Headed Out to the Beach...

I am headed out to the beach for a quick mini vacation.

Its been a good week of lots of work, one class to teach, many pieces to make, a few big shipments to pack up, and today a whole lot of printing on glass. Phew. I am ready for a break. I've got a room booked at the beach, I am sure I will have lovely pictures when I return.

Today I had a nice walk home with Jan after printing, it was pouring rain when we got off the train at one point so we ducked into the Gothem tavern and had some snacks and drinks while the rain passed. I love the train tracks down by her studio on the waterfront. I believe they haul grain and whatnot from the big boats out on these tracks

I've been practicing on my Ukulele a lot. Its fun, sorta relaxing... I am trying to pick up some easy strumming rhythms while I learn some basic chords. Its a wonderful little orange instrument. Little Micah had fun playing it on Wednesday. We even got out my old Didgeridoo and played with that as well! Its been ages since I blew into that Didgeridoo (I made it 10 years ago when I was in Australia and it has so many stories attached to it of me hauling it around backpacking the 'land down under' and then FedExing it back to the states in a moment of sheer frustration and opportunity)

Anyhow, I digress - I am off to the beach and I'll be back to vend this weekend at the Portland Saturday Market!

Portland Farmers Market

Today I went to the farmers market! To be specific I went to the Montavilla Farmers Market and it was super cute and packed with happy people and their families. All of us there to stock up on healthy goods to fill our bellies.
As we drove down Stark St to the market I notice a cute older couple walking down the street carrying a big bag of produce, greens bursting out the top... the man and woman each held one side of the bag, walking along together splitting the burden of the market booty. It was so cute! And I knew I must be close to the market :)

Its the peak time of year for the farm stands. There is so much to mention! The crunchy sweet juicey bi-colored corn...

the peaches that were so incredibly perfect (who doesn't like a taste test!!)

the cherry tomatoes in colors that I didn't even know had been introduced into the realm of cherry tomatoes (I grow the little orange sun gold, but purple? that is new to me, and utterly delicious!)we bought some delicious goat cheese and a loaf of bread (Tim also got some sort of cinnamony potato donut for himself at the bakery while I was purchasing a flat of black berries to make into jam) and some green zebra tomatoes that we sliced up and had for brunch... sooo tastey

and I made the most amazing market salad:

• golden beets really thin (got to use my mandolin which sadly is a rarely used kitchen toy in my house)
• onions shaved thinly as well
• fresh basil (the bundle from the market was so huge! bigger than my plants I'm growing!) cherry tomatoes, both orange and purple :)
• olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper

and then later I made black berry jam with Maggie. We made jam and syrup... we had a LOT of berries!

Pictures of Mobiles

Pictures from my wonderful customers - Thank You Shawn and Joel! Looks great!

Twitter Fun at the PSM

My next door neighbor today at the Portland Saturday Market was talented artist photographer Verone Flood. While I was away taking a break from my booh she stepped in and got to play!

Its fun to know I am not the only one who likes taking pictures in my booth :)

I got home tonight and looked on Twitter and found these pictures in her Tweets.

Twitter fun - makes me smile!

Give-Away: FREE Glass Plate

Today I have been working and cleaning - my tools at home were in desperate need of organization and I happen to be home today... so its happened.

I like to organize things occasionally, I even own and operate a label gun :)

click here for a pictures of my tool organizing

But back to the FREE give-away fun! You can win these plates - they are glass, dishwashable, foodsafe... they were test experiments that Jan and I made earlier this year. The print on them is a hammer, its visible but a little strange... on one plate its yellow and the other plate has a blue hammer. We found this particular experiment ended up too "polka dotted" and not crisp at all... you can see the hammer print, but not as well as we wanted.

As we published in our LeJa Methods Booklet, some of our experiments were less satisfactory than others. If you are interested in our printing on glass techniques, this book is full of good information - one of the most useful parts of purchasing the little book from us is having all of our mistakes already done for you!

Experiments always lead to give-aways... so these plates need a home and I am sure someone will love them. Enter a comment here or tweet your entry - just make sure I can contact you if you win (I'll need you info so I can send them to you). Thanks a bunch for entering and be sure to pass the word along to your friends (there are two plates being given away here, so if you have a friend enter and they win, they could share the winnings with you!)

This give-away will end when I pick a random winner out of all the names submited by August 20th 2009

Work and Play

Yesterday was a great day of doing all sorts of stuff.
Jan and I went to Environments for the debut of our mobile in their wonderful space. I took so many pictures, all the Knoll furniture is strikingly beautiful (and they favor the color of bright red/orange, so I found just about everything really eye catching). This wall of textile samples was particularly enchanting. There was even a mini chair on a bookshelf.
I don't have time this morning to post more pictures of the Knoll furniture or the space, but I did upload some onto my flickr account so you can see them there. I can't leave out the pictures I took of this beautiful cocktail they were serving (click the picture to see two more shots, it was a pretty drink!):
After mingling a little bit, I stopped at both Jan's studio and the glass studio up in North Portland to get a bunch of work done. Making mobiles, cutting glass, attacking to-do lists and making plans... you know.... work :)

Then I went to my friend Naomi's and played around with her and some balls of thread and paper flowers (wedding decorations for her brother-in-law's nuptials which are tomorrow). I know its stressful creating things for a special event, but just jumping in and helping for a night was really fun! I enjoyed myself, and I took lots of pictures :)
What she is making are beautiful light features for the reception tables - string latterns covered in curls and pink flowers. Really these deserve a blog entry all in their own! They are so beautiful!

Origami a Day

Check out this origami frog that my brother made - I gave him a "Origami a Day" calendar this past Christmas... they are getting pretty complicated! I love this orange frog!