Crafting with Christine

Yay, Christine came over last night and we crafted! I made cases for the summer mix CD's finally. They are unhemmed very thread-stringy flowery fabric pocket covers. I like them a lot, they whipped out easily and quickly.
Christine finished her very colorful and beadfull owl dress! She embroidered magical little owls all over the top and beaded the neckline, arm holes and bottom hem. It is so cute and adorable on her. I have to say, it made me really miss living with her, she is one of the few people I feel completly at home with. Yay for finished CDs! They can finally be mailed!!!

Screw On Head

It's only Thursday but I'm dreaming of the upcoming 3 day Laborday weekend. My folks will be in town and I plan on crashing thier hotel to swim in the pool. They're staying in Santa Monica to attend a wedding, and i think it will be just the thing with how it's been getting hotter every day. Last night we watched the animation The Amazing Screw On Head. It's from a comic of this screw on head guy who was an aid to President Lincoln and fights a guy called Emperor Zombie in ye olden civil war days. It was good and super funny, but was described by Netflix at 40 minutes long, and really it was only 24 minutes long. We felt ripped off. The movie could easily be expanded too, the characters could be explored and there was room for tons of development of the story, but in the behind the scenes they explained they wanted it this way so it would move quickly and abruptly like comic book frames. I did not agree, I think they were making excuses. It was supposed to be a pilot for a TV series, but didn't get picked up wich explained how abrupt it was, but I think they should have just made a full on movie. Anyway it had voices of Molly Shannon, Paul Giamatti, Patton Oswalt and David Hyde Pierce.

Goodie

Yee-ha! Excellent Music trade response! Everyone who commened will also be on my recievingl list. I was going to make covers last night, but I made cilantro and lime porkchops instead, and spent the evening hours reading The Golden Compass wich is really picking up and developing into an amazing story, not only about spirit animals, but also about the battle between church and state, with the Catholic Church being dark and sneaky. I also like that it's a complete fantasy with magic and everything, but it happens on our earth in places like London and the main character eats cornflakes and a baloonist man mentions Wells Fargo. I plan to keep reading on my lunch brake today.

BEST PICTURE EVER

OH MY GOD, I should be a photographer. This is the best picture EVER. Does Elwood think he is posing for a senior year high school portrait? Is he merely fancy? He's quite lovely after visiting the nail shop and spa this weekend. David-Michael is equally precious.
Today, David-Michael rode his little motorscooter to work to save on gas and parking. Also, a motorscooter looks like much more fun to jet over the streets of Hollywood than a truck. I am especially taken with his yellow helmate. Maybe I'll steal it tomorrow morning so accessorize with my car....

Complete!

I finished my cd mail mix! It's themed "Lush Listless Summer". I've got to make up the cases and burn copies, then they're out in the mail! I've had a lovely summer, though I wish I'd made it to the beach at least once, I've enjoyed the weather and wearing breezy skirts in our too-good-to-be-true weather this year.

VMS

I just finished making posters for my sister's school - she's a counselor at Vandenburg Middle School back in Lompoc. I did a series of posters for the administration in her office. Its weird to think I am now making the posters that I used to stare at in bordome durning registration. I like to think mine are much nicer.
This weekend I plan to do a lot of reading. I picked up the Phillip Pullman books His Dark Materials ("Is a three part trilogy..." oh Mr. Symcox how I miss you..) based on the reccomendation of Lindsay at work. The first book The Golden Compass is being made into a movie right now with Nicole Kidman, so I was glad to pick up a copy before all the covers in the bookstore are plastered with photos of her and other actors. Yes, I am reading children's literature. I don't care, when I was in the bookstore yesterday looking around in the young adult section I had this incredable happy feeling, looking around at all these books I read so many times I knew them by heart. I remembered how when I was a kid my whole life was reading books. The Chronicles of Narnia, all the Roald Dahl books like The Witches and Madilda, E.B. White, Lawerence Yep's Dragon of the Lost Sea, Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Hobbit, the whole set of Oz books... I loved the library more than any other place. I have to say, I tried to read Harry Potter a couple years ago, but I couldn't get into it the way I loved these other books. His Dark Materials is supposed to be pretty dark and Lindsay said she loves them, and I'm really looking forward to curling up with them. It's supposed to have some awesome spirit-animal polar bear battles.
I also picked up a graphic novel I've never heard of, that's almost as thick as the 3-novel trilogy set bound into one. It's called Blankets, and it looks really pretty inside and is also quite tempting. I'll post how I like them when I'm done.

