It’s 7 Days time again! That quarterly time of year when a group of some of the funnest, nicest, most creative people on Flickr spend a week taking self-portraits and then commenting on each other’s photos. I was on my way to bed when I realized it was technically Saturday and I could take my Day 1 photo. Here it is: me, being a big ol’ nerd with Photo Booth in the dark dining room at 2am.

I took this shot first, but decided it was too creepy for Day 1, even though it made me laugh.

On a side note, it’s come to my attention that I have not been keeping very good track of the various dottery mugs and crocheted whatsits that I’ve promised people. If you’ve discussed a custom order of some kind with me but have not heard a peep from me about it since, could you check my crafting queue and see if you’re on it? If you’re not, please shoot me an email or leave me a comment, letting me know. Thanks.

Did you know that today is Small Business Saturday? I figured that would be the perfect time to finally get around to updating my Etsy shop with all those pottery pieces I’ve been meaning to list for ages, starting with the funky square dottery dish up there.

Most of the rest of these are from the Geek Dottery collection, starting with a Princess Bride quote mug. I painted this on a day when I needed to remind myself that sometimes, life is pain, and anyone who says differently is selling something.

“Castle” quote dottery mug. Painted with one of my favorite quotes from the TV show Castle, starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic: “If you don’t believe in even the possibility of magic, you’ll never ever find it.”

Jayne Cobb—the sarcastic, uncouth, thuggish mercenary—is, against all reason, probably my favorite character from Firefly and Serenity. I think that’s mostly because of the fantastic job Adam Baldwin does of creating a character who’s loveable and possibly treacherous all at the same time. Some of my favorite Jayne quotes are on this Jayne Cobb Firefly/Serenity mug: “Time for some thrilling heroics,” “Shiny. Let’s be bad guys,” and “Pretty cunning, don’tcha think?”

Any Browncoat’d be proud to own this Firefly/Serenity mug painted with two of the ‘Verse’s best lines: Mal’s “I aim to misbehave,” and Jayne’s “Shiny. Let’s be bad guys.”

One of my favorite blog posts of Brenda’s is about how you should always “do what you love.” I love that, so I painted it on a mug.

Happy shopping, in my Etsy shop or any other small business of your choice!

Oh, I also wanted to mention that I recently created a Facebook page for my blog. If you’re into that kind of thing, feel free to like it! (There’s actually a Like Box over there in the sidebar for you to click.)

Have a great weekend, y’all.

I dragged the lovely but annoyingly-uncomfortable rocking chair out to the minivan so we can donate it to Goodwill and lugged the ugly, awesome video chair up from the basement. I moved the changing table from the living room (where Troy assembled it) to Elliora’s room. I found the baskets we originally used for changing-table storage, found new places for the yarn and craft supplies they were holding, and arranged them on the shelves below the changing pad filled with diapers, lotion, and wipes.

All of this rearranging has activated my Must Get Rid of Excess Crap mode. I’ve been regularly donating bags of Elliora’s outgrown clothes to friends and charity in recent months, but now I’m feeling the itch to get rid of more. Books, toys, clothes, furniture, give it all away, MWAHAHAHA! Ahem.

So anyway, while I was busy this morning I had the sudden need to clear out my gift stash. I put a bunch of it into the giveaway bag, but some of the things in there I thought I might give away to you guys. These are all items I bought to give as gifts a couple of years ago but then didn’t, for one reason or another. They’re all new and unused.

Two white, 100% cotton baby t-shirts screenprinted in red with a little cardinal saying, “Cheer.” Although one is tagged 3-6 months and the other tagged 6-9 months, they look exactly the same size to me, and they’re both too small for Elliora. These were purchased from paperbluebird’s Etsy shop, but the shop is no longer open. Know any babies who’ll be about those sizes this holiday season? (Note that the ink on the one on the right, the 6-9 months shirt, is very slightly blurred.)

Two pink and green striped fabric wallets, purchased from bluejaye crafts on Etsy, which also seems to be on hiatus. I own one of these little pouches and have been using it constantly for the past three or four years. It’s a little faded, but has held up beautifully.

