ChatRabbit

My poor, ignored blog.
Been busy lately with a million things, and there’s a million more coming!
In the meantime, some of my art has been popping up here and there:

Here’s April 2008’s issue of Highlights High Five, with my Creepy Crawly Dominoes feature (oooh, it’s a fold-out!).

Here’s a little piece in May 2008’s Highlights magazine (the one for bigger kids). It’s a feature they run every month called My Best Self. Hey, look- Roz is on the same page!

The Read, Rhyme and Clap DVD is available from the Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club’s Spring 2008 issue. I did the Muffin Man sequence on it.

Here’s the new, improved children’s menu for the Newport Creamery chain of restaurants. I got to do the whole thing (fun!!) and will continue every so often as they need ‘em. I applaud the company for pursuing a more individual approach with these- instead of using the menu equivalent of “clip art” (which they could have easily done), they commissioned me to make something with local appeal and original characters. Yay!

And hey, what’s THIS?
You’re right, I did NOT do this. Eric did!
His design is featured in June 2008’s MacLife Magazine, where his iPOD watch idea came in as a runner-up in their Design-the-Next-Big-Apple-Thing competition.
They had some very nice things to say about it- check it out!

That’s it for now! Back to work!

Barb tagged me for a little exercise in randomness…here’s what I was supposed to do:

1. Pick up the nearest book. 

2. Open to page 123.*

3. Find the fifth sentence.**

4. Post the next three sentences, so if my math is correct that’d be sentences six, seven and eight.

5. Tag five people and post a comment to the blogger who tagged you.

The alternate PB version is to go to page 23 and just put down the text.
Well, OK then…remarkably, I cleaned my desk recently, and there were NO books on it (!!)
So I went to my special book shelf (where I keep my signed books) and pulled off Lyle Finds His Mother, by Bernard Waber. Here’s the surprisingly pivotal scene I found:

Gosh I love Lyle…he was a big favorite of mine as a child. I met Bernard Waber in 1990, at RISD, I guess.
Eesh, that was a long time ago!

I’ll tag:
Kim Norman
Jannie Ho
Kathy Weller

Mystic, Connecticut is a great town that’s close enough to us that we can visit it often. And we do.I found some of my stuff on a recent outing there:

 Bank Square Books is a sweeet little independent bookstore- I love them, because they HAVE MY BOOK! They put it with the pop-ups alongside the Sabuda/Reinhart ones. Hmmm, interesting choice. I usually find it in the baby/toddler section (if I find it at all)!

Here’s a cute little shop in Olde Mystic Village called Hammen Home. Love the yellow paint and blue trim! It’s an extremely cool, bright shop, and I’m NOT just saying that because they have a bunch of my products there:

Next to the Smart Cookies you can see some intriguing little Japanese collectibles that I couldn’t resist- ReMent (?) puts them out- the series I bought contained the world’s cutest, bitsiest, retro-ist tea sets ever!

MAN, that’s cute! I put this set on my perpetually Irish shelf. It matched the leprechauns.

Spotted at Mystic Aquarium: a healthy dose of Snack Attacks!

Thanks again for the exposure, Mystic- we’ll be back! 

There is a wonderful old greenhouse in Connecticut called Logee’s that has been open since 1892. It is one of the few places here in New England where you can walk through the door…

…and instantly feel like you have entered a tropical rainforest. It makes for a great day trip when you are totally sick of cold weather (which always seems to hold on juuuust a little too long around here).

It doesn’t matter what time of year you go, there are always things in full bloom.

I was on a citrus mission this day.

For unexplained reasons, I have always wanted to have my own orange trees, or lemon trees, or lime trees. This is going back to the time I was 10 or so. Maybe it IS explained, actually. I won a trip to Florida/Disney World when I was this age, and the sheer tropicality of Florida made a big impression on me, I guess.

The 100-year old Wonder Lemon tree at Logee’s is amazing-it’s comfortably growing right into the ground of the greenhouse, and seems to always be producing gigantic lemons (like up to 5 pounds!).

That’s Eric, The Jungle Boy.

Here’s my little box of citrus (plus one orchid), ready to come home with me.

And here are my new studio inhabitants!
The biggest one I had gotten a while back- it’s a Kaffir Lime. Now it is joined by a baby Grapefruit, a Key Lime, a Buddha’s Hand, a Meyer Lemon, a Sunquat, and an Australian Finger Lime. Plus one Salu Spot orchid. So far, they’re all doing well and have new growth. I knew from the Kaffir Lime that the studio was a good place to grow stuff. They add a nice living touch to the studio too. And hopefully some oxygen. We spend a lot of time in here!

Have a lovely St. Patrick’s Day!

If you need a virtual Irish vacation today, ye can go here!

My springtime fabrics were just sitting there, looking all springy.
So I sewed up a new batch of PillowStrations.
Visit them at Recycle Rabbit!   

