under the bridge

Walking along Latah Creek with Maya. 

nook, neatened

IT'S A SNOW DAY!!!!!

Let me tell you, the excitement does not go away once you reach adulthood.
 Snow days will always be the magical bonuses of winter. Love. Them. 

Even though there are various cleaning tasks awaiting my attention,
I decided I'd take advantage of this freebie day to organize a tiny area of my apartment. 

Ugh. Don't even look at it. Why am I showing you?!

This is the weird wall nook in my office. It's 17'' x 34'' and I've been at a loss over what to do with it for, um, six years. I did have some pictures hanging in there, but I a few weeks ago (after one of them fell) I decided I'd make some sort of paper collage in there. Well, you can probably guess how that turned out: never happened. So, this is what I decided to tackle--turning the nook into usable space, preferably for the crafting odds and ends which have been accumulating. 

Here. 

And here. 

I hope you realize the amount of trust it takes to reveal these junk piles. A bit. A bit. indeed. I don't have a defined (and permanent) crafting space because my apartment only has one decently well-lit area and that, my friends, is occupied. 

Yeah, succulents and Matilda. Neither will be denied their natural light and views of squirrels and magpies. 

Back to it. The ideal would be some type of shelving, right? Um, like I have random boards and a means by which

 to cut them. But wait! I do have these swell vintage nested shelves, picked up at an estate sale for $3.00.

And I have a bunch of posters from the Museum's concert series, BeGin!

And I have a tiny hammer too, see?

So, shelves: check. Background: check.

I taped up the posters. You could also use wrapping paper, or fabric, but I kind of liked the collage feel of this route. Most of the edges will be obscured by shelving, but some of the images will peek through. 

Like so. Easy as pie. Time to fill it up!

Success!!!!!!!
Craft clutter: managed.

beribboned

Sometimes after a horrible day, you just have to play with a kitty and hope everything turns out in the end. 

The Campbell House

I was stationed over at the Campbell House on Christmas Eve. We have an open house format around the holidays, with living history interpreters playing the parts of the house's inhabitants, circa 1910. I was playing the part of house security, and let me just say that I'm quite adept at smiling innocuously and keeping out of pictures. During the slow times, I wandered around the second floor and took some pictures. Without further adieu...

Wallpaper on the servants' side

Wallpaper on the family side

The linen and sewing room

The master bath

Helen Campbell's room

The yellow guest room

While the house is lovely and ornate, like something out of Masterpiece Theatre, I find it all a bit overwhelming. I mean, the place is gargantuan! I could never imagine living there: too much pressure. I can practically feel the residual Victorian constraints reaching out from the great beyond. 

super slackers

OK, it's almost been a week since I last posted and nothing is happening on the Monika and Catherine post end either. It's because we're all frantically crafting (or attending class, like Catherine). But expect some posts soon. We're celebrating our early Christmas on this coming Sunday, so we'll be free to reveal all the crafts and goings on directly after.

In the meantime, here's a little picture from the Museum. The sculpture, The Navigators, is by Brad Rude and it is more excellent in real life than in pictures, I assure you.

Where, oh, where...

has the day gone? Oh yes, I remember. It's gone into watching season three of Parks and Recreation and cuddling with Matilda on our new favorite knitted blanket. So, maybe I've been totally slacking today. Maybe I haven't really done much of anything. So what? It's been an awesome day of sitting on my bed and eating linguine with mushrooms and goat cheese, looking at magazines, forcing Matilda to bat at the drawstring from a hoodie, and messing around with craft projects. I didn't run any errands. I didn't even get the mail. It was perfect.

I did make this headband. 

And here's a little bit of Parks & Rec for you to enjoy. 

What a lovely lazy day. 

mural in the morning

Here are a few shots of Ric Gendron's recently completed mural at the Museum. 

Ric is one of our awesome Spokane artists. He likes to blend traditional images with American pop and rock culture, and you can find more of his work at the Tinman Gallery. He's pretty terrific, don't you agree? 

kitty in the window

Someone sat in the bedroom window today. 

Its Matilda! 

Doldrums

I've been kind of in the dumps for a couple weeks...except I don't call it the dumps, I call it the Doldrums. But I was determined to accomplish something on Sunday, and I was determined that accomplishing something would propel me from the Doldrums into whatever the opposite of the Doldrums might be. Some other seafaring reference? Maybe something to do with the Gulf Stream... 


Anyway, I cleaned my vacuum and then vacuumed the hell out of the apartment. I took care of the dishes and cleaned the bathroom. And then I hand-washed exactly 90 vintage handkerchiefs, strung them up to dry in my living room (this had to be done in batches), and ironed them all. It took HOURS. 

