Henna absence - noooooooo!

Well, everyone, it had to happen sooner or later.

This coming weekend is the July Mosey Down Main Street, and I will be in Wisconsin. I am disappointed about this because the Moseys are so much fun (and I get money and everything!), but the Wisconsin thing has been in the works for months, so...

The August Mosey is iffy for me right now, because I'll be on my way back from Pennsylvania, and might not get back in any shape to do henna, much less in time.

The September Mosey is opposite Global Fest, held at the Morton Community Center, and you can bet your sweet bippy I'll be over there instead. Last year was crazy, and I'm not about to miss this year's.

However, you can look for me at the Farmer's Market tomorrow in my shiny new EZ-Up shelter. It's definitely built to be sturdier than the last one, and hopefully less prone to wind damage. I have a brand new batch of henna waiting for test subjects, I mean clients. The test patches I did on myself look very, very promising.

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Embroidery is happening. I'm doing tree trunks at the moment, trying to get all the boring neutral colors out of the way so I can start putting in some greens and reds and fun stuff like that.

At the moment, the embroidery is even more fun than usual, because The Husband has a small project he is working on, as well. It's a gift, so I can't talk about it more than that, but it's nice to have something that we can sit down and do together. When we're on the computer, we're usually not facing one another, much less talking while we do our separate things. With this, we keep up conversation and show off our work and all that.

Embroidery as marital aid... I can just see someone writing up an Expert BS Article on that.

I'm considering getting or making some kind of peg-board just so I can display all the embroidery thread skeins I have, up on the wall where they'd kind of count as decor, and add some color to a fairly bland space. I haven't cleared space to work in the studio in too long, and it shows.

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I recently rediscovered my mind-mapping account over on bubbl.us (no "e") and I've been trying to use it to get a handle on my life. Probably the project management apps at either TaskWriter or Todoist would work better for that, but I like the pretty colors at Bubbl.us.

Of course, this also keeps me from "having the time" (oh darn) for data entry or actually working on the projects that the apps are supposed to be helping me manage... hmm.

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Watch this space for henna "brochures" that I hope to keep permanently accessible via the category tags on this page. You should just be able to click on "info" or "brochure" or whatever and get the main information about booking me, about henna body art in general, and about henna safety.

"Safety?" I hear you say. "I didn't know henna had a safety concern!"

So, to keep you from freaking out, here is the short version:

Public Service Announcement: If anyone is trying to sell you "black henna", say NO. At best, you're looking at a mix of henna and indigo, but it's much more likely that you're looking at black hair dye. Hair dye is not intended for use on bare skin, and it can leave scars. If you really want to see some good gross-out photos, you can follow this link, but you might prefer taking my word for it.

I do not, have not, and will never use anything other than pure henna powder, along with other safe ingredients. Feel free to ask me for my ingredient list, anytime, or to request a special batch made without a particular ingredient (ie, without lemon juice, or without a specific essential oil to which you are allergic).

Anyway, there's more information on safety that I will include in the brochure, but those are the basics. It occurred to me that if I mentioned safety, I'd better clarify or people would freak out.

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The flowers that I got from the hardware store? Some of them we got for a quarter because they were teeny, scraggly things and the lady just wanted to get rid of them. Yeah, they're blooming now. This makes me happy.

Till next time, y'all.

Still here, still ... here...

In case any readers were wondering if this blog was still updated - it is; I just have been have some problems with motivation lately, and haven't felt like I was doing anything to really crow about.

I've gotten some good henna fun in at the Farmer's Market, the downtown Mosey Down Main Street, and most recently at my kid's preschool/daycare, where I slapped some henna down on about 40-45 kids plus their teachers, while trying to provide about 30 seconds' worth of education. I've been able to make credit card payments for a change, which is making me happy. The data entry is so hard to keep myself motivated to do, even with the post-it note on my monitor telling me how much I still owe on the card.

Within the next week or two, I'm going to be creating a kind of brochure that I will keep available here on the blog for potential customers to look over - just check out the categories section, where it will be labeled as conspicuously as I can make it.

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Completely unrelated to anything, I have a new imaginary friend. I say "imaginary friend" because it sounds so much nicer than "stalker-like obsession"... see, my imaginary friend looks and sounds JUST like Robert Downey, Jr., though I'm willing to bet that the imaginary version and the actual living breathing guy don't have all that much else in common.

Has anyone else noticed the trailer for the Sherlock Holmes movie, coming out Christmas Day, which just happens to star Downey in the lead role? Complete coincidence, I swear. Also, it's cruel to tease me with a movie I really want to see, that is more than six months away - which it was, when the trailer first came out. Big meanieheads, anyway.

