girlfriend sweatshop beach/craft weekend extravaganza super heavy image post!

we meant to leave at 12.

we instead left at 3 (or was it 4?). me, jen, rachel & bekah met up with erika at the hotel. it was lovely. we were greeted with:



and we were soso relaxed and relieved to be there.







this didn't last long of course, once the asti was opened.



out we went to whole foods for some delicious snacky snacks and for me, ibuprofen. 5 girls, 4 of them bleeding, 2 of them sick. i conveniently got the flu and my period on friday - lovely, no? the car was filled with crafts, estrogen and a veritable treasure trove of herbal medicines. and ibuprofen.

so we ate and went to the tavern on the main to meet some other vendors and hang out w/ yen & mike. hurrah! then back to the hotel to craft some more and to PLAY ON THE BEACH AT MIDNIGHT.

check out rachel's awesome pajamas. she needs a smoking jacket. and don't ask what jen's doing to my butt, i have no idea.



must... craft.... cannot..... stop!!



on the way to beach - this is jen & erika's american apparel shot:



the beach was cold and quiet and dark. the sand was freezing! like soft soft sugar. so different from ft myers beaches, which are full of shells. i was able to run about without fear of sharp cuts and stick-a-burrs.



much frolicking ensued:





and then the fun photos began. the cold makes us delirious, not the free beer at the tavern.

so many stars...



and unexplained objects





the dangers came from all sides



fear is the path to the dark side. fear leads to anger. anger leads to hate. hate leads to suffering



and yet, we were able to relax enough for some interpretive dance. there is always time for interpretive dance. we are the ocean.







erika really wanted to go skinny dipping until we realized creepy people were watching. go to bed, man! it's midnight!









anyways, the next day was full of coffee and crafts.

here's the auditorium:



us, pre-show



jen & rachel had this awesome idea for a logo sign!



and, our booth. lovely, no? :)



hopefully you were able to stay with me the duration of my trip down memory lane. i now love the beach and want to go back. so soft!! though, probably imported.

i should.... probably get back to work now. mayhaps i'll have time to write more later.

fingers in the raw

i've been sewing like a little busy bee as of late! and on an ebay buying craze. that site is deadly dangerous, i say. deadly. dangerous.

ipod case and thick thick interfacing? check!
4" zippers?
::struggles:: no... not.. just... yet......... must... resist... allure of ebay...

urgh.

new little pouches - i am totally in love w/ that fruit/vegetable print. it's even better in person, because the colors are little whack here. it's such a deep deep green blue. delicious and growing. and i colored in those little flowers myself! red & teal are apparently "in."


the gift i'm bringing to erika tomorrow - one of the robot bags i started AGES ago!




i love that i can actually post this here w/o fear of her seeing it. she's predictable like that. though i do owe her a hugely loving erika-post since i crapped out on visiting her last weekend... eep! hope she hasn't been sneaking about on the internets...

here are some old pics from the.... july crafting out loud show:


me w/ my buddha latte. sweetened condensed milk is fucking amazing in coffee. you can see my pouches in the middle, star's old skool toaster covers to the right and some of rachel's little wooden paintings on the left.


there's jen on the left, talking to yen, who makes beautiful, beautiful jewelry. and those are jen's books and journals!


star, with her plethora of shiny record bowls - i think one of those is elton john.

wtf - no pics of rachel?? note to self: bring camera next time.


i have also been completely obsessed with tracking what i am listening to. thanks madge! she recently commented that i should "do this everyday." so that's what i do. every day. at work. i figure this could get *really* boring, *REALLY* fast, so i had to curb my list today. also because it was huge.

wait a minute.

wait a minute..........

HAHAHA! you thought you were getting away? i don't think so.

listening to:

• terry gross interview w/ gene simmons (via unauthorized audio on wikipedia)
• the rollercoaster ride - belle & sebastian, the boy w/ the arab strap
• gasoline - the new year, newness ends
• don't talk (put your head on my shoulder) - the beach boys, pet sounds (skipped halfway thru)
• ugly - pond, rock collection
• matinee idol - rufus wainwright, rufus wainwright
• i hope for tumbleweeds - chin up chin up, we should have never lived like we were skyscrapers
• the silence of underwater traffic - the cancer conspiracy, the audio medium
• aurora - bjork, vespertine
• ambulance for the ambiance - broken social scene, beehive
• rookie - boy sets fire, after the eulogy
• you too song - errortype:11, amplified to rock
• my mother was a chinese trapeze artist - the decemberists, five songs
• broken - audio learning center, friendships often fade away
• new clear saturday - jejune, this afternoon's malady
• bb mineral-love my way - mineral, &Serenading 7"
• water your hands - aloha, here comes everyone
• junk bond trader - elliott smith, figure 8
• the other side - the dismemberment plan, change
• lebanese blonde - thievery corporation, garden state
• this hits home - the mercury program, the mercury program
• track 05 (?) - the casket lottery
• convict - the appleseed cast, low level owl: volume 1
• break in the new year - cursive, the storms of early summer

i logged into my computer thru citrix.


