Taking it easy Monday

Misery is a Butterfly
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Well not totally, but after the full weekend we had we aren't going anywhere tonight. We have stuff for food and Veronica Mars season 1 on DVD to watch so we aren't budging.

So far the show is pretty good, but there are certainly some holes here and there that I pick up on. And some of the cheesy is good, some not so good. Through the flashbacks it doesn't seem like she got a personality until her life got totally turned upside down. She got that and a haircut.

Between seeing friends, a mouse in our bathroom, church, picking up a replacement bouncy chair that I wish was for me and running far too many errands all three of us came home exhausted on both Saturday and Sunday. blee has been to her first noisy bar. She slept in her carseat on the floor the entire time we were there, it wasn't too long but it was impressive. Of course as soon as we got away from all the noise and were leaving that is when she woke up.



I've figured out slinging and both of us are loving it. At this time the adjustable fleece pouch is the one for us. I just slide her into it, put a hat on her and go for walks. She comes back totally asleep. And after car trips I give dad's back a break by picking her up and carrying her home in the sling instead of him dragging in the infant seat. She loves it and so does my back.

I'm going to do some light studio cleaning as I finish my coffee then do some carving. I'm working on another good sized block, the other side of the "crazy block" actually. It is a very loose unplanned piece.

Have a great Monday!

This Week Will Have Art!

Ginkgo Leaves at Dusk
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Overall it was a pretty good weekend. Very hot though, I hope people in the rest of the country didn't have the heat wave that hit us hard last week. Yesterday was a bit better, but that was the day that our little angel decided to show her horns. She wasn't that bad, but compared to her normal behavior she was a demon baby that just couldn't be pleased.





We had company over multiple times and of course she was perfectly behaved for them. Even when they stayed for hours she was good the whole time. Visits are great but quite exhausting. I'm pretty happy because my friend and his mother who was visiting from Maine gave blee some of her first books. We've gotten so many great gifts but since so many are handmade not too many books. She had assumed that we would have gotten so many that she steered away from the obvious choices like Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Now some art talk! I did not get to do anything other than some very light studio cleaning. While my studio is far from being super messy it could use a little work if I am going to carve and even more if I am going to print. I should probably carve since it is easy for me to stop and get up from that activity if baby calls. And while Jon is home today and basically for the rest of the month he has some work to do today. I put a sketchbook and some pens on my nightstand and have promised myself that if I don't do any art in the studio during the day then I will at the very least fill a page of my sketchbook. It seems like a good way to wind down as well as keep my creativity going.

But I have been listing pieces like this one from July fairly regularly in my Etsy Shop. I also have quite a few ACEOs that I need to scan and list.

Now that the little bug is down for what could be a long nap I think I will try to do the same. I did not get enough sleep last night.

The Weekend is Over

Dragonfly over City
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Monday morning. Hope everybody had a good weekend.

My baby shower on Saturday was a whole lot of fun even though I was a bit of a zombie for it after having another rough night sleeping. The shower favors that Kate made for me went over really well. Thanks Kate! My friends officially have a sense of humor. I got some much appreciated baby stuff, but more importantly got to spend the afternoon relaxing around girlfriends. Some I hadn't seen in months. Two came all the way from Brooklyn for the shower. There was a lot of tasty food that I didn't have room to eat much of and crafting that I was a bit to brain fried to do a good job with. I made a collage of cut out paper cherries. Why cherries? Because I was eating cherries and that was about how creative my brain was willing to get. But it was great fun and then I went home and crashed.

Last night we sucked it up and made a quick IKEA run right before closing to get curtains and a rug. The rug selection totally sucked so we just ended up with curtains, but we now not only have curtains for the babies room and my studio but for the entire place except for the kitchen. Like real adults! Too bad Jon lost my power drill and we have to borrow one from a friend to put the curtains up. My dad offered us a free drill but we have to wait until he visits to get it because he won't mail it. But a good cordless drill is expensive enough to wait for.

I want to work on carving that block but I still feel crappy most of the time plus I don't want to get woodchips all over my studio before the guy from the Boston Globe comes today to photograph me for a Daily Candy article. I actually need to tidy up my studio a bit today because it is not currently photo worthy. But neither am I so we can match.

I have a seriously unfun pregnant lady task today and see a midwife tomorrow to complete it. I'm ready to get off this ride now thank you very much. Blee, consider yourself served an eviction notice. Thirty-eight weeks is plenty! At this point I know all you are doing (besides making me sick) is packing on the pounds. At least I was able to sleep through the night last night. First time in awhile.

On the plus side I have lots of cool art recently listed and being listed in my shop right now from last week. Including this piece that I love and a favorite that has already sold.

