"It's, like, a community or something."

This has been a lovely day, of a sort that I think perfectly illustrates the odd and wonderful convergence of my "real" life and my "online" life. I got a facebook message this morning from Dory letting me know that she and her little guy, Porter, had been to the P.O. yesterday, and my hat was in the mail. Then I got a facebook message from Jen (who I met online and then, totally by accident, moved to her street last year when I moved to P-town) saying she had just walked by my house and it looked like I had happy mail.
I had very happy mail. There was this book, A Child's Garden of Verses, illustrated in a charming combination of fabric, paper, and embroidery, by Virginia Tiffany, which came to me from Corinne, a "just because" gift. (BTW, anybody seen these? Adorable.)
It was filled with little post-it notes exclaiming things like, "I'm in love with these fish" and "How brilliant is this chainstitched sweater?" and "What? French-knot peas?!" The whole thing--Corrinne's thoughts included--is just beautiful, and this end paper says "The world is so full of a number of things. I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." (How's that for abundance, Jess?)
The other package contained not one but two gorgious hats from Worthy Goods! While I was totally unworthy of modelling them for you, I did anyway. (I'm talking unshowered, dirty hair, jammies.)
Honestly, I'm WAY happier about these hats than I look in the photos, but I hadn't brushed my teeth, folks, and they needed to stay under wraps. Seriously.

When I showed Mark (you know, my real, brick and mortar companion) all this, he said, "Wow--it's, like, a community or something." Yup.

Pink House Love

I'm working on top-secret stuff right now, so no craft pictures, but I wanted to show you the postcards that will soon come with my orders. They were made for me by etsy seller Michaela Dawn, who sells her work at Skinny Swallow and Little Sparrow's Nest. Normally, of course, people showcase images of their own work on their promotional materials, but this photo has stolen my heart, and I am willing to follow it anywhere. It's the little, solid, fouresquare mixture of safety and whimsy about which I have always dreamed, and I'm just saying that the owners might want to make me a pallet on the floor.

Thanks, Michaela!

You want to be my friend now, right? Right?!

Yesterday was all about making special gifts for friends, which is one of my favorite things to do. The little family up there belongs to Dory, my high school pal and fellow Etsy Maine Team member. Her shop, worthygoods, is a fantastic place for stylish baby slings and deliciously retro hats and caps for babies and big folks, too. The craftsmanship is excellent, and who doesn't want a turquoise houndstooth hunting cap? I do, and I'm getting one!
"Little Fish" is for the new baby of some friends with the last name Fisher. They call the dad "the fish," so... I'm nothing if not clever. Whew.

Home Again, Home Again

So, it was a snow day--quite dramatically so, with chainsaw action and a big crane to scoop downed trees from the street. In the a.m., the girl snuggled under her cowgirl blanket (circa baby days), listening to some changeling-boy-versus-bad-magicians or ass-kicking-fairy-cop-versus-time-traveling-Irishman or orphan-child-among-benevolent-ghosts audio book on the headphones and drawing comics that involve humanoid penguins bumming around Europe.
I painted Lucy, who is now in the shop and will accompany her house wherever it may go. And here are the promised squirrels:
The client said that when they bought their first house recently, her husband--knowing how she loves sunflowers--secretly planted some of them in the yard, but two fat squirrels ate all the seeds. That's the beauty of art, folks--she can have in a hoop what she cannot have in life. Oh, the power I wield. Ahem.

In which I sound like I'm fishing for compliments, but really I'm just doing you peeps a solid

So, craft-wise, I'm just gonna come straight out and say, I got nothin'. The past couple of days I've been alternating between work on a custom house portrait, which includes the first squirrels I've ever tried to make, and course prep for my online poetry workshop, and that ain't eye candy, however you slice it. I mean, I'm sure I'll show you the squirrels when they're done, but just as Heather said of yoga in a recent post, poetry's not for everybody, and that's fine.

What I did want to share was an insight--and obviously an accompanying photo of my mug (not the cute, Swedish birdie mug Abby gave me for Christmas, but--you know--my face). I know this isn't earth shattering or anything, but the minute it occurred to me, I thought of you, my blog friends, so I'm not gonna withhold it, as dopey as it might make me sound.

