Still here...

Making little books....

Watching the ships in the harbour...
...and lunching in the gardens.More news soon. Right now, I'm off to try and finish the last Harry Potter...

Xavier Rudd

Last night, we went to see Xavier Rudd. He's pretty amazing - we have one of his older albums, and I like the songs - but until we saw him live, I did not realize that he is basically a one man band. As you see above, he's got guitars, digeridoos and bongo drums, and he seems to play a lot of them at once. The music was much "trippier" live than I remember from the album - but that was cool. It was a bit like being at a hippie rave - I especially liked some of his instrumental tunes. As well as being a great musician, he is an environmental and human rights activist - check out his "Better People" campaign - an all around nice guy.

Flight of the Conchords

Flight of the Conchords - this band has their own HBO show, that you can watch by clicking the link. It's kooky!

Sat-day

That's the way Martin says Saturday - Sat-day. I guess it's an Australian thing, but it kind of makes sense - Mon-day, Tues-day, Wednes-day, Thurs-day, Fri-day, Sat-day...all the same number of syllables. Anyhow, I digress. On Sat-day, we drove to Wolfville, about an hour away and had a great morning. We started off at the Farmers Markets with coffee and pastries. Milo had a great time, there were so many other dogs there. As well as lots of amazing veggies, there are some great craft vendors. One that stood out was a little 9 year old girl who made stuffed horses - very "Science of Sleep"-like. Unfortunately - I didn't get any photos of the market because I was juggling my coffee, the dog and a bag of fresh rocket. Then, we went to see a client of mine and sell her some books for her shop. It was lovely to see her again - she always oohs and ahhs over my work and is so encouraging. She even gave me some really cool new paper to make books from! The photo above is from a drive out to the beach. We ate veggie calzones that we had bought at the market while looking out at the sea. You can see in this photo what a little squirt Milo is!


This area is really beautiful. Just a short drive from the sea is all this gorgeous farm land. Martin had to stop the car and take this photo, because the trees on the top of the hill look a bit like a bunny. I like to think that maybe the farmer planned it that way. A giant topiary.

She shoots, she scors-it!

Ahem, please excuse the bad pun in this title. Today, I'd like to discuss the "Scor-It." It's a gadget I recently picked up for scoring paper. "Why do I need a gadget for scoring paper?" you might ask - "I already have a bonefolder and a ruler!" you exclaim. Well, a bonefolder a ruler are great - but I score a lot of paper, and I wanted something that might make it easier. I had seen the Scor-It at the place where I buy my cello bags, and always wondered if it would work. I had previously been using a scoring blade on my Fiskars cutter - which would also probably be a fine option if you were scoring fewer items - but I was having all sorts of trouble. The scoring blade would cut into the paper, it was really hard to line up the measurements for my accordion books, and if I was using heavy weight paper, I would sometimes get that horrible cracking effect. If you work with paper, you know what I mean. Anyhow, I bit the bullet and ordered the Scor-It, and it works great. As you can see from the photo, it's pleasingly old-school. It's basically a metal strip, mounted on a rubber covered board with a wooden scoring tool. You line up your paper with the ruler and stopguide on the top, and then just run the tool down the metal strip to create the score line. The lines it creates are very strong, and there is absolutely no paper crackage. A great little tool if you like to score.

PS - when looking at their website, I noticed that the company that makes the Scor-it is Vandelay Industries! How great is that - I wonder which came first, the company, or the Seinfeld episode.

Scenes from a studio....

Milo curled up on the rug today and chewed on a bone as I worked away. I love it when he lies like this, with his little legs splayed out. This is probably a new low in my blog posts - resorting to photos of a dog's bum! It will be better tomorrow, I promise.

Time Management

I'm having a bit of trouble with time management at the moment. I've been really busy with double happiness lately - don't get me wrong - it's fantastic and I'm not whingeing, but I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. I just finished my commission, and in the past week all the shops I sell to have called to order some books. I also work full-time, so I only have the evenings and weekends to make books, as well as all my housework, socializing and family stuff. I don't want to (can't, in the case of work) give anything up at the moment - so I am looking at a way to make more "me" time - and also time to experiment with other artwork. Doing the collages was great, and I'd like to have more time to experiment and develop more product lines, but I am a bit of a slave to my little books.

An obvious thing would be to cut down on internet surfing/blogging - but I find it too inspiring to quit. I have tried to give up on housework, but things are getting pretty feral around here - we haven't been keeping up on the washing, and I nearly had to wear the bottom of my swimsuit as underwear last week. My husband helps out when he can, but he has been working long hours and has also been away on a few business trips. There are a few good hints over on apartment therapy ny today, and I'm really open to hints from anyone out there. I have to say, my hat's off to people with children - I don't know how they find time to do anything - I can't even manage with a puppy!