Today Justin’s dad sent me this video of some really cool people playing my favorite song *fabulously*
I could go on and on about how we have the power to inspire, encourage and love each other, but I think it speaks pretty well for itself!
I’m about a week and a half into June - the June I work every single day. I’ll persevere. There are little things I’m neglecting, though. Like sleep, trimming my toenails, letters, calling my parents, remembering to even turn my phone on…little things?
Well, I am still making stuff. This drawing I commissioned by Sally Harless. Originally I was going to use it for wedding hankies, but I thought it might look nice in a frame. Here’s how it turned out:
I gotta pay for the new power cord for my laptop. Yet another one pooped out on me! And this time it was $74 to replace. You see, the Apple Computer company has my figurative nuts in a choke hold when it comes to my internet addiction. I will do anything!
In other news, my sister is running a marathon (while I still struggle with a 5k), the designer of my website and my best bestie Megan Downey is making a triumphant return to Bloomies, and my economic stimulus check still eludes my grasp!
Here is a list of the things I could probably do with a $600 check (but let’s face it, I’ll probably get a $300):
1. Get a hot air balloon ride from TJV! This is what I was going to get my ex boyfriend for his 30th birthday, so I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time!
2. Go to Salvation Mountain
3. Give it all who call me a significant debtor (I’m looking at you, Sallie Mae!)
4. Buy myself a personal trainer for a couple of months.
5. Buy the most sterling silver I can so I have a bargaining chip during the impending depression/recession/apocalypse. I imagine the price of a Polar Pop will go above a dollar. What will we do? WHAT WILL WE DO?
Let me know if you have any grand ideas.
All my embroidery right now is being made watching the Showtime show Dexter, which is about a serial killer who kills other serial killers. If you’d like to see how much sympathy you could really muster for an evil dude, watch this show. You’ll love his ass.
I wanted to recommend any artists out there who make books to check out this artist I have been working with lately. He’s shooting one of my bands for a magazine next week, and his artist books are pretty great! Very inspiring journals and beautiful photos.
I wanted to give a happy 15th birthday to the album by Liz Phair that never stops being inspirational, devastating, thought-provoking and important to me, Exile in Guyville. It was the first vinyl record I ever bought, and the older I get the more it means to me.
Oh! I almost forgot. I did a small commission that is a great example of what you can use Blow My Nose for. A client mailed me an antique handkerchief, we agreed on the font and color, and I mailed it back to her quickly. They’re going to a wedding in Ireland and giving it to the bride! Here’s how that ended up looking:
Thank you, Claire and Kerri! You guys are cool friends.
I made this such a long time ago that it’s kind of embarrassing, but I finally took a picture of it on a human today. Thanks to Blow My Nose model, Matt.
I don’t really care much about politics, but I *love* making small amounts of money off of political hype. I’ve spent the past week making my friend James his very own Obama shirt. You, too, can have one for $50. The logo is designed insanely well. James is also a part-time Blow My Nose model. All the ladies out there can email me for his number (which also costs $50).
More to come!
Summer approaches! Hillary Clinton invades Bloomington! Seasonal “hard porching”! New episodes of LOST…
Lots to be happy about, though I haven’t been feeling so great lately. Many things contributing to that, but I’m trying to knock them down one by one.
Here is something really cool. The new Architecture in Helsinki video is done in embroidery! This must have taken someone quite a while to do. I’d like to try this some day. Hey, independent music artists with small video budgets! Call me!
My etsy store has been sorta updated with a new apron! As Heidi Klum would say, it looks totally home-sewn. But um, it is. And the first thing I’ve ever made with a pattern. And I didn’t use one of those “sewing machine” things because I don’t know how to use mine. QUALITY PRODUCT FOR YOU. You can guess who the model is.
What are your goals for the summer?
One of the coolest places I’ve ever been to is the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Center Point, Indiana. They rescue large cats like lions and tigers from abusive situations or abandonment and give them a home for life. I went for the first time last year, and it was really eye-opening. You can get up really close to the animals (not too close because they’ll piss on you or straight up kill you) with a really nice tour guide, who, in our case, was covered in deer guts. It was so fun!
I really support this as a cause, so this year I’m going to do the Jungle 5k, which is a 5k on May 17th that goes around the grounds and actually through about 1/2 mile of the center past some of the cats. Please get in touch with me if you’d like to donate to sponsor me as a person running in this thing because this is the first 5k I’m ever going to complete as a total run (I’m training this month!), and it’s a really wonderful place. I can’t wait to go back. If you are my friend and reading this, you should come run (or, shuffle jog like I do) with me!
So I turned 25. This is what that was like.
I got these paint by numbers paintings as a lovely gift, and I painted frames for them and hung them on my wall. Here’s what that looks like.
Then I embroidered Vietnam on a hanky for a fine woman who resides in Brooklyn, NY. I love commissions! Keep them coming, please. This is what that looked like (I really do apologize for the bad photography. I was in a hurry).
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were sort of in line or something with Britt Daniel? This has happened to me many times in the past couple of years. I’ll be in an airport behind him getting breakfast tacos, and I don’t really want to talk about Spoon or mutual friends or anything. I just want to talk about the time he was on Veronica Mars. The past few days I’ve re-watched a lot of season one and season two. Man, it’s my favorite, ever.
That’s it for now. Order stuff from me!
People often ask me how I make embroideries, so I decided to include a post on the birth of the giraffe piece I submitted. What I do isn’t hard, it just requires a lot of time and patience.
