spring has sprung

The back yard has become our sanctuary. The weather isn't hot enough for mosquitoes yet and the kids are loving the freedom. despite a few ant and spider scares the kids are pretty nature-loving. our whole yard is covered in little purple flowers (fair's photographic genius above)... i know they are weeds, but they're beautiful. fair refused to let me cut the yard because of them, but whitman has been instigating sibling fights by stomping on them. it amazing how the young ones know what buttons to push...

We found some abandoned tree stumps and claimed them for our firepit seating. The kids then continued to transform them into an outside dining area. gourmet veggie corndogs a la ketchup.

whitman has found a new love. this is one of the few real solid foods he approves of.

momma, shy whitman and pirate fair.

i'm so glad that the warmth is here and we have big plan for our back yard. we are starting a community garden, which involves transplanting the play set to the other side of the yard. we are having our garden kick-off party in a few weeks.

this saturday is our remembrance of the Haymarket Affair and the grand opening of sticks and stones books, our portable bookstore, with music from them, him, him, and michael's new band Holy, Holy, Holy!!! at picasso's coffeehouse. starts at noon and goes all day. ending with the showing of the film "Sacco and Vanzetti."(synopsis: In 1920, the anarchist Italian immigrants Niccola Sacco (Riccardo Cucciolla) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Gian Maria Volonté) are sentenced to death, falsely accused of a robbery and murder. Indeed they are condemned due to their political beliefs, in one of the most shameful and hypocrite judgments of the human history. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ) Here's the flyer for the whole day:

Empire or Humanity?

zinn takes complicated issues and states them so simply. What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me about the American Empire by Howard Zinn Narrated by Viggo Mortensen Art by Mike Konopacki Video editing by Eric Wold

here are some of my recent art pieces from my fibers/printmaking class and a few others...

my first attempt at monoprints (additive)
**from a photo from my friend sarah**

monoprint (additive)

caligraph

"july and her ghost" dyptic, monoprint and ghost print (subtractive)

batik in progress

"the crowd" conte drawing in progress 36x28

"serenade" acrylic and charcoal on cardboard

franklin family folk festival

last night we celebrated the first ever franklin family food folk festival. the sky cleared for us right before dinner and we shared the company of our many st. charles friends, but a whole slew of those from st. louis. more and more people arrived throughout the night and enjoyed our backyard, with poetry, music and fire. we hosted David Rovics for the night , while he is on a short mid-west tour and he closed the evening with his furious guitar pickin' and sweetly piercing songs. it was his 41st b-day and michael suprised him with a homemade cake. michael's nifty like that... he used so much red food coloring that everyone's mouths were turning red. it was a really great night and i didn't pick up a single dish! i'm really against disposable plates, even at huge potlucks. we went through four sets of dishes, over forty people ate and we ended the night with two full recycling bins (one went missing at the end of the night...) and less than half a bag of trash. i always get upset when i see three huge full trash cans whenever i go to other potlucks or events. i hope more people start mucking through the dishes and give up the convenience of throw away plates and the like. i had many volunteer washers... sean, james and the other mystery washers get many points. thank you! and thanks to all who came and shared an amazing evening and to those who gave their support to david. all of the boys ( michael, david, jason and sean) left this afternoon to drive david to KY and then on to Tennessee. I'm sure they will have many adventures, make lots of good music and hopefully remain out from behind bars (the orange jump suit kind).


david rovics and his revolutionary b-day cake


fairs, tigers and whitmans, oh my

a sliver of jen with james and sean

i think lady bug is enjoying the poetry.

michael, my hubby and of the garage

sean arnold, casino town poet

ian fisher

david rovics

the fire

the beautiful glow...
of not only my lovely cousin carrey and her belly-floating baby boy ( please name him Ettienne), but of the fire.

off to play with the kiddos!

thanks! angela

chicago and the sickness

i had a fabulous time in chicago last weekend (henry darger, pale blue dot and a skinny-ass bar called the matchbox...just to give you a taste) and i'm dedicating a whole future post on the trip... sadly i came back and by the end of the next day i was laid out with a flu bug and have been moving at a snail's pace for the last four days. whitman caught it as well and we were in the ER wed. night to get him re hydrated. things are calming down now but i still have the rumblies in my tummblie. i was feeling a bit better on thurs., but i didn't want to chance getting sick during classes, so i spent the day at home sewing these:

and whitman's conquering dino... on the Vera linen bag. This is actually the first bag that i ever made, using a tea towel. it just took me until a few days ago to figure out an interior fabric that would work to go with it and not take away from it's vintage feel.

more to come...

back in the day

my husband's old poetry group, brokenPOETspoken, during a protest about five years ago. Michael is the first on the left. i love these pictures, it makes me miss the boys and their rowdy poetriness.

