Nothing Says Happy Birthday!

She Sits in Darkness
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Like cold, rain, wind and being sick to top it all off.

It's my 30th birthday today and outside is depressing on a day when I really need it to not be.

Seriously, February is not a good month to have a kid in most areas of the United States. It is hard caring for a newborn in this weather with bundling them up and illness and all that fun stuff new parents just love.

And it isn't fun for them when they are older. This is the second time in a row that I have been sick and isolated on my birthday. I dragged myself out to a little birthday dinner on Saturday night, but due to weather and traveling for the long weekend only three people came. When you have something planned in February you need to anticipate people dropping out or it getting canceled last minute because of a storm.

If we ever choose to have another child I plan on trying to avoid months November through March as due dates. Early September was a great time to have a baby. And Boston summers are a lot milder than Chicago summers so it wasn't all that bad being huge during the summer. And it certainly wasn't as dangerous as being huge in icy conditions!

While I firmly anticipate that I am on the right track in my life finally and that my thirties will be better than my twenties today is still such a bummer. I got my hopes up thinking that my dad would send me something this year. He told me that he would send me a little something along with some of my sister's old baby clothes but predictably that never happened. And you know what, it hurts.

And I miss my mother today. A lot. I picked up a book for blee yesterday and thought about how if she were around then blee would always have plenty of books from grandma. Thankfully she raised me well and I know what to get. It was an exchange and I had a very limited selection to choose from so I got Harold and the Purple Crayon. It is a little to old for her, but it never hurts to start the collection. There is a Leo Lionni (Fish is Fish and Frederick) box set that I want badly.

I was supposed to go to a babywearing group in Cambridge today as the meeting this time is actually a lot more accessible than normally. But with this weather I am not so sure anymore.

At least I am not puking on my birthday like last year! And I have a lot that I am truly and deeply grateful for this year. It would just be nice, yanno, to not be hacking up strange things on my birthday for a change. *edit* thinking about my symptoms and the fact that my father in law had pneumonia I am starting to suspect that I have a case of walking pneumonia. Freakin hell! And the doctor won't even be open for me to make an appointment! Double doh!

Thirty Days of blee!

Etsy blee
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Our life has been bleetastic, bleebastic, and generally just all about blee for the past 30 days. Tonight, at 7:14pm blee will have been on the outside for thirty full days. Many of them wonderful, many of them quite difficult.

cute onesie courtesty of mamamonkey.etsy.com.

Mondays are always rough for me and yesterday was no exception. The kid is sucking me dry literally and figuratively. I nearly had a breakdown near the end and am still quite shut down and depressed. Last night was another difficult night starting around 4 or 5am. It is hard for me to know what time it is lately. Jon knew how bad I was doing and took care of her and let me sleep when I could, except for at the end when I knew he was doing badly and I took over.

The Open Studios over the weekend went so well that I ended up doing a half day on Sunday and am very happy that I did. And it isn't about the money, even though I made a good amount. But I had such a great time seeing people from last year and connecting with other artists as well as the people that came to talk to me. I had brought along one of my carved blocks and stuck up quite a few conversations about the process. People seemed pretty interested in it. Some of them bought from me, and some did not but I enjoyed it regardless of making a sale or not. And by the end of Sunday I only had a few business cards left from my stack and all my promo bookmarks were gone. I wish I had gotten Moo cards!

The weekend was dangerous because it gave me a taste of my old life, of freedom to a degree. And I realized how much I miss it. How much I want to make new work. And not just because I feel pressured to keep producing and selling but because it is something that I truly enjoy. Something that keeps me happy and sane. But currently all my free time goes into cleaning or I am so beat down tired that I can't do anything remotely productive. Yet I rarely have time to nap because she isn't down long enough during the day.

And I can't even work on art until I clean up my studio from the mess that getting ready for the Open Studios in a flurry caused. Throughout the day during blee downtime I would rush clean so I got some done, but I miss the spotless studio I had months ago. Currently it is clean enough to carve, but not to print. I do have a bit of carving to do before I can print and then I will need to clean up after that. Jon offered me some time this weekend to print but I don't feel hopeful about it. Plus the weekend seems very far away.

Look at me, feeling sorry for myself and depressed on my beautiful daughters first big milestone. Later today we go to the pediatrician for her checkup and will find out just how much of a hungry hungry hippo she has been! The big weigh in! Born at 8lbs 6oz, any bets on where she is at now?

the gocco gods hate me

Poppies for Gocco
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I can't believe it is already Friday! This week sure did go by in a whirlwind. I hope you guys have more exciting plans than the no plans that I have. I'm just going to be hanging around the house with Jon making art when I feel up to it.

I bought a Gocco silkscreening kit for myself for my birthday this February because I found a used one for a killer price. But I was far too sick at the time to actually use it. When I did try using it about a month later my screen failed to burn properly, I got discouraged and put it aside. I would say away but is having it sit under my printing press really away? I just wasn't feeling inspired or motivated to use it and I didn't want to waste the expensive and hard to get supplies.

Then yesterday I got to thinking about it again and thought maybe if I adapted an older design that I knew that I liked I could make it work. Plus according to Heather Jeany who works pretty much only using Gocco I could make masters using black printouts from my HP inkjet. Normally people say only laserjet works but she uses her inkjet all the time with fantastic results. And we have the same printer so it should work for me too.

Well it didn't work for me too. The screen didn't burn at all. On the bright side all I wasted were bulbs and I have a lot more bulbs than I do screens. But for some reason my batch of black ink must not have enough carbon in it. After venting with her on the phone for awhile I remembered that Jon's office has a laser printer. So I sent him a copy of the image at the correct size and asked him to print me out a couple of copies of it. He had to work late but at least I should be goccoing by the next day.

I put the Gocco aside and did some successful but tiring woodblock printing. When he came home the prints were huge. He hadn't unclicked the option to stretch the image to fit the paper so it had indeed stretched the image to fit the paper and is totally useless for me. The gocco is a small machine for making things like greeting cards. I've heard certain pens have enough carbon in them to work but I don't want to risk it and will wait until I can get a good laser print.

This image is a photoshop mockup of what I want the final card to kind of look like. The blank cards I have are an orange called "poppy" of all things and my poppy image will be printed in a sparkly gold ink. Once the cards are dry they will be packaged in a rich chocolate colored envelope. If I ever get this to work I think they will look quite lovely!

I really wish I could work on this today and not wait until tomorrow. I need to find something else artistic to do with myself. If I am feeling brave I may print some more. It hurt like hell doing it yesterday but the rush of creating again felt so good!

Hopefully greeting cards will be appearing in my shop on Monday. Too bad I am totally out of categories and am going to have to be clever to find a way to make a section of them. I may have to kill the neat but disposable favorites section.