The Sqrl

I've Moved

2008-01-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

So it's time for a fresh face and a new home. So many things have been happening in and out of the studio that I haven't been able to blog. But this excuse is getting old and I miss blogging. So I'm trying again and we'll see how it goes. Hope to see ya there.

Studio

2007-08-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

Some new things to come out of the studio this week. I'm so happy with them and their all recycled t-shirts. I plan on making a ton, especially if we get into the Philly Designer Sample show. And especially the I heart.... shirts, I am loving them a whole lot.

Wow, May 26th !

2007-07-31T05:44:00.000-07:00

That was the my last post, May 26th, I should be ashamed. This little blog hasn't been far from my mind though. My excuse is that my computer has been in and out of the "shop" four times since we got here in April. Finally Hp sent me a new one, a brand new one. But really the reason for not blogging has been that I'm just too busy and I wasn't putting it very high on the priority list. But I vowed to start again, regardless of my busyness. What have I been busy with you wonder? Well lots and lots of sewing, mostly bags. Started some skirts, but the serger is not cooperating so that was put aside. I'm trying to get ready for two craft shows in September. One is just a regular type craft show the other is quite intimidating and is more like a trade show. It's for local Philly and surrounding area "fashion designers". The first hour is for retailers only and than it's open to the public. Hence why I was working on some skirts. I would love to get some into stores, but they just are not ready. I haven't work out all the kinks yet. This was a hard decision to make, 'cause I really want it. And I really want to get into this show, just for the experience. So I'm sticking to what works - my bags and T-shirts (I'll show them off as they get done). I think Andrew and I are going to share a spot, hopefully, so he can get shirts out there.

Other than that, we been painting/working. Doing lots of graphic work, lot's of weddings and baby stuff for friends. Real good experience. Gardening also, our garden is exploding. We have ourselves a tomato forest. Huge spaghetti squashs, lots yellow summer squash and pickles. We have these little yellow birds who sit on the sunflowers and eat their seeds, it's the cutest darn thing. All the pictures below random pictures of the garden, remember just a couple months ago?This what happens after a couple days of visiting from our little yellow birds. This is why I planted sunflowers, I was hoping they would make natural bird feeders. It worked!

tomato shadow.

huge spaghetti squash.

Heirlooms, they're so dainty.

Tomatoes reaching for the sun.

more heirloom tomato, kind of lost track of what kind this is I think it's a Rio Grande

tomato forest

New Links

2007-05-26T04:18:00.001-07:00

I've added the Lansdale area links and here's a list of other crafties that were added::

The Worsted Witch - A green craftie
Momo - My swappin partner
sew green - a bunch of green crafters
Sweet Nellie - I LOVE her stuffies

You can now find all these newbies over there --> in links. Enjoy!

More to come......

Check my website

2007-05-26T03:46:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know I've had the melissafrueh site up for a while now. Originally I had it up so it would be easier to find me, but now that I'm doing this craft show (hopefully). Now it's pretty and I think I should have a pretty site.
So go check it out!

We went on a field trip....

2007-05-25T05:05:00.000-07:00

I'm finally bugged enough by Whole Foods to get back on buying locally. When we first moved her about three months ago I didn't know where anything was except Whole Foods plus it was the end of winter and no farm stands on the corners or farmers markets on weekend to get me in the groove. I never like Whole Foods, for me it was always the last resort. I was spoiled in California, first in the LA area there was a farmers market everyday of the week all year long. Then Arcata, had a great almost all organic farmers market for 2/3 of the year and an awesome co-op that carry most things locally. These last three months I've been almost shopping exclusively at Whole Foods and it's killing me. Not only are they ridiculously expensive but the milk isn't always fresh (you can tell when making yogurt) and lettuce was turning that red around the fringes only after three days. Much of the produce was coming from California, so I moved across the country to eat the same food. Anyway this wasn't supposed to be a rant about Whole Foods.
I'm excited to finally be finding local food. Starting with yesterday, we went to Hendrick's farm in Telford. We found raw cow and goats milk, fresh butter, yogurt, fancy cheeses, curds, ice cream, meats and soaps. Really, really nice people that were happy to take the time to tell us about the cows and how they are treated, how happy they are. You can pretty much see for yourself since they just hanging out it the fields just beyond the little shop. Really, a great place. And today we are off to visit and local bakery, yeah! a bakery. When we first got here I googled bakeries and found almost nothing , except in the city (too far). I want to talk to this bakery about their site, you can't find them anywhere unless you know their address, that's got change. We got a loaf of their bread yesterday on the farm. Awesome bread, really great flavor, good hard crush with a moist soft center.
Over on the side bar ---> in links I'm going to add a local links, so whatever I find locally I'll add over there. Hey may be someone like me will be searching around the Lansdale area looking for local foods and I can help the out a little. I also have a ton of new blogs to add, so look for them too. I think I'll post them first as a heads up than add them. It's endless with all these creative blogs.
Below are some pictures of our little farm outing yesterday. Enjoy!

This guy here was trying to wrangle up this little calf. It was pretty funny, this calf was certainly giving him a run for his money.

Well... Friends

2007-05-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

For all those few who check in I'm awfully sorry, for I have been neglecting this little blog. I've been hyper focused on trying to get things made to submit pictures by June 1st for two craft shows in September. When I'm not working I'm working on prototypes and trying to get a product together. So far so good..... I have three different size bags and another idea for a forth. Making to first "real" bag today to be photographed. Lots of needle felting going on 'round here, lot's little fruits and veggies, acorns and little birdies. For me, needle felting in so relaxing it makes me sleepy and always in need of a nap afterwards. I don't know if I mentioned earlier but the big "theme" of all the stuff I'm making is..... Organic, natural or recycled. Means just what it says all the products will be made from either organic, natural or recycled and pretty much in that order. I found two great sites, one for the fabric - Nearsea Naturals and a great site for all your felting and wooly needs - Weirs Dolls. They carry 100% wool felt and roving both with plant dyes and many colors to choose from. Other non plant dyed felt and roving too, well go see for yourself.

Can you believe that those are plant dyed colors?

Let's see, what else.... Lots of gardening. Almost all my seedlings have come up. I'm a little worried about the tomatoes just cause they seem to have stunted. But we'll see, they're going to be potted up today. As you can see by the picture I've got lots of thing this year - tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, pumpkins, spaghetti squash, sweet potato squash, pickling cucumbers, peas, soy beans, sun flowers, lettuce, herbs like dill, parsely, cilantro, and catnip. All kinds of stuff, we're going to have ourselves our own mini farm.

Oh and all these seedlings are from heirloom seeds.

Well.... Must be shoving off to be a slave to my fussy sewing machine. I think it's time to take her in for a check up.

Spring has arrived

2007-04-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks to leave ya hanging there...... That freak little snowy day came and gone and left us with Spring! We've had a few pretty hots days and the rest have been quite Springy. I haven't live in a four seasons area in seven years. I'm excited. Well, I don't know about you (the few yous who tune in) but I was sure tired of looking at that last picture. Here's a little sun shining in our window the other day ('cause todays a little rainy).

And little taste of what's been bloomin around Lansdale lately.

Oh how I love Spring, even on it's chilly rainy days.

Snowin' and Swappin'

2007-04-17T05:57:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right we had ourselves a snowy/slushy/crappy day yesterday. I thought April was supposed to be Spring. But I guess since I haven't here in seven years I must of had it all wrong. Actually, I think everyone's been feeling that way lately regardless of how long they've lived here. My friends, welcome to Global Warming....

On a much funner note (yes I said funner) I swapped gifties with a new friend in Japan - Momo. I believe, when I first signed up with Gimme Your Stuff I contacted Momo to swap. That was almost a year ago and I got no responses from anyone. I think mostly because there like a billion people on there from the US and mostly in CA and of course anyone wants to swap with someone from the same region (can't blame them). Then on the last leg of my trip I got a comment from Momo asking if I wanted to swap. I was too excited. The best part - she's vegan. You see, most people want to swap goodies and treats, candies and foods. This doesn't work for such a strict veggie like myself. So even more excitement...... In the end I received such a wonderful package from her. I got the what is apparently the Japanese craft book, I asked for one but had no idea so I asked for any. Also a great book on appears to be a book on artist studios which got me really itchy to create my own (cause I need one so bad). Let's see what else...... Great fabrics, very cute bookmark, little garden stakes for my seedlings and yummy veggie snack. I sent her lots of vintagie things, homespun fabric, Blueprint magazines and soap. This was such a fun thing to do.