I shipped out a birthday gift to my soon to be eight year old sister in Illinois. It is a Princess Peach game for her Nintendo DS. Her birthday is on the 12th and I am hoping blee beats her! Or maybe I could hold out long enough for them to share. I think my sister would get a kick out of that. She is a sweet kid.

Gotta get to cleaning!


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Now playing: Everything But The Girl - no difference
via FoxyTunes

Manic? Me? No!

Crazy Block
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Okay, maybe just a little bit! smiles

It is Monday already? Why does my weekend feel wasted? It wasn't, but it is just never enough since there is so much to do.

The heat got to me and I wasn't able to print yesterday as planned. My body just wasn't cooperating at all. Instead I made a promo poster (side A, side B) to and sent it to the JPOS for them to include in binders throughout the area. Postmark date today!

I took a nice nap and actually woke up feeling rather refreshed for a change. My brain was hopping a bit and I started going through my sketchbook and adding new doodles. I'm not a huge sketcher but sometimes I doodle or do very loose plans for images. That is where this crazy block came from. Pulling random images and throwing them all on one block in a mad drawing fury. I had more that wouldn't fit that I was tempted to put on the other side but I restrained myself, reminding myself that the drawing part is the easy part of this process. That carving this won't be a fast and easy task for sure.

And I won't be letting myself carve this no matter how much I want to until I print. I have around 50 sheets of beautiful Japanese papers torn and ready to go and those four new images to print. This new crazy block can wait or I may end up totally screwing myself over and not have any new work before blee comes!

It feels so good when my brain works like this with energy and not wanting or needing sleep but it wears me out eventually and if I don't force myself to focus I don't get things done I just get too many things started and end up overwhelmed. I feel very impatient with myself right now wishing I had carved or printed yesterday but my body was not able to print and by the time I finished drawing the block it was midnight and time for bed like it or not. Plus, starting carving means messing up the studio I cleaned up for printing.

This morning it is raining and cooler. Still muggy but not nearly as bad as yesterday. I had a so-so night sleeping having woken up feeling icky a few times but managing to control it. Then around 6am (I think) I was woken up again by a thunderclap. I love thunder but I need my sleep! Right now I need my coffee or a big pot of tea.

Currently the colors I am thinking for today are a golden yellow/ orange. slate blue and deep purple. I hope my body and the heat don't do me in.

Getting Centered - Priorities

The Quickening
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Happy Monday party people! Well, many of you are probably not really party people, but probably moreso than I am.

On Saturday morning we had our birth class, nothing like natural childbirth (hah) though we did learn some simple breathing techniques that were putting me to sleep during the class. We were the "yes drug us please" class. Sorry but I have too much anxiety already to deal with natural childbirth when I don't have to. The class went really well and I feel very reassured about the process now and even better about our decision to use a NP midwife at the Bringham. The labor and delivery rooms are set up to look like bedrooms with two beds and a crib. We watched a video of a birth and it was like nothing I have ever seen before. So much better than your standard hospital room!

I have to say I got a little bitter because every other woman there seems to be having a problem free pregnancy and during the 7 hour class I was looking at all their ankles and the only one that swelled (just from not being elevated) was mine. And no I do not eat a lot of salty foods. I don't each much at all anymore really. One meal and a few snacks here and there and I am good.

Despite the foot issues and other sorenesses I am feeling quite good. I have such a strong motivation to get things in order that I often am able to just push through the pain and get what needs to be done done! This piece from last Sunday really means a lot to me. I relate to it, I would say it is one of my most personal and powerful pieces to date. I am very proud of it.

Proud of the batch in general. After the panic of nearly losing another piece I took a couple of hours to totally reorganize how I store my work. I'm actually still not completely finished as I would like to have every piece signed ahead of time and I still have some unsigned pieces. But it is tons better. I just wish I had gotten a second refill pack of archival sleeve pages for the presentation case I ordered from Blick. I'm hoping the store may carry the refills, but they probably don't because they don't carry the case. Shipping from them isn't cheap so I would have to wait until I felt that I needed something else and I don't know when that will be. Sure I sell my work at a good pace but I also make a lot too, especially before getting pregnant. Back then it was fairly normal for me to create 30 original pieces in a day or two once every week or two. It is no wonder that I have art coming out of my ears.

