we’re in the fucking woods! again!!

ok folks. it’s that time again.

i’ve gotten several queries about whether i was going to print these again or not. and yes, i am, due to popular demand! as usual, i am only going to hand-print these on easy-to-acquire hanes or fruit of the loom mens ribbed a-tanks – because i don’t have to work very hard to find them in town readily and i really don’t have the time to figure out anything else. if this shirt style doesn’t work for you, just hang on… when i get a minute to breath i’m going to work up another teespring campaign and offer the design on tshirts and other items too, since that’s much harder for me to manage printing at home. but i’m going ahead and putting up the paypal button here for the tanks, for those who’d like the traditional style. (i will also mention it helps me more if you order here as the reason i do this is to help fund my time in the woods and i make more $$ on the ones i print myself. but i know lots of folks want shirt styles i can’t offer so i’m going to do the teespring campaign to make everyone happy!)

wereinthefuckingwoods

 

so. hit “buy it now” and it will take you to a paypal checkout page. sadly, paypal’s buttons no longer work with wordpress to specify sizing so the only way i could do this was to have it be for ONE tank plus shipping. if you want more than one, just email me what you want and i can invoice you individually for it. (or i guess you can always just go through and make several orders and i can refund you the excess shipping charges.)

i will leave this up probably for about a week and then i will close pre-ordering and acquire shirts and print sometime next week so i can get them in the mail well before long crew leaves.

thanks everyone for the support and your continuing enjoyment of this silly tshirt. it makes me smile every time i see one of you in it either in person or in pictures. and stay tuned as i have another fest-related shirt idea i will be running in the next coupla weeks and hopefully bringing with me to fest to sell.

UPDATE 6/29/14: i have taken the paypal button down. if you still want a shirt, email me or leave a comment here and we can talk about it. i have 1-2 of each size  (small through 2xl) extra that i am planning on bringing to fest to sell at the worker craft sale but if you want one before then, we can work something out.

sale!

i decided to test out etsy’s new(ish) coupon codes features yesterday. the coupon is good for 20% off everything in my store through friday. some people have rent parties at the end/beginning of the month – i’m having a rent sale! (though, actually, the rent is covered, so now i’m working on the entergy bill! january was a sssslllooowwwww month, y’all!)

use the code: 20OFFSALE til midday friday, at which point i need to pack everything up for the freret market the next day. yes, i decided to go ahead and do it. thankfully, it looks like it will be sunny, though kinda cold. i’ll be wearing my long johns, for sure. i will hopefully have lots of new stuff (if it doesn’t all get bought up in the sale!). lots of funky handmade gifties for your valentine, and maybe even a few things to decorate for carnival. see you there!

to market, to market…

freretstivus market, that is. TODAY! noon til 5pm – i will be there. come enjoy the beautiful day before we get more nasty weather tomorrow. and don’t forget about the last stop shop at the big top on thursday, 6-10pm (1638 clio street).

and remember, i do custom work also… so if there’s a clock or sign design you like, i can make it in your favorite color combo and have it done in plenty of time for christmas. i even have some blank scarf material in stock and could print up the scarf of your choice. so don’t be shy – just ask!

happy holiday shopping, y’all.

dyke summer camp

i didn’t take but a handful of pictures this summer at festival – the michigan womyn’s music festival, what many of us who attend/work there every summer refer to as “dyke summer camp.” i guess it’s not all that weird; many years, i go to fest and forget to take pictures. other years, i take hundreds, constantly. but it did strike me as a little odd this year, as i’ve been pretty attached to my camera and documenting everything around me. i certainly went with the intention of taking more pics.

but once i was there, even though i carried the camera around with me almost daily in my messenger bag, i just didn’t think to take it out. maybe it was a good thing; maybe it was a subconscious thing, that i was trying to be more present, in the moment, rather than stepping outside myself or any given situation to be behind the camera, documenting. or maybe i just plain forgot. not sure.

i did have one afternoon, during festival week, when i was working late… i was the last one left in my area, waiting on a workshop in the media tent to finish, and decided to relax in the hammock. every year i have been on the media crew (we show the movies, and attend to workshops that have need for media equipment, i.e. dvd, powerpoint, sound, etc.), we have had a lovely hammock we hang off a very old tree that sits in our “back yard,” our break area. this year, when we arrived, we noticed the limb we usually attach the hammock to was gone. we had to hunt for a new location, which ended up being between two smaller trees right next to the media tent. not exactly in our back yard anymore, but convenient for the media crew to lay in while babysitting media workshops.

