swallowfield

free shipping, elvis costello, me feeling awkward, and so on

just a quick reminder that worldwide free shipping in my etsy shop ends tomorrow night, october 31st, at which time my children will most likely be in a post trick-or-treat sugar-induced coma and i will be thinking i might like to eat a mini three musketeers or two. it is hard for me to talk about promotional stuff here, i've decided - it makes me feel shy and i have never thought of this blog as only a place to talk about my business life - far from it. i don't exactly know what it is i do here, but i think i like it light-ish on the business side of things. so anyway, free shipping. okay.

i don't often post pictures of my kids' faces here, but lots of people asked so here is a picture of my son's elvis costello costume:
happy halloween!

halloween prep

halloween is not my favorite holiday. i don't hate it or anything, but i never get super excited to line my front path with skull lights or make a tree of little white ghosts, either. nothing against skull lights or little white ghosts, but you know what i mean. my kids, however (and of course) love everything about halloween with fierce intensity. they've been talking about decorations, costume plans and trick-or-treat routes for at least two months. the costumes have gone through several different phases of sketching and planning, with my daughter finally deciding to be a particular life sized uglydoll. both my kids are huge uglydoll fans and love to draw them and make up stories about them. (my son was easier: he wanted to dress up as elvis costello, end of story.)

i told her i'd give the life sized uglydoll a try, but i couldn't promise excellent results. first, sewing is not really my thing. i can do it, but the way i do it is extremely unscientific/fly by the seat of my pants. it turned out much better than i'd hoped, though very much the aw, what a nice homemade costume kind of costume.

in case you're curious, here is what we did: we bought a couple of yards of gray fleece and a wee bit of yellow, black and cream colored fleece, a couple of yards of fusible interfacing (to give the costume a bit of stiffness,) yellow and cream colored embroidery floss, fabric glue and gray sewing thread. i had a coupon from joann's, so we spent a total of $22.50.

when we got home i laid her down on the interfacing and traced the general shape of babo around her. (ie, super unscientifically.) i cut out two identical pieces of interfacing and two pieces of fleece, then ironed the interfacing to the fleece (this part didn't work so well but it was passable - i was afraid to turn up the iron too much and melt the fleece or something else dumb i am often prone to do in these situations.) we planned it so the mouth would roughly line up with her eyes.  i machine sewed the wrong sides together, leaving good sized openings for her arm holes. we flipped it right side out and added eyes with fabric glue. i stitched around the eyes with yellow embroidery floss. then i cut a large slit for the mouth and i  machine stitched two long, thing pieces of black fleece on the top and bottom cuts, and we added two teeth with cream colored fleece and stitched around those with cream colored embroidery floss. i had her try it on three or four times during the process to make sure i was one the right track.

she can see through the mouth opening really well, which was a relief. i wasn't sure how that was all going to pan out. the costume comes down below her knees and she's going to wear it with a gray sweater underneath and gray tights for her legs.

she declared it 'the best costume ever' and said she'd 'never been so proud of me in her whole entire life'. dude, i never really thought about  what hearing that would feel like - it's pretty excellent. it sort of even made me like halloween a little bit, though i still draw the line at any super crazy decorations.  (and don't let the ones in the backround of the top photo fool you - my kids put them up by themselves. :)

papercut

i am counting on the fact that my dad has still never checked out this little blog, because i want to show you what i've been working on for the past few days. my dad actually shares a birthday with my stepmother, and this is their birthday present.
it's a 12x18x1.5" papercut on gouache on cradled birch panel. my left hand is now a cramped up, gnarled claw, and i have two new  exacto knife cuts to show for it, but i am pretty happy with the outcome. my stepmother is a master gardener, so i'm hoping they'll like this.

they're hardly internet un-savvy, but blogs are, i think, still a great big mystery to them. i'm counting on it, anyway, until this arrives in the mail for them in a few days.

cheers to you all this lovely weekend!

 

clickety click

a few leaves made it into my back hall this morning. i like them so much more than the melted puddles of dirty snow that will be here soon enough.

i'm not feeling super chatty today, so i thought i might share a few blogs i am enjoying reading and looking at right now.

i am happily clicking over to the morning news, a new-to-me blog i found recently when they did a lovely review of 3191. there's a great mix of arts and politics. i don't read many political blogs but this one has great links i wouldn't have found otherwise.

bread and honey is a cooking blog i really like at the moment. it is full of great recipes and gorgeous photos.

and this morning i had the good fortune of meeting + getting to spend a bit of time with lari washburn. she has a lovely, peaceful blog + makes beautiful art right here in maine.

what blogs are you loving right now?
have a great weekend.

