30dayphoto now over with!

Wow, that was fun and challenging. I liked it, and I hope that you did too. If you care to see them all in a bunch, here is the whole set over on flickr.

Here again is the link to all of the other folks who participated.

30dayphoto 30

30dayphoto 30, originally uploaded by monster town.

rain without stopping....

30dayphoto 29

30dayphoto 29, originally uploaded by monster town.

My friend Desiree at CalSkate.

30dayphoto 28

30dayphoto 28, originally uploaded by monster town.

30dayphoto 27

30dayphoto 27, originally uploaded by monster town.

shop my closet

Have you seen Shop My Closet? Interesting use of a blog! I'm considering doing something similar on my other website that is in the works, with the huge racks of clothing and all of the amazingly delicious vintage fabrics I've collected. Any thoughts?

30dayphoto 26

30dayphoto 26, originally uploaded by monster town.

This is what I could see at the Gogol Bordello show that I went to last night. I think that I was the shortest person there!

Scott and Gerald

DSC03620, originally uploaded by monster town.

I made this for a little friend's birthday. Scott named him Gerald. I think he wants one for himself.

30dayphoto 25

30dayphoto 25, originally uploaded by monster town.

30dayphoto 24

30dayphoto 24, originally uploaded by monster town.

30dayphoto 23

beaded sweater, originally uploaded by monster town.

This is a gorgeous vintage beaded sweater, made in "The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong". It is wool and mohair and nylon and it is elaborately beaded all over the front with these flowers and vines in pink, blue, yellow and green. They look like sugar. The beads are glass, and are clear on the outside, with a colored core and it makes them look frosty and delicious.

30dayphoto 22

look! a seal!!, originally uploaded by monster town.

I was sneaking around the Oakland Museum during the field trip, taking pictures of things here and there. Photography may even have been allowed, but I felt kind of weird about it.

The Oakland Museum was great by the way, if you haven't been there, and you're in the Bay Area, you should absolutely check it out. It's divided into three sections, art, science, and history, and all of them were very good!

30dayphoto 21

DSC03561, originally uploaded by monster town.

Waiting for z's dance class to finish, I wandered around the Laguna and took a lot of photos. The weather was beautiful and it was late afternoon, things are budding, and the red winged blackbirds were out in numbers.

30dayphoto 20

DSC03544, originally uploaded by monster town.

Have I abandoned the 30dayphoto project?!? Heavens no! I just couldn't find the time for the photo uploading, tagging, blogging part of the process, but I've still been taking them.

This is Yoda, part of a series of photos of this weird but loveable giant fluffball of a cat who came with our house. He likes to sleep in strange places like on the table or the middle of the kitchen floor. He seems to prefer hard surfaces, maybe because he is already so puffy.

Lynda Barry on eBay

I've been holding out on you guys, I guess, she's been doing this off and on for a long time, but look...the amazing Lynda Barry has a bunch of original drawings for sale on eBay.

thumbtack

Thumbtack Press!

slow mover

I have realized that I'm kind of a slow mover. I like to sit with ideas for long periods of time, and let them brew. Since I was sick in January/February, it's taken me this long to get my energy up again and back in motion.

I have projects that I'm working on:
my website, with Cliff
paintings (more sporadically than I should)
my ebay
my house
my new thrifting blog
the new networking group

And then I have ideas that I'm brewing:
textile ideas
crafty ideas
art ideas
business ideas

I spent almost a week, working on an improved look for my ebay auctions. I was kind of bummed because I spend lots of time finding beautiful things that I think people should have, and on taking clear photos, but then plopping them in the standard ebay template resized the photos and made them kind of small and fuzzy. Most templates for ebay are super ugly and distracting to me. And I do not know HTML.

I managed to make a template that I like pretty well, and I made a logo in Illustrator of my silly ebay name, and that I like. Here's what I came up with.

mt. tam view

mt. tam, originally uploaded by monster town.

Johnson family on the trail

johnson family on the trail, originally uploaded by monster town.

Scott and his family hiking the trail to the stone bench on Mt. Tamalpais in Marin. On Sunday we went out for brunch and on a hike up Mt. Tamalpais. The day could not have been nicer, and the views were breathtaking.

Thank you Johnson family!

30dayphoto 19

pretty, originally uploaded by monster town.

View coming up to the top of the ridge on Mt. Tam. My favorite shot from a lovely day full of breathtaking views.

30dayphoto 18

DSC03499, originally uploaded by monster town.

My kids wrestling in the sand on a windy day at Salmon Creek Beach.

work being made

Now that the recipient of my newest painting has had her birthday surprise, I can post the link to this photoset on flickr that is sort of a step by step documentation of the work in progress. Lots of steps and layers are missing, because I got so involved in the painting, that I forgot to take photos!

teacup swap

teacup swap, originally uploaded by monster town.

