The Market on Monument.

Today is veggie pick up day at the market. My poor farmers didn't benefit from the rain storm the other day. They are feeling the drought. We had small pickings. There were onions, potatoes, melons, carrots, a few tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and a few other items but not in huge quantities. Poor farmers!

Geraldine's space

An antiques market has been added to the Market on Monument, which is fun. We visited with several of our friends today. Geraldine of Ghostprint Gallery had paintings and other vintage items.

A peek at Maurice's stuff

Mimmy's vintage items

Mimmy's vintage jewelry

Maurice Beane had lots of interesting items to share in his area.  And another Antiques collector offered this fun range of seating.  Exile and Ouroboros were there today. Mimmy (the other Mim) and her mom, Sylvia, had a section with vintage jewelry and other items.  We managed to leave with only our veggies BUT we spotted a couple of things that we might just check out again.  If you're in Richmond, or nearby, this is a fun spot. They'll be there until October so I have plenty of chances to find some cool vintagy item, like those drinking glasses!

New color and a storm

I changed the color of my nails but we didn't get to the pool for me to match them to a pool noodle. However, we went to a movie and on the way out, met up with some people we knew and I was delighted to see that the wallet of one of them matched my nails. She trusted me with her wallet for this photo! 

We had a really bad storm, really bad, so bad that trees came down all over the neighborhood, and power was out for a lot of people (not us.) I tried to capture the rain as I looked out my back door, but of course, the energy in the air, the wind, the wetness can't be captured in a photo.

Mail Art, off to New York City

I'm sending this Mail Art off to New York City to our daughter.  The base is an image of an ancient Greek mask. I put the torn out eyes on top of it and liked the way it looked as if the eyes were behind the mask. I surprised myself with the effect. There had to be a word added because of the closed mouth mask and the open mouthed woman. Why "radiant?" It jumped off my table at me!

Mail Art, off to MailMania 4

This Mail Art is going to Victoria, B.C. Canada for the MailMania 4 exhibit.

Positively chilly!

Well, not exactly chilly but after experiencing 105F two days in a row, 91 felt down right cool! The water at the pool this morning was very warm after those high temps. What a surprise getting into it. Oh, a warm bath! My new polish color did not have a matching pool noodle but I thought the pale green was a nice combi with the orange.

 Moving some items around in my garage, I came across my very old Olaf's Dotter clogs. I thought they were long gone but there they were. I dusted the spider's webs out of them, made sure no-one was living in them, and slipped them on. They are still very comfortable and will be great for going out into the back garden.   Speaking of my back garden, I found this dead butterfly out there this morning. What a beauty. I don't know if I've ever seen this particular kind.  It was hard to get a nice photo of it on the ground so I put it on a planter saucer. Some ants came with it.

My niece bought one of my Pockets for her daughter (my great niece, and that she is) and sent me this photo to see what a success it was. It's so nice to see a Pocket in use.   

I'm behind in Pocket production. I gave myself the weekend off, and then made it a three-day weekend. Oh dear, double production tomorrow.

Thinking cool thoughts!

I'm thinking cool thoughts! What are those, you may ask? Ice cream, the pool (even though the water is tepid,) ice skating, how I used to sit by Lake Michigan and enjoy the breeze, last winter's snow storms, thoughts like that. Is it helping? NO! Nope, no, not at all! 37.7C It feels cooler when I write the lower number. Enough about the temperature.

SO my fingernail polish matched the floaty noodle thing at the pool the other day. How cute is that? And the flowers are doing wonderfully around the outside of the fence. They are well cared for by a pool member.

While driving our son back to his home from a pool morning, I grabbed this image of the tennis courts near his house. This is the place, though these courts are all new since the BIG flood, that Arthur Ashe learned to play tennis on. No one was playing the other morning, and I doubt they are playing today. Did I mention that is was 100F? There are lots of courts and in good weather, they are well used.

