Featured on the Etsy Blog!

blue bird embroidery, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

I love waking up to good news! My little blue bird kit was featured in the Etsy Finds email and on The Storque yesterday. Thanks Etsy!

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Things are winding down here in Emilyland! Tonight I am having a group of friends over to help me with all the last minute kit assembly. After that, I just need to pack everything up, and I'll be ready for Urban Craft Uprising this weekend! Hope to see you there!

Boxes! And July!

boxes all stacked and ready to go, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

Urban Craft Uprising is just one week away! I am a little stressed, but things are going well over here in Emilyland. This morning Ben stamped and stickered 100 boxes for the new kits!

My to do list is still pretty long, so unfortunately I will not be partaking in July 4th bbq festivities this year. But, I am planning on making cole slaw, and enjoying it over here in the studio. Liz and Brutus are going to join me, and we will have a grand ol time enjoying our cole slaw and fiber craft.

Have I mentioned that Brutus is the cutest little winker ever? No? Judge for yourself:


Happy July!

*** if you are available this week, and would like to help with last minute assembly, do let me know! I will feed you and give you drinks!

Meet my husband

What!, originally uploaded by benjaminjaybaier.

Please meet my husband, Ben!

Now that you have seen this picture, you know exactly what he is like.

pasta salad

pasta salad, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

Today is the first REAL day of summer... the first day of our CSA! A CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a super awesome way to support local farms and have a bounty of fresh, wonderful fruits and veggies all summer long. We get our CSA through Helsing Junction Farms, and I have never been disappointed! (This is our 4th year getting a CSA through them.)
Ben and I split a large CSA box with my parents, and every week we have almost more than we can eat. We also get a mushroom share through Provisions Mushrooms that comes with our CSA box each week. This week we got a crazy MEGA MUSHROOM!

Look at that thing! It is called a Lions Mane mushroom. It is very squishy. We fried it up with some other mushrooms and put it in our delicious pasta salad that we had for dinner. Yum!

I am a huge fan of pasta salad. It is filling and refreshing. I can't think of a better summer dinner!

This particular pasta salad was made with:
Bowtie pastas
Pink radishes
Garlic Scapes
A little bit of leftover salami
Big crazy mushroom as well as shitake and crimini mushrooms
Poppy seed vinaigrette (from scratch)
Served on Arugula

This pasta salad was served with my recent alcoholic beverage of choice, white wine spritzer!

yum yum!

little sneak preview!

little sneak preview!, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

So the summer Urban Craft Uprising is coming up... so I am hard at work making some new kits! I am super excited about these two new birdy kits! They are about the same size as the blue bird and the red bird.
I am having such fun drawing these birds that I may make even MORE birds! Ahhh... a whole wall of embroidered birds, in every color of the rainbow! Sounds AMAZING to me!

Here is another brand NEW design that I am making a screen of... 2 little bears in love!



(Sorry for the crappy photo quality, its a just a quick phone snapshot of the negative I will be using to make the silkscreen stencil.)

This one is going to be a beginners kit. It will not have much stitching on it, but will be a good, small kit for anyone who wants a quick easy project. I am so excited to start stitching the sample for this guy.

I hope you are having a lovely June so far!

sketchbook

bear, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

I drew this lovely little guy when I was working at the art store, in my sketchbook. I do like him very much. I can't decide if he is talking, singing, or shooting water out of his mouth!

The little loopy bits were drawn on with masking fluid first. I let them dry then painted over them, and then gently rubbed to reveal the white underneath. Masking fluid is your friend!

BUSY CRAFT TIME!

knitting, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

I am SO BUSY with crafts right now! I am in 2 awesome swaps on Ravelry (you do know about Ravelry, right??) and on top of that, I have 100 things to do for the Urban Craft Uprising show in July!

I am also working on the album art for Brian Vogan's childrens album. It is coming along so well. I can't wait to show it to ya'll!

See you in a few weeks...

Vacation

Newport May 2010, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

I don't go on vacation enough. But I take a lot of days off. I need to stop taking so many days off and just do it all in one big swoop. Because 4 days away? Totally not enough. Especially when 2 of those days involved driving for 6 hours!
Our family went to Newport, Oregon for a long weekend, and it was quite lovely. The house we stayed in was up on a hill, and we had a lovely view of the Pacific. We drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of seafood. I suppose those types of vacations are the best, where you don't really have anything to do in particular, and can just zone out and relax.
I had a lot of thinking time on this trip, and a lot of it was prompted by the book The Secret Language of Birthdays. Have you ever read that book, or looked up your birthday in it? Of course, I realize that what they write is somewhat general, and if you believe in it you can twist the words to make it sound just like you. But really. My birthday was EXACTLY ME. So much, that it made me realize what kind of person I am. Ben's was also EXACTLY LIKE HIM.
The birthday book told me that people born on my day have extremely high standards (that sure does explain a lot) and the thing that I didn't realize was me until the other day: they expect SO MUCH more from the people around them, and especially expect so much more from themselves. Perfectionism within my crazy standards. Have any of you fine readers experienced me while I am working on a project and the deadline is approaching? Or dealt with one of my freak outs as I work on something creative for someone else, and it JUST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH EVER?!? Now that I realize that this is me, that I am like this, I feel like I can control it a little more. And I will make an effort to accept the imperfections in life as wonderful things that make us all different and unique. And perhaps I will not need to push myself so hard on the small things that really, really, don't matter all that much.

fresh eggs

fresh eggs, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

fresh eggs are the best! I am lucky to be related to family that has chickens. Fresh eggs taste DELICIOUS, and its good to know that the chickens were treated right and good!