Mom’s Birthday Calendar, designed by Sandra Boynton. It’s a perpetual calendar, so you can write birthdays or other important anniversaries on it and use it year after year. On the right is a photo of a similar calendar (the design is slightly different; my calendar is taller and narrower) that I’ve had for years, hanging on my fridge.

Last, a set of square magnets with little nature-y sketches or motifs on them.

Would you like any of these things? Comment and let me know which item(s) you’re interested in. If you only want one or two, that’s fine. If you are interested in all of them, that’s okay too. If more than one person is interested in anything, I’ll just do a drawing. If you win an item and you’d like to PayPal me a couple bucks to cover postage that would be nice, but you don’t have to. Call this a random-act-of-kindness giveaway, I guess. I’ll leave the comments open for a day or two, and once I do any drawings I’ll post the winners’ names. If you don’t email me your address within a day or so, I’ll draw another name. Sound good? Okay then. Comment away!

Updated 13 Oct 2011: Comments are closed. I’ll post the winners tomorrow.

My friend Bonnie decided on her birthday this year that she would take a picture every day of something that made her happy, to remind herself in the midst of a difficult time to Find the Happy. She decided to create a Flickr group so her friends could share the happy too.

Finding a bit of Happy each day.

The rules:

1. Find some Happy and photograph it each day. You could choose to do it less often if that works better for your life but my theory is that the more often you look for the Happy, the more the Happy helps.
2. Do it for a year. Or less. Or more. Or as needed.
3. No Unhappy allowed. That also includes self-abuse if you miss a day or lots of days. Hippie voice: Go with the flow, man. Everything is as it should be.
4. Rules are for breaking. Except Number 3, it’s best not to upset Hippie Voice.

My heart has been heavy lately, thinking about Samantha. So I’m reminding myself of some happy things.

I don’t know about you, but homemade black-and-white cookies make me very happy.

So does the cool way the sun was reflecting off this dotty coffee mug. Like little bubbles of sunlight!

I happened to glance at Annalie’s calendar a day or two before Troy’s birthday and was tickled to realize that she had drawn a miniature portrait of our family on that date, complete with him in a party hat.

I love it when I get a teeny painting of a harried-looking coffee-drinking cat in the mail. Thanks, Brenda!

French toast with powdered sugar on a sunshiny dottery plate.

Keeping a baby alive and homeschooling a 7-year-old are both time-consuming pursuits (duh), but while I barely have time to shower and I don’t seem to have time for housework, I manage to cook dinner almost every night and write emails and blog posts (sort of) and I’ve been crocheting a lot. So I guess it’s true that you do make time for what you love. And crocheting makes me happy.

I’m sure that in a year or so I’ll be hearing many cries of “Mo-ooom, make her stop touching my stuff!” So I try extra hard to enjoy the sweet moments like this, when it’s clear how much Annalie loves her little sister.

On one of Troy’s Navy deployments years ago, he happened to go to a wine festival in Cyprus, and he brought back two of these little glasses. They’re the perfect size for a shot of juice or taking a packet of Emergen-C, and it makes me smile each time I use one. It’s such a random thing to have in my cupboard, small wineglasses from a Cypriot wine festival, yet there they are.

I went to high school and college with Rainbow Rowell. (I know, awesome name!) She wasn’t someone I hung out with, but we knew each other. We had mutual friends, and when we went to the same university we occasionally ate lunch together. I’ve been reading Rainbow’s writing for two decades now, mostly in newspaper-column or blog-post form, but now I’ve read something way more exciting: Rainbow’s very first novel, a romantic comedy called Attachments. The night I started reading it, I actually got out of bed at 3:30am, feeling compelled to send Rainbow a message to let her know I was loving her book and was genuninely happy for and proud of her. (I’ll be interviewing Rainbow soon and doing a giveaway of her book in a blog post, so stay tuned for that!)

The sun was shining into Annalie’s room just right one afternoon so that her bright fuchsia sheets were reflecting a pink glow onto everything else in the room. A few days later, Annalie picked this bouquet of wildflowers, leaves of grass, and a wild strawberry from our yard for me and arranged them in an old vanilla bottle.