I am still busy with sewing. Yesterday afternoon I spent a few hours cutting out items from my new fabric, having sewn up all the ones I'd cut out before. I made one item already, wanting to see how the new fabric looks as a Sunglasses Pocket. I'm pleased with the results. I think I'll do some more sewing now as it's just toooo hot to go outside for any reason. (Did I mention how hot it is?) I'm sooo grateful for A/C and the electricity to run it.  Doesn't this look like a black and white image? The fabric is actually beige with white and black. I used my cell phone and got this. Kind of old-timey quality to it.

Okay, F & F (family and friends) I'm off to my studio to sew.

Sewing, lots of sewing.

I'm getting ready for my participation in the 3rd Annual Johnny Z festival on 7 August. (I've linked to an old bit of info about the festival.) I've got 10 Pockets, 17 Purses for Change, and 9 sunglasses Pockets ready. Whew. I sewed up everything I had cut out so my next task is cutting our more pieces. I have new fabric (from Ikea) and new buttons. It's the first time I've purchased buttons since 3 years ago in Paris. I've been using buttons from Mom's collection mainly, but really wanted some bigger ones and some colors that I didn't have, especially for the Vintage Tea Towel Pockets.  I'm really enjoying this. Since it's still quite hot here, staying indoors is preferable and having something to make is delightful.

Banana Cake, the pool and a boring comment about the weather!

The sky was so blue with just this one puffy cloud. I think this was on the 14th of July.  There was no one at the pool, despite the presence of the red car. We did our exercises, then headed back home to our assorted tasks. (Me to the sewing machine.)  I sold a couple of things from my shop, which is always exciting and always makes me energized to sew more items.

Yesterday, we were invited to have dinner at the home of some friends and honey had noted that we had some ripe bananas the other day, so I found a recipe for a banana cake (not bread) in my old cookbook. It turned out that my two bananas didn't add up to a cup so I went over to the supermarket and the only ripe bananas I could find were RED ones. I bought one and it worked out fine. My recipe can be found on my other blog here. Fortunately, my kitchen has a fan and air conditioning, otherwise baking in this heat would be too "hellish."

And now the boring comment about the weather. I know there's nothing we can do about it, it's what we have, but WOW it's hot. It's like an oven outside my door. It's not just the heat, which is 91F (32c) right now and going up to 97F (35c) but the humidity added to that. I know this is boring and I know that lots of us are in the same situation, but I just HAD to mention it. Thanks for letting me say it. IT"S SOOOO HOT.  Therefore, we're going to the movies this afternoon, to see Inception .

Something you might not know about me: I like Science-Fiction (Dr. Who, Battle Star Gallatica, Torchwood, Firefly, Sci-Fi novels, movies, etc.)

An assortment of things.

I received this in the mail yesterday from one of the participants in my lunchtime talk last week. What a nice surprise! It was a Good Mail (Art) day.

I sold my really nice vintage tea towel Pocket from my Etsy shop today, popped it into the mail, to the afore mentioned Pam of the badly broken arm, and decided to finish another Pocket from vintage fabric. I put this into the shop just now. The fabric is so soft.

I met a couple of friends for lunch today at the VMFA. The large clay pieces by Yun Kuneko have been installed. Here's his big blue head. It looks like it wants to join the crowd of people.  The other sculptures are called Dangoes (dumplings.) When it's not so very very hot, I'll stay out longer and get some close up photos of these.

I really like four-o-clocks and have grown bushes of them along the side of my house. Some years, some are solid deep fuschia, some years they are white, this year there are buses with a mixture. I also have one bush with yellow blossoms on it. I really like the yellow ones and they seem so rare to me. Do you grow these? Do you like them? Do they remind you of your childhood?

Mail Art for Debbie

This Mail Art is being sent to Debbie who is recovering from some intense surgery. We've all been sending thoughts her way. Now she's home, and we hope she'll be making art again before too long.

Mail Art for Pam

This card is going out to Pam to cheer her up as she recovers from a really bad broken arm.  Speedy recovery, Pam! 

Good Mail Day

Yesterday was a Good Mail Day! I got two pieces of mail art. One from Andrea in the U.K. and one from Ptrizia Tictac in Germany. Notice, I got two of those sheets where you add your name, send mail art to the next name in line, and make copies to give to other mail artists. These two have some names the same and then different names added so I can see where they diverged. Very interesting. I, also, received one a few weeks ago, sent out mail art and two of the copies. I have 8 more to send out but slow going. I may have to go into Mail Art detox. (Yes, there's a detox group on IUOMA) I love the Mona postcard. She has big eyes like a Blythe doll. She cracks me up (makes me laugh.)

