spring

well i have a few things that need to be posted but we'll start with this hat! i knitted one for our little darling last fall that she outgrew by early winter and then this hat came into being. the maroon is an alpaca super soft yarn and the bulk of the rest is a bulky Malbrigo some nice stuff. after making this i am a firm believer in the power of the quality of yarn. the higher the quality the more freedom you have with the pattern. (i want to be a high quality yarn then i can do whatever i want and it will turn out good) this one i sort of improvised from a bonnet pattern. she's getting a little too big for it now but we can tie it on for the remaining brisk spring days if their are anymore in coming.

other projects. that's overgrown tatsoi in the picture, amazing watching these things grow! it tastes good similar to spinach but has a shorter shelf life but the coolest part about having it in our yard is we can just grab some and prepare it the same day! there are so many aspects of japanese culture that I am thankful for, which i didn't even notice i was absorbing at the time, one of them being the deep respect for nature. As westerners, americans specifically, we seem to look at nature as something for our pleasure or entertainment rather than our life source, not saying americans don't revere nature, but the sentiments are different. thanks to an insight into the Japanese mindset regarding nature i now hold a deeper understanding of the idea "God is in everything and everywhere". this quote was one from a Bahai children's class teaching reverence and that particular class has always stuck with me maybe because as a teacher teaching reverence to 3 year old's is no easy task! but when we talk about God and Nature and go on the 'nature walk' (one of the activities) you can see the children recognizing what they instinctively know and connecting it with mental frameworks and language. Gardening makes me feel like an observant absorbent child, to be humbled and informed in such a natural way. All thanks be to God.

paintings for sale

Hello friends, visitors. i'm not sure, nor do i really have any full fleshed idea of how to go about the sale of my artwork but that's what i will be working on for the next year however (insert word that starts with 'd' that means to go retardley slow, that i can't think of... so the slow process begins here... ahhh. anywho! The small trees i am looking at repainting/remaking some of them so if anyone is interested or has any leads as to where i can show or sell some of these works please let me know. OR if you can think of that 'd' word i am still tryin to think of let me know. i also started the balloon series well actually it's either done or waiting to be tweaked again.
xo

perhaps the beginning

hi again. Esme is asleep and i need to get something up here. that makes it sound like a guilt thing but no i do actually value and hope others do too this blog however dusty it may get between posts. as for the painting andrew and i love Albuquerque and we needed something in our living room on this big white wall.
reminiscent of the sandia mountains, calling from memory the big skies ... this is what happened. it's plesant enough to look at all the time sorta like a personalized hotel painting but brighter... that might be a good idea for a series, like the southwest hotel room and have all pictures of this nature but with my hand visible in the work, cuz it seems like most hotel paintings from prints have no trace of human hands and maybe worse the new 'modern' look just appears like a computer spit it out on paper. maybe i say all this dissapointedly because we can't afford to stay in the fancy hotels where they actually have real peoples real work on the walls. huh.
BTW Esme is so awesome! babies are like pure sugar love and they are fascinating at that. summer is progressing nicely. i hope you all remember michael J. on the 25, his great legacy lives on.

totally grade school art project

back to the crafts posting. i had all this tissue from some presents i got over the weekend at our baby shower, let me tell you this baby has no idea what kind of crazy world it will be entering. a world where a corporation gives you a mile long list of "must haves" that ost of the world could never dream of having, or better yet would just complicate things more if they DID have some of these things. like today i just found out that one, a nursing mother that is, can express breast milk without a pump, for the purposes of storage or to release a surplus. fancy that!
I didn't get the simple pump that i put on my registry and now i am thankful because it may not even be necessary. besides the seemingly endless phone calls to insurance to see if they were covering the homebirth putting things on our registry has been the next most stressful thing. but the showers are over and we have some really great stuff that has about the life span of open guacamole, ok a little longer than that but only by a few months. we are 37 weeks today! andrew and i ready but i don't think the little critter is done fattening up my body doesn't seem ready either, no practice contractions or dropping yet. my mind is really the only part that's ready.
now that i went off on that tangent i'll tell you about this glass with tissue paper. well that's really all to tell. i used acrylic gel matte Golden brand to glue the tissue on. it really makes a nice little glow. we bought a huge ikea pack of tea lights for our oil disspenser then ran out of oil but i had this glass from a candle that we used and it must be spring inspiration is coming back.

living below our landlord

so this is an unusual post and i wouldn't normally think to commit such an act of self indulgence well i  would think to do it but not actually do it... here we are anyway.  

about landlords and living under them,  i mean literally in our current situtuation.

when we were looking for a place one of our main criterion was laundry in the building.  Of course when we were looking our *i'll refrain from name calling here* landlord, was very proud to inform us there was a washer and dryer that they would be willing, due to thier GRAcious genrous natures, to let us use them. 

 well that gave poor me, who's few kicks in life reside in mundane things such as having laundry in their building, the impression that this place has (had) laundry. 

well the short is, now it doesn't. we have been without this convience, which i believe few would agree laundry in your building is less in the category of  convenience and more in the category of necessity. 

as i went to pay rent on the 1st yesterday with a check filled out, all but the amount, i was hoping for some kind of consideration and adjustment not expecting more than 30 dollars off our already, really too high for this 2 bedroom that's really a one bedroom with an office, rent.  

well he was ready with no hesitation and some aggressive defense. he firmly stated that the full amount was fair, and that no where in the 15 page ,seriously have you ever signed a lease for an apartment that long?, was there any agreement to the building having laundry.  then as a tactic he has used in the past, he let's me know how much he has suffered in letting us use THEIR laundry with NO charge. 

If he wants to charge us, charge us! I just want to do our laundry, is that so much to ask!?

he came down with the novel of a lease in his hand spouting off the paragraph and page in which it states that he has the smallest weener on the block and there is no such agreement to laundry.  Based on principal i shouldn't have wrote the whole amount right there but you never know what a boy who pretends to be a man might do. i wasn't about to have him throwing a tantrum in our living space, honetsly his demeanor was so disgusting i just wrote it and tryed to get him out as quick as possible. plus we were on our way to feast and "conflict and contention are in no-wise permited". 

obviously the issue still has me in its clutch, but ooo it feels so nice to vent here, since i know noone really reads this. if you do read this feel free to leave comments, what would you have done. oh and BTW there is no promise of the machines being fixed... if you are reading this and are one of those people who has kindly let us use thier machines, thank you, thank you, thank you. 

what's more interesting is what becomes so important to us...lol for me it's laundry, i guess i really am a full fledged house wife.

thanks for sharing this experience with me.  

the atlas collection

here are more books i made as party favors for my(our) baby shower. all the images are from an older atlas. lined notebook paper was used to fill them. they have about 20-30 pages each. i stamped the back with a little heart and my initials with a little 'thank you!', the guests chose which one they liked. making these out of recycled materials feels like i am making progress in 'simplifying' life. it keeps my hands and mind busy and there is a final product that can be reused in which lies the reward i suppose.

coasters

quilted coasters an excuse to do little embroideries and to use the smallest of fabric scraps. good for condensation although there is no drinking of icy beverages this time of year. :) even though the past few days have been a heat wave here in chicago today reaching a sunny 40.