i found a bag of airport, government and various municiple toy vehicles at goodwill. i peeled off the decals of the now-defunct airline, grabbed up some sharpies and went to town.

now when i put on arrested development, i can play too! wanna hop on?

what is in these chips
that i’d cheapen my blog with
snack food poetry?

“you know what i’ll do? see, i’ll go ahead and take a series of about 400 photos of myself with my computer, see… it’ll be great because it’ll show me, like, as i really am. you know, i’ll do some homework to show my smarts, and i’ll take a couple with my childhood sloth bear, gleep glop, to show how sensitive i am. did you know gleep glop survived 2 house fires and a tar spill? i know, you’d never be able to tell. anyway, you know, also i’ll get me a giant piece of fruit or something because i’ll be hungry but also it shows that i’m just a man and i have my needs plus i saw somewhere they said fruit is sensual and i’m all about that and then… OH!! i TOTALLY have to wear my blue t shirt. you know, that blue tshirt that looks so great on me!? this plan is COMPLETELY coming together.”

oh, but there’s more: clicky.

the unfailingly awesome sister diane wrote a great book review of “the pocket paper engineer” on her endlessly engaging craftypod blog yesterday. even cooler, she includes a bunch of great links to other inspirational destinations for people proactively pursuing pop ups. (i ♥ alliteration.)

did you know that sesame street debuted on my birthday, the year before i was born? that show was a big deal for my family. i have audio tapes of my dad coaching me to repeat things into the mic. he prompts:

“say ‘hi grandma.’ now say ‘i love you.’ don’t forget to say hi to grandpa. tell him to ‘send us cash.’ now what do you want to say to mr. hooper?”

my dad died two years ago today and i have to say, i don’t like it. i still feel like a part of my physical being has been severed and the empty space hurts really bad.

the worst part is the unsettling continuing shock. when it first happened, i was horrified of course, but there’s all of the in-the-moment stuff that you have to go through – travel, funeral, headstone… somehow, when all the tradition and ceremony ends, you know you’ve been through a hard time and there’s a finished feeling.

it was really then that the enormity of “forever” started to bitch slap me around, and it hasn’t stopped since. it’s funny to me that somewhere inside, i forgot that the funeral was only the end of the beginning of the loss of him. i still find myself thinking “wait… wait a second… you mean, NEVER?” and it aches deeper than anything i’ve ever felt.

mr. hooper died too, back in the day. here’s the clip of the cast explaining the permanence of death to big bird. it makes me sob, but it helps too. (btw, it starts with hilariously dated political chit chat between the adults.)

we both believed in “because” and finality, but he was a whimsical, imaginative guy. i used to archive some of the best emails i got from him. his death was a surprise, but coincidentally, this is the last email from him that i saved:

Considering where this nutty world is going, I have decided to come back in my next life as a Monarch butterfly, providing I can keep coming back each birth cycle. I will look beautiful. I will be able to travel. I love to fly and I will have many many good friends…we all will look the same so no one in our group will pick on us; what could be bad? Ok, I know I can get eaten by a big ass big bird etc or get caught by a stupid ass kid and put in a jar…

anyway, i miss him. thanks for listening.

i was going to wait until i had a ton of designs, but i just could not resist sharing. i’m terrible at waiting.

can’t stop making them, either. they are the crafty equivalent of snacking on potato chips!

i have to go to see the new collection of soft sculptures by sara lanzillotta, of devout doll fame, debuting this friday. you should be there.

the show is called “wonderland,” and the pieces are based on the alice in wonderland stories by lewis carroll.

head to gargoyles statuary august 15, 5-9 pm. if you can’t make it to the emerald city, go shopping for sara’s delightful work online instead.

i love this, even though it contains a handful of things that i normally don’t love so much: songs that list things, nostalgia, and homemade music videos featuring “say what you see” slide shows.

someone put this song on a mix for me when i was a kid, and i still like it. and, the video is pretty well done, so here you go:

On December 6th and 7th, 2008, over 100 indie crafters will be selling their work at the fourth annual Urban Craft Uprising, at the Seattle Center in downtown Seattle…and you could be one of them!



Urban Craft Uprising’s third annual revolutionary craft fair, held in December of 2007, brought in a mass of talented vendors from all over the Northwest and over 6,000 fans excited to see fun, fresh, and funky urban crafts. UCU’s phenomenal success has captured the eye of local and national organizations alike.

Applications are available now!

Deadline: September 8th.

i can’t stop watching this clip of the daily show. it seems wrong to laugh this hard at corruption and economic peril, but i can’t help it.