Daily Walk Documentation

I found this amazing book at Barnes and Noble ages ago.  I found it when I was looking for a book that Kitty Pink Stars had been flickering about.  It is by the same author (Keri Smith) so the books were neighbors on the shelf, and I was immediately drawn to it because there are all these colorful circles on the cover and I find circles to be a most pleasing shape!  

**(quick side note---while looking for a link to Keri Smith, I just discovered she has a blog [swoooooon])

I bought the book without shopping around or checking used book stores because I fell in love with it immediately, and except for the occasional cafe mocha with extra whipped cream splurge, I tend to be pretty frugal.  But, this book is great, it helps you to see the world through new eyes.  It brought out my inner child that had gone into hibernation because all the "adult-ish" stress-bullies weren't letting it play.  It has all these projects to do---a lot of them are about drawing, collecting, observing and wondering.  Before today I just used to peruse the book during a bath and get excited at the possibility of actually doing the projects, but today, on a walk with Albert I made myself do one.    I collected interesting objects on my walk---the goal was supposed to be 30 items, but I lacked the pocket space (I smell a sweater alteration project, do you?).  It made my walk very exciting.  I felt like a pirate on a treasure hunt.  It also made me more mindful and got me genuinely excited about Spring and all the magical things that occur.  I made it a rule to not pick anything living, like weeds and flowers.  The coolest thing I found was the item on the far right, bottom.  It's a natural thing that grows on trees, but it looks like some medieval torture device or something....  Completely strange.  I really enjoyed myself, and I really recommend the same adventure to anyone else!

Wooden super hero catharsis....

My sewing machine is getting dusty, and my blog is even dustier.  I blame my job on both, but I like my job, so I don't want to be too blamey towards it.  If you read this regularly you know that I work with adults who have developmental disabilities.  I recently became the instructor at my program, so I am like a "teacher lady" with 2 different 2 1/2 hour classes plus an hour in a half being a lunch monitor (or I'll go ahead and say lunch lady).  When the adults I work with are engaged, I consider the class a success.  When they are enthusiastic, I consider the class an enormous (almost miraculous) success to the point where I feel moved to tears.  The reason I am telling you this is so that you can understand why my blog is being neglected lately.  In an effort to try to get my class excited I pump up my enthusiasm for whatever we are doing by about a million percent.  I talk about the new spring weather like it is the first time I have ever experienced something as amazing as "buds forming on trees", and I direct a Bingo game as if the stakes are millions and bazillions of dollars instead of a sticker of an ice cream cone.  This enthusiasm results in me coming home at 5:00 feeling like I have been run over by a truck.  The energy I have left is completely depleted when I exert it to open a bottle of wine.  But, this makes me sad.  I miss creating my little plush friends.  

However, I have discovered the immediate catharsis of painting (or maybe "re-discovered" since it was my major in college).  I am really ecstatic.  I have started this super hero matroyshka project and it feels so good to be creative again.  The sewing takes too much planning for my energy level right now, so I don't know when I'll get back to it, but hopefully the wooden super heroes will entertain you as much as they are entertaining me.  Thanks!  Go outside!  Have fun and enjoy the breeze that doesn't chill you anymore!

Heraldo

Heraldo would rather be deep sea fishing than worry about the recession.  Though he'd like to be a deep sea fisher-man by trade, his current day job is an accountant.  This is most-likely due to Heraldo's inability to keep the fish he catches---he always throws them back in because his heart is as big as a killer whale's and as soft as his furry mustache.  Sometimes when his clients are talking to him about their stock worries, Heraldo drifts off and instead stares at his screen saver (set to "oceanic scenes").

Heraldo measures about 12" high and 9" across.

I am going to hire Heraldo to be my accountant, since I don't have one.  Then instead of talking about practical money matters, we could drink tea and dream about living off the radar on some sort of hip-ily decorated ship.  Heraldo will be available in my Etsy shop today!  