CAMP

Last Thursday, we participated in C.A.M.P.'s (Community Arts and Media Project) soon-to-be-monthly fundraiser. Local artists donated art for a silent auction and michael and i were asked to contribute. my best friendola Na-Do provided music with her latest project, NaDo's Delight. The lighting was perfect and I captured some amazing silhouette shots. (notice her little admirer? whitman was fascinated but kept putting his hand in the tip jar.)

Michael and the kids making use of CAMP's art area.

"The Community Arts and Media Project (CAMP) is a local independent effort to bring free and sustainable resources to its neighborhood and to the city of St. Louis. Through the means of art, media, open forums, open doors, event space and collaborative projects, CAMP will provide a new center for creative interaction, welcoming people of all ways of life. Thriving inside of the historic Randall Building at the corner of Cherokee Street and Minnesota Avenue, CAMP considers its location in crucial juxtaposition with its mission. The crossroads of CAMP span out into an extremely diverse range of incomes, races, cultures and ideas. We want to be agents to foster cultural fusion and positive ideas. We believe that art and open spaces provide that agency.

The Community Arts and Media Project takes form not only as a space for the public but also as an umbrella for several groups who rent affordable office space inside the building and contribute to the vision of CAMP. These groups include the Confluence newspaper, Gateway Green Alliance , St. Louis Independent Media. CAMP has also given birth to new educational projects such as the South Side Workshop Exploring Appropriate Technologies (SWEAT), which not only focuses on human-powered technologies, but also provides a bicycle workshop for the neighborhood youth and broader St. Louis bike riders; South Side University, a local “free school” that offers classes which are taught and attended by anyone who wants to share, learn, and participate; the Bread and Roses Library, which features hundreds of handmade books, also known as “zines” a public access computer lab which is set up with wireless internet and useful software; and an ongoing indoor murals project."

CAMP is basically what michael and i have always dreamt of doing...and probaly will end up doing later on in our life. so it's exciting to see how these guys are doing it and learn as much as we can.

i found a bird-lovely beautiful tea towel at a local antique store and turned it into this:

spring break 2008!!

phase two

tonight i sat for almost four hours getting the second installment of my tattoo. the tattoo artist, lauren b., and i agreed to have a third session on down the road to do the whites and finishing touches. i'll post a better picture once it's healed. i'm really happy with it so far. i almost broke during the last half an hour, but held strong. why do we put ourselves through this?...oh yeah...because it's awesome.
tomorrow is another breakfast at black bear bakery, the worker-owned collective that michael is part of now. all you can eat buckwheat pancakes and buttermilk corncakes!!! so for those of you that live in the st. louis area, come down 9am-1pm.

first sew

after waiting through many cold days and nights, i finally starting sewing in the new studio. i pulled the space heater out of michael's studio, in the garage, and finished a few bags that are quite tardy. thank you everyone for your patience. i love how the studio is all windows, but the cold air leaks into the room so easily, due to the 100+ year old house. ( notice my adorable black apple postcard in the back ground? emily gives extra goodies with all her orders.)

my little sewing mascot.

and voila, the large pleated canvas bag. a lady requested that i remake this bag for her and i happened to have just enough fabric left to accomplish the feat.

my cutie #2 ( not in rank, just in years...) we went down to the railroad tracks again. the train cabooses on display are now james and persy... because one is green and one red and whitman is obsessed with trains. the scarf is another chirstmas present from lovely amy. it's actually daddy's, but i stole it for whitman.

fair had a nice stroll along the water with her friend shade. shade is only a few weeks younger than fair and the only boy friend she has that isn't years older. they are so cute. everything is brown here and the wind is chilling, but the leafless tree skyline is still amazing. i'm really hoping the weather gets warmer soon so our outings can be extended.
it's been a great couple of days. i got an A on my folklore and fables midterm and my first few prints of my linoleum block weren't completely horrible. i'll post some of my prints that i've made soon.

studio rebirth and sunday mornings

I finally moved the sewing studio back into our mud room. here is the half that is organized... the half behind the camera is a four foot high pile of stuff that will be dealt with later on. i put up a shelf to make my bag-making fabrics more accessible and added a card table for cutting and drawing out patterns. this set up is definatly more functional than before.

here's a bag i just finished for a friend of mine. she didn't want anything floral or paisley, so this was our compromise. not too paisley, but more of a classy indian feeling.


for the last month or two we have been having brunch at picasso's on sundays. two omelets for michael and i and a huge belgian waffle for the kids to share. going out to breakfast is something we always did in portland and it is good to have a cozy place to hang out at that we feel some what comfortable with the kids.




the weather has been eratic lately( 80 degrees last weekend only to snow 8 inches the following day), but today is the second sunday of taking the short walk down to main st and we walked along the railroad tracks at the waterfront... the kids insist on stumbling over the rickety tressels the whole length of the park (don't worry the tracks have been out of commissions for over a decade).



