Home for the Holidays

And here's Amber's girly bird in situ! in theory I'm starting a flickr thingy, but in practice my computer battery is dying. So stay tuned for picts of the farm in Othello and costumes from the 10 k...

gallery shots

ok, not the best, but they give a good impression of my working conditions. see the very impressive looking heater flanked by all those fantastic pennants? it was making me deaf. now i have a space heater under the desk. the card catalog is full of sequins. i have tennis elbow. nuff said.

First Duck Done!

The great thing about living in Wheeler is, even if you sleep for 11 hours a day, those other 13 have the potential to be so productive! So, here's the first finished lady- herons and pelicans are soon to follow. I've also commissioned new work for the gallery in February, which is extremely exciting as well...

One of the few handy things about the particular inn I'm inhabiting is that it faces a post office with a flag that lets me know how miserable my run is going to be. Pretty damn miserable...

& then I moved to the beach!

Well, to Wheeler, actually, which , to those in the know, is not actually at the beach. But I do go running on the beach (normal in Manzanita, though sometimes in Rock Away) almost every day!

I am living in the Kaffer's Inn and have started a gallery down stairs called The Duck & Pisaster! (pisasters are those orange and purple predatory starfish featured in the first chapter of my favorite book of the year Where The Wild Things Were). Anyway, my gallery is full of things made with love by Matt and Me and also that Ted guy, so if yer ever on the 101 come check it out! I'm sure I'll have better photo's at some point. Also, if you google Duck and Pisaster you will find our/my Etsy page, where everything if for sale! Decoys! Mugs! Bottle Cap Covered Skulls! Etc.!

Oh, and Bix is also doing well. He likes crab and running around on the very old rugs in the attic, which must smell amazing...

i need a better camera...

So, it's been a month that I've been unemployed, and here's what I've created so far. Unfortunately the chickens (that you can see here both finished and unfinished) are not quite done yet. The yellower one is, the reddish guy still needs it's belly done. These are some of the few remaining Don Featherstone (creator of the lawn flamingo) chickens. They may resemble symmetry, but they aren't- one of the reasons that lawn decor and decoys will change in the future, I'm sure. Anyway, a lot of these birds are smaller, but i'm still only averaging 1 or 1/2 of one a day. and I'm getting extremely bored! Ah well, still 9 days till I head to the beach maybe a heron and some green tomato chutney will get finished before then...

cold at night here...

if you want to see some actually interesting photos... http://www.flickr.com/photos/getflocked/collections/72157615658959017/

Rabid Killers!

Look what jumped on my handle bars on the way home? And then proceeded to lay her eggs on my tire (big insects still have small brains.) Thanks to the internet I learned that it's relatively easy to breed mantids indoors, so I gently removed the egg sack and stuck it in a mason jar in the shaded window. Maybe Mom'll be able to release a batch of babies into the yard around my birthday. Wouldn't that be nice?

lil zizou

the cat and i soaked up the last 70 degree day... of course, we accomplished nothing except vitamin d absorption. and some flocking. my cat thinks flocking is pretty great (huff huff), but sunshine is much better.

multi-cultural lunch!

who else gets to eat atomic foods tortillas with hummus, siracha, nasturtiums and borage? who else would want to?

in other news- the Ames' just cleared out their garden. which means i should clear out mine. Instead I think I'll take a nap...

michaels provide inspiraton

And we aren't just talking about the store, though that's where the feather came from. My work so frequently walks the line very close to kitsch... you can get these feathers for 70 cents...

other inspirations today:

http://www.herspaceholiday.com/biography/biograhpy.html i want my website to get close to this. i love the note book style. and someone else should read this biography page...

fresh hop ipa from ice harbor.

riding in a porsche.

my droid+pandora

& they're off!

Away go Peg, Deb and Rick! Off for Turkey! To the land of dervishes and delights! yum!

On the same day I also finished the sequinning part of Phillip's sister's penguin! ooooh... As the more astute of you may have notice, this penguin (or it's twin) was featured a few days ago in the black and white skirt photo. Looks different now, eh?

Mom was sweet enough to make me oatmeal cookies before she left. My diet now consists of cookies, coffee, arugula, and fresh hop pig beer. Could one really ask for more?

Tomorrow I mandatorily attend a class on how to look for 3 jobs a week. Should be interesting...

$300

So, ladies and gents, this is what $300 worth of sequins looks like! For those wondering- I operate with generally around 100-120 different colors or shapes of sequins at a time... Mostly black, golds and browns, though at the moment i have 10 variations of green, so i guess i need to make a parrot or something... I hold them all in those little metal tins people used to make aspics in as i work. Really, besides the astronomical costs of sequins there is nothing exciting about my process whatsoever. just a lot of sitting, listening to books on tape or watching penn and teller's bullshit show.

natural remedies

I take biscuits for my ulcer! I've been worried about money for about the last week or so (week 3 of being unemployed, FYI). So what do I do (besides applying for a job as a costume stitcher in Ashland, Oregon)? I make biscuits. I try to pretend they make me relax. The fall out from Charlie (my ulcers) lasts days, however, and I'm on my 3rd set of biscuits. Today it's gonna rain.

gooooo team!!!!

So, mom & i were having a chat about becoming spontaneous cheerleaders, which of course necessitated me trying on her old highschool bombers uniform (woohoo! it fits! except i'm too tall...) and me sporting my new favorite skirtyskirt atop a pile of rubble. rubble has since been hauled off to the dump.

Hard at work, should be more pictures later...discovered I have to go up to mom's balcony to get hings to load fast with the new mifi...just another reason we should get a new deck...

bright sun-shiny day!

and i spent the whole thing (almost) inside putting bright shiny sequins on dull plastic birdies... But here's the mater making herself useful! 6 new birds (which are actually 5 and 2 half birdies) got their first clear coats today. Some are now ready to go out into the world (and there will be etsy pages for them someday) and some are already spoken for as orders... I shall document in the future, I"m sure...

GOLD!

one decent apple on our tree, hops we don't know what to do with, and sage in bloom...Fall!

RED!

there are times when my house is the only place i should be. 86 degree days in late september with color motifs are fantastic!

nice big studio~

So, inquiring minds were wanting to know what the studio configuration looks like this time around. Here's where I started last night. Hopefully soon there should be some images of the first "finished birds. And by finished I mean ready to get varathaned- no bird is actually ready to migrate away. Yesterday I got special delivery of a new heron for the Luongo family... Always exciting to get the really big birds in the mail...

men reading fashion magazines...

So, Peg's off to Turkey, and needed some pant! We started with spiderman, margaritas and me in a little chinese number. Stay tuned for pants!

toes create scale

Sometimes it's good to have perspective on what's really important. I brake for great big frogs! There should be images of Wenatchee and crazy Leavenworth on here, but no, you get what I remember to take. Maybe tomorrow studio shots? we are easing back into this...

Back in the saddle again?

So, it's been record lengths of time, eh? But whatever, I don't really believe this sphere has that much influence. But look at ted and i! Super duper!

more to post post camping debacles....