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Can you be in love with fingerless gloves? I am smitten with these. They are Moe Munroe fingerless gloves, and I found these at Creative Courage. I have since found out that not many places carry these, and they are expensive. I can't justify the price. I am going to have to play with making some. Aren't they cute?? Check out the other designs too.
That title has nothing to do with the post except that my toes are cold. So, yesterday I taught my first class of the year at Creative Courage in Woodland Hills. It rained so hard on me while driving out there- and then it stopped- and then it rained so hard on me coming home. But Lupe made us all some nice coffee and the store was warm and cozy and we had a nice afternoon. It was a good way to spend the day. So here is what was created.....
cool eh???
and this...
Lupe, honey, don't stand on chairs... look at the mess we made!!!
For me, though, my life is a series of works in progress-
here is the studio floor. Did I tell you that the polyurethane crackeld?? Not what I wanted so I sanded it down and started over.
I swear, one day I will move my stuff back in.
and these are the mini quilts that I have been noodling with-
You know that Mary Ann from Dispatch from L.A.? If you don't, you should. AND if she offers to cook you dinner, say yes, fast. She is a funny lady with a posse of cats who can out art the best of them! M.A. that is, I don't know about the cats yet! I had the pleasure of sharing a lovely pasta dish with her last night - cozy in her warm bright yellow kitchen while the rest of L.A. washed away in this rain. Our chat was not linear by any means. Anything that comes to mind topic wise is fair game between us with no segue needed. So, if you see her stuff online, you know she is one amazing artist, but to see it up close you just want to start chucking stuff into your bag and sneaking off. Next time I am taking a bigger purse. She was kind enough to share some stenciling tricks with me AND even more helpful some computer tricks too! I have just successfully added a sitemeter account to my blog ( who knew I would be able to do that!!! ) I am not a techy kind of girl and I am always struggling to learn more. It was relatively painless, and quick to do and now I can see who has visited my blog and where they are from. My first visit after setting up the meter was from Mexico. Cool no?? If you click on the sitemeter icon on my blog you should be able to see too. Thanks M.A. - you rock!
In other life news, my stuido space is still in a shambles... this rain has postponed any polyurethane to the floor, so for now all my stuff is stacked in the dining room. It is making me nuts. Keep your fingers crossed that this storm will blow thru and I can finish. I can't wait to show you pictures when it is done.
AND I have to tell you that I have been lax in informing you of up comming classes. The first one for this year is this Sunday at Creative Courage in Woodland Hills. I will be doing a mini quilt class where we make collage works with fabric and frame them. These always come out so great- its a fun class to do. I also have some new classes I am going to do this year involving soldering, so check out Creative Courage and Zinnia for class info. O.k. kids, that is it for now, I am off to run exactly 1 million errands in the rain. Wish me luck.
On Sunday I took a break from my new project, ( don't read into that I have finished any of the others), of painting my studio. I am having trouble calling the space my studio because that sounds so official and professional- I decided to finally remove the red floral carpet that was in there and the old vinyl flooring under that. Once down the wood I decided to paint it and well, might as well paint the walls while everything is torn up. I am doing the walls in a very very light blue, and the floor in deep eggplant. Here is how it is looking so far-
So, with the dining room full of my junk, and my studio looking like this, I decided to go ck. out a new flea market/artist event called Southpark. Held on 8th and Grand downtown, I think it is going to be every Sunday. It was a mix of artist and folks selling retro furniture and high end soaps and olive oil.
I ran into Renee Dominique and Jennifer Rowland there while visiting with Shari Enge, and miss Denise from Out of Necessity.
Renee posing with Jennifer with the lovely skyline of downtown as a backdrop, and then Renee with her new friend, ?? I don't know... crazy hat guy... And finally one of Shari's newest dolls.
A nice outing all in all, the venue is still on the small side so I was home early ( to paint !!) Check it out sometime!
uh... was I on fire or something?? uh... somethings up, I don't know what yet. Maybe I have t.p on my shoe. Nope, shoe is o.k., underwear is in appropriate place, hair is .. well lets skip the hair. For some reason my counter reads that I got 102 hits to my blog today. Do you know anything about that?
How did 102 new people find me, and not leave a comment?? Did my counter have a seizure?? I didn't even use a suggestive title to try and lure unsuspecting readers into my tiny sometimes crafty world. Did my family just stop in 102 times?? Come on- you can tell me.
I am hosting the Valentine's Day Post Card Swap part II over at Flickr! This is the card that I made last year. Any interest in joining?? Well, head on over to flickr and join up!!
These are the post cards that I got last year- great aren't they??
Yesterday was our first chunky book gathering for 2008. I have been missing my chunky book friends so much!!! We gather approximately every 6 weeks and exchange 4"x4" art pages ( o.k. we eat too!). We have been doing this now for 3 years!! The first meeting I had to kind of force folks to give a try and figured we would just do the 1 round, but before we had even finished exchanging pages they already wanted to make sure we were going to do this again. Our theme for this CB was new years resolutions. I hate resolutions and tried so hard to get the topic changed! The collage below, and the bird one from the previous post, were the front of my pages, I did 4 of each, and then the back I glued on all kinds of stuff from my junk pile that I was just tired of seeing, but was still keeping. My goal for this year is to get rid of stuff that I don't use or love, so that I can keep the stuff that I do love. ( that would be the stuff on the front!) 
It turned out to be a great round-and as usual once we picked our next theme I couldn't sleep! Our next pages are based on a project by Sol Lewitt.
We made of list of items that must appear in our next page. So, how similar do you think work from 8 different artist using the same "directions" is going to be??! Along with this list we have to add one element that is our own. I am really looking forward to this challenge, and to our next CB gathering!
The elements:
1. triangle
2. five stripes
3. three circles in the lower right corner
4. four stars
5. doorway
6. famous floating head
7. goats
8. pink dot
"It is too cold to snack."
Someone said this to me yesterday.
Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous??
Maybe too cold to sleep, or pee, or play outside, but too cold to snack??
Dang.