our good friends, scott and kelly, came over later in the day with their little ones faron and miranda. the girls dressed up as princesses. miranda loves the pillowcase dress i made and fair had to wear the frida crown.from her halloween costume. the girls danced around and the boys banged their trucks into any and everything... god, how gendered our kids are, but we really didn't push them either way. whitman took to trains and cars, while fair insisted on being a princess. but at least they both love making art and fair did ask to be frida this last halloween... so her priorities are somewhat straight.




the hubbies just swept them all off to chuckie cheese's to give momma some sewing time. so i best be getting off this thing and get some work done.

inked

here is the first stage of the tattoo (the picture is a little fuzzy). it is just of the line work and in a few weeks i'll get the rest done. lauren b. @ evermore tattoo is the artist and she is doing a great job. most tattoo artists wouldn't go near a piece like this, but she was excited about it from the begining. i've had it for almost five days and it's basically healed... it was itchin' like crazy today. well i love it and fair loves it. she calls it the "fair and mama tattoo." when i got home, after getting it done, whitman said he was sad because he wasn't in the tattoo, but i reassured him that his was coming...
i'm buckling down this weekend and getting the orders done for all of you kind patient folks. so i may be missing in action again, but since i'm borrowing a camera for a few days i may drift towards the computer here and there...
until then...

fair ophelia interviewed on RFN

the lovely mr. marty owings just interviewed me for Radio Free Nation, part of blog talk radio. it was a little nerve racking, thinking of all of the "uhms" and "aws" to be swallowed, and not rambling... thankfully it did go well. we talked about the history of fair ophelia designs and the nifty handbags thus created. you can listen to the interview here.
...and there is a camera in the mail, so i will be posting more and more pictures...
off to writing my late comparative paper on afghan and indian folktale motifs...here's to coffee and good music until the sun comes up.

bread and circus

my husband, michael, was interviewed last night on radio free nation on his collaborative blog found in pockets. the interview turned into a great look into the franklin family and our efforts and beliefs. this is a great chance for those of you to get more acquainted with us.
michael is an amazing orator and his eloquencce of speech largely surpasses my own...one of the many reasons i fell in love. so check out the interview and tell me your thoughts.

missing in action...

sorry for the lack of attention, but i've been drowning in school work and trying not to make myself sick. and i must admit i've been spending a little too much time shopping on-line and going out thrifting. i did make some great buys though.

from emily @ inside the black apple

a paper doll set
(for fair's birthday)

HighVoltageVintage
4 round vintage lockets
(for myself and maybe for some of you special ones out there...)

okay so i'm doing it again, i have to stop looking at this computer screen and get to sewing. i have quite a few bags to work on. so goodbye for now...


a few things before i truly go:

michael and i have started our own portable bookstore, check our blog for Sticks&Stones Books

today was the first day of work at Black Bear Bakery, for michael. yeah for good food and anarchists!

later.

breathing

yeah!! i can finally breathe again!! i just broke my sleeping for the last two and a half days sickness, along with poor whitman all snuggly and snot-nosed... now i can get right to work on the school projects that were due days ago. no sleep tonight... and no working on bags until the weekend. i have sheets of unorganized color-aid paper to go through for my color theory class. i was slightly duped by buying the pricey ass paper on ebay thinking i was getting a deal. the discription of the set missing a "few colors" actually meant "colors" not just sheets. i realized last night that there are hardly no reds or yellows. so what do i do? send it back and get a really bad grade, or try to work with what i have, eat the money and buy a smaller version of the set new in a few days. i'm screwed, my nose hurts and i think my husband and daughter are next in line for being sick... i can't wait until spring and for our tax return...

hillary would be good, obama would be great.

Etsy Shop Update Today

I will be slowly, but surely updating my etsy shop with bags today. I will start around 4pm and end.... who knows...I have 15 bags to add!! yes, 15. this is largely due to the great but extremely overcrowded show last night. i did not have a hand in the arranging and setup of displays and unfortunately my bags where lost within the sea of merchandise. the space was tiny for the amount of stuff and people, so unless it was a quick grab, many sales where lost. despite my lack of sales, i met some really cool people.
i've become one step closer to getting my tattoo, from miss lauren b., at evermore. I am getting Three Ages of Women, by Gustav Klimt, as an upper arm sleeve. I'm doing it for a number of reasons, mainly it is to honor fair's birth. Here is the actually painting, but lauren with be simplifying it and changing some coloring .
i found a great hook up for asian baby slings, from South City Slings.

and i got to hang out with longtime friend kate, from red anvil.

so, in the end, i may not of been financially successful, but it was a great social evening with sword-toting belly dancers, fellow crazy crafters and artists, and a few solid women that i hopefully will be hanging with again.