next year i swear I wont let our christmas tree be so sad. even if it means spending a stupid amount of money on ornaments. matching lights that work. tree skirt. some kind of matching ball ornaments. damnit. MOAR bird ornaments. more cute kid made ornaments.

Learn how to mix my own drinks.

after like 3 weeks of everyone being on vacation, AKA at home all the time, i am about to fucking scream every time i see the kitchen in a not clean state. I swear I will try to clean the kitchen every night before bed and run the dishwasher and then empty the damn dishwasher in the morning. that way dishes wont pile up during the day and there will be no excuse for a messy kitchen. jack goes to bed, then kitchen gets cleaned then i can collapse into bed and/or make myself a drink.

play more board games with jack.

shit. i had another one but now i can’t remember it. oh yeah, GET THERAPY.

also, go to ocean beach/sutro baths more!

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The next thing I am hoping he will do for us is to build us a new front gate and fence. Right now the side gate and fence are flush with the back of the house in effect making the side yard part of the public front yard. I would like to have the fence and gate brought up to be flush with the front of the house so that the whole side yard become backyard.

Our house was built in 1895 and is what I like to call a plain victorian farmhouse. It is tall, from the street it can look 4 stories high because you see the basement/garage and the very high roofed attic, and narrow but it is a lot of WHITE.

I did some internet searches on gates and gathered some examples on Pintrest. I was originally thinking that we should have a white fence and gate to match the house but then thought it might be TOO MUCH WHITE. So then, black. I thought black would be nice since I plan on having the window trim be black as some unspecified date when we replace the windows, also a black front door.

I did some photoshop mockups.
black:

white:

black:

white:

The other thing in favor of black is that I can think of a ton of lovely california natives that would look good against a black background. Many natives are sort of a dusky gray green foliage color that would look washed out against white.

I was super annoyed when taking those pictures that i couldn’t get the whole house not obstructed by the tree in the shot. This morning I walked across the street to get a coffee and turned around to look at the house and realized that all I need to do to get a full pic is walk across the street… so maybe i will do that later.

The front yard obviously needs work… I was holding off on giving it serious thought due to our need to have a new foundation. Speaking of which, we are stalled on that mainly due to our not quite being up to confronting that architect who sucks. We need to fire him and maybe make a partial payment to him and then we need to visit the oakland planning department a few more times with plans and questions and then take the plans out for bids form construction company’s. It is very daunting.

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First of all we have some scraggly lawn + weeds that needs to be
killed off. Secondly, our soil is dead clay soil, so we need to build up some nice healthy hummus first.

If we prep summer, fall and winter we will have super star soil next spring and we will have had time to get our new porch built, some other garden things rearranged and maybe we can get our yard graded. It’s really on an amazing slope that doesn’t need to be there at all. The backyard concrete porch that is there now is at a 45 degree angle making it the most pointless porch ever.

First: pull all weeds and turn over existing grass. Do this next week.
Second: sow first cover crop. Consisting of buckwheat, fava, peas and oats. grow for six weeks and then turn under.
Third: Immediately sow another cover crop, grow for 6 weeks and turn under.
Fourth: Immediately sow another cover crop, grow for 6 weeks and turn under.
Fifth: Immediately sow another cover crop, grow for 6 weeks and turn under.
Sixth: sheet mulch and wait six weeks before planting meadow

4 6 week growing cycles plus one 6 week resting cycle is what? like 7.5 months and brings us to Feb. and maybe March is a good time to get meadow plants. or maybe one needs to wait till April? so maybe we could squeeze another short cover crop cycle in there.

I need to ask my neighbor and call some nurseries to get advice on when and where to order plants.

- Call nurseries for advice on where and when to order.
- calculate square footage
- super fun part -> plan out which plants to get.

Site basics: the site is pretty much full sun. Our entire yard is full sun right now. That will change I guess as some of our new fruit tree mature. Most of the area i want to be a natural native lawn grass, so not too clumpy. and then I want some wildflowers and some good bird and butterfly attracting plants.

In my next post I will start thinking about plants and maybe post a map of the garden.

