Just pictures

Sherlock Sanchez (looking for ants) and Maggie pretending to be in a studio portrait (actually an action shot on our recent camping trip):

SOLD!

N017-Red and Black
Originally uploaded by stannabelle.

Someone bought this necklace yesterday, and although it's one of my favorites and I'm a tiny bit sad to see it go, I'm SO happy that it'll go to a good home! And I'm almost keeping pace with my May gallery sales -- I'm over $400 for June now.

Oasis

Last Tuesday, we went to a place that offers a slice of deep green nestled in the endless landscape of sage, grey and brown. A place where dragonflies hover, and healing waters bubble up from deep within the earth below. It's an 80-minute drive over rough roads, but that sudden shock of green reeds and grass and a winding stream makes time fall away, and restores a soul weary of drought.

Happy birthday, Lazarus!

My boy turned four yesterday, and when I asked him what he wanted to do, he exclaimed, "I want to go to Pie Town for birthday pie!" Out here, any trek is a big deal, and one that ends with pie is all the more special. So off we went, and on the way we stopped at the Very Large Array to see their giant radio telescopes up close. Laz and Maggie ran down the path toward the closest telescope, but their little legs faltered as they got closer and the 230-ton colossus loomed ever larger -- and they both stopped and then turned tail when it groaned and cranked on its base to swing over a few degrees!



Lazarus got a t-shirt and a solar system mobile from the gift shop, and Maggie picked up a postcard of a telescope that she now brandishes as she runs around the house while chanting, "The giant telescope MOVED and it scared me, mama!!"

On to Pie Town, where we ate (as always) at the Daily Pie Cafe and chatted with the staff, who know us well from our numerous earlier treks (including Maggie's very first road trip). No time for pie (I grabbed a six-piece sampler for the road, though!) because Lazarus wanted to go straight to the Pie Town playground -- an outdated clutch of steel pipe and splintered wooden structures that nonetheless was fun because lots of kids were there for the town's graduation party.

Gotta go -- happy birthday, beautiful boy!

Happy Mother's Day!

Love to all you mamas out there... I've had a mixed day (a bit of escape time, and a poop-encrusted Maggie when I got back), but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Even an ice-cold bottomless margarita sipped while gazing at a tropical sunset somewhere far away, where the ocean waves lull me to sleep at night and gently awaken me at dawn.... Not that I've never been tempted....

I wish I could update more often, but I just haven't gotten much computer time lately. One reason: it's planting time! I got my veggie garden planted, finished tweaking the drip irrigation system, and have laid black plastic over most of the beds. That's a new one for me -- I keep reading about how it minimizes moisture loss (especially important here, where humidity has been around 8%) and also raises soil temperature, equally important because the nights are so cool even in midsummer. Last year my tomatoes just didn't ripen, except for a few tantalizingly sweet cherry tomatoes, and that just will not do -- I can't live without garden fresh tomatoes. So if the black plastic doesn't work, next year I might just invent some sort of solar/water heating system for them. It would give me my tomatoes and also maybe be patentable....

I just totalled up my jewelry sales at the co-op gallery so far: $467 since we opened eleven days ago (two bracelets, three necklaces, and seven pairs of earrings). Not bad -- I've recouped my whole investment as a co-op member and have started to make a dent in my materials costs. And that doesn't count a commission order from a neighbor who wants two necklace/earring sets. So, given how much I enjoy doing it, it's turning into a good little venture. I need to take pictures of my more recent stuff before it sells (I missed one necklace and a watch) -- speaking of pictures, here are two of my lovely children, from an outing with Granna and Granpa last month:



That's it for now. I have more pictures in the camera, and I also have work coming in next week, so I might actually update more than once this month. You just can't wait, can you?

"I'm the decider": A quote from Napoleon himself

No pix today -- too lazy. But I couldn't resist this:

Dubya's performance yesterday reminded me of a scene in Disney's The Aristocats, where the yokel hound dog Napoleon moans, "Wait a minute, Ah'm thuh leader! An' I decide when we go."

I know, you had to be there. (If you have children under five who love the movie, you'll get it...)

Dragonflies hovering at sunset

I've been busy making jewelry the past month or two, and am finding it both fulfilling and relaxing. Not to mention it's something I can do downstairs, even with the kids around, which means I get a whole lot more jewelry made than quilts or other objets d'art that require "studio time" upstairs.

Here's more. I'm partway through inventorying what I have so far, then I'll start selling it in town (at our arts co-op, our shop once it opens, and maybe another local gallery or two) and at art shows. I do hope it sells -- I love doing it but I have to make money to support this new habit....