Momma and Her Chick

2007-04-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

Big thank you to Ms. Lynn from Molly chicken (one of my most favorite blogs, I love, love, love her creations) for sharing her Easter Birdy pattern. I used it as a way to kick start my crafting again. It's been very hard to get motivated to work lately. I have no real studio like I had in Arcata. It was small but it was all mine. I don't have my own table to work on and my fabric is stuffed in the corner of the bedroom, the tool box is in the laundry room and my self with all my goodies is in the kitchen and my little inspirations are still packed away. So.... You get the point. It sort of feels like not enough butter spread over too much bread as Bilbo would say. And since I have this goal to be in at least one craft show by the end of 2007 I gotta find some way to get my butt in gear. So thanks to this very cute and very easy pattern I can say I made something in the last month or two. It was a little giftie for my Mum. A little Easter gift, I guess. Oh and happy Easter, celebrate the Earth's fertility and abundance!

You can see mine is a little skinnier than hers, not sure how that happened.

The Travelling Kid

2007-04-07T05:52:00.001-07:00

Just a little shot out to my Sister-in-law and her super cool site - The Travelling Kid (yes that's two L's ). If you are having thoughts about traveling anywhere with your kid, stop by this site 'cause there's bound to some useful information. She's traveled everywhere and for the past couple years with kid in tow. Great articles, stories and pictures. Oh and see that little logo there on the bag... We did that, cute huh? She had an idea and we made it happen. Gotta brag a little....

Wow it's been too long in between.....

2007-04-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

Well friends.... I can officially say we are settled. Things have been a little nuts, hence the not posting. We've been painting for work - back to what we were doing in LA but this time we like doing it. Hoping to get a lot more painting work since it really gives us a lot of freedom to do all the other things we fill our time with.

So without further ado..... Pictures of our abode!

The side, since you've already seen the front. We're on the bottom.
Backyard (on a dreary day).The bedroom (not the best picture). In the corner you can't see will hopefully one day be my little studio space. Right now I have my stuff just here and there, kind of hard to get myself started with all my stuff everywhere. So hopefully sooner then later.Our very cozy, sunny livingroom.

The Kitchen...You can tell which part of the kitchen sold me since I failed to take any pictures of the rest of the kitchen. I love this cabinet, we call it The Apothecary.

Or well, I guess this is also part of the kitchen.... A little eating area, and we have a table that seats four!! First time for everything.
The Bath

Now of course we are still working on things. We still have some boxes, hence no pictures of the laundry room. Still figuring out where things go. And hopefully soon we'll start digging in a garden.

God Bless America

2007-03-15T06:44:00.000-07:00

Home Sweet Home

2007-03-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

We sign the lease tonight and start moving in. It's official on the 15th. Yay!!

We're on the first floor. Nice front porch, little backyard and side yard. So I get to have a little veggie garden. Good stuff.

Kitchen (original cabinets late 1800's time).

Living room looking into the bedroom. Love those pocket doors.

Where've I been??

2007-03-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

You'll probably thought I got lost somewhere in Tennessee. But no...... Just lost in all the apartment shopping..... Which is starting to get old and it's only been a week. We have seen so many crappy city apartments, though three I have liked and two of them I love. One is in an ok neighborhood surrounded by really crappy neighborhoods. The other is pretty far outside the city and may just be taken by someone else so we are waiting, hence the getting old thing. There is a "warehouse/loft" that we'll find out tomorrow if it's still available . A warehouse/loft is exactly what I was wishing for but from what I was seeing they were all it in crappy neighborhoods. But not this one, but like I said, it may be taken. So keep your fingers crossed.

application moss

North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina

picnicking

We made it!

Hello Again (a little sooner than expected)

2007-02-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

It seems there really aren't very many places to stay in the truck on this side of the country or this side of Dallas. So here we are at another hotel. Here's a couple of snapshots of our last few days. All starting with the beginning of Texas. It took three days to get through TX and it was all thorns, wind, and bad rest stops. There was this one old building in TX that was great, we stopped there shot some great pictures and found lots of treasures.

Me.... Treasure hunting.

The best part of Texas.

Treasures found - melted and broken glass, we're thinking the building caught on fire at some time.

Like I said.... Thorns

Pretty things too in Texas.

This is how we eat on the road.

It seemed that no matter where we went we followed the train.

Our pressed half dollar, thank you train.

Good bye Texas

2007-02-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

Yes we're finally out of Texas. We now find ourselves in Tennessee. I like Tennessee. Since I succumbed to TV last night and...... Well this morning too, this is kind of a lame post. Check out time is technically one minute away. But real quick, we still have our friendly stow away eating a healthy varied diet. Andrew is currently learning about how to keep a wild mouse because we certainly can't release a wild desert mouse in the middle of a northeast winter, right? Looking for things to do in TN, since we still have 3 days til our destination which is only the state right next door. Hopefully the great Smoky Mountain national park will work out. Well, friends we must be shoving off, Until NC, farewell......

Memphis

Fireworks for my Dad.

Woah, crazy signs and their everywhere. This one was found somewhere around Arkanasas Tennessee area.

Mesilla

2007-02-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

Currently we are in Texas. It feels like we've been here forever. I really don't like this state very much. Sorry to anyone is from Texas, I would love to hear about the good stuff in Texas. I'm betting it's prettty nice in southern Texas near Mexico. Anyone want to try to change my mind about Texas let me know. I don't like not liking a state, seems so judgemental or something. So far I've only found brambles and wind here in Texas, SO windy and everything has thorns it's so strange. A couple tumble weeds and I did get to see a Road Runner!! Very excited about that, they're very silly. We're about to pass through Fort Worth and Dallas and get the heck out of here. And on the Arkansas, on to new adventures. At least there are now trees, a sight for sore eyes.

What I really want to talk about is Mesilla.... In New Mexico about an hour before El Paso TX (if you want to look on a map) there is a city called Las Cruces. We wanted to stay in hotel to get cleaned up and online and some bathtub laundry. But if we're going to spend the money to stay somewhere, we wanted to hang out a little and see the place. Well... We randomly picked LasCruces because we were getting a little desperate. Well... We randomly picked an awesome little town. In Las Cruces there is a section of town called Mesilla. If you know Eureka, CA then Mesilla in like Old Town. Mesilla is so darn cute. Old adobe houses, bunches of dried chillies hanging in every ones windows, shops selling all kinds of local art, antiques store and great Mexican restaurants.

We stopped in this great shop - the Purple Lizard two great gals who work and/or own the shop, great clothes. I got stuck there for longer than expected and walked out with three awesome new articles of clothing. I had to... Everything in the front room was three for $20. Anything..... And we are not talking junk here. Great stuff, really. You must check it out, if ever in the area.

After my little shopping spree we stopped at this little place, I think part of the building is an antique store and the other side, not sure. But it was just great looking. This is the part of New Mexico I was missing. I never understood what was so great about New Mexico. We always drove through on I40 through Albuquerque. Albuquerque doesn't do much for the state, it's not very enchanting (license plates says "Land of Enchantment"). But, now I understand.

And last but not least the houses around Mesilla.

Friends.....

2007-02-15T08:13:00.000-08:00

We are now off for the next leg of our trip - Texas. Forever we will be in Texas. Until we find online access again, farewell.

Oh, go here to read more about our trip and here to read a little about a little stow away.

And, here we are in Quartzite, AZ -- our favorite desert spot.

As Promised :: GREEN

2007-02-15T08:10:00.000-08:00

Desert green, this was a bit of a challenge. It was pretty fun though going on a treasure hunt for green in the desert.

We interup this traveling broadcast to......

2007-02-14T23:05:00.000-08:00

to show off some great pictures Andrew randomly took of our niece Kamryn. I love the innocent carefreeness in her face. Just had to show off.....

A little Hello from the desert

2007-02-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Well the New Mexico info center on I10 close to the AZ border has free WiFi if your ever in the area and need to get online. And it's a great rest stop too. We had an amazingly great stay in Quartzsite, AZ for a couple of days. Shopped a little at the Main Event, I show those pictures later since I have not yet downloaded them. Spent most of the time hanging out and hiking around the desert. Found a place where they were hounding for some kind of quartz so we found our rock hammer and Andrew went at it and got us some beautiful turquoise, smokey quartz and clear quartz, very beautiful and also not yet down loaded. Yesterday was spent frustratingly as we drove around in circles in Phoenix to try to get to see Body Worlds 3, in the end we gave up and left. Then to Tucson where we did the same darn thing - drove around in circles looking for a super market that we could actually park in (we are the size of a small RV and really hard to back up). Today is good though, just trying to decide on our next route since Louisiana seems to be getting some very ugly weather that we'd like to avoid. Anyway, here are some of the pictures from Quartzsite.

Family Goodness

2007-02-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

Everybody but one, Andrew's brother Steve left early....

Cooking up a feast

Casey and Kamryn

Kai

All the ladies in the house

blogger lesson

2007-02-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

Sisters :: from left to right Brooke, Jennifer, Me (behind Jennifer), Jolyn and than Jessica.

