Recently in Podcast Category

Episode 152 of the Creative Mom Podcast is live... it's all over the place. "Catch-up" shows are rarely as tightly woven as they should be. The above photo was a reference photo for a piece talked about in this episode. The photo was taken... wisely... before it was accidentally toppled the next day.

Yesterday I paused and realized how grateful I was that I took time to make rice pudding Sunday with the recipe Gooma8x left at my house. I was skeptical, but it worked. And I made double. And so there is plenty for a seemingly decadent bowl of rice pudding with my toast while I work in the mornings. A simple thing. And yet it is one of the good things.

At the end of the day, it seemed all I'd sewn was a stack of flying geese. Symbolic? Maybe.

Episode 148 is live.

New art posted at Creative Therapy for #98.

The above drawing is not the one talked about in Episode 145 of the Creative Mom Podcast, but 145 is titled "In Hand." The piece above is related, for sure.

What 'nudge' works for you? What do you draw... for comfort?

from Facebook ~ Moments: Two tiny snails picked up on the way to the car and put in a lid to take to school. The lid stowed in the floor. Bird out the window in a tree. Bird out the window on porch steps. Snails in floor on a lid. Snails forgotten in excitement over bird. The relative size of a 5-year olds Croc to a baby snail? Squoosh. Mom's relative comfort level with picking up squoosh out of the floor of the car?

It was a bit gross. And they were in the floor because he is maybe the most fearless of all of us, but he has a bit of an aversion to the "slime" snails leave when they (ahem) yeah... that, in your hand. So, they were on the lid.

Fittingly, the new episode of the Creative Mom Podcast is entitled "Making Moments" (EP 129). It's live as of today.

Episode 108 of the CMP is recorded... and will be live in another day or so. End-o-summer has complicated the way I fit these things in! But, Episode 109 is already underway... I'll be hinting about it at the end of Episode 108. I got to spend time working with (and learning from) someone I very much admire from the CMP circle... and I can't wait to share with you how it went, show you photos of the first project we've collaborated on, and so on. But... that's next week. This week... it's all about "change."

But, some things... remain the same... like bird art... and bird pillows. It's never too late to discover what you love. I'm realizing that... and so... maybe change isn't all bad. There's a lot of change going on... and I'm feeling a bit like this:

But, I'm trying to stay balanced. And... I guess... finding my birds last year... was "change"... at its best. It's all about perspective!

As you heard me mention on the CMP, I sold almost all of the pillows I made this summer at an art show... but I'm back at work, and things are going up at Etsy for the fall. I'll be announcing the availability -- and showing a sample -- of custom-order photo pillows soon... very soon... thinking holiday thoughts... My mom wants one... forget my art... she wants a photo of the boys... and so... an OAmyOAmy patchwork strip pillow... is underway.

I've been quiet, but step by step, I'm finding my way.

Well, everyone... it looks like I have been quiet here... or not here... again. Spring... is upon us... already, April has moved in... so quickly...

I posted Episode 93 of the CMP yesterday. And... I've started pulling things out and working on some updates... maybe for Etsy... I'm getting ready to try a bit of a new spin on what I was doing... and that's exciting... so... I'll be showing what I'm doing soon... in the interim, more pen pouches and "nest" cards are underway. It's that initial process of doing the central patch that is the most fun... for sure... I just love that part.

A few books caught my eye recently... have any of you read any of these?

You can tell summer is coming... for some reason... it brings books like this into my realm of focus!

Well, I'm still doing what I'm doing... as you can see above. The shipping tags are continuing and really it's a good thing. It's a good bit of structure for me in some odd way... without that right now... I'd probably not be "doing it" at all. So, while sometimes I look at them and think... total "rut".... each morning I grab a blank tag... and when I finish it, I'm typically content with it and with having "done" it... I smile at whatever bird has taken shape. And I file it in the green plastic box behind the ones from the days before. So, it works.
Episode 86 is short... but it came out yesterday. A bit on "small" Moleskines in that one...

Well... I didn't announce last week that Episode 84 went live, but it did. And now, Episode 85 is live... It's February, and I'm on track. This week, I'm finally talking about the shipping tags... feeling that there's something to say about them after 31 days... and seeing in them a process of both learning and evolution. So... there's a LOT of shipping tag talk this week. (Superstitiously... I didn't want to talk about them "during" the process of the month!) But, also, in Ep 85, you'll find links to a number of artists and projects that caught my attention this week, a few tidbits from our week here at our house, and more.