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I want to take a brief moment to put in a plug for Uniquely Yours pottery and glass studio, over on the east side of town. I'd been doing a lot of stuff over at All Fired Up before the shop changed ownership, and now I find that Uniquely Yours has the more nifty atmosphere; they have a few things you can do there that All Fired Up doesn't offer (so far as I know), plus a little kids area where you can chuck the little ones if they're not interested in painting with you. They'll even play DVDs for the kids if you bring something in.

Anyway, the kid and I have been in there now and checked it out, and I have a piece on display, which should surprise no one. I love to paint the stuff, my ego enjoys having it on display, and this way I don't have to bring it home into my already-cluttered house. Wins all around.

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That's it for the time being; I have an appointment for later this evening to sling some more henna, and as long as the weather holds I'll be at the Farmer's Market tomorrow and every Wednesday. Hope to see you all there, especially my growing base of regular customers - you all make me happy every time I see you.

Cheers!

Henna days are here again

In brief:

Mosey Down Main Street was a success as always - this time I had a goal to earn enough to cover my booth fees for the west-side Farmer's Market season, and I met it with lunch money to spare.  I'll be at every Mosey with decent weather, so far as I know, and I'm working right now with TAF to see about getting included in the Gallery Walks, and possibly even the Taste of Tippecanoe.

As for the Farmer's Market, I got the contract approved yesterday within ten minutes of submitting it, so it looks like I will be setting up tomorrow.  Looking forward to seeing people there!

Also, I got a phone call from the organizer of Global Fest, and as soon as she introduced herself I said, "Hi there, I'm in!"  But she was still talking, so I had to wait for her to actually reach the part where she, y'know, asked me if I wanted to be part of the festival again this year.  Then I repeated myself.  Heh.  Mutual happiness all around.

I'm sleepy, and have other things to take care of, but I wanted to at least post this much.  For those of you who would like more frequent updates, please consider "following" and/or subscribing to my Twitter account.

Cheers, and see you tomorrow.

Gosh golly, I'm so tech-savvy...

I've noticed that I often want to update my blog even though I have very little to actually say (maybe I should become a politician...?) I've also noticed that the only way to keep Facebook from eating my life was to subscribe to a feed that just shows my friends' status updates. It's looking like short-and-sweet messages just work well for me.

So yeah, I went ahead and put up an account on Twitter, and yeah, it's linked to this blog, over there on your right. I'm wondering if the "tweets" will show as updates to the blog or not, 'cause if they do, you could be notified when I update. That assumes you don't have a Twitter account and don't want one, 'cause otherwise you could just follow me there.

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Embroidery is progressing. Maybe when I unbury the scanner (currently there's a box of data entry work on it) I'll get some pictures in for y'all.

And, as the first tweet says, flower seeds have pretty colors on them. One packet is more expensive than one skein of thread, but you get lots more flowers once they sprout, and if you buy perennials, they're the gift that keeps on giving!

Speaking of flowers... Note to self: it was a mistake showing the kiddo how to blow the fluff off of dandelions last year. Our yard is now very, very well populated with pretty yellow flowers. Man, those things are fertile little buggers. Supposedly their roots produce a purple dye - this may be enough incentive to get me out there with a spade (but probably not).

Kid and I went to the local greenhouse for the first time today. She thought it was great, right up until the roof dripped on her nose and startled her. We now own a snapdragon start -- any flower that you can squeeze and make it go "roar" is automatically COOL -- along with the fennel I was looking for, and some delphinium seeds that I wasn't. Couldn't find the darn Maximillian sunflower seeds, though. This is getting frustrating.

Good news, bad news

The good news - the wimple and veil were almost completed....
bad news - in the wrong colors.

The good news - I apparently know how to make my stitches good and solid and secure...
bad news - which makes them a royal pain to pick back out.

*sigh*

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Now taking suggestions for a domain name and website ideas... I think I'm going to take the good folks at Mobiuz up on their offer, once I figure out what sort of site I want to build.

New residents, new opportunities

Yeah, okay, this has nothing to do with my creative endeavors, but everything to do with beauty, so...

Our housing addition has a pond. I don't know how far I can go to call it a habitat, since they mow down to the water's edge and treat the water to counteract all the lawn chemicals that wash in and cause algae blooms, but still. Pond, fish, frogs, and drop-in visits from ducks, geese, and about every other year a family of muskrats takes up residence in one of the culverts and starts undermining the bank.

Well, we also get great blue herons, one of my favorite birds. Last year a really HUGE one got his foot caught in a muskrat trap - I know this because I was the one who noticed he'd been in the same spot all day, and got close enough to confirm how badly he was stuck.

This year it's either a different heron, or he was immature last year and has come into his full color this year, because he is spectacular. All the pictures you see with the shiny white head, black streak across the eye, kind of shaggy feathers on the throat and chest?... This particular bird looks like he has a sideline modeling for the Audobon calendar.