Hey everyone, I'm just showing Brooke about Blogger. Trying to convince her it's the way to go.... And since I want to show Brooke about linking here's a great site for really awesome socks... Sock Dreams

Last Day

2007-02-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Click pict. to see details

It was a rough ride but we made it. Almost all of our plans fell apart and had to be changed at the last minute. We had to miss our favorite bakery and may never be able to go again if we're not in the area. Didn't get to see Jason at Mount Madonna. We had to take a different route. We left so late, we had to drive separately the whole way down to LA from Arcata (12 hours). Lots of problems with the truck and it's fuel line. The cars tow bar didn't work, well it really didn't work it ripped the bumper off the car. Such a bad start, this has never happened. Oh and after we stayed in a hotel that night we woke up to see that the car had a flat tire. It was unreal. But, now we're in Simi and safe as houses. Hanging out with family, shopping, feasting, gossiping and all the good stuff. Warm, sunny So Cal....... Above is our farewell to Arcata, a hard place to leave.

Craziness

2007-01-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

Well friends, things are getting crazy round here. We are getting to the final stages of taking our little nest apart and making ready for our exodus. So...... I may not be around much soon. But.... I will be keeping a travel photo journal. I decided to keep it here on the blog instead of Sqrl & Bee, it's just easier to up load and all. So.... Check in to see the adventures of Sqrl & Bee transcontinental, it should be fun.

~ And yes, there will still be a green collage coming, soon one day and then blue and than purple, I promise.

Bird

2007-01-16T16:06:00.000-08:00

Look at this guy, he was such a ham this morning. Puffing his little chest out and fluffing his wings. I was out snapping pictures of a snowy egret that was visiting the field behind our home and this little guy kept chirping at me, he wanted his picture taken. I just love our sparrows, I'm going to miss them so much. Especially when they would bath, they would get so excited and dance around in their little bowl and sing. Sweet little things.....

Nesties

2007-01-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

Finally some nesties.... These are so fun to make and I love using up my fabric scraps. I'm still deciding on what (if anything) to put it the nests. I made a ton of paper mache birds mostly for the wreathes and I have a lot left over. I was thinking though, that birds usually make nest that just fit their itty bitty bottoms with not much room to spare. These nest would be like mansions for my birds. So then I was thinking of just putting eggs in the nest, kind of like Momma just stepped out to get dinner. The Bee is dabbling in a little needle felting, which is very cool. So I was thinking of may be making some feltie eggs may be for the nests. I have some wool that a friend sent me dark chocolate brown and a oat color, I could do some spotted eggs may be.

Well..... We'll have to wait to show off these pictures because Blogger is not cooperating.

Mellow Yellow?

2007-01-03T19:15:00.000-08:00

Is Yellow mellow? I don't know if mellow is the word that comes to mind when I think of yellow. I think of yellow as an intellectual color, a thinking color, an industrial color...... Well, last Friday we had yourselves a yellowie kind a day in Eureka. A perfect kind of day for yellow since the sun had temporary won the forever on going battle with the clouds. Today would be more of a grey/white day. Anyway, yellow turned out to be harder to find than red and orange and it was very often found with black....

Coming soon...... Green.

It's an Army of Sqrl's

2007-01-01T17:46:00.000-08:00

What more could a girl ask for but her very own patterns. I just say what creature I want and proof, magic it's 3D. Ah, if it were really that simple....... As you can see 10 sqrl's later we finally have one that works. I can take no credit for this. I certainly don't have the patience or focus to do this. This is the work of the Bee. He has the amazing ability to take a concept, a drawing in a sketchbook and build it into a 3D model. Sounds simple but it is so not. I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am for this help and how excited, because the sqrl is just the beginning.

Who's that?

2006-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

It's Rupert the robot.......

Oh yes, and don't forget Ratso (see the little mousie nose sticking up there), the mouse that lives in The Bee's pocket.

2006-12-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

Well.. I hope all who celebrate had a great holiday. We don't celebrate here in our house but we did go for "drinks and goodies" at a friends house on Christmas eve and that was real nice. Christmas day was quiet and relaxing. I started working on a new project and am so very excited about it. You see, we have this tree in the little courtyard in front of our apt. Not sure but it's some kind of weepy birch kind of tree. When it's windy it sheds it's branches and it's branches make the best wreaths. Well, it was so windy this week I thought we were going to blow away and I couldn't help getting excited about the all the downed branches that I would find in the morning. Now, I know I shouldn't be making anything right now with the amount of junk I already have to move across the country but you see I just can't help myself. I can't just let those beautiful branches lie. And I'll be seeing so many wonderful people in the beginning of our trip so now I'll have presents to give. I like giving presents, even if it's just an excuse to make things... Shh, don't tell..... Since I'm just totally digging on the whole paper mache' thing, I've decided to make two little birds for each wreath and nuzzle them into the branches. This tree makes a very nesty looking wreath, perfect for birds. This got me thinking nesty so now I'm working on making little nests. Not as easy as you'd think. For little tiny animals with little teeny bird brains and no thumbs or even hands for that matter, it's pretty impressive this nest making. It definitely took this big brained animal with poseable thumbs quite a while to figure out how to build a nest. Well... I've got one done and working on another I want to put a smaller bird and some eggs in each nest. They are so darn cute I'll have pictures eventually. Now I just have to find a similar tree on the east coast..... Above are some the prints that came on of our silk screening fun last week. I think I'm quite happy.

Happy Winter Holidays!

2006-12-21T09:23:00.001-08:00

An Orangie Day

2006-12-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

Well, I had an Orangie kind a day on Saturday. This is a fun little thing to do. It will nicely ingrain this little town into my brain too since we'll be leaving here real soon. It's a funny thing, orange is often found with blue. Blue is oranges complementry color on the color wheel. May be people are just naturally drawn to the two colors together. They do look good together, well most complementry colors look great together red/green, purple/yellow... Well I'm not a big fan of the whole purple/yellow thing. I think purple just not my color. Well anyway the world is full of orangie things and their so often found with the blue things, check it out for yourself.

A Musical Tribute to Battlestar Galactica

2006-12-18T11:05:00.000-08:00

Action Stations, Action Stations!!

By Andrew Frueh, the Bee

REDwood

2006-12-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

Well... I spent most of my time this weekend messing around with silk screening and not paying much attention to SPC. So alas I don't have a great self portrait to show today. But, this one is at least appropriate since it's one of my new silk screens. Oh also perfect 'cause I do live in Redwood country, at least for now. I hate that I'm only posting once a week. Arrrr..... This weather with it's gloomy days. But this weekend we had our first sunny day and about a week and a half so I snapped all the pictures I could think of. I'll have something to show and tell this week, at least..... Yeah! for sunny today also!!!!

A RED Saturday Morning

2006-12-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

I am in there, just hard to see. If you look closely you'll see... But even without my little shaddow hidden somewhere in there this collage really is me. A day in the life of me, or at a Saturday.

Well... This week for SPC I decided to do a collage. This is my pretty typical Saturday morning. Food shopping at the Co-op, dropping off books at the used bookstore, stopping in at the best smelling fabric store in town (yes not only do I just love this store and the people who work there I also love the smell, weird?), next was the herb shop to pick up the best chili powder there is. Here we met (randomly) a person his name was Isaak. A new person of like mind and ideas. Yes there's proof that you people are out there, just hard to find. Oh and to the hardware store and everything in between. This was all done on foot, yes I love that.... One of the main reasons we are moving to the city as apposed to the suburbs. Because, well can you walk to anything in the suburbs?? I love, love, love doing all my errands on foot, oh I said that already..... Well anyway, this little color collage has inspired an idea in my little ole brain. I think, I'm going to do one for every color for the next couple weeks, we'll see if I lose interest by the time I get to violet. But I do love color. As a child I was particularly obsessed with color and rainbows (I'm starting to see a pattern here. Let's see, for all my two readers out there how many times can you count the word obsessed?? Humm, what does this say about me?)I used to keep all my crayon shavings in a pencil box, because I love all the colors, my imaginary friends (yes I had them and I'm proud of it) were all named after colors and surprisingly Pinky was my best friend. For those of you who know me well enough, know that I'm just now excepting small amounts of pink into my life. Hey, I just thought of something...... May be I was traumatized because Pinky and the gang (she was, of course the leader) just got up and left one day, no good bye, no nothing. May be I internalized it. I don't remember them leaving, they were just gone. May be I can't remember because it was too traumatic. Ok anyway, I love color and I going do an Orange Saturday next weekend and then yellow after that and so on. It's kind of fun, when you go around looking for a color it starts to stand out and present itself. Then you see it everywhere. Good therapy for the color obsessed. Oops there it is again.

More Show & Tell

2006-12-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

They look very mischievous in this picture.

Well Stephanie over at Little Birds posted her pattern for her little stuffed trees a couple of weeks ago I was quite excited because I really like her simple trees. I'm not a pattern person, they make my eyes go cross and I usually get frustrated from the beginning. Always better off figuring it out on my own. But her pattern was quite simple, well it's quite a simple tree. So I gave it a try. Much of my fabric is packed, so I didn't really have anything that felt right for a tree and hey, do I ever follow the directions on the side of the box.... No, almost never not I follow a recipe without making at least one small change. It's in my nature to make my own rules, patterns, recipes whatever you want to call it. Anyway, my trees turned into tree angels. Hey my Mom always taught us to think outside box..er..patteren. So these ones are mine and I made a couple for my Mom since she's got a new house this year and a new house calls for a couple new Christmas decorations, don't ya agree?