Sunset Zone

ZONE 17: Marine effects in Southern Oregon, Northern and Central California

The climate in this zone features mild,wet, almost frostless winters and cool summers with frequent fog or wind. On most days and in most places, the fog tends to come in high and fast, creating a cooling and humidifying blanket between the sun and the earth, reducing the intensity of the light and sunshine. Some heat-loving plants (citrus, hibiscus, gardenia) don’t get enough heat to fruit or flower reliably. In a 20-year period, the lowest winter temperatures in Zone 17 ranged from 36 to 23°F (2 to –5°C). The lowest temperatures on record range from 30 to 20°F (–1 to –7°C).Of further interest in this heat-starved climate are the highs of summer, normally in the 60 to 75°F (16 to 24°C) range. The average highest temperature in Zone 17 is only 97°F (36°C). In all the other adjacent climate zones, average highest temperatures are in the 104 to 116°F (40 to 47°C) range.

Resources:

http://ebcnps.org/

http://cnps-scv.org/gardening/grasses/CreatingANativeCaliforniaMeadowArticle.pdf

http://www.native-again-landscape.com/index.html

http://www.gardeningwithnatives.com/resources/buy_plants.html

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/calif/

http://www.stopwaste.org/docs/gardeningguide.pdf

http://www.cngf.org/gardens/meadow.htm

http://www.nativeplants.org/

http://www.asla.org/uploadedFiles/CMS/Meetings_and_Events/2010_Annual_Meeting_Handouts/Sat-B7%20-%20Creating%20Meadows%20and%20Grass%20Ecologies.pdf

http://www.wix.com/wwgd1com/waterwise03

http://www.larnerseeds.com/_pages/native_grass_seed.html

http://www.inspiredbynature.us/about.html

http://www.baynatives.com/

http://www.redbud-cnps.org/Native_Grass_handout_4pg.pdf

http://www.calfloranursery.com/pages_plantlists/grasses.html

http://www.yerbabuenanursery.com/

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Projects that need doing:

• 3 new shirts for Jack with some recently purchased fabric.

various pairs of soft pants for jack out of old t-shirts

• One shirt for Vim with raccoon on fire fabric
• Yoga mat bag for me
• underwear for me out of old t-shirts
• Do something, a drss probably) with the most awesome Love/Hate shirting fabric
• Make myself some shirts with various patterns purchased recently at a pattern sale.
• make myself a Sencha blouse
• large baby blanket for friend about to have baby
• baby blanket for niece who already had baby
• mabye try out making some simple doll clothes for Jack’s new doll
• make curtains for Jack’s daycare caregiver

I asked my friend Shandelirous recently about what the deal with shirting fabric is. She told me it was made by elves and I believe her. It’s so nice feeling and so much better than the quilting cotton I usually buy. Quilting cotton is the usual fabric store fare so it’s what I am used to. But shirting fabric is so CRISP and thin. Besides lawn it’s my new favorite. I haven’t actually sewn with it yet, so we’ll see how that goes.

Other projects that need doing

• take jack hiking and birdwatching more
• think about my destash plan
• think about moving and packing
• stress about decorating theoretic new house
• think about building next round of craft fair application. Possibly my curent database set up is not working for me.
• anticipate Blogher in NY
• anticipate Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs in Seattle
• update the theme of this blog once and for all!

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Am I right? Should I make a couple of t-shirts anyway? A few people have suggested it but may also have not though about the sudden tit reference once it is written across your chest. What say you?

Thank you for making this about boobs.

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Every time I buy something handmade that comes with super nice packaging I just wonder how much extra time and money people spent on that part of their business.

At the grocery store this afternoon I noticed that Rosie’s Chicken has started prepackaging their chicken breasts without styrofoam in just some plastic wrapping. That’s great, although I usually buy mine from the butcher in paper anyway, but when I do buy prepackaged I will def buy the ones with less packaging.

I’ve decided to not get business cards made this year and instead I am going to print (silk screen or stamp I haven’t decided) onto the scads and scads of cardboard packaging that I recycle. Don’t worry, I’ll save the tampax box ones for YOU.

Last year I almost spent way too much time making bags and envelopes out of those cardboard boxes but then decided that it would be WAY too much time and energy.

Oh wait, I actually bought the Moon Cup last time I was at Berkeley bowl so I guess there won’t be any tampax cards. I love the new Berkeley Bowl! Its so nice and spacious! I still get lost though and have not memorized the layout. The other day I went all through getting produce and then realized that all the organic produce is in a whole other produce section… GRrreat. thanks for telling me!

