I love surprises. Last week I got an email from somebody's husband, asking for my help with his wife's Christmas gift. Jack had very much wanted to send his wife to Blueberry Hill Inn last summer for one of our Weekend Sewing Workshops, but none of the dates had worked. When I told him the dates for next summer he booked Louisa a spot and called me to discuss the details (even though its actually their wedding anniversary, which makes me a little worried that Louisa will want a refund and that I got Jack out of having to plan two holidays...). Now we had to figure out how he was going to put this under the tree. Lucky for him, I had just gotten some samples of my yet to be released Christmas Sweater Gift Wrap, which of course I offered up. He thought it would be fun to wrap up a copy of my book. "But doesn't she already have my book?" I asked. There was a long silence during which I assume Jack was busy thinking "wow, Heather, get OVER yourself...", but it turns out that she didn't, so we wrapped up a signed copy. "Can you add a personal note? Jack asked. "Absolutely!" I said. Then, I swear to all of Louisas friends, neighbors, family, etc.... HE TOLD ME WHAT TO WRITE.

I have exactly a dozen books sitting in my studio right now and about two rolls of wrapping paper. There are presently a total of 15 spots open in the two Weekend Sewing Workshops scheduled for next summer, August 7/8 and 14/15. If there are any more husbands (or sisters/mothers/daughters/sons) out there who would like to give their wives an extremely fun weekend with a bunch of sewing-crazy ladies in one of the loveliest spots in Vermont, do email me. I would love to help.

Technically I gave up beer a few years ago because of a very awkward exchange between myself and a trainer at my former gym, which was one of those places where employees openly solicit potential one-on-one clients. "I can help you lose that baby weight!" he said enthusiastically. I didn't need to tell him that I have never actually had a baby, he realized it before I was even finished carefully arranging the look on my face. TC thought this was extremely funny, and the next time he bought one of those little kegs that everyone was so wild about last summer he referred to it as "Our Little Blessing". Since that day I only drink beer when its for a good cause, or when its much much too hot to drink wine. Or if I'm poolside. Which is why, long story short, I go to Brooklyn a lot. Every single promotional event that Leslie gets us involved in over there there seems to include Pabst Blue Ribbon or a local micro-brew, always for a worthy cause. Occasionally, there are bagels. Pizza is often delivered. I usually try to eat beforehand. BUT, not this coming Sunday, when I am honored to have been asked to be a JUDGE at the 1st Annual Brooklyn Pie Bake Off Benefit at Spacecraft and for one of my favorite charities: Bags For the People. Beer will be served. Pie will be judged. I will look like I am in my third trimester by the time they stuff me into the cab and send me back to Manhattan. Actually, I should demand a private car so that I can lie down on the ride back. I may stop eating on Friday in order to take full advantage. 

Take a look at the details, contest rules, and other specifics here, and I will see you there!

Anyway, I recently found myself developing some Owl and The Pussycat artwork for a client, and I really expected it to be a pretty easy task, since I already knew the characters quite well. The process was a lot more trying. My first sketch was a bit too sweet, But I did like the way Pussycat comes accross as being in charge of directions:

Something about this felt a little... un-relatable to me. I was trying to find a personal experience that might lend a bit of inspiration, and I was reminded of my father in law telling me about his youthful summers on Lake Michigan, which (he agreed with me on this) sound a whole lot like that Kid Rock video. And yes, this link will actually lead you to a Kid Rock video. My father in law and I have this in common: we are both, deep down, fans of canned beer and Kid Rock. So I took a moment and made him this sketch, which imagines the Owl and The Pussycat with an outboard motor and a sixer of tall boys.

I did another dozen sketches, none of which are worth showing anybody. They all looked a little forced, like I was trying to re-tell somebody else's story and I wasn't remembering the punch lines or as if I hadn't met the characters first-hand, and was getting very frustrated. This is when I did something for the first time in a very long time: I drank a cup of espresso in the mid-afternoon. And this is what I drew next.

Yes, the Pussycat is squeeze-guzzling honey straight from the bear. And the Owl is rocking out. I loved it, but it wasn't exactly a sustainable amount of energy for any of us. Our fearless duo would be out of honey and energy very soon at this rate and we would all be crashing and dismal before dusk. I needed to tone it down.

And still, I had lost something along the way that was making it hard to tell this story in the way that I remembered being able to see it as a child.

I decided to keep the honey bear though,  and managed to scratch out this slightly sugary version:

Which, in turn, led to the group below. I'm sorry I can't tell you what this is all for yet, but if all goes well you will be seeing them all again...

Spending a week with the Owl and The Pussycat has also led to another seemingly permanent development in my life. I'm now officially an afternoon coffee drinker. The addiction was instant, within a few days of my first mid-day cup I was crawling into the kitchen with a splitting headache a half hour after what my brain had already decided was Coffee Time. Oh, the anchor of dependency.