And do I even need to say anything about this little guy.... He now has friends, a giraffe and well, I can't seem to decide whether he's an alligator and a crocodile.

2006-12-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

Got all kinds of things to show and tell today.... First I found two very different artists today that just rocked my world and I have to share.

Nick Brandt... Now we've all seem wildlife photography and lots pictures of the Serengeti. But these, I don't know are just so different. There's magic in these pictures. I just stared at them all morning.

Kurt Halsey Frederiksen.... I love his illustrations. Something about the simplicity of the faces and the use of color. I like the little sayings also. I wanted to buy a print from him but it looks like he's only currently selling christmas cards and post cards. I'm emailing to find out if I can get a print. The print above is not the one I would have choosen to show but since it's a flash movie I was limited by what I could use. So... Look around in his work, it's so good.

Ok Next is my own stuff..... I'm currently obsessed, it seems with circles. As you can see a little of if below with my Bee Thankful card and my red SPC for this week. It all started with this mobile. This idea has been haunting me forever, it feels like anyway. I saw something months ago in salon window that was something similar and couldn't get it out of my mind. I thought about it and thought about it ,always coming up with some complicated way of making it. I failing uttering twice in making it and eventually put it aside for some other time. But..... It still haunted me..... This is a good example for the importance of stepping back and looking what your doing. My Mother-in-law taught me that. I come from a hard working family and when I started painting with Carole (MIL) she would have us break after only working five hours and say it's time to quit for the day. This felt so wrong to me, I didn't work enough, we'll never get this done.... Well, her theory is that your work will suffer if you get lost in it. You must step back or step away from it for a while to get a new prospective. Over time I could see the logic in her theory and she was so right on. So back to the mobile. It eventually dawned on me the perfect way to build this mobile. And it was so incredibly simple that I can't believe the ridiculousness of my past attempts. Just paper, string and starch paste (or glue). No wires, no paper mache. And I just LOVE this mobile.... Love, love, love. It is so graceful and simple and organic, very organic it reminds of bubbles. I have so many more ideas.... The best part is that I used all straps of paper to make it, straps leftover from Andrew's handmade poetry books. I kept the straps not knowing what I'd do with them and not knowing they had the ultimate destiny of becoming a great mobile. Now this picture above does it no justice, there is almost never any good light now days around here with the sun setting early and tons of rainy, cloudy, foggy days. But I had to show it off, I'm just it love. It's about 6 feet tall. I've made two others that are much shorter only about three tall. One is made with different colored solid origami paper and the other is with printed origami paper. Both are quite beautiful but not as graceful as this white one. Well... Can ya tell I'm excited??

SPC Red - Week One

2006-12-04T19:06:00.000-08:00

Phew.... I made it, it's due tomorrow. I didn't do any for November. Mostly because I couldn't connect with the theme. The theme was Glamor and now that I think back I could have come up with something, I'm sure. I'm just not a very glamorous person in the traditional kind a glamorous. Not to mention it's hard enough for me to get it together to do a self portrait every week. The weeks are going by so incredibly fast right now. I swear, one day it's Monday and the next day is Friday and I have no idea what happened in between. This is what happens when you live in a waiting void. It's starting to make my head spin all the packing, shipping, coordinating, thinking, figuring and waiting. Well this month's SPC is Red..... Good choice, I think. I like the color red a lot, it's rich and warm and womb like. This week, for me was something of a quicky. I just realized yesterday that the months changed and there would be a new SPC. So I had a day to prepare and figure out what to do.... No real meaning in it, just red.

New Things

2006-11-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-22T14:29:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

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..........

2006-11-17T08:22:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Happy Samhain!!!!!

2006-10-31T20:43:00.000-08:00

Oh a wonderful holiday full of spirits and new beginnings. Tonight is the night to welcome all those who have left the world as we know it. Welcome them and feast with them, ask them to guide you for the rest of the year and keep you on your path. For they can see more and further than you. Tomorrow begins the decend into the cold days of winter, time to go in, quiet time, time for reflection.

We had our little feast tonight - pumpkin raviolis and onion gravy, some roasted chestnuts (Yum!) and the Bee's best cookie recipe yet - cocoa nib cookies. That's raw cocoa beans all chopped up, before it's made into chocolate. They're very bitter when eaten alone but when mixed with right ingredients they're delicious. I promise, I will post these recipes... One day......

Studio Sketch

2006-10-30T18:41:00.000-08:00

click to see details

I found this today in the Bee's sketchbook. I'm not sure if I've ever seen before now, if I did I didn't pay much attention... Today it really struck me. I love it, I love having a sketch of my current studio situation, stuffed into the corner of our living/bedroom. This is all about to change in the next three months. All slowly getting packed away, shipped and eventually arriving in it's next home. Hummm... I wonder what that will be like, what will it look like, how will it smell? I think about this almost all the time. I'm forever dreaming about what my new home willl be like. Anyway this sketch is very, very much like the real thing. He's pretty talented, huh? Try convincing him that.......

And Other Skirt

2006-10-29T13:33:00.000-08:00

This one was the first one I made. So... There are a lot mistakes. With this one, because I was learning, I did it the "traditional "way. All the patterns I found used the same method - over lapping the crotch. After making this skirt though I discovered my own way of doing it and I think it's better. So if ya look closely you'll see..... Oh and the red froggy patch there on the crotch area, that was actually a hole in the pants, originally. Thankfully I had the foresight to use the beat-up pants for the first skirt.

real quick

2006-10-29T13:16:00.000-08:00

I'm posting real quick before I settle into making pumpkin raviolis. This is a house special here and only happens this time of the year. We slaughtered one pumpkin yesterday, made way too much pumpkin soup and the rest is for ravies. This is a vegan dish but it's a major hit with anyone, meat eater or not. I usually make it with a butter, sage, mushroom sauce but this year Andrew's making his yummy onion gravy that's out of this world and substituting the water for pumpkin juice. Yeah baby...... I'm happy to say we're sharing this yummy festive meal with our pals Dorie and Kevin.

I also wanted to introduce Miss Molly. She doesn't have a face yet.. hum... Well I'm kind a scared of making faces. I don't know, I always worry at this point. I'm not very goood at it. My softies don't usually tell me their names until after I make their face but not Miss Molly. She's got a ton of character. She's my little Humboldt hippy with orangie rainbow dreadlocks, made from old wool socks that I barely got a chance to wear before they felted. Her shirt and pants are made for two of my old favorite shirts. Gotta love that recycling!

Happy Pumpkin Ravies to everyone!!!!

Another Skirt

2006-10-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

Front

back

This one's my favorite. I got a compliment on it this weekend, at the farmer's market. She said it was 'sick'. I thought that sounded good. Anyways I love these little birds, they're going to be the subject of a new little animated movie that were making called City Birds. It'll be while before it's finished but it's in the works, along with a thousand other things. Sigh...... This shirt is made from a pair of corduroys that never fit Andrew and since somehow we wear the same size pants, they don't fit me either. But it works as a skirt, just a little big. And yup, that's leg warmers I'm wearing, love my leg warmers!

Before & After

2006-10-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

Before

after - see the zipper

My new found love is altering clothing... I'm going crazy with it, anything that doesn't fit just right, watch out!! You see, I have some clothes that I love and have had for years and I love them for there fabric but there too big. From the days when I wore all my clothes too big. So.... I'm taking the 'knife' to 'em. It's a little scarey at first, there's always a little hush just before I make the first cut because there's no turning back after that. I always kind a hold my breath and think wait, do I really know what I'm doing. Most of the time the answer is no, but it's a hell of a lot better than just donating that favorite shirt I've had for years. Fortunately so far, my 'winging it' has been working. You know, this means endless possiblities.

This Sqrl's got new shoes!

2006-10-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's right brand new shoes and girly ones at that and even two pairs, I splurged. I haven't had girly shoes since I was a kid, not a real girly kind a girl, I guess. Makes wearing a skirt kind of interesting. Anyway, these shoes are totally vegan, this is an experiment with alternative shoe material. I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about leather shoes. We're not vegan but we don't buy leather unless by accident. But (good) leather shoes seem to last longer and that's the thing - buy less leather shoes because they last longer or shoes made from alternative materials like canvas or polyurethane that don't last as long so therefore you must buy more, which means more are produced and therefore defeating the purpose. For us it's all about the smallest foot print. Leather is not so good because the treatment and over production of cows. I'm not too sure about the alternative materials, that really depends on the company and how responsible they are. That's most important. What I need to find is leather that comes from happily raised cows, I guess. And of course the processing of leather also needs to be responsible, and of course no sweat shops. And we wonder why I don't buy shoes often.
These shoes though are made in Spain, it's a Brittish company - Vegetarian Shoe Company.
I think I made a pretty good choice, but still not sure about the leather issue. Hummm.........