In this particular batch of eggs, there was a HUGE EGG! Way bigger than any normal egg!



LOOK at that monster! Of course, Ben and I ate it. We made scrambled eggs with it. When we cracked it open...



DOUBLE EGG!

2nd wedding anniversary

2nd wedding anniversary, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

Ben and I have been married for 2 years today. He is the best thing to ever happen to me. He is my dearest love and my best inspiration.
We were talking a little bit about our wedding this morning and how great it was. It was miraculously sunny and beautiful out, and there was NO parking at Golden Gardens (but luckily our friends saved us a parking space so we were not late) and we wrote our vows on scraps of paper while stuck in traffic on the way to the beach.
We realized that before we know it, we'll be looking back and it will be a lot of years, and i just can't wait to experience all that time with him. I can't wait for the rest of our lives! I want to know what happens!
Now the internet knows that I LOVE YOU BEN!

errol

errol, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

just wanted to share my favorite picture of my favorite little boy :)

Nature Party

Nature Party, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

and... ta-da! Here is the finished piece! It made it to Portland, Oregon just in time for the show. (THANK YOU KIM!!!!)

I am so super happy with the finished piece, and I am looking forward to making more!!

New Work

in progress embroidery for Portland show, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

I am super excited to tell you about a new body of work I have been doing! This is a little sneak peak - the in progress shot of a piece I am doing for a show in Portland.
I am using acrylic paints and the glorious Golden fabric painting medium, and then embroidering over the paintings. I think its such a great direction for me to go in. It takes the best of my resin/gouache/acrylic paintings, the subjects on my prints, and my love of embroidery all into account. I have 4 or 5 pieces underway right now, and I haven't been this excited about a piece of artwork in a long time.
I finished and framed this piece earlier this week (with the super awesome emergency help of my friend Kim!), and sent it away to Portland. This will be the first time I am showing one of these pieces, and I am very anxious to find out what people will think of them!
I can't wait to show ya'll (yep, all 2 of you that read this) the others I am working on!
Have a happy weekend! It is supposed to be 70 degrees here in Seattle, on the first day of March! Thats crazy!

knitting

knitting, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

hello!

I've been very busy creating lately. knitting, embroidering, painting,cleaning, loving.

sewing

hand sewing the sleeve lining, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

I've been busy lately!
I've been sewing instead of working on embroidery stuff!
I am very excited to finally get this coat done, so I can wear it all the time!

That's really all I have to say at the moment...

cleaning the messy studio...

cleaning the messy studio..., originally uploaded by maybeemily.

the studio is SO MESSY right now. I cant do any work. The only blank spot is where Liz has been sewing. Whenever I come in here I pick like one thing up and then RUN AWAY!!!! (to upstairs, where I mess up my mothers sewing room.)

How do ya'll keep your workspaces clean? I think I have a problem. Oh my god. Who wants to help me clean? seriously. I don't think I can do it myself.

Sparkly Pants

We Wrote The Book on Connectors and Discs of Fury, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

For the past week, Hollie and I had been spending our evenings sewing 3 sets of silver lame hammer pants, sequined muscle-tees with lightening bolt appliques, and stretchy wristbands. It was really frustrating at times: these fabrics are incredibly hard to work with, the glue securing the faux sequins to the fabric kept on gumming up our sewing machines. We had draft the muscle tee patterns ourselves, because apparently nobody else in the world has any interest in making them, so there are no patterns available commercially. We finished these glorious costumes just in time...

But, it was all worth it. Last weekend we had the pleasure of seeing Discs of Fury and We Wrote The Book on Connectors play the BEST SHOW EVER. The sparkly costumes (which were worn by WE, as they were playing the Captains of the Future) were incredible on stage.

If you have never seen Discs of Fury, then part of your life has not been fulfilled. It is the most epic, most exciting, most geeky, most incredibly show I have ever seen in my life. I have seen them twice, and they have completely BLOWN MY MIND both times. I was super excited that I got to participate (in some small way...) this time.

Here is a video of them from last year, doing the awesome song "Blades in the Night" :



Also, I have a huge crush on Marvin Lazer. But really, who doesn't?

au natural

grass, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

Ben and I went on a very long walk today, and it was very lovely. Thats all!

Featured on Etsy!

Yay! My Red Fancy Bird was featured on The Storque (the Etsy blog) today!

Super awesome!

Oh my gosh, EVERYTHING featured in the article is AMAZING. Check out these knitted earmuffs, this awesome apple ukelele, and MAKE YOUR OWN CHEESE!

This is why I love "the handmade life." Everyone in the world is so darn creative. It is amazingly inspiring.

Suddenly!

cat owl guy, originally uploaded by maybeemily.

Please meet cat-owl guy! I made him to add to the secret santa present that I made for Hollie. He is good luck! As soon as I made him, I started having all kinds of good luck. He is filled with good luck pennies to keep him standing upright, and its rubbing off for me, I hope it works for Hollie too!

I have had a sudden burst of creativity the past few days. I have wanted to paint and draw and print and sew and knit and everything! Its nice after the creativity drought I was having during December.
I am using this creative streak wisely, however. I am putting a lot of energy towards my friends Kim and Jayme's website, which is already shaping up to look awesome. I can't wait to show it to ya'll! I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the month, possibly with some fancy flash stuff to follow.

Also, I have completed task #1 on my to do list, and will be starting my awesome new job in 2 weeks! Hooray! The best thing about it is that I can walk there from my house! So hopefully that will help with task #5 (losing weight).

Yeah January! You are very good so far!