The first Saturday that Sonja was here, Karyl & her girls came up to spend the day with us, which was super fun. We started with brunch—aebleskiver and home-fried potatoes and bacon and fruit—which made me very happy because I love brunch. Also, I made the aebleskiver with almond milk and coconut oil and maple syrup (in place of cow’s milk and butter and granulated sugar) so Sonja could eat them, and they were totally as delicious as usual. It was a Very Happy Thing indeed: brunch everyone could eat!

Sonja-safe brownies, made with coconut oil instead of butter and honey instead of sugar. And they tasted good! Yay! I had fun meeting the challenge of cooking without ingredients I usually rely on while Sonja was here.

I love it when naps end like this, with Elliora waking up in the Ergo and smiling when she sees me.

If I have to put up with hot and humid summer weather, at least I get to eat perfectly summery meals like this: grilled mini burgers, strawberries, and marinated cucumber salad. Yum.

After seeing Lauren’s Doctor Who necklace on Flickr, I stalked this Etsy shop until she listed more so I could buy one for myself. I like how the high-top sneaker is a reference to the Chucks habitually worn by both the Tenth Doctor and Chuck Bartowski.

We often make popcorn with the very air-popper that I used when I was a kid, and eat it out of the exact stainless-steel bowl I used to eat popcorn from. (My mom was getting rid of the air popper and asked if I wanted it; I basically swiped the bowl because I loved it so much. Both these things are 30+ years old.)

Trader Joe’s dark chocolate bar with caramel bar and black sea salt. Enough said.

We live near a good bakery and stop there on a regular basis for treats. Every time, Annalie carefully surveys the variety of lovely, fancy cookies and pastries…and then requests a plain butter cookie. I love that.

I believe we’ve mentioned before that our neighbors across the street actually own a bounce house? They put it up for birthdays and parties and random weekends just for fun. And they are happy to share it with the neighborhood kids.

Rain always makes me happy.

Neon aquamarine polish, and bare feet outside, and green grass, and bits of sidewalk chalk. Basically, summer’s here!

A while back, Jenny asked me if I could paint a colorful, mostly-not-blue, dottery teacup and saucer for her collection. I told her I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to do that, since the studio where I usually paint doesn’t often have teacups and saucers on its shelves, but that I would look into it.

The next time I went to paint, I asked about special-ordering a teacup and saucer…and was told, “You know, I think we have one in the back! Follow me.” It turned out, the studio had been commissioned to paint a bunch of teacups and saucers for an order, and there had been a couple leftover that they had not used. Serendipitous for me and for them and for Jenny!

I had a lot of fun with this custom order, partly because Jenny didn’t give me super-specific instructions. She just told me to make them dotty and happy. I think my favorite part is the saucer’s dottery center. It’s hidden until you lift the cup to drink, and then it’s a nice little surprise.

Thanks for asking me to paint this for you, Jenny! They’re in my Etsy shop whenever you’re ready to purchase them.

Wow, I have not done a pottery post for a while! I can’t believe I haven’t blogged some of these yet. I have a lot of catching up to do, so let’s get right to it…

I’ll start with my favorite thing I’ve painted recently. Before we went to California, Madge told me that her husband Fish was a wee bit jealous of the dottery mug I’d painted for her birthday last year. He was wondering if I could paint him a mug too, maybe with a Battlestar Galactica reference on it? As a BSG fan myself, I jumped all over that one. Madge and Fish and I batted around a few ideas, and eventually settled on “Oh my gods…this is FRAKKIN’ good coffee!” I added “So say we all!” on the inside as a surprise. Troy liked this mug so much that he asked me to paint another one for him, which is fine with me. It was super fun to paint.

Now I’ll go in chronological order, more or less, starting with this mug I painted for Kristen (better known in 7 Days circles as sarkasmo) way back in March, but neglected to post photos of till now. Not sure how that happened.

This was inspired by a photo she posted of herself drinking cocoa out of a “got coffee?” mug. Kristen doesn’t drink coffee, so it seemed like she needed a “got cocoa?” mug. When she had surgery last spring, it seemed like this mug would be the perfect get-well gift. The “enhancement optional” is because she spent much of the December 2009 7 Days run making extra-hilarious comments while drinking hot cocoa “enhanced” with an adult beverage of some kind, and it’s become sort of a 7 Days in-joke.