 

Monsta Love

Awhile ago I had a very fun request from a very colorful girl to the north of me (Canada).  Her name is Miss Monsta and she has beautiful red hair, a nose piercing and tattoos.  She wanted a plushized version of herself and here is what it looked like.  So, a couple weeks ago she asked me to make one of her boyfriend and supplied me some photographs---the best one being this one (because of course he is in a glam rock band)!  This photo is more of what I based the "plushized him" off of, mainly because I wouldn't know where to even begin with that glam-rock hair.  But, I loved the zebra scarf-tie thingy, so I had to include that.  I pierced his ear with a paper-clip and a wire-bending tool and the whole experience made me nostalgic for my junior high rebel years when my friends and I thought we could pierce our ears with safety pins.  I didn't actually follow through with that, actually none of us did, but we were pretty hard core for even talking about it.

I start my full-time job in a couple of days *gasp*.  I'm mostly excited and a little nervous and definitely sure that I am going to miss my 1 hour naps with Albert (below) in the early afternoon.  

I plan on "Pink-Cheeking" it on the weekends.  Actually that phrase is less-endearing to me now that I found out there was a "gentlemen's" club in Santa Fe called Pink Cheeks.  Oh well.  Thanks for reading, happy Valentine's day and have a lovely, lovey-dovey weekend!

Oscar for Dawn

Oscar is a carpenter. He had a bit of a wild youth, hence the tattoos all over his body. Oscar specializes in tree forts because he is a really great climber. He doesn't believe in ladders, but he's super strong and agile, so there isn't really a need for them. Kids in the past have thought he was part man, part bear because of his scruffy beard and burly ways. One boy, Tommy, overheard him accidentally hammer his thumb instead of a nail. He screamed really high-pitched, like a kettle when the water is boiling, or like a girl-singer when she is reaching a really high-note. Tommy thought it was funny, but not as funny as his completed tree fort was cool.

He measures 10" by 10"

This story is a repeat---I haven't been able to write new stories lately.  I am not sure why, but I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe it is due to the free cable I acquired a couple months ago. Today, when I heard Joseph pull up I had to run and turn the TV off before he caught me watching a "Next American Top Model" marathon.  So, I need to get to the library and turn the boob tube off more.  

Oscar is for a lovely, lovely, lovely plush goddess named Dawn.  She is from Look What I Can Do and is the hands behind those lovely, large-eyed love-creatures that you can see nearly anywhere.  They were the first softies I saw that really started making me curious about sewing my own.  Also, Dawn has a special place in my heart because she did the most adorable Flickr set---documenting the vegetarian lunches that she makes for her kids---it's really fun, you can check it out here.

Thanks Dawn!

The counterpart....

And here they are, finally finished.  I hope they go over well for the cute little boy on the orange chair (pictured in the previous post).  I have discovered that it is harder to blog when you don't do it every day----same with going to the gym, although I have to admit that right now I am blogging to delay going to the gym.  In other, non-plushed news, I am going to start working full-time on Monday at my day job.  All the economy craziness started making me nervous, plus I really do adore my job.  I work at a day program for adults with developmental disabilities---so my days involve lots of hugs, high-fives, sign language, coloring, Candy Land and bingo.  I love it, so I don't mind moving up to full-time, I am just a little nervous about the time that will be squeezed out of Pink Cheeks.  However, I think I am better at time-management when I am a bit busier which is strange, but I've heard other people make the same observation.  

Are you guys on Facebook?  Has the "25 Random Things" epidemic reached you yet?  It's where you post 25 random things about yourself and then you tag people and they have to write 25 random things.  It's fun to read others and I even had a good time thinking of my own, so I'm going to share a bit of myself with you and post it here and cyber-tag all of you that read it because I would love to read about you and your inner-quirks as well:

1. I am writing my 25 random things instead of watching the Super Bowl, though I may tune in for the half-time show.

2. I have a dog named Albert who I love so much. He is such a good boy. He is obsessed with being a good boy and starts to get very nervous when he is in a gray area and unsure how to behave in the best possible way. When he is outside though, on his walks, he is not a good boy---he is a very bad boy who barks at all dogs, joggers and senior citizens.

3. Joseph and I have a "voice" for Albert. Imagining what he must be thinking and then impersonating him takes up about 50% of our days. Albert for some reason has a lisp and a Balkan accent.

4. When I was younger I played the trumpet. I used to get very nervous before solo contests which at the time seemed like very important life events (you could win ribbons and everything). My neighbor at the time was a social worker and she would do relaxation hypnotism on me before the contests.

5. The things that gross me out the most are eyeballs. I don't like that they aren't really solid and that they are just sitting there in your head protected by a thin eyelid which may or may not close in time to protect you. I am grossed out right now just writing about this.

