etsy faves

one of my friends emailed today, asking me to share my favourite etsy shops with her; it was such a treat to look through my favourites and send her a list! in my non-shopping times, i forget about the wishlist-slash-inspiration that comes in the form of etsy shops. some of these sellers have been posted about here before, but some i've just discovered. here we go!

ninainvorm.

i've admired her work for a few years now, and today i found her highly inspirational blog. it might be time for me to invest in a brekkie set. check out the happy dutch people!

knock knocking.

just in time for holiday decorating.

berkley illustration.

veekee agendas.

i missed out on one of these last year, and this year price is deterring me. check out how cool they are though - space for doodling and compartmentalizing AND staying organized.

enormous champion.

hijirik studio.

matte stephens.

delve studio.

from my friend lisa. her art is so amazing. we met playing frisbee!

kelly johnston.

still my favourite earrings.

i heart mon ami.

what a great idea for snacks! i love the different bags that thea is making and all of her attention to detail - quick! go get one as a christmas present!

julien jaborska.

bike tire belts. i don't even think cool is the appropriate word. in? sensible? green?

alice apple.

i gave my sister one last year. maybe give your sister one?

black friday.

Two weenie dogs. Knitting. Many cups of coffee. Christmas music. Birds feeding outside the window. Leftover dressing (or is it stuffing?). Afternoon light. Black Friday.

Wishing you a happy holiday!

control issues.

when things feel out of control, sometimes you just have to grab SOMETHING by the... ahem, well, you know... and take charge. today, i grabbed ahold of the kitchen. with some excellent help from my friends, it went from brick colored to this colored, in a matter of hours.

i remember dreaming of a red house. red kitchen. red bedroom. red everything. remember amelie's apartment? soooo cool. one new year's eve, i even painted my parents' hallway deep red for them, while they were out of town. they were pretty cool about it. i would freak if someone else chose my paint colors (see post title...). i think the hall encouraged them to paint other rooms - their house is full of color now. you're still welcome mom and dad! anyway, when we bought our house this summer, with its super-red kitchen, it turned out to be less fantastic than i had dreamed. the space was too small for such richness, plus the red walls AND the oak cabinets AND the creamy tile made everything just a LITTLE too cozy for me. it had to go.

fast-farward through the 15 (or was it 50?) paint samples that i put on the wall. i envisioned icy blue for the kitchen, but it turns out that icy blue just looks white. after much indecision, i impulsively bought mellowyellow last august. it's been sitting, collecting mouse poop, for 2 months. i finally swatched it on the wall today, only to find that it was bad. mellowyellow has the tone of force-fed prozac.

out again came the samples. more painting on the walls.

+ grey conjured up dementors from harry potter land to suck out your soul.

+ green flashed me right back to my babysitting/diaper changing changing days.

+ all of my blues looked white.

poop. out again came the paint cards.

finally, someone talked some sense into my indecisive, teeth-grinding head. more blue pigment. a blue that looked blue. blue. BLUE! i'm always scared to go country-kitchen, but this worked. i loved it from the first stroke of the brush. it looks nice with the purple wall, it doesn't blend with the grey of the living room, and it will showcase my few fancy dishes well.

now, what to do about the cabinets? replace with open shelving? paint a different color?

that is for another day.

holiday stamps!

if, come december, you find yourself wishing for hot buttered rum, christmas cocktail parties with deviled eggs, or just plain ole 1960's tinsel-festooned trees... you are not alone. i reminisce for my romanticized version of 1960's christmas cheer every holiday season. maybe it's the idea of christmas parties galore, or using those chintzy plate/punch glass combinations. maybe it's the dream of wearing a velvet dress and not being under the age of 4. whatever it is, i get the 1960's christmas blues every year. if you suffer from similar achings, maybe you (like me) should check out these nostalgic stamps from ward jenkins' drawings, just in time for december!

when you order these, the directions must say, "for christmas cheer, add bing crosby and a yule log. shake vigorously."

there's a mouse in my toaster!

or

how i finally resolved to purchase a kill-trap.

or

why you should finish all repair jobs on your home in the summer time.

or

i microwaved my quesadilla, and you should too.

no, really, you should. i went to toast a tortilla (the lazy teacher's answer to "it's seven and i'm HUNGRY"), and there was a little mouse tail sticking out of the bottom, flick, flick, flicking the air. holy bajeezus - there was a whole mouse, all up in my toaster, eating months of bread dust. gross. not only gross in the sense that every single surface of my kitchen is CONTAMINATED, again, but also gross in the where has he been that i don't know about sense. nestled on my dish scrubber? chilling with my hair brush? also, i'm mad because i planned a whole post about writing on the drive home today. with one flick of that dude's tail - ffftttt - it's gone. inspired by the npr doctor/writer broadcast, i was thinking about how i've always wondered where writers who don't have another job get their material - do they ever run out of it and switch to socializing as "research"? and what about writers who write and work - when do they do it? anyway.... now all i can think about is what this mouse does while i'm working. and whether or not he and my pups have forged a secret alliance.