Also, on the bottom, along with my name and the date, I wrote, “It’s a FACT: Kristen is funny.” Because she IS funny, and because we’re both Kids in the Hall fans. (Semi-explanatory KitH It’s A Fact Girl skit.)

When I asked Erin what she wanted for her birthday this year, she said something like, “I must be getting old because I can’t think of anything I want. Maybe Annalie could make me something? I’d love that.” I asked Annalie if she would like to make anything for Auntie Erin, and Annalie immediately said she would like to paint her a volcano plate, because Erin loves volcanoes. Annalie designed and painted the plate entirely by herself. I especially like the ash plume, and the river flowing in the foreground.

You might recall the I-knit-so-I-don’t-kill-people mug that Brenda and I painted for Lauren early this year. A blog reader saw it, loved it, and wanted to buy it for a friend’s birthday. Brenda graciously allowed me to copy her design onto a second mug. I added the little ball of yarn with the needles stuck through it on the inside bottom of the mug.

Here’s a cereal bowl I painted for no other reason than that the colors made me happy.

Erin from two more seconds asked me to paint these little sake cups for her, so she could turn them into pincushions for a swap. She gave me some photos and a blog banner for inspiration, and it was fun to do something a little different than my usual mugs and plates.

I liked the colors I was using for Erin’s little cups, so I painted a little bowl for myself.

I happened to be painting these all at the little pottery studio that’s about ten minutes from my house. It’s a nice little studio and it’s much closer to me than my regular studio, but I don’t like that they charge a $6 studio fee per person. I also don’t like that their fired pieces often seem to have these black marks on them. Marks from the kiln? I don’t know.

I painted these red and orange dotty ‘be happy’ mugs at Mike‘s request, as he was thinking ahead to Christmas. They’re in my Etsy shop whenever you’re ready to buy them, Mike!

A lil’ happy jack-o-lantern dish Annalie painted while we were in California. I think she did a great job with it! She’s getting so much more precise with her painting.

Brenda painted this for Troy when we were in California, kind of as a joke. Note the empty, unpacked box in the bottom of the mug reminding Troy while he likes it when she and Bug visit us. Luckily, he thought it was pretty funny. And Brenda and Bug ARE coming back to visit us in November, yay!

I painted this square funky dish for no one in particular, just for fun. Anyone out there want it? Gimme a shout, I’ll put it in my Etsy shop for ya.

My mom asked me to paint a bowl for their remote controls, so they’re not forever searching for them. I added my own little touch inside.

I hope this bowl is big enough. Mom, do you want me to send this to you, or hang onto it and give it to you when you’re here in a couple of weeks?

I painted a Halloween plate a couple of years ago, but I was never 100% happy with it. And recently I felt compelled to send it to Bex for some reason. Maybe God whispered in my ear that she needed a little care package of happy because He knew she was going to have kind of a rough September, I don’t know. In any case, I painted a new Halloween plate for myself…and I’m not 100% happy with it either! The orange paint I used was much less orange once fired than I expected it to be. But oh well.

I do like what I wrote on it. I think I might stick this in my Etsy shop. Anyone out there want it? Let me know, I can reserve it for you if you do.

Whew. You still with me? We’re almost done, I promise!

This mug is the second one I’ve painted with one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes, from Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV, Scene I: “I do love nothing in the world so well as you: Is not that strange?”

Someone saw the first one in my Etsy shop but didn’t buy it fast enough, so she asked me to paint another. Anna, it’s in my shop whenever you’re ready to buy it.

Once upon a time, way back in March, the lovely Claire asked me if I would be willing to face a crocheting challenge for her. She wanted seven crocheted balls, in varying shades of red; and one ball crocheted out of jute twine, representing the city of Dundee, Scotland, where she lived. (Dundee is famous for, among other things, its jute mills.) I assured her that I loved a challenge! I could do it!

Yeah, did you notice the part where she asked me in March, the month during which we were moving into a new house and hosting a variety of houseguests at the same time? That was also the month during which I unknowingly became pregnant and started requiring 14 hours of sleep per day and not wanting to drink coffee. I was also working on a million other crochet projects at the same time. I got the red balls done by mid-April, and then…just…came to a stand-still. I looked around locally for the jute, but couldn’t find what I needed. I ended up having to order it online, then went out of town, blah dee blah, etc. FINALLY I finished all seven of the red balls and the jute ball. I emailed Claire to tell her it was done! I had completed her order!

Naturally, Claire (who was extremely gracious about my slowness throughout the spring and summer) and her husband were about to move away from Dundee. She assured me that the balls would be a lovely memento of their time there, and that she still wanted them. That was when I realized I’d forgotten that one of the red balls was supposed to be striped in the six other shades of red.

Sigh.

I scrounged around through my yarn bins and found most of the red yarns I’d used originally, and made an eighth ball, red and stripey. And now, finally, five months later, THE ORDER IS COMPLETE.

Claire, the red and jute crocheted balls are in my Etsy shop, waiting for you! I have no idea why this order took me so long, other than the obvious reasons of (1) moving cross-country, (2) being pregnant, and (3) not finding jute locally. Those things should have made this order take two months, maybe, but not five. Thank you again for your kindness and understanding.

(I saw we take my banner’s advice and just blame it on the baby. She won’t mind.)

I painted this mug way back in April, when I was in Omaha and I went painting with Katrina and Kassie. This mug is notable because it’s the first time I tried painting in script rather than printing. It turned out better than I thought it would. The quote is from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It’s one of my favorite lines from a good play that was made into one of my favorite movies. That line has always struck me as a sweet and hilarious sentiment at the same time. I found myself thinking, Someone should put that on a mug! So I did. And then I put that mug in my Etsy shop.

I was trying to branch out from my typical brightly-colored dottery when I chose these colors. It turned out to be one of my favorite things I’ve ever painted. I love this color combination, so cheerful and summery with the sky blue and lilac and violet and apple green! And a little bit of gray for summer storm clouds. Perfect. It’s in my shop too, if you like it.

This is the red-white-and-blue plate I painted as an example when I taught that dottery class in June. I used a speckled paint for the white dots, so it has tiny bits of blue, red, and yellow paint in it that help the white dots stand out a bit more. I also used a larger paintbrush than I normally do, so it looks a bit different from most of my dotty plates. I really like it! If you like it and want one, I can paint another one for you—just ask.

A couple of months ago, I painted this green dotty mini bowl for no one in particular. (I don’t think I ever blogged this…it’s been a while since I’ve blogged any pottery-painting.) Brenda saw it on Flickr and asked if I could set it aside for her to buy. Instead, I set it aside to give to her for her birthday. Then I forgot to put it in her birthday care package. So now it’s going to be her thank-you-for-letting-us-come-visit-you-in-California gift.

Sonja saw the first green dotty mini bowl on Flickr too, but Brenda had already claimed it. She proclaimed her love for it, and asked if I could paint her another one. Alas, this is not exactly the first bowl’s twin; it’s slightly larger and has a couple of different shades of green in it, since I painted this one at a different studio. But I think it’s just as adorable in its own way. So this bowl is going to be Sonja’s thank-you-for-letting-us-come-visit-you-in-California gift.

Last Christmas, Melissa saw the star ornament that I painted (the one that now lives in Bex’s cubicle at work year-round), and said if I ever came across another star ornament, she’d love it if I’d paint her one. Unfortunately my pottery studio in San Diego had already run out of stars, and I’d never run across any more. Then when I painted with Anna at the beach, they had star magnets. I threw caution to the wind and painted one for Mel in bright colors, adding the word ‘hope’ just because it seemed like the right word to use. Mel might have thought she was going to buy this magnet from me, but I decided I just wanted to send it to her as a gift. Because isn’t hope always a gift, really? Mel, it’s already on its way to you!

Here’s the dotty ‘be happy’ mug I painted in Omaha last month, thinking of citrus fruits when I chose the colors. Not sure what I’ll do with it. Anyone out there want it? Let me know, I’ll throw it in my Etsy shop for you. (Gently! I will gently throw it since, as Sonja pointed out to me, it’s breakable.)

Finally, here’s something I’m really proud of. I’m kind of throwing caution to the wind posting it now, because a blog reader asked me to paint this as a birthday gift for her mom. She assured me her mom doesn’t read my blog, so it’s most likely okay to post photos here, but I’m not going to mention who commissioned it just in case.