Yesterday and today, for the first time, I've seen a kingfisher in the area. Yesterday he was on a wire about a mile off, along the route I drive to take the kiddo to preschool. This morning he was sitting on the culvert at the pond. Yes, the same one that the muskrats like so well.

I'm going to miss the house swallows this year, though; they were living in a mailbox just across the street from the pond, and for some reason the homeowner wasn't too happy about that. Barn swallows are this really rich midnight blue with orange chest and bellies; house swallows are an equally rich deep teal-green, with white chest and bellies. I'd never seen them before last year, but in the fall the guy took down his mailbox and replaced it with something harder for birds to set up housekeeping in.

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At the event where I taught the henna class, I also proved once again that I needed a chaperone anytime there is colored thread around. But they were five skeins for a dollar, and how can you pass up a deal like that?

Things are actually progressing with the embroidery thing. I'm outlining the lady's wimple and veil right now. You might recall a griffin I mentioned doing in Bayeux stitch; I gave it to a friend of mine whose "kingdom" emblem is a gryphon, and she said it would probably end up being part of the front panel for an early-period gown. Cool. Probably I should ask her to send me a picture of it, since I never thought to take one.

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When you're clinically depressed, it's too easy to fall into the trap of struggling to be "happy" as the opposite of "sad." Thing is, happiness comes in moments and snippets. A guy I know describes it as the butterfly landing on your shoulder - beautiful, but impossible to try and keep around. What is better, according to my counselor and my college memories, is the idea of "peace" as the opposite of "suffering". So I've been checking in with myself yesterday and today, asking what feels peaceful to me, what brings me contentment, that kind of thing.

Or, as a great many sources of wisdom like to say, "Pain is; suffering is optional." Another way it gets phrased is, of course, "shit happens"... it's how you handle the shit that determines, oh, pretty much everything.

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Had an email out of the blue (heh - out of the ether (I'm so clever)) from a guy who wants to host a web domain and site for me, for free, simply because he likes to assist artists and the arts. Sadly, I keep finding myself trying to examine the horse's teeth, just because it's been awhile since something like this has dropped into my lap without conscious effort on my part. All I did was leave some business cards somewhere and the guy found one.

Also, I have no freaking idea what domain name to pick. Just my name isn't very catchy, nor does it describe what I do... but like this blog, I do a lot more than just henna, even if that's the only art I'm making money with at the moment.

Hmmmm... suggestions welcome, both serious and otherwise.

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Anyone know how to repair a stepping stone that has cracked into four pieces, just from having a three-year-old walk on it? This was the one I discovered had poorly mixed concrete, and was crumbling around the edges and all that.

I'd really rather not redo the mosaic from scratch, nor "recycle" the thing by chipping each piece of glass out of the broken sections to rebuild into another stone. Even though that probably would be both faster and the wiser course to take. That damn thing took me about a year to finally finish; I really don't want to dork with it anymore if I can help it.

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I think I'm on an upswing emotionally; I can tell I'm improving when my brain starts providing me with song lyrics without my asking. Today it was "Beer Run" while at the cashier, paying with a $10 and getting back a $5. If you've never heard the song, try to imagine a nice hillbilly twang and someone going "yee-ha" in the background. It doesn't have a banjo, but it should.

B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Run,
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beeeer, Ru-un,
All we need is a ten and a fiver
A car and a key and a so-ber dri-ver
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Runnnn.

Not sure who wrote it, but it plays on Bob and Tom every now and again, so I guess it qualifies as their contribution to American culture.

I will continue to agree with Steve Martin's (very old) assertion that it is impossible to remain unhappy when a banjo is playing. 'Course, at the time I'm sure he'd never heard Bela Fleck playing BACH on banjo... which would only serve to confirm, reinforce, and utterly and competely prove the point.

Bits and Pieces

Had a private henna appointment not too long ago, which was nice. I really need to thank the Java Roaster, a local coffee shop, for being so relaxed about my bringing clients there. The house is pretty much never in a state where I feel comfortable bringing people here, and coffee shops make for a nice atmosphere, so...

Taught a sort of "Henna 101" class this past weekend at our local SCA event. It's funny - I have street cred in the Society as a scribe, and all my henna experience is completely outside that hobby, yet my scribe classes in the past have never drawn more than two people, while the henna class had five or six.

The embroidery thing is progressing, slowly, but it is progressing. I'm just happy to be finished with outlining things in black, and able to move on to the colors.

There hasn't been much else happening in my creative world lately; looking forward to the Farmer's Market season in a few weeks, need to get my contract and booth fee in, NOT looking forward to using the damaged pop-up from last season. I really need to get out of the house, though, and this is my best way to do it.