The elements of a really good tea break include a warm piece of soda bread, strong cup of tea, extremely tired dog from weekend of hikes and camping, and the entire third season of Battlestar Galactica waiting to be watched. (I mean, not right now, but its something to look forward to.) Oh, and some light reading. Ahh.

We did a one night trip to French Beach in the Trillium (our 1973 lime green fiberglass trailer) to open the season. We were away almost exactly 24 hours, but it felt like a vacation. Yesterday friends of ours met us at the campsite and we went up to China Beach for a hike. Sam the dog had an Outward Bound wilderness trust experience, making his way over a metal-grate suspension bridge over a ravine, paws spread out and cautiously stepping paw by paw across the bridge. My brave dog! Back when we first got him, he was about a year and a half old, and he was afraid of a lot of things, including the hardwood floors at my mom’s house. We used to have to line up all the area rugs and floor mats so he could make his way from one end of the room to the other. Now he’s a west coast adventure dog!

I did a little playing with furniture finishes over the last couple of weeks, trying to pick up some new skills. This was sort of a distressed/aged finish, though its probably the kind of thing you’d apply to a door to make it look old and weathered, more than a chair. But I loved working with the layers of glaze. If you haven’t used it, glaze is this gooey, non-colored medium that you mix with other paint colors to get a translucent color. It stays workable for a long time, and you can texture it, or wipe it off, leaving traces of the color in the recesses of the grain. Or you can add subtle layers of color, making some areas of the finish look a bit darkened with age. Its pretty sweet.

I often have trouble making time for art & crafting projects, which is why I love my little sewn books. They are like little appetizers. So easy to play and experiment; just dip into the paper stash and go. No shopping required. No excuses. Just enough structure to let you get started without having to think your way out of having time to make something.

Some people keep their memories in journals and scrapbooks, but in my case they sometimes turn into journals and scrapbooks. A lot of my printing and collage experiments end up being returned to the stash to be incorporated into other projects, where they might come together with another scrap from another project from another time. These particular books use some of the materials from our wedding invitations — the linen book cord and the lokta paper.

I like the idea of storing the memories in the vessels themselves. It reminds me (obliquely, but it does) of that Steven Wright joke, where he says “I have an extensive collection of seashells, which I keep scattered on the beaches of the world.”

“Maybe you’ve seen it.”

Sometime last winter, or maybe early spring, the Victoria Public Library held a sale of old periodicals. I went in looking for some old style magazines, maybe some fashion or home magazines from the 30’s or 40’s, for inspiration. There wasn’t much of what I went looking for, but there was plenty of stuff we weren’t looking for, like these old Popular Science magazines from the 20’s and 30’s. Gary and I scooped up armloads of them and made two trips to the car. They are an amazing slice of life, just packed with articles and illustrations on what were the innovations of the day, all written up with that sense of the wonder of technology. Some of the covers are gorgeous. There are certain years where they did these beautiful richly colored poster-like covers, illustrations of planes, cars, and crazy inventions. Usually some kind of vehicle going fast or flying.

So, I’m pretending I’m just here, digging out this cover illustration, just because I really wanted to share something I found. And I do, but really, I’m just covering up for my total and utter lack of any projects. I can barely remember the last thing I made. Its receding in my mind like some train passing into the distance. Its getting so bad that sometimes I’m tempted to “fake” my blog. I’ll start thinking, hmmm, maybe I can pull out one of those collages from last spring and it will look like I’m making things . . . I know, I know, faking it is the opposite of what a crafting blog should be. But its just depressing not to ever have anything to show. Maybe the experiment isn’t working.

My whole motivation for this project — the blog — is to help me make crafting and making art a priority, to help me make time for it. The blog medium attracts me because its all about incremental progress. I don’t have to do everything at once, make everything now, learn all those skills and techniques now. I just have to do a little every day. Maybe not even every day, but the idea is just to keep taking steps. Because I’ll never do it by just thinking about it. And maybe in a year, in two years, I’ll be able to look back and see all the distance I’ve covered. Stitch by stitch by stitch.

I knew when I started this blog that I didn’t want to let it take away from my priorities. Time that I might have spent at my work table. Time that I would take out for friends and family. I’m not ready to bail out completely just yet. I’ve met some wonderful people here in Victoria through the blogging community, and I think its a great way for people with shared interests to find each other and network (in the real world as well as online). I’ve gotten a lot out of the craft blogging community and I still want to participate.

I’m forever amazed by people who manage to work, and have kids, and make things, and write about them on their blogs. I just don’t know how that is possible. Three out of four of those things seems like one or two too many. I’m think I just have to accept that for at least another couple of weeks, while work is in its busiest stretch, I’ll be keeping a pretty low profile around here. If I have extra time, I will try to spend it off the computer and at my work table, or grabbing a few extra minutes outside with a sketchbook. I’ll start a knitting project I can work on during bus rides and when I get home late. (The other day I saw a woman knitting while walking her dog; an option I hadn’t considered.) I’ll make jam, cook dinners, and have the neighbors over for a glass of wine. I’ll work in the garden in the evening while Sam watches for rabbits. I’ll try to notice September.

Starting new projects can be a slow and clumsy process. These are accordian books I made over the weekend, while working on an idea for a photo album/CD sleeve. Let’s say — just hypothetically — that a person was to take a whole mess of pictures at a family get-together and wanted to share the photos on a CD. But suppose said person wanted to send something a little more cosy and friendly than just a CD in a plastic sleeve. The idea is to create a little mini-photo album with a CD pocket in the back. These are still in process.

