mmm.... coffee.....

half a bee, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be

although no vegans are currently eating these, i baked more treats from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World this weekend.  to make your own homemade hostess cupcakes start with the basic chocolate cupcake, pipe in the "butter"cream frosting & ice with rich chocolate ganache.  they're unbelieveably rich & delicious!  the cupcakes came out very dense so they weren't as filled as i'd like them to be, but i have so much extra frosting i might have to bake another batch today...

i had an unusually social weekend: friday whitney & i went to tom's to watch Kidnapping, Caucasian Style, a fun old Russian movie.  saturday was dinner at neighbor susan's & her friend eric came over with his wife & their 10 day old baby.  providence is so small sometimes - i know eric & kristana because they used to live in teresa's house, but susan knows them from work & they had no idea she used to live on our street, too!  it was great to see them & i also enjoyed chatting about art & community with susan's friend jamie.  then yesterday teresa & i drove up to visit tara.  we brought her the cupcakes & other candies & goodies, made a stop at Osgood Textile so i could buy more glitter vinyl, tara treated us to dinner at a diner & then we all just hung out chatting in her cute house until late.  it was wonderful.

after another cup of coffee i'll get back to cleaning since my roommate returns on wednesday.  i should get my crap out of the way so she has room to pack because she's only here for 2 more weeks!  i'm actually not getting another roommate, at least not right away, i'm taking the summer to live on my own & it's going to be sweet...

skin as white as a cuttlefish bone

oh how i have neglected you, little journal!  i am still dreadfully camera-less: a whole holiday of fun & visiting & not a single photo to show for it.  and i'm going to see abby this weekend & won't be able to take photos!  erg.  that above shot was taken by my sweet ibook - i'm playing with my new toy, a nintendo DS lite, which i have been rather attached to since receiving it for christmas.  it was gifted to me along with Super Mario Bros and Mariokart, but that wasn't enough!  oh no, i just had to go out & buy Animal Crossing!  needless to say there is ZERO crafting going on in my studio, with the exception of whipping up a vinyl case to carry my dear DS around in with it's tiny games.

here, at least, is a little montage of photos i don't think i've shared:

my friend jim & his adorable little daughter emma,
tasty local purple potato

monster i made for my friend ryan,
paul & i at the Harmonix holiday party
 
if i can find the card i'll tell you what amazing little
china shop that is (it's somewhere near Purl Soho)

the inside of the Time Warner building where we had breakfast,
my sister & jo at our thanksgiving dinner.

monkeys with knives on their tails

teresa had her halloween party on saturday.  i dressed as lucille ball because i needed an excuse to wear that emerald green dress again.  it was a ton of fun & teresa cooked up lots of tasty food.  some of these photos i stole from teresa's flickr & the rest of mine are on flickr, too. once again i missed whitney's halloween party, but i sent over some cookies in the shapes of the card suits because the theme was Las Vegas.  last week i had helped whitney sew her fabulous white tiger costume & i hope someone has photos of it!


there was more to this weekend than cookie baking & costume wearing & missing my sister's birthday (sorry, again, lee!)  i made a few small quilts, but i'm going to let you linger on these halloween photos for another day or two...

but i got more flavors than a pack of now & laters

here is the aforementioned 'dark & muddy' quilt i made monday night & is quite a contrast from the last one i posted.  these are the green fabrics i rarely use because they're a little too olive-colored & don't go well with the intense grass greens.  ugh, can you smell that?  i still smell like grease from last night's "You Bring it We Fry It" party at shawn & stacy & sigrid's!  i should have washed my hair, but i got home so late & had to get up so early...  here are a few strange & frenetic photos from the party - the rest are up on flickr:

there was a little bit of theremin-playing going on in addition to the frying of hotdogs, pickles, crab, mushrooms, zuccinni, potatos, twinkies, sno-balls, a fake rib sandwich, broccoli, okra, chicken, tofu, and probably a few other things i forgot!  i blame the poor photography on the hazy air thick with grease & not on the unsteady & grease-filled photographer...

teresa's halloween party is tomorrow night & i'd better hurry home to work on my costume so i have time to bake something.  have a good weekend!

the script actually called for me to say yes, but I put a little spin on it

 

damn, i wish i'd taken one more photo...  oh well, anyway, here are some swank new ipod sleeves just in time for the RISD alumni sale!  there are three sizes; original, mini & nano.  'original' fits both the early generation fatter ipod & the newish slimmer one, but i haven't tried it on one of those wicked fancy video screens.  i made about 30 different ones & i only repeated a couple designs so they're even more one-of-a-kind than usual.  that last one with the trees & orange birdon mustard is inspired by an enid collins' money tree purse.

i finally clicked into production mode this weekend, or at least on Sunday...  Saturday was severely comprimised by Friday's martinis & sushi with kristin.  i hope to take a couple days off from work this week: one for sewing cuffs & one for sewing purses.  it's amazing how much i can get done when i concentrate!  as my elementary school teachers said, "erica is easily distracted and constantly plays with little toys, when erica is able to concentrate on her work, she does well."

