happy year of the rabbit!

happy year of the rabbit just a bit early!

what have you been doing in the chinese almost new year? i've been working on my weekly projects like pax and ak

and skull digggery.

i've also started that new series that i was telling you about with excheckered.

that project's all about collaging over old edited journal pages. there's some annotation after each image. it could be fun!

i've been working on these things in my new studio/office.

i got tired of being in the studio with no heat or running water so i'm moving everything inside. it's coming along well, i think. (cards and stuff available at my etsy shop if you're interested.)

leff and i have been running errands since k loaned us his truck while he's out of town. we've gotten two out of our needed five rain barrels, stocked up our liquor cabinet and gone to target.

and there's oatmeal

but that's nothing new. i eat oatmeal all the time.

this is new though. another goofy "arrested development" banner for leff.

i'll never get tired of making those.

have a photo of clouseau on my smart dumb phone and i'll let you go.

the stupid thing won't let me sent pictures anymore. what a piece of shit!

and i'm back

things are getting a bit closer to normal around here. in good news, i got my copy of noah's book from the publisher!

if you'd like to see my pages in the book, please click here and check out the flickr set! (thanks again to noah for asking me to be a part of the book!)

i finally found out about irish breakfast tea.

that shit can stave off a headache, let me tell you! and since i don't have time to leave the house on a coffee run (and we're currently waiting on our replacement filter for our 10 cup pot) it makes life just that little bit easier.

to go with the tea, i made leff some jammy thumbprint biscuits.

technically, they were for a "doctor who" marathon that he was watching but i made enough for the rest of the weekend as well.

i also made this.

no, i'm not the poe toaster but i do appreciate a slice of nutella poe toast now and then.

don't forget, new pax and ak post today! new skull diggery post tomorrow! if you're lucky (and if i've had enough time to set up my new studio space (with heat! near running water!), i should be able to start yet another art series by feb. yay, etc!

losing ava has been a hard thing to deal with. as such, i'm not fully up to speed yet. here are two pictures from good parts of the week without comment.

there will be two new images up shortly at the weekly blogs, pax and ak and skull diggery, should you need something else to look at. i'm hoping to have a regular post here next monday. thanks for understanding.

goodbye, ava

we lost our nubbin cat, ava, on wednesday morning. she lived with leff for 12 years in three different cities (baltimore, memphis, seattle). she was always partial to seagulls and plain potato chips.

goodbye, ava. we miss you terribly.

(photo courtesy of leff)

easing into the new year

the new year has been blissfully slow paced to date. in fact, most of my last week was so dull (reading vilette (so good!)and both angela lansbury's and louise brook's biographies, catching up on new wave films that i didn't see in college, listening to language cds) that it doesn't require mentioning in depth.

i *did* get my order from blick though! check it! new watercolor pencils!

they'll come in very handy with the two new weekly projects (1, 2). maybe you'd like to click on one or both of two of those links to see what they're about?

on saturday night leff made nutella + raspberry jam and cheese + onion crepes.

they were incredibly delicious and, instead of reminding us of paris, you know, where they're street food, they made us think of cardiff. ('cause we ate some there.)

here's a very short video of leff making a small crepe.



it's only funny because he's right about it not being a good video.

i also went for some short walks around the hood when it was warm enough to get outside.  so, basically, on two days i went for some short walks.  here's a monkey puzzle tree that i saw on one of those two days.

yeah, slow week. which is fine by me.

yay! it's 2011!

my mood has greatly improved since we buried the filthy, stinking corpse of 2010. hooray! hooray! hooray!

i'm not going to go so far as to call 2011 "the year of rakka" (as that sounds a bit too much like "the summer of george" and we all know how that turned out...) but i will be happy if the new year is even one teeniest of tiny slivers better than the suck that was 2010.

anyway, this past week saw more packages trickling in. most were from the uk where mail has been slow due to horrid weather.

i got my copy of "smoke" bang on time though. (london orbital took a while.)

sadly, "smoke" seems to have run its course but it's ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY worth ordering the back copies. soooo goood. i'm looking forward to their new projects.

as you can see from the post below this one, my weekly projects for the year have started. (1, 2)

you can see me already breaking one of my new year's resolutions in the above photo. that being, of course, to not use my keyboard as a plate. oops.

surprisingly, the new year has brought some sunshine with it. i haven't really seen shadows since, oh, july of last year?

that reminds me, i should take my vitamin d supplement this morning as we're heading back into the grey this week. (freezing fog this morning! don't you just LOVE "freezing fog"?)

have a cat photo. i'll be back next week with another one.

new projects start TODAY!

my two new weekly projects for this year, pax & ak and skull diggery both start TODAY!

why not click through to one or both of them while you're nursing your hangover from last night.

oh yeah, happy new year.