Category Archives: personal

Boston First Night Parade 2007

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Boston First Night Parade 2007, originally uploaded by Mimi K.

It’s been a very busy week or so. Full house, lots of food, cooking, mess, laundry, shopping. Down to Connecticut for a few days. Yesterday was First Night 2007. Eleanor and I went down for an afternoon of puppet theater. The most wonderful was the Flexitoons and their take on the Pied Piper. (The link includes some YouTube footage!) Love!!!
At 5:30 in the afternoon, the Parade started. I’ve posted many blurry, shiny, sparkley photos to my flickr account. Also photos of the 7pm fireworks.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

getting inspired

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In the last few days, I’ve had several people ask what inspires me so I thought it might be a good idea to post about it, i.e. give it some actual thought. Years ago I took my son to a talk given by Philip Pullman. He was absolutely brilliant. One of the things he talked about was that people often ask where he gets his ideas. He said something along the line of- the ideas come to my desk and if I’m there, I get them. If I’m not, I don’t. I loved that explanation! So much of the art is just being at your desk and working. I googled “Philip Pullman inspiration” and I didn’t get that story but got this explanation. (the first paragraph) Not as funny but also excellent.

I am inspired by materials (these days beautiful fabrics), things that I touch (robots with the sewing notions for details), the seasons, the little stuff going on in my life everyday, some odd thing that I’ve read about (example- fat fairies), the photos of what everyone else is doing all over the craft blogging world and Flickr, a new technique that I’ve learned, my family, color. And if I am working on something, and if it doesn’t have a face, I probably won’t stay interested for too long! If I hit a dead end, I have 2 ways of recharging that usually work. I go back to my older work, look through it and try to come up with a new approach or simply do another one. I have found lots of inspiration for the postcards by going through old photos of my pottery. The other technique is to go through all my materials. That way I get 2 things accomplished- clear out some stuff and almost always find something that sparks an idea.

pricing

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I got a question today- How do you price your work? After thinking about it, here is what I wrote back-

I think about it in several ways.
one- how much would I be willing to take for something and I won’t feel like I’ve been insulted, won’t feel sick, and/or wish I’d kept it.
two- I have a fantasy that I should earn $100 for a full day of work (ie 8 hours ). If I think something took 8 hours, I should get $100 for it. Of course this is very rarely straight forward. I don’t include my design time and mistake time. I am always second guessing myself. Could I have done it in 8 hours if I’d worked harder? kept a more accurate tally of time spent? been more organized? And it doesn’t include materials. so I know it isn’t really sensible, but it is still a model I pretend to use.
three- there is the fantasy of what people will pay. I am always guessing at that. I don’t try to sell my dolls in a gallery because they take 50%. I can’t believe that I could double the prices and still sell them. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. Besides most galleries seem to be afraid of anything that looks like a doll… not art enough? The gallery sales thing worked for me when I was doing pottery so I have had experience selling that way.

I wonder how this compares with other people? I think fiber arts work not something anyone get into to get rich- you just can’t get back the time you put in.

It was so beautiful this morning. It was misty and everything was wet from yesterdays rain. The color was amazing. Everything seemed to glow! I took a bunch of photos and posted them at Flickr.

november

yesterday and today

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Last night was a farewell dinner with Mary before she returns to Portugal. I’m so glad we got to meet and become friends while she was here. Someday I will get to Portugal and sit around in her house and talk dolls again.

pie

Today, a friend from my doll club spent the day with me and we worked on robot dolls together. She wants me to make a pattern, but since that is unlikely to happen in the near future, I figured I’d just show her what I do. It was a great day.

robots

And look at the great stuff she brought me- buttons

buttons

and beautiful vintage ribbons-

ribbons

Some other fun stuff too, but not so pretty for photos!

moo

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my moo cards came – the 100 batch that I paid for, not the 10 that were free.

moo

They are fun- and interesting to look at and think about. They are a long thin shape. Some of the images work really well, some are pretty awful. I think I like partial faces the best. The colors work in some, not in some others. I will use them for tags- they are perfect for that. A bit small for business cards, but maybe okay.

I was having fun, clicking around Sharon’s Saturday blog round-up, and came across this great blog- Woof Nanny. Two postings really caught my interest. This one about making children’s clothing from tablecloths. It is so interesting because I am always trying to use vintage table linens in my work. I also like this post about old children’s books, especially The Make-It-Book. She talks about pouring over it as a kid. I had this same book when I was little, I still have it and like hers, it is held together with old yellow scotch tape. I think it was probably the most used book in our house (by me anyway) until I was about ten. Well, actually after that I started using it for babysitting ideas.

I worked on the swaddled babies today and fixed up what needed fixing. I’ll post them again tomorrow.

and other stuff

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I forgot to mention this the other day- I got a nice email saying that I had been nominated to be a featured website here at Indie-O-Rama. I tend to be a bit dense about this kind of stuff and I don’t really get what this is all about, but it looks like a new site geared toward promoting independent web-based art/craft businesses. I guess I qualify and I am very pleased!

