Another postcard. Used a page from a Paper Source catalog, markers for the red edge, and candy stickers.

Another Xmas postcard I made.

Xmas altered postcards

This is for a swap I signed up for on Swap Bot. I used old cards, wrapping paper, and other bits to cover over existed postcards, creating a Xmas themed NEW postcard!

Finished Quilt Top!

Here it is! It's actually not just the top, but the whole sandwich, that's why you can see little gold shiny things all over the top--those are the safety pins holding it together with the batting and the backing. So someday soon I need to learn to actually "quilt" my quilt. It's kind of devious, you think you're making a quilt, then the class ends and they go, "oh no, this is just the piecing class, 'quilting' is a whole other class," and set of tools for your sewing machine, etc. But I'm very pleased with how this turned out. I love my bright color choices. Several people in the class said it would be good for a children's room. NO, it's MINE.

ATC's: more Hand-Drawn

The two themes here were "Artist's Choice" and "Lanscape." I did "Psychedelic Lady" for my choice, and since I don't do good landscapes, I cheated and made little tiny "Landscaping" maps for a path. This was a very fun swap to make cards for, I just hope I like the ones I get in return.

ATC's: more Hand-Drawn

The first one on top here is a cat theme, and it's my favorite: "Cat Spaceship." It's based on some drawings in a really fun children's book called The Truth About Cats. The second on top is, you guessed it, trees. I call mine "Modular Tree." The bottom one is on fish, and mine is called "Prehistoric Fish" based on some Walter Anderson artwork I saw in a show here at the Bell Museum.

ATC's: Hand-Drawn

These were for an ATC swap through Swap-Bot, and most of the themes were chosen so I had to come up with my own interpretations. "Professor Plum(p)" was for the theme "faces," and mine is based on an illustration from the classic version of the game Clue. The Self-Portrait was, well, you know, based on me. The bottom left one's theme was "Egypt" and I just looked up an image of Nefertiti on the internet. I call mine "Nefertiti's cousin" because mine is not as pretty as the image I saw. So I thought her cousin might be a little more manly-looking. She probably has a moustache. The dragon is from a super cute dragon I saw on Art.com that I can no longer find.

What Are you Thankful For?

Thanksgiving approaches. Life is a little chaotic right now. My Dad is in the hospital and far away and it's tough cuz I can't do anything from here. I'm going through a medical thing myself and having lots of headaches and other side effects. I finished my first quilt top and it's gorgeous and I love it. I got promoted at the library and am supposed to go to training on the Monday after Thanksgiving but my medical thing is going to interfere so I'll have to put it off another two weeks--I hope my boss won't think bad of me. Good, bad, happy, sad. All seems to be compressed right now into a very short time period, like a TV mini-series.

I like Thanksgiving and thinking about the things I'm thankful for. I'm thankful in particular for my Dad, who's mellowed in his retirement and is really fun and silly now. I love him when he tells me stories about his life, even when I've heard them before. I'm thankful that he's gone back to an early love--singing, and his life has been enriched immeasurably by his singing group. I'm thankful that I got to go to a concert of his this year and hear him solo on his favorite song: How Great Thou Art. I knew he was a good singer, but he brought tears to my eyes when he sang that, both because he was so good and because you could feel his enthusiasm. I'm thankful that he doesn't take things too seriously and can laugh at himself, which is always a good lesson for me. He's still my role model, which is really satisfying to realize sometimes.

I gotta go call the hospital and see how he's doing.

Dia de los Muertos Postcard exhibit winners

These are the winners from the exhibit. They got their postcards printed up for the MCBA store into sets with 2 of each winner. I bought a set and was kind of annoyed to discover that they didn't even acknowlege the artists by name on the back of the postcards. It just says something like "one of the postcards from the blah-blah-blah exhibit." Kind of lame. As far as the winners themselves, I liked them pretty well. I felt like my art compared well with everyone else who entered. I don't really like that one red winner, though. I just don't think it's that well done. It seems kind of slapped together. I really like the lizard, he's cool. I think that's my favorite. And the yarn one is really fun, I like that, too.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine is the one with the family group against a blue background.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine is the one with bowls of ice cream under the skulls.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine is the one with the slices of pie under the skulls. I really like the one to the left of mine.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine are the guitar guy and the one right below it with the skulls on a pastel background

Dia de los Muertos Postcard exhibit at MCBA

This is the exhibit I have cards in. Some really fun entries, I hope they do this again next year.