I did already order some stickers but I was thinking I might sell those nice ones (for cheap) and then silk screen or ink jet print some free ones onto the 45 tons of old sticker paper that I have collected over the years. I mean, it was a bigass deal back in the day when I could afford a stack of decent thick sticker paper and I have not yet let go of quite a bit of it. Maybe I will see if someone I know has a round die cut punch I could borrow. Anyone?

Back to the moon cup… The one I purchased had minimal packaging, just a cardboard box (perfect for business cards!). Some of the other ones had this horrible packaging that had a plastic window so that you could see the actual product. It seems like that might be a good idea until you are standing there with it, in public, in your hand thinking about how everyone seeing you standing there holding it will now immediately think of you shoving it into your vagina. “How will she get that HUGE thing in there”, I could hear them wondering and I quickly put it back.

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I wrote up a bunch of notes on that previous silk screen post and it is GONE! I must have not hit publish?

I went out and bought a couple of Dover clip art books. They are mostly royalty/copyright free images and they come in high res on CDs. Handy! That’s where I got the Narwhal image and then I messed with it in Photoshop and added the text and printed it out on my ink jet printer. I printed out a few other images as well, the sugar maple seed sketch and my old gas mask girl image.

I ran all over the fucking universe trying to get transparencies made. I so fucking hate FEDEX copy shops. I shoot lasers directly from my eyeballs into the hateful soul of that place. All of them. I mean, Kinkos was bad enough once you could no longer steal copied form them by banging the key on the ground to set it back to like 5 copies but this new fedex shit is srsly awful. Neither fedex place could manage to do what I needed so in a desperate fit I went to staples which was another hell on earth.

Apparently the trick with transparencies or acetate as some might say is that you need to make sure they do it on a color copier and not a b/w one. Whatever.

So I burn my first screen with like 3 transparencies sandwiched together and when I went to rinse it off a bunch of the emulsion peeled off as well. So I reclaimed that screen and started over with my second one. For the second one I just oiled my print out. So take your print out, and smear vegetable oil all over it until it is saturated, both sides and then burn your screen. I made the second screen with the sugar maple and the narwhal. It came out pretty well but also had a bi of the emulsion peel off and a few pinholes so I used a brush to put some screen filler over those areas.

I used water based ink to print the shirts and on some test fabrics and papers.

The next class is in a few weeks and I will do a Thank You For Not Being Perky stencil, maybe to be used for a few t-shirts. I WISH I could find my damn resale license. Maybe they’ll resend it to me if I call them…

I’m also working on a cute Oakland/ Pacific Pipe rail road image.

Silk screening makes me feel mad with power.

Some online resources (to be updated):
Silk screen printing instructions

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(my R key is sticking and it is very annoying)

I almost bought some of that kokka fabric with birds on it but balked at its 17.99 per yard price tag. So instead I bought a bunch of other fabric that ended up totaling more anyway. I am determined to sew myself a few skirts. Ones I can actually wear…

Hart’s Fabric is great! The staff is nice and the selection is huge and best of all they have a children’s play area!!! What a fabulous idea! I wish Stone Mountain and Daughter would do the same thing.

Instead the staff at Stone Mountain often follow you around and comment on your kid and how he better not run around because a bolt of fabric might fall on him. oh yeah lady? That is totally absurd and if like half of your weekday clientele isn’t women hauling kids around I will eat my hat.

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Those four are Liberty of London – two are lawns, one is a stretch cotton and the other is maybe a silk. The price was really good and I love these! Now, what to do with them?

I’m thinking a skirt and maybe a nice short summer robe with pockets.

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It’s suddenly all about layering. In fact one of the projects I would LIKE to be doing soonish is developing into an absurd amount of layering.

Starting with a swatch of fabric. freezer paper stenciling it, then adding stitching wth embrodery thread arounf the boarder of the stncil so that it look like a patch sewn on., scan it and manipulate in photoshop. Hhahahaha.

Why is my brain working this way? why not just MAKE A PATCH? Or do the whole damn thing in PS? Anyone? Anyone?

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Five Auspicious Clouds

Originally uploaded by not halfway there
A while back I told KT that I would try to plan out a labyrinth for the ranch property. KT, MamaPajama and I scouted out a decent location near Kt’s house in progress.