I got the bulk of my shipping done finally on Sunday and that lowered my stress level a lot. Still waiting on an echeck to clear and an address correction. But other than that I am good. I spent too much of Sunday making up stickers. 228 stickers to be exact and it was maddening. Jon tried to help me out as best he could and did a good job but when he discovered that one of the rounds had a drop of water on it was ruined and that I needed to print out more to replace it I kinda lost it. We got it done but I had to raise the prices of my stickers because there is a lot more effort to making them than I every imagined and I just can't be having them priced so low that I get so many orders in a week. I can't be carving blocks for the hanga project I want to try if I am busy making stickers. I hang up my cape and resign from being Sticker Girl. Feel free to order them if you wish because I think at the higher prices I am less likely to get so overwhelmed. If I really didn't want to sell them I would have unlisted them, I just want a more fair price for my labor. And they are a lot harder to make than you might think! Apparently the price increase is not too steep since a set sold just last night. I think I am going to wait before putting anymore back up until I have this one made.

Now I can put my focus back on carving that block for hanga. Before blee comes my goal is to have at least one more big printing session. Maybe it will be a hanga experiment or maybe it won't be. Not sure if I can use my oily blocks for the waterbased method.

The Great Reorganization Project Begins

Drawers open
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Good morning! I hope everybody had a lovely weekend. Mine was pretty good actually.

I'm finally cleaning and organizing my studio. Starting by putting away blocks in newly purchased drawers. Oh how I adore the Container Store! Finally all my small and midsized blocks of carved wood have been safely put away instead of lying around here and there in my studio like they were before. I mean really is that how I should treat my beloved woodblocks? The blocks that I haven't carved are safely stored on a shelf on my pegboard. The only problem I see with this drawer solution is that I don't seem to have much room left for future blocks!

Though if my Gocco experiments keep going like this then that top drawer that I have currently used for Gocco goodies may find itself free for more woodblocks! I haven't given up on Gocco completely but I am not a happy camper. After producing such worthless cards I had half a mind to take some of the blank cards I have left and make beautiful woodblock prints on them! If I had the energy I would have too! Maybe I will do that today. They could be really pretty but selling them at a price that is fair to me yet might be tricky. People will only pay so much for a card I think.

Bad news from studio cleanup is that I can't find one of my favorite newly carved stamps. It is a simple enough design that I should be able to duplicate without much of a problem, but I would rather not!

I'm still playing around with my lightbox and photoshop skills after getting tons of advice from people! Some wonderful souls even took my flawed images and fixing them for me! Having contacts that are photographers is certainly helpful. As tempting as having them fix my images in the future is I really need to learn how to do this myself! But maybe a few could be fixed while I am learning! For example this one that I put up on Etsy yesterday is certainly looking rather washed out compared to how it looks in reality. It could use some TLC but I struggled with it so much in Photoshop yesterday and wanted to list a mirror so badly that I put it up even with the flaws. I figure I can always change the photos later!

Pregnancy is sucking me dry again. Getting stuff done is hard, I am shocked that I was able to clean yesterday after the horrible night I had before including puking up acid at 2am! But I may have discovered a surprising cure for the horrible acid. It was suggested to me months ago but I ignored the suggestion because at the time Xantac was working great and it sounds weird and gross. But a swig of apple cider vinegar seems to help more than anything at this point! I was able to sleep through the night last night and that is a small but important victory for me.

Soon I need to go to the doctor to have a nurse look at the shot my midwife gave my on Friday testing for TB. This is so pointless and stupid because unless the sign of TB is having no sign at all I don't have it. The nurse is going to check the puncture area for any discoloration but there is nothing. I may not be a nurse but there is nothing there! But since I am not a nurse my eyes don't count. Can't even see that I had a shot at all! Imagine that, I don't have TB!

500!

Life Begins
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Good morning Monday! Hope everybody had a good weekend. Mine was pretty mixed for the most part and I am glad that it is over. I'm going to try my best to make this week better.

This piece is my 500th sale on Etsy! The buyer is a woman from Norway that recently found out that she is pregnant. I have been noticing a rise in international buyers these past two months or so. I'm pretty excited about this sale since it means that I have made my big goal for June, about a week early. I don't normally put number goals on myself but it just seemed so within reach that I couldn't resist. I think it is a pretty awesome piece to be number 500 too! This certainly is not a bad start for the week.

Saturday night I glanced at myself in my bathroom mirror and thought of an alternate version I would like to do that is actually based on myself and not some made up pregnant woman. It would be nice to have something like this as a record from my actual pregnancy since the original is from well before me even thinking about getting pregnant.

This past weekend was hard. Burrito is very sick and we're not sure what to do about it. We have already tried so much at this point we are running out of options. Friday my appointment went very well but all the walking around killed me and I could barely move for the rest of the day. Stress of any sort is getting more and more difficult to handle. I'm starting to have panic attacks that are getting difficult to control. One of the punk kids in the neighborhood insulted me yesterday and it really had me upset for most of the rest of the day. I just want to flee the city at this point and move somewhere quiet and safe. Where twelve year old kids aren't filled with hatred.