***Retraction of last statement: Rylee the hunter-dachshund took down the mouse, single-weiner-edly, as I typed the above. I just found her celebrating in the closet, over the little dude. Dang. I guess now I need to clean up the kitchen. And, I should admit that I probably couldn't have bought a kill-trap. Unless things, you know, got really ugly.***

indie rock coloring book, you rock.

yes, i like to color with crayons. mostly, i like to color with my hello kitty crayons, at my coffee table, while sitting on the rug that my grandma bought me, listening to music of the indie rock persuasion. i also enjoy coloring with friends, on friday night, sprawled in front of a movie, beer in hand. i'm adaptable.

imagine my delight when i was gifted none other than the INDIE ROCK COLORING BOOK!! (previously blogged here) yay for friends!

when i saw it, i made the "Uahh!" sudden intake of breath sound and brought my hands up to my face. they waved around in little circles until i calmed down enough to look inside the book. i cracked it open and saw the iron & wine page, then closed the book again. i couldn't decide - should i NOT look at all the pages? how long could i wait to discover how my favorite bands had been rep-rep-represented? how long could i put off finding new bands to l-o-v-e?

about 2 minutes, was the answer to that.

there are some awesome pages (slash hours) of coloring to be had here folks. all the proceeds go to charity, so i'm going to guess it's ok that i show you pictures of these, my colored pictures, as a teaser. enjoy, then go on out and getcha one!

spoken word.

spoken word night at the white house.

who knew?

check out other performances here.

i went backcountry skiing, and i have the bruises and blisters to prove it!

(i also have some photos)

when i first moved to colorado, i was startled by how into outdoor sports everyone was. as in, INTO. as in, i moved here to ski/climb/road bike. as in, "i board - what do you do?"

and, well, i knitted. that's what i did.

now (5 years later?!?), i'm into a few more things. i like biking. i like running. i enjoy yoga. i love hiking. snowshoeing is pretty darn fun. but skiing and i - we've maintained our love/hate relationship. many people put up with all the crappy parts of skiing that make me crazy with ease, because they enjoy the thrill of the slopes - whizzing down the mountain, chatting with friends on the lifts, perfecting their tele turns. i am HAPPY for them! but... i do not get excited about resort skiing. i hate the long drive. i hate how much everything costs. i get bored halfway through the day. lift rides are windy and cold. blah, blah, blah. there is a point to this - i swear.

skiing and i may have found our compromise - the backcountry. after dropping quite a pretty penny on an Alpine Touring (AT) ski set up earlier this fall, i can now put skins on the bottom of my skis, hike UP the mountain, and then ski down. i get to learn other neat skills too, like using a beacon to find someone in case of an avalanche, and how to ski through really deep powder without falling on my booty all the time.

on my maiden voyage with my new AT set up, my friends drove me up the ice and snow covered road through poudre canyon (pit stop at above pretty picnic spot). we donned our skis + skins + beacon devices and schlepped up the snow-covered trail below. a good amount of caloric-burning was involved.

then, i learned how to find things in the snow using a beacon/transceiver. my friend buried another beacon, then i found it and dug it up. this was fun once i got the hang of it. before that, it was frustrating. i want to practice with it a lot more before i'm in a situation where i might have to use it. i mean, i want to be GOOD at finding shit buried in the snow. it could be another person!

finally, i followed my friends up the mountain and tried my hand at skiing. i sucked, but it was pretty fun. skiing through the several feet of fresh powder felt like running in the ocean. refreshing, invigorating, and AWKWARD! my years of shunning the sport of skiing are coming back to bite me...

eventually, the sun disappeared, clouds rolled in, and we skied out. skiing through the trees wins the favorite moment award, but i'm pretty stoked to have had such a rad day. i think i like this backcountry stuff because there's so much involved - never a dull moment. now, i just need to learn to ski better!

sunday entertainment.

every sunday, i go to the same coffee shop to grade whatever crate of language arts papers i've collected from the week. tables are hard to come by, so i snag one early and hunker down, ignoring the glances from couples awaiting a table for two, or teens hoping to sit and people-bash. my box of papers counts as another person, right? so what that i've been drinking the last sip of my coffee for two hours? i'm entitled to this table! today i sat outside, between families and bandmates, and sorrounded by the leaves that are piling up in the corners of all brick patios this time of year. soon, an area homeless man set up shop next to me with his broken guitar, plastic mariachis, and turquoise recorder. i could only listen and focus on grading for so long before moving indoors, but my favorite song (by far) was "dancing queen." he was having a lot of fun singing it, and i've never heard that one done solo before.

inside, i have to derive my entertainment from my students. so far, the best i've encountered is an asterisk by Shakespeare. glancing down to the bottom of the page, i read:

"the famous guy who wrote lots of poems"

awesome. and, yes, my students can make footnotes.

rocking my (non-handmade) socks.

oh lord, how snow days rock my socks. they rock my big, thick, plaid, knee-high, snow-boarding, comfy-schmomfy, winter socks. i haven't even begun my snow day (it's tomorrow!! school has been cancelled!), but already i can feel the stress roll off of me as i shovel my drive, snuggle my puppy, and begin what can only be described as my annual winter knitting.

i'm excited to announce: fingerless mittens are BACK, my friends!

i found this pattern several years ago, and i've kept it as close to my heart as pb & j to soggy bread - as close as dried glue on your finger tips after a little construction paper crafting session - as close as pantyhose. i've tried patterns with lower gauge (thinner) yarn, but they take TOO long to knit up. i've tried patterns with the little individual finger-stubs, but they involve more thinking and less of the mindless, day-dream infused knitting that this time of year demands.

so, as the snow falls down in fat, lazy clumps, and i enjoy my mid-week sojourn from the wiles of middle schoolers, i will once again be picking up my double-pointed needles and my leftover manos del uruguay yarn from last holiday season. my thoughts wander as i knit, which i think is why i love it so much. i'm sure this is common, but besides work and books i tend to mull over the person who will wear whatever knitted "thing" i'm concocting at the moment. is that why homemade gifts are so great? that they are given with time spent thinking about the friendship? i'm feeling pretty lucky right now to have friends and family who are so darn nice and helpful and supportive. this particular day, i'm looking through my box o'yarn and wondering: who is best represented by fuzzy pink with magenta stripes? which one of you is woolen cerulean with black marbling?

while i sort that out, here's wishing you a happy thursday - with or without the snow!