I’m not exactly sure what prompted me to want to do this. Labyrinths are cool but this is actually a pretty big project and I’m not quite able to get my mind around how much work it will be. Supposedly there will be a bunch of other people there to help? I hope? If there are other people then I think it will be fun and rewarding.

There are a few web sites out there detailing how to create a labyrinth and most of them use the 7-ring classical pattern. I want to use the pattern pictured here even though I have never seen another labyrinth using it. In the picture the black line will end up being the path you walk. I like how it will make you visit the center of the whole thing 5 times and that five other times you will visit the center of the particular spiral you are in. Okay that sentence was sort of grammatically confusing but I am too lazy to rewrite it.

So my problem now is to figure out how to lay it out and build it. Here’s what I’m thinking so far.

How to Build the Five Auspicious Clouds Labyrinth
Materials:
string, rebar, gravel, spray paint, shovels

Offsite:
knot a string (lenght being the radius of the labyrinth) marking the points of the path

Onsite:
Measure whole area of labyrinth
plant rebar, one in center, one at each of five points on outer edge
dig out an inch or so of earth ( ?)
use string and spray paint to start marking out the path, have 5 cans of paint so that five people can be doing this part at once. after marking the initial points the rest can be freehand i think.
use dug out earth to pile on ‘walls’
use gravel and river stones to mark the path

After:
shrine-y thing in the very center. maybe a really nice pinkish rock from the river as a large flat table-y surface
benches around area
sign with suggested usage/rules?

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It’s already summer here. I HATE being hot. Unfortunately I am sweaty and hot when t is like 70 degrees out. GREAT! Fortunately I have pantaloons to make things better.

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I have not done much crafting lately because I have been reading ROMANCE NOVELS. That’s right. Romance novels. 12 of them to be exact, 6 in each series. Here is the last one I finished yesterday:

People are getting married and having babies all over the place and I find that I want to hang around discussing babies and wedding dresses and shopping. I blame these dumb books. Really, after reading these all things girly should be making want to HURL.

I have GOT TO STOP reading stupid books. I might as well be watching Blossom reruns.

In more crafty news I just got this in the mail a few days ago. Lovely! What a surprise as I orderd this like 3 months ago but it was back ordered!

I LOVE Alexander Henry fabrics. What shall I do with this? I was thinking when I bought it that I would make myself some nice pillow cases. How nice would it be to go to sleep and wake up with these sweet birds under your head? With your head CRUSHING these sweet little birds. How could you?!

An apron might be nice too.

And with that I shall leave you with Miss Piggy singing Peaches ‘fuck the pain away’.

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WHY do we carry that shit around with us for so long? Out of all my school sketch books I only ripped out like 20 pages worth keeping and even those were questionable. Written papers? HAHA. I only had to do like 2 the entire time I was in school and they sounded like they were written by a fucking 2nd grader. A not very smart 2nd grader at that.

Okay, I twinged slightly at all my intricate and detailed photography chemical notes and all the glazing compounds for pottery and the endless typography history and notes.. and the art history notes. Oh… did I know this stuff at some point in my life? Well, I don’t now so fuck it.

While it felt like a great relief to get rid of this stuff (including all my mechanical drafting stuff from HIGH SCHOOL) it was also a struggle to not feel like a total loser since I barely remember anything about anything. And it isn’t pregnancy or motherhoods fault either. I’m simply lazy. and never ever applied myself.

I threw out 47 tons of old photographs of me naked and wearing wigs…. (why god?!)

Next I will tackle my huge portfolios filled with shitty charcoal drawings.

Now that all the proof that I once knew something has disappeared… now what? Do I have to amass more proof only to throw it away in 5, 10, 15 years? This is depressing, I tell you.

This frenzy has been brought on by feeling cluttered and trapped. We have so much STUFF (and I’ve complained about it before) and I don’t want all the clutter to be my fault and due to some lame pointless sense of hanging on to the past. So I am being brutal. The more crap in the house to harder it is to keep Jack out of trouble. I want him to be able to roam free like the fuzzy little house buffalo crumb nibbler he is.

