bits & peices

The WomanMade Gallery reading last weekend went fabulously, and mad props to my fellow ladies (Sarah Gardner, Erika Mikkalo, and Lauren Levato) all of whom were awesomeness. My folks were in town and afterwards, we had a belated Mother's Day dinner outing. The artwork in the Beyond Audubon exhibit was amazing and beautiful and one of my favorite shows I've seen there. I tried not to read so many bird poems though, since sometimes it feels like overkill. There are alot of animals in the havoc manuscript (once known as the kissing disease) so I read some of those. Foxes, deer, rabbits--all sorts of woodland goodness.

The intervening week was filled with 9-5 doldrums and lots of work in the studio, getting the jump on three new chaps that will be making their appearance on or around June 1st, work by Jessica Bozek, Lindsay Bland, and Amy Fetzer Larakers. We will also be opening up for submissions then for the year and I can't believe it's already that time again. I am perpetually running about two weeks behind on getting orders out, though, so if I owe you something it's coming. We've been slammed in the most delightful way with the sale and lots of individual purchases, so I have a slight backlog.. Incidently, the spring sale--5 books/$20 deal ends on May 31st and probably won't return til late summer, so get them while they're hot.


Yesterday, we had our Library BBQ at the beach, and the weather, though it looked a little dicey earlier in the day with cloudiness and fog, turned out to be rather heavenly. There was one point where the sailboats looked like eerie ghost ships moving slowly out on the lake. When the sun finally made an appearance, I got a little burned, so parts of me are pink as the inside of prime rib. I was zonked by the time I walked most of the way home from Montrose Beach (I bailed and caught the bus for the last 8 blocks) so I crawled into bed and slept for a few hours. Not an incredibly productive day, but a fun one.

This weeks projects include finishing up the abovementioned chapbooks, some new blank book / bound journals I'm working on and some gemstony, more natural looking jewelry I've been plotting. I am so in love with a number of stones lately--certain agates, aquamarine, amazonite. They're a little spendier to use than my usual glass and pearls, but oh so pretty...