Lucky Number 9

And the winner is...

Wow, my Random Generator picture came out really big. Hey! Our lucky winner is catinanapron, otherwise known as Marne!
(balloons falling)
Hooray!
Marne is the brains and talent behind Cat in an Apron, mama, craftypreneur, and blogger. :) Yay, Marne, thank you so much for the support!

Thank you, everybody, for such a marvelous turnout, to my friends who spread the word, and to those lurkers who left comments for the first time here on everything.in.blue. I will totally be doing these more in the future, it has been a huge confidence builder. As you know, I'm a weekend worker, so coming home to read your comments before bed was super sweet. I've got *big news* to announce tomorrow, and because of it some fun new things coming into the shop during the best month ever: my birthday month of June. Thanks again for making the weekend pretty darn special, too :D

Leap!

Remember the 10,000 times I said I would have a **blog give away**?? Well, friends, here it is! Yes, rushed perhaps, but I've had the flu this week so posting wasn't much on my priority list.
Here is to turning a corner!
Here is to feeling ship-shape!
Here is to letting you all know how much I appreciate your support and ongoing kindness- let's have some treats. :)

So this time we'll start big. I'm so happy to have Larger than the Sky back at ouou that I'll be giving away one of these limited edition Gocco screen prints! Today I'll also be listing the "second" editions of this print, Gocco prints on acid free paper. The "firsts" are on Strathmore watercolor paper, and one from this series will go to our lucky winner. :D

So stop by and say "hello!" over today and Saturday in this post. I'll be picking someone from comments at random (you know how these things work) on Sunday morning. The comments will be closed at 8 pm pst. on Saturday, May 30th. Thanks again and have a great weekend, everyone!

a love Larger than the Sky

I hope everybody had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Over here we have been pretty busy these last few days, with an impromptu trip to the Oregon coast on one of my lucky days off. Before that, though, I was winding down my week days (I work mostly on the weekends) and finally finished the second round of Larger than the Sky.

This two color Gocco print has been one of the cornerstones of my shop; it serves as my logo on Facebook, for example, and was my banner on SilkFair when I had a shop there. Since the move last year I've been sold out, so I was pretty anxious to get these kids back into the shop.

This time around the printing turned out to be a chain of lessons in Gocco troubleshooting. First, while putting down the initial layer of blue ink, I realized I didn't have enough. The blue of last year's prints was always too light to capture well in photographs, so I considered this a fine motivation. But, I had to mix my next color directly on the screen, and that was a challenge. I'm really happy with the deep, brilliant blue I achieved, though.

The second step, weeks later, was much harder. I honestly don't remember how I printed this last year. The two parts of the image are in opposite orientations on the screen, making it hard to "stamp" the second layer over the first. It came back to me right away that this was one of my earlier Gocco experiments, and really not such a great idea in execution. There was no way I was about to let the 30+ sheets of watercolor paper go to waste, now that they'd been printed with the sky blue, however, so I waited for a day when I was feeling peaceful and up for the challenge. I hit a good pace, squeegeing away a late afternoon.

It took several hours, and quite a few mistakes, but I've listed the first of the new round in the shop today. There were far fewer successes on watercolor paper than I'd like, I think the screen will be retired simply out of difficulty. I'll be listing a round of "seconds" (that actually came out really well) that were my tests printed on Arturo paper in a few days. For now, the very very limited run of new prints is up, new photos and all!

firsts

The other aspect of life that I've yet to report on, of course, is the similarly shifting role of live-in Aunt. The role of becoming an Auntie has been the single most transformed and important series of events in my life thus far. And yes, living with my sister and her twins these last three months has effected probably every aspect of my own life in predictable ways, but those alterations, too, have proven to be (extremely) positive. Going back to work, for all the ways that it was familiar and easy, was very strange for me on this level.

Lucky for me, this time around the boys were kind enough to wait for their Aunt to have a day off before they started some new antics. In fact, this past week I've been ringing my hands for my sister's sake as SL's night sleep suddenly went downhill fast the day I got the call to come back in, and continued throughout these last 7 days to be fitful and dramatic. MNJ, as is his disturbed sleep pattern, would be up more in the early morning hours... and awake at 5 or 5:30 to begin his day. As mamas do, she powered through (with a little help from our friends ;) ) and I've been hearing very sweet stories from their days together.

Wouldn't you know, yesterday as I was with MNJ while mama and SL were still asleep he started calling for "mama"! We've heard our share of "ba!" and "ga!" and the always enjoyable "geek!" coming from little M, and more and more often lately they've accompanied the corresponding sounds coming from us:
"Would you like to get down?"
"ga!"
"down?"
"da!"
That sort of thing. But this was something different, and clearly with the purpose of finding out where mama (!) was, what mama (!) was doing there, and when mama (!) would be back.

As if his brother was showing him up, SL decided the very next day to pull himself up to standing for the first time. This one was one of the milestones that brought tears to my eyes, his triumphant smile and squeals of excited laughter at his new skill were the icing on the cake. SL is not the kind of baby to just burst out laughing at any little thing, it was really quite a show. I guess add to that there were 2 then 3 days where I didn't see them much at all, suddenly these budding abilities illuminate everything extraordinary about the seemingly ordinary things (babies, jobs, a home) that have entered our lives. Not to mention the look on my sister's face telling me, first, about coming home to her second son calling her "mama!" and, not long after, watching her first born pick himself up. That radiant face will be with me for a long long time.