Here's the long of it: I have always looked younger than I am, even as a teenager. I just have one of those "cute" faces--round cheeks, button nose. When I first started professoring, it was mad--they tried to graduate me at every commencement, and people were forever saying I was too young for the job. I'm not complaining--I enjoyed it. I don't have a lot of hang ups, historically, about how I look (aside from the run-of-the-mill distaste for how my bum looks in the Target changing room, etc.). Thing is, just this past year, people have totally stopped saying I look younger than I am. Totally. I don't get carded anymore on the rare occasion when I order a drink. Even when I sort of vainly prompt folks to say it, they don't. Nada.

So while I'm generally pretty level headed about age--I loved turning thirty--I think it has started to get to me. I'm simply not a young woman anymore. I'm not old--I know that--but I'm just a grown up lady. There's so much that's WONDERFUL about this, and yet, its onset represents a moment of what the smarty-pants psychologists might call "cognitive dissonance," a sudden shock of recognition that there's a difference between how I've been perceiving myself and how others are perceiving me. I'm just saying it's taking a spell for me to catch up is all.

But today, as I was walking the dog, I thought: I'm not just as old as I have ever been, I am also as young as I will ever be.

And say what you will, but this just about blew my mind. And it made me so, so happy. I don't want to call it too soon, but there it is: I feel better. I might be crawling up on "over it." I mean, will you look at me up there? Not bad.

(I thank you in advance for not making fun of me about this.)

In Which I Sound Like A Slightly-Depressed Hatfield (or McCoy)

A new house today, ready to ship off to its, um, new house.
You know what I'm finding? Everybody likes red. A lot. No matter what I make, folks always request I make 'em a red one. Me, I'm very particular about red--it has to be the right shade, or it's no go. This here's cranberry, my favorite red among the shades available in 100% wool felt.
This stuff's fascinating, I know. (And what's with my new hillbilly dialect? I just like to mix it up!) Outside, it can't decide whether it wants to rain or snow. It's kind of doing both right now, the sky and the ground a gray muck, and I've had some sad extended-family stuff happening these past several days, so the combo has got me kind of droopy. I am--as I know you are, too, if you live in the northern part of North American--counting on Spring to swoop in and save me from myself. Meanwhile, maybe I can understand the attraction to red, with its vibrant energy. Maybe I need to go buy myself a pair of red flip flops and wear them around the house until I can actually tramp the outside world sans wool socks and skidoo boots--you know, so long as they're cranberry. I have some pretty ferocious fashion standards. Ahem.

Technically this IS homemaking--right?!

So here's what all the angst was about--my "other lover," so to speak.
I've been dreaming of doing something dollhouse-ish for months, and while I'm already planning what to do differently next time, this was so fun to make. Usually I only design the exteriors of houses for LPH, but what girl doesn't love the inside bit, too? My favorite is the red sofa--Annabelle likes it, too. She said, "It's so vintage!" (How does she know that?)
I'm working on a little accessory to go with the house--more on that soon, I suspect.
And Corrinne--you were totally right. I hugged the fam to my busom (eeew--why is the word busom so awful and, yet, so irresistable, like that snot in a cup you buy from the machines in the KMart lobby?), and now they're off to see Coraline for a second time, leaving me to entertain myself for a least two hours. Hmmmm....what shall I do?

Sinning (or, um, Sewing) in the Mind

So, get ready: I'm about to confess to one of my weaknesses as a wife and mother. Yup. I know. It's hard for you to believe I have any, but--

There's the occasional moodiness, but we can chalk that up to hormones, right, my dears? There's the fact that while I truly love to cook, I have an alarming tendency to serve sandwiches like a dozen times a week. (For a side dish? What do you mean tortilla chips aren't a vegetable? Come on--they're made out of corn.) Let's don't even get started with laundry, and I'd much rather read in the bath than clean the bath. Who wouldn't?