I got some nice Easter pictures of the kids yesterday -- we went on a picnic with Granna and Grandpa to the Bosque del Apache. But the camera is downstairs, and so are the sleeping children, so y'all will have to wait till Wednesday to see those pix. Tomorrow I'm off to Albuquerque to return my parents to the airport, and I might take Lazarus because we haven't had a Mama-Boy outing in a long time. He's great company, and he loves being in the "big city" (my little country boy calls Socorro, pop. 9000, "a really really big city").

Is the cookie finally crumbling?

I opened my email this morning and found about seven newsletters announcing Tom DeLay's impending resignation from Congress! Holy crap, I muttered, not sure whether to believe this amazing news. Sure nuff, it's true, and I can only hope it's just the start of one big long land-mass-altering earthquake for the current regime.

Now showing

I made this using memory wire, sterling silver beads and wire, riverstone (the creamy white beads), and turquoise (real, not chalk or howlite). Yes, I made every one of those little turquoise chain loops. I'm rather pleased with how it turned out -- it's way too nice for me, so I'll put it up for sale along with my slowly growing stash of other FINISHED objects. I just became a charter member of the Magdalena Arts Cooperative, and we open a gallery in April -- we're a dozen or so, all local, with quite varied works and styles. I'll have quilted, knitted, beaded, and mixed-media stuff in there, and I'm also on the publicity committee which means -- oh, I have an article to write about us by tomorrow. Which is why I came upstairs and turned the computer on, two hours ago....

Okay, enough of the glamorous life... Miss Maggie is feeling better today -- no throwing up, she's eating a bit, and she's not as cranky or sad as she was earlier this week. Lazarus was throwing up all day Tuesday, and with two pukers on hand (and feet, and sofa and bed and rug) I just about came to the end of my rope. The laundry -- God, with the winds howling too much for safe linedrying, it started piling up on the kitchen floor. The FLOOR. Appalling. I washed and hung four loads today and folded four more I'd managed to get out yesterday, and I just have two or three more loads... as long as no one starts throwing up again.

Yes. The glamour never ends.

The days of poop and vomit

Nice title, huh? I'm not feeling very nice today, after several weeks of someone or another (including me) being nastily sick. By nasty, I mean messy -- I have so much laundry to do -- and sticky and stinky. Poor Miss Maggie is the latest to hit the sickbed, and by herself has generated at least two loads of laundry in the past two (now going on three) days of, well, I needn't elaborate. The good news is that the wretched gusting howling winds have finally abated, so I can hang laundry and know it'll still be there when it dries, not a mile away flapping in tatters from someone else's barbed wire fence. Lucky, lucky me.

I don't like posting without putting up a picture of something I've been up to lately, but it has been a LONG day, and I still have to do our taxes. (Well, get them ready for the tax guy to do them, bless his heart, because God knows how much I HATE wrangling over taxes especially with a home business and all the other stuff we have going on.) (Anyhoo.) (Pictures tomorrow.)

What I saw today

Just a few things I saw today:
-pink trees in Socorro (I can never remember if they're cherry or peach or WHAT, but they sure are purty)
-turgid daffodil buds in my front garden border
-hints of green in the elm buds outside my "office" window
-pure glee on Maggie's and Laz's faces as they twirled down the curvy slide at Sedillo Park, again and again
-different shadows on the north side of the Magdalena mountains, thanks to the changing angle of the sun

For Magdalene on her second birthday

Happy birthday, dear Maggie Roo. You've blessed my life with hugs and kisses, giggles and tantrums, and sweet smiles for two years now...

I'm unbelievably fortunate.

The night I went into labor with Maggie -- Oscar Night, and I have no clue who won anything because, well, I was busy LABORING -- I listened to an amazing poem on KUNM's "Spoken Word" program while racing down Highway 60 to the hospital. Here 'tis, along with some of my favorite pictures of the divine Miss Magdalene.

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)
Nikki Giovanni (1973)

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad



I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman



I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me



For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on



My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save



I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels



On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents



I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission



I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky...

My greatest creations, ever

These pix are from a few weeks ago (at friend Echo's fifth birthday party) but the kids haven't changed that much. Well, Maggie grew a few inches, probably in anticipation for her second birthday on -- gasp -- Wednesday! (Mom, your present arrived today, so you're covered!) I'm hoping to finish knitting a teddy bear in time to give it to her as a present -- might happen if I don't get any more chapters in the study I'm editing until Thursday... and the kids are perfect angels... and I (continue to) neglect my housework... and I take my knitting outside where it's approaching 70 degrees!! ... and put aside my 15 other artsy-crafty diversions....