Yesterday I went to the RISD Alumni Sale in Providence, RI. It was fantastic- the artwork, the crowds, the people. I saw Teresa of Sewing Stars. And I actually introduced myself! I bought one of her fantastic owls-

owl

and her pattern book which I had been meaning to get, but forgot about. I am very interested in how different people put together patterns.

I was so pleased to finally meet Megan in person- I’ve been online friends for a year or so. I loved seeing her work too-

pillows

puppets

I also saw a few other people/artists I know that I wasn’t expecting- such a nice surprise. It was such a perfect day and I hope everyone made tons of money!

When I got home, there was an envelope from Eleanor- this is what she sent me-

patch

does she have my number or what! She found it here at Microcosm Publishing, which she found via Zack’s blog. Thanks everybody, for being part of presents for Mimi. Now I need to go find something to attach it to…

Hope everyone is having a great Columbus Day week-end.

happy days

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Some good stuff has been happening lately.

On Sunday, Mary, of A Saloia fame, came over to see me. She is with her family in the Boston area and so we were able to meet up. We sat around in my studio, looking at fabric, chatting about doll-making and blogs, among other things. Then we wandered down the street and went to my corner fabric store where we each managed to find something we “needed”. Now I have some pretty fabric bits that will remind me of our afternoon together when I use them.

I have finished up my atc’s for Kirsten’s Bird atc swap. I made 10 and 6 will be sent off to Minneapolis. I still need to make the little envelopes. They are always fun.

atc

On Tuesday, I was the very grateful recipient of a treasure trove of embroidery threads- Mostly wool (about 200! skeins) but also some wonderful embroidery thread called Danish Flower Thread. It is a matte, vegetable-dyed thread (I don’t know if that is the right word?) in beautiful soft colors. I love sewing with it. Lucky, lucky me!

wool

And lastly, one of the reasons I’ve been doing postcards recently , is that I have several friends who have been ill and need them. I went to see my friend in the hospital today. She was so much better then I was expecting and I can tell you, I am very relieved. I was so happy to be able to give her this card-

postcard

Now I have to do the other 9 and make another series!

more postcards- eventually

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I am working on postcards now. But there has been so many steps between the intention and the end product! I spent a lot of last weekend, cleaning up in my studio. A friend was suppose to come for a visit and I realized it was so bad that 2 people could hardly fit in the room together, let alone actually sit down and visit. So- step one, find the floor-

floor

well, you can see I’ve already started to lay out new projects in that picture.
Step 2- cut out the sketches from my fabric sketchbook. I washed them because I used a water soluble chalk pencil on some of them. Here they are, drying on the edge of the bathtub-

drawings

Oh No! Now the floor is completely covered again!

I worked on the floor for a day- boy, was I sorry though. My back was killing me by evening. The next morning I cleared off a table (i.e. piled everything up on top of any other clear surface) and layed the project out so that I could sit at my chair and also have decent light.

ah, much better. And here we are today-

d

the floor is not too bad- at least I can move around and find stuff… Hopefully I’ll be able to show some finished postcards in the next few days.

One of the people in my doll club, brought this book, Kokoro no Te by Kumiko Sudo, to show us. I ended up buying myself a copy- it is fantastic! It has some inspired sewing kits- I might have to try making one, instead of just admiring the beautiful photos.

thinking about…

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musicians-

sketch

and working on fairies-

fairyparts

I had a wonderful surprise yesterday. Last month I cleared out a container full of old cassette tapes. I threw some away, others I piled into a box and brought up to my studio. Slowly I’ve been listening to them and deciding if they are worth keeping (a lot are damaged in some way- they sound like a warped record). It has been a strange trip back to other times in my life, as far back as the early 70’s. Yesterday, I tried out a tape with no label- I thought it might just be a blank tape. Little kid voices started singing “Happy Birthday to you”, slowly. Eleanor and Julian, I think. They got to “Happy Birthday, dear (who was it going to be for???) mommie/ mom” -they hadn’t agreed on that part I guess- I got chills! They went on to sing several more songs- talk about being sent back to another time! I could picture the whole project being organized and excecuted.

and then Chicago

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Well, actually, this sign was from the Minneapolis Airport. We don’t have signs like this in Boston-

sign

I was a day late getting to Chicago. My plane got so delayed leaving, that I spent another night in Minneapolis. I had one full day in Chicago with Eleanor- what a great way to spend my birthday! We did her errands, then went to Fabric Stores- 2121 21st St and Vogue Fabrics. I used the birthday excuse to buy myself some really special wool/angora(? or was it cashmere, I should have written it down) blend in my favorite acid green color. Then downtown to the Chicago Cultural Center and Millennium Park. Thanks Brandy for the fantastic suggestions. I’ve got a few left that I’ll have to do next time I’m in Chicago.

So here is the bean, of course… had to take a picture of that-

bean1

bean2

I don’t know how I managed to get those pictures with no one else around- there were crowds of people everywhere…

and this amazing fountain-

fountain1

it was hot as anything and I was very tempted to jump in with everyone else-

fountain2

fountain3

On Thursday morning, before flying home, I went out to Redmoon with Eleanor and she gave me a tour of the shop. Wow! They are doing some amazing stuff and it all looks like it would be so much fun to work on. Another life maybe.