I wasn’t sure how this one would turn out, because I rarely paint with the “right” end of the paintbrush. In my head, the dotty center looked good, and the shades of orange and golden yellow I chose for the sunflower’s petals were just right, and the true blue color I chose for the outside of the bowl and the dotty pattern inside complemented the colors of the sunflower perfectly…in my head. But once it was painted and I was waiting for it to be fired I got nervous. What if I was wrong about the colors? What if the petals were totally brushy and amateurish? What if I was too freeform on the blue dotty pattern and it looked like crap!?

But when I saw the fired bowl, I breathed a sigh of relief because I loved it. I hope my reader’s mom loves it too! And I hope I remember this lesson and branch out of my painting comfort zone a little more often because sometimes the end results are worth the nail-biting.

Whenever I’m going on a road trip, even if it’s a short one, I bring crocheting with me. I can’t read and be social at the same time, but it’s easy to crochet and talk. And if I have to put my crocheting down for a minute to help Annalie with something or look at the map for Troy, I don’t get annoyed like I do when I’m deep into a book.

When we left San Diego, I was actually close to finishing a big crochet project: a blanket for my friend Angela, whose baby girl is due to be born next month. I thought for sure I’d finish the blanket halfway through the trip, so I brought along a second bag of assorted yarn and some stuffing. I figured it didn’t hurt to be prepared in case I needed something else to do once I finished the blanket.

Funny thing is, though, I didn’t touch the blanket once we were on the road. Maybe because I’d been working on it nonstop for a few weeks, I just needed a break. Or maybe I just felt like making potholders.

I made whatever came to mind—headbands, potholders, balls, baskets—with whatever yarn I felt like using. I wasn’t even making anything with anyone specific in mind.

Except these three headbands, which I crocheted at Amanda‘s request. (Amanda, I’ll get these in my Etsy shop for you soon, honest!)

And I made these hearts for Bex and Jo, so I’d have a little gift for them when we met up in Alabama.

These Easter baskest are similar to the ones I made a couple of years ago. If anyone out there wants them, let me know. I’d be happy to list them in my Etsy shop for you.

I guess I crocheted one more thing with a specific person in mind. I made the coffee-cup sleeve on the right for Troy, so he wouldn’t have to use one of my girly ones each time we stopped at Starbucks. I liked it so much I crocheted another brown and green one.

And then I crocheted a brown and pink one (which I’ve been using) and a brown and cream one. If anyone wants one of these, let me know, Etsy shop, etc.

In house news, I put up a bunch of photos on Flickr, mostly ones I took the day we moved in. Go have a look!

I painted this with Katrina when I was in Omaha, on Day 1 of 7 Days last month. I had hoped that the colors would be even more muted, but oh well. I still like it. Michelle saw the photo on Flickr and she liked it too, so we met her in Encinitas for lunch.

Michelle has been one of my best Etsy customers for a long time, and she happens to live in SoCal. I suggested that she could save on the cost of shipping if we met for lunch and I just brought the mug to her, so that’s what we did. It was great to finally meet her!

Heather painted this mug when we all went painting when Lauren was in town, and I love how it turned out. It fascinates me how everyone’s dottery is unique. We’re all using the wrong end of the paintbrush, yet each person’s patterns are slightly different. Very cool how that works.

Okay, my inner geek is showing. The story behind this mug is kind of long. You can read more about it here; it helps if you’re a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan.

Captain Picard on ST:TNG used to order tea from the replicator all the time by barking out, “Tea, Earl Grey. Hot.” Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on the show, is a famous blogger now and is selling mugs with this on them to promote a podcast he’s doing with commentaries/reviews of early ST:TNG episodes. Lauren told me about all this, and said she wanted to paint her own version of the mug. I thought it was a brilliant idea and wanted one too, except I hate Earl Grey tea. So I changed the last word on mine to “not.”

Here is the mug Lauren painted. I especially love the little Star Trek symbol she drew above her signature on the bottom.

I just realized I never got a photo of the first two dishes Lauren painted. Something was weird about the bisque or the glaze, and they turned a strange green color in the kiln. The pottery studio gave her a credit for the cost of the dishes and she painted these three to replace them. The one in the middle is for Lauren’s Japanese sister-in-law; I believe that’s her name on there. The other two are for Lauren and her mum.

