Beetlegirl Design

Yosemite (a.k.a. the land of the rocks)

My sweetie and I had a lovely time at Yosemite for the past two days.  This was one of the rare occasions where our off-season vacation was not met with rain.  We spent hours out of doors yesterday, taking in the sprawling meadows and the enormity of the rocks at the park.  We returned home with sun-rosy cheeks to a bunny who has been tripping over our feet all evening (it is safe to say we were missed.)  I did capture a few images worthy of sharing, and you can find those here.

november bps postcard

This seems to say it all for me at the moment...life is whirling around me, and it is all I can do to keep a snail's pace.  My beasties for Luv-able & Hugable are coming into being bit by bit, as each piece is mostly hand sewn due to the growing complexity of my armatures...(whose brilliant concept was it to wire each individual blade of grass?)  Well, the trickiness of my creations is well worth the end result.  My hope is to see off my NY beasties within a week, and then turn my attention back to the poor, deflated, squirrel bodies that have been patiently awaiting their stuffing.  But this weekend might throw my timing off a bit; my sweetie and I are escaping the untethered insanity that is Santa Cruz on Halloween, and venturing instead, to Yosemite, where I hope to spend a day or two attempting to capture some silly Ansel Adam's inspired photos of my wee snails.  If I don't poke my head in here again before then, have a lovely Halloween...

Home again from Neverland...

...or it seems to be what Portland has become to me.  

I spent a lovely few days with my brother up in Portland this past weekend...Days which were filled with all of my favorite things...Pumpkin-patching at Sauvie's Island (an activity which is evidently now in the realm of action-adventure), finding amazing beetle wing fabric at Bolt, a movie at the Kennedy School (with tater tots), drinking fancy coffees and watching the rain out of big foggy windows, meandering through stores on NW 23rd, a drive through Washington Park, pumpkin milkshakes and sweet potato fries from Burgerville, delectable treats from Pix, pumpkin carving and jack-o-lanterns lit until the wee hours indoors, and seeing Wild Things.  As you can see, it was a very food-centric weekend, but I also could not get my fill of the colors of the leaves, and the moisture in the air (the leaves seem to simply drop here, and despite being blocks from the ocean, there is something entirely different about the quality of the air after the rain.)  

I am a bit sorry that I did not have more time to visit with more friends and family, but sometimes it is nice just to truly allow yourself to be in one place, with one person...Although it does make it even more difficult to return home again.  But who knows where home will be for us in the future.  So far, the universe seems tickled pink with keeping us on our toes...so I will continue to go along for the adventure.

Plush You 2009

If you would like to see these wee beasties in their true habitat, they are currently showing, and available for purchase, at Plush You 2009 at Schmancy in Seattle, WA.  Although I missed the opening reception this year, pictures of the event can be found here and here.  What fun was had. 

Update:  The wee snails have sold, but the squirrel is still available here.

The Benevolent Postcard Society

In an effort to bring more snail mail into my life and to others, I joined The Benevolent Postcard Society a few months ago. The BPS is a twelve-month project wherein you mail a postcard to a different member each month in an attempt to brighten their day.  I've decided that all of my postcards would be paper collage. While I don't know whether my images are "cheerful," I am excited that this project has inspired me to revisit an old medium, and the tiny scissors and paper collection that go along with it. As you can see, my first two postcards are sea themed. 

Postcard for October: Paper Moon

 

Postcard for September: Searching the Seven Seas

from sixty to zero...

After the wedding of my dearest friend to her boy on the twelfth, I seem to have sputtered out.  But I have slowly found my way back again, and spent the evening creating new lists and crossing things off a neglected "to do" list. 

So thank you once again for visiting here even when I was away. 

The Academy of Beasties

I couldn't have had a lovelier birthday than I had exploring the California Academy of Sciences yesterday.  I added a few pictures from our day's adventure to my other flickr.

31 + 1

(Me at five.)

Perhaps it is simply the nature of birthdays, but I have been in quite a self-reflective mood lately.  Rather than compiling a list of thirty-two things to do in my thirty-second year, I have decided, instead, to write a list of thirty-two things about myself.  And so here they are, in no particular order and theme:


I am an excellent secret keeper.  I also have a very long memory. 

I almost have a Master's in English, but I am one course shy of the degree (it is a tad more complicated than it sounds).  I don't believe I will ever complete it.  This bothers others more than it does myself.   (My favorite research paper I wrote during my M.A. experience was on the narrative structure of Wuthering Heights.)

I am an avid daydreamer.  I daydream best when I am in motion.  This has led to me having a bad reputation for wandering into traffic. 

My favorite colors are the hues of the ocean, from dawn until dusk, in sunlight and in storm cloud.  

I idolized my brothers growing up, and I still do.

I claim to only be a sentimentalist, but I am a closet romantic.  I could watch Masterpiece Theater on endless loop reels.