Walkin'

2006-10-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

Andrew's first attempt at hand-animating. Taken from Edward Muybridge.

BioShield

2006-10-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, so in my last post I ment to talk about the kind of pigments I was using to make my paint. I got distracted in the middle of posting last night and totally forgot, darn it. All our pigments are BioShield pigments, this is a great company to know about.
In the beginning of our eternal quest to find responsible companies, we were searching for a way to make paints that did the least harm to the planet. We learned about making our own linseed oil by buying organic flax oil and oxidzing it , it a very time consumming ordeal and quite expensive. But it makes beautiful paint and worth it, especially good for the conscious. We also learned that you don't need turp to clean your brushes, just some clean oil and time. This is also better for your bushes, they last longer because the oil act as conditioner, good bushes are actually made of hair, ya know. So than we needed pigments. Anyone knows that good pigments are toxic and many of them as horrible to the Earth because of mining and processing. Well, we did our homework and found BioShield. They sell pigments, paints, stains and cleaners primarily from naturally-derived raw materials. We took it a step farther and only bought the pigments that were kiln fired and all made from magensium and alluminum. This means that they are essentially neutral, unlike the usual mineral used to make these colors like cobalt and cadmium that are very toxic to breathe and toxic to the planet. Please, check it out, this is a grat company.

Studio

2006-10-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

A bird close up

Here I am in my wee studio. I'm about to mix up some paints, my least favorite job, I wouldn't make a good chemist. See those birds there, that's what I'm mixing the paint for. These fancy birds will eventually become a mobile, a birthday gift for my Mother-in-law. It's a belated gift of course, always belated. I have to keep my reputation, ya know. The studio is going on a field trip tomorrow - my work. I always have some project there, sewing or graphic but I've never taken it as far as being paints and paraphernalia. You see, currently I have no online access at work... Can I say AAAHHHHHHAAAHHHHAAAHHH!!!!!? And I'm sure it will probably take them years to figure out how to fix the problem. So I must spend my evenings blogging, emailing and catching up, I rather do all this work when I've got time to kill. So instead I'm crafting anything I can at work, that is, whatever I can manage to schlep with me. Filling my time, because I cannot just sit there a stair at the wall, right?

Self Portrait Challenge - Imperfections

2006-10-17T20:38:00.000-07:00

I'm so bummed I miss last weeks SPC. The weather was icky all week so I kept putting it off waiting for better light. And than it was too late. So I'm doing it early this week. The sun finally broke through so I took these in the last rays of light this evening hense the washed out look, which I kind a like.
So anyway this one all about my hair. Anyone knows me would say "WHAT!! Your hair is beautiful, how could say it's an imperfection". This is because everyone loves my hair and I'm being narcissistic here. My Grandmom would always say "people would pay good money to have your hair." I swear it's the only thing people rememeber me by, my only redeemable quality.
I was born with the usual baby curls that eventually turned straight. I had straight hair until I was about 11 when I hit puberty. I had very short hair and was trying to grow it out. I remember telling my Mom when I hair grows out I want a perm. Well... We went to salon asking for a perm and once my hair was washed and waiting to be done the hair dresser looked at me like I was crazy and I remember her saying' Oh honey you don't need a perm, you do need to stop brushing your hair and look you have perfectly curly hair."
That was it, the next 10 years of my life and my Mom's was hell. I hated my hair I mean really hated it. I tried every product, tried straighting perms. Anything to control my hair, it was (still is) thick and frizzy and curly and all I wanted is what everyone else had - easy straight hair. I drove my poor Mother insane. When we first did the straighting perm she would spend hours blow drying my hair straight, she was good to me....
Well, I've learned to handle this rats nest, as my Mom loves to call it. No more products anymore, no more straightening perms. Just natural oils, a mix very lusious oils acutally, that I call Greek hair oil. I originally got the mix in Greece on Santorini from this amazing man who owns a pharmacy there and distills his own essential oils and he made this mixture especially for my hair, he went to him home and made it himself. It was very special I'll never forget it. Anyway it's still not easy though, every other night I apply jojba oil to my scalp so when I wash my hair the next morning it will run through my hair and protect it from the soap. I can only use the super fatty soap that we make to wash it, no conditioner, apple cider vinegar treatment once and week. You see, it still rules my world. When it's a bad mood, so am I. It is very finicky.

But it is me, without it would be a much different person, when my hairs up and put away I feel different, not quite all the way me. It's kind of like what they say about a mans beard and how it's like a mask, well that's my hair, it's so much a part of my character.

I have been making stuff

2006-10-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

I swear, I have..... For some reason I'm just not taking pictures of all the things I've working on over the last like months. Three quilts and I think three skirts and a bunch of other things later here I am. Anyway here is one of the shirts.. It's made from two pairs of the Bee's old corduroys. I had a whole stack of them waiting to be made into another corduroy quilt but one day I got an idea into my head and than procceeded to turn all those old corduroys into skirts , yes new skirts for me!! You know, how you turn an old pair of jeans into a skirt, the patterns are everywhere, well that all I did. One pair is different, I'll have to show it off 'cause it's my favorite. But this one is my least fav. out of them all, just because being that it is old corduroy, you can really tell with this skirt. But hey people would probably pay for such a thing in a store, so what am I complaining out... I do love the little applique owls though, I think they're just darling. I decided too that if the skirt does fall apart I can always remove the owls and use on something else, just incase, right?

Also I have finally joined a swap, yea!! The hostess with the mostess is Miss Hoping for Happy Accidents..... This is a new blog that been checking into, another creative kindred spirit. It is a beautiful useful object swap. Perfect for me since I love useful things. So much so that ,back when I was still in LA, I spent almost every evening in a ceramic studio and I was always struggling with making just art there was a huge part of me that needed to make eveything useful. I'm just too darn practical for my own use.

Adventures in a Pumpkin Patch!

2006-10-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

I haven't done this in so long.... And I have no idea why, 'cause I love it... What is it about a pumpkin?? I love Pumpkins!!!!! They're so orange and cheery and smooth and round and each one has it's own character, it's own personality. So on the way home from work on Friday I saw sign that said pumpkin patch this way -->. So I said to the boy well if the weathers nice we're rifing our bikes to the pumpkin patch and getting ourselves a pumpkin or two... Well I was figuring the weather would be it's usual self and be gloomy, cold and windy especially it the farms where it's extra blustery... You see, if you say out loud I want to do this today if it's sunny or I'm going to do laundry today - meaning hang it on the line... Than sun goes away, it's a very spiteful sun around here, or am I just a superstitious Sqrl? Anyway, we had a delightful time in our pumpkin patch as you can see. We will be sacrificing one of them, for a feast on Samhain (Halloween).
Happy Autumn!

SPC - Imperfections

2006-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

My tummy..... All my life I have struggled with this part of my body. It is one of the few things I hide. I've been hinding it so long that it's natural. My Mom used to always say, as I was crying over it, that one day I'd grow taller and lose my stomach... Well I believe I haven't grown an inch since 6th grade so there went that theory. It's only lately that I'm starting to except my body for what it is. I'm actually starting the love my self a lot more and I blame most of that on the Bee, by showing me that beauty is not just in super skinny. There was time when voluptuous women were considered beautiful. They were the subject of art. They were the ones being painted.

I wish that voluptuous could be beautiful again.

SPC

photo enhancing

2006-10-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

Before

After - I really like this one, I was really able to punch up the color.

Before

After - way too painted
This is a new thing that I'm learning. I'm really going for the luminous landscape look. But I need the right picture to start. So as I was looking for the right picture in our photo library of something like 8,000 pictures I found Brooke's wedding pictures. They good but lacking... They were taking with our old camera so much room for adjusting. And it was so crazy and busy you gotta get the picutres when ya can, specially since both of us were in the party.

Contests

2006-10-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

Design contests are a new thing for me... I discovered this concept when I stumbled across Design 21 They were doing a logo competition at the time and I had found it early enough to come up with something and enter. I did enter, but stupidly (long story, I was very mad at myself, I'm over it now) entered late, so I know I won't win. Still though, can't wait to see what they pick as the winner - winner gets $5,000 and they use their logo for the company. I have to say honestly I was more excited about them using my logo than the money, that was just and added bonus. So now I'm on to a new one for Fossil - you know the watch company, it seems they make clothing now too. They go for a vintage look, I had SO many ideas. That was probably the hardest part, picking which idea to go with. So I went for the dirty white t-shrits, rolled up blue jeans, greasy hand, tools and engines and of course a vintage tattoo. Here's a taste of what I'm entering. Oh it's for a tin design and deadlines in two days.

SPC - goods friends

2006-09-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

kind of a silly picture of Brooke and I...