But it was a good opportunity to test drive the vintage handkerchief garland I will be making at some point. 

And then I had an egg sandwich and watched The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. 

little visitor

This little lady or gent was clinging to my screen door this morning.  I wish I could be more specific, but I'm not a moth-sexer, so I'm afraid we're out of luck. Wow. Moth-sexer just sounds sooooo wrong. I probably could have just said lepidopterist and sounded like a normal person. Sheesh. 

OK, so I did a tiny bit of research. I think it might be a Catocala parta (also known as Mother Underwing) and I think it might be a female. When it flew from the screen door to my very dusty picture window, it started vibrating...much to Matilda's delight. A chorus of tiny meows immediately followed the sighting. 

Oh, I learned a new word pairing as a result of this sighting! One of the websites referred to the underside of the moth as verso. Thus I stumbled upon: recto & verso.

Recto: The right-hand page (or front side) of a book, manuscript, or codex

Verso: The left-hand page (or back side) of a book, manuscript, or codex

I love new words. 

keeping it clean

It's another warm day in Spokane, so I decided to hide indoors and tackle a couple cleaning/organizing projects. While I'm not big on sitting in the sun, there are a few things in my apt that do appreciate a little direct sunlight. 

Matilda slept beneath this curtain most of the afternoon. 

While Matilda napped in the sun, I cleaned out my closet and dresser, found some stuff for the thrift store, some for consignment, and a couple things I'd totally forgotten about. 

Like these shoes:

I love coming across things I'd forgotten.

lady business

As in ladybugs. That's right, I discovered aphids on my lettuce, basil, and tomato leaves this year. No good. On the upside, I found a local purveyor of ladybugs. So, I ended up with 1500 ladybugs, which I decided to release in two separate batches. If you haven't had the pleasure of releasing roughly 750 ladybugs, let me tell you it's a bit of an adventure...especially when you add the fact that ladybugs should be released in the dark (they're more sluggish and inclined to settle in and lay some eggs before departing). The other thing is that you're going to end up carrying hitchhiking ladybugs to bed and work. Just accept it.  

This one came to work with me. It crawled inside my printer.
I was like, "No, no, no, no, no!" No worries. It emerged unscathed. 

The ladybugs hang out in this mesh bag, which is kept in the fridge until you're ready to put them to work. 

They go everywhere: pots, watering cans, hands, hair, and so on. 

But they also find their way to some actual plants. 

Hooray! 

Lucky for me, the second round of ladybug release took place while Catherine was visiting. She was initially resistant to participating, but once the ladybugs woke up, she took over and released them all. And I only found one ladybug in the house afterwards! Let that be a lesson to you: release ladybugs with a sister. 

Kittens inspired by kittens!

I'm having a very sleepy day. I think that's what I say every Sunday. Matilda is having a sleepy day, too. She's been basking in the sun. Basking and squinting and finding little sparkle balls every once in a while.

But while she's having such a lovely afternoon, a lot of kitties are in limbo. In fact, Matilda was once one of those kitties. She was rescued by Feline Friends and Kathy of Little Book and then came to live with me!


I'm mentioning all this because the The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee is currently participating in the Dog-A-Thon 2011 fundraiser for The Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County. Last year, the IBKC raised over $48,000 for cats and kittens. So exciting!


Here's what the IBKC has to say about their involvement in the Dog-A-Thon this year:


Even though it's called "Dog-A-Thon", all of the money raised by the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee Team will go directly to the cats and kittens. It will help fund the  foster and adoption programs, and go towards shelter improvements for the cats. It will fill the shelves of the emergency food bank and reduce the cost of spay and neuter surgeries for pets of lower income families. It will feed and provide medical care for tiny kittens, senior cats, and every cat in between.


We've donated two years in a row...just saying. You can click HERE to make a tax-deductible donation. Good karma for your kitties!

Squirrel World II

The squirrel has been up to no good in my recently planted plants. He (or she--I actually don't know) keeps digging little holes looking for the peanuts he thinks he's buried. Little does he know, when I was planting my plants I removed all the winter peanuts and tossed them in the yard. I think another squirrel picked them up. I know this because the other squirrel isn't as friendly as the first squirrel...the friendly squirrel that I, delightedly, coaxed onto my porch with peanuts.

Other squirrel

The friendly squirrel

OK, so this whole thing might be my fault. I tempted nature and now I'm getting my comeuppance. And that comeuppance is taking the form of exploratory peanut holes in my lettuce and lavender pots.

I am now withholding peanuts. Here's what that looks like.

I feel super guilty.