Sweet Thanksgiving Greeting

We got this adorable Thanksgiving greeting from my husband's mom! Handmade of course. Very cute and very clever!


I have craft night tomorrow and then my husband and I will leave for PA on Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving there with family. We are both very excited for a long holiday weekend. If I fall of the radar for a while, have a happy Thanksgiving!

Craft Fair Postcard

Arpitha sent me an email that the postcards advertising the holiday craft fair are ready. I am very excited, I have never been on a postcard before. You can see the front and back on her blog.

I have a lot less prep to do for the fair this time around, which is nice. And I will be inside, which is even nicer!

Tipetty Tap Tipetty Tap

I felt inspired the other night and made a treasury. I was able to get a spot yesterday. Check it out before it comes down on Tuesday morning.

Holiday Mission Accomplished

I finally finished all of my holiday cards. They are all posted in my Etsy shop as well.

Crafty Update

The Somerville Museum updated their website for the craft fair. If you watch long enough you will see one of my cards.

The Other Lawless

You may have noticed a new addition to the sidebar on the left dedicated to my husband's published poetry. I decided this is as good a place as any for me to glow about my talented husband and share his work. As his poems get published I will link to them here. This also makes the blog a one-stop shop for friends and family to keep up with us.

Right now we are waiting for some of his accepted poems to appear in Drunken Boat, Memorious, Blood Orange Review, H_NGM_N, and the Cortland Review. Keep checking back, I will post them once they are up. Happy reading!

Almost Defeated by Snowflakes

After burning 2 screens and trying two inks I give up on the bird holiday card design. I could not get what I wanted out of the colors or the snowflake background so I went back to the drawing board. I switched the background and foreground and also switched from pool blue to the bluebell blue. This is the new and improved and hopefully more printable version:


Of course, it couldn't just be a matter of changing the design and merrily continuing on my way. This cards has been strewn with obstacles. My printer ran out of ink. Instead of 1 trip to Staples (to photocopy the design so it would be the necessary carbon based image my Gocco craves), it meant 2. It took one trip to Staples to by ink, and then home to print the background, then back to Staples to copy the print out, then home to finally print.

Not so fast. Because I had a light, poor exposure on my screen last time, I opted for a darker design copy to burn my screen this time. But I over compensated and the carbon was so heavy that the paper stuck to the screen blocking the holes. I inked it anyway, hoping I had gotten off all the paper (using tweezers and a steady hand), but there were big blobs of paper messing up my snowflakes. Uhg. Aside from that I loved the new design and color.

I was about to burn the 4th screen but decided to heavily clean the screen with my giant tub of Gojo. Lo and behold, saturating the screen with Gojo and lightly scraping the screen lifted off the last bits of paper and now I have a usable screen!

Now I am just waiting for the clean screen to dry before finally printing these cards. Sigh. It will feel good. Nine out of 10 times the stars align and printing is a breeze. This is that 10% of the time that my Gocco is in a foul mood. But I will prevail and you will see some finished cards soon enough.

A Fairey in Union Square

I just found out that the new mural in Union Square was done by artist Shepard Fairey, who did the vote poster, the Obama Hope poster, and is well know for his Obey Giant stickers. The mural is on Somerville Ave, on the side of Grand. Here is an interesting interview with Shepard in SuperTouch. I love the small Fairey sticker(s?) on the emergency box nearby. The piece is a great addition to the area. He is going to have a show at the ICA, which I want to check out when it opens.

Etsy Treasuries

I have some cards in a treasury called yellow and grey put together by katedowding who makes really great sock monsters. It comes down on Tuesday afternoon.

I also just found some of my holiday cards in another treasury called Winter Ice, put together by poshpretties who makes fun hair accessories for kids. This treasury will be up until late Tuesday night.

Check them out while they're up!

Today I Gocco

Really, today I will finally finish my holiday cards. I am determined. I other crafting news, I found out that my application to be in the Somerville Museum Holiday Sale was accepted. Craft fair take 2. This one is indoors (yay!) and is actually for 2 days. It is much, much smaller than the stART on the Street and is held in at the same time as a few other happenings in the Ville. This one does not require much prep since I did so much prep last time.

I will bring a book and welcome any visitors who happen to be in the neighborhood. I am not making my husband sit with me all day, even though he is so great that if I asked he probably would. My not asking him to come is his birthday gift since the first day of the craft fair is on his birthday. Last year I was in Baltimore on his birthday, and this year I will be at a craft fair all day. Next year I will do better.

One last news item, I gave a pack of cards to a fellow crafty blogger, ohhellofriend, to use in her holiday giveaway. When they go up and she starts promoting the giveaway I will let you know. OK, I am off to Gocco land...

A New Day

Honestly, I woke up today with You're a Grand Old Flag stuck in my head. I fell asleep smiling last night. I feel so proud, hopeful and relieved. What I really love is that the first and only thing that a whole generation of children will know is life under an African American president. It is not a "what if?" or "when?" anymore, it is a reality.

Get Out There And...

art by Shepard Fairey

Stalled Out...

Last weekend I worked on my holiday cards (not the weekend that just slipped away with no real crafting, but the one before). I printed 2 out of 3, but had trouble with the third. It’s the bird card. I was planning on printing a pool blue background on a white card with the snowflakes being the white paper showing through. I know that the Gocco is not the best at printing large swaths of solid color, but I was looking forward to the distressed look.

Something wasn’t working for me though. The pool is too much and too heavy. It is also a thick, mixed ink and came out too distressed, and almost faux finished. And one corner had poor exposure. So after printing these two, I called it quits to sort out my next step. And a week and a half later, that is where I still am.

I think I might expose another screen (yikes, not when they are such a precious commodity!), and use the metallic blue ink right out of the tube since it is a little more fluid, smoother and a cooler color. There is an upcoming holiday, which I might turn into a 4 day weekend since it falls on a Tuesday this year. So let’s hope I get back in gear then and can finish these up!

Red Lentil Sunday

I didn't quite get as much done this weekend as I would have liked, but I did make an important discovery. I have been craving the red lentil soup with lime that Lorena turned me on to (and which is in the amazing vegetarian cookbook she also gave me). As I cruised around the insanely busy Stop and Shop with everything I needed in my cart except the lentils, I remembered that split red lentils aren't easy to find in regular grocery stores.

Not that finding Indian specialty stores in Somerville is a challenge, it's just that all the ones I know about are in Union Square and, since I hadn't eaten for 3 hours and had already spent over an hour running errands, I did not want to deal with the traffic and parking situation in the square.

I had essentially given up hope and was on my way home thinking I might get lentils tomorrow. But my street is full of little shops, and while they are almost all Brazilian, Italian, or bakeries, I decided to try one on my way up the hill. And that is when I made my big discovery. A small Indian grocery store 3 blocks from my apartment! Seriously, how long have I lived here and never noticed?

I got a giant bag of red lentils and some fun frozen Tandoori breads. They had a ton of spices - so I plan on evaluating my spice supply at home and then restocking. Needless to say I am very excited and love Somerville that much more. Where else can you find a martial arts studio, a Brazilian bakery, an Italian sub shop, and Sir Hare's Salon, and an Indian grocer living in such close quarters?

I made the soup for dinner and it was exactly what I needed. Yum.