Lauren had the idea for a mug that said, “I knit so I don’t kill people,” but she was so busy with her Earl Grey mug and the dotty dishes that she hadn’t even started painting it by the time Brenda finished her plate and had nothing to do. When she asked if anyone had something for her to do, Lauren asked if she wanted to paint this mug for her. Brenda painted all of it except the last part of the scarf. Her hand got tired so I finished the scarf, including painting it into the inside of the mug and adding the tassels.

Good thing I enjoyed crocheting all those rainballs for Bug’s party, because Claire H. saw them, remembered that she’d intended to order some snowballs from me last year, and asked if would like to crochet her some of each. I said I’d love to, since it gave me a reason to watch a few episodes of Dr. Who on Netflix Instant, both of which I’m loving. Thanks for that, Claire! Your snowballs and rainballs are in my shop whenever you’re ready

I’ve been on a kick of painting these round little mugs lately, they feel really nice to hold. This one is in my Etsy shop for anyone who wants it.

This one, I painted for my friend Jen as a birthday gift.

Annalie and I were sitting outside on the patio today and Katy was sitting at the door, yowling to be let out. Poor cat. She really wants to be an outdoor cat, but when we got her from a shelter in Phoenix she was already declawed, so we don’t feel right letting her outdoors.

Took our Day 98 photo for Troy while we were out there. I keep accidentally taking these off-center self-portraits. I kinda like them.

Not long ago, Brenda introduced me to her favorite pen, the Uniball Signo DX 0.38mm. They’re Japanese gel pens with a really nice stroke and a fine-but-not-too-fine line, and they are awesome. Brenda had only ever been able to find them at a local Japanese bookstore for about $4 apiece. Then we found the fabulous Tokyo Pen Shop, where they sell our favorite pens for half the price we’d been paying at the Japanese bookstore.

We ordered a dozen to get free shipping, and then I noticed they had an offer on the homepage for a free orange pen if you ordered a certain amount of merchandise, which we had. So I wrote a quick email explaining that my friend and I loved the Uniball Signo DX pens, and we’d love a free orange one. I got a really nice email back from one of the website’s owners, saying that she probably would have included that brand, since that was all we’d ordered, but that since I’d written now she knew to include two orange pens. How cool is that!? I will definitely be patronizing their shop again.

More flower scarves! I keep making these because people keep asking me to crochet them. Whenever I start another one I groan a little bit because in my head these are a pain to make, but once I get started I remember, oh right, these are actually pretty fun!

I’ve been thinking about writing up a pattern for a flower scarf and putting it in my Etsy shop, along with the spiral squares and snowball crochet patterns. It wouldn’t be exactly the same as the scarves I make because I make up the patterns for the flowers as I go along, but it would be similar. What do you guys think, should I write up that pattern? Would you buy it for a couple of bucks? (Oh, and these particular scarves are in my shop waiting for OneScrappyGal to go buy them.)

I got a pretty exciting present earlier this week: a new lens for my D40! (Pardon me while I geek out just a little bit.) I’d been wanting a lens with a better zoom, so when my friend Joe (my camera teacher) saw a good deal on a 55-200mm VR lens he told Troy about it. Troy bought it for me, and told me he’d bought me a present that would be coming in the mail, but he didn’t tell me what it was. I truly had no clue this is what he was sending me. I might have actually squealed a bit when I opened the box. Today Annalie and I went to the park, where I tried the new lens out.

It’s much bigger than my other two lenses, but it’s not much heavier thanks to being made of plastic. It’s easy to use, thanks to the autofocus.

I love my new lens! Yay! Thank you so much, guys, for your conspiracy in making me a better photographer. Or at least an amateur with fun photography toys.

This park has a new, modern, colorful playground with deep mulch all around it. Annalie went down one of the plastic slides and then made a beeline for the 30-year-old slide and monkey bars sitting in hard-packed dirt.

These mystery fruits (nuts? seeds?) were on a tree in the park. They were about the size of walnut, maybe a little smaller. I have no idea what they are, but they’re a really pretty shade of reddish-orange.

This photo pretty much sums up Annalie’s attitude about the tall slide. It also makes me laugh.

Love that light, and the girl. And my pens and my new lens. To sum up, we’re all good around here, good and happy.