I have unusal friends.... Not unusal like they're wierd but like non two are similar. It's good... I wonder though what it would be like to have them all in the same room.. Humm.... It would certainly be interesting.... Brooke is one of those friends. We met because we suddenly became sister-in-laws, at the time she wasn't offically married to Andrew's brother but it was pretty obviously it was going to happen. Brooke and I have almost absolutely nothing in common. We don't agree on anything political, and have the same religious veiws, live completely different lifestyles. But you put us in the same room with eachother and we gravite to eachother like two magnets. And sort of forget everyone else in the room, although we're getting better at not doing that. It's a 2 hour minimum for a our phone conversations. It's a strange thing that such different people can get along so well... Well suppose that's the moral of that story - give everyone a chance regardless of your differences you never know what you'll find in between those differences...

Sqrl's List

2006-09-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've been finding some really great stuff lately.
NOTCOT.ORG - I love this site there's always new stuff... A really great resource for random websites.
Inside A Black Apple - I love this girls style, love her dolls, love her paintings, it's all good!
Bird in Hand - Another lady whos got style.

this is good

2006-09-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Andrew sent this to me. It's from NPR
We Never Go Away: by Dennis Downey

I believe in genes and a forward flow of time and in all things visible and invisible.

Smaller than a light microscope sees,
a gene is a genie (is a ghost)
is one-half of each of us given by one-half of each parent.

Each of us comes from two parents
each of whom came from two parents
each of whom came from two parents
in an endless criss-cross of streams of time and persons going backwards

And each of us is as in our own incarnation
a soul inside a body
for some reason

a fire
a flame
a soul

what we desire
(that we desire)

Lighter than flesh, the soul is the glow of us.
The soul is the particular glow that the genes make when they make.
It's the soul that stands the body up and gets it moving forward.
Every body's soul is on a journey.

I believe we live in a solar system
that we go around a sun, the Sun
and that the Sun is a giant ball of flame.

I believe that most of the energy for everything on Earth
comes from the Sun except
for the energies of the Earth itself
because the Earth itself is also on fire.

Inside.
In the center.
At its core.
We know this from volcanoes.
That there is fire going on inside of the Earth.

We stand on an earth that is
a boiling ball of iron
on fire in space
spinning at its core as it circles a source of sunshine.

And each generation is short. A mutation.

first we're a child
then an adult
then a parent in turn to a child
then an old person
(hopefully)

with change, constant change all around us all ways through out
who wears what who's in charge what music sounds good

I believe that a book is a box.
Because a book carries something from some one person to another
And because it is used (and can be used) to carry ideas across time.
Which is how ideas build up.

And each of us is not only our own lives unwinding forward
but also a part of (and in service to)
the larger life of the tribe
which in turn is in service to the larger life of the species
which in turn is in service to a larger life source
lost in a bath of stars that is a galaxy
scattered in the hugeness of the universe.

We are not lost when we die.
We never go away.
Why would we go away?
When we're gone, we come back.

too much time in between

2006-09-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

Two SPC's in a row with nothing in between, not good.. I guess I've been busy... Bad excuse.. I have been busy and with no pictures to show for it. What have been doing this whole time?? Well besides last weekend when I felt drugged, it was so wierd I had absolutely no motivation to do anything, very unlike me. At first I was starting to freak out a little - gotta get stuff done repeating over and over in my head - a wee bit of a workaholic, are we?? But than decided it was cool and went with it... Did manage to some really good progress done with a paper mache' project I've been working on. Promis to show that off soon. Also been turning Andrew's old corduroy's into skirts and lovin' it and appliquing them, ooo and their turning out really good. Other than that lots of thinking and figuring about packing and moving and that goes with it (sigh). Oh and above is a pot holder one for me and one my Dad - Why did God make little green apples?? Why did she anyway??

SPC - My Big Brother

2006-09-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

This pictures a little fuzzy, but the one one really want to use is not on this computer so this will have to do.
This is my BIG brother. The gentle gaint. He is a man of few words but he sees everything. Very protective, very sensitive and very smart. Growing up we were like Tom and Jerry. Some episodes we were the best of friends and having a grand time but most we enemies at war, we weren't even permitted to sit next to eachother in a resturant. He was a mean old bully and I was the most annoying creature on Earth. Than we grew up and grew out of that stage much the delight of my parents. And here we are all grown up and married and living 3,000 miles away from eachother and missing eachother - if you would have told us that when we were younger, we would have never believed you. My brother is one of the few people who have a similar imagination as me, I guess because we both grew up in the same strange little world. I love him and wouldn't trade him for nothing....

SPC - Sqrl and Bee

2006-09-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much the gist of it..... He attackes, bites and I of course win in the end...

These were all taken with different ISOs but of course we took way too many pictures and I lost track of what was what.. Oh well next time. I make a bad scientist...

good lighting

2006-09-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

What good lighting and do for ya! There's no touch up on this photo just really good light and it helps to take like 1,000 pictures in one run that way you get a couple a really good ones... The wonders of digital photography. All you ever "waste" is time delating. I'm in love (gush, gush) with my new camera (she sings).. I wish I looked like this all the time.

A listy list

2006-09-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

I like reading other people's list so why not do my own I got this list here.

Favorite Season: Autumn
Favorite Color: all colors really but especially orange and blue
Favorite Time: dusk and just before - the light is beautiful and shadows are long
Favorite Food: potatoes!!!
Favorite Drink: I hardly ever drink anything but water and tea but I do love really pure juice like nectur juices
Favorite Ice Cream: don't eat much ice cream either but I still love mint chocolate
Favorite Place: New England in the fall or France
Favorite Sport: Hockey is fun to watch??
Favorite Actor: this is a hard one (thinking) I do like Johnny Depp and have probably seen all his movies, yeah I'd say he's my fav.
Favorite Actress: ooo nother hard one.. I like Audrey Tautou a lot

9 Currents
Current Feeling: a little bored, wasting time at work, having a creative itch
Current Drink: water
Current Time: 10:21am
Current Show on TV: nothing
Current Mobile used: don't have one
Current Windows Open: firefox, sqrl blog, and notepad
Current Underwear: don't wear it unless I have to.
Current Clothes: black chucks, orange socks, tanish/brownish fitted corduroy button up top with little flowers and a white tank top under it and jeans
Current Thought: I really need to stop wasting time and get working of course not on work work but on some digital stuff, who works at work? Not I.

8 Firsts
First Nickname: Sqrl, Nifi, Melly, and Lissy
First Kiss: 7th grade first "boyfiend" Adraine, he was sooo cool
First Crush: May be it was Adriane??
First Best Friend: Sophia
First Vehicle I Drove: 87 grey toyota carola
First Job: a waitress for a couple of weeks, not fully trained and my Dad had to pull all mafia style on the guy to get my last paycheck..
First Pet: Misty my brothers cat I used to dress her up.
7 Lasts
Last Drink: alcohol you mean, hummm last weekend Dories a beer and a bad beer.
Last Kiss: at about 7:15am at my door step
Last Meal: oatmeal breakfast
Last Web Site Visited: kellyraeroberts.blogspot.com - where I got this list idea
Last Film Watched: we've been renting tv series - so I'll say the last season of Arrested Development
Last Phone Call: Megan
Last TV show Watched: Arrested Development

6 Have You Evers
Have You Ever Broken the Law: of course
Have You Ever Been Drunk: yes
Have You Ever Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: yes, I'm sure in Mexico long ago.
Have You Ever Been in the Middle/Close to Gunfire: I lived in L.A. so I'm sure
Have You Ever Broken Anyone's Heart: May be unknowingly

5 Things
Things You Can Hear Right Now: traffic and mind static
Things On Your Bed: pillows, lots.
Things You Ate Today: apple and oatmeal
Things You Can't Live Without: oh my.. let's see.. my husband.. I love my stuff and especially my craftin tools but if I had to I could certainly live without them, for I can create with anything..
Things You Do When You Are Bored: Am I ever really bored??? I find something to do.

4 Places You Have Been Today
home
work
car
bathroom

3 Things On Your Desk Right Now
pagers, yes lots and lots of pagers
computer
scetchbook

2 Choices
Black or White: I think black only because white and I don't get along well
Hot or Cold: I don't like Hot, cold is good because you can always add another blanket or sweater but I have say living in Humboldt you can certainly get tired of cold and damp all the time so I say.. Variation, a little of both.

1 Place You Want To Visit
Paris again

Farmers Market

2006-09-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

With our new camera.. Oh how I love this thing! These pictures came out so beautiful, I just love how rich and clear they are. With our old camera we could never get this close the subject, we now have a whole new world of freedom to discover and this is just with the stock lense imagine when we get a telephoto or a macro.. Oooo (rubbing hand together with sneery look) I can't wait..

SPC - Girlfriends

2006-09-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Heather, Me, Megan and Courtney

Now, this picture has already been posted here months back but SPC is asking for a self portrait with someone, someone of some meaning..... Well..... There is a whole lot of something between all the girls here in this picture. Some weird connection made many lifetimes ago. These are my sisters, girlfriends, kindred spirits, the little sisters. Soon I will be living near two of them and absolutely can't wait! I love these girls, don't know how I found them, I guess I'm just lucky.. Sounds cheesey but it's true.

Swappin'

2006-09-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'd always wanted to do a little swappin - that is, the exchange of items in the mail preferably from far, far away. Well I've just found the perfect way - Gimmie Your Stuff - A Cultural Exchange Blog... Sounds fun, huh??? I think so.
So I'm suppose to talk about who and what I'd like to swap... Well I don't really care about with whom specifically, anyone other than the US would be interesting. I would like to swap crafty things though. As fun as it would be to get local foods, I am a stritch vegetarian, this usually scares people off... So unless you are a veggie looking to swap yummy healthy local foods then I'm your gal.
So crafty it is.... Anything really - paper, fabric, its and bits. In exchange for the same... How's that sound??

Hey I just realized after commenting other people's blog that may be I should list what I can give..

I have lots of yarn to give
fabric
books - like used (in good shape, of course) novels
veggie foods - like wierd grains (quinoa, couscous), TVP or other healthy things you can only find in the granola crunching northern California
US magazines
Anything I've made - softies, recycled clothing etc.
and let me know what you are looking for, I may just not be thinking in that direction..

oh just thought of two more things, big duh!!
I make handmade soaps - completely natural, unscented and very rich made from coconut oil, palm oil and olive oil... This soap has some very loyal users.
Also I make skin creams made from organic oils like jojoba oil, wheat germ oil, avocado, grapeseed. It just depends on which combination I'm using at the time.. I don't sell these creams and soaps currently and I usually use clean recycled glass containers for them. I'm a recycling freak... Since I'm going to be moving soon across the counrty I should use up these oils for they could go bad along the way. So... I am certainly willing to exchange these yummy rich skin creams with some one.

Edited 5.24.07 :: If you want to contact me to swap please go to the newest post (by clicking on the main banner above) and leave a comment or email me at sqrljunk(at)sqrlbee(dot)com

Sqrl's List

2006-09-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of things I've come across lately....
Look at Me - This is very neat thing, definitely check it out..
Wol & Zo - a very talented lady.
Yarnstorm - Another very talented lady.

SPC - in darkness

2006-08-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait Challenge I'm back..... Yay, finally.

Oh and this is for Suzette

2006-08-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

You see.... There was a little tear in the package and well we couldn't help ourselves.

Some of the inhabitants of our garden

2006-08-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

An orb weaver

A Preying Mantis

a frog

I promised pictures... So here they are.....

Coming soon to a.........

2006-08-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

Picutures!!!!! Brought to you by my brand new camera... That's after I get over my fear of the darn thing. Aperture and 'film' speed and this button and that dial. One day I'll get it... This morning we were messing around with it before work and it really takes beautiful pictures, clear and bright. I feel like I've moved up in the world of photography here. Watch out world....... Before we make our exodus we're going to get a telephoto lense so we can take pictures of the beautiful land that makes up this country. Oh, we have finally decided on what direction we're going on this said exodus we're taking the southern route interstate 10 From Santa Moncia CA to Jacksonville FL, transcontinental baby!! We've done the the 70 all the way across and it is beautiful. We wanted to do the 80 but we are going to be traveling in January in the truck with all our stuff and car in tow. Not the safest roads to travel going through the Rockies in the winter. So we'll be making three sides of a square, sort a. Driving from here to LA, see family, hang out, pick up stuff, drop off stuff, ya know. Than hop on the 10 stand in traffic for half the day trying to get out of LA and than desert, desert, desert in CA and Arizona, New Mexico, than Texas forever and ever, Louisianna - never been to New Orleans, Mississippi, Florida staying in the Everglades for a while and than up the east coast - looking for a different route than I95 to NC to see my Brother than 8 hours later - PA our final destination (deep breath). And taking our sweet old time the whole way across.. That's the plan anyway... May be tomorrow picutres with my new camera.....
Oh am I just the most spoiledest girl in the world?(yes) I got two packaged yesterday. I got a big box of herbs and spices I ordered last week. We're talking BIG like over 10lb. I got to restock everything. Oh I'm happy girl...... I ordered it all from Mountain Rose Herbs. I cannot express how much I love this company. I've ordering from them for a couple of years now and we're talking great prices and really really high quality stuff. You can really trust this place and I'm crazy about what comapnies I'm loyal to...

The good news is......

2006-08-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

This is just a beautiful picture.

Ok this one has a little story.... This little sticker was part of a project of Andrew's. He was doing a propaganda project last year and this was one of the pieces. They were all made from recycle paper and glued with homemade starch paste and pasted all over, mainly on HSU's campus. There was a website where people would post about finding them and their thoughts. I just love the accidental composition of this picture.

Brooke and sister-in-law and good friend .I love this just because of the memories of that beautiful day.

that UPS says that our camera is in route to our house, meaning I'll be playing with my new camera as soon as I get home today. Yeah!!! But here are a couple of favorites anyway.

I love this one.......

2006-08-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

This one was taken about 2.5 years ago when Kamryn was only about 6 or so months old. I took a series of pictures this one morning of her just doing various things. Then her Dad came to hang out with us and that's where this picture came from. I just love this picture.

Well......

2006-08-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

Since I have no camera I'll just post some old pictures that I love....

two weeks ago..............

2006-08-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Let's see if blogger wiill cooperate and let me post some pictures. I finally remembered to get these pictures off Andrew computer. This is from the weekend we had Kelly, Brooke and the kids visiting. We had our usual pizza night, where everyone makes their own pizza. I didn't take these picts, since I am without a camera (she sighs).

It's been a while

2006-08-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well I have to say Blogger has been quite annoying lately, which makes blogging not so much fun. I can hardly upload pictures anymore and I can't understand why.... Also my camera took a crap and now I'm cameraless. This is a sad, sad state for me. I am quite sad without my camera. Especially this last weekend, we had Andrew's brother Kelly his wife and my good friend Brooke and their two kids up visiting from LA. It was a really nice weekend and I have to commit it all to memory since there was no camera to be had. Well, Brooke had her camera but it's just not the same. On a good note though it costs too much to get it fixed, so we're getting a new one especially since the truck's fixes didn't cost nearly what we thought it would. For the amount we paid for our current broken camera about 2.5 years ago we can get what we've always wanted - a real srl, a camera with removable lenses. Yes, yes, yes.... I love the techie age, where things just keep getting cheaper and cheaper. The one camera I looked at with just the stock lense that it comes with, you can get within 6 inches of the subject. Imagine having a macro lense. Yes, yes, yes. Can you tell I'm excited? But in the meantime not pictures for me.

Inspiration....

2006-07-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

... Comes in the smallest ways. Last night my Dad was telling me a story - he's the ebst story teller. His boss was asking him why something had happened - why was this____ broken. And since there was no logical reason for it being broken my Dad simply said "Well... Why did God make little green apples" and I lost it. I thought it was the best darn thing he ever said and than proceeded to spend this entire morning creating prints totally inspired by this little passing comment. And yes, that's my Dad and his very BIG attitude.

And since blogger sucks I'm only showing off one print...... Is anyone else out there having an intensely hard time uploding jpg's??

Self Portrait Tuesday!!

2006-07-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait as........ Vectorized. Since this is one of my newest obsessions, I figured I should do a self portrait. I think I have just figured out posting on Self Portrait Tuesday, I even got my handy dandy SPT button over there. So we'll see how it goes.... If only Blogger would cooperate, AHHHH!

2006-07-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

A poppy kind of weekend

2006-07-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

It was such a beautiful weekend. It was actually hot here. We made some huge changes round here. We cleaned house this weekend. I think believe the amount of junk you can aquire over just couple of years. We have done our first round of discard, there will be at least a couple more rounds before we move. When you your moving 3,000 miles away you only want to bring the essentials, moving is bad enough even when your moving around the corner. After all this I decided to paint a new painting on a very large canvas and I just hate it. So much so I can't stop thinking about going home and painting over it. I attemped an abstract kind of thing. You see, at the office the walls are so bare and dead and I have three huge canvases at home that are either not painted on yet or just need painting over. I thought I could just do something easy and abstract, nothing too invasive and hang them in the office. Well for so reason during the painting process I deviated from my original abstract design and was feeling very inspired by a digital piece I did early (above). Lets just say it just kept getting worse and worse. Oh and also I'm using a limited color palette because I wanted to use up all our old tube paints (cleaning out). So things we just getting muddier and muddier. It was horrible, I hate looking at it or even thinking about it and it's huge. AHHHHH!!! I feel like I wasted so much time.... Why did I change my mind right in the middle of the painting.... Bad idea! Now I have to fix it, darn it.

