Three Things: Cardboard, Felt, and Mockingbirds

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Tap, tap.
Hello? Hi? Is anybody still out there? Is this thing on?
Oh, it is on! Okay, let's start over then.

Hi.
Hi, I'm here and it's Monday evening and I'm here where I'm used to being on Monday evenings. And gosh, I've missed you!

Somehow last week came and went and I never made it to this space to post about the week's inspirations or ponderings or creations. And I'm sorry!
I've been so incredibly distracted. And well, now I'm back.

I'm back. Hi!
Hi, I missed you.

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Three Things:

Thing 1:
As you know, we moved to a new apartment in mid-February and I am slowly but surely climbing out from the stacks of boxes. But to complicate the cardboard, I work for an arts organization during the week and last week we moved to a new office! Now, boxes at home and at work. But I have decided to surrender to the boxes and shake hands with the cardboard. And if the rain doesn't stop very soon, I just might build myself a cardboard boat and row myself around Oakland. Honk if you see me paddling.

Thing 2:
The felt flower workshop was amazing! 17 people came out in the pouring, sobbing, drenching rain to join me at the library on Tuesday night. And the participants were so lovely that I floated out of the library and back into the rain, buoyant with their crafty energy and enthusiasm. They made the most beautiful felt flowers and it reminded me how much I love teaching. How happy my hands are to stitch and trim and sew. Put simply: I am grateful.

Thing 3:
There is a mockingbird in our new neighborhood and I am falling head over heels for its erratic songs. The shrills range from poetic to electronic to a hushed tweeting to an operatic showdown. The song is part every-other-bird-in-the-neighborhood and part video-game-sound-effects. Reminds me how much I love birdsong. Reminds me that the simplest pleasures are never very faraway, sometimes I'm just too noisy to hear them.

Happy Monday, lovely yous. xoxo, k.

Day at the Park & Felted Flowers Workshop

I should remember this every time: follow the sun and head outdoors to the greenery and birdsong and welcomed pace of the woods.

My husband and I spent several hours in the sunshine at Tilden Park on Saturday afternoon and, simply said, I'm just so pleased we did. The rains came swiftly on Sunday morning and the Sunday Farmer's Market was humid and wet, and then cold and wet, and then... well, you get the picture. But Saturday afternoon was luscious and green and full of early spring's promises for tulips, ranunculus, and anemones.

As always, I returned a little calmer, a little clearer, a little more like myself than when we left. Dear friends, I hope we never know a world without public parks and preserved green spaces. Never. Ever. Ever. It's long been the sanity to my urban living.

I wanted to tell you about an upcoming craft workshop I'm teaching in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 22. As requested by a friend, I will be teaching Create Felt Flowers for Brooches or Barrettes at the West Portal public library. I've long been intrigued by the various methods of felt-making and this workshop is providing a good opportunity to study-up while unpacking my threads and firing up the glue guns.

Join us for some felted flowers if you're nearby, won't you? xoxo, k.

Home is (Not Yet) Here

Sometimes life is just an exercise in good old fashioned patience, you know? I imagined that by the third week in our new apartment I'd have the artwork hung, the furniture carefully arranged, and the studio would be my oasis of natural sunlight, well-organized shelves, and ever-dreamy inspiration boards. (Now, that actually makes me giggle.) Well, needless to say, this is not quite yet the case.

Instead, I am posting this blog while sitting on my living room floor amidst haphazard arrangements of furniture, boxes with the most stubborn items, and the new spaghetti of wires that promise to clean-up once we've established a wireless internet connection. But today is actually one giant leap for humankind as it's the first day we have internet pumping into our apartment at all. (Imagine a small crowd cheers!) Le sigh.

I have been so busy between my day job and my life-in-and-out-of-boxes that I haven't yet unpacked the studio. I have a deadline on March 22 so I will have to unpack it very soon. But thank you, dearest readers, for sticking it out with me here in blogland. Soon enough, I hope to be back to a better "art+life" balance or at least my new balance will suddenly re-emerge, a bit off-center from how I left it.

PS--I have recently joined Pinterest and I think I'm in love. The Selby is in Your Place is my newest art book read; I adored the chapbook, "The Man Who Lost His Head" by new-to-me poet Zach Savich; and I hear the BAN6 talks at YBCA are lovely. xoxo, k.