Every room is a problem. The bathroom is painted and the new cabinet is almost ready to be put up and that is a good start for that area. Everwhere else feels sort of hopeless. I’ve been weeding books. Weeding books is very hard as I have to pick up each book, remember where it came from, when I read it, blah blah blah. Dishes are bing removed. general crap is going on 3 month probation. 39 pieces of luggage are getting tossed.

project list:
- giant free floating window frame needs ot be taped, sanded, primered, painted and hung up.
- The snack box cat litter tray MUST happen. The IkeaHacker site is a good one and I recommend it. They have a great post about hiding your cat litter box in plain site.

So here is my big dilemma. Here I am, carting shit out of here by the truckload. And all the while I have this HUGE urge to go buy some stuff to help me organize. The ikea snack boxes for one. more stuff, another project. It’s like I hate myself and want myself to never relax. I also want this other thing frpom Ikea that will help keep stuff hidden from jack. that’s important, right?

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Finish Whump’s spats

make red pin stripe/white brocade lining with pearl buttons spats

make more baby blankets

cross stitch Hemulen family motto – “People are all assholes”

cross stitch “FUCK” for G’s birthday

reframe fuckity cross stitch.

make mom’s horsey zippered pouch

make self zippered pouch with repurposed deyoung museum gift shop bag as lining

paint window frame – add new knobs!! hang up said window frame

nudibranch painting

cat portraits (pastoral – folk art style – turner? constble? -  http://store.encore-editions.com/)

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iron pillow squares
cut out felt cherries
sew pillows

create pattern for chair pillow

finish spats pattern.

sew crib sheets from old queen sized sheets.

finish tranfsormer dress

finish black and red skirt

hem Vim’s pajamas.

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Or you could work on a technical skill by copying. You can open up some paints and slosh color onto your paper randomly. and doodling/journaling can really help as well.

One of the reasons i started this seperate crafty blog was so that I could organize and search my ideas and projects more efficiently. Often I have a spurt of brain activity that thinks up a million and one projects but then have no time, or forget what they were. i swear i have about 40 million moleskines filled up with sketches and parts of ideas and lists of projects. One tag i created here is "project ideas’. so when I’m feeling at  a loss I can click on that tag and take stock of my forgotten ideas and take my pick of things to work on.

This fun little thing caught my eye in the latest BUST magazine (courtesy of my sampler! thank you very much!). Porn paint by numbers! woot! And you can check out the cutie who makes them and buy kits here: http://scarletlibrarian.com/, plus she has an interesting blog there too.

i like this whole idea and it would be very easy to make ones own paint by numbers kit using your desired photo and photoshop with various filters. I’m too lazy to make a tutorial right now but maybe i will soon.

Right now i have to go print out the scarlett librarians pdf and get to work.

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I used the left over scraps of light blue minky dot fabric and a fat quarter that I got in Medicino. I opted for whiskers instead of a mouth, just using some black embroidery thread.

Man, I have a lot of projects to do in my head. some crafty and some not so much. I’m about to be a part-time stay at home mom. more time for crafting… you think?!

HAHA *laughs maniacally* despite mamapajamas nice comment about me getting shit done… it’s totally not true. I get jack shit done. mostly because i am so scattered that I can’t concentrate on one thing for more than 5 seconds.

things to do:
another collage, redo pine needle/squid painting, wings for halloween, lose a million pounds.

oh and chair cushion and all the other projects listed in previous posts…

also, learn PHP, take care  of baby, go grocery shopping, clean up mess when head implodes.

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up coming projects:

-redye white boots. (white boots?! wtf was i thinking? how about lavender?)
-make goth fairy wings – divide moth wings i have now to create two pairs of smaller winges. remove mesh and replace with fishnet.
-more  carrots and kwoozys rabbit stuffy

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Materials needed:

maribou boa
narrow velvet trim
beaded trim of some sort
glue
sewing machine

Step by step:

Cut boa to lengths that fit comfortably around your neck
cut velvet trim to desired length – in the one above i think i would now cut the trim much shorter so that the beaded trim came to rest somewhere around my cleavage.
sew trim to either side of boa
sew/glue beaded trim to ends of velvet trim.

DONE! Easy-peasy.

P.S.

check out that cleavage. woot! thank yoiu pregnancy, 30 extra pounds and a good bra.

Also, note the kick ass little black dress. it was cheap-o at some teeny bopper store. it’s totally excellent tho very sheer. here I am wearing my black and pink night gown as a slip. I clearly need me a few black slips. hellooooo goodwill!

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