M. and I have been doing a lot of furniture browsing lately as we get ready to move into the new apartment (10 more days!). These little spice holder ponies were at a warehouse that specialized in Indonesian imports. They open up like mini Trojan Horses. M. couldn't help but crack himself up over and over saying "We could put our weed in there". Not because we have any weed we need to stash, but because it reminded him of some SNL skit I've never seen. We didnt' buy them (They're $40 after a 50% mark-down), but I kind of want one despite all impracticality and non-matchyness with anything we own.



Here's a table we're considering. We want an oversized wooden table since we have so much space to fill. This one's 7.5 ft long! It's not perfect, but it's under $400 which is the best deal we've found so far.



Finally, a look back at the finished Zot mug I made in my ceramics class. This is a terrible, noisy photo, but I'm too lazy to retake it.

We spent the entire weekend buying furniture (a bed from IKEA) and checking out future potential furniture (NOT IKEA). I'm already over this move and it's still three weeks away! I can't wait until everything is packed, bought, transferred and set up. It seems a long tunnel ahead.

Ahh well, here are a few bits from the neighborhood. Downtown L.A. is growing on me.

This is the central library. It's huge and every nook and cranny is stuffed with books and ornate details. I'm always in a hurry when I go there so I've barely explored the place, but what I've seen is very grand and beautiful.



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This is from a free performance a couple of weekends ago. Strange Fruit is a traveling group from Australia. Their act is part-circus, part-dance performed on flexible poles. I wish I'd had a better view, but the crowd was pretty big and my choice spots were either behind a tree or the tent.



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Last week were the "star performer" festivities at work. My directors nominated me for the "honor", which culminated in a couple of free dinners that M. was invited to attend, an emmy-esque award-thing, plus an engraved Movado watch that I'll never wear because watches look really dumb on me.

M. surprised me with flowers because he's sweet like that. Let me tell you, tuberose smells amazing and we're going to use fresh flowers as our standard apartment freshening device from now on:


( Plus Four... )

Dropped off the deposit on our next apartment this morning. We have > thirty days to pack everything up and move ...two blocks away. This is an upgrade though. I snuck in and took some pics of the empty space:


Building facade


Facade Close-Up

( New on the Inside )

I haven't been taking pictures of my ceramics stuff in progress because every step of that class is messy and no place for small electronic devices. I did take this one photo of a bisqued mug (Pre-Glaze, Pre-Fired) for my DoodleFactory Blog.



I should have stopped here, or fired it up with a clear glaze since I seemed to have a lot of trouble with glazing last night. Glazing is interesting and nothing like painting because there is no WYSIWIG in glazing. Since it's all mineral/chemical reaction, a bucket of rust colored glaze could come out black, while the red looks white, and don't even try to combine yellow and blue expecting green. You have to pay attention to the sample glazes tied to each bucket, but that still doesn't give you any idea of what effect you'll get with combinations.

The unexpected aspect is neat and I look forward to seeing what comes out of the kiln, but I'm afraid my application last night was messy and way too heavy. In fact the teacher called me out because I'd dunked one of my pieces in the glaze for 6 seconds rather than 3, which is apparently some serious offense. Like enough to make an 'example' of me in front of the class, wherein she completely exaggerated what I'd actually done and even included a swaying dance intended to mimic my lazy dawdling in the glaze(?). I was rather horrified and even my friend thought her reaction was over-the-top/unneccesary.

I've been taking a ceramics class that meets three nights a week at the Santa Monica Community College. I missed the first night because I wasn't expecting to take the class (which was full anyway), but my friend who I've been carpooling with convinced me that I could probably get in after the instructor started dropping the no-shows. So I used her clay and tools for two classes and got the official code to take the class on Thursday.

So far I'm pretty terrible at ceramics, but the majority of students are equally terrible or even more terrible. I haven't really put any thought into what I'd like to make or get out of this class, so I've just been making "things" that confine themselves to the guidelines of each assignment. I've also made only half the amount of things we're supposed to have made by now because of that first class missed and because I often end up squashing most of what I start on back into lumpy clay oblivion. So far we've covered hand-sculptured technique. This week we will move on to glazing, and by the middle of the semester we'll finally get to throwing and the wheel (this is where everyone makes some reference to the movie "Ghost"). I'm really looking forward to that part if only for the slurpy tactile feeling and I can only hope I am less terrible at that than I've been so far.


oh, ALSO, FREEBIE ALERT: you can enter to win my latest (Tropical) stamp set + some other stamp stuff at: http://starvingartistamps.blogspot.com

I know I was going to put all the stampy stuff in my DoodleFactory Blog, but I had to post these really fun cards made with my stamps from customers in Sweden.