Whatever else I manage to give her, my Maggie will get lots of kisses, and a cake, and quite possibly some daffodils that are ready to BLOOM in my front yard. Daffodils, on the first day of March... unthinkably eerie. Welcome nonetheless....

UFOs!!!

Right here in Magdalena -- a whole slew of UFOs!

Unfinished objects, that is. This isn't Roswell, after all. It's nothing more than my Olympic challenge: to, shall we say, resolve as many personal UFO mysteries as possible. I just finished Laz's black-and-white sweater (to be modeled and photographed soon), so now I get to face...

...the second mitten of Laz's mitten set, which I just finished knitting but (since I NEVER manage to obediently follow patterns) is DIFFERENT from the first one and so I'll have to go back and do some counting and reknitting and -- feh, it's almost spring (so it'd better fit next winter, if we ever see winter again):


...a nearly finished needle case to house all my double-pointed needles (it would be done except I miscalculated how wide the top of the foldover cover should be, and it doesn't quite work yet):


...another case for my straight needles (I need to resolve the problem above before sewing this one up):


...two pretty hummingbirds (no, not knitting-related, but I want to finish these!), awaiting beaks (what to use -- wire? carved wood? the pattern calls for dyed toothpicks but that just seems tacky) and embellishment with embroidery, beads, and other fancy stuff:


...and, the dog of the lot, a sheep that just isn't working (that pattern issue again):

Studio tour

Yesterday turned into a very productive day... my desperation to avoid work, coupled with my solemn promise to NOT avoid work by sewing or knitting or other craftiness, finally yielded a CLEAN loft. I haven't seen it this neat or clean since... before we moved in. Heh. So here's where I work, sew, gaze out the window, sleep, read, etc. -- I only get three to four waking hours up here every day, but it's usually enough to keep my spirit going.

Coming up the ladder into the loft: I created a new knitting nook by moving several months' worth of crap off this old chair (which will soon have a rainbow serape cover, which is now clean and drying). The north-facing window looks out on the Bear Mountains:


Turning toward the east, this door leads to a small balcony outside; the shelves hold some but not all of my insane fabric stash (not yet organized; that's the next project in Operation Anti-Clutter) as well as fabric dyes (this summer's new endeavor) and beads, and I also have my dresser and jewelry up here:


Here's my work desk, facing south, with a great view of the Magdalena Mountains and the big blue sky:


And I do my sewing in the (north)west corner at the foot of the bed, right under a skylight:


Next up (now that it's CLEAN!!!): I'll add some track lighting above the sewing area, continue decluttering and organizing by craft type, and finally start putting stuff on the walls. I noticed yesterday that I have none, but NONE of my photography up, and given that this is my main creative/inspirational space, that's a big gap. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home....

"Keeping your eyes closed is worse than being blind"

That's one of my all-time favorite lyrics, from Doc Pomus' "(There is Always) One More Time." Sung by B.B. King, of course. Johnny Adams does a slower soulful version that I like, too, but King's guitar riffs go straight through my bones.

Eyes opened today to:
-Another mining tragedy, entirely preventable yet inevitable because of, what else, corporate greed
-Another opportunity for oil companies to jack up their prices, surely setting up another record-breaking quarter for the industry and laying the groundwork for Bush&Co. to "bring democracy" to poor, downtrodden Nigeria (the US' fifth-largest oil supplier). Here's one view from China on the larger picture of oil in Africa... I'm becoming fascinated with prospects of the US and China having to somehow deal with each other as competition for oil (i.e. political domination over oil-producing nations) heats up. If the US goes ahead with its apparent plan to "tame" Iran, will China enter the fray to protect its own interests? If so, what fate might Walmart and its ilk then suffer? Oil wars and nukes and China, oh my!
-"Katrina Katrina, why'd you blow so hard" (to the tune of "Corrina Corrina") by T.J. Wheeler, performed live and scorching on WUMB
-Some great tips on how to counter arguments from nincompoops who believe the idea of global warming is a plot hatched by left-wing commie freaks

Today is a work day (thanks to the holiday, Marin is off from school and available to babysit my adorable little ankle-biters) but, having had one cup of coffee too many, I'm "multi-tasking" -- work a bit, blog a bit and, demonstrating the desperate depths of my obstinance to work, cleaning up my messy, messy loft. I've managed to refrain from more artistic pursuits so far, mainly because my first burst of cleaning energy has put the baskets of knitting, sewing, embellishing, etc. out of reach. For now.