And... as for the tags... I'm continuing them... which means... I've gotta cut some more!

Books reviewed and mentioned this week... as well as a few related titles (or titles in a series...):

We're headed to Tahoe for a few days. So, I'm hoping to see some birds, see some snow (like 20 feet!), and drink lots of coffee.... oh, and sketch... a lot. They can ski. I'm going to sketch. So, we'll see what happens! I'm taking along my little recorder... the quality isn't great, but I think I might do next week's show "log"-style.

Have a good week!

The above photo is one of several from a walk my mother and I took last week, briefly described in the opening notes of Episode 71 of the Creative Mom Podcast which is, of course, now live. It is a walk I am very glad we took. A special place.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween.... and much fun with their families.

I am supposed to be recording this week's show... right now. And yet, since posting my subsequent "in line" story this morning, this photo has been in my head as "the" photo to post to accompany the set of stories. And so, here it is. These dahlias caught my eye on a walk from school (the long way around) the other day, and so two very quick photos of them.

In thinking about this week's show ... and reviewing just now the essay I'm going to read... I think many of you will feel all of these posts tie in with the essay... and maybe they do.

That I noticed these flowers though... perfect.

You know what that means? That's right... ATCs are in progress around here... Of course... I always make life harder than it should be because the base prep I use is just downright unfriendly to watercolor... and yet I like the effect. So, a zillion coats of paint later... and much time spent admiring the process of evaporation... and I'll have fairly vibrant color built up on all cards in the series.

This week on the Creative Mom Podcast... thoughts on "flow"... (EP 64).

I've had this photo to post forever... I'll be mentioning the book this is from in EP 60 of the CMP. (Maybe today? My thoughts are a bit scattered, so we'll see. Maybe tomorrow....)

At any rate, this is from volume 1 of Owly, which contains "The Way Home" and "The Bittersweet Summer."

This morning I read Embroideries... usually I don't sit and read anything in the mornings. But I did today. And this is what I grabbed out of the stack, which is still mostly graphic novel format (even though I'm "not"...). I wasn't sure what to expect from this one (given the name) - and the name does NOT mean what you think here. I found it very interesting - the whole book is from the span of time after dinner one night when all the women in this family in Iran sit and talk... fairly explicitly.... okay... very explicitly. Not for the delicate-minded. (I'll update later with a link... am having trouble with Amazon's server...)

Episode 58 of the Creative Mom Podcast is live. This week... short and sweet (seriously!). Where Women Create comes up... and it's one that is so much fun to look at. It's beatifully photographed and full of inspiring ideas.

I should be organizing, I suppose, rather than blogging and surfing and emailing... actually... I should be painting or sewing. It's true!

Oh, but I'm back again because in trying to close about 20 browsers, I thought, "Hey, I'll just see what's on the front page of Whip Up and found this post and this group... all related. And, ummm, I'm seeing walls of cork.

Kritty double-dared me today to post a photo of one of my messy (albeit reorganized) squares of cork. But after scanning just a few of the photos in that Flickr group above, I doubt I'll EVER be showing photos of anything remotely related to how and where I work. And I'm not answering the doorbell if it rings, either! (Well, that's a given. I don't answer the phone, either, unless I really have to - or unless it's my mom. Caller ID is a blessing.)

I really need a P.O. box... just in case.

[Warning. LONGGGGGG post.]

So... I've been thinking... not that I don't always think... but I've been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about zines and newsletters... just little thoughts.... little teasers in my head. Violet (of L&V podcast) first asked me if I'd considered doing a zine. Then, someone else mentioned it... and so... it's been simmering in my head a bit.

On the way to Flax yesterday for a "kid" thing, I was thinking about something I'd meant to talk about on the show that is "tip" oriented... and I thought... well, I should just include something like that in the announcement newsletter each week. But, my mind says... no... that's not enough. I'm a layout person at heart... the nature of the grid and all... and so just textin email doesn't totally do it in terms of communication with "all" of you.

And then I started thinking about a publication I did as a graduate student... stranded in the swamps of LA (swamp not Hollywood) after being lured (suckered) there as a playwright and finding the performance tangent of the department disheartening, I focused again on fem. theory and women's studies, and poetry... the same mix I'd been doing for the previous four years... I rocked a lot of boats, I guess, when it came to reading things like Milton and Wharton... but I had a wonderful director there and the chance to work with a few wonderful poets... And, I don't remember why I started doing it... maybe because there was a need for more discourse and more subversive thinking and more deconstruction... but I started producing my own weekly newsletter and distributing it around the English department.