Nancy Drew deco

This is a page I created in a small deco for a group I'm in online. The theme is Nancy Drew with a Twist, and the twist is your interpretation based on one of the actual Nancy Drew book titles. So I chose one with "crossword" in the title--The Clue in the Crossword Cipher, #44-- because I have this great crossword puzzle rubber stamp. Then I found an image of a cipher (some coded text) and messed about with that, ripping it up and inking the edges to make them look burnt. And the photo is a real vintage photo of some mystery lady. I chose her because I thought she looked sort of worried and nervous, good for a mystery.

Not a Very Jolly Jester

J. got this cute jester outfit for Cocoa for Halloween but she was not amused. She did agree to wear the collar but the hat was out, no way.

My First Quilt Square!

Hooray! I'm so proud. I am taking a beginning sampler class at this wonderful store in Minneapolis called Glad Creations. The instructor is an absolute slave driver, but I'm really learning a lot and I would totally recommend her as a teacher. That little black toe in the bottom left corner is Cocoa helping me take the picture by putting her paw on the quilt. Such a good doggie.

I Drink the Tang, I Eat the Toast

Ugh. I have a cold/sinus infection/stomach issues. It started over a week ago and it's still hanging on like an annoying hanging-on thing. I haven't been sick like this for quite a while, where I just had to stay home and wait it out. Here I have this great job and I can't go to work! Suck. So I drink the Tang, I eat the toast. I sleep a lot. And cough. It's not that bad, it could be worse. I don't have a horribly stuffed-up head, thanks to this procedure some sensible doctor told me about a few years ago, nasal irrigation. It's basically like an enema for your nose. Hey, being sick isn't pretty! But seriously, this beats taking antibiotics, which will probably be the downfall of mankind.

Anyhoo, I've watched a lot of TV lately. I expected there would be some good stuff on for Halloween, but not so much. There was Exorcist II, which stars Richard Burton as a priest who gets brushed by the wings of the demon Bazoozoo. Uh, yeah. If you look it up, it's spelled Pazuzu, but it sounds like Bazoozoo. Couldn't they have come up with a demon name that inspired a little more fear, instead of visions of the fifth Teletubbie? Bazoozoo, yeah, he's the cyan-colored teletubbie who wanted to teach the kids irony, he didn't make the cut. And how sad is it to see the great Burton in this B-movie horror sequel? Oh, yeah, and James Earl Jones plays a great healer Kokumo (from the Beach Boys' song?--way down in kokomo?) somewhere in Africa in a mud hut wearing a locust mascot head, but also a city slicker entymologist who is developing The Good Locust, who calms all the other freakin' out locusts so they don't destroy crops and stuff. But wait, my favorite part of the movie was this funky hypnosis machine that Linda Blair's psychologist was using in her freaky all-glass clinic. It's like a strobe-light metronome that you control with your brain. And you can share your trance/vision/flashback with someone else, they just have to put the headgear on and synchronize their strobe-light metronome with yours. Very 70's, and very classic Hollywood, the whole hynpnosis thing being such a snap. And funny how Louise Fletcher plays a role very similar to the one she'll play only six years later in the much better movie Brainstorm: hard-working psychologist using freaky new scientific device to cure people.

Well, even though that movie kind of sucked, I obviously had fun watching it. Here's my shorter thoughts on Wolfen: Plodding. Gregory Hines plays a hip black dude coroner. Oh, yeah, you know he gets killed. He's too nice. But if you want to see what Edward James Almos looked like before he became the patriarch of Battlestar Galactica, here he is as a skinny young Indian. He even gets naked! Not for a love scene, but to mock the white fella cop who thinks he's shape-shifting into a wolf. It's pretty weird. The premise is interesting, about an ancient animal living on the fringes of society picking off society's throwaways. But then they use real wolves at the end and I'm just not buying it, they're just wolves, they're too small to rip people's heads off with a single swipe. I'm just too CSI-educated for that now.

