Sofie, Shine and Steam(er)!

Steamer

Alright! What a weekend. I'm proud to announce several changes in the shop, as well as some new faces! Because I am irresistibly drawn to warm drinks and scarves as subject matter, I thought it was high time I bring in Steamer, a lovely friend drinking a warm cuppa. Classic ouou drawing, but without the Dragon. :)

Sofie and the Bird

I've brought back one of my personal favorites from last year, Sofie, in her printed version. I have the same design in silkscreen Gocco version, but these (along with the green envelopes I've got right now) printed cards are such a necessary piece of Spring in my shop.

Shine

And finally, also new today is Shine~ this wonderfully celebratory new card. I've begun announcing new designs on Flickr a few days before they appear in my shop. For me, this is great because I'm not able to blog every day, so check it out! There you can see the other projects I'm working on, and notes from my sketchbook too.

But there are a few more changes this week at ouou. I've consolidated several winter card designs into Mixed Sets here. So, cards like Smarty and Red Dragon Drinks Tea are now only listed as parts of Mixed Sets throughout the spring and summer. All card designs are available upon request, however, so no worries if mid-June you really need a set of bundly, cocoa drinking Dragons or something.



Lastly, I've brought back the Monkey products, in all his wiley forms. I'm planning a blog post about Gocco later in the week, so for now you can take a look at tags and the Moleskine selection in the Gocco Silkscreen section.

update

Hi there! Right from the get-go let me say this is a much quicker post than I had intended, I'm pretty beat tonight. Today was a great day, and being tired after a great day is such a good feeling, but I really should go get some reading done. :) If you can see my links to the left here... the shop is *open* once again. Woo!

Around these parts I started off my day cooking, and finished up the day cooking too. Our friend K recommended this sweet, basic recipe from Joy of Baking [dot] com for cream scones~ they've become something of an obsession for me. I've tried so many varieties, replacing the egg with flax seed, the cream with coconut milk, the milk with soy or the flour with GF "flour" with the many, many excuses I have to put a batch together. What can I say? There are a lot of sensitive immune systems around here. Every switch has been a smashing success. This morning I simply switched the cream for soy milk, and a tsp of cinnamon. Try them out, they're quite good!

The shop is up but the official fanfare will come tomorrow as I bring in some new designs. You may notice things shuffling around from the "Winter" themed cards, right now they have been removed and will be replaced throughout the week by consolidates sets of tthose designs in order to make room for the spring and summer stuff. I have a whole outline for myself this month and am really excited about April in my shop. I know I promised you a little trail of interesting links from my vacation-explorations and I'm on it this weekend. I just had to stop by and tell you about those scones. Heavens they're good.

The Schedule (pt. 2: diversion/ focus)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to April and new month. This being my first spring on Etsy (I was closed last year for my resettlement), I am particularly excited about April and the New Leaf feeling it brings. Let alone the flowers, sap, green and sunshine!

Well, around here the "sunshine" is never a guarantee, spring time weather is as changeable as the sea. We are getting out more, though, and the birds, colds, open windows and budding trees of this season are picking up steam. I'm going to be re-opening the shop within the next few days, but before I do I wanted to cite some of the reference points I've had in the last week of vacation time to revitalize my artistic & Auntistic engine.

First of all, a little nonfiction story.

We begin with MNJ and his mama upstairs taking an afternoon nap. I was in the living room with SL, who was also napping, working on transferring some drawings with my light box. NPR was on my computer, and SL began to stir. Since that whole branch of the family is still suffering from a particularly virulent cold, I decided to rock with SL until he fell back asleep instead of letting him get up. While having one of those so sought-after daily moments of baby peace and calm, I was torn between putting him down + going back to transferring my drawing + possibility of him waking up OR staying put. Slowly my consciousness shifted to the radio, and an interview I really never would have listened to caught my focus and attention for the next half hour.

