get free things.

photo by anabela carniero

just a quick note from my mountain of emails to send and photos to edit to let you know that a) i am still alive and well and somewhere in the midwest and b) the lovely anabela is hosting a giveaway of the sweetie pie press' newest commissioned artist button sets by sarah mcneil. anabela's latest project, dreamcats, has turned out to be an overnight sensation and as soon as i saw it get rolling i knew that the new 'cats' and 'other cats' buttons i was working on with sarah would be a perfect fit for the hazy feline whims of the dreamcats crew.

go try to win 'em!

and thank you to both sarah and anabela for being awesome ladies.

sword of your face.

my very wonderful friend shannon has been working tirelessly (and sometimes tiredly) for what seems like forever on sword of my mouth, a post-rapture graphic novel collaboration with jim munroe (he the writer, she the illustrator). now it is finally ready to be launched out into the world.

because work begets work, shannon has decided to celebrate the completion of her slavish daily drawing buy offering free facebook profile images to as many people as she can handle drawing. in exchange, you just have to share information about the book and its launch via said social media site.

personally, i am hoping that shannon gets around to drawing everyone on facebook. her hands will atrophy and fall off, but the internet will be so much cleaner to look at.

you can find all the details for the book launch here.

for all the details about how to get your own free shannon face, look here.

let us all fulfil our narcissism and/or appreciation of shannon's deft pen. and let shannon's viral dreams become a reality.

update 04.26.2010: due to popular demand (surprise, surprise) shannon can only keep doing these drawings until may 4. i think some bigger blogs have picked up the story and she is starting to get really swamped.

on the mend.

photo by dusty parr

just a quick note to say that i will leading the church of craft's saturday service on darning this weekend. so gather up your holey socks and woolens (and other stuff, if you feel like experimenting) and come on down to heartbeat 960 for a little sewing circle. we will supply the wool and needles.

darning is very easy (at least the way i do it). in a few short hours you can learn the skills to restore your favourite knee highs and stop your pointy elbows from sticking out of your best sweater.

more info can be found on the church of craft website here.

a winner and some replies.

1) given that i didn't want to clutter up the comments on the giveaway post, i have been holding my tongue (which is hard for me). so here are some replies before i announce the winner:

a) a general thank you to everyone who said kind and supportive things. they made me feel the opposite of how januray usually makes me feel.
b) mama: you are banned because you can have anything of mine you want, anyway. plus i knew you would complain about the wool. we can go through my yarn stash and make you something custom while you are out here. okay? sheesh.
c) i would love to see a knit version. i feel similarly about knitting - like i am standing outside of the room looking in. but i should be able to do it!
d) double neckmonia is when both of your necks are afflicted. walking neckmonia travels from neck to neck. i think there was a denzel washington movie about it.
e) levi macdougall is the best and i miss him now that he is a real working person swimming through america.
f) roisin: there is not much need to flatter me. it shakes my image of self.

2) finally! and the winner is: mathild-e! (the astute among you will notice that i didn't bother to take my mom out of the running after all).

i will be in touch to get you your goodies, mathild-e. i am very excited to be sending this guy off to france (i presume). i hear you got our canadian weather this winter, so this should serve you well.

and what a joy it was to lure you all out of lurkerdom. thank you all!

for those interested, i should be piling some more of these into the etsy shop over the next couple of days (i just have trampoline hall and my difficult mother's arrival in town to get through first).

the first nice thing i did for you this decade.

hi internet. it's me, becky.

today leah came over, we sipped tea and crunched some semi-final numbers for last year's city of craft. she also encouraged me to make the desktop calendar of my semi-dreams. so i did!

it is pretty rudimentary, but it serves the purposes i have (namely: planning another big, big year) and keeps my new computer's desktop relatively simple.

my original plan was a black on white one, but i just stuck with the weird blue of the scanner in the end. there are some colour matching issues, i think, but i'm okay with that for now.

if you would like to use it for yourself (and your screen resolution happens to be 1680x1050), feel free. it is here. just don't try to sell it or pretend you made it, right?

if you would like to request a different resolution or ratio, also feel free. no promises, but i will see what i do. you are important to me, friends of the information super highway.

let's do this year right up.