super quick drive by

christopher david ryan made some awesome obama posters and they're available for free download. i love them. via supermarket blog.

paths + october sun

shari had the great idea to have a week of paths. i saw this short path to the ocean on a walk over the weekend. i'll share some others this week, too.

i've been feeling pretty much in love with fall for the past few days - it's been sunny and warm, with gorgeous colors everywhere you look. the  leaves are outrageously pretty and reminded me of a time in college when my boyfriend secretly taped hundreds of leaves all over my room while i was out.  to this day, it still ranks way up on the list of most romantic things ever to happen to me. (we went out for a doomed two weeks and were (are) much better as friends, but i'll always have a soft spot for him for the leaves.)

here are some other pictures that are making me happy right now (+ making me think that there should be a week of windows...) :

food for thought

i've been trying to take pictures outside every day, just little quiet scenes.  i liked these shadows a lot.

for the rest of october i am offering free shipping in my etsy shop, worldwide. it will be interesting to see how the economy affects holiday sales this year. last year was extremely busy for me for about six weeks before the holidays. while i love selling my art and making a livelihood of it, i understand that art is, for most people, a luxury.  i don't have a lot of expectations about what this holiday season will bring.  for those of you who are doing similar creative pursuits, what have you noticed about sales and trends in the past few months? i have noticed it is quieter and more erratic. i am okay with it.   

thanks for all of the apple recipes! i have successfully used up all 60 something pounds now, and i am so happy. you all really came through for me. i'm especially excited about all of the applesauce in my freezer. yum.

cheers. i hope you are enjoying the fall sun and lovely leaves.  i am enjoying this bittersweet. it hasn't popped out yet.

sunday

thanks to everyone who came to the opening at nahcotta the other night! it was a really fun evening, despite my nerves + shyness. a special shout out to my mom and her friend who drove four hours to come. thanks!

it feels like fall. 47 degrees this morning, bbrrr. time to get the comforters out and start wearing slippers again. we've been busy stacking lots of wood, with even more to come.

amy ruppel on converse = awesomeness.

i was happy to notice that one of my favorite maine restuarants, chase's daily,  got a nice write up in the boston globe recently.

i need some apple recipes. if you've posted one recently, i've probably tried it (+ thank you, it was tasty,)  but we still have more, more, more apples because  i had a hard time  saying no to the kids when they wanted to keep picking.  any other good  recipes?

we're going to our friends' annual kid swarm potluck this afternoon. i might make the same carrot salad i made last year. or maybe something with apples...

have a nice day, friends!      

happy friday

i've been slow to warm to the idea that fall is here, but i think it's sinking in. the colors are pretty amazing.  i stacked a bunch of wood  yesterday  with the kids and was actually loving the feel of cool in the air.

i'd love to see you tonight if you're in or around portsmouth for matte's and my opening at nahcotta. i'll be there, so please say hi if we haven't met before. i'll be the awkward one. :)

i also wanted to mention that this is the last week for the old school show at uppercase gallery. all of the art from the show is 20% off until october 10th. go and look - there is some beautiful work to be had.

ps: go, obama/biden! i thought joe was great in the debate last night.  i feel so hopeful.

happy weekend everyone!

it's shaping up to be a great week.

thank you so much for all of the nice comments about my art for nahcotta. really, i am having a shy + happy attack over here. here are some things to tell you: nahcotta has a new website (in addition to their regular one) called enormous tiny art. this one was created to catalog the all of the art for their twice yearly enormous tiny art shows, and then in the off months they'll features smaller works from the artists doing monthly shows in the gallery.

why am i telling you this? i am the featured artist for october (and matte stephens will be november's artist,) with a handful of my smaller works. you can still purchase the larger works, like the ledger drawings,  by emailing nahcotta directly.  and speaking of the show, thank you to craft zine and poppytalk for mentioning our show on their blogs. thank you so much. this week has been full of happy things. (self promotion stuff makes me feel all itchy + uncomfortable,  so i think i'm done. thanks for bearing with me here.)

on another note, today is my firstborn's ninth birthday. i have been feeling nostalgic and totally goofy all day. strange + random fact: my sister-in-law had a guest appearance on friends the night i was in labor, and i remember  looking up in a haze at one point and thinking 'huh, that's alex sitting on the couch in central perk with ross. random.' and then, 'oh! contraction.'  anyway...nine is a pretty nice age. she is independent, quirky and funny and interesting. she likes to read the guiness book of world records and is about to start violin. she asked for vegan cupcakes and a narwhal for her birthday - happily, sian keegan totally came through for me.
(photo from sian keegan, with permission)
isn't  this it the best? sian also makes custom stuffed dogs and i just think she's super talented.

happy birthday, my dear little big girl. i love you.