i'm in orange county for christmas this year, and its going to be seventy degrees. hm. have a great holiday, i'll be back home in time for new years...

i am seeing (and loving!) lots of matryoshka around the web in the work of artists and designers. i usually get tired of kitchy motifs after seeing them a couple of times (antlers? no thanks) - but not these. sean and i picked up three keychain ladies on our trip to prague - so cute!

i'm honored to have been featured in a couple of great blogs recently...

my childhood friend and neighbor emily wrote about about raeburn ink on her blog, eco-chic weddings. she's got tons of great ideas about how to embrace earth conscious values while still planning a stylish event. she has even written a book, which i think would be a great gift for folks about to take the plunge.

and andrea of fly, who i met last summer at the renegade craft fair, did a lovely post on some things i have for sale on etsy. wow.

thanks!

my morning view is misty today, looks like it will be another wintry (i.e. rainy) one...

i had a great time in portland - seeing the city and participating in a craft fair on the west coast were great fun. i definitely miss urban life! my birthday was on the 15th, and i was so glad to spend it eating dumplings and visiting the portland art museum. a step above my local options in humboldt for the weekend...

crafty wonderland

i'm off to portland tomorrow for a brief visit and a sale - i'm a vendor at crafty wonderland, a big holiday craft sale, this sunday the 16th. i hear such great things about portland, i am really looking forward to exploring it and joining up with the handmade community. if you're in the area, do stop by!

daytrip society now has online shopping! i designed a few maine-centric tee shirt graphics for their store at the beginning of the summer, which was a fun project for me. i got the chance to design in a much different style than i usually do. they also carry a full line of raeburn ink products, including some stuff that isn't available anywhere else. i am buying some of my holiday gifts from them, they've got a great collection available online!

new pillows available on etsy!

it was cold and clear last night, and this morning there is a layer of frost covering everything. the crystal formations are pretty amazing. as the sun rises, the frost melts - it has turned to dewy moisture where the sun has hit, but remains icy in the shadows.

i have been busy working the last couple of days, getting ready for my visit to portland and the sale at crafty wonderland. there will be pics soon on etsy, new pillows and bags, and some tee shirts too! one thing i really appreciate about my life in the country is having lots of time for creative projects. my sewing machine has been getting a workout!

i spent a while today trying to photograph the weather - first the blustery winds that have been shaking the house for the past two days, later the pouring rain that announced the arrival of winter here on tower drive. the pics just weren't capturing the dramatic weather. but then the power went out and i had to get out the candles.....

allison, brooke, and denise came over today for a stitch n' bitch. i was so impressed that everyone brought their sewing machines! it was really fun to be social and exchange ideas about projects - especially in contrast to the generally long hours i spend working alone. i hope we can do more of these in the future...

molly sent me this picture over the summer, wearing the soft patchwork necklace i made for her. i'm making some more necklaces for the craft sale i'm going to do in portland in a few weeks. its been fun to try my hand at jewelry projects.

i'm off again, this time heading back east for thanksgiving. thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday, for the low key time spent with the family, cooking and relaxing. and i do love the mashed potatoes!

I've been making some new things recently for my etsy shop, tiny pill-shaped pins and earrings. They are patchworked tiny bits of fabric filled with stuffing that makes them into wee pillows. Yet another way for me to use materials leftover from other projects!

duty free

there is something about having a foreign currency burning a hole in my pocket when i'm just about to leave a country - i feel a desperate need to spend it all, usually at the airport! we picked up a box of swiss chocolates at the duty free shop with our last euros. it has been a tasty purchase.

some reflections of paris...

today is my sister joanna's birthday! i'm glad we got to spend so much time together this year. i love you very much, joes!

with the arrival of the aforementioned toadstools, i am reminded that humboldt's "winter" will be a mild, rainy one compared with the snowy east coast seasons i always loved. (though the east coast seems to be turning tropical anyway..) so this october sprinkling of snow we saw in the alps may have to tide me over for a while!

its fall in humboldt, and getting lush. we have picture perfect toadstools growing right here on tower drive!

guidebooks

sean and i spent a while at the bookstore choosing guidebooks for prague and paris before we left for our trip. and when we were there, we spent a lot of time standing on street corners pouring over them, often a little bit lost.

we opted for time out paris and lonely planet prague. time out was the clear winner, with well organized information and pretty good maps. (of course, we still ended up needing to know the name of that one street that wasn't labeled or that was under the map key, so if you're going to paris get your hands on a copy of the really detailed book of maps katrin lent us...) lonely planet prague had good listings, but maybe i've been trained by reading time out new york magazine for ten years - the writing just didn't seem as snappy. and the maps? pretty awful.

back at the bookstore we had decided against buying a guide by rick steves. i didn't know who he was either, but i sure do now - some guy who travels europe in a polo shirt and writes opinionated guides and also has a line of luggage. we saw a lot of other tourists with rick steves guides, and when we arrived at my sister's house in dresden she took us on the rick steves tour of the city. he says things like "there's a monument of a guy on a horse in the middle of the square but he's not very important so we won't talk about him." maybe next trip....

