I neglected to mention that Friday was not actually my birthday. It was Tuesday, so here's some more birthday fun. I've always liked to dress up in general and on my birthday specifically, so here's my birthday outfit on a nice cool day in July:

Birthday quote of the year: "You're all deered out... except for that bat." (I wore deer earrings, a deer shirt, and antler barrettes... and a bat.)

We have a massive flea invasion in our house. Everyone, cats and humans, is at one another's throats from the stress of constant bites and itches. No one warned us that moving to the Pacific Northwest means a constant battle with these little vampires, so we were not prepared.

Nonetheless, when I read this week's Illustration Friday topic, the only thing I could think of was a flea circus flea on a unicycle. Fie on you, Imagination, for making my enemies cute!

So here he is, my shaky flea. Or perhaps the only shaky thing here is the tenuous grasp I hold on my sanity.

Kieran, the sweetie pie to end all sweetie pies, threw me a great birthday extravaganza yesterday. I woke up to this delightful package which contained this foresty goodness by Figs and Ginger:

Next up was lunch downtown. While roaming the streets, I spied a great display in a candy shop...

...which reminded me how badly I wanted to visit Leonidas Belgian Chocolates. Any candy shop named after a Spartan warrior is bound to be great.

And it was!

Afterwards, we spent some time in Washington park drinking bellinis, but my sweet tooth would not be quelled by peach nectar, so we made our way (our very long way, thanks to some tricky directions) to Pix Patisserie, where we enjoyed a tiny game of Scrabble...

...a very tiny game of Scrabble...

...and macarons! (Can you believe I lived a year in France and never once ate a macaron? I hadn't had créme brulée until a year or two ago either. How did ever did I manage??)

Thank you, Kieran, for making my day so sweet!

I made a clock! Who knew? It's for a show of artist clocks at Pony Club in downtown Portland. The opening is this Thursday, July 2. You can check out last year's clocks here. I can't wait to see what this year's artists have come up with!

Turning a digital print into a clock turned out to be a bigger challenge that I expected, but I'm really happy with the results. And now I'm off to the Pony Club to drop off my work.

I've been going through some of my dad's old photos lately in an effort to find some family photos for our walls.

I used to be a slightly creepy little girl.

Now I'm a slightly creepy adult. Ah, life...

This week, I have two drawings for Illustration Friday. My first one had something to do with hair drifting upwards or gravity drifting somewhere or something doing something. I like the drawing, but by the time it was done, it seemed like quite a stretch, so now it's simply named "Hair Bow".

I decided to figure out something that was a little tad more obvious for the theme, so I came up with this:

It makes me think of "drifting" out of my shoes at the end of a long day at work and wandering around the apartment barefoot while relaxing. Ahh... (Until, of course, I stumble across a hairball or other lovely present from the kitties.)

They're both a bit different from what I normally do, which is what I love about Illustration Friday. The prompts always spark an idea that is something new and that I have not done before, so I have to think a bit outside my little box to execute them. I often worry that new pieces will be too far from my regular style and thus will alienate the fan base I have built up over the years, but then I remember how vastly different Picasso's works were and settle on telling myself that I'm simply in my rose period.

And now I'm off to eat some (hopefully) delicious yak burgers that Kieran has prepared. I love the crazy foods you can find at the various Portland farmer's markets.

As soon as I read the topic for this week's Illustration Friday, I couldn't stop thinking about this creepy fuzzball doing a plie (which literally translates to folded) and grand jete.

Pant! Pant! What a week!

I wound up having to work overtime at the day job last week, and boy am I tired! At least I managed to catch up a bit today, and I have a ton of new button designs to share!

Splitting up the button designs into sets is one of my favorite parts. Some of them are obvious, and some are less so. I suppose it's just the obsessive compulsive disorder forcing me to enjoy organization. Or perhaps it's just a human instinct. Or maybe I just like things that look pretty together!

All of these sets will be available in the shop, which will be updated throughout the week. Plus, I hope to have magnets available soon. (If for no other reason than that I really need to get rid of my ugly plain refrigerator magnets. :)

I'm not too far on this embroidery, but it, and five more like it, will be done by the end of June. I really don't have much to say these days, but I'm toiling away on lots of little projects (and having a lot of fun doing so). For some reason, though, I don't seem to have the energy to talk about them. Even Kieran has no idea what it is that I'm doing.

P.S.: Does anyone know why red tends to look awful when saved for the Web? Frustrating considering the fact that it's my favorite color. (Well, okay, one of my seven favorite colors.)

A bear embroidery that did not go as planned.

MerShiim cards are back in stock.