This is what I sent out to my partner in the teacup swap over at http://justmycupoftea.typepad.com. The purple thing in the back is a little journal that I made, the wrapped thing is a surprise, and for tea, I just included what I drink most everyday when I don't have Campbells Perfect Tea on hand. I don't want to say it yet though, because my package is travelling to Norway and is probably not there yet.

The cup and saucer are Ironstone and are from the early 1900's.

I got a pretty cup and saucer in the mail too, and some tea all the way from Maine, but the pottery sadly didn't survive the journey.

little my the front side

little my!, originally uploaded by monster town.

Showing both sides is important.

Little My is sledding in the winter time when all creatures are supposed to be sleeping!

little my!

little my!, originally uploaded by monster town.

This cup makes me so happy. It is a belated Valentine's day gift from Scott, and it arrived yesterday in the mail from Finland. He knows how I love moomintroll, and he had written down somewhere that Little My is my favorite character, so now I have this fabulous Little My cup to drink my tea from.

I love Little My because she reminds me of my daughter, fierce, straightforward, no nonsense, and tiny enough to fit in your pocket, or sleep in your sewing basket.

30dayphoto 17

30dayphoto, originally uploaded by monster town.

Sylvan's hand plus a boat plus the first blue sky in a good long while.

30dayphoto 16

birds, originally uploaded by monster town.

Two thriftstore bird sculptures on the windowsill. The landlord says that our house will get new paint this Spring, and that it will be green.

felt on the line 30dayphoto 15

felt on the line, originally uploaded by monster town.

Sorry, I fell behind! This is a felt project trying to dry on my clothesline, but it keeps raining and I keep forgetting to bring it inside.

30dayphoto 14

pinksweaterclose, originally uploaded by monster town.

ebay madness

I spent what feels like the whole day photographing clothing and then fixing the #@!#@#$% white balance in photoshop.

This is a detail shot of a vintage sweater shell from a fancy shop in Nairobi of all places. Well, at least the label was fancy, and the sweater is super cute.

I also had a little retail adventure with Spring. My very first time at costco. Wow. I was in search of a Jiffy garment steamer, but they didn't have them. I ended up buying a Rowenta one at a different store. It made the clothes look great.

Here's my day's work on flickr. The thing is, I have five times this much stuff still to list!

cups

cups, originally uploaded by monster town.

sandwich 30dayphoto 13

sandwich, originally uploaded by monster town.

water st. bistro Petaluma
ham, cheese and apple sandwich with a green salad

a bit of news

Scott bought me a flickr pro account and now I cannot stop looking at Flickr and joining groups. Flickr is just such a great community website and there is too much to look at.

You've got to try this. It's called Flickr Leech and you type in any date and it gives you a huge page of thumbnails based on interestingness. Very cool. Try it in a week or two though, the maker of it just had to take it down, probably due to bandwidth problems, because it was just featured on digg.com.

I'm working on a new blog and I'm very excited about it. It's called "The Art of Finding" and it's all about thrift shopping, reuse, salvageing, serendipity, and also making a living with ebay. I have big big plans for it. I'll post the link when it's ready. I'm trying to learn to use wordpress, so that I can make it pretty.

As soon as I finished writing that paragraph, I got a few more new ideas! This makes me very happy.

a bit of news

Scott bought me a flickr pro account and now I cannot stop looking at Flickr and joining groups. Flickr is just such a great community website and there is too much to look at.

You've got to try this. It's called Flickr Leech and you type in any date and it gives you a huge page of thumbnails based on interestingness. Very cool. Try it in a week or two though, the maker of it just had to take it down, probably due to bandwidth problems, because it was just featured on digg.com.

I'm working on a new blog and I'm very excited about it. It's called "The Art of Finding" and it's all about thrift shopping, reuse, salvageing, serendipity, and also making a living with ebay. I have big big plans for it. I'll post the link when it's ready. I'm trying to learn to use wordpress, so that I can make it pretty.

more snow in the woods

DSC03116, originally uploaded by monster town.

Zelia in the snow

DSC03112, originally uploaded by monster town.

30dayphoto 12

 

A California snowman!! It has been really cold here, so we thought we'd get up early and go check for snow. We found some way up on top of a mountain between here and Lakeport. It was so beautiful, and so much fun. Here are our photos 

30dayphoto 11

 

I'm working on a painting.

30dayphoto 10

 
My favorite candle holder.

I got this funny little ceramic guy at the thrift store, it looks like one of those rubber dolls that you squees and it's eyes and ears pop out. 

30dayphoto 9

 
The lovely paintings of Mati McDonough

Scott and I went to her Beehive Collective show on Thursday night and we both loved the work. The place was hopping and there was some really good music as well. 