the last few days of our trip were spent visiting my sister and brother in law in dresden. it was a too short visit, and all of a sudden it seemed we were back on the plane again, heading home. fortunately we had clementines, which always make things a little bit better, even the ends of vacations.

after visiting paris, sean and i flew east to prague. it was our first visit. we had a great time and found the architecture stunning, but the city life itself eluded us. i think we arrived about fifteen or twenty years too late. tourism has completely overwhelmed the old parts of town, making prague's transition to capitalism seem like a change for the worse. we had to go out of the way a bit to find glimpses of regular czech life, like this bit of kitsch in a storefront window.

i saw lena's post about the beautiful flowerbox building in ny, and was reminded of the musee du quai branly that we saw in paris - it was so amazing to be walking along the river and literally come across a living piece of architecture. somehow the french have managed to re-create fern canyon in the middle of the city.

we have been home now for four days and things seem as they were before. trips quickly fade into shadows, daily life takes over, and thankfully we have the pictures. paris was amazing - we spent time with my dear katrin, saw the sights, walked too much. our few days were not enough, i wish we lived closer!

the reason for our trip to europe was to meet my parents, sister and brother in law in the swiss alps, at some of our old haunts. we had a truly magical time, and my favorite day was spent taking the ski gondola up to the top of the mountain and hiking with the whole family. i am still sorting through the pictures of the trip, but i quite like this one with the shadow of the gondola on the grass..

sean and i are back home again after what seemed like a long time away. we stopped at a beautiful wedding on the coast of maine, and then went off to europe, where we had a great time jetting around to see friends and family. i'll post a few pictures when we download them, i can't wait to see them myself!

i am going to be out of town for a wedding & family reunion for a couple of weeks, so no posts for a while. thanks to the lovely christie, my etsy shop will remain open for business. i've been busy making a lot of stock, so items are ready to ship. i've also got some new products in the works, so there is a lot to look forward to when i return!

i'm obsessed with the scraps and bits of fabric that end up getting thrown away at the end of a project. these are the ends that got cut off by the serger after finishing the edges on some fabric that is orange on one side and white on the other..

shadows

even though, as previously noted, i live in the rainy part of california, the sun is out often. i am constantly surprised by its intensity - there is often a dramatic difference in temperature when the sun goes behind clouds sets. i suppose this should be obvious, but it seems to me that on the east coast the air stays hotter on its own in the summer. dramatic shadows are a beautiful result of those lovely sunny days.

whidehch

sean is a wildlife biologist on the hoopa valley reservation here in cali. he studies the pacific fisher, a type of weasel that lives in the forest. this one is whidehch ("little sister" in hupa), a fisher they found as an abandoned infant and have been rehabilitating for release back into the wild. here she is in her temporary cage on the reservation. they let her go this week, back into the forest where she was found. everybody is hoping she'll do well!

of course, when rains blow through the sky is often quite lovely. i was struck by the perfect cotton ball puffiness of these clouds today.

i was warned about this

when i moved out to humboldt, one of the most common pieces of advice i got from people who knew the area was to get a good raincoat. summer has been lovely and sunny, with bouts of fog. but fall has arrived, and with it a good bit of drizzle. i did buy the raincoat, and it is getting lots of use!

poppytalk handmade

for the month of october, i am participating in an online street market called poppytalk handmade organized by jan of the blog poppytalk. she has selected an amazing group of designers and artists to participate in the market, and i am proud to be one of them!

today was a project day - i spent several hours cutting out pieces for some patchwork pillows, and stitching them together. the rotary cutter leaves tiny pieces of fabric on my cutting mat that are too small to save, but quite beautiful.

i am loving the texture of these bubbles in a glass of soda.

updates!

i have been busy recently updating my website and etsy shop. this is a picture of the latest version of my triangle-shaped handbag, and its my favorite so far. have a look at my other sites for more recent items!

we recently watched a surf contest in nearby trinidad. basically the contestants take turns showing off during heats. we didn't see the end of the contest, but i was rooting for one of the younger surfers who was having trouble getting past the surf break. being new to the sport myself, i could really relate!!

i have been working a lot recently on refining some designs for sale on etsy. i did a photo shoot over the weekend, and love the look of all of the thumbnails lined up together in iphoto. my etsy shop is up - i'm still working out some kinks and adding more designs, but please have a look and let me know what you think!

its funny, i thought i traded in hip hop for banjos when i moved from brooklyn to humboldt county, the hippie (and pot-growing) capital of the us. actually, i know i did, but the north coast journal seems to think otherwise.

i have been pretty busy the last few days, we've had houseguests, and i started a new part time job this week. i'd forgotten what it was like to be a working girl! here are some pictures of what it looks like from my seat at the computer in the morning on a sunny day. i've made half curtains to keep the sun out of my eyes, and there is a beautiful shadow from the window on the orange wall behind me.