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Seven for seven

August 6th, 2015

I can hardly believe it, but I’ve now lived in the Pacific Northwest for seven years.

In that time I’ve done my very best to see as much of the region as possible, and document it all in my sketchbook.

So in honor of seven years, here are seven sketchbook drawings—

—presented in no particular order—

—of some of my very favorte places

and moments

in the place I now call home.

Berry jamboree

July 15th, 2015

Because we’re having a record-hot summer this year, everything is coming into season early. And it’s all ripening at once, which made us look at the shelf of canning jars in panic.

But there was nothing for it but to dive in and start filling jars (and jars and jars).

For the first time in anybody’s memory around here, the height of the season has actually arrived by the time the official solstice declared it “summer.” And as if on cue, it’s summer around our house, too.

So it seemed fitting to take a break from the more pressing repairs on our new house and focus on rehabilitating the vintage 1950s brick grill in the back yard. The Tailor’s parents were here over the solstice, and he and his dad got the grill back into shipshape—and then re-christened it with some seriously good kabobs over the charcoal from some fragrant cedar logs.

And we’re not the only ones celebrating summer at our house: this gal has been a regular visitor all month (she’s helping us prune back our shrubs…and pilfering a few apples as payment). When we stepped out back to hang some laundry outdoors, though, we were startled to find her napping in the shade back there. She watched us put the sheets up on the line, and waited patiently for me to grab my camera.

I suspect she’ll demand some more apples from us pushovers after this—ah, well. We can put up garden fences next year—and buy our apples for this year’s canning.

Happy summer!

Proud day

June 26th, 2015

Babe Didrikson Zaharias and other LGBTQ public figures of her time didn’t have the option of living their lives they way they chose. But we think it’s a bit of poetic justice that the Supreme Court made their landmark decisions on all three LGBTQ cases (Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, United States v. Windsor in 2013, and Lawrence v. Texas in 2003) on June 26: Babe’s birthday. So since today is also the start of Pride Weekend, we’re dedicating this weekend to Babe—happy birthday, happy Pride!

Scenes from a weekend

May 25th, 2015

Hope yours was glorious!

Souvenirs of 35 years

May 18th, 2015

I have my tiny souvenir bottle of Mount Saint Helens ash sitting on my desk right now, as a reminder that it was thirty-five years ago today that the mountain erupted.

The event happened a year before I was born, so it’s not like I have personal memories of it—but Mt. St. Helens still crops up in my work now and again. It also shows up on the horizon from time to time—

—but not as frequently as you might think. It’s often in its own bank of clouds, so it’s not visible much, even when Mt. Rainier and the other volcanoes are out. In fact, I had never seen Mt. St. Helens up close (despite a few attempts) until ten days ago. With the anniversary of the eruption looming, I figured it was high time I remedied the situation. It just didn’t seem right that so far the only thing I’d seen in any detail was the gift shop.

Speaking of which… Normally I’d say that my sketchbook drawings are my best souvenirs, but I think in this case, there might be an exception:

Our “before and after” salt and pepper shakers, given to us by a geologist friend. I’m not gonna lie: there’s no way I could ever top these (er, no pun intended).

As another “souvenir” of today’s anniversary, I’ve got sketches of Mt. St. Helens from the past few years over on Drawn the Road Again. So go take a look—but head for high ground if you hear any rumbling!

Apple blossom time

May 16th, 2015

I took this photo of one of our apple trees a couple of weeks ago, when the blossoms were at their peak.

Now the tree just has a couple of blooms still hanging on—

—but if you look closely, it has other surprises in store.

In the pink

May 4th, 2015

The rhododendroon is the state flower of Washington, so it’s not like I’m not used to seeing them around town. But this pink monster, which practically dwarfs our neighbor’s house, is something else again.

Spring was never my favorite season before we moved to the Northwest (I’m more of an autumn gal in general), but what we lack here compared to the spectacular fall foliage of the East, we more than make up for with our spring color. I’m a convert—and reveling in all this gorgeous pink.

Shelf life

April 13th, 2015

You’ll have to excuse the grainy photos—snapping pictures in the basement is never ideal. But this shelf sure is—last week the Tailor built me an enormous inventory storage system, and over the weekend I finally organized my entire stock of stationery. It’s hard to see the scale here, but this monster is about 8 x 7 x 3 feet in size. (Not pictured: the giant metal print cabinets that haven’t arrived in the post yet, which will take up the rest of that whole wall.) I am one happy camper.

One of the pitfalls of manufacturing your own line of products is finding room to store the stuff you make. It’s only cost-effective to produce cards in quantities of 1000 or so—and when you multiply that by dozens of different items, you suddenly need a staggering amount of space for it all. For years I’d been limping along, sharing my workspace with my storage space, and making use of what little square footage I had by stashing items into shared boxes and then shifting and stacking and repacking those boxes endlessly. Every time I made a new product, I had to divide it amongst whatever nooks and crannies had a little space free. Reordering stock when it ran low was a nightmare, as I first had to check and make sure I didn’t have extra quantities hiding anywhere. More shifting and stacking and repacking ensued. And every time I did a live event, like a craft fair or Studio Tour, the prospect of taking everything out and putting it all back again made me want to tear my hair out.

So this, by comparison, feels downright luxurious. Now that we’re in the new house, I finally have separate spaces for working and storage. The studio (another work-in-progress, which is why I haven’t posted about it yet) is just for making things, and I have two annex spaces to house the things I make. For the first time ever, I can store the entire quantity of each item, and display every item for easy access. Now that it’s done, all I want to do is spend the day staring my new tiny OCD kingdom.

And best of all, there’s plenty of room to grow. I have big plans for the next few years, and not only can I see what sorts of things lie ahead—I can also see exactly where they’re all going to go.