No, what I'm talking about this evening is the fact that about half the time I'm spending with one or both of the two people I love most in the world, there's a part of me that just wants to go make stuff--you know, close the studio door, a little Ira (Glass) on the radio, fabric scraps and straight pins till morning. This is especially true when I have a new idea, an idea I'm suddenly junior-high-crush crazy for, and it's going to take hours to test it out.
Such is the case tonight, and yet, I'm putting the needle down, the scissors down, and I'm going to read to Annabelle and tuck her in, and then I'm going to watch the X Files movie with Mark, snuggled under a blanket on the couch. And I'm going to feel happy and blessed and beloved and cozy, but I'm going to be thinking about felt, just a little bit. Forgive me?

Wishful Thinking?

("Hej var" means "hello spring" in Swedish.)

If I can't have warm weather, though, I can have takeout and Groundhog Day with my honey soon as the child's in bed. Sweet.

Good Mail

It's one of the best parts of my new life--such good mail. When I was a professor, most of my mail consisted of reminders to turn in my grades or update my info for the staff directory. Sexy.
Now that I'm a full-time artist and writer, thank you very much (and, okay, somebody who does a heck of a lot of laundry--are these people punking me? How much clothing do they need to wear in a week?), I get rejection slips which are occasionally acceptance letters from magazines--even the rejections are sometimes pleasant, believe it or not, saying things like, "I thought this was brilliant, but my c0-editor felt is wasn't quite right for the issue," and I'm totally okay with that. I'm the type of girl who hears "this is brilliant" in a bright, booming voice and "not quite right" in a tiny, halting whisper.

More pertinent, perhaps, to this blog is the other kind of mail: crafty goodness. Today, it was a little bundle of sweetly tied felt--some of it a totally new fiber to me: woven felt, hand died (the mottled look not resulting from my photography this time), which turns out to be kind of like a thinner, softer version of a felted sweater. I'm trying to cook up something cool to do with it--I'll keep you posted. :-)

Francophone Home

Just a glimpse of what I've been working on today--a custom order in progress up there, and down here, a tiny neighborhood I finished up this morning:
I decided to mix a little French in with the Swedish. Annabelle is learning to speak French, and she loves it. I, on the other hand, grew up in the house of my second-generation, Franco-American grandfather, whose own parents spoke only halting English, and all I can do is swear and eat head cheese in their native language. Sheesh.
If you really want to know what head cheese is, I could tell you, but I don't think you really want to know.

Kate and the Lunch Date

Well, here's Kate. There are no good pictures of her because Mark had the day off, and somehow enchiladas seemed more important than photography. The hat's for you, Sian! It does, however, cover up the carefree flip of a bang I admire so much, so there will have to be more pictures, sans-chapeau, on a day when I am not having a lunch date with the world's handsomest man.
This is her terribly mod dress, though. So there's that.

And here are a few more craft-mojo movies I thought up: Amelie, Miss Potter, The Royal Tennenbaums. All these give me the finger-tingle. Sometimes I sew while I'm watching them, which is almost too much pleasure at once. Reminds me of my grandmother who used to listen to the radio and watch TV at the same time. She also used to make me talk to her furby on the phone, so if you see signs of that kind of behavior around here, let me know, huh? Sheesh.

Hello Linen

Look what came in the mail today--a lovely little package from Rebeca, one of my PIF winners. (The other gift seems to have gone astray--any sign Gillian?) It contained a tiny box of crayons (immediately snapped up by one Miss A., as you probably intended, Rebeca!) and just the smoothest, butteryest, prettiest linen I have ever laid eyes and hands on.
Receba said in her perfect birdy postcard that I "might" be able to do something with it. Ha! Do you see the scissors peeking their shiny handles into the above photo? I might be able to do something with this present right now. Well--just after I read a chapter of The Various to Annabelle, which I promised to do before the mail came.