whilst laying there, i was gazing up at the leaves and limbs of the trees holding the hammock, swaying in the breeze… just appreciating nature and the great gift that it is every summer i am able to be there, in those woods in michigan, breathing in fresh air, doing very physical work, disconnected from cell phones and laptops and the 24-hour news cycle and all the stresses associated with the outside world. it really is the best self-care i give myself, a few weeks (usually three now but i used to do the five-week longer crew) away from the world to just be, to focus on just whatever is happening in my immediate vacinity. it’s like a recalibrating exercise, one that makes space in my brain to see the big picture by focusing on just my present experience… flushing out all the minutia, the facts, the headlines, the tweets, the status updates, the text messages. allowing my head and my heart (and sometimes my body) to talk to each other a little bit easier.

anyways, that afternoon, as i was laying on the hammock, staring up at the trees, i got the urge to grab my camera and take a few shots. i took a bunch of the trees themselves, like the one below, and then also felt drawn to the rows and rows of colorful flags that were strung between some other trees between the media tent and the workshop tent. the flags had been made in a workshop, i think, and had varying sentiments on them, in the style of prayer flags. it’s interesting to me that i chose to zoom in on one particular flag – seen in the photo at the top of this post – that says “change focus.” i wasn’t really thinking much about it in the moment – it just caught my eye, being yellow and in the center of my field of vision, one of the few flags that was facing me – but now, i feel like it was my cleared and big-picture-thinking brain sending me a message to hopefully be discovered post-festival, when i am back in the world and losing grip on the clarity i always feel i have while i’m there.

change focus. a simple thought, but so hard to do, really, particularly when caught up in the whirlwind of information and activity and deadlines and money and stress of the outside world. but yeah, i think it is time to change focus. and i think i’ve been knowing that for a while and slowly moving in that direction, sometimes without even realizing it.

i still don’t exactly know what it is, what is coming, what is about to happen, what the new focus is. but it’s something. some kind of big change. a big change that i really need. i can’t keep doing things the way i’ve been doing them, cuz it’s not really working for me. i don’t want to keep feeling stuck. i’ve been there before and would prefer not to need some major catastrophe like 9-11 or katrina to happen in order for change to occur. it’d be nice if this time i was in control and made things happen, because i want it and need it and know it and will it.

so yeah. change focus. my two-word summary of my dyke summer camp experience… or i guess what it is that i’m bringing home with me from my experience. oh there was lots of great music, amazing performances, beautiful and mindblowing women, a deeply satisfying and fairly smooth work experience, lots of delicious food, a gorgeous forest, great conversations, interesting movies, strengthening of bonds and community, lots of dirt in my shoes, sweat on my brow (and everywhere else!), the loveliest outdoor showers ever (!), some painful emotions, a good deal of crying, woo to the nth degree, breathtaking fireworks, lots of hugs, and brilliant stars in the sky. and so much more that i’m trying desperately to hang on to for as long as i can.

but thank goddess i took my camera out that one afternoon while swinging in the hammock.

bayou boogaloo!

i love the bayou boogaloo. for all the years i was away in kentucky post-federal-flood, i was so sad i could never seem to make it here during memorial day weekend (too soon after jazzfest) so i could partake – either as a vendor or just a mid-citizen – in the boogaloo. i mean, come on – a music festival in my own neighborhood! (well i guess an argument could be made that jazzfest is also a music festival in my own neighborhood, but the boogaloo is more of a community, grassroots event, and even closer to where i live than the fairgrounds.) last year, i was FINALLY able to participate as a vendor, and it was glorious. so much fun, so many sales (thanks everyone!), and so great to see so many of my mid-city neighbors!

this year, i have been looking forward to the boogaloo for months. the new orleans craft mafia is again, like last year, offering a free t-shirt recycling workshop adjacent to the kid’s tent, in the “eco” area of the festival. (see the festival map below.) we’ll be out there both saturday and sunday – saturday from noon til 5pm, and sunday from 1-4pm – teaching people how to make tote bags, halter tops and other fun stuff out of old t-shirts, with a minimal amount of sewing. we have a good stash of donated t-shirts already, but we’re still accepting donations – just bring ’em on out to the fest and throw ’em in our bin. if you don’t have any t-shirts to work with, don’t worry – we got ya covered. oh, and at the end of the weekend, we’ll have a little fashion show at 5pm on sunday for you to strut your stuff with your new creations, too!

