2009 isn’t even one week old yet, but so far it’s a good one! On Sunday I invited Tracey over for a studio visit. She had commented on my blog a few times and I knew she lived near me. We got into an email conversation and I knew we had to get together. We did that wonderful blog friend thing where the conversation starts where so many other conversations would end. So much is a given when talking to another art/craft blogger- like how great the online community is and how clueless so many other people are about why we do it! We can move right on to other important stuff.

First, Tracey brought me this wonderful gift inspired by the interview in Craft magazine-

I’ve hung it up over my desk. Here is her description of the inspiration for the piece and also her report of the visit. I think it is too funny that she photographed all the doll bits that never got finished…

We talked photography (among other things)- she is doing some amazing work with ttv– through the viewfinder (tutorial if you are interested). It sounded intriguing and, of course, somewhere in this house I knew I had one of those cameras where you look down into the viewfinder. I’m pretty sure I bought it at a yardsale with a red leather camera bag that looked like a child’s doctor kit, in the early ’80s. Yep, there it was on the shelf in the living room. I tried looking through the viewfinder and it was so dirty I couldn’t really see anything.

I took out a few screws and cleaned it up as well as I could.

It is now significantly better and here are some photos I took from off the back porch-

Everything looks so spooky!

not so sure what to do about the grid in the viewfinder.

I think this uncropped one is my favorite-

Lots of fun but probably not going to pull me away from dollmaking.

Yesterday I had fun outing. A local fashion designer, Deborah Parker, invited me over to her studio to go through her scraps and see if there was anything I could use. Yes! I came home with 2 large bags full of wool, silk, linen, and some little pieces of cotton. Delicious! There are some very inspiring pieces in that pile- like, have you ever heard of wool corduroy? I hadn’t but now I have some to play with- it looks like perfect hair fabric to me.

Hurray- what a great way to start the year!