my perennially popular poppy posters are almost gone, but don’t fret! here’s what my printer is working on right now to replace them: poppy art prints! the same poppy image everyone loves, but bigger [16 x 20 vs. the current 13 x 18] and expertly printed and color-matched. i hope to have these online by next friday, along with new datebook cozies and wallets i’ve been sewing in the studio this week.

this past weekend’s project: illustrations for the cover story of this week’s willamette week, one of the local free weekly papers. it’s neat to see it hit the streets 3 days after completing it!

the story covers 8 7 types of perfectly legal mind altering plants.

the individual plant drawings are in full-color in the online version!

neato, someone else has gone and gotten my artwork on their arm! this is a quick photo emailed to me the other day. this is the second poppy arm tattoo that i know about – it’s so flattering when people want my artwork permanently on their body!

anyone else have tattoos inspired by my artwork they’d like to share?

i’m not the only who needed a new set of wheels this month. from now until the end of october i’ll be donating 20% of the sales from my shop to the wheels for henry benefit. help me help chloe eudaly of reading frenzy fame buy a conversion (wheelchair) van to transport her son, henry, who’s outgrown their 20-year-old toyota corolla.

you can see the entire list of vendors on the henry blog, or shop in my shop. thanks and happy weekend everyone!

i was unexpectedly pulled out of regular life to deal with a family emergency for the past few weeks. while i was gone, fall appeared here in portland. it’s a beautiful time of year!

thankfully my artwork is portable. above was my temporary studio set up in the family kitchen while i was gone. note the redwoods issue of national geographic! if you know my work, you know redwoods are my favorite tree. check out this centerfold [also available as a print, which would make a great holiday gift, hint, hint]…

[the little red dot at the base of the tree is a person. click the pic to see it bigger.]

my favorite new thing i learned in the article is that [of course] redwood have entire ecosystems high up in their crowns thanks to soil buildup. thickets of berry bushes, ferns, other trees and small animals can spend their entire lives up in the sky. neat.

i’m briefly in my studio this week before heading out of town again, working on a bunch of sewn items for orders and holiday sales preparations. below is a huge stack of cards in progress.

i’ll post about all those upcoming sales soon! ok, back to the sewing machine!

deep into work on a few client projects and a solo show coming up in december. the pieces for my show are the largest i’ve made to date – 18 x 24 – which is exciting. but, dang, it takes a long long long time to finish each one! i’m hoping to have at least 10 done. above is a small corner of one of them.

inspiring me is the stack of books i got a powell’s in exchange for a pile of books i traded in.

a reenchanted world: the quest for a new kinship with nature. ok, this one’s actually from the library but it’s so amazing [notice all the paper markers] after only 72 pages i’m going to trade in more books so i can own it. where was this book when i was working on my mfa thesis six years ago, on the visual language and importance of anthropomorphism? benjamin kilham, on the back cover, says it best: “an important history of the reconnection with our animal origins.”

river-walking songbirds & singing coyotes, an uncommon field guide to northwest mountains. one person’s musings and profiles of the flora and fauna of the northwest mountains. awesome!

field guide to the slug. a slim illustrated volume all about slugs, finding them in the wild and in your garden, and [least interesting for my purposes] how to control and trap them. only $3.95, i couldn’t resist.

mosses: utah and the west. this book has page after page of boring technical text interspersed with amazing technical ilustrations. my copy has sun damage on the cover so it was affordable!

last but not least: “my friends went to zanzibar for their honeymoon and all i got was this stupid t-shirt amazing fabric!” i love the stickers with the writing that i have no idea what it says. i will never cut this up for projects!

concord grape pie?! yup. and YUM!

a gaggle of us girls got together on saturday to process about 30 pounds of concord grapes from someone’s yard into jelly and wondered what else we could make. grape pie was the answer!

we also experimented with making grape mixed cocktails. somehow the combination of fresh concord grape juice, vodka, seltzer and sugar makes the outside edge of your top lip burn. weird, but true. all of us experienced it!

oh yeah, and we also made oodles of grape jelly. guess what everyone’s getting for the holidays…