Our spring weekend

garlic stalk!

This weekend I ventured out to check on the garden, did some tidying up (=2 garbage bags of leaves). The garlic I planted in the fall is well on its way... supposedly it will be ready in June.



Daffodils are out of course, and there are plenty of hidden things under the leaves, getting ready to sprout up.



I found a dead black bird and buried it.



Patches was enjoying the fresh air with the window open.

Despite my previous decision not to bother this time (based on the last two years of failures) I again have over purchased seed packs and started some things indoors. This year I'm trying some seeds planted in egg cartons. We'll see how the seedlings fare. I'll try to do some photographic documentation as well.

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In non-gardeny news, I went out today and did some embroidery while lounging out of doors. Nearly finished Jack and the Beanstalk. I'd really like to get this to be a habit long enough to finish the "project."

The time and weather are throwing me for a loop. I'm trying to use it to my advantage to get some stuff done. Did some cleaning: mopped the floor, vacuumed, organized a little, put some things up for sale, added to some goodwill bags, made split pea soup.

squirrel with gun, discriminating weirdos, thrift store cat and vigorous zucchini

Disclaimer: this post is just going to be a hodge-podge with no particular theme.



In purchase reports, I bought this cute/ not quite scary squirrel with a gun keychain from MonkeyDogStudio AKA OneMansTrash at last Saturday's Bizarre Market. She had some other cool ones too!

I also just won some screen printing supplies on ebay, though I'm pretty sure this breaks my rules about not buying craft supplies when I already have too much. BUT, I have mixed emulsion and need to use it ASAP, so I guess that's an excuse.

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In other news, the discriminating weirdos at Moe Sew Co. had some deep thoughts on some of my embroideries. I'm very flattered by the term wantable weirdness and also the fact that they somehow managed to work a freakish 1970 commercial into the review. Thanks, discriminating weirdos.

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Speaking of weird, here's that framed cat picture I bought last month at a thrift store. It's not totally clear if the maker was entirely pro-cat, but at any rate, I think it's pretty funny and wacked out.


text:

THE CAT IS always greener on the other side of the fence ◘ a rolling cat gathers no moss ◘ just say "no" to cats ◘ read my lips - no new kittens ◘ I left my cat in San Francisco ◘ frankly Scarlet I don't give a cat ◘ able to leap tall counters with a single bound ◘ four score and seven cats ago ◘ a watched cat never boils ◘ if at first you don't succeed, get a cat ◘ a kitten a day keeps the doctor away ◘ give me liberty or give me cats ◘ kittens should be seen and not heard ◘ she'll be carrying six white kittens when she comes ◘ ask not what your kitten can do for you but what you can do for your kitten ◘ my cat runneth over

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And last but not least, some zucchini is really anxious to grow up. One of them (on the left) punched through the soil so vigorously, he's still wearing a little hat made out of a clump of soil.

Strawberry Kids

Quite a while ago, I posted a photo of Strawberry Boy under the title Naked Strawberry, because he had no clothes.

Now he has clothes, and his friend Strawberry Girl is out and about as well. Maybe there will be more Strawberry Kids, but only time will tell. These two are now residing in the Toys and Doodads section of my shop.

I attempted to make a stop motion with these two, and I think it would have been pretty cute, but unfortunately it came out all pixelated and funky. The weird thing is - one single frame was clear, and I have no idea why. Nevertheless, I put in on YouTube. I think I'm just going to have to do the digital movie thing as a trial and error work in progress. Once I figure out what I'm doing maybe I'll do remakes or an epic or something.

Karee Raisu and a Crochet Tongue

Karee raisu is the Japanese "katakana English" word for curry rice. And that's Japanese curry rice (quite different than an Indian or other Southeast Asian curry). It's kind of like a thick curry gravy stew served with sticky white rice. It's one of my favorites!




So, I had been planning this for some while, since I bought some tiny little china "bowls" at the thrift store. This is a curry rice pincushion. I was scared the curry rice pincushion in my head wasn't going to come out... but I'm very pleased that it worked out pretty much as I imagined it.

I need to get to the post office before it closes in the late morning. I have a postmark deadline to meet, and if anything is a form of motivation, it's a postmark deadline.

If I make the deadline, I'm planning on entering the curry rice pincushion and a re-worked toothy pincushion into the Interweave Press Pincushion Contest. Thanks to my friend Catherine for telling me about it quite a while ago - of course I waited until a week before the deadline to get these going.

I had to "learn" to crochet as a technique which would fulfill the requirements. So I crocheted a tongue for a toothy pincushion.



Previous incarnations of the toothy pincushion have been sewn velvety fabric. It's much much more difficult to crochet a pincushion tongue than it is to sew one.



It's been a hectic week, craft-wise. Let alone organization/cleaning/yardwork-wise. There's just too much I need to do. As crazed as they make me, deadlines really are helpful.

lots of floss (preview)

Embroidery floss.

I have a lot of it that I have amassed over the past 3 years or so. That's since I decided I should start embroidering again. I started one overly complicated "project" that is less than half done (yes, over years), but in between I've been making smaller stuff. It's very time consuming, but it's somehow less strenuous than most other crafts I've encountered.



So, this is the preview for my inventory at the Bizarre Market's Holiday Market, at Chop Suey Books (v1), opening this Saturday evening and available for shopping through December 24th. It's THE place for shopping this December. I'll have other random things, and I'm sure others will have even more randomer random other things. There will be something for all.

I only made three embroideries because they took a very long time and also they kind of morphed into whatever they wanted because I did not draw out anything before hand. And in such cases things don't always turn out as planned... sometimes you have to just let the floss do what it wants to do...



Since this is a preview so I will not show the "items" in their entirety right now. You'll have to go to the shop to check them out.



In other news, I thought of something I want to make with the theme of "curry rice." That will be next, maybe.