I ironed a piece of white fabric significantly larger than the image I was going to copy (leaving about four inches on each side).
Then I used this stuff called Chaco paper. The blue kind washes off with water. I took the image from a calendar by Sally Harless. You place the Chaco paper between the image and the fabric.
I anchored the whole project with my enormous penny holder (you might have something better). Trace the lines with a pencil, making sure to press down hard where you want the blue ink to transfer.
The transfer ink isn’t super heavy, so I always go over it again with an invisible ink pen to make the lines really dark and easy to see. The ink is the same way and washes out with water.
Then…you embroider it. It is a lot easier to embroider something that is just going on a wall and won’t be washed over and over, hence the enormous stitches. Since I’m self taught I really can’t tell you how to do this except practice and experiment. Big help, I know.
Then I stapled it to the back of a basic wooden frame we got at Michaels and painted with regular acrylic paint.
I think it looked good hung up near my grandfather’s Crosley!
Final product (again for those who don’t like scrolling):
It is for sale on etsy currently.
In other news, we survived SXSW? Not without at least two sunburns. Here is my friend Bekah from Suicide Squeeze and me at the Pitchfork bash (where I ingested the aforementioned Sparks from hell):
Glad to be home!
Man. SXSW, right? I loved coming when I was in college, but now that I come to work it is a stressful business! Part of this is great, of course. Our labels are doing great, and we had a really successful showcase last night. Michael Stipe even came. It was so crowded that I had a panic attack. NPR chose to talk about three bands to preview SXSW on morning edition, and they chose my dear, dear Bon Iver. No one is more deserving.
But let’s be honest here: I am bad at partying! It’s 1 am here in my hotel room, and I’m super happy to be in the quiet after the super long day. I’m not trying to find out where the happening after-hours hotel parties are or anything. I’m going to get up early, enjoy the bounty of the sweet La Quinta continental breakfast, get over to the Fader Fort and get my photo taken with David Banner, as has been the plan for the last part of the week.
Of course SXSW is exhausting, but the culture with it is to party as much as you can and push through your fatigue because you can sleep when you’re dead. Or so they say. People ride through in trucks passing out free AMP energy drinks and Rockstar drinks and what have you. Stuff with a lot of get-up-and-go chemicals. Today I made the grave mistake of giving in to this idea.
If you know me, you know I’m a caffeine-free woman. It makes me feel horrible. I’ve been this way for three years now. I make exceptions, mostly when I’m doing a long drive or, in this case, when I’m sleep deprived and need to make a good impression while meeting the excellent staffs of NPR, Pitchfork and the like. So, today I decided to slam the free Sparks handed out at the Pitchfork showcase. Dude, that drink hit me like a ton of bricks. I was on 10, jumping around and so happy to be alive and with cool friends in the Texas sunshine. But then, I came down. At about 6 o’clock I wanted to eat dinner and found myself without a dinner partner. I texted almost everyone I knew at the festival. I got about 10 texts back saying that they had already eaten. I walked alone on 6th street, but I had to duck into an alley and SOB MY FACE OFF. An all-consuming sadness took over. I felt so lonely and weird! Maybe the loneliest and weirdest I’ve felt in a long time! I quickly called my best friends Megan and Becky who calmly reassured me that I had consumed some really wicked brew and just needed to wait it out. And they were right, but what a horrible thing, huh? No more Sparks. Ever.
So I’m sunburned, every part of my body hurts and none of the hundreds of cute bearded boys I saw today flirted with me, but I should probably make a list of the great stuff that happened just because:
1. I saw some people in Chipmunk costumes breakdancing on 6th street.
2. Land of Talk. Everything about Land of Talk is great.
3. Plentiful tacos. I’ve eaten tacos every day and every day I’ve spilled taco juice all over my carefully planned and ironed outfits.
4. Seeing old friends from college. Seeing old friends from last year’s SXSW.
5. Seeing Chris Kirkpatrick from NSYNC on the escalator at the convention center with two other very boy bandy Orlando looking dudes.
Ok, so that’s enough about SXSW for now. I wanted to mention that Design Sponge, who I heartily endorse and read often, did not choose my entry in the DIY contest. I consider this an oversight on their part and I will do an epic post on that shit soon in case people are curious as to how I made the giraffey thingy. Which I know you all are, right? The faceless, nameless 40 people who check my blog every day. Whoever you are.
I finally updated my etsy shop to include the giraffe-y number I made. Someone go and buy it, please.
Etsy.
This weekend I had the great pleasure to be introduced to my new favorite thing, Darkon. Run to your nearest fine movie rental joint and pick up this documentary. It follows the Darkon realm of LARPers in Baltimore, and not only is it fucking hilarious, it’s heart-warming, beautifully shot and the music is really beautiful.
They anchor the picture on a man named Skip who also goes as Lord Bannor of Laconia. Skip is sort of a babe to me? Yeah, totally a babe. HAIL LACONIA, you guys.
Skip has hilarious kids and a *very* understanding wife. I loved all the dorks in this movie. I loved that they all had sewing machines and were super serious about making their armor. My favorite moment was when the leader of the imperialistic and super-evil country of Mordem was going off on some tirade in the requisite fake Olde English weirdo battle speak and broke character. You just gotta see this movie. I laughed until I cried.
Oh, and there is a country called Moot where you have to promise not to eat Broccoli. Their flag looks like this:
I’m so into it, dudes, I even read the message boards. LOVE.