6. Both of my parents passed away from brain tumors. This may be a bit too serious for this "Facebook 25 things" list, but it is the biggest part of my life and more than anything else, has shaped the person I am today. Watching my mom get diagnosed with cancer that took her husband's life and then suffer through it with grace and humor had a profound effect on me. I miss her every day.

7. Sometimes I forget that Joseph Holsapple (my husband) wasn't always a part of my life. I don't know how I ever lived without him. Sometimes he even sneaks into my childhood memories on accident.

8. I take my coffee black. I used to take it with cream and sugar and then one day I decided that I should have it black. I hated coffee for about a week, but now I love it and I think it is disgusting with sugar. I am really proud of myself for giving up sugar in my coffee and sometimes I enjoy making other people feel like sissies if they sweeten their coffee.

9. Trains are my preferred method of transportation.

10. One day someone in a gorilla suit came to my door and gave me enough money to pay for my wedding. It was totally awesome.

11. I love knee-high striped socks.

12. I want babies so bad right now. When I was younger I dreamed of having a family just like Bill Cosby's Jello commercials---chubby cheeks and multi-cultural.

13. I hate my "keeping in touch" skills. They are very poor. I don't like talking on the phone---it makes me completely self-conscious, but I adore my friends, which really puts me in a pickle.

14. When I was younger I loved pushing the limits of the US Postal Service. I once sent Molly Oesterle a high-top Converse sneaker by stapling the stamps directly onto it. Molly sent me bizarre things too---it was completely great.

15. I believe natural peanut butter is so much better than the other (unnatural?) peanut butter.

16. I have a ukulele that I don't know how to play. I feel guilty and lazy every time I look at it. I really wanted one after reading Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. But Stargirl I am not, just lazy Nichol.

17. I taught astronomy at summer camp. I learned that our sun is just a medium-sized star about a week before I started educating children on the cosmos. My favorite thing to tell the kids was "there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on all the earth". Is your mind blown yet?

18. My brother and sister-in-law wanted me to run a marathon this year with them. I thought I could do it until I tried running on the treadmill and realized I could only run for 1 minute before I needed to rest. Now I can run for 12 minutes! However I demoted my marathon ambitions to a 5K race.

19. I think I am really good at Foosball (Foozball?). I beat Joseph EVERY TIME we play. He could be very bad at it though, I suppose.

20. My hero is my friend, Alice Cihon, who lives in Santa Fe. I LOVE her and think she is the most amazing woman there is. I wish everyone knew her.

21. My favorite movie is Amelie. My face hurt after watching it in the theater because I was smiling so much. I love the montage in the beginning. I also loved Triplets of Belleville---the French animated film about a tour de France bicyclist who gets kidnapped by an American mob. Also, regarding movies, I make a lot of enemies when I say this, but I didn't care for Monty Python. I couldn't handle all that silliness, which is odd because I used to think I had a high tolerance for silly.

22. Every now and again I try olives to see if I aquired a taste for them yet.

23. I think about my weight too much.

24. At summer camp once some sort of animal ate up the engine of my car and built a nest inside there. I thought it was in such poor form because I'm a vegetarian, so I thought that animal was not really following karmic law.

25. #25 has pressure to be very important because it is the last one! I'll just use it to say thank you for reading, and I can't wait to read yours. Love, Nichol

Special Request for a cute little curly headed boy...

I was asked by a super nice auntie to make a plush version of her nephew in the style of this duo.  I think her nephew looks adorable, I love his curly locks.  I also love that orange chair.

I haven't made his little friend yet, but I am really happy with how the plushized nephew looks. I also like that he likes his green, washcloth dog with bizarre eyes so much.  There are really wonderful cartoon characters out there.  It makes me sad though, when kids prefer to play with only Whinnie the Pooh or Elmo dolls.  I feel more encouraged when kids like random dolls who don't come with a pre-existent personality, which is not to say that Whinnie the Pooh isn't a nice fellow, I'd have tea with him any day of the week.  I just like it when kids have to be more inventive with their play-things.  But anyway, the plushized nephew has some good squish to him and the dog part is made out of fleece, so hopefully the real nephew will give me a thumbs-up for texture!  I hope you all are enjoying your weekend!