go home.
2. A job where I can bring my sewing machine to work and sew and create all day long.
3. My bestest friend in the whole wide world - Bunsen.
4. My incredible group of girlfriends, I am blessed with knowing and loving so many beautiful strong, intelligent women.
5. Having so many Mothers, especially me Mom and Grandmom and also not being a part of the bad mother-in-law club, I'm happy to say I love my MIL.
6. My Dad who is the funniest, most hardworking man I know. He's full of, how he says, "useless information" (I think he knows everything)
7. Even though I don't make much money (because it's almost impossible to make money in Humboldt) and I still have a rich life and everything I need. We live a simple life.
8. Saving money.
9. Being an artist, having the ability to create what I see.
10. Living in a world where I have the freedom of education, and information is everywhere.
11. I can cook and do it well, I think it's genetic thing.
12. Having a really good childhood - makes for less baggage in life.
13. Being taught to seek happiness not money (though I know it helps).
14. Organic food
15. The experience of living in LA and here in Humboldt.
16. All the adventures I've been on - Greece, France, road trips.
17. My imagination.
18. My big brother.
19. Really good books and stories.
20. Huge world of creative people right now on the Internet. All these blogs I read all the time. So much inspiration out there. It's a great time to be creative. Tapping into that current feels so good. It also feels so good to find so many like minded people.

These guys don't have names yet.... Their a gift to me Mum.

face shots

Mrs. Clair - She's a gift for my Grandmom

Clair face shot

Not sure what these guys are, but I like 'em. I'm going to keep working on this idea and see where it goes.

Abigail who is sitting on Ellis the Egret, William and Molly

Geeze, it seems like it's a once a week posting trend here.... I could blame it on the fact that when I get home from work it too dark to take the pictures, 'cause ya can't post without a picture!!! So I broke down last night a just took some pictures anyway and I'm just going to have to level them. Still a little dark but it'll do the job. Some of the pictures as you can see were taken at a different time with different light. I wanted to show off the whole doll, last night when taking the pictures I was focusing on their faces. So please ignore the harsh differences.

Well I can finally say - WE HAVE FACES!!! I'm happy with all but one. Miss Abigail (who hasn't yet been introduced here) I tried like ten different mouths on that poor girl and not one fit. So in the end I embroidered a mouth for her and I think that one worked best, but still not perfect.

Oh and I can't take full credit for the little dolls and Clair. My Mom bought the doll bodies and sent them to me when she was moving because didn't get a chance to do anything with them. So now I'm moving and sending them back to her, finished. I just dressed them, gave them wings and a face. They need names though.

Sqrl & Bee Studio..........

Sqrl & Bee Studio has a new look.... It's still got a couple of things I want to change, but overall I like our new design. It's clean, simple and to the point. We wanted something to just display our little but growing portfolio. The hardest part is gathering all the art and stuff and photographing it. It surprisingly takes forever to do this. Our last site was too much about web design. I didn't want to make it look like that's all we do. We're just artists and we happen to know how to design and build websites, that's all.... On another note we offically leave on Feb. 1. That's a big deal. Originally we were saying we'll leave sometime at the end of Feb. We didn't know exactly when because this job Andrew currently has. So he settled it with is "boss" and we're leaving the first of Feb. That gives me 2.5 months to pack and ship and pack and ship. Crazy stuff 'round here... I already have a good stack of boxes all of which are ridiculously heavy and will cost me a small fortune. But I have no choice in the matter and I knew this would happen so I saved my pennies.

dream journal

I haven't done this in a long while... Actually I haven't been remembering my dreams much lately. Things are quite stressed here in our house lately. May be that's the reason for not remembering. Anyway there was a lot of dreaming going on last night. But only one detail that I really remember and I really like thinking about it. I wonder what it means??

I was outside, at a little table. It was almost like there was a sewing machine on the table. It had lots of compartments. There were three broken eggs on the table with two newly hatched birds and one breaking out of it shell. I was tring to move the new chicks into the little compartments and put little towls over the compartments to keep them warm. Then I went find my Mom and tell her about the new chicks. When I found her, she was in a garden, a really big fancy garden. She had big, tall tins (sort of like these olive oil tins that people plant herbs in, in Greece. But way bigger)attached to the bottom of her feet. Like she was walking on stilts. So she was real tall, I was looking up at her.I remember thinking "Wow, Mom your really good at that". She stumbled a little and than I saw that she was braiding trees, like how your braid hair. But these were pretty grown trees and she was just braiding them. Then she said "damn Aunt Rose and her crazy ideas" (Aunt Rose is her sister). And that was it.

Wow a whole week went by already, how did that happen?? I hardly remeber anything from the past week, it's like I went through it in some dreamlike state. I swear one day I wake up it's Monday and then the next day is Friday. And yet it doesn't seem to get any closer to moving time.. I'm living in a void!

I'm eating chestnuts right now.... Oooo how I love roasted chestnuts... Until I spent a week in Paris in the Fall a couple years ago I thought chestnuts were some novelty in a christmas song. But the streets were lined with people roasting chestnuts, yes on open fires. Granted these were a little less romantic since they were sort of big old coffee tins with tin foil on top and who knows what burning inside the tin. But still, the smell of roasting nuts, chilly rainy days with yellow leaves falling in Paris... Romantic enough. But I still didn't try any chestnuts while I was there. It wasn't until last year at the farmers market, someone was selling chestnuts and roasting them. He told us how, we came home and followed his directions and died. These are the tastiest darns things. Not like a nut almost at all, expect in looks. Very starchy, sort of like a potato. I love them... Try them if you get the chance, there are instructions on how to roast all over the internet, so excuses...

And above is Sir William the gnome... With no face. Ahhhh! I must make faces, I have 6 dolls waiting for faces. Pretty bad, huh? I have to get over this and just do it.... I'm having issues.

Onion Gravy

As promised....... I'm starting with the gravy and I'll work my way to the rest, raviolis are harder to figure out a recipe for 'cause it's like, a little of this and little of that kind a thing. I'll post it, promise..

Onion Gravy

1 medium onion (chopped)
3 cups water
4tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp flour (white or wheat, we almost never have white flour in the house so we mostly use wheat)

Prepare ahead of time - 2tbsp soy sauce, 3 cups water and 4 tbsp flour.

Medium-high heat. We use a iron skillet. Saute onion until dark brown, very close to burning (... I know, it's hard to let them go this far but you have to, that's the secret). Add 2 tbsp soy sauce, stir for about a minute. Stir in prepared sauce. Cook until thickens - starts to boil. Then serve.

A little concept that I'm working on

I want to do a run of these. This was is the first one I did. I'm not sure about it, but I think I like it a lot. It started very randomly Friday morning when I first arrived at work. I had no preconceived notion, I just started working and this is what I got. Well actually I was laying out a painting on the computer and just started playing. I'm not sure if I've ever done that before. It's good, it came right from me, very naturally. I like what I got..... Now, I believe it's time for banana ice cream and chocolate sauce and than packing, packing, packing. Yeah! for me.