My favorites are by a woman named Nina who also creates her own drawings for stamps and always has some fun things to look at on her blog [Google translated version].




I won't post them all here, but you can check out more crafty swedish blogs and see more of their cards in this post

I drew new drawings! The latest Doodle Factory stamps are on their way to the rubber-making plant AND I've already started on the next set. I'm on a roll, but only because I've had such a dry spell for so long.

See all of the funny monkey's friends and the rest of the new set here: starvingartistamps.com

I didn't take this photo - see the tag and click on the photo to go to the original photographer's flickr page. I couldn't take any photos of our evening watching girls brutalize* eachother on skates this Saturday because the LA DerbyDolls don't allow the general public to bring in cameras unless they posess a laminated "PRESS" pass, or stroll in at halftime when nobody's checking anything.

*Actually, while there were quite a few falls, a broken nose and an oxygen mask that came out by the end of the night, the match wasn't WWF-violent. It was pretty entertaining overall, although the LA team annihilated the San Diego team (100Something to 13 or so) under somewhat unfair circumstances. The SD team usually plays on a flat track, while the LA track is banked. Needless to say there was a disproportionate amount of SD girls tumbling compared to the LA team.

Anyway, so we saw roller derby for the first time as Part 1 of M's birthday celebration. We heard Drew Barrymore was in the audience for research on an upcoming movie and I used avez_kristen's tip to spot her. I just looked for the girl with the head the size of a grapefruit, and after some squinting, I totally zeroed in on her across the stadium. I couldn't tell if the dude next to her was the mac guy or not mostly because I couldn't remember who it was she was supposed to be dating.

After the Derby, we headed downtown for many spiritous beverages and a very good time was had by all.

If you've ever wanted to own a set of my Doodle Factory Stamps without having to pay for them, here's your chance!

I just finished a spankin' new Fairy Tale set for www.starvingartistamps.com and Tracey is giving away a set to one lucky winner. All you have to do is follow the directions and comment on this blog entry:

starvingartistamps.blogspot.com

Good Luck!

We had Easter Brunch at the wild animal preserve (www.safariwest.com). I took a million pictures, but I'll try to cut this post down to just 1/2 million:



( Animals Animals Everywhere )

I finished another set of drawings for www.starvingartistamps.com last week. These two guys are from the new Country set (Rest of the stamps Here).

There will be quite a few more sets forthcoming.

Holeeeeey Crow! Do not - I repeat: DO NOT store your contact lenses in hydrogen peroxide and then blithely proceed to stick them in your eyeballs eight hours later. Unless you want to set your retinas ablaze and murder your vision.

Yes, I did this, but lest you think I'm a complete idiot, I assure you, I'm only partial idiot.

See, my eye doctor had given me a sample of this Clear Care No Rub/Disinfecting Solution several months ago. It's a pretty good product when used properly, but using it properly means ONLY storing your lenses in their contact lens bondage crate and never in the regular flat cases. I won't go into the science or magic of it all, but with the bondage crate you get super clean lenses and without it you get a jalapeno rub with your morning beauty routine.

The eye doc had issued a grave warning about this and I warned Mike never to use the stuff, but several months had gone by with the bottle quietly sitting in the medicine cabinet and I didn't supervise when he packed his overnight bag. We spent last night at his parent's house because they were out of town for the birth of their second grandkid. As I had forgotten just about everything except my next day's underwear (no toothbrush, no hairbrush, and certainly no contact stuff), I was just relieved that Mike had brought a little travel bottle along. I know the little red band around the nozzle of the solution should have warded me off, but they really ought to have a blazing 72pt warning instead of a small bullet point. The front of the bottle is calming blue and says things like "No Rub! Disinfecting!" not "TOXIC TO THE NAKED EYE!!!!".

Anyway, yeah. 14 hours later my right eye still hurts and looks like it has received the most devastating news. Never doing that again.