Altered Propoganda

At a recent exhibit at MCBA, I saw some work from this brilliant artist, Micah Wright, who reimagines WWII propoganda posters. He evidently has a couple books full of the stuff, with great titles like If You're Not a Terrorist, Then Stop Asking Questions. His website has a bunch of his artwork as well, which he calls The Propoganda Remix Project. If you look at one of the slide shows of the posters, be sure not to miss his added commentary on the bottom of the window in small text.

Deco Pages: the backs

These are the backs of those same pages. On every back I have one thing that is the same: a yellow square with my personal chop stamped in red. My bro-in-law had the chop carved for me special with my name when he was in Singapore. It's very cool!

Deco Pages Swap

Here are just a few of the 41 pages I made for a deco swap, which is a 4x4" book that you bind together, one page from each of the participants (so there's 41 participants in this swap, it's a big one). The theme was "Alluring Asia" and I mostly used text from a book in Chinese and origami papers and collaged them together. I also used some rubber stamps with Asian motifs, and some Asian coins. I also have some Kung Fu guy wrapping paper form Archie McPhee's that worked well, he's in the lower right corner. My favorite is the one above that.

Look into the Light!

I have this as my desktop wallpaper now, which you can do, too, if you want. Click on the picture to get a bigger version of it, then right click on the photo, and choose "Set as Background." Fall is my favorite time of year, so colorful.

Quick! Look at the Leaves!

Before they all blow off, that is. Good thing we went looking the weekend we did, because most of the leaves are gone now. Here's me and Cocoa at Hyland, in front of a particularly colorful tree.

Wanna Go For A RIDE?

Cocoa in the car a couple weekends ago when we went to Hyland Lake Park Reserve to see the pretty fall colors before all the leaves blew off the trees. Doesn't she look happy? She loves to go for rides in the car, and she knows the word RIDE. When you ask her is she wants to go for a ride, she bounces up and down and runs around and tells you in high-pitched squeaky bark that YES, she would like to go for a ride, please. Then when we go out back to get to the garage, she runs around the yard and tells everyone listening that she is going for a RIDE! We keep a special seat belt on her in the car so she is a safe rider.

ATC: Monkey Fez with Rings

The monkey in a fez is a bead I got at Archie McPhee's, and the rings are pasta rings painted black. Archie's has a lot of good monkey items, the latest of which is Cap'n Danger, Stunt Monkey.

ATC: Zoik!

This is a fabric ATC I made for a new ATC group that meets at a quilting store. I made up the word Zoik to go with this fabric, I thought it sounded retro. Plus that's the best I could spell with the wooden letters I had left. :)

Get the Burglar, Fozzie!

Here's Fozz with one of his toys, a stuffed burglar. He likes to pull on it but really he doesn't damage it much. He just loves to throw it around and leap on it. So cute!!

Fozzie Bear and Woo

It's W. and her little silly doggie, Fozzie Bear! Isn't he cute? He's a labradoodle and just a funny little ball of energy and love. Very wiggly. He likes to leap on his toys.

Reading

I just finished reading a children's book called The City of Ember, and it was really good but now I have to rush to the library and get the next one in the series. I didn't know it was a series when I started reading it, and you know how when you're reading your mind can wander and you look at the cover of the book, or the back...and when I looked at the back, I discovered a blurb that said "The cliffhanger ending will leave readers clamoring for the next installment." Doh! And it was a cliffhanger. Annoying. Still, it was a good story. It's sort of a dystopia for kids. I've always loved those kinds of stories (Z for Zachariah was one of my favorites growing up), because they make you the reader realize everything in your world that you take for granted, like trees and a breeze of fresh air. Those are two things they don't have in this story. The other good thing is that the kids are the ones to solve problems, through their ingenuity.

Part II: Max Speed 8 mph

After about an hour and a half we get to the Mill City Museum on the other side of the river and take a break in the coffee shop there. Then for the second part of the tour, we got to use our yellow keys to start our Segways, which gave us the ability to go a maximum of 8 miles an hour!

