This post is in honor of my dear friend Catwoman. She turned me on to PostSecret a long time ago and she remains a faithful and fanatical admirer of the work. Thanks kittycat.

from wiki–

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. It is an ongoing community art project in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

PostSecret began as an art installation for Artomatic 2004 in Washington, D.C.

The simple concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed. No restrictions were (or are) made on the content of the secret; only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams.

Since Frank Warren created the website on January 1, 2005, PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 2,500 original pieces of art from people across the United States and around the world.

The site, which started as an experiment on Blogspot, is updated every Sunday with approximately 20 new pieces which share a relatively constant style, giving all “artists” who participate some guidelines on how their secrets should be represented.

At the Visionary Art Museum I got to see in person for the first time part of the POSTSECRET project. These all dealing with issues of faith and spirituality as that is what the current “All Faiths Beautiful” show is about.  It is so poignant and touching. Sometimes humorous,inspiring, thought provoking and sometimes makes your heart hurt. Check out the PostSecret link above if you are not familiar with it. Anyhow– they are trying to help out the Hopeline program. You can watch the video and particpate if you are so inclined.

Love your life.

Dawn

I woke up yesterday and thought it looked like a good day for freezer paper stenciling. You can find bunches of tutorials for how to do this if you google it. We had a little friend over and needed an activity. So to surprise Jim, we decided on MAD MAD MONKEY WEAR! We might be taking over the world with it! I cut the stencils, and everyone painted their own.

Flying Monkeys!!

and I made this gnome for friends-pillowcase and then decided it would look really nice on one of my t-shirts!

alrighty. I’m going to CLEAN! yip yip!

Oh, I had such a nice weekend–

Had a wee roadtrip.

I went away on my annual fiber-goddess / fibery-goodness retreat.

Gathered are a group of women who used to work at a LYS together, at the most lovely slice of lake-front heaven. This shangrila happens to be the home of our superweaver-woman. She is so generous to have us visit and share the all of that beauty with us. It was so short, but so relaxing and rejuvenating. Spending time with women I admire, who are all so different yet infinitely interesting and inspiring. Being surrounded by so much natural beauty. You just should have seen the enormous starry sky! It was all lovely.

I always pack way too many pjts. I have done this since I was a little kid… headed off to the babysitters for the day with books and needlepoint and a few other crafty things- you just never know what you will be in the mood for, right?? Well, I got to do a bit of spinning, reading, gnome-making, and knitting! I have a project just getting finished up which I’ll be able to share in a bit.

I enjoy so much the alchemy that happens in our time there together, we work side by side on our respective projects– sharing ideas and experience. We enjoy the lake and natural beauty, cook, eat amazing food, story-tell and laugh raucously. Maybe there could have been some less than perfect moments– but I wasn’t noticing those at all. I am just so thankful for those ladies. I came back home feeling so centered.

Ready for your virtual get-away??? Go.

( Clickable– they might actually take you there though….)

More tales tomorrow.

Howdy. I have finally gotten stitch markers up in my Etsy shop.

You can find it at http://www.gnomegarden.etsy.com

Won’t you please help me get the word out?

A humble plea:

Help me please?

If you like my markers and would like to help me get them out there–send a link to this page to every knitter you know, every knit blogger you know, every one you know who might need to keep track of a few stitches in style!! It might sound silly– but I really need help with this! If you have any great ideas for helping me spread them otherwise– please give me a shout. I’d love to hear about it!

I will be adding felting projects, kits, jewelry, hand-made knitting bags, as well as other knit-accessories and craftocity as I get them born.

I’ll be announcing updates here on the blog of course, but you can also send me your email if you’d like to be in on the top-gnome mailing list.

Thanks dear friends.

Dawn

So we had the birth and the half-birth day. I just want to show you the cakes we ate to celebrate. ‘

See if you can figure out whose is whose.

and

There was fairie princess world-for-a-day, and then, um, Friday-the-13th birthday turns into Saturday’s The Unfortunate Party with a few friends from school. Tiki torches. Cookies shaped like real LADY FINGERS ( pegaloo of course) Voodoo-baby-esque dolls ( thanks to Aunty Matryoshka’s brilliance) and death-by-chocolate flourless torte with shrunken heads. y.u.m. The day was masterfully pulled together by Jim, said Pegaloo and Carol– Thanks from the bottom of my Davey Jones Heart. I just sat around winding string dolls.

All were happy. That’s what counts right?

Today

It’s finally Summer Veecation as Rosie calls it. I have lost track of what day of the week it is– mostly because we have been so b.u.s.y. I am hoping next week to settle in to a sort of groove where we work on things we want to create, experience and accomplish –balanced with a good healthy dose of summertime serendipitous spontaneity. We couldn’t really keep it all together otherwise.