Words can’t describe how much I love this old wooden puzzle, recently bought at a local antique joint.
Have mercy! Why don’t they make ‘em like this anymore? 

Here’s a pretty typical scene from the studio…Old Georgia (she’s 19) is sitting on a stack of books, waiting for me to flinch, breathe, or move in any way, so she can divert my attention to the kitchen.
She doesn’t remember anymore when she’s been fed. She gets fed constantly.
Thank goodness for those little cans of food they make now! 

When she is not eating or anticipating my every move, she is sleeping.
Today she has been dressed in a jaunty new cap and scarf by one of my kids.
It turns out that American Girl clothes fit cats pretty nicely, too. 

I left my usual life behind for a few days over the weekend, and retreated to the woods for the Whispering Pines Writer’s Retreat. The location of this event is truly remote, so it’s easy to immerse yourself in both nature and writing, or at least talking about writing. 

The retreat opened with a First Pages panel, whereby participants’ first pages of their current manuscripts are read aloud, and then discussed by the writer and editor mentors. Here they are:

That’s writer Mark Peter Hughes, Charlesbridge editor Emily Mitchell, and Candlewick editor Kaylan Adair. They did a bang-up job of critting the story beginnings, being truthful yet positive.

Someone in this group is probably sweating it out while Lynda reads their First Page…

The next morning was rainy, so the pines were not whispering (which they do on a nice day), but whimpering, maybe.

The weather didn’t interfere with the great sessions, though, or the GREAT food that gets served seemingly all the time. It is easy to get used to gourmet meals served continuously, without having to actually cook or wash the dishes. But I digress.

Emily Mitchell was up first. 

Emily reads. She chose some clear examples of strong voice, which reinforced a lot of what came up during the First Pages panel. She thinks voice is the most essential, driving part of the story.When you start tuning in to what attracts you to a book and makes you want to read more, you start hearing voices, for sure. I really feel like I have a better understanding of this concept than ever before.   

Next up was Mark Peter Hughes, author of I Am the Wallpaper and Lemonade Mouth.  He gave a pens-on workshop about dialogue, and how it can effectively move things along in a story, create tension, etc. It’s great stuff to know. After this, I definitely already had mental updates I wanted to make to my current book text.

Thinking makes me hungry.
All we had to do was follow this path back to the Lodge…

And voila! The Lodge:

The neverending banquet was inside. I didn’t get any good food pictures, but the fine folks of Whispsering Pines have never made a bad meal, as far as I can tell.
Here are some scenes from the dining zone:

Lucia, Mary, and Laurie- bon appetit! 

Kaylan, Moi, and Ilene- slainte!

Barb and Jan…and pie. Oh, the pie… 
Back at the Laurel Lodge, Lynda Hunt presented the helpers with weird things from her Bag o’ Fun.
Here is Lynda, Lucia (a.k.a. the “Partner in Crime”), Mary and Jan (the Basket Gals), and Barb (The Power Point Princess).  

These gals are a LOT of fun- they helped make it the casual, fun-yet-functional event that it is. Bravo. 

Not pictured: an evening of wild writing-induced debauchery that lingered until morning.Well, that’s what COULD have been going on, for all I know. I went to bed at midnight after a lot of chatting, laughing, and Cadbury eggs.

Morning came early, but the sun was out!

Kaylan Adair from Candlewick presented first on Sunday morning. She gave us an excellent overview of how things run at Candlewick, which seems pretty different from most of the other publishers out there. Different in a good way. It reminds me a bit of the Highlights company, which also operates on it’s own terms and manages to put out well-regarded work.

That’s a picture of her box o’slush behind her.I like this picture- it looks like Kaylan is channeling the angst-ridden spirit of the slush pile!

Next up was my pal Ilene Richard, the illustrator mentor. I have known Ilene for years now, but I still found out lots of new fun facts about her (like, I didn’t know she did jewelry design for 15 years!). I also hadn’t seen a bunch of her art pieces. She’s a prolific gal, and I think she’s on the verge of some big stuff. She read one of her dummy books (which I believe began at last year’s WP), and it is lookin’ GOOD! Best of all, she was not defeated by her own PowerPoint presentation!

Here’s a nice, formal picture of Ilene, Mark, Kaylan, and Emily in front of the fireplace. How rustic!

Mark clearly doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

And then, it was over. I went home with a splitting headache, but after it cleared, I was left with a clear case of inspiration!

Here are some lovely parting shots of the property:

If you are feeling nostalgic for WhisperingPines 2007, click here! 

It took a while, but my website has now been updated with new stuff- new illustration, new toys, new products, and all kinds of fun facts if you care to read ‘em.Feedback greatly appreciated! If anything is wonky, please let me know!Go ahead, go to my website now!

I have been having a lot of fun playing around digitally with my ephemera and fabric collections, