Well, the month is just about over and even before the NaBloPoMo prizes are announced, Laura just found out that she was awarded a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women! Yeah Laura! I don't know all the details and I am sure she will post more soon, but her proposal talked about the realities of  being a mom and an artist and the balance there. Her proposal not only included funds for equipment, space and professional development, but wonder of wonders, child care!! I look forward to seeing her new series of work.

I’ve been feeling the Christmas spirit and am enjoying working on gifts lately. I gotta say, I feel like I’m ahead because it isn’t even December yet and I already have gifts for 2 people done. In general I am very much a last minute gift crafter. Last week I did a few house blessings to barter with the coordinator of Eli’s cooperative preschool and it inspired me to make a couple more for gifting. Painting these is a like doodling, fun, and a nice change from working with all things fibery.

Yes that is mica glitter on the edges. Too much? I think not. Now, if you are familiar with traditional Pennsylvania German frakturs you would know that mine are, ahem, straying a bit from the confines of the traditonal craft.(For one thing they are written in English..) Luckily, my frakturs are not monitered by the Fraktur Police, so I can embellish all I want. My desk lately:

I've found it works well to have two or three in progress simultaneously. Also shown is my little Windsor and Newton watercolor paint box that has turned out many a fraktur, and part of my new to me paint box my mom thrifted for me. Quite a leap in the color choices!

There is a friendly little Laundromat in Berea that I visit when our spring stops flowing on us. Yep, there is no city water where we live; it’s either catch rainwater off your roof or find yourself a spring. (For some reason, wells in our holler produce salt water.) Luckily we have a spring on our hillside that flows into a cistern buried behind our house. When it is really droughty, as it has been here for months, we get little more than a trickle. So, I occasionally go to Beth’s Laundromat. It used to be Jack’s, but Jack sold the business to Beth and she has done what she can to charm up the place. She has added fresh paint and a nicely stocked corner for kids to play. I know you’re probably wondering when this antidote is going to get blog worthy, and I am almost there. The coolest new decoration by far is a mini clothes line strung over the dryers complete with tiny clothes pins holding tiny clothes. On closer inspection I realized the clothes were Barbie clothes! Perfect!

Thank you Beth, you definately made my wash day brighter!

The mica encrusted paper morivian star (ok actually a great stellated dodecahedron) I made yesterday from the pattern in AG Smith’s book Cut and Assemble 3D Geometrical Shapes is drying in my studio doorway.

Also drying is the spackle in the boy’s room we are adding on. (1 bedroom house + 2 parents + 2 kids = insanity; its been clinically proven.) Thanks to a generous input of time and materials from my parents the boy’s room now has a ceiling and walls, hooray! Some people shop on black Friday, Strider and my Dad hung drywall. (I was up early the next morning, spackle knife in hand.) I love this part of building projects, almost done! (And I can do spackle, sanding and painting myself, no more hounding Strider…well, not for this project anyway.) We are hoping to have them moved in by Christmas. Very optimistic, but doable, I think.

And finally, Eli is helping himself to cinnamon sugar to top his breakfast biscuit.

I love our local bookstore, Robie and Robie's. They sell used and new books in a lovely serpentine, over-crowded space. The fair trade shop I manage shares a building with them and we even have a walk through to their shop. I am forever getting distracted (is it my fault that the gardening books are on the way to the coffee maker? No, it is not.) and I love to see the new arrivals, piled temptingly around the back office.

This morning I found this  book:

 

That's a tiny image, sorry. It is a pattern book for a knitted farm, family and animals. They are knit on 2 to 3 mm needles and start with a simple chicken and proceed to more complicated sheep, cows (with udders!) and horses. I was so pleased! The little animals and buildings are my favorite- so sweet! Even though they are knit using tiny needles and fine yarn, I think they would be totally do-able for Christmas gifts (why no, I haven't made any gifts yet) for my family. We'll see. I don't really have any appropriate yarn, and probably won't be able to find yarn like this locally, I am going to research on the web a bit to see if anyone else has been knitting these figures lately and what they have used.