i am a nerd.

craft + coffee = fun

much fun was had by gfss girls at the first crafting out loud fair. : ) coffee at the sacred grounds was delicious, the only negative was that it was outside. they have coffee ice cubes!

i think many of us believed that it would be inside the shop. we got there at 6.30 and it was hot-hot-hot and sticky. it cooled off once the sun went down, but then the mosquitos came out. !! i hate when sweat drips down between your ya yas.




jen , star, rachel & me.
products (from left to right):
star - record bowls, toothbrush bracelets (inside the bowls) and toaster covers
me - little pouches for makeup, contact stuff, sundry feminine products
rachel - wood & watercolor paintings, embroidered tank tops
jen - handbound sketchbooks & photo albums


once night fell, we moved to a spot on the sidewalk and hung out w/ yen and (soon to be updated - i can't find her site!).

i want to write more, but it's 1 am. even though i napped like crazy today, i need my sleep.

zzzzz....zz

crafting out loud

sacred grounds

busy bee

so this is what i've been feverishly working on this past week:



little bags! they're about 7 inches by 4 inches. looking at them now, i realize there really aren't that many of them... oh well! i have until saturday, 7 pm.

.... i think that this is all that i'll have to sell at the show. um, and i still haven't finished the 2 big messenger robot bags.

also, i am missing skin from my thumb where the needle tightener knob bashed my sensitive digit. my fault, i'm really bad about where i put my fingers. and i've only stabbed my finger once!

these little babies are for the very first craft show Girlfriend Sweatshop will be participating in on june 3rd!

ok, i have to stop here, because my mind is all over the place and i can't write any sort of coherent paragraph or sentence. i keep rewriting them and rereading them and it's just not meshing in my mind.

night!

me without glasses. i can see! i'll definitely be keeping my glasses around for the days when my eyeballs are oxygen-starved, but for now i'm kind of enjoying not having heavy glass rest on the (small) bridge of my nose.

the scarf in the pictures is my latest finished knitting project. it's red mohair w/ blue-ish beads knitted in.

mohair is kind of itchy. : (
and fritz said that cashmere comes from goat stomach! say it ain't so!

B-HAM

birmingham was a pleasure to visit. i stayed w/ my friend michelle and her fiance, scott. we worked it out and realized that i've known michie for about 14 years; we met before 9th grade in band camp. truly a friendship meant to be, despite her belonging to the woodwind camp and i to the brass. we brass just couldn't help being so good, so jealously was obviously understandable. ;)

to use a term madge uses in her blog, i took a few "analog" photographs. in fact, i only took my film camera. which means i have no photos up yet. the plan is to do my finances tonight and figure out how much i can get developed as soon as possible. i should probably start w/ my oldest rolls first, though...

damn, as much as i love my film camera, the convenience of digital is just so alluring and seductive! oh, please me now, instant gratification digital slr camera!
but i do love the heavy *chunk* sound of my nikon shutter. it's yummy.

we ate delicious food and played with her beautiful kittens and knitted and made many many tasteless bodily humor jokes and got me addicted to 'lost.' i'm going to have to get the dvds from the library and download them to satisfy my needs.

speaking of bodily humor jokes... scott introducted me to the "wonder" of ratemypoo.com. i'm not even going to link it. i thought i could handle it, but seriously, as funny as poop is, it's not funny in real life, in color, on your monitor. my gag reflex is rather superb.

thanks scott. no, really. thanks.

man. because, really? poop is GROSS.

i gag when i clean out the kitty litter - what am i going to do if i have kids?

here are some sketches i did whilst in selma; i got to listen to michie's sermon (she's "The Rev. Michelle Freeman," after all) and while she was in her presbytery meeting, i wandered around old alabama.





i wish i could have drawn more, but 1) it was super windy and my contacts were like a desert sand dune and 2) the pastor of the church freaked me out by telling me how a girl was abducted and repeatedly raped somewhat nearby. i ended up waiting for michie's meeting to finish by waiting in the selma library reading and dousing my eyes with visine. that stuff is like eye-crack. i heart me some eye-crack.


OTHER UPDATES

ant's band, red room cinema, got to play the big heatwave concert here in tampa on saturday night. it was crazy full of old hippies and strange drunk middle aged people. it was LOUD. an excellent show, except for that huge huge roach.

rachel got engaged!!

i'm hoping to participate w/ the rest of the girlfriend sweatshop in a little craft show at the sacred grounds coffee shop!

i've been a gardening fool. i tilled half my backyard in preparation for sowing me some grass seed.

and...

i saw the da vinci code.