Tea and Sympathy

I drink a lot of tea. For serious. Pretty much all the time, unless I'm sleeping. Black tea with plain soymilk is one of the greatest things ever. And something else really wonderful is Chatsford teapots. Mesh strainers, people! That means you don't mess up the taste of the tea with nasty metal and you don't get all that dust in the bottom of your teapot from using a ceramic strainer with too-large holes. Brilliant! I really don't know why all teapots aren't made like this.

Coming home and drinking tea has smoothed out some of the frustration I was feeling after a confusing, sleepy morning. I have too many feelings and sometimes I'm fairly certain that other people have hardly any. Or at least that they're very good at hiding them, which is something I don't understand at all.

Alchemy

I've known about Etsy's Alchemy for a while, but never really checked it out until a couple of days ago. All of a sudden I'm making bids left and right for all kind of things. Mainly it's been graphics or print production stuff but I've bid on fabric-based projects as well. For those of you who don't know, Alchemy is a service where a person places a wanted add for something, with an ideal price and shipping date. It ranges from the very specific (a yard and a half of a particular fabric) to the very general (a present for my mother). Anyone with an Etsy account can bid on the job with a description of what they can or will do, a price, and their own shipping date.

Three of my bids have been accepted, so I've got some real (read: paid) projects to work on. One is a custom Pillow Monster, another is a kimono and obi for a toddler, and the third is two fabric reward charts for kids to keep track of their chores and earn goodies. All of them are going to be fun, but I've already discovered that I should bid high, rather than low. Once I've figured it out, I'll be able to make more of the reward charts, but so far I'm afraid I've spent a terrible amount on supplies because I haven't got all the details worked out. I did pick out some really cute fabric, though. There are a couple of bids that I really hope get accepted because the projects are super fun. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Also, if you've got anything you need made, designed, printed, or whatever, you should think about putting up a request. I'm considering using Alchemy to get a coat tailored.

The weekend is nearly upon us and though I didn't get all of my chores done, I at least opened a bank account and mailed out a pillow that I sold the other day. Plus I put together a design portfolio of sorts on Flickr, with mock-ups of some of my buttons and other design stuff. Still no tags, though. Apparently it's going to require getting a North Carolina driver's license. It's been a while since I had one of those. Maybe my picture will be better this time around.

p.s. I put up a new Often Awesome Army skin on Personas. Check it out.

Noise Addict

Okay, anyone who keeps up with me online is probably sick of hearing about this, but I really cannot get enough of the new Noise Addict album. I've been listening to Ben Lee since I was fourteen and this album makes me feel the way I did back then. It's fun and sweet in the best way. Also, they've released it for free, so check it out.

I've had a very productive couple of days, which feels great. I helped clear/clean the Kenmore Estate for a little while yesterday after stopping in to lend them my tv. Why is cleaning someone else's house so much more satisfying than cleaning your own? Today I babysat Ayers, which was fun and totally mellow. And I even performed a couple of random good deeds to top it off.

So, after all this waffling and procrastinating and avoiding, tomorrow is the day that I really start getting down to business. Bring it on, to do list. I will own you.

Distraction 2.0

I've been on my computer nonstop for the last two days. OS upgrade, browser upgrade, Firefox add-ons...it's almost like I've got a whole new computer. It's pretty sweet. And to the detriment of my realworld, tangible projects, I discovered Mozilla Personas, so I've been making skins like a maniac. Above is the one I'm using right now. They've all been submitted to the site, so once their approved you lucky bastards can have them, too.

** Update: Here's my designer page for Persona (9/11/09)

Bonus

• My bad luck rubbed off onto the School for Girls, apparently, but as a pleasant surprise, I managed to leave Birmingham before half of the house fell off. Nice.

• There's an old metal trash bin in our powder room with a faded illustration/print. Similar ones were all over my grandparents' house, and I think I remember that my grandmother had decoupaged them all sometime before I was alive. I've seen this one a thousand times, but I just realized that the image on it was really cool. It turns out that some clever soul (my grandmother, I guess) also pasted the text that went along with the pic from wherever she found it. It seems it's a piece by this guy Georges de Feure. Probably the dude is way famous and I'm an idiot. No worries, though. I've been loving on some art nouveau for years now, so I'm stoked to know of another artist I like.

• And in other news of random discoveries, one of my quilts was on the the front page of Etsy today. Sweet!

Copycat

I've accumulated this pile of toys to paint, so I made a trip to the art supply store today to get some acrylics. The person working there clued me in to the existence of this totally sweet gallery/shop in Car Mill Mall called Wootini. They show art in the front and sell toys, art books, and magazines like Juxtapoz and Playtimes in the back. Perfect! (I spent too much on an issue of Playtimes with a Tokidoki cover because I'm secretly a little obsessed.)

So that was a bonus, and in addition, on the way to the hardware store for some plastic primer I discovered a radass shop, Chapel Hill Comics, on Franklin Street. I loitered there for at least an hour looking at their comics and amazing art books. I must have written down ten different things that I want to buy when I've got some spare cash.

I'm hoping to do some actual work on a couple of toys this weekend, so I cleaned and primed most of the figures. The Hello Kitties were pretty easy, especially the ones that didn't have a lot of paint on them. The only real problem I hit was with the Ghost Rider Mighty Mugg I snagged on sale at Urban Outfitter the other day. The head part was fine, but the body was a disgusting mess. I figured the body would be black vinyl with just a little bit of silver and white paint. There was black coming off, though, so I thought maybe it was painted over the same base plastic as the head. But no matter how much I rubbed, the black wouldn't come off. It started to get totally gloppy and nasty with bits of cotton ball stuck in it. Ew. I got it as clean and smooth as I could and left it to dry. I'm going to try sanding it a bit tomorrow and then priming. My only concern is that I want to leave the flames the way they are and I'm not sure how to avoid getting spray paint all over them. I'll work that out tomorrow, I guess.

Oh, I almost forgot. My new glasses came today.

Carolina Sunshine Girl

Well, I'm here. I procrastinated to the brink of failure, but thanks to Kate, John, et al, I got everything packed and arrived in Chapel Hill at around midnight on Monday. Kate and I bought walkie-talkies for the drive and it was the best $17 I've ever spent. I waffled a little, thinking, "What can a walkie do for me in this age of cell phones?" Blasphemy! These things are freaking awesome. Plus they made driving the truck a breeze, since Kate was able to tell me when it was safe to change lanes. A+

It's green and lovely here and much cooler (temperature-wise) than Birmingham. Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, and most importantly, Locopops (yesterday Kate and I shared a chocolate chile popsicle and a plum pink pepper one. Holy sweet god damn!) are right down the street. AND a quilting store moved in next to Locopops. Nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty down. The time has come to get to the business of moving on and looking forward, which I'd really rather avoid.

Instead, I've decided to distract myself with new crafts, which I've convinced myself is not incongruent with the looking-forward directive. I bought some cheap vinyl toys and spent most of last night perusing tutorials on painting, sculpting, and general modification of toys. And then, of course, there are the laptop cases, pillow monsters, quilts, and embroidery projects I've stockpiled. Problems? What problems? Lalalalalalalalala, I can't hear you.

Pictures of my endeavors to come...as soon as I can find my camera cord.