Another beauty... what an incredible delicate structure.
I found this one Liivian's blog; always worth a good look.

Again with the fabulous garland by Sofie Cuvelier. This time I imagine the installation with this song by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, which I have playing right now.

I haven't seen the movie to which this music belongs, so for now it just reminds me of little things fluttering in the wind... like pretty little white discs of paper on string.

One of the great things about having a blog is that it actually forces me to make stuff. It's like a little match lighting my butt on fire... I want to make so many things and the list would be endlessly long had I not started a blog. Because I have a relatively short attention span and skip between ideas fairly frequently, I can pretty much be satisfied with having tried something at least once and move on. The wonderful thing is that if something really grabs me, I'll stick to it... like knitting the beasts.

Sometimes I know exactly what I want to make. Other times I don't and I just end up fiddling about with a material or idea until it becomes something.

And today I fiddled around. Well, to be honest, I was cleaning up my living room and got sick and tired of a small strip of cherry veneer that keeps unraveling and falling out of my "materials closet" and I decided that I had to either make something right then and there out of it or I had to get rid of it. I gave myself 5 minutes.

At first I was going to make some kind of bent-wood mobile, then it was going to try to make a lampshade, but lo and behold it turned out to be a plant cocoon-basket!

Actually I have no idea what it is. But I kind of sort of really like it :) I can imagine a whole wall of these little cocoon-baskets filled with little plants. This exercise of "make-something-out-of-it-or-get-rid-of-it" was fun... when I make another one I'll try to spend more than five minutes on it. Maybe the idea will stick.

Wish I could have spelled out the word summer with my little plaster letters. Though, on second thought, the peaches do a pretty good job at saying it's summer, no?

Say hello to Beatrice and Harriette.

I'll be uploading some new beasts onto Etsy in a week or so. I've really been neglecting my Etsy life lately and I'm itching to re-stock the store with the fun little experiments I've been doing here and there.

So stay tuned!

This is Nelson. He's a rather quiet fellow.

One of the many things I love about Los Angeles is that airplanes have to turn around right over downtown for their descent into LAX. If you are downtown and simply look up, you get a great and relatively close view of the huge underbellies of these massive planes flying in from some international city.

I am still amazed that these huge airplanes even make it off the ground. I really could watch airplanes take off and land all day. Incidentally, another favorite spot in LA is literally right behind one of the runways right off at the intersection of Sepulveda and Lincoln Boulevards. There's a lovely little patch of grass and you can just lie on your back and look up.

Of course the airplanes in these images are barely noticeable... You'll just have to trust me on how large they seemed above my head :)

I wouldn't characterize myself as being very musical and up until yesterday I couldn't read a note to save my life. But I have always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. So yesterday I bought a guitar. Just like that: I walked into the store and bought one and walked out. Crazy.

I have been 'talking the talk' for a while now, having wanted to learn to play but never doing anything about it. And now I have no excuse. It's a relief actually.

I'm happy to report so far so good. It is hard though... for me at least; my hands and brain don't really seem wired for this, but that is what I said about knitting when I first started, so we'll see. Despite looking awfully serious, I'm really enjoying this. It's great fun to learn something new.

My repertoire includes 'Ode to Joy' and 'Jingle Bells'.... I'm sure those around me will want to strangle me pretty soon :)

I am not quite sure who or what this little guy is exactly... I made him when I was in Amsterdam in February and only just recently put his little face on.

Something's a little off with him, I like him, but he needs something else... a tail? a nose? a neck-tie? I don't know.... a work in progress I guess.

I'll be posting some more the latest knitting experiments soon. I got some knitting done while I was in Honduras but not nearly as much as I had hoped. All those sneaky hammocks literally took over my life. And I'm telling you, it's not easy lying about and knitting in a hammock :)

A last batch of photos from Roatan.

We had hammocks strung up outside our room and rocking chairs. My 5 days of nothing were really lovely, exactly what I needed... just swinging in the wind and looking out at the ocean and all the greenery.

.... . .. . .. .. . ... . . .

And so... I'm back in Los Angeles now, thoroughly refreshed and entirely mosquito bitten.

I like the building we are staying in. I like that it has this great colorful front side, concrete patio with hammocks, bright red benches and aqua walls.

The backside has not been given the same treatment, but I like it equally. Plants and moss find every crevice and thrive. I like how the building shows the signs of weathering; it makes is look wiser.

One thing I was surprised by is how many buildings are built out of concrete. There are a lot of made of wood and are on stilts, which I expected; the mossy, crumbly concrete structures I did not. But I like it this way too. I imagine these buildings been taken over completely some day by the plants that surround it.

We weathered the storm and we got to Honduras safely.

This is where I was all day. I did nothing. I can't tell you how long it has been since I did that.

And I have 5 more days to go.