Grandparents are visiting from a plane ride away. For an adventure today, we had a pilgrimage down to the American Visionary Art Museum. My favorite museum EH-VAH!– and one of the gems of Baltimore that makes me happy to be right here now.

I get sooooo inspired there. Just crazy. I am a nut for mosaics, and junk and the stupefying gorgeousness of Outsider Art. The kids loved it. My brain is just buzzy with it. The whole family was pretty well spellbound. I wish we could spend days there. Maybe move in? There’s loads of room, anyway.

Here are some photos to tell a sliver of the story. The current show ALL FAITHS BEAUTIFUL ends in August. I hope we get to go and spend some more time with it.

This is one of those days that I think my cell phone camera sort of rocks. It’s only a stand in, but it did O.K.

(fuzzy art photo…  not the cell phone rocks variety )

ART COMA

Loads more pics of the day on flickr

Lastly– Here’s some spinning from last week. I have a bit over 400 yards of this. Don’t know what it wants to be yet, but I am digging the colors.

There’s creative lava flowing around here– bet you get to see more in the next few days.

Gnome-out.

How in the world does this happen so fast???

The “I will only sleep ON you” stage.

The “I totally fit in the kitchen sink like it is a pool” stage.

The “OH MY STARS, YOU ARE A GIANT! ” stage. 10.

Yes, I skipped a few pictures in between…. But really! Marigold is T.E.N. tomorrow!!! I am sort of stupefied over it. I rummaged up the one photo album that has baby photos–( the rest still live in the virtual digi-land. Bad mama.) and I was misty and leaky looking at the pictures of her little self and thinking about the big girl I took to the hair salon today for her annual birthday-beauty-day. Wow. I am so amazed by and proud of her. I think of all the wonderment and struggles that have been with us, and the many that are yet to come to us and I just really can’t believe it. ANY of it. There were pictures in there of Jim and I, and even my sisters soon before we had kids, and then as we were brand-new-first-time parents. It was really strange looking– really looking — at those too. Seeing the innocence and youth in our faces. The smiles that were yet to be touched by parenting and its many joys and challenges. The physicality of youth. The changes that are all too apparent in the contrast of those youngsters and the people we are today. Wouldn’t trade it– as they say– but isn’t life just amazing?

I remember that when Marigold was born and then wee, Jim and I would sometimes look at her and crack up– we’d point at the two of us and hiss to her a hysterical tone– ” WE are your PARENTS!” As if to say “LOOK AT US! HA! You have no idea what you are in for, and neither do we, and HA, isn’t that a SCREAM!”

Still the same right?

This day, I hope if you have kids, you go and give them a big sweet hug. Feel their growing bodies. Smell their lovely skin. Eat ‘em up. And be so thankful.

If you don’t have any… grab someone else’s kid and hug them :). They all have so much to teach us about love, and humanity, and observation, and listening, and the things that are truly important in life.

yum.

Happy Birthday, Flower.

Hey!  Go check JIM out!!  He got on into ARTSCAPE with some Awesome Art.  I am so Happy!!! Get your MONKEY MASK ON!!!!  YAY JIMMY!!!!

(detail)

Yum, mixed up berry tart

Happy Tuesday from Hell. It is mightily hot here in Maryland. Next Wednesday the weather site says it might be 82 degrees, but it’s all August otherwise. ( you know they’ll take away he 82 by then too!) I know that some like it hot …visit jim. He’ll tell you all about how much he looooooooooves this weather. Plus he’ll show you how to make heirloom Ceviche and show yo the rest of THESE-

Why re-write the book right? He has written very cleverly about it all, so if you want the story, step over there and then come back.

In other areas of our existence, BUTTERFLIES!

The 2 Gulf Fritillaries came out and w.o.w. Oddly, all of the butterflies in this project emerged overnight, so we never got to see the magical breaking-out. They were so lovely. We set them free on Saturday. It is such a cool feeling to watch the girls faces as they open the tent and watch them flutter away.

Ok…. Lots of crafts and stuff going on here. I’ll have my ETSY shop up and running any day now. I’ll announce it to my millions of readers as soon as it’s a GO

Have a great day and stay cool!!!

As promised, here is my spinning dilemma.  Please, if you can help or know someone who might have a vision for me– send it along!

Here is my first spinning.  It’s been hanging around waiting for me to make something of it.

Then, a while later I got some of this lovely wool from Cloverhill.  I believe it was from a sheep named Oreo.  I can’t remember much else, but have left a msg. for Chris to lend any memories she might have.  I spun a bit of it and fell out for a while.  I just returned to it and spun it all and plyed it.

I wanted to make this sweater from it.  It is from the book Spin To Knit.

