Cocoa and me snuggling on the bed. She's so soft and cute! 

"A Higher Percentage of Grays"

Customer Service: a dead art in America. Okay, I have to rant here because this has been bugging me for days now. I get my hair permed about twice a year and I'm very lazy about styling it in any way so I'm willing to spend big bucks on the perm at a salon so that it looks good if I just basically wash it and go. So I got my hair permed last week and I wasn't happy with the result. It ain't curly enough. So I call the "perm technician" (oh Lord) and tell her and she basically grills me with questions trying to come up with an excuse, instead of A. apologizing (that's what you do when someone is not happy with the service you've provided and you're in a service industry, moron), and then B. coming up with a solution to make me happy (see parentheses in A.) My favorite question that she asked was whether I had "a higher perecentage of grays" than the last time I'd had my hair permed. Um, excuse me? So now I'm old and gray and that's why it's my fault my hair didn't curl? Gawd, for a Minnesotan, that was just such an un-Nice question.

This particular salon guarantees customer satisfaction, and I'm afraid I'm about to find out whether that's just a hollow marketing statement or if it really means I won't have to pay for them fixing what I wasn't happy with. I go in next week for her to "look" at it. She'll probably say it looks curly to her. Bah!

ATC: Woodcut-Style Rabbit

Newest carving: bunny rabbit, done freehand after looking at some Walter Anderson watercolors at a local exhibit. I love his lines, they're so full of motion.

Duckies in the creek just up from the Falls at Minnehaha Park. 

side view of Falls, all frozen below. 

Minnehaha Falls today on a doggie walk. Not much water going over it right now, but plenty of icicles on the sides still. 

Cocoa is fun to cuddle but she'll only be a lap dog for about 5 seconds at a time, then she wants down, please. 

Deco round robin spread I created: deco just means decorated book. Sometimes there's not much difference between an altered book and a deco, although the deco is usually smaller in scale. In this case, the deco is a small children's board book and the theme is Monsters. First I painted over the cute squirrel story with white gesso, then dabbed black around the edges. Then I found an image from a movie poster for the remake of Night of the Living Dead and ripped a portion of that to fit the page on the left. I stamped and embossed the scared girl on top of the poster image. The right side is text both stamped and hand-lettered that says,"Holy sh**! It's Zombies! George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' scared the crap out of me when I saw it at a drive-in, age 11." I think I was 11, something like that. What a bad idea. But then I loved being scared. Still, it probably scarred me. :) 

More ATC's made with my carved seahorse stamp. 

Snoopy Sent Packing

Suck! One of the things I like about our huge obscene Maul of America is now going away. Camp Snoopy, the amusement park in the middle of the Maul, is not going to be Camp Snoopy anymore, wah! The powers that be couldn't come to agreement over the rights to the Peanuts characters, so the stoopid Mall people are cutting Snoopy loose. Wah! The park will still be there, but it will just be a park, just the amusement park at the Maul. All the Snoopy stuff gets stripped by January 19th. I think I may go down there and get a few things before it all becomes a memory. Stoopid people. Grrrr.

Aeropetespithekosozophobia!

page for a deco round robin: the theme was phobias, so I found someone on the internet who had invented a word that means "fear of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz." I carved the monkey stamp and the skull stamp. Mr. Skull is saying "They'll get you my pretty." Scawy!

Artists Who Inspire: Jim Flora and Tim Biskup

Jim Flora is also from the 40's, do you see a theme? I love retro. Tim Biskup is in the same style, but he's a current artist emulating artists like Flora, and he of course adds punk and darkness, which I don't like as much, although I still like many of his compositions. Anyhow, Flora did album covers in the 40's and 50's, mostly for Jazz, which I'm not terribly fond of as a rule, but I do love his artwork. I mean, look at this: Mambo For Cats. Is that not the bomb?

Artists Who Inspire: Mary Blair

Mary Blair? You've probably never heard of her. Think "It's A Small World" at Disneyland--that's Mary Blair. Blair was one of Walt Disney's favorite artists from the 1940's and 50's. She was not only an imagineer but she also illustrated many children's books as well, which I have evidently filed away in my subconscious, because when I see some of this artwork now it registers on a really primal level as GOOOOOD. I love her lines and colors. The kiddies are cute, but what really interests me now as an artist is her style, the lines and shapes in her buildings and other structures.

ATC: Horsea

This one I really love. I carved this seahorse stamp just yesterday. I stamped it twice, once on the base, and then made another impression to paste above the first one to make it 3-D.

ATC: Owl

Finally cleaned off my craft desk and started making some new ATC's.

Cardinal at the birdee tree in the dog park. They really stand out in the winter here. 

Cocoa looks like she's trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue. 

Chickadee at the dog park at the birdie feeding tree--J. always bring a bag full of seed for them and spreads it all over this fallen tree. 

Conquer The Ice!

I got this great Christmas present that is making my life much happier while walking Cocoa over the ice fields that pass as sidewalks in this stupid weather--just over freezing during the day, just under freezing at night. They're called Yaktrax (check out this link--a wilderness guide uses them to walk his sled dogs!) and they strap onto your shoes and keep you from slipping on the ice. You can get them from REI or Amazon.com or probably lots of other places. I highly recommend them for Minnesota winters.

Chocolate Mousies

Still with those darn mousies in the kitchen. We got a metal shelving unit that doesn't have solid shelves but bars and STILL the mousies are getting to the food we put on it. I imagine them in little Mission Impossible climbing hardware with suction cups and caribbeaners...getting into my Frango chocolates! Bastards! We've got traps everywhere and they aren't going for those, oh no, they want MY chocolate. So now my remaining chocolate is in a secure location (the refrigerator). We really need a cat.

Christmas Cap for a Good Guy

another hat I knit this Xmas. I think hats and socks are my favorite things to knit. I just kinda winged it on the color amounts and decided as I went along how much to do of each and where to make stripes.

Christmas Hat with Bamboo Stitch and Flower

me modeling a hat I knit for Xmas. The flower was very fun to make, once I figured it out.

Christmas Socks

close-up of cabling on a pair of socks I knit this Christmas. Looks difficult but really it's not that hard!

Christmas Beret

Wow, doesn't this look hard to knit? I'm very proud, it's the hardest thing I've knit in a while and it came out really nice. The recipient says she feels very hip wearing it. And that's red, not orange, it's just a bit washed out from the camera flash.