what this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?

i have decided that the quilt goes the other way so now it's upside-down in that photograph.  i really like how the green silk puckered from the interfacing because i ironed it too much.  now how to do that on purpose?!  i did a teeny bit of sashiko-type quilting on this one & i love it.   i'm trying to restrain myself & keep it simple, but some times it's hard to know when to stop.  i still have to figure out how much white sashing there should be & if it wants to be centered or not...

there's been a good amount of work getting done over here, but i have this nagging feeling that the alumni sale will arrive far too soon.  i really ought to pull out my vinyl & work on cuffs, sleeves & purses.  i put them away after Renegade & just haven't felt like working on them lately.  we'll see what this weekend brings...

this is apple & honey for a sweet new year - friday night i helped neighbor susan celebrate rosh hashana with a dinner for 18 friends.  there was so much tasty food, including brisket which she's really getting the hang of, and although there was no kugle friday, susan brought me some for lunch yesterday!  i also made my first matzoh balls for her soup which was deee-licious.  i need to have susan over to decorate christmas cookies this year like we did with our jewish friends when i was younger...

cause i'll be rockin this party 8 days a week

+ =
there's last night's tasty dinner that i cooked, i just ate it for lunch & it was still delicious. notice that there are no photos of crafting.  yeah, um, please feel free to harrass me about that, i could use an ass-kicking since i've apparently become lazy.  you wouldn't know that i've only got 7 more days to sew for the Renegade Craft Fair.  what happened to the erica that would get up a few hours before work to sew?  and come home & sew.  and stay up late & sew.  where's that girl?  i'd like to know.  if you see her please tell her to come back home, she's needed at the sewing machine.
(from this moment on the thing playing on my ipod will be the renegade theme song "no sleep til brooklyn" by the beastie boys.  maybe i can program my stereo to wake me up to it.)

i got these boots to make you happy, i scuffed them up to turn you on

2 hours later & my shoes still aren't dry.  at least i was smart enough to bring a pair of pants to change into after walking to work in the downpour.  now i'm running around the lab in my socks being careful not to drop any x-acto knives on my toes!

that was supposed to be the start of my tasty dinner in the broiler last night, but shortly after i took the photo it all burnt to a crisp!  i already had the tomato & cheese & basil sliced so i left the house hungry to get another eggplant, i stopped by jon & ana's who are conveniently located around the corner & ended up having a bbq with them & tracy.  someone had the brilliant idea of sandwiching my eggplant parcels with their portobello mushroom veggie burger, it was damn tasty. 

needless to say i didn't get as much sewn last night as i should have.   to make it look like there's actually some crafting going on, there's a photo of the 1" buttons i made when my sewing machine was acting up this weekend.  now i must get back to work since i'm at work - currently i'm making mylar jackets to protect the original paper dust jackets on three first edition Norman Mailer novels!

what we need more of is science

<-- tasty post-sale breakfast at the brickway with teresa followed by shopping & buying of silly shoes.  i fell asleep at 7pm after the alumni sale saturday & didn't wake up until 7:30am the next day!  it was actually a pleasantly un-stressful event, i was prepared & didn't stay up too late, just a little bit.  the day was fun & i did quite well.  those two jellyfish clutch purses didn't last long, i will definitely be making more of them.  i sold the green & purple quilt which made me very happy.  we had a gorgeous sunny spot for as long as the sun was out, my quilts looked like glass with the light behind them:

after all the crazy varied weather reports all week there was only a spatter of rain just at the end & i put my quilts away, but the vinyl didn't mind.  we were lucky to be between a very nice jewelry artist & the fabulous bob & ginny of Orange Bags!  bob can be seen lurking behind the tree by their table, i didn't get a picture, but they had some awesome new bags.

i need to find the proper venue for selling my quilts.  any suggestions?  the street sales aren't really appropriate, i find that either people are confused as to what they are, are completely in love with them, or are fascinated, but it a confused way.  and then there are the quilters who admire & respect them, but i understand why they don't buy!  i dream of having a gallery show of my quilts some day soon, i need to create more or track where they go so they can be borrowed back.  do you have one?  oh, that would be amazing!  a whole show of my quilts...  mm...

i don't hardly know her

thank you so much for the comments about my quilt, i hope to make more of them now that the holiday season is over.  i'm still catching up on my photo posting, back in the beginning of december santiago, kristen & i took Art out for sushi on his birthday.  it was so much fun, we got a huge boat of sashimi & some little tables of rolls, a bottle of cold sake & a bottle of plum wine:



afterwards, santiago & i went over to jonathan & ana's to drink the bottle of Poizin (the wine to die for apparently) that lee & jo brought back from napa valley a while ago.  it came in a little wooden casket, i had saved it for a while, but was afraid it might go bad... not that my apartment is ever very warm this time of year!