Everyone.  PLEASE wear helmets when you ride your bike.  Daniel would probably be dead or a vegetable right now if he hadn't been wearing a helmet when he took a spill on Saturday night.

It's still a bit mysterious what happened-- he suffered a concussion (even WITH helmet) and lost about an hour of memory.  Apparently he lost control of his bike somehow and flipped in the midst of thick car traffic.  Through a twist of fate, I witnessed the scary-looking post-crash scene from the bus I was riding, which I think I will remember in horrifying flashbacks for a good long time.  I am so thankful that it wasn't as bad as it looked.  We got off easy, given what could have happened!

So, I implore all bike riders: even careful riders can get in accidents.  Be careful, but also wear a helmet!  Always!

In the day spent watching concussion-victim-Daniel for signs of more severe damage, I managed to get a little art-ing done for my roommate Nina's booklet about the UW farm.  (Clever segue, eh?)

These are little watercolor illustrations to function as headers for various topics in the booklet:
edit: make sure to click on the images to see them in full size!

I'm not going to try to explain the last one...

Perhaps my favorite image in the book is this illustration by Nina:

"Imagine a time and place where ecology students
cannot recognize a carrot growing in the ground..."

Blast From The Past (2008)

On one of my many visits back to the Bay Area after quitting CCA, I prepared by making a bunch of pencil pouches for friends there.  I recently stumbled upon the following photos while in a self-indulgent photo-archive-prowling nostalgia trip.

They're pretty cool pencil pouches, and I still have some of the fabrics!  I got the fabric for this first one at an estate sale.  It is one of my prized possessions, and I can't think of any project worth cutting it up for!  Most likely I will gradually hack away at it with minuscule projects, like this:

I gave this one to Anna Weiner, I think!

Isn't that print amazing?  What is it?!  Where does it come from?  I'd love to know its history.  Just the other day I saw someone at an info booth at Honk Fest using a table cloth with the same print, but in red!  I asked where it came from, of course, but they were distracted by something else and obviously didn't think it was as cool as I do.

Then there's this one, made with wool felt (also purchased at an estate sale, but a different one).  I think this is the one I gave to Anna Bunting.  I hope everyone is still using them!  I love it when stuff I make for people gets used to tatters.

I cut little windows in the fabric for the print underneath to peek through!

Then, there's this one, for Imma:

And I won't post photos of the crocheted "rasta" hats I gave to Yohta and John on that trip...  Ohhh, things that seem like a good idea at the time...

CHICKENS!!!

At the Portage Bay Grange, just a couple blocks from my house, they raise baby chickies!!!

And baby duckies, too!!!

and MORE baby chickies!

And baby Tays, too!

Here are my VERY OWN CHICKY BABIES!!! (And my roommates' and neighbors'...)

They're such sweet clucks.

Here's what the chickens see when we're stealing their eggs:

URBAN FARMING, YEAH!!!

See how the garden grows!

Look at my post of a mere two days ago to see the dramatic difference!  The carrots have just poked out their tender little sprouts, and check out the beans:

(They're the ones in the front couple rows: behind them are radishes.)  They are looking SO hardy!

Salad lovers, drool with envy!  These kales and lettuces are fresh and tender and delicious:

Eager radishes

Radishes begin to sprout already:

And rainbow beets:

And even the bush beans just barely begin to peek outside!

I finished a project! Yahoo!!! (Fridge bag)

I posted a photo of the beginnings of this bag a couple entries ago.  I copied the pattern from a plastic grocery bag.

It folds quite flat and small, but holds a lot.

This fabric had a selvedge of steel!  Almost broke my needle!  At least it made a pretty cool bottom hem of the bag.

My favorite part, perhaps: the tops of the handles are bound with bias tape on both sides, then folded over and bar-tacked together for strength and style.

Looks kinda like your standard plastic grocery store bag.  Not the MOST attractive thing ever, but it was a fun experiment.

Another experiment:

Daniel's not sure if he wants to eat my creepy cookie that I made specially for him.  The roommates watch in tense anticipation.  (It's just a melted candy cane!!!)

Daniel and I made some silkscreens last week at the Vera Project, of the Mathematician/Philosopher Bertrand Russell.  He is a cool dude!  To get a quick idea of who he is, you should read this short article on an idea he is perhaps most known for: "Russell's Teapot."

Anyway, I was having some masking difficulties as well as alignment difficulties... so... yes, I KNOW it's way off toward my right side.  C'est la vie.

Too much computering for such a lovely day.

Beets, Carrots, Radishes, Beans

I'm excited to watch these little guys sprout and grow (I hope!!!)

Thanks, Marie, for letting me be your sharecropper!  :)

A common day in the factory

No tail yet...  but too ADHD to finish before moving on to another project:

This is in the process of becoming a "fridge bag," for use in our current system of roommate food segregation.  I've been using a plastic bag with a piece of masking tape with "Mad" written on it in sharpie, but this will be much more aesthetically pleasing, until, of course, it becomes irrevocably soiled with grease and sticky mystery substance.

Also... appliqueing wool felt is like CRACK!!! Or, it is what I imagine the bliss of a crack high to feel like, since I have never actually tried it.