I have a faint birthmark that circles my eye.  My mother told me once when I was very young, possibly in an attempt to make me less self-conscious, that birthmarks are evidence of having been kissed by a guardian angle at birth.  Although not a spiritual person, I have always carried this thought with me.

I am afraid of the dark when I am alone.  I cannot sleep for fear of zombies and everything that goes bump in the night.

In contradiction to the last statement, I am not afraid of being alone, or of silent pauses in conversation.

I love the ocean because it reminds me of how small I truly am.  Most every major decision in my life has been discussed and decided within a few steps from one oceanic body or another.

If I could, I would move to New Zealand with barely a second thought.

I took intensive first year Latin and received all “A” pluses.  I don't know that I remember a thing, other than that Catulus wrote dirty poems.

Like my mother, I actually have a pretty singing voice, but I only sing when I think no one is listening.

Evidently I once slept through an entire viewing of The Princess Bride and laughed at all the appropriate moments.
 
I am incredibly shy when I first meet people, and can be incredibly the opposite once I know them.

I still make wishes by holding my breath when I pass through tunnels.

When I was little, my mother would have to take me, not to get my hair cut, but the knots cut out.  I quite literally had leaves and twigs (and squirrels) interwoven with my hair on days when the adventures were at their most involved.

I have always wished there was a means to erase the memory of our favorite film or novel, so we could once again, experience them for the first time.

The day I have a house and a yard to call my own I will immediately seek out the perfect Labrador-mutt.

My yard will have a weeping willow, a dwarf hazelnut tree, and thorn-less raspberry bushes.

Like my sweetie, I like to skirt a thin line of anonymity, and while I prefer to blend with the shadows, I also love ballroom dancing, and would love to take lessons again someday.

I have always admired brave and brazen people.  I hope to be one someday.  I am going to attempt to be brave in the upcoming year.

I do not believe in reading books with a pencil in hand.   The pages only disappear if the book itself is the only solid form in your hands.

Among my favorite adolescent memories of my on-going adventures with my brother, A, is the night he asked if I wanted to go out for ice cream, and then proceeded to drive us the forty-five minutes into San Francisco for the massive ice cream sundaes they make at Ghirardelli Deli Square.  What I love more, is that my parents never seemed to mind our adventures.

And on the topic of brothers…I am the luckiest only sister in possibly the world.  Each Valentine’s Day my brothers would fill the paper sack that hung outside my bedroom door to the brim with handmade Valentines.  I have kept each and every one.

Though I claim to be self-taught, this is only a partial truth.  My mother is a talented seamstress, and an ever-patient teacher.  It is due to my own stubbornness that I often failed to ask for help.   I now see her for the tremendous resource that she is, and it is only because of her that I have slowly acquired three lovely sewing machines and just about every tool and gadget under the sun.

To say I am stubborn is an understatement.  I detest being told what to do.  Peer pressure never had a chance with me.

I am terrible at saying no, even when it is clear that I ought to.  (This, too, contradicts the above statement, but both are true.)

I do not believe I am the only daughter to believe this, but I think my dad is the greatest man alive.

I am a terrible liar, so I don't even try.  I would always exaggerate; I couldn't help myself.

When my sweetie met me, I ate nothing but toast, made on the oven broiler.  His first gift to me was a toaster. 

Even at thirty-two, I have been looking forward to my birthday for a week, and I couldn’t be happier than to spend it with my family and friends, and most especially, my sweetie too. 

reason #101 why you should own a house rabbit

They are sales tax exempt.

It seems that I have missed the fact that for the past three years our rabbit food has not had the added cost of sales tax.  Being that our sales tax is about nine point a trillion percent in California, you would think I might have noticed the difference, but no.  Evidently, rabbits are food, and as thus, their feed is non-taxable.  While I do not plan on making our wee fuzzy beastie into a meal anytime soon, I do think this point makes her even more awesome than she was just a day ago.   So, this lovely fact, along with other wonderful things, such as that rabbits are crepuscular, (i.e. twilight creatures), and sleep the day away while you are at work, and that they are so oddly quiet  (Pesto thumps occasionally at nothing, enthusiastically grunts when she charges at your feet, and grinds her teeth when you scratch between her ears, but that is about it), they are litter box trainable, oh, and just about the cutest pet you might ever have (outside of golden retrievers, hedgehogs, and sugar gliders), should lead you all to rescue a wee fuzzy beastie today. 

flora shop update

It is perhaps ridiculously overdue, but I have finally located the days between days to create a flora shop update for my Etsy. 

 

The update includes three linen branches, two wee snails in grass soft-sculptures, and one cluster of silk grass.

 

The wee snails in the silk grasses couldn't be sweeter. 

Silk grass detail:

 

Linen branch detail:

 

For more images or details on their construction, please visit my Etsy shop or my Flickr site.