so yeah. i’ve been looking forward to it. but at the same time, freaking out… because a) i had a really successful jazzfest show at jen’s and sold a lot of t-shirts and signs – which is good, yay for money and sales, but also has left me with not as many of the signs and t-shirts i would like to have to sell at the boogaloo; and b) i started this census job that has been kicking my ass! it’s been a long time since i had any kind of “real” job (meaning worked a job outside of my own house), and it’s been a hard adjustment getting used to both that aspect as well as the strange start/stop nature of census work. for example, on any given day, i: have a daily meeting at 9am for a half hour; might go out to make rounds on a new block i’ve been assigned in the morning for a couple of hours; come home for lunch; spend an hour or so going over all the paperwork from the morning to make sure i have it all correct; go back out to a different block for 2nd or 3rd or 4th rounds, trying to find folks who weren’t home the first time; come home again to cool off and do paperwork; go back out in the early evening trying to catch folks coming home from work who i’m having a particularly hard time trying to find; come home, eat dinner, and maybe even go back out again after dinner before dark, for the pesky hard-to-find folks. and then spend more time on paperwork when i’m home. (and then collapse!)

and all of that only got me like 6-7 hours of actual on-the-clock work. but i’ve been working since 8:45am! so it’s been a big adjustment, to say the least. and has left me little time to think about things like ordering t-shirts to print (much less finding time to actually print them), cutting/sanding/painting wood for signs, and making clocks. and, to top it all off, though i did well at jazzfest at jen’s, it’s the only good market/sale i’ve had in months, so i’ve been begging/borrowing/stealing to pay my bills and am deeply in debt… and we’ve only gotten one paycheck so far from the census. so i didn’t even have the money to invest in buying t-shirts to print, or paint to make signs, etc. (much less the booth fee for vending at the boogaloo.)

so this all came to a head on saturday night, as fae and i were hanging out at home and i was surfing the internet, trying to find some wholesale outlet that actually had the style/color of t-shirts i wanted to order (all my usual outlets were sold out of at least one size and most of them several sizes) so i could order them in time for them to actually arrive in enough time to be able to print them… and i realized, what am i doing? i don’t even have the money to pay for these. nor do i have the money to pay for my booth. and even if i could scrape that up, there’s no guarantee that i’d make it back… just because i sold a lot of 70119 t-shirts last year at the boogaloo doesn’t mean i will this year. sales at markets has SUCKED overall so far in 2010, so why would the boogaloo be any different?

and, as an aside, i have been wracking my brain trying to come up with an oil disaster related design, which i thought might be the biggest seller due to the timing, but i haven’t even been able to find the time to work on coming up with that. (and even if i did, i’d be donating the proceeds to the gulf restoration network, so it wouldn’t be something i’d be making money off of. which i still really want to do, but, it was just one more piece of the puzzle that wasn’t coming together for me.)

so. all of a sudden, it came to me. i can’t do the boogaloo. i can’t afford it, i don’t have inventory, and i don’t have time to think about it. and the second i started thinking about not doing it, i instantly felt relief. i immediately posted something on my facebook page, and thought i was done with it. i slept better and the next few days i didn’t think anything about it. it was actually really nice. sad, but also stress-relieving.

and then yesterday, my friend rachelle offered to share her booth with me, which was so sweet. i thought about refusing, but then i figured if i don’t really need to spend any time making stuff and i just take what i’ve got and make as much fit as i can in part of rachelle’s booth, around her stuff, then it doesn’t have to be stressful and maybe i’ll still make a little money anyways. and i always have fun hanging out with rachelle at markets – we almost always set up next to each other. so thanks, rachelle.

so now i am once again doing the bayou boogaloo. and of course, i am going to try to make a few signs this week, maybe a few 70119 clocks. but i’ll only have a literal handful of t-shirts, and a weird assortment of clocks and signs and cufflinks… and that’s it. not a big effort. but at least i’ll be there.

hope to see y’all there!

