hair today, gone tomorrow.

this reminds me, today i booked a free haircut for my return to toronto. i am really looking forward to the freedom that a bit of debulking will do.

no sleep till.

oh, you know the rest.

we have returned to the place that used to terrify me with its loud sounds, horror drivers and finger-nail-sullying air. over the years, it has grown to be populated with friendly faces and familiar places. i can even handle the bqe without crying now (usually).

we rolled into brooklyn and went straight to etsy. our charming hostess, melissa, teaches public school until later in the day and anda opened herself up to some chilly canadian hugs so we had a place to land. when the etsy offices aren't entirely overrun with activity and meetings, our old friends there are usually able to offer the ability to plug in. after all, in the indie craft community they basically are the internet (no offense to other ethereal craft exploits, but...c'mon...they are our world's equivalent of the borg).

after some frantic chatting, some emailing, some wandering, some leg stretching and some eating, we made our way over to melissa's. we decompressed. we got a little caught up. then we motivated ourselves to make it over to melody lanes for a late game of ten pin before they closed. we are all atrocious bowlers but the place is great...and not just because of this guy (who got aitor a little too drunk on tequila).

oh yeah, i won. 78 is a pretty hot score, right?

all business philly day.

today we stole some children and did some very important business around town. we started with a visit to our friend paul's brand new print shop, fireball printing, to pick up some of hazel's ghost prints. the place is huge as are so many such spaces in philly. i was also excited that a clean cut man in black pants and a tie was repairing one of the copiers when we got there. he looked like an old timey door-to-door solicitor.

shiny new prints in hand, we all went down to northern liberties for a meeting with art star. me, aitor and hazel all had appointments. it was hazel's first store meeting which i am happy to report went very well, indeed.

hazel's first store sale, caught on camera. look at that pile of cuteness. those are art star proprietresses, erin and megan sealing the deal. after a successful day out, we decided to push our luck with a very long and misguided goose chase to south street. lessons learned: if you take directions from a fifteen-year-old, you might end up peeing in a scary alley for lack of working bathrooms in the vicinity. in spite of our long pointless journey, we did stumble into some points of interest (see below). what else is new?

grand day out at the italian market.

did i mention the amazing picnic basket that i thrifted in ohio with a full mustard coloured set inside? it has totally changed and improved my portable display. this is a good thing because at ten dollars it seemed beyond my meagre budget at the time.

it helped a great deal today in devising a card-table-sized display to bring to the italian market. we accompanied julie who both has experience in guerrilla street vending and the italian market connections to find somewhere to set up without hassle. it was a minimal display but a step towards the craft fair holy grail of portability and acceptable aesthetics.

this has been a pretty self-absorbed posting, so i will leave you with this to help find your way out of here:

trenton avenue arts festival.

we spent today outside at the trenton avenue arts festival in philadelphia, a local street fair that we were encouraged to get ourselves into by some philly friends. it also boasts a kinetic sculpture derby (hence the flying monkeys above). the weather forecast called for clouds and possible showers (a situation that has bitten us before in this city) so we were extra happy to find that the clouds only produced rain for one brief moment and was warmly cloudy the rest of the time. the day was spent chatting with nice people and watching an endless cavalcade of strangeness walk by the tent.

i was too busy to get to walk around much but i did manage to stray from the tent long enough to find a favorite table of the day. i ended up buying a ghost brooch for my growing ghost art collection from artist greta scheing. she and her partner ron also collaborate (i think) on this incredible paper cut-out modular home under the name daymaker. art of place, mathematical figuring and clean design - how could i not fall in love?

of course, hazel got in on the action for all of ten minutes, too.

philadelphia family.

having settled immediately into our adoptive philadelphia family, we woke up (from our five chihuahua bed) and got right to work making art with hazel. hazel has definitely expanded her repertoire of ghost art (a true soft spot of mine) into a whole community of spectres.

she has been selling prints of these at craft fairs alongside her mother's jewelery. i think this stuff is so great that i plan on taking her to my store meeting with art star.

as the day progressed, we hopped a ride to northern liberties to take a poke around with our lovely host family. julie has taken a job programming outdoor vendors for a new piazza there and we wanted to go give it a look. it's always interesting to me when big time property developers decide to invade warehouse area with their slickness. at best, the old charm of these areas still poke through but sometimes the new sheen makes me sad. still, the piazza is lovely and i am looking forward to spending a day there at the philadelphia independent craft market next weekend.

on the way home, hazel stumbled into a whole new level of audience engagement. i know i probably shouldn't encourage this type of stuff in some ways, but i would rather discuss with her the power of using this language and what it means. oh, who am i kidding? it was making me laugh. i am a terrible person.

sorry, world.