The return of the CrossFit Chiang Mai garuda

Loyal blog followers might recall the project I was working on in Thailand this past winter, drawing a garuda (mythical Thai half-man-half-bird tough guy) to be used for the CrossFit gym t-shirts and other promotional materials.  Perhaps you remember my struggles with getting the biceps to be sufficiently X-Men-esque.  Anyhoo, it turned out really cool, and I just got a photo of the womens' style t-shirts!  I appreciate in general how pink has become an acceptable color for a strong woman to wear.

And for you local folks, tonight from 6:30-7:30 I'll be at Rasa Spa for the closing reception of my art show there.  It's been a great run.  Stop in if you can!

Made for walking

Just finished a bespoke Wingtips project, taking a pair of well-loved black cowgirl boots to the next level.  I approached this with much trepidation, since the person who owns the boots was very fond of them, but they turned out great and I'm hoping they wear well.  Her directions were to use bold colors and to include a butterfly.

In other gossipy news, we had an earthquake yesterday!  Not that I noticed, I was either in the car or the shower and completely missed it.  Bummer.  I have no desire to experience a big LA or Haiti style quake with collapsing bridges and parking garages, but I would really, really like to feel a minor quake to see what it's like.  Upstate NY is pretty darned stable, geologically speaking, so thankfully any earthquakes that come our way are pretty mellow.  I have been chuckling over this link of damage photos.  However, I DID get to experience a thunderstorm of Biblical proportions last week, and swear that lightning almost struck the house.

My show at Rasa Spa is coming down next week.  I've been happy to be their artist for almost a year, and love being part of such a lovely place.  If you wish to see the show, please be sure to go in the next few days.

Branching out, perhaps

Hmmmm, maybe just maybe I'll start doing belts.  More later.

Magic sungold and tomatillo salsa

It's peak tomato season here, and in celebration, here's my recipe for delicious salsa:

Step 1:
1 pint tomatillos, husk removed and washed with warm water to get rid of the stickiness, cut in half
4-5 cloves garlic
1 jalepeno, halved and seeds removed
1 sweet red pepper
Roast the above ingredients at 350 for an hour.  Yum, roasted garlic!

Step 2:
1 red onion, chopped
1 more sweet red pepper
juice of a lime
Add these ingredients to the roasted ingredients above, and chop up finely in a food processor.

Step 3:
1 pint sungold tomatoes (oh so sweet and good), quartered
1 large Brandywine tomato, chopped small
generous dash of salt
Mix everything together, and EAT.  Probably with a spoon, it's good.

Variation: last time I made it, I added some fresh sweet corn.  Cilantro would be good too.

A wedding certificate

It's raining and cloudy in Ithaca today, and for once I'm actually happy about it.  You may never hear me saying that again, so take note!  Taking the morning to putter around, and the gloomy skies make me glad to be inside with no pressure to go outside and run or mow the lawn or participate in some other energetic activity.  I will probably also spend some time with my book today (once again sucked into the GRR Martin series in preparation for reading the 5th book that just came out), before waiting tables tonight.

Busy week last week, buckling down to some freelance work while gorging on Radio Lab podcasts.  Remember the photo last week of my cat sitting on the desk while I was trying to work on a Quaker-style wedding certificate?  Here's the finished, cat-free, product. I'm pleased with the end results and so was the bride.  She's from a family who makes delicious hard cider, and the groom is the son of a winery family.  Pen and watercolor on 300 lb hot press paper.

yesterday's haikus

market is ghost town
selling paper in the rain
where are the tourists?

adorable cat
"half-and-half," he is thinking
I open the fridge

Trying to get some work done around here

Happy Friday y'all!  That means I'm heading into my work week.  I'm once again freshly back from a nice time at Forked Lake, the annual trip with great friends.  We've been doing that for ohhhh almost 20 years now!  We're starting to feel like old timers there.

Today is a good working day.  I was up early and threw all the camping laundry in to clean while eating breakfast.  This being a somewhat ideal day, the breakfast process involved at least a half hour with my tea and book and cat on the lap before actually starting with the real day.  Once the Earl Grey settled into my system, I was off to a running start.  Had the car packed up for tomorrow's market by 10:30, and dove into some paperwork and bills and other odds and ends of business administration and mucking about on the internet for the rest of the morning.  Working on being able to accept credit cards again.  After lunch it was up to the studio to finish the preliminary sketch of a wedding certificate (it involves apples).

Now that it's not as hot out, I'm enjoying being in my studio again (which is waaaay upstairs and gets afternoon sun).  Here's a photo of my working space today.  I know I've posted a million photos of my various cats in various invasive places, but I still think it's funny.