yes, i’m still alive…

just really, really busy. it’s been a crazy week so far.

the first weekend of jazz fest feels like it was a million years ago to me now. my last post was on saturday afternoon, so to recap the rest of my weekend:

i did hang out at porchfest 2010 on saturday night. we lucked into an easy parking spot and camped out for the afternoon/evening on the porch with the other non-festing and then later, festing, revelers. the weather was pretty great and the band was awesome and there was a sizeable crowd. we were pooped by 9:30 or so though, so it wasn’t a late night.

sunday, though i wasn’t feeling all that well, we ended up heading out to the fairgrounds for our one day at jazz fest. the weather couldn’t have been better, and we again lucked into a perfect parking spot at jen and mary ann’s with no hassle. i wasn’t very set on hearing any specific music – though we did catch a lovely few songs at the beginning of theresa andersson’s set at the fais do do stage – so our day was mostly spent wandering around eating. let’s see if i can remember what i ate: i had the fried eggplant with crawfish sauce as my first appetizer, and fae shared her boudain balls with me. next i had some jama jama (sauteed spinach) and fried plantains from benechin over in the congo area (i skipped the chicken on a stick this time). we shared a strawberry lemonade and later an iced tea. there was some glorious downtime in the gospel tent, enjoying the shade and the breeze and the electrifying crownseekers (their lead singer had the most amazing falsetto voice – wow did he hit some high notes!) with deuce and puma. we visited with karen and debra in karen’s booth in the louisiana folk life/marketplace area. at some point i had a snoball (strawberry) from plum street. oh, and fae ate a cochon de lait poboy that she generously shared with me. she also picked up some cracklins for later snackage. as i was finishing my snoball, i couldn’t resist the white chocolate bread pudding, while fae had some strawberry shortcake. and then she grabbed some crawfish monica to walk out with for mary ann (which she had requested), and i decided at the last minute to get some spicy crawfish rolls from ninja to walk out with, which i later enjoyed on the porch back on ponce de leon street.

so that was our day of feasting. i think we did a pretty good job, knowing it was probably going to be our only day out at the fest since we had free tickets. (of course, if anyone has any free tickets they are trying to get rid of for this weekend, please do let me know! there were a few things i wanted to eat that i did not make it around to!) we also worked our way around contemporary crafts to see all the wares for sale, as well as congo and the louisiana marketplace. but we really didn’t listen to all that much music. and by about 5:30-6pm, we were done. with our last food choices in hand, we sauntered back over to ponce where we plopped down on the porch and remained for the rest of the evening, chilling out.

sadly, due to the chaos of jazzfest, our treme viewing party was postponed til monday. and even more sadly, on monday, when we went over to deuce and puma’s house to watch it, we all collectively learned that hbo on demand does not show the current episode of treme until 24 hours AFTER the show is over, which means, 10pm. not 9pm, which is when we showed up. and by 10, we were too tired to stay to watch it, knowing that folks had to get up early the next morning for work. so i did not get to see the 3rd episode and now will not get to see the 4th episode until next tuesday (again due to jazz fest). sad. (but yes, i’ll live.)

speaking of work, on tuesday, fae and i then started our training with the u.s. government’s census bureau. it’s been long days of mostly having a training manual read to us aloud verbatim, which is pretty dull for the most part, but we really love our crew leader and he at least does his best to make the training entertaining. there are 15 people in our training class – we had 5 no-shows the first day. but so far, no one else had dropped out. today was the last day of the verbatim training, and tomorrow we will take our final test and then go out into the field for “live” training – which of course means, we start knocking on doors tomorrow. i will probably take saturday and sunday off so i can enjoy porch fest this weekend, but then monday i will begin full time door-knockin, hopefully in my own neighborhood. i can’t wait for that first paycheck.

so that’s what i’ve been up to. things will calm down a little after jazz fest i guess, but for the next two months i think it’s going to be all-census-all-the-time. i’m basically being forced to take a little break from the crafty life due to that, but don’t worry, i’ll get back to it when the census gig ends in late june. i think it will actually be good for me to take a little break from making and selling stuff, plus i still have my music column to write and there’s that pesky film festival that i need to finish programming and write up for michfest. so i got a lot going on for the next little while.

all of which is to say, i guess i might not be blogging all that much. but i’ll try to pop in every now and then.