recent fleamarket finds

• The pink quilt was a gift from my mom (from her own collection) but it seemed to fit the theme of this post.
• Cat cookie jar - perhaps the best fleamarket find ever!
• A great big stack of quilt squares just waiting to be turned into a project.

A bit of de-lurking

:: needle felting ::
It's no secret, I have been a terrible blogger as of late. Perhaps it needs a bit of explanation and maybe even a little de-lurking on my part.

The story goes something like this...
I'm in one of those in between stages where you either have so much on your plate you're entirely too much overwhelmed, or you have nothing to do and don't know where to begin. Right now I'm on the overwhelmed side of things. I just finished up grad school in December and spend a lot of my time job hunting. I also intern and teaching art classes/workshops to kids over at the local museum. And I'm planning summer sewing camps/projects over at a local sewing store. I'm spending so much of my time researching and lesson planning and doing other 'stuff', that I just can't seem to multi-task anything else. So my grand plan for a blog and to get my etsy shop set up have really gone by the way side (plus, this is a daunting task. i'm not even telling people about the blog right now, for fear of it not being up to par.)

Needless to say, I do seem to keep up with reading my favorite blogs and continue to lurk behind the scenes. Maybe just by admitting this I'll be forced to keep in better touch. Either way, that is what's going on around here. But as a small treat to myself, I did begin to learn some needle felting last night. I'm amazed out how simple it is. And the outcome is spectacular every time! Why did I not try this sooner!

cute little valentines...

Who doesn't love a Valentine's day card - old school style? I don't know which is better, making 'em or receiving 'em. These are taken straight from the pages of purl (sometimes things are just too good the way they are, no need for changes here).

There are about a million things to do around here, but the almost city-wide snow day made these possible. You can make 'em while you're watching the evening news... so, if you haven't made your friends, family and coworkers a v-day card yet, get started, everyone deserves to know just how sweet they are!

The Creative Eye

Sean Wilkinson
Untitled (Cleveland), 2005
Marc Suda
Sunflower I (Side View), 2007

One of the perks to my new internship over at DAI, is getting to attend some really fabulous lectures. Tonight's Regional Artists Lecture was given by two local photographers. I love hearing artists speak about their work, getting to understand and appreciate the work so much more. I really enjoyed listening to Sean Williamson speak. His work is kind of mysterious, ambiguous, and he had this sort of wonderful to listen to soft voice as he read a narrative he had written about his work. I like how he spoke about Dayton as this really ordinary place, because really, that's exactly what it is. He said he felt it was "sweet... and mournful..." and that really kind of captures this place.

I'm excited about getting back into the art scene. I miss that kind of excitement. I forget sometimes how much I love it, how much time I've invested into learning about it, how much it is very much a part of me. This internship is going to be a great thing... being in this kind of wonderful academic place where people are always learning, learning for the sake of learning to share it with others. It's all very community driven. It fills me up.

Vintage finds online

Cabin fever is setting in and I find my mind wondering to the upcoming spring. I wonder what this years fleamarkets and antique shows will have in store. I get excited just thinking about it! I was so also excited to stumble across this sweet shop today, where I found another community of people that enjoy collecting just as much as I do. If I had a shop, this is exactly the kind of stuff I would sell. In fact, I own tons of fun found items just like these!

Lovely to read, lovely to watch

Mmm... The Complete Jane Austen series, six fantastic adaptations of her novels. Tonight's film was Northanger Abbey, they are such rich and beautiful tales, I can hardly wait another week to see the next one! Such a wonderful beauty and simplicity of the time period and lives lived back then, its certainly enough to motivate me through my work all week.

Lotta goodness

Lots of Lotta Jansdotter goodness in the press recently. Oh how I love her simple, clean, modish look. You can catch a really great video interview of her here, as part of etsy's This Handmade Life. And if that doesn't give you your Lotta fix, then check her out in the most recent issue of ME. The bright colors and frilly frills of ME can be very misleading, but it is one of the best magazines out there for reading up on current artists -- all of your questions answered as they talk about their work, inspirations, businesses, etc. Each issue interviews at least one person, and in this month's issue there are four! So read up!