It's been a great weekend so far, what with Coraline last night and the linen today. Also Annabelle had a guest from a certain Swallowfield family today, and I made them strawberry/blueberry sorbet from scratch (because, um, there are no groceries, but I did have a bag each of frozen strawberries and blueberries), and of course I didn't read the whole recipe before diving in while the girls were eating lunch, so I had already pulverized all the fruit with some lime juice (no lemons in the house) before realizing that you were supposed to then add the simple syrup and freeze the stuff for like eight years (okay, SIX HOURS), so instead, I added about four tablespoons of agave nectar, gave it another pulse on the mixer, and served it. It was yummy. We'll call that a Melissa-Crowe-homemaker-sucks-special recipe. Ahem.

Movies for Mojo

Okay my crafty peeps--you must run, don't walk, to see Coraline, and see it in 3D if you possibly can. Most of the time 3D sort of bugs me because it's not quite right, and once the thrill of trying to grasp at ethereal objects that seem to be floating in front of your face but aren't passes, well, it's just an uncomfortable pair of plastic glasses. Not so in this case--the effect merely enhances the gorgeous, hand-made, delicious-diorama texture of this film. Think of the lovely, layered paper effect of a Roadside Projects piece, and you'll have an idea of what I mean.

I guess I don't really even care what happened in the movie--which is, if you were around for the eight years I tried to write a novel but couldn't because I'm not much for plot, not a suprise. Thing is, the movie made me want to make things. I always want to make things, but it gave me that hairs-on-the-neck, tickle-in-the-fingers, desire to cut and paste and stitch and paint. It made me want to make little, useless, delicate, detailed, luminous things in much the same way I was inspired by Science of Sleep (shout out to my boy the burlap horse!), which you should also totally rush to see if you haven't yet. And it wasn't as creepy as I thought it would be--I think it's fine for the eight-and-over set, so long as your wee ones aren't faint of heart. And it wasn't hyper. Oh, in the name of all things holy, please let's stop catering, in children's films, to the ADD crowd. Most kids' movies give me panic attacks. This did not. It gave me an attack of adoration and creativity.

Sorry to gush about a movie here, but I'm just saying, if somebody crept into my secretist artist brain while I slept and snipped out all my fondest artsy dreams and used them as a recipe for a movie (hello, tiny sweaters? flowers with mouths? a stuffed squid? old-lady-mermaid-acrobats? a pink house, for crying out loud?), only I were smarter and stranger and more creative, well--that would be Coraline. I'm just saying.

And I was thinking it would be super cool to make a list of movies for crafters--hardcore handmade junkies who swoon over button eyes and skeleton keys and little paper owlet lamps and burlap horses, you know? If you leave a comment, include one such movie, and then we'll all know what to do if we're ever low on mojo. Cool?

Hem Sweet Hem

Okay, it was totally unintentional, but that post title is making me feel like I should be hemming the jeans I bought for Annabelle some six weeks ago. By the time I get around to it, they won't fit anymore. It only takes a minute (like loading the dishwasher, putting away the laundry, etc.), so why do I keep putting it off? Poor kid is wearing a pair with totally faded-out knees--she loves them, don't get me wrong--while a nice, crisp pair with legs for miles languishes in my studio cupboard. Let's face it. As a "homemaker," I suck a little. And that's okay--because I made a new felt painting:In reality, "hem" means "home" in Swedish. Yesterday Annabelle asked me, "Mom, why do you always put Swedish words on everything?" I said, "Cuz I like 'em," and that's the plain truth. I'm a bit of a Swed-o-phile (I think I made that word up!), and if I had any money and weren't a wee bit terrified of the over-waters flight, I'd go visit my friend Peela (the big laugh, the boldness, the hair almost the color of this little house, oh-how-I-miss-you-Peela) right now! Okay, maybe I'd have to take a shower first--and hem those pants so Annabelle would have something decent to wear when she sees Beata and Botilda for the first time in years, but you get me, right? I want to go to Sweden. Some day.

Say Hello, Jane

So I made a lot of clothes. I want to make more. It's a bit addictive.
All of it goes into this Little Pink House drawstring bag--its own cozy home.
I went in for polka dots big time.
And who doesn't love red boots?
I'm thinking about all your stand-up suggestions, and they're good. I think any of them could work. For now, she's a table-play girl or a lean-against-stuff girl. I don't fault her. It can take a great deal of gumption to keep oneself upright all the time.