(Inside A Black Apple)

I'm here, I'm making things, I promise

Since I've been on a wee painting hiatus (maybe you have noticed?) I feel like I've been idle...or it appears that way on le blog. But I haven't! You must believe me...I haven't been idle.

For instance, I've been on a bag-making kick:

These will each be for sale at The Black Apple in the next day or so!

I know that they're a bit "one of these things is not like the other", but I haven't really settled into a cohesive bag-making-mood yet. Its coming along, though.

Last night I stitched up some hedgehogs after going to see Of Montreal for free, which was very fun (they closed with "Crazy", that Gnarls Barkley song that is pretty great & strangely very befitting Of Montreal). It's nice to see an Athens band playing in Brooklyn...it feels cozy.

These little boys are off to the wonderful Robert Mahar, and his sweetest-of-the-sweets online shop:

That little one with the tie just KILLS me.

The last little bit of eye candy are these new sweet buttons that came from Busy Beaver today:

 

On top of all of those little things, I Post Office'd today, which is always such an experience.
Whew, now I feel like less of a lay-about!

Happy Mondays, my dears!

Mood Fabrics!

Oh my goodness, I had such a fun afternoon...Sarah and I went to Mood (better known as the Project Runway fabric store) and I got such lovely, lovely stuff. I am so used to buying fabric (and everything else for that matter!) online, that it was so nice to just be able to touch and see the fabric with my own two eyes. It was a little on the pricey side, and there was much rummaging and sifting, and heavy bolt-carrying, but it was so great.

I got some lovely cotton and cotton-blend prints:

I'm so excited about the green apple print and the hungarian folk prints...and...oh...all of it.

These are the beautiful tapestry-weight fabrics that I got:

Here are some larger images of my favorites:

In closing:
I am such a dork for fabric.
&
I hope everybody is having happy weekends!

Rogue Quilting, Chapter 2

Elizabeth's quilt is 99% finished! It's just in the thread-snipping phase, which is why the 1%. So this is my second quilting endeavor, armed only with my vague notion of what-is-a-quilt, and I think that it's lovely, in it's oh-so-slightly lumpy and vaguely uneven way.

Thank you, Sarah's bed, for being the model. My room is a mess of messes right now, which is next on my list of things to reckon with, after the quilt. So, we ordered a very fluffy batting for this, making it like a very snuggly comforter, but it also was a little hellish to quilt. I really thought I had given myself carpal-tunnel syndrome yesterday as I fed, fed, fed the thing through my machine.

  I am excited and a wee bit terrified about how it will fluff up and distribute itself.  Hopefully it will be good. Hoping! I'm a little sad that I have to relinquish the first washing and drying, where most of said fluffing and re-distribution will take place. Sadly, I cannot do the washing myself this time, as we don't have a washer or dryer, and I will have to take it to the lovely Sofia at the laundromat across the street, and entrust it to her. She's a good egg, though, and they always do a remarkably beautiful job on my clothes and linens, so I'm sure it will be wonderful.

More of Quilty V 2.0:

So, there you have it, my dears. Please don't be too hard on la quilt, as I have no idea what I'm doing, really. I know it is full of problems, but I kind of love that quilts and blankets do their job just fine, even if they're a little wonky, and have more than their share of...ahem... "character". :)

Off to check off more things from the To-Do list!
Happy Friday my bluebirds!

4 New Isobels

here, naturally.

(POST 11:00 PM EDIT)
Oh my god, what the hell just happened on Project Runway?! Wny is Angela still on the show?
WHY? WHY? WHY?
If somebody else I love (besides Malan and Katharine) has to go home instead of her (ie: Allison, Michael) I am going to have to make a vow to find her and burn up her hideous creations.
But the good news is that the "big drama" is about to go down next week, so that should be interesting. This link has a theory about what is going to go down. Scandal!

Rogue Quilting and Good Friends

I started on the quilt that I promised to make for Elizabeth and her wonderful boyfriend, Lee, who I love almost as much as Elizabeth. The only glitch is that Lee has a terrible aversion to brown, and we kinda made the quilt very brown-centric. Whatever, Lee, don't you even think about looking a gift quilt in the mouth!

These are the 12"x12" squares, all nice and ironed:

I am crazy for that chocolate brown and dark brown stripe...I should order lots of it before it dissapears like every fabric that I fall in love with. I think that this quilt is going to look a bit like a bunch of fancy chocolate bon-bons jumbled together...the binding is this adorable caramel candy stripe. Mmmmm....