It was a really fun thing to do. Learning how to ride the Segway made me feel like a kid again, learning to ride a bike or something. It's fun to be motoring along, but you do get tired of standing on the thing. If anyone comes to visit us I'd probably take them on this tour. It's a unique experience to ride this Jetsens technology machine, and you also get to ride through some really pretty historical parts of Minneapolis.

Single File please

Here's me and J. on the Stone Arch Bridge during a history stop. The guide was good on the machine but not so great with the history--she was describing some event and she said it was "hundreds--or was it thousands?--of years ago..." Yeah, that's kind of a big difference.

They made us go single file on the tour, which wasn't as fun as if we'd been allowed to zig zag all over the place, but then the other people out walking and biking probably would have been annoyed.

10 years of fun together

Look, it's me as a dork! Haha, I'm on a Segway. This is what we did for our 10-yr wedding anniversary in September. There's a local company, Human On a Stick, that will train you and let you ride one on a tour for a couple hours down by the Mississippi River. J. got discount tix through work. So here we are in a parking lot practicing before we start the tour.

Sock Monkey Couture

These lovelies were on display at the MN State Fair, and it was fun just to watch the expressions and exclamations from people as they walked up and saw the dresses. I think the flowing dress was hand knit and the evening gown with backpack was machine knit. Some people were saying it was too much work for a joke, but I thought it was great. The fact is, to me it's not a joke, but a statement that knitty can be goofy, it doesn't have to be boring (and plus, I would probably wear one of these if given the chance). And look how much joy it brought to the thousands of people who saw it! Most knitting magazines are so God-awful boring it's a crime. Personally I want to knit something fun. Knitty mag online is a good antidote to the Vogue snoozefest when you want fun patterns. I mean, look at this afghan--have you ever seen a knit blanky this gorgeous?? There's a little piece I want to make--a watchband--and the photo is particularly funny and has a dog in it, so they get big points for both humor and dogs. I have to go knit something now.

Mom's Marigold Shawl

Mom posing in her new shawl that I knit her. I started this back in April for Mother's Day but it took a wee bit longer than I expected. I think she likes it.

40 and 50 Birthday cake

Mom lighting the candles for our big party: Me 40 years old, K. 50, and Mom ?.

Chloe and her Puppies

Look at the tiny little tail! They all have white-tipped tails like their mommy.

2-day-old Beagle Puppy

Aw! Chloe, a beagle doggie I know in Seattle, had 5 puppies this week. W.'s hand is petting one baby. They are so tiny, like little sausages with feet. Chloe is watching W very closely, being the protective mommy.

State Fair Baby Pigs feeding

So tiny and wobbly and cute!

State Fair Baby Pig!

Here's a piggie from the new more spacious Miracle of Birth Center. Evidently they have sharp little toothies, just like puppies! Isn't he cute?

Largest Potato

Well, yes, it's big. Not very pretty, though. Looks like it's trying to get up. To escape. This reminds me, I'm hungry, I have to go now. More Fair pictures latuh.

Bead Lampshade

Holy crackers! This looks like a lot of work. I like the color combinations and the waves on the bottom, those are cool.

Bead Bib?

I don't know that this is really a wearable as they've displayed it (it looks like a bib) but it's really neato, all made of beads and a lovely landscape with forced perspective.

Dairy Princess posing

Here's one of the princesses posing. Notice she's wearing mittens? It's cold in there! Otherwise the butter would melt, duh.

Butter Head being carved

Here we are, back at the Fair, with the butter sculpture. This time I caught the sculptor and the model in action. J. says this one looks like she's picking her nose--"Here, you got some noogie on your nose, let me get that."

Weinermobile!

Isn't it cool?? This was at the MN State Fair and you could get a Weinie Whistle if you stood in front of a bunch of people and sang the Oscar Meyer Weiner song into a microphone. Um, no, I didn't do it. I wanted a whistle, but I wasn't really into the whole public humiliation thing. I don't do karoke either...

I Voted

Sheesh, I just went and voted, at 2 in the afternoon, and I was ballot #133. Puh-thetic. It was like a ghost town.

Butter Sculpture!

You've been waiting for it, I know, my photos from the Minnesota State Fair. Let's start with the butter sculptures. Isn't this amazing? Here we have one of the dairy princesses, in butter. At the end of the Fair, she'll get to take home her head and eat it. I love it.