"All for under fifty bucks!"

He builds furniture.

I sew.

He built a headboard; we upholstered it; I made a matching bedspread.

We're a pretty good team.

Art therapy.

One of my family members has been struggling a lot lately, and so has taken to collaging and various forms of art therapy. She's really, really good at it (though she'd deny it).

I've had an emotionally exhausting couple of days, thinking about how there's so much suffering I wish I could untangle, fix, and extinguish - but ultimately feel like one drop of water on a raging fire. How can I get through? So, I thought: "hey, that's a collage I could try!"

What's probably most impressive here is that I was able to do it all with ONE Red Plum flier. What's most helpful is that, if you look at the orange triangles, you can find a Little Caesar's near you. And what's most awkward is... why did I use blueberries for clouds?? Sure, there's a lot I don't like about how it turned out, but it does the job.

R-o-c-k U-S-A?

To sate my raging biological clock, I thought I'd try some quintessential "mom" crafts. Just to keep me distracted and shut up my damned ovaries already. So I thought, hey, what's more mom-ish than a quilt!? So here was my thought process.

1) There is no way in hell I am cutting out 3,000 tiny triangles; appliqué it is!
2) When I was a kid, I loved blankets, posters, etc. that had tons of cool patterns and details to look at and interpret.
3) I like maps.

Yup. It will be all 50 U.S. states, in quilt form, using different representative fabrics. Some of them are my own personal associations (bicycles for Oregon) or general cultural contexts (Idaho = potatoes). And then some are going to be input from friends, or something that reminds me of a friend that lives in a given state. (Because, honestly, I don't know anything about Virginia.) And then some of those little tiny states on the east coast are going to get whatever scrap fabric I have lying around, because screw them. Sorry, Maryland, I would make you out of crabs, but no one would actually know they're crabs, and I'm not about to buy a fat quarter for that buzzkill.

Anyway, this is going super well, which surprises me. No, it's not 100% geographically accurate, but you know what? Simplification keeps my sanity intact. Also, while I have a reference grid and actual-size guide, the rest I am totally winging. That's where I tend to have the best success. I'll deal with problems as they arise and just work my way across the country.

Piñata!

For my birthday last year, I decided to get myself a piñata and beat it with a dowel in my backyard. I mean, I invited friends. It was actually a lot of fun - so I wanted to repeat it this year, except do it without those 1) crappy piñatas you get at a hispanic grocery that's made of a balloon covered in party hats with Justin Bieber's picture or something, and 2) piñatas they sell at the big box stores that are made of solid cardboard and require a systematic decapitation with a police nightstick (true story; he was an officer stopping by the convenience store next door, sympathetic to our plight as violent candy-seekers).

So I made my own for my birthday this year! Naturally, it is a yak.

It was made with three balloons, some phone book pages, maybe about two and a half cups of flour and water, a few tablespoons of acrylic paint, and three rolls of crepe paper. Actually... probably at least 8 hours of work spread out over 3-4 days. But it was good, fun work that didn't feel like work.


I love celebrating my birthday. It's the one get-together I can organize that implies people will actually show up, and I can arrange all kinds of random stuff I would never think of doing for any other holiday (read: things I couldn't get away with). For example, this weekend I am going to force my husband to sit through 6 hours of Star Wars movies with me. Why? BECAUSE IT'S MY BIRTHDAY.


An awesome resource for piñata making is pinataboy.com - so if you've got the urge, I say go for it. It's awesome. And while it's natural to feel sad about breaking such a cute little yak, pinataboy says "Remember, piñatas LOVE to get whacked and smashed!  It's the most fun a piñata can ever have!"

Knox on fox in socks in box.

Another Christmas project that I can now post about! Yes, I made some people things for Christmas. For this scheme, I picked up one of those little wooden boxes from the craft store and decided that I was going to paint it like a grown-up and gift it like a grown-up.

India ink does nicely on wood - fast-drying, bright colors, no raised anything, and the wood grain shows through. So I recommend that. Then, finely sand to give a distressed look and really bring out the natural grain. Then lacquer. (My husband used to work for a paint company, so we have tons of this second-quality lacquer-like stuff that's used for oil paints. It's fabulously glossy.)

The 4-drops-blue, 1-drop-green combo I mixed was questionable at first, but I chose to roll with it. Turns out - after the gloss darkens - to be a classic-looking, aged hue. I then hemmed and glued some leftover bookbag fabric (thanks Stacey!) in the bottom. And it's a nice little trinket box.

Daisy chain.

Four individual threads and a plethora of beads! The most complex beading I've done. It actually warrants a spot here, I think!