A drizzly day! Finally.

Today, we have gray skies and light rain. Finally! We're in a drought and may have water restrictions, or not, so the drizzle is welcome. However, it meant that we didn't have pool time this morning. Here's photo of the pool from earlier this week. Isn't that water so pretty? It's salty and very clear.

I changed up my nail polish two days in a row. The colors looked good with the pool water so I thought I'd take photos and share them. I'm totally silly about nail polish. Cheap fun!

New stuff.

The other day we drove down to "the bottom" and as we passed under the interstate, the setting sun was reflected on the support. I liked the way this looked, including the curve of the highway.

Today, because it was just too darn hot at 103F (39.4C) I stayed indoors except for the few moments spent photographing items for Fritzi. I was able to get a couple friends to stop by and model Pockets for me. Besides preparing for tomorrow's mail art workshop, I made a few more Sunglass Pockets. I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I'll take them by Quirk (the craft gallery on Saturday.)
Wish me luck with tomorrow's talk. I found out that 17 people signed up to listen to me!!!

Enough about me.

Be warned, this is a blatent marketing post. Let me share about my son, the graphic designer. First off, he's the guy who created Skull-a-day. Yup, that guy, my son! My son, the Skull guy. He is founder of a very cool Graphic Design business called ALRdesign. His second book is now available on Amazon and will be published in time for the December holidays. You can see it here.
He was on Martha Stewart and did a TED talk and a GEL workshop. Okay, had enough? Just one more item.....

  His new United Skull of America tee shirt is available. I love this one because it includes ALL of the states. He managed to figure out how to add huge Alaska and tiny Hawaii. If you want to share your amazement for the different sizes of the states in the U.S., get this shirt. It'd be great for kids to learn to recognize the states, right? I know it helped me. Check it out here.

Okay, I'm done! Thanks for indulging me. Next time: my daughter!!

Making Mail Art

Making Mail Art to send out into the world. I'm not an arm chair traveler, I'm a Mail Art traveler.

It was so hot here today that going outdoors wasn't recommended.* For real! Stay inside. Of course, we are really fortunate because we have air conditioning and don't have jobs out there. I can stay in my studio and make Pockets and Mail Art. Are you tired of hearing me say how lucky I am?

On Thursday, I'm giving a lunch time talk about Mail Art. I wonder if anyone will show up to hear me. Tomorrow is prep day. I'll be taking lots of books and examples of Mail Art for show and tell.

* 103F high temp today, 88F right now at 10h25 p.m. (39C high, 31C right now) AAAGH

What a Birthday!

Early in the morning, we went to the pool. After that, I went to my Spanish Meet-up group. A friend brought a gorgeous, delicious cake. YUM!  Another person brought some delicious homemade chocolate candy. YUM! (sorry, no photo of them.) And I got a cute little tea pot gift.

When I got home, I discovered that a friend had left me a cool gift, something that I've seen and liked, and can display postcards on it.  Plus, the little girls from around the corner, had left cards, cookies and some bits of shells. How sweet is that?!

But there's more: We then went to VMFA to meet friends for lunch! I had salmon over French lentils.   The day was just gorgeous, not hot, not humid.  After lunch, we stood still and admired the sky and clouds. Like a painting, yes?  I came home and read until it was time to go to the First Friday Art Walk. We went to a few galleries and chatted with people, before heading to dinner. Yes, more eating. We met up with our niece and her husband, our son and near daughter-in-law, and had a delicious dinner at Aziza.  I had scallops that were really good.

And we couldn't leave with out having Aziza's fabulous Cream Puffs. I took a photo of one with the little replica Roman Doll that my friend had given me.  By this time, I was ready to head home, dazed in my brain, glazed over eyes, from all the good food and companionship throughout the day, from the good cheer and happy birthday wishes, exhausted by it all, happily merrily gratefully ending my day.  Lucky lucky me.