I haven't thought of that in years. (Amazingly... it has been years.) We can refer to it as BG. Really, BG is a thing of the past. In my head... it's a publication full of commas, and slashes (/) and parentheses and hyphens... all the things that turn traditional discourse into something deconstructed and full of new meaning above, beyond, and beneath the surface-level rhetoric.... which is how I read and think and even talk (if you know me well enough). How did I fill the newlsetter? I can't remember. But I know I did fill it. BG was a single sheet... a legal-sized page... double-sided... and I printed each issue in a bright color... black type on a bright colored sheet... and the sheet was crammed full of articles.

And very well-received.

Driving yesterday, I was thinking about BG... it's just this faded thing in my memory... something I did... along with all those poetry readings and performance readings those years in the bayou... years where I joke now that all we did was look at a map and try and figure out where I should land myself to do my post-Master's work. Love bugs, swamp, Hurricane Andrew, a fellowship with a small stipend, and then a year of teaching remedial English 101... and heat... lots and lots of heat. It was not the place for us. The highlights there... a Sonic where we could get a Route 44 Diet Cherry Vanilla Coke (we are still saddened that there is no Sonic in the Bay Area) and a Wal-Mart just down the road from our apartment.

But... the two years culminated in a creative non-fiction thesis that centered on the importance of quilting and sewing and was, itself, a quilted narrative of theory and memory and story and personal history. (Also something I haven't thought of or looked at in years.)

And then... many, many years of Web stuff and hundreds of technical and how-to articles.

And then... last year... we took on the co-op newsletter (well I did) after something happened during the year and there was a need for a new editor. And what fun I had with that despite the fact that it was a ton of work and the fact that I seriously doubt most people ever realized how much work it was. I didn't take it on this year... but... how much I taught myself in the production of the issues I put out.

And then... somewhere in that process, concurrent with the school newsletter and with the first seed of an idea about the Creative Mom Podcast, I started creating and producing the Kids PuzzleBlast newsletter... an idea, at the time, that meant so much to me... but got closed out for various reasons... in part because I had to choose between it and the CMP and in part because the realities of printing and mailing such a publication make it hard to come out ahead or even break even.

And then... I deliberately did not volunteer to work on the elementary school newsletter. (We are over-extended already is my argument.) But... I did suggest a new art-focused column for the new year... which means I need to write the first several of those (samples of sorts) to see if they want to run it as a regular section. (More non-paid work, just what I needed, right?)

And so... now... I'm thinking again.... This week, I've got a super-short show planned for EP58... unless I just can't help myself once I start talking... I'm interested in trying that... the super-short show... and yet... it means there are a lot of things I'd like to talk about and show you and share with you that won't get included this go-around.... a newsletter (PDF maybe) would solve that a little bit... even a SHORT newsletter.

It would be nice if I could still just "do it" and print them out at Kinko's and drop them in office mailboxes as I was able to do all those years ago with BG.

But, I can't. So... I'm still thinking.

And, clearly, I'm gonna have to stop sleeping.

So... the above are postcards (which those of you at Flickr know). I don't even think the original color scheme appears in the above grid. I was playing around in prepping and printing a set for Kritty (who asked if she could have some to mail out to friends who might be interested in the podcast), and I started messing with color. I had originally thought I'd start all over and do a new design... and then maybe have a set printed up (rather than futzing with it here at home - plus, then they'd be nice and shiny and glossy and in richer color than I'm seeing on my HP All-in-One with which I constantly do battle these days). But... a new design just wasn't in me this weekend. Besides, once I opened this one up (and I think it's a Jan 2007 design... similar to the first Cafe Press journal I did), I found that I still like many things about it. It's frilly, yes. And swirly, yes. And maybe even girly (which despite the name, I hope the show is not). But... there's still something about it. Ironically, I never sent these. Maybe I sent 1 or 2. But that was it. So, they haven't gotten any use... so Kritty's request for some was a good thing. And hers are ready to mail out... assorted colors.

What I'm torn about is if I do go ahead and have some printed... I'd have to settle on a color scheme... and I am not sure that I can choose just one now that I've played around with them!