There are some shows that NPR stations pick up by region depending on what they're listenership is interested in. This is how we had Speaking of Faith (more on that in a bit) in PA but not in my hometown of MA... at least not when I lived there. Last week another show I had never heard of before, Human Media, was broadcasting on NPR's 24 hour news stream~ which is how I chanced upon it. They were playing an interview by host David Freudberg of David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. Now, don't get me wrong, I mean this in no offense of David Allen but I worked in bookstores a long time and Getting Things Done just looked like another business management book written for the bestseller list. (shrug) Not that back then I knew anything about owning and operating my OWN small business... :)

These days though I'm a little older and a little less cynical, I was glad for sleeping baby SL threatening to wake up if I moved, keeping me seated and listening. I'm going to tell you something about myself as a worker, too: I love, love, love having a long list of things to do as I come into work/ walk into Etsy studio. I love even more to MAKE that list. But, predictably, as days and time go by and actions are taken on a great number of any things we all assign ourselves to do, there is also this background level of yet-to-be-done. There is, in every one's consciousness like a chattering reminder, a stream of "to do"'s that can constantly tick through our day. David Allen refers to this as "overwhelm" and it is the misplaced paper every bit as much as the PRIORITY (!!!) stuff like emails, returning calls, juggling office vs. home, you name it.

When C was pregnant and we were both trying to cull together the resources it would take to settle all the way across the country, words like "intention" and "mindful" and "purpose" were all powerful tools to our decisions. Babies bring with them a fistful of chaos (and twins!?) so in this part of my experience you have to get through the parts of the day that are about survival before you reach for words like that. On the other hand, I know how resonant they are to the way both she and myself strive to live. I know for her, raising the boys with such keen awareness of intentional action as a part of their experience, for example, is important. For me, the meditative calm with which I enter my time with them is surely a cornerstone to my interactions (if I achieve that, too. See above what I said about survival). And then take the both of us with businesses of our own where it is so important to be decisive and clear. I would recommend the book or the download of the interview to anyone, now.

The interview I listened to was called "Relaxed Focus". It talked about bringing intention into our actions, and his book tackles the variety of ways we can reduce the "overwhelm". You can listen to a free segment of the interview via Human Media here.

All that to say that the interview caused me to really look at my own list of things I hope to accomplish each day, and not only what I'm getting done but the spirit behind those actions. Since this time last week I've also been finding threads of resources, you know... when one interesting tidbit leads to the next? about parenting, creativity, productivity and running a small business. In the next couple posts I'll be exploring these (in less of a round-about way, I'm sure) and adding new links.

vacation

Just a small check-in from my corner of the Internet. I've been taking this "vacation" from the online venue/ my Etsy shop this week as I instituted a schedule around my not-leaving-home-to-go-to-work time. This change has been good, although slow, like the recovery in our small corner of Portland from the various illnesses in our home. Let's hope by next week everyone is feeling ship shape!

The afternoon of closing down ouou.etsy for this break I was cleaning my room and - woo! - found the Gocco screens I had misplaced in the various moves that got us here. Oh, what a relief, for both my sister and myself, as we worked a great deal with the Gocco last year and were eager to return. I have been cranking out a pretty satisfactory number of drawings, paintings and brainstorms. Sales don't run an Etsy shop~ imagination does, and I sorely needed an immersion back into my own before even thinking about making new Gocco prints.

Otherwise I am playing with some drawings for spring and paintings encouraged by a friend. The paintings will probably end up on Flickr, as well as some other stuff I'm working on, without being involved in the shop. Spring designs, however, are still in the works, and I'll get ready to reopen when I feel more confident about switching out the winter/ snow/ steam of the collection I've had so far. Remember, this time last year I was packing up to move- I spent the spring and summer seasons closed! Not this time around. :)

So we'll hope the week brings days closer to robust health for my kin, and an announcement about the shop.

Walks around the neighborhood are unfolding more and more scrumptious beauty, and the boys week by week seem to be passing through stages like shifts in weather. MNJ has begin testing his tongue and making strange little baby conversation noises, much to the repeated surprise and delight of us all. SL continues to build his muscles and act the gymnast. He figured out how to jump and in that moment redefined the meaning of supreme happiness for his baby self. While the flu and subsequent colds hold sway over the house, sleep (and everything else, really) just is what it is.