I see vectors when I close my eyes

2006-07-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

Megan

Heather

Me

Courtney

That may sound strange to anyone who doesn't play with graphic programs. Since one of it's definitions is - An organism, such as a mosquito or tick, that carries disease-causing microorganisms from one host to another. Than there is - A bacteriophage, plasmid, or other agent that transfers genetic material from one cell to another. And yet another - A force or influence. Boy, Vector has many meanings - A course or direction, as of an airplane. But this is the one I'm talking about - A one-dimensional array. I certainly am a dork. But what am I talking about? Above are what I have been making all week and lovin it. It's just that when I close my eyes, I see all the little vectors that it takes to make just one line of all the tons of lines it takes to make just one girl.. But look what you can get.

A new Blanket for a new Boy

2006-07-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

Walking home

There's a new baby in the family!
Andrew's brother and his wife just had a little boy (about a month ago) named Maxwell... pretty cute huh? I have been wanting to make this darn blanket since months before he was born. But it took a while to get started, I had to order the fabric since I was feeling so picky and then there were other projects that needed to be finished first. I'm happy to say that it's going out to them tomorrow. I'm getting good at this finishing thing.
The fields outside our home have been so beautiful lately - golden wheat and amber colors, so during our evening walk we decided it would make a good place to photograph the blanket..

Fun with Inkscape

2006-07-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

Our album cover

Super Sqrl and Her Sidekick Doctor Bunsen

2006-07-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

These will be pins one day.......

Nothing new (that's acutally interesting)

2006-07-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

Not a digital collage but an old collage I did by hand. I just recently came across it in an old folder. I just love the story it tells. I called - Midsummer Nights Dream - Of course..

Lots of new things at work though. Things that make my job 10 times easier, less stressful and even more boring. I can deal with the boring part now that I have my fancy dancy computer that I take to work. I'm discovering digital collages and re-discovering Gimp and it's wonderful tricks. I have been in Inkscape land for so long because that's where the web design magic happens, that I kind of forgot what Gimp can do. I'll show off eventually, but not yet. We're currently working on two sites - Humboldt Herbals and Gina's Holistic Nutrition. I love that so far everyone we've worked with have been so much like us - lifestyle, I mean. I am sure that will change though when we move away from Humboldt County.
If you've never been here, you should visit because there is no where on Earth like this place. The people, the land, the weather, the attitute and the beauty - as much as I complain about the seemingly endless fog, when the sun does grace us with his presence it is simply beautiful here and almost untouched. It never gets hot here (by the ocean, of course) and it never really gets that cold either, jsut damp. But if you visit at the right time of the year (which seems to change from year to year) you'll never forget it. Enough selling, the issue I have is that it's like void - even most cell phones don't work here. This void can be great thing if you're trying to run away from the rest of the world, than this is your place. But to grow and learn of the world, this is not the place. There are almost only one color (I personaly prefer all kinds of color)of people here and almost everyone is a least a particle green Earth lovin' hippy - this is not a bad thing but it's like 'preaching to the choir' here. I think we would be better off if we all spread out and covered more territory. We could reach more people, teach more people and open more minds than just just northern California. This is why we are leaving. I had already been thinking along these line when a friend and may be futrure family member - Jenny came up from LA to shoot a movie and stayed for about a month and got to know the area a little. She came for dinner one night and told us that she thinks we are wasted here. Our views, our beliefs and lifesytle are wasted here. There is no one for us the teach no change to be made. Well.... That set the ball rolling - thank you Jenny. And here we are planning our next move. Now since I moved to California all I ever wanted to do was move back to the east coast (northern) that is where I most resonate in this country, just never felt right on this coast. And since we know people in the Philly area that is where we are landing first. This is a little scarey because I left there a girl just married for two weeks and now returning with my own life and my not so very 'normal' views on life. Hummm..... This is quite a little stressful venture. First needing to convince Andrew that we weren't moving to the east coast just to be near my family - to him that is a big deal and I should want to go there for myself not for anyone else because I want to, not because someone else (Mom) needs me to. This was settled in my head but, he needed convincing alas though, I think only time will prove that. Than I have to continue to be my own person (of course) but I've only really done that here and with Andrew's family and my more recent friends so I'm wondering how that will be around my family and old close friends. It's the unknown that we usually wonder (worry) most about. This I know is the back of my head that everything will be just fine, I'm not moving 'in' with my parents and they're not the kind of people who smuther either. Just me worrying about the future. Then there's the little things - where exactly to live, will the truch make the trip, what the hell do we do with the truck when we get there, Jobs (the worst part) and stuff tons and tons of stuff that has grown over the years. I think I want to live in Manayunk/Roxborough area, I'm putting that out in the universe... That way may be someone out there is listening and will get us there. It's just outside the city, but still very city-like, old industrial area that is now very artsy and fun, but expensive. Keep your fingers crossed.

Happy 4th of July!!!!

2006-07-04T19:03:00.000-07:00

It's good to be free!

No red, white and blue here, don't really dig that color combination. But, sunflower are about as American as you can get.

Things I've been up to lately

2006-07-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

This is a little backpack made from old jeans for my Sister-in-law, Zuri. She is 8 (I think) and is the artist who drew this drawing of herself and the one down below of Kai (my and her nephew).

I've been going embroidery crazy lately. It's becoming one of my favorite things to do.

This pillow, which is filled with lavender and cotton and this bag is for my Mom for her birthday. The bag is made from an old favorite pair of corduroys. Gotta love recycling.

A bag for Brooke, Kai's Mom, my Sister-in-law ans very good friend.

I've been participating in the 'finish what you have' month. I think it was for a month - June. think your supposed to have a flicker account and show off your finished pieces but for some reason I don't really want a flicker account. Don't know, may be because everyone has one. But anyway it's such a darn good idea - this finish what you have concept - that I'm continuing to do it into July (and hopefully forever). I always have way too many projects going and always needing to finish something. I've actually been able to get caught up recently, I can't believe it but it's true. And here are some of the finished pieces. It feels so good.

On a Sad Note.......

2006-06-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

This little girl is no longer with us. She has gone off to Kitty heaven. This is Scratch aka 'Bip'. She was Andrew's childhood pal, a very wise and gentle kitty who knew just where it hurts and bo bo's were and just how to nurse them. She will be well miss and we're hoping that her little spirit comes back to us one day. Good bye Miss Bip.....

Us

2006-06-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

What feels like just a memory since this morning it's back to the usual cool and foggy. This is us being silly and enjoying our sunny Sunday evening under the "villa".

Harvest Day

2006-06-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

Bee's potatoes.... We've never grown potatoes before. Only had them this year beacause we had couple old potatoes and the Bee decided to put them in the ground and let them figure it out. Well... We were certainly surprised to pull out so many yummy little russets. We'll be doing that again, that's for sure...

I can't believe how beauttiful this garlic is, I didn't even peek on it once as it was growing so I was quite surprised. I pulled 17 big beautiful garilcs today.

And this is what became of it (some of it at least). Roasted potatoes with fresh sage and oregano, onions and garilc all harested this morning. On a bed of wilted spinach from the farmers market. We are truely rich.

We had a lovely day today, actually the whole weekend was grand. I decided it was time to tackle the back garden with the sage taking over the world, the oregano was getting up of hand again and the garlic decided it was time and fell over and the potatos started to look not so good. This could be because we haven't been watering lately. You get so used to all the rain we get 3/4's of the year that when it stops you don't think about it, I mean how could the Earth need anymore water with all the rain we got this year. But it does...
This was such an amazing weekend, what a little sun can do for the soul. This is one of those weekends where it feels ok to go back to work. I mean, of course I would rather not, but I feel refreshed.. It's good.

Oh My Butt hurts!!

2006-06-24T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Bee found a bone--->

Let me give you a little advise...... If you haven't ridden your bike in a couple of months, don't go and ride to the beach which is at least 2 miles (may be more) away. I think I bruised my butt. Today was an absolutely beautiful day, the sky was clear, the sun was bright and the air was warm.. Perfect. So we did our usual Saturday morning shopping at the farmers market and other errands, came home had a darn good lunch under the "villa" (a sheet of fabric we use as an awning) and than took a nap, one of my absolute favorite things to do is nap outside preferably in broken sun, under a good (Maple) tree. No tree here, so the "villa" does the job fine enough. Than off to the beach to collect drift wood pieces to build a mobile gift for Andrew's Dad. Oh My Gaud! the sand was SO hot! Holy moly! It got to a point when we first go there and were walking toward the water than I got this major panic feeling like a fight or flight response thing going on. It was SO hot my heart started beating fast and I quickly threw off my bag, jumped onto it and had a little freaked out moment.

---Skirt hiked up, scavaging for drift wood---

After that (as you can see in the pictures) it was shoes on for me for the duration of the adventure. But besides the panicy situation we had a very lovely day, got a vitamin D over dose and are now completely wiped out. This feeling always makes me think of when I was a kid, summer days and I would play outside all day until the sun set and than crash. Today was a good for the soul kind of day, a day where you don't get anything done but it doesn't matter.