And I thought you guys would get a kick out of this, which is my further public acknowedgement of my "Rogue Quilter" status. I already explained when I made "My First Quilty"  that I actually have no earthly idea how a proper quilt is constructed. I just kind of, let's say, intuitively went about it the way that seemed to make sense, and I was very happy with the results. Now comes the real testament to my true roustabout streak, and the proof that I would indeed be hanged by the "real" quilters at the "real" quilt store:

I use LP's to trace my squares. I don't know why this feels so...illegal...but it does.

I used one of my two very favorite LP jackets, which are beloved decorations as well, to make Liz's squares today. These things will never stop cracking me up. I want for them to follow me to every place that I ever live for the rest of my life:

I found "He Touched Me" first, and then MONTHS later I found "We're just a little singin' band". Granted, at the same thrift store, but still.

Another highlight of this afternoon is a package that came from my dear friend Jenny, who is in Athens making beautiful ceramic things, and who I love very much.

Granted, she does work at a book store, but goodness gracious! What a haul! Thank you so, so much Jenny. I know you don't read this blog, really, but maybe one day you will be bored and head on over here.

Project Runway tonight, which I'm sure that all of you already know, and I'm going to make a nice dinner. And cupcakes. Have you noticed I'm exploiting every opportunity to make cupcakes that I possibly can? Etsy-versary: Cupcakes. Project Runway Night: Cupcakes.

Love,
Your Rogue Quilting and Cupcake Addicted Partner-in-Crime

So Excited about "Money" & The Blueberry Bandit

...About "Black Apple Money", that is! It just made its debut in the shop.
   

(adorable envelopes courtesy of the overwhelmingly wonderful Paper Source.)

This seems like a very keen idea, as I know that lots of folks buy my work to give as gifts. The certificates themselves are just so adorable...

I'm a  busy bee with lots of little things, and I must make a to-do list, or I am certainly going to slight some of those things that I should be to-doing. I got a jump on the aforementioned "fall-ish" purses last night, so that is exciting and I am in the midst of ordering/making new suprises for the next round of Black Apple Samplers, which are going to be the cutest yet!

Oh! While I am here, I keep meaning to say how proud I am of/how wonderful my friend Sara is. This is not SaraH who I live with in NY, it is Sara no H (though I am proud of and think my friend Sarah with an H is wonderful, too...she just started an exciting new job yesterday!).

Sara lives in Athens, GA with her sweet cat Junebug and her even more sweet husband, Andy, also a good friend, who I used to work with at the video store (when I was a DVD-slinger by trade). She is a blooming craftista who has been out of the internet-crafty loop, and has now taken a full-fledged plunge by starting an adorable Etsy shop, and a wonderful blog, both of which I would love for you to visit! I mentioned her wonderful print gocco cupcake cards a while ago, when she sent me off to NY with a whole batch of them and the beautiful handmade envelopes that accompany them. She also makes sweet felt pillows, art prints, and etceteras.

This is a little smattering of the Blueberry Bandit experience:

So please go visit, and spread the crafty support & love! Sara is one of the most kind, self-effacing people that I have ever met, and almost out-of-control humble. She has luna moths (my favorite animal, for anyone who wants to know) that come knock on her front door. They have unfaltering good taste in people, so you know she's special. Her noble purpose for starting her blog is obviously share, but also to kick herself in the ass a little, which she is completely open about, and I think is really great. I think our blogs kick all of us into gear at times, because it's almost like an accountability thing.
I feel like I owe you guys posts and work and happy thoughts, because you give me so much love and feeling of community (no matter how scattered), and that's a very good thing.

Feeling good about trekking to the P.O., and then sewing, and then Bingo.
Happy Tuesday, little turnips!

Hedgehog Hello!

These little ones are going to be featured on the next run of canvas totes!
Stay tuned for their arrival from the printers.

I also made this image into a lovely print:

It's here.

I'm sorry about not too much writing, but pictures are better than words, right? Right?

Oh, and shoes! Remix shoes are now mine, and they are so, so wonderful. They are comfortable, and I think that they are amazingly authentic looking.

Happy Monday!

Little Paintings and Big Paintings

my own little bird children here!

and

The true story of how I met my very best friend.
Not really, it's just Jane and the Giant Bunny.