30dayphoto 8

 

little clay tooth guy on my studio windowsill, made by Sylvan

I forgot to post this yesterday, look for another one later today. 

30dayphoto 7

 

This one was inspired by the lovely photo taken by happythings on Flickr

I think that I have some kid fingerprints on my lens though. 

Tale of the Leopard Print Skirt pt. 2

Remember the leopard print skirt? The one that sold for $314.00?? Well, now there is more to tell, and it's not good. The woman who bought it from me wanted to have her husband come and pick it up from me, because he was in town. She called me on the phone and we chatted for a while, she was really nice. She used to be a seller, selling high end designer clothes, Gucci, Chanel, Alaia, and Pucci mostly. She told me a few things about finding that sort of stuff, and recommended that I go to the upcoming vintage fashion expo in San Francisco.

She said that she's been searching for this particular skirt for a while, to complete the Alaia leopard print ensemble. Bustier, bodysuit and skirt.

The check arrived via overnight fedex the day that I had to go to the hospital. I mailed it out two days later. I didn't wait for the check to clear, because I had talked with her, and she was a mom and had been a seller, and seemed nice.

Three weeks later, I went to buy groceries, and found that there wasn't enough money in my account to cover $57.00 worth of food. Sure enough, her check had bounced and I was out the $318.00 plus another $20 in fees from my bank.

I tried to contact her, and she didn't respond for four days, then she sent an email saying "Oh my god! I'm so sorry, please call me", so I did, and she never answered or returned my calls or emails. I wrote her several times politely saying, let's please work this out. Either you can pay me with a money order or paypal, or if you can't pay for the skirt, you can send it back to me. Over a week went by, with no answer.

Friday she called back finally, saying that she would pay on Monday with paypal, because she had some other auctions ending this weekend that she needed to pay for. I was kind of insulted because at this point, she's had my skirt for a month without paying, and should pay for that before she buys more stuff! But I was nice and said okay.

Guess what? She still hasn't paid! Now I'm all upset, and I'm not sure what to do.

This is the first problem that I've had in my 5 years of selling on ebay and it's really not fun. I guess I'll have to wait to send things until the check clears, from now on.

30dayphoto6 what I didn't buy today

 

no sad clown paintings for me, thank you!
taken today at the mission thrift 

30dayphoto 5

 

Today it was raining, non stop all day long. Scott and I settled in for a long day huddled indoors with a stack of British mysteries on dvd. Orion came over and joined us, and Spring did too for a bit. Then I remembered that I hadn't taken my daily photo yet, so I took this one of Scott, looking shifty in the kitchen under the flourescent light. In the background, up above, is a really cool carving of Fargo made by Laurel Roth, carved from many layers of old paint that she peeled off of a derelict building.  

30dayphoto 4 Fargo loves Sticks

  

saturday morning

Scott is at the handbuilt bicycle show in San Jose this morning. I am catching up on shipping some packages and trying to wrangle the kids into cleaning their room.

I am hoping for a better day with the kids today. Z was having weird freakouts yesterday and making the day hard for everyone. I'd like to maybe go and do something out in the world today, but they totally complain and drag their heels.



Tonight we are going to our friend's art opening. I am very excited about it, and if you're in the area, you should come out to Roshambo Gallery in Healdsburg to see it. Todd Barricklow and Will Smith. Both incredibly talented artists.

30dayphoto 3

  

google pages

Have you heard about google pages? It's kind of neat and easy to use, but I'm not so sure about it. I made a little web page for my artwork, while I'm still working with my web designer friend on a real website. It looks okay overall, but the really frustrating thing is that the default link colors are horrible, and they really clash terribly with my page, but I can't change them. Argh!

What do you think?

what did you have for lunch today?

For lunch today, I had a steamed artichoke with the juice of a meyer lemon off of a friend's tree, a tiny bit of butter and some Jane's Krazy Mixed Up Salt.

What did you have?

Look at these tasty lunches

30dayphoto 2

 

This is day two of the 30dayphoto challenge. I made this little guy from the fabulous instructions over on MollyChicken. My daughter wanted a new warm pack pillow thing for Christmas, and she loves cute stuffed animals, so I thought that I'd combine the two. I made this bear out of wool fabric, with cheapo acrylic felt for the ears and legs and I stuffed it with buckwheat hulls. When Z heated it up to use as a warmer, it made the most godawful acrid burning smell, like a mixture between burnt popcorn and burnt hair and wet fur. Ugh, I had to take the little guy and toss him out on the porch, hopefully to air out.

While he was out there, our evil cat Jack took rather a liking to him. Jack loves four things in this life, sunny spots to lie down in, biting people, wool, and cigarette smoke, so this burnt smelling wool creature is just right for him. Now this panda belongs to Jack. Jack takes most of his naps right on top of the panda, and if the panda gets knocked off of the chair, he somehow gets it right back up there.