This one is just a regular accordian-fold book without the CD sleeve. Just something I wanted to work on, using some bits and pieces from my stash and some pages from a book I picked up on the “free” table at the library. Kind of a 3-D collage project.

I also worked on my card designs for the screenprinting project. I’m trying to work up at least a few print designs before I mix up my photo emulsion. I don’t want to have to throw away any expired emulsion, so the key will be to have a bunch of projects lined up and ready to go. Its slow going, though. Its hard to stay motivated when you’re working through some ideas that just aren’t really coming together. I just try to make incremental progress.

Meanwhile, in the garden, the peas are almost ready to eat. They are very active, twining their tendrils around the netting that has so far kept birds and bunnies out of our garden, climbing slowly but steadily. I guess that should inspire me, but instead I keep thinking I’m being outpaced by a vegetable.

Here’s one thing I love about the bus: the Monday morning treat. At first I bemoaned the lack of a regular direct bus route from my park and ride lot to the University. But that was before I discovered that I switch buses right in front of my neighbor Sam’s espresso bar, 2% jazz, on Douglas Street near Hillside. I have been off morning coffee for a while, and I have never been into lattes, but for some reason the first time I walked into the shop I ordered one, and it was amazingly good. I repeat: amazingly . . . good. Now I look forward to that peaceful Monday moment: get a cup in between buses and sip it in the cafe — from an actual mug. I’m planning to try every beverage they make at least once, because Sam really knows what he’s doing.

I rode the bus today with my new lunchbag prototype, now in beta-testing. I’m a bring-lunch-from-home girl, all the way. Since starting my job, I’ve been bringing my lunch in another bag I made last winter from a felted argyle sweater. It’s a simple tote-type bag, and its downside as a lunchbag is that its a little small and it doesn’t have any kind of closure. If I had a flap or some kind of way to close up the bag, I thought the felt might be insulating enough to keep my lunch cool for a while.

I’m still getting the hang of working with these big thick mats of felt, so I decided to work with one of my least-favorite felted sweaters which I wouldn’t cry over too much if it didn’t work out. I measured a couple of my lunch containers and designed a boxy bag with a flap to cover the top.

As far as function goes, it worked great today, but I must say I find it lacking in personality. Mr. Argyle up there is a lot more charming. When I collect enough retired wool sweaters and some snazzy lining fabrics, I’ll make a few of these for sale. Co-ordinating cloth napkins are a must! No more brown bags, people! Bring your lunch with style! I’ll see you at the microwave.

I am slower than molasses, but I finally finished a few of my mini memo books. First things first: behold my favorite turquoise button.

Its a fabric wrapper with a snap closure, flat pockets for your important tidbits of paper, and a decorative button. The notebook is made from thrift-store paper with end papers from my paper stash. The paper is sewn to a boxboard backing which inserts into the wrapper. When it is used up, you can take it out and put in a new one. Or you can just pull it out if you want to check what kind of cereal and crackers we eat around here.

More buttons, waiting to turn into new projects. I hope they are very patient.

I only squeezed in one morning of studio time last week, and worked on this collage using this map of the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh, my poor neglected work table! I haven’t spent much time there lately. Starting a new job has kept me busy, as well as good things like working outside in the yard and garden. I am eager to get back to this project. It’s my first “tweet” design. That’s what I’m calling the handmade items that I’m designing using re-used materials. This is a covered notebook with vintage fabrics and thrifted papers. More on that when I have a few finished pieces. Just a couple more busy work days to come, then I’ll be back at the work table.

I’ve been sketching some of the wildflowers and other ephemera of spring. I carved a speedycut block of an unfurling fern this morning. While inking the block, I noticed that it was just the right size to print as a repeating pattern by rolling the brayer over the block and then rolling it onto the paper. It made a nice scroll pattern, so I decided to layer that on top of some other imagery. Here’s a detail:

I’ve promised myself that posting to this blog won’t keep me from other important things, like enjoying the last of the evening outside. So that’s it for tonight — daylight’s fading!

I was doing a little sketching in the backyard recently when one of the resident Anna’s hummingbirds took up a perch in the quince bushes nearby. This one seems to be a juvenile that is still living at home, so to speak. We see him kicking back and relaxing in the quince like this a bit more often than his industrious parents ever do. He made a lovely picture sitting amidst the red-pink quince blossoms, so I did a few quick sketches and tried to etch the image in memory.

This print was my first attempt to use a new hand-printing block press I made. The mechanism is simple: just a base with a hinged strip of wood on one side. The block goes on the base, and the paper gets attached to the hinged strip of wood. My hope is that I will be able to use this little device to make nicely registered prints using linoleum and speedycut blocks. Once I get it working correctly, that is.

This first print of the Anna’s hummingbird was a reduction print: I printed it color-by-color from a single block, each time carving away the areas that I didn’t want to print on top of the previous colors. A good system is needed to keep the successive prints in registration with each other. This attempt was not a raging success as far as registration goes.

Still — just making something is the main thing. I tried a lot of variations: printing on different papers (mostly re-used from my paper stash) and over other prints. As is often the case, my favorite results are the accidental ones. The color layering and the texture of the block on different papers created a few lovely bits.