And that's how I spent my Sunday vacation. See you tomorrow :)

The Littlest Birds (Sing the Prettiest Songs)

I made a new doll today...I woke up with this idea whirring in my brain:

I spent the afternoon figuring her out, and drafting a pattern. I have an immense fondness for the "bird children" vintage plates that we have hanging in the apartment, which I keep meaning to de-frame for a moment so that I can scan them for all of you to enjoy. Maybe tomorrow?
Anyway, she ended up having a touch of Hillary's wonderful birdies, what with the long legs and all. But I wanted her to really appear to be a human(ish) child in disguise. After many hours of experiments, here she is:

She is very hard to photograph in a manner that shows how adorable she is! I'm happy to have a little make-shifty pattern in case there are more of these little birdies down the pipe line. She's right here, for now.

I got some wonderful fabric in the mail today, and I have some more coming from the amazing but so pricey Kitty Craft in the next week or so! Also there is a trip in the works for tomorrow afternoon to the amazing fabric store that they shop at on Project Runway...I thought that you had to have a wholesale permit to shop there, so I was intimidated. Not so, my darling Sarah discovered this afternoon. Thank you for actually looking into it, sweet pea, instead of throwing up your hands like I did! I will report if the visit happens.

I've been thinking alot lately about making a whole slew of sweet little totes in more sophisticated shapes for the fall. This mostly arises out of selfishness, as I can't just carry a good old tried-and-true square one around town with my beautiful dresses all the time (though, if you look at the little note-pad sheet at the top, that IS the design I'm thinking of maybe having printed on the next round of black apple canvas totes!)

I want to make more bags that are nice and roundy round. I really like a few of the gathered, skirtish ones that I made a little while ago... I think I'll continue with that trend. They'll be pretty. And demure. And, oh, I cannot wait for fall. I know I'm alone here, especially when Miss Blair  and Miss Amanda seem to be posting all over the place about the sweet things of summer...but I'm an acorn, I have to just come out and say it. I would be loving the summer a bit more if there was grass to be had between my toes, and messy peaches and strawberries to gorge on, but my front yard is a concrete strip of sidewalk right now (or maybe it's my fire escape?) and the peaches aren't the same here. Country mouse alert.

Liz and I just got back from seeing M. Night's new movie "Lady in the Water", which has been recieved with horrible, horrible reviews. My only beef with M.N.S. is that he HAS to get a new advertising company to trailer his movies, because the trailers for both this and The Village were so deceptive...and that is why people get so mad about the movies. I liked the Village (I think I'm one of many 10 people, but then again, I took it as a period romance, not a horror movie) and I really liked this new one! It is a pure-hearted fairy tale fable-mixed-with-the-mundane-and-Paul-Giamatti, and I thought it was wonderful in it's way. It had this beautiful sort of optimism and unashamed whimsy that I just fell for hook, line, and sinker. Bryce Dallas Howard is so achingly lovely, and Paul Giamatti is always a charmer. Critics need to try to at least remember what it was like to watch movies as children do, especially when it comes to this sort of thing. That's my 2.5 cents.

I hope you liked little bird girl. I love her so.
Happy Weekend, chickadees!

Thursday is like Sunday

Today is a dreary-ish day...more Sunday-like than Thursday-like, which amounts to a random grab-bag of a post. My friend Sam went to graduate school in Lebanon, and was visiting over that way when all of the very recent unpleasantness erupted. He got a flight home to the US of A, luckily, and stayed with us last night. I hadn't seen the old man for 2 years and it was nice to see he was safe and Sam. Had lunch at a cute French restaraunt with wonderful, cute quiche, and then whiled away the day watching Garden State with Sarah, and painting.

I found this photograph yesterday, and I think it's the greatest thing ever. It's like a scene from "The Wind in the Willows", reenacted by actual creatures. What a nice toad.

This neckace came recently from Sandra at Snapcrafty, it's so perfect for me...it obviously needed to be mine.

So cute. It's a little big, but I love that it existed in the first place. Tonight I am making some good food, and attempting to recover from the kicking-off-of-Project-Runway of Malan. I mean, I thought that he was actually maybe the devil on that first episod, but I had warmed up to him so much by this second one. That no-talent assclown girl gets to stay, and HE has to go? He was a bit of an odd duck, but I found him fascinating because he seems like he fell out of a vortex of time. I just can't believe he's real and alive in 2006. I loved his 30's obsession. So sad. Anyway, goodbye, Malan. I think we could've been friends.
Sorry so random...it'll be better and more cute-ful tomorrow, I promise. :)