Maybe that's why I struggle to relate as well to The Owl and The Pussycat now as I did as a child, because with every convenience, every luxury, every habit that becomes a part of my life I know that I am further away from a ife that allows for spontaneous adventure, or at the very least saddled with a much longer packing list.

Maybe if I just stop accumulating things now, I can still manage it. I can see myself pushing off from that dock someday in my own pea green boat and rowing off to lands unknown, accompanied not just by a big bag of money and a squeeze top honey bear, but also a formidable amount of coffee beans, pre-ground. Its calming to imagine my tall, handsome percolator sitting across from me, gleaming with the promise of a productive afternoon. I hope he doesn't try to bring a guitar.

Denyse's studio, in sale mode

My dear and talented friend Denyse Schmidt is having her annual studio sale on November 14th in Bridgeport, CT at her gorgeous studio. Its worth the drive or the train ride if you are in day trip distance, if for no other reason than to meet Denyse and to see her workspace, which is in one of the old American Fabric Co.'s former factory buildings.

Denyse has a lot going on this month, with the launch of her newest fabric line, Hope Valley, as well as four new quilt patterns (below) shipping before the holidays. I especially love "Hills and Hollers", but look at that proverb quilt, which allows the maker to sew up any message spelled out in lovely Denyse-y blocks on full sized and baby quilts. Such a brilliant idea.

Oh, and there is also a very quiet but very exciting sale going on over at Denyse's website right now: a very small number of her quilts are 30% off for a limited time.

And here are those new quilt patterns, fresh off the press!

I've made these very realistic jello eyeballs and they are so much fun. My advice is that you should freeze them and drop them into icey martinis rather than arrange them on a platter, because even the politest of guests will not be able to bring themselves to pick them up and put them into their mouths. The best part is that when you drop them into a clear drink, the red veins (food coloring that you have expertly applied with the unwound edge of a Q-tip) sort of waft around like spooky swirling little drops of blood. Creepy and lovely. Especially beautiful in martini glasses but also very effective in shot glasses. Be warned: The oppportunites for punnish toasts are endless.

Order them here.

Oh, and if you are tempted to order the Jello Brains kit, don't. It will frighten people away from the buffet.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Halloween, especially here in the Northeast.

Toys have longed seemed the answer to this dilema. But while I have an impressive craft book library, I have not, until Hand Stitched Felt, had a single one that includes such a wonderful assortment of toys and accessories. There has been a need for a book like this for quite some time, and Kata Gold was the perfect person to write it.

From Hand Sitched Felt by Kata GoldaI have been aware of Kata Golda for some time, having first bumped into one of her little framed portraits of a dapper little mouse dressed in striped cover-alls in a shop in California years ago. What struck me then and what strikes me now about her work is the expressiveness of the simple faces on her felt animals conveyed with  literally a few simple lines. Her toys and embellishments are so full of personality and life that they are sure to become well loved members of the family. Melanie just finished this little guy, who I think is especially dear. And maybe its my imagination, but I see Kata in his little face as much as I see Melanie, and I think I even see a trace of Melanies real-life dog.

Melanie Falick's Dog, from Hand Stitched Felt by Kata Golda

So simple, right? But so totally pee-your pants cute that the entire New York City Craft world has been crazy over them since they arrived in town a few weeks ago, even inspiring an extremely cute little stop action film. You can even win a free copy of Hand Stitched felt by leaving a comment about the video.

See more images and projects from Hand Stitched Felt here, on the STC blog, or learn more about it here at STC Craft.

But, as Hannahs sparkly little star began to fade, I feared for my own public image in the eyes of my tween nieces. The girls are older now, and harder to impress. And I am older, and finding it harder to be hip, at least in the eyes of the young. You can imagine my glee, then, at the news that one of the many Hannah Montana dolls on the market currently is proudly donning a pair of yoga print Munki Munki pajamas, which has created nice little bump on my "hip" meter over at my sisters house.

Actually, lets be honest, nobody thinks I'm hip, including me. Which is (Stephen) the real reason why I haven't moved to Brooklyn yet. Its too hip for me. We tried, we went and looked at an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that a friend of our had described as "amazing". Williamsburg is the type of neighborhood that has a bar whose specialty is throwing rock and roll birthday parties for toddlers. I was there having lunch once when a seven year old Kate Moss in motorcycle boots and a tutu pulled over her low slung New Religion jeans climbed up on a bar stool and ordered something called a "Pet Peeve". And people smoke in public there, too, without the furtive and shameful expressions seen on the faces of doorway and alcove smokers all over Manhattan. And breakfast is not served until 11 o'clock. We know this because we arrived for our appointment early and starving. We did find a place that was sort of open at 10:30, but the waiter left us alone with our thoughts until 11. My thoughts, which I was happy to share out loud with TC, included: "This place is cold. Does this place feel cold to you?" and "The music in here is too loud. Don't you think the music in here is too loud?". Also, in reference to our waiter, "How many tattoos does one need, exactly?" and, once our food had arrived: "my eggs are cold. Are your eggs cold?" When we finally did see the apartment, which was an expensive, dark cave that came with some ferocious looking cats (bonus rodent control), TC didn't even bother to evaluate the place with me because, as he put it, "You are 85 years old in Williamsburg."