Here’s the speedbump…

The pattern calls for 1500-2000 yd of yarn total divided up betwixt the yoke and body.  I have ( drumroll please) 1330 total.  370 of multicolor and roughly 960 of the grey/brown.  WAHHHHHH!  SO what’s a girl like me suposed to do with that??  There is no more Oreo at CH.   Has not been for a year or so.  I can see if C remembers where she got it.  Cripes. Do I try to find something similar and add it as a block?  The pattern is very “cowgirl-knitting” as I like to call it- almost Zimmermanian.  Should I just start knitting and see what happens.  I am throwing it out to the fiber-universe–Some wise spinner/knitter, please help me.

We freed the first butterfly yesterday in a break between storms and said a goodbye prayer that it would find it’s way safely to some nectar filled flowers. There was a tornado watch here– which might not have been optimal. But there was no twister, so not to worry right?

It was a really nice art-filled weekend. We started a “sketchbook challenge” month as a family. Jim just did one last month with another group and it was so much fun. Join the FLICKR group if you’d like to participate. “MONTHLY SKETCHBOOK CHALLENGE”

We are all scribbling away. Have to fill it by month’s end. Marigold has no worries, and I think she’s right– she filled a BUNCH of pages today! It’s nice that she has the fire going… she even took it on a playdate today and drew until her pencil point broke. Since there was no sharpener, that was it. Wait ’til she learns to gnaw a point back on that pencil.

Here is one of the sketches I posted. I found this oddish piece of wood soon after we moved into this house. I suppose it is a sliced off knot-wound from one of the trees. I have always thought it really sort of magical looking.  I don’t think I am the only one.It has been an architectural element of various sorts in the big fairy house for the past 2 years. Sometimes, I’ll see it hanging on a tree or twig-fence. Seems to have many uses in the hidey-hole yard.

So, I came across it today just lying in the grass. Someday, when Jim and I renew our gnomic nuptials, I’ll put our picture in it as a frame.

( I think I hear him bellowing out in the barn….)

What else??

My dear Peggaloo ( who just finished her own familyesque sketchbook challenge) sent a link yesterday that I LOVED

Yeondoo Jung Born 1969, Jinju, Korea.
Lives and works in Seoul, Korea.

http://www.yeondoojung.com/artworks_view_wonderland.php?no=88

Go check it out, I’ll wait.

Zzzzzzzzzz…….

I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

Don’t you LOVE how the costumes and body proportions are straight from the drawings. Don’t you want one of those princess dresses? Or the BIG pink bed?

I only looked at that collection– none of the artist info, etc… until later. My FANTASY-story was that it was a PARENT-ARTIST ( ok, a MOM in my fantasy) who was so inspired by her child’s art that she interpreted and celebrated them in her own art. Can’t you totally see that?? Aren’t we all SO totally inspired by kids art?? Can’t you see wanting to bring them to life like that? I thought “WOW! We should start a group of folks who would like to experiment with something like that for fun! ” ( After all, isn’t it all about the communal art group now?? I LOVE that!) I have seen things like when artists incorporate kids art into a drawing or assemblage piece, or like when soulemama embroiders her kids art on quilts and hangings just as 2 quick examples. So many different ways you could work with it.

This just blew me away though. Completely.

Imagine my surprise when I did a little reading later and my fantasy was smashed to bloody bits. I still L.O.V.E. the work. But sigh… here’s the real story.

First, a man, not a mom.

“South Korean photographer Yeondoo Jung’s series Wonderland attempts to recreate the fantastic euphoria of young children’s crayon artwork. The gallery that showed the series a few years back explains how Jung executed his vision:
[The series] presents costumed adolescents posing in sets based as closely as possible on children’s drawings. He collaborates with many people to bring to life the boundless imagination in the drawings. For four months, Jung oversaw art classes in four kindergartens in Seoul and collected 1,200 drawings by children between the ages of five and seven. After pouring through them, he carefully selected 17 drawings and interpreted their meanings. Then he recruited 60 high school students by passing out handbills at their schools in which he invited them to act out the scenarios in the children’s drawings. In order to recreate faithfully drawing details such as dresses with uneven sleeves or buttons of different sizes, he convinced five fashion designers to custom make the clothing for the photo shoot. He also made props unlike any scale found in reality but similar to those in the drawings. ”

A little more realistic, yes? Budget. Gallery. 1200 drawings. Access to things like fashion designers. Just a bit more clinical than my fantasy though. I am sticking with my dream, and still so thankful to Peggaloo and Mr. Jung for the morning fit of inspiration. If such a group exists– please invite me!!!

tired. late. still stuff to do.

I’ll tell you a story about a spinning-knitting-math-word-problem tomorrow. It can be like the PUZZLER on Car Talk! Get ‘yer thinking caps on.