I think I created a LJ feed for the 365 Monster Doodles. It's showing up on my friends page, anyway.

Thanks, Gwen.

Thanks to David "Voz's Boyfriend" Attenborough's Life of Mammals I managed to stay up late enough (3am) to finish all my Craftland tagging AND inventory AND the sketches for the Illustration Job of Inconvenient Deadlines.

PLUS I learned that ungulates (maybe it was one in particular, now I forget) on the African plains have horizontal pupils for watching the wide horizon for predators. When they lean their heads down to graze their eyeballs rotate in their sockets keeping the pupil horizontal. (I learned some other things but in my sleep-deprived state I might not remember them.)

I watched the piece about rodents like three times. I am such a dork.

I have next to nothing done for BazBiz and I have to finalize the illustrations (assuming they don't just send back my sketches and say "try again") before I leave for the BBB but I do have the whole series of The Life of Birds out from the library, so at least I've have Sir David's company while I work.

These are some of the monster ornaments I made this year. They just need to get boxed up and delivered to Westminster St. I will be so glad to cross that off my list.

I don't normally give advice.

I've been making a lot of ornaments this week. I really should be sewing but making monsters is more fun than making bags. There's glitter involved! I'm bored with sewing, I hate to say it. Maybe I've just done too much of it lately.

I'm counting down the days until the BB, after which I will be able to focus on gifts I'm making for friends & The Boy. I've been so consumed by making stuff for shows and wholesale orders I only realised yesterday that December is here. I was aware of my deadlines and all the day-to-day stuff I need to do (I haven't forgotten to pack The Boy's lunch yet!) but the reality of time passing didn't really hit me until yesterday. Oops.

I'm ready to be on the other side of all this. While I work my mind is occupied with plans for quilts and prints and pretty much anything else but what I'm doing. It's been a lot of repetitive work, dozens of one thing at a time, and I get bored easily with things like that. I'm ready for something new.

I'm working on a big wholesale order of 24 tote bags right now. By my calculations I sewed 192 18" seams yesterday. 192*. Like some kind of zombie seamstress. All I can say is thank heavens for books on tape. I couldn't have done it without a good plot driving me forward.

I had a super scary moment while sewing where my machine slowed down and then stopped, making a horrible, straining "can't go on any longer" noise. I thought I'd worn it out with the endless seams but it turned out there was a length of thread wrapped around one of the moving parts inside. Hooray for easy problems that can be quickly solved.

It seems like I'm always silently willing my printer or camera or sewing machine to just hang on a little longer until after a craft show when I can actually afford to replace it. I do have two other sewing machines I could drag out if this one really did die, but they've got problems of their own. But at least they sew.

That doll is for an exchange I somehow found myself joining. I think I was having nostalgic longings for Nervousness.org late at night because I went and signed up at swap-bot.com and joined this exchange. I don't really have time for this but I also think I need a few creative interruptions while I'm churning out stuff for shows. However, I doubt I'll get in over my head at swap-bot. Most of the swaps are sadly uninspiring.

*(18" x 192 = 3,456" / 12" = 288 feet)

I'm trying to take one day a week and stay home instead of going in to the studio. I have huge petrochemical guilt, so one day of not driving back and forth makes me feel a little better. Besides, there's plenty for me to get done here. All my paper crafts are still here and there are so many things I need to add to my store. I could easily spend a whole day just working on updating the site.

I submitted my inventory for Craftland this weekend. I am probably insane, but I'm hoping to have (among other things) 240 sticker packs and 200 magnets. Those numbers are still nice and abstract but it's starting to seep into my brain that I have to MAKE all that stuff in a month. Plus get ready for the BB in Boston, keep all my wholesale customers stocked up and still have something to sell to anybody who shops online. Wheee!

I totally enjoy the craziness of all this. I really do. I just hope I don't get sick. Last year I got sick while trying to finish everything for Craftland and then I tore the connective tissue in the arch of my foot a few days before the Bazaar Bizarre. (The previous year my Beautiful Assistant got sick and had to endure the entire day of the BB with a fever. And then I got what she had and was sick the following weekend for a show.)

Any bets on what'll happen this year? Short-term memory loss? A broken bone? Temporary blindness?

Hot damn. I made a skirt in my new STUDIO!



And I printed monsters in my new STUDIO!



And my new STUDIO is already collecting piles of stuff though I'm far from being moved in.



As soon as it's not 100 degrees in my new STUDIO, I'll go back.

It has been a very slow, not very creative year so far. I'm in a funk and sort of stuck there. BUT I did put some old designs on spiffy magnets and created a couple new ones. Including that cute little guinea pig, which I love so very much.

I now have 41 designs on magnets. I could've sworn I was just saying last year, "I have too many designs." But now there are more. And a couple new ones I haven't actually made into magnets yet but will. I promise me I'll stop at 50. You be sure and remind me I said that, ok?