FINALLY!!!

happy feelings

I'm working hard today, a big push to get a kind of complicated book done and shipped off, but I needed to take a stress-relief break, which often means watching this:



I keep coming back to it and it never ceases to make me smile.

performance orb

We live in the shadow of the Empire State Plaza (or we would if we lived north of it...). Part of that enormous monument of extinct marble is The Egg.

In general The Plaza is ridiculous and The Egg is not the most attractive structure, but I'm not going to complain that I can walk a couple of blocks and see the likes of David Byrne, Andrew Bird (his show this fall was UNBELIEVABLE--this clip is not the show I saw but similar, he does all the parts and loops them. And he's adorable) and They Might Be Giants, who just happened to write a song about The Egg



LOOOVE John Hodgman, too.

tunes

I'm bored, over-tired and buzzing with coffee and Lyric is (at least momentarily) occupied in solo play, but I have no new work to report. Instead I thought I would share some of my favorite music these days. So here it is, by no means all-inclusive but a bit of a cross-section of what I listen to while sewing:

The Magnetic Fields, and all of Stephin Meritt's side projects. Seriously, this is the best band in the world. I almost peed my pants when we saw them in Northampton last year.

PJ Harvey--always. Everything she has ever done is brilliant, in my humble opinion. If I could be anyone in the whole world it would be her.

Santogold--it's rare to feel like music is really fresh. She is SO fresh. And looking for a link to her music I discovered that she's just a few days older than me. That's one way to make me feel like I haven't done much with my life!

Lady Sovereign--hilarious and fun. Tigerlily loves her, too.

The Evens--already mentioned here. Great music and message. (this clip is FANTASTIC--when will the Evens kid's album be out?)

Aceyalone--the most amazing lyricist ever. Again, in my humble opinion.

Mates of State--so, so great. You're singing along, right? How can you not? (I totally want to party with the guys in this clip but I could never keep up)

Busdriver--another good lyricist. He also uses really interesting arrangements.

Avenue Q Soundtrack I can't get enough of this. Beware of some bleeped profanity in this clip.

...And of course there is so much more, but it's lunchtime!

a family affair

Here's another one for the history books:

A family book! I love this idea, which was totally conceived by the wonderful customer who ordered it. This is actually the second I've done for her and both, I think, turned out really well. It helps that her friends all seem very interesting and have lots of good hobbies.

Sorry for the lousy pictures. Not only is my camera broken (just one of a series of unfortunate events this month) but the light is awful today and I can't get this borrowed camera to take very good pictures, either. Oh, when will the camera fairy bring me an SLR?

BTW, Avenue Q was so so so so so so so so great. I wish I could afford to go again! If you have the means I highly recommend it. It is so choice.

Schadenfreude!

Today, at long last, I will be seeing this:




:Our friends Jon and Krista turned us on to it a couple of years ago and we have the album but have never seen it. I'm SO excited! We're so lucky to finally have some real Broadway shows in the area, last year we saw Jesus Christ Superstar with the original Jesus (well, not that original) and Corey Glover from Living Colour as Judus, who ROCKED; even though we're technically pretty close to NYC it's always a huge expense to go (the train tickets alone are more than we can afford!). This was my Christmas gift to Skye (he gave me this). Technically I guess I got two gifts this year!

another one down

I haven't had a ton of time to work lately. I look forward to having much more time for work in the weeks to come once Skye cuts back on his work a bit and we focus on living creatively on less (including bartering, trading and really pushing the local currency idea we've both been really passionate about). Amazingly, in the spare moments here and there over the past few days I've created this:

:It's for the niece of our fantastic friend Katie and I'm so pleased with how it turned out. I had hoped to put a bit more detail into the Hawaiian flower but kind of ran out of steam after attaching its 18 individual fabric pieces. Here's a photo of the real thing:

:The little tendrils would have been fantastic, but so much work. Am I finally becoming realistic about what I can do in these books? Of course not--I'm totally regretting not putting in the extra effort. If I wasn't under a time constraint I definitely would have done it. Imagine what I'll come up with when I actually have time to work!

Lately I've been doing all of my handwork in front of this, on demand from Netflix. Belly laugh-inducing television is hard to come by (though there's always this)!