What better way to show your appreciation than with a bee who has a note tied to his stinger? I jotted this fun little design in my sketchbook at work the other day, and I couldn't help but make thank you notes with it.

One of the most exciting things about making stationery and other paper goods is coming up with professional presentation. It makes me feel like a grown up artist.

This little buzzer is now available in my Bee's Knees shop.

I've had a blast these past few weeks coming up with crafty items to fill my Etsy shop, and I have quite a few more up my sleeve. In fact, seven new items are just waiting for their supplies to come in. They can hardly wait!

I hung the show at Coffee Plant today, and these are the last two "new" pieces I have included. I suppose I didn't feel like messing with any other paints, but I really enjoy working in monochromatic blue. There will be an opening at the shop on Tuesday, June 9 from 4:30 to 6:30, and I'd love to see you there. (Plus, they have great coffee!)

I made these a forever ago, but I never took photos. I've done that with a lot of things I've made, and it's a dreadful little habit I hope to drop. Working on that task has helped my Bee's Knees shop be much less lonesome, which is where these little sticklers now reside.

There are many uses for these stickers, but this is my favorite:

This long weekend with Caitlin has been a blast. We ran around enjoying tons of Portland activities, but the only time I actually got out the camera was at Multnomah Falls.

You can really see the family resemblance to Kieran:

After hiking the 1.1 miles all the way to the tippy top of the falls, we found a mysterious water nymph. Oh, wait, that's Caitlin's friend, Kelly. Oh, wait, Kelly is a mysterious water nymph.

We also found a troll, but he was camera shy and ducked under his bridge when he saw I was going to take his picture.

There was some sort of fuzzy green creature, but we only ever saw its tentacles.

From the top, there is a dizzying perspective of the ground 600 feet below. It's so hard to capture, since it hardy looks real in person.

Looking up, I realized we had somehow found our way onto the island from Lost. Luckily, we made it home in one piece, without even spoiling the ending of the fifth season.

What a wondrous state!

Starting a new embroidery is always so much fun, particularly when there are little soon-to-be-satin-stitched drips involved, and despite the fact that technically no embroidery has begun. Needlepoint is such a time-intensive undertaking, and it feels great to finish one project and begin the next. Ahh, thesense of accomplishment...

This does, of course, mean that another little stitchery has been completed, but there are still a couple more steps before she will be ready to greet the world.

I am curious if anyone can tell what this new image will be. Anybody care to hazard a guess?

In non-fiber news, Kieran's little sister is in town from St. Louis, and I have every day off until next Wednesday to spend exploring Portland with her. The goal is to convince her to move, and so far we've been fairly successful. Wish us luck!

I have decided once again to revisit my kitty dots, and this time it's nothing but fiber arts. I thought they'd make a cute embroidery, so I have added the pattern to my Bee's Knees Shop. Now I can't wait to stitch them up myself!

I have also made a new version of the polkadot fabric with kitties and uploaded it to Spoonflower. I can't wait until I get a chance to order yardage of some of my new fabrics. I get such a kick out of seeing my designs on a finished item like professionally printed fabric.

This image can also be used as a pattern tile for desktop wallpaper and the like.

I have a show at Coffee Plant coming up in two weeks. Rather than create new work for the show, I've decided to revisit some old work instead. I'm revamping all of my old original drawings (the ones I turned into digital prints) and coloring them with watercolors.

It's a really fun process. I can't possibly mess up, because, really, the originals are just "extra" in comparison to the prints.

Juggle:

Opinion:

Reptilian Halo:

I have six more to go, and I'm really enjoying myself. After that, it's back to embroidery, which I also enjoy. Finding a passion in life is just great, isn't it?

I made a bunch of shrink plastic top hat charms ages ago, but I never did anything with them. This morning, however, while cooking breakfast, I decided to finish them at last. Now, they are necklaces, and they reside in my Bee's Knees shop.

The best part is that I now know that the brass findings I used are nickel-free, so I can wear one of my creations as well.

I spun and baked yesterday. What a good little homesteading woman I am!

I filled my little flyer as far as it would go with wool purchased at the local farmers market. It's a bit scratchy, but oh so lovely!

It felt good to spin again after such a long hiatus. I need to purchase more roving and dye it. (When I told Kieran my plans, he insisted there was no reason I diet. He's so silly.)

The day also involved gingerbread press cookies. Who knew they made press cookie camel shapes? The recipe is one of my own invention, but it needs a bit of tweaking before I share it. More nutmeg should do the trick, I think. Oh, and molasses that didn't expire two years ago.

Nonetheless, they're tasty, and I'm happy to have homemade cookies in the house again.