Musical Mix

I am spending the evening prepairing a new musical mix. I have long-hankered to do a mail CD for friends, with custom made cases and such. I am compiling happy summery music for a freash new blend for my mail friends as well as myslef. I dearly need a new roation at work/in my car. If you're interested lemme know so I can figure how many to make. If anyone wants to trade that would also be lovely! My theme is slowly developing, I'll call it out once I have a better feeling for it.

The Gifting #3

yay! I came home to my Tank Girl issue #3 subscription, ready for reading at my door! I am a Tank Girl fan, yes I do own the awful Lori Petty movie, and I do adore it, and I was thriled to hear Alan Martin was digging her up for a new run of comics. Artist Ashley Wood is illustrating them, and it's sheer girly delight of lovely pink drawings with the same old poo-poo jokes. Also very cool is Ashley's comments on Tank Girl's new look:

"We were concerned that she didn't make her re-appearance in the same, tired old clothes that she bowed out in some twelve years ago. What was alternative, upsetting, anarchic, and just plain odd-ball back then has since become common place. Mainstream media smothers us daily with punky chic, and modern day babies can be seen sporting spikey hairdos and Travis Bickle T-shirts. The uniform of the cultural revolutionary has been sold to The Man. So how to rebel? How give the finger to the fashion fascists? Normal is the only way ahead. Dress like a high school teacher from the mid-eighties, or pick clothes from your boring aunty's wardrobe. The only way left to rebel is to dress like you're not rebelling."

I can't wait to curl up on my couch now and immerse myself. I thououghly enjoyed 1 and 2, and I'm sure 3 will be just as good.

Vegas!

We had an excellent Las Vegas weekend. We woke early 4 am on Saturday morning, and drove to join Levan, Heather, Lance and Courtney at The Golden Nugget for Heather's birthday. They were sleeping of a night of partying, so we used their room key to lounge the pool all day. Golden Nugget has a shark aquarium in the middle of the pool with a water slide that shoots you through the middle of it! We had 10 am margaritas, and wasted away the hours in drinks and sun and swimming, it was wonderful. After lunch and a nap we got up to join our friends. David went a-gambling and won enough $$$$ to pay for our trip , how fabulous! We had a delicious dinnner together at Isla (at Treasure Island) and then taxied to Manalay Bay so we could visit the Red Square vodka bar. Levan and Heather were keen to experience The Freezer Room at this Russian themed bar. You get to put on fur coats and hats and hangout taking shots in a little room kept cold at 5 degrees, taking shots of vodka of a bar made of ice. The rest of the night we putzed around, visiting different casinos until Lindsey gave up at 2:45 or so in the AM. Sunday morning we breakfasts and took in some rousing games of air hockey before starting the long treck home.

Kat on Cat

Elwood is not happy about our new baby.

Bitters

Well, the journals David made out of old library books seem to be extremely popular! The evening they were posted, Museum Adventures and Old Glory Stories were sold, and are now on their way, respectively, to Austin, Texas and London, England. I love thinking that something we made is going to different states, countries even, and will be used by people to pour out their secrets or drawings or hold movie tickets and love notes. It's very romantic ;)

In other events, today Lindsay H. at Punch took me to the lovliest French restraunt on Overland, and I had salmon wrapped pears with salad, and an amazing chocolate bread pudding. YUM. On the drive back to work, we saw 2 kids with a lemon aid stand - one of the kids was biting her toenails off, foot to mouth, it made my day!

Postingposting

Tonight David was out on a fun work fieldtrip - his company may possibly doing part of The Darjeeling Limited website, so he got to go to an early screening of the movie. In his absence, I had JR's on my own, and spent the rest of the evening uploading new journals to etsy, while watching Venture Bros season 2. Tomorrow I've got to get the house clean and maybe pack for our exciting Vegas weekend....

Mr. Lynch

Last evening I met Kristen at the Borders in Westwood for a David Lynch DVD signing of Inland Empire. When Mr. Lynch walked in, he looked at me and Kristen and smiled nervously and did a magical fingerwave in our direction, we giggled and grinned back. The Borders crew managing the event were like evil nazis, regulating on everyone, but Mr. Lynch was lovely, he signed my copy with a gold pen and a series of dots under his name and smiled big at me. I was a smitten kitten! Oh that hair, I love it! I half expect him to deaf-yell at me like his Gordon character in Twin Peaks.

