Isn't he cute! 

And this one, Silky, kept me up most of the night. She's very ill, I stood outside with her from about 4 am til about 7 am. It's a good thing I wear wool pajamas! 

You'd never know by looking at her but she really needs a bath! 

Possum Skull? 

Another shot of the skull, I think it's a Opossum. 

Some head gear, Dh found it on the ground while hunting this weekend. I suspect it was cut off the deer by some hunter that didn't want his buddies knowing he got a buck with that small of a rack! ;-) 

Angora Rabbits

This is why one should never go blog surfing: I want an angora bunny rabbit! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa It's a good thing I don't have space for them or I'd be online shopping right now. Bunnies are devilisly cute little critters, and angoras are like times ten on the cuteness scale. Little fluffy fuzz balls of cuteness!

My dad and my grandfather both raised rabbits, so I know of the work involved, and it's a lot of work. Angoras need constant grooming so they are even more work then the average rabbit. George, a greyish blue angora I had was a lot of work to maintain. But he was a cutie, I still have some of his hair, I should spin some up.

Here's a full lenght view of the yardage, there's about another half yard of fabric hanging off the furthest end of the table. The fabric gets darker, and the pattern more intense as it goes along the length.  

A piece of silk organza I have been working on. It's about 4 yards long and 54 inches wide. 

This is Trouble, a little boy squirrel that lives in my tree outside. When he's not living in the tree he's in my attic, because he has found a way into my house. For entertainment he drags my fabrics out of hte attic and pushes them into a particular gutter on our house, why I do not know. 

What you can't see about Trouble is that his face is really dirty right now, he has a huge glob of mud on the end of his nose. He's also quite aggitated for some reason, maybe it's the weather change, maybe it's the mud on his nose. But he sure is chatty today. 

The Big Stretch. Pepper enjoying the warmth of the sun. 

Pepper basking in the sunlight, or at least I think that's what the yellow thing in the sky is called! 

Wet Studio

It's almost done, and I can't tell you how much work this has been, holy cow! There's a saying, it's only going to get worse before it gets better, so true so so true. My table and counter tops are buried underneath so much stuff it's not even funny. But, this has given me an opportunity to purge like none other before, mostly because I want my stuff to have a place that's not on the floor.

And since I can't store the inventory for the business on the floor I'm being forced to get rid of a bunch of stuff. And that's exactly what it is too, stuff! Stuff I've picked up along the way for some errant technique I wanted to try, and decided I didn't like. So out with the old, and in with organization!

Next stop my studio closet, out with the office supplies and in with nicely and neatly organized fabrics! They are organized now, I just can't get to them. And about half of my fabric is in the attic anyway.

Now to find a place to store all of my fibers, I gotta find the stud finder so my husband can build the loft for my fleeces to live on.

There'll be more pictures later, right now I'm so tired I could care less.

I decided to add some color to my seeds and weeds altered page I was working on. It looks a lot better, the milkweed pods contrast nicely with the background. The monochromatic background, from before, was just too much. I have more adornments to add to the surface, and more treatements to add to the surface. the paper needs to dry at this point before I can add any additional inks or paint. 

It's Fixed!

It's fixed my Thermofax machine is fixed! Now I can make all of the screens I want, limited by size of course but still I'm way excited by the potential this machine offers. This also means I can go another year w/o having to build a light table for developing screens the traditional way.

And she has the counter filled with stuff already! I found a bunch of little mini pails I bought last year on clearance, for a quarter each at Target, to put my brushes and stuff into. It looks loads better than the old plastic ice cream containers I was using. 

New counter tops looking east to west. I will paint the base the counter sits on later this evening. Yes I know it would have been easier to paint it "before" the counter top was installed but we won't go there today. the shelves are a blond wood type material that we salvaged from a dumpster, they won't be painted. I'm thinking of painting the base legs green, or some other interesting color other than white! 

View of new counter and shelves going west to east.  

New Wet Studio

Well almost! I decided to not paint the floor at this time, I'll work on that later this spring when I can have the windows open, oil paint is not a good thing to be inhaling and the floor paint is oil based. I still need to paint the base of the counter, I'm using latex for that.

The counters are in, as of 11:05 pm last night! I'm so excited it's hard to focus on work when I'd rather be cleaning and arranging my new space. It's nice to have access to all of my brushes and tools. I've decided to lose all of the plastic containers my brushes live in and am using flower pots and old this and that that I'm finding around the house. Like the glass salt jar that never had a lid. The flower pots I have more than plenty of that are sitting around empty.

My biggest hurdle is remembering to leave enough space on the counter top for the computer moniter and the microwave. I dye silk fibers, with natural dyes, in the microwave and have one that's dedicated for dyeing only.

I've also decided to do some purging in both studios, and the house. I have lots of stuff I've been hanging onto that will never get used in that "special project". Most of it needs to be pitched, the rest needs to be sorted through and reorganized.
I'm taking the office stuff out of my design studio closet and putting it in another room, the result is a lot of shelf space to lay my fabrics out onto, all sorted by type and then by color. Ditto for the yarns and fibers, they will all end up in baskets, instead of hidden inside of boxes.

Corner braces to beef up the counter base 

Shelves on the north wall behind the saw. 

More shelves and cabinets, I guess I'm in remodeling mode or something. The shelves with crates to the left are my natural dye supplies, ditto for the stuff in front to the right-ish. I'm thinking a rod suspended from the ceiling with shower curtain hooks and some yardage to act as one big moving curtain. Allowing me to hide it so I don't have to be distracted by everything, another issue I struggle with - easily distracted by stuff. 

Wet Studio Redoux

The north wall of my wet studio comprises about 10 feet of commerical sink and an apartment sized stove, then there's the door and another 13 feet or so of floor to ceiling shelving that are laden with crates, the plastic variety. I'm tired of looking at them! The do NOT inspire creativity in the least.

So I'm thinking a curtain would be in order. Ditto for under the new countertops that are going in, no cabinets I asked for shelves instead to store large bulky items on, that refuse to live in cabintes due to their awkward sizes and shapes. The shelves/cabinets overhead need some help and desperately. I'm thinking paint, and lots of it at that, and some of that paper lace edging stuff.

I'm a country cottage girl at heart, lots of plants and nature.

More shelves, and I know I have no business whining as most artists don't even have a studio let alone one this big but... 

More shelves, these last three pics plus the pic in the archives are all attached and are about 26 feet in lenght total. That's a lot of ugly wood to look at! 

Shelf delimma, the edges are too hard, and I'm thinking of painting the exposed wood green, a planty mossy kind of green!!! 

My thermofax machine, it needs the belt replaced and badly! I bought it three years ago for $5.00 US from a local school. The belt was melted through, I bought a replacement belt from Welsh Products but can't figure out how to get it on the machine! Any ideas??? 

The serial number so you know what model I'm working with. 

the inside of my thermofax, it needs a belt