Come see my boyfriend's first solo art show in Los Angeles.
Opening Reception is this Saturday (March 8) 9pm-Midnight.

artist website: rippens.com
venue website: pehrspace.org

325 Glendale Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90026
pehrspace is 2 blocks south of Temple in Historic Filipinotown. The freeway offramp is Glendale Blvd from the 101, about 3 blocks south of Echo Park Lake. Finding us the first time may be difficult. We are in the back of the Glen Village parking lot, behind a short palm tree. You won't see it from the street, you'll have to come into the parking lot.

Our actual door is closer to a small street parallel to Glendale Blvd, called Court St. There is plenty of free parking on Court St, Pizarro, and Glendale Blvd, as well as in our parking lot. If you see Tigeorge's Chicken, and Bangkok Express Thai, we are in the parking lot between those two restaurants. The two signs you will see to the left and right of the parking lot will say "Beauty Force Salon" and "Praise Chapel".

I was going to post about something besides my cats, but my compact flash reader is broken so I can't show you the photos of the dinner M. made me for Valentine's last night. (We had a very lovely night at home and he made me a super fabulous full-course meal + gave me an anthropologie gift card).

The SD card reader wasn't broken though, and that contained this video of Trouble playing his current favorite game. He used to be a fetcher and a jumper, but now he just likes to sit back on his fat haunches and whack mice out of the air. Video quality does not do the game justice, but it does cement my standing as a crazy cat lady!

I have, for lack of a less crude term, complete and utter creative constipation. Feeling very stuck-in-a-ruttish. This needs to pass.

I bought this nifty new lens for my rebel an entire month ago, and all I have to show for it are these silly cat pictures I took last night:



( A Tale of Two Tobies )

Welcome to the dusty wasteland of my journal. Life is rolling along just fine which means my life is rather normal (ie boring). So, here is a mash-up of things outside of my own egocentricity that have piqued my interest this week:

Economics:
Living in a loft with 0 doors + 2 cats has prompted me to want a house (and a gated yard!) more than ever.* Of course it is quite possibly the worst time in history for home-owners, and I've been monitoring the whole mortgage meltdown closely. I'd had hopes that the interest rate drops would make fixed mortgage rates even more appealing, but this blog indicates the rate drop is merely a subsidy for BANKS rather than an economic stimulus. "Since August 2007, the Fed has reduced rates from 5.25% to 3%. During that same time, bank mortgage loan rates have increased, rather than decreased".

Huh. That reminds me of how Exxon Mobil broke records as the world's most profitable publicly traded corporation, as rising oil prices helped the company bring in better-than-ever income and revenue. So Oil companies get tax incentives from the government AND get to pass on the rising costs of crude oil to consumers. Riches for few at the expense of many is the new American Way.

* The other day, Toby figured out that he could make the 5 foot vertical jump from the dresser over the wall of our loft bed. Not only is the one cat free spot in the house now compromised, but I can see him cracking a rib or breaking a leg trying this maneuver every morning in their rabid attempts to coax us out of bed each day. GAH!

Well That's Pretty Shitty:
Last night bixxy reminded everyone that wrapping disposable diapers filled with kiddy poop and tossing them in the trash is not only gross, it's environmentally awful. Since I don't have kids I've never given this a single thought, but even if I did have kids would I have figured out that you're supposed to flush that poop before you toss that diaper? It apparently even says so on the wrapper, but honestly, how many of you actually knew that?

This also prompted me to wonder about the ramification of the bag of cat clumpins I toss in the bin each week. I learned this: In San Francisco, for example, animal feces accounts for nearly 4 percent of the city’s residential waste—almost as much as disposable diapers, another landfill nightmare. Tossed into landfills inside plastic bags, animal waste becomes a nearly permanent part of the landscape for generations". Yikes! But wait....
San Francisco wants to turn animal feces into fuel
Canada also has a plan to turn dirty diapers into diesel

That's cool. But in the meantime, it's kind of scary how little I think of everyday routines that probably have a progressive impact on the environment. And I don't even consider myself THAT wasteful!

Eye Candy:
So this isn't all Doom-N-Gloom/State-of-the-World stuff, here's an artist I found this week in my latest book purchase: Illustration Play. AJ FOSIK makes painted wood animals decked out in warrior gear. Neat: