'Remember lad, whatever doesn't kill you usually succeeds in a second attemp' , Mr, Krabs to Spongebob as told to me by Theron so it may not be exact

I've decided I always need at least 3 days off in a row. The first day is for sleeping. Hopefully everyone in the house has been briefed on the 'if the eyes are closed DO NOT TALK to the person on the bed' rule. The second day is for getting our stuff together. And the third day is for getting things done.
And oh, my was the weekend relaxing, napping and having conversations like, 'does the dog try to French you?' (my answer was no, why?). Our baby bird is in an apparent growth spurt which added a non-relaxing element to the holiday. We always want to get the food in him so it's a happy time, but busy. They say (wrongly, believe me!) that a mother can distinguish the sound of her baby's cry in a crowd. This is what my baby's cry sounds like: "MOM???!!!! I need FOOD!!! "
Then again an hour later. 'Didn't I just give you food?'
"Yes, but I'm STARVING!!!!"
All right, all right, since you asked so nice. Why can't you get your own food, how old are you???

Anyway, here are some pictures from work.

Feathered head bands from the Amazon

Sweet little doll
Pomo basket
Plains doll

Details from a muslin drawing

Panic and Anticipation

The time is here to pack and get ones self to Milwaukee
That doesn't mean the work is all done, by any means, it just means that by the end of today everything that needs to be done by machine will be done. And we'll be sitting in the hotel room sewing tags on stuff, etc.

There are more pictures on the IVS blog

I can't wait for Cafe Disco, but also I look forward to visiting with everyone. Emily and I are going to lay in bed with glasses of wine and talk about Nilfisk vacuums.

Now that I have all this left over leather I am especially inspired by these little Apache pouches that we unboxed at work this week.

The Last Two Weeks

Oops, it's been awhile. We've been buuuuussssyyyyy. Look and we've been cold, too, that's ice in the birdbath. Wasn't it 90 degrees last week? Thanksgiving we went to Santa Maria with Oli in tow to meet family. He and Theron napped on the way.

Oli also met Mia. Mia, who is 19 now, had spent 2 days in front of the oven waiting for turkey and she wasn't going to let any whippersnapper dog elbow in on her meat. Oli got his face smacked quite a few times.

Here's Oli saying that's okay, it was worth it! He had a good time being spoiled. The only part of the visit he didn't like was riding the elevator at the hotel.

This is the Phoebe of the Porch Light. The phoebe has come for the second year in a row to hang out on the light.

Then it was back to work. Here are a couple things I came across:

taxidermy quail head

And a silk sample

Unfortunately it was folded up and the dyes bled.

But it's still pretty amazing.

Look at the gossamer threads making feathers and veins in the lily pads.


I also worked on crafts for Theron's school's holiday bazaar. I made a bunch of animal iron-ons

I think they're all cute, myself, but I'm kinda partial to the chickens

I also repeated last years contribution by making more pocket tissue holders

And that's not all... Ashley wished the sewing machine had a muffler.

Random Discoveries

This last week our enormous basketry show went up at Griffith Park and it is fantastic! Locals should definitely go look, - we all love it. Ten Native basket weavers from across the country curated the show from our collection of nearly 14,000 cataloged baskets. It is the largest collection of its type in the world. A few of the weavers came for a visit the following Monday to see our collection in situ for the first time, as they did all their work for the show from photos. A few of the visitors noticed the little collection of seal gut items that Ozge re-shaped. This bag was sitting with these things. The white pieces inside are piece of foam covered with teflon that Ozge used to help the bag keep its shape after the humidification. The visitors told us that this Northern Athabaskan bag is actually the membrane from a caribou heart. I guess we thought it was maybe a bladder of some sort, but when you look at the shape it becomes clear. There was no information in the database save several question marks.

Then today I opened a box for processing and found this tiny metal container.

What could this be, I wondered. So I opened it...

And it turned out to be a teeny tiny gun, a teeny tiny ramrod, and a capsule of teeny tiny blanks.

Actually there were a bunch of teeny tiny blanks in a little shaving kit container. This was donated by a Col. George Ball. He was on a business trip in Mexico and was held up. President Porfirio Diaz read about this in the paper and, being a friend of Ball's, sent him this pistol set and told him to carry it with him for protection! Ceci and I went crazy looking it over, peering down the barrel wondering if it fires. Upon further web research we discovered it does indeed fire and thankfully we didn't find out the hard way. Imagine that worker's comp claim. We found a video on Youtube of someone loading one and firing it.

I get home and can't wait to show Ash - Look! Look at the tiny pistol!!! Ash just looks and says - Oh yeah, when I was a kid I had a tie clip tiny pistol and it had the exact same blanks, and yes it does indeed fire and it's much louder than you would expect. He thinks it's probably still in his family's home somewhere. Next visit - find that gun!

Multi-tasking Crash

This was a VERY busy week.

Let's see, Monday Sophie helped me get on the road to making one hundred bean bags to give away at a workshop on art and artifact handling on Friday. I was going to do them on my own time, at home, but the whole thing spiraled out of control and by Thursday nearly everyone around me was put to work. But Monday was the craziest day. Sophie downed an eggnog latte before work that gave her a headache, then we stuffed ourselves at India Sweet and Spice for lunch. We had our own little sweat shop going, I didn't let her stop for a minute: cut that, fill those, iron those, go to my car, etc. By the end of the day I could barely lift my arms. "I'm so tired, are you tired?", I asked her.

"Yeah, and I think I'm gonna barf".

Polypropylene pellet bean bag ready to have the tag sewn in.

Labels we made using twill tape and iron-on transfer paper. My helpers and I cut and ironed down 100 sets, and they came out so nice. It was totally worth it.

We had researchers in to photograph petroglyphs, that was interesting.

Ozge greets the researchers.

Anyway, the workshop Friday went very well and both Ash and I were relieved it was over. He was having sympathy stress so we were both ready to skip away. Everyone loved the beanbags and oh, yes, the presentation was fine, too.


We filled the weekend with soccer, a trip to the Observatory, and the yearly shopping trip at Felt Club where we saw the Gem Sweater lady, Leslie Hall, in person, selling spandex pants and cds. I went up with the plan to touch her but then I decided not to act like a weirdo. I guess I'm a little sad about it now.

Theron with the Hollywood sign in the background

On the Observatory stairs

We're also sad because Theron and Alan were supposed to meet for a movie this weekend but the fires closed the roads between us. Safety first. Madagascar 2 will still be there another day.