to quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

It is pretty quiet around here. Alice is with my mother, sailing in the mornings and organizing the neighborhood children in the afternoons. Aerin is enjoying having no commitments for a week or two, and sleeping and reading and (at the moment) watching Brannagh's Hamlet. Which she wants to chase with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Al is kibbitzing on Hamlet. I am going back to my room to work on a new piece, because I have to take something to my class on Friday.

Dad: so, are we done with Indiana?
Alice: which one is that?
Aerin: Indiana Jones and the Cursed Shiny Box
Dad: not cursed so much as protected
Aerin: whatever – touch this and we melt your wax double

Somewhere online is a group called Bloggers without Remorse. Their fundamental tenet is that the author should not be apologizing all the time for not posting more often, because other stuff happens. And many times, the other stuff is much better that whatever is going on online.

So I've been busy, and distracted, and the only reason I am writing anything at the moment is because I cannot go out in public with the appalling case of Novocaine face that I am sporting. My lovely dentist thoroughly numbed my face before deep scaling and root smoothing, for which I am grateful. But I can't talk, smile, drink or chew. So I am kind of hanging out, knitting on some socks, until it wears off enough that I am not a drooling, food spewing, numb faced person anymore.

DSC_0522.JPG
Originally uploaded by Storm.

I didn't take it, but isn't it grand?

As usual, click the picture to see the photostream. In this case, a photodocumentry of the Strolling of the Heifers 2009, by someone who calls herself Storm. Leave nice messages for her!

enormously tall
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Aerin on stilts at a recent fundraiser. The one with the cow colored sheep.

June 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Actually I have 48 of them cut out. After sketching a page of snakes, I decided to free hand the cutting. Mostly because I am too lazy to trace all those snakes, and partly because I like drawing with scissors.

The 100 snakes comes from a friend exclaiming over something unusual happening, and asking "What next? A hundred tiny green snakes falling from the cupboards singing the Hallelujah Chorus?" I loved the image of a hundred tiny green snakes, so here I am, cutting them out to stick onto red backgrounds. Making them all fit (25 in each 10" square) is going to be tricky. I think they will be interlaced. The trick then is to keep it form looking like one of those fornicating bunnies mugs (completely Not Safe For Work, except that I used to have one at work, so what can I really tell you?).

June 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am charmed by the looseness of them, how much they look like rope carelessly dropped or coiled. I made a background yesterday, and I have a lot of green fabric ready to cut out little green snakes, but I wanted to get a better feel for them before I started that part.

Alice wanted to know if I was making fabric snakes or clay snakes. I might do this again with fimo snakes…. it has appeal, for sure.

May 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I had fun with coffee stirrers last Thursday, and finally made the shape which I was thinking off all through March, of a nine patch with edges. I like this view of it particularly, although the following is a more accurate rendering. Or whatever.

More May 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.