Back to... oh, yeah, work.

Here's some REALLY broken sh&%....

I was shocked and appalled to open my email and see this headline:

Senate Rejects Wiretapping Probe

Our "democracy"? Feh. The Republicans have succeeded in making it a plutocracy. One of the Bush administration's most egregious offenses (in a LONG list) against the "democracy" they claim to uphold does not, according to the majority of our nation's senators, merit investigation.

You gotta f*%$ing be kidding me.

BUT that's not all -- here's more "good news" to further brighten my day:

Senator May Seek Tougher Law on Leaks
Patriot Act Moves Closer to Renewal
and, no surprise by now:
Cheney Shooting Case Is Closed in Texas

Here's some new fun for schoolkids and the zealots who love them:
Bible Guides Tour Museums to Counter Science
I mean, wow. Let's return the favor and gather together some scientists to "tour" their churches and Bible schools, shall we? And the name of one company: Biblically Correct Tours -- there's a ballsy claim. Do they do field trips to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to "discuss," say, Leviticus? All in the name of education, you know.

What do the fundies have to say about the bird flu's confirmed spread to France and Egypt, soon after being confirmed in Germany and several African nations... oh, never mind, they always crow that it's God's punishment for sinners. So I guess we're all toast, eh?

But this trumps them all and, hell, could make it all irrelevant sooner rather than later:

Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels

I'm so disgusted. I think I'll go stick my head right back in the sand, after I write my senators and representatives, for whatever the hell that's worth.

Speaking of broken...

It sucks being sick. It sucks more when the kids are sick, too. And the babysitter. And now the husband. But nothing sucks more than not being able to DO anything while sick -- no work (can't sit up, and upstairs is too far from the bathroom), no laundry, no KNITTING, for God's sake -- besides moan and shuffle to the bathroom and change 17 poopy diapers a day (haste being essential because the kids figured out how much fun it is to rip the diapers off and smear the poop all over the place) and grope around for the TV remote in desperate hope that it will be within easy reach (too much bending and, well, back to the bathroom for me, and did I mention the fast-growing pile of laundry on the kitchen floor?) because maybe something interesting will come on, for a change....

Yesterday was a bit better. Today is okay except for the stabbing back and shoulder pains (laundry is still out of the question), and only four poopy diapers so far. I've managed to knit a few inches of the neckband for Laz's sweater (a few inches of a five-stitch-wide band ain't much, but it's up the left front and heading towards the neck). Maggie and Antonio are still pretty sick, but Laz and I are coming back.

Last week, the kids and I went to a birthday party, and I'll post a few pictures later... gotta go lie down again.

I broke it again

...but I think I've fixed it. I've been trying to publish a new entry for over a week, to no avail, and since I've been working I haven't taken the time to mess around in Blogger's and my FTP settings. Cuz, you know, I need to WORK. And I've been doing that. Sometimes. When I'm not doing this (it's done except for the neckband, which will be black, and buttons):



or this (a quilt for our bed; center panel is done and now I need to figure out some borders):



or chasing the kids around, getting them outside in this constant 50+ degree sunshine (it's just EERIE, I say), or giving Miss Maggie a bath:



or making dinner, which I should do now (Elk roast). Oh, and working. Heh.

Better than chocolate

Two more *finished* projects (my mom made most of the scarf):


The hat fits perfectly (the second time around), and I just cast on some matching gloves. (If I lose my courage or my marbles trying to deal with all those fingers, they'll become mittens.)

I'm trying hard to take care of my UFOs (unfinished objects) before starting new projects, and in that vein I'm halfway up the second front panel of the jacket I started for Laz a few months ago:


The gloves/mittens will slow me down a bit, but I PROMISE not to cast on anything new until this jacket is finished. Oh, and I still have to finish that goofy legless sheep, and a friend is patiently awaiting her teal mohair scarf, and... yeah, no more new projects, and certainly no new yarn. I'd better finish quickly because yarn will certainly be going on sale soon, what with spring just around the corner. What am I saying -- winter never came, and I just don't think we'll get any cold or stormy weather here this year. ...I'm tempting fate on purpose here... bring it on, baby!! Mama's got enough wool for at least three more months of knitting!

My sewing UFOs are a different story entirely. Needless to say, I won't be buying any fabric for the next year, at least. Maybe for the rest of the decade.