Bumblebee Kitty

This is Bumblebee Kitty - I got him in a barter exchange at Craftivisim. I put him up on Elwood's stand, and he's not happy about it. He refuses to share a seat with this new kitty. He sits at the bottom and scratches, most displeased.

Craftivisim & Kennedy

So today was the long awaited Craftivisim fair, and David and I were there with our table o' books.We had so many they barely fit on our 6X4' table. It was really cool to get a ton of positive feedback from passers-by, so many people loved them and loved the idea of the recycled sketchbooks from record album covers. A couple Louis Vuitton bag toting women said, "What are these? what are they?" apparently they'd never encounterd books before.
We sold a few journals and a couple of my twin books, and I traded another vendor my Romeo & Juliet Ballet sketckbook for a handmade crochet bumblebee kitty, she really wanted the journal and I couldn't say no to the kitty offer. I think my highlight of the day, was our Kennedy sighting. The two girls with a table back to back with ours were selling cards. This guy showed up to hangout with them, and I looked at him thinking, he's familiar somehow. I looked at his fancy 70's glasses and hipster loafers. I took in the haircut thinking, oh, that guy looks like Kennedy, then I caught a glimpse of a diamond encrusted letter "K" necklace hanging about his neck and was like, "Oh my god, it IS Kennedy." If there was any doubt in my mind, it was gone when he left and his friends said, "Bye, Kennedy." Wow. We took secret pictures of him, that's him on the right.
If you don't know him, please go to his website and watch the Lovin' Your Mama video. I promise you too will become a fan. We caught this video at the Egyptian Theater a couple years ago at a Res Fest and were enraptured.

Literartistry

Lat night after a delicious dinner at JR's, David and I went to the Corey Helford Gallery to see the opening of the Literartistry show. They had different artists do paintings of books. It was a great show, it was cool to recognize books I've read and am familiar with depicted. There were paintings from Alice and Wonderland, The Witches, The Catcher in the Rye, Invisible Monsters, The New Testiment, Lolita, Moby Dick, and lots of others. My favorites were:

Sissy and Jellybean from "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"
Max from "Where the Wild Things Are"
Group portrait from "Geek Love"

Cribs

Guess what, Elwood has been selected for an episode of MTV Cribs, here he is with his paper stacks.

I just made that up.
That's Elwood trying to bogart all the single dolla bills I took out of the bank this morning to have change for the Craftivisim fair tomorrow. All day David and I have been prepairing, getting change from the bank, getting more triangle tubes from FedEx to display our books in, making more books, letterpressing HANDHELD PRESS 2007 into the backs of all our books. David set up a block of this 70's lady mailing a letter on the press so I could press postcards too, I love them! I can't wait to send them out to unsuspecting friends! Anyway, our house has been destroyed by the book mess, and we have not completed the grocery and laundry tasks that really need attention, so hopefully tomorrow we have some luck selling our fine journals. We are so proud of them all, the latest ones completed today are the best yet!

Goya

INTERESTING FACT:
Elwood greatly enjoys the fine taste of Goya Crackers. You know, the knockoff Ritz. He becomes very excited when I am eating them, and is greatful for big crumbs I bestow him. Magic kitty, magic crackers.

Away...

Sorry I've been away from the blog lately. I've been ever so busy at my new job since starting, and I've been sick all week with a nasty cold on top of it. I promise, I'll update soon....

Little Helper

Elwood helps bind books and do the dishes.

Hoo-Rae for the Post Man!

I had a great mail day yesterday!
I got:

Big Footed Bunny pattern from Wee Wonderfuls
Wedding Reception invite from Hazel (Mrs. Fluffin' Capistran now)
Postcard from Moriah

I LOVE the post! I love finding lovely things in the mail box, it sure beats an email any day ;)

P.S. I went in for my first little introduction to Punch Studio today and I think I'm going to be much happier there!

ChaChaCha

Last evening was spent in the company of my fine friends at Cha Cha Cha in West Hollywood, celebrating all the good times I had working with them at Guess. We steadily dove into pitchers of Sangria, and had a wonderful evening of laughing and merrymaking. Here are lots of pictures of me hugging people I like!!