We settled on the Financial District, in lower Manhattan, where we can afford a real kitchen. Its a bit like having moved to Chicago: everyone is polite and average looking (thank God, I always felt like such an ogre among the beautiful people in our old neighborhood) and it is extremely windy. We don't have a Bloomingdales in this neighborhood, we have a Benetton.

I like it here because it is, undeniably, unhip. I even appeared publicly (with my dog) this morning wearing my Munki Munki pajamas. Just like Hanna Montana.

Photo by Jim Church, 1969

The bus in the photo above belonged to my uncle Mike. He is the Mick-Jaggerish looking fellow (they even had the same birthday, and the same lips) with his arm around his girlfriend, her name was Alison. The couple on the ground? Thats my Mom and my Dad. This photo was taken by an old family friend, Jim Church. The story, accoding to Jim, is that he was waiting in line to get into Woodstock (yes, that Woodstock) and my uncle Mike pulled up in this bus with my parents and Kenny and Bob (The other young men in this photo) and said "Don't wait in this crazy line, come up to Vermont with us instead." and so he did. And a day or so later, he took this picture. A year later this particular bus met its unfortunate end on our dirt road, when my father accidentally rolled it down a hill. My mother, hugely pregnant with my sister and I, was ejected from her passenger seat and landed in the grass. Everybody, except the bus, was fine.

My very first car was a 73 Volkswagen Superbeetle that never, ever properly ran. My mother traded our piano for it, which was very thoughtful of her. She is still annoyed at me for not caring for it well enough - or even managing to keep - such a treasure, and she has a point. My Beetle required a pair of needle nose pliers rather than an ignition key and three hands to drive it (four if it was snowing) because of its fog-prone windshield. If you wanted to start it you had to push it down the road and jump in and, while holding the pliers in pace, pop the clutch. One night my friend Angie (we were maybe 16? Maybe not quite?) and I pushed it almost a mile in freezing weather (and flats and miniskirts, naturally), down a snowy road trying to get it started and finally decided to leave it in Mr. Sylvesters yard, without bothering to let him know. The rest of the story is just too embarassing to tell, but that was the beginning of the end.

I didn't own another volkswagen again until just a few years ago, when I bought a little convertible rabbit. I left it in Santa Cruz when I moved to New York, and get to drive it when I am visiting. Its the perfect little beach car, and always starts right up. I know it sounds silly, but it feels more like a pet than a car. It has this eagerness about it, this quick little responsiveness and cheerful little purr. I know that cars don't technically have personalities, but....

Photo by John Gruen, 2007
We even had a VW in our wedding, as more of a member of the bridal party than the getaway car that we intended it as. My dear friend Michael rescued this Karmann Ghia from the infamous Vermont used car lot known as the "Greensboro Garage", I think he paid $800 for it. He lovingly restored it, even adding his company's own signature color combo or turquioise and orange. The "Carter / Mondale" bumper sticker is original.

VW announced a few years ago that they were planning a new VW bus. The concept was much like that of the original, a perfect family wagon that morphs into a camping mobile when called upon. "Well that decides it," I told TC, "we're having kids." Sadly, VW scrapped those plans. It isn't even on their concept cars page anymore.

A canadian company called Verdier has developed this beauty (licensed?) but I think its a bit out of my budget. Its worth watching their videos, here and here.

OK, so why am I blathering on about VW? Because I'm ready to make the plunge again. This time I'm on the lookout for a bus, ideally a Camper. I have big big plans for the exterior and seat and wall coverings, so one that is in good mechanical shape but in desperate need of a paint job and re-furb would be ideal. I haven't quite pinpointed the perfect year and model yet, but have been perusing sites like The Samba and comparing old images and ads. I'm thinking that my bus must be capable of long drives, camping, book touring, mobile party-throwing, and limited refrigeration. I like the pop-ups, but the ones with attached tents are pretty fabulous too, yes? Here are some of my more inspiring finds thus far, all from The Samba..

Rainbow Toe Socks by Jamie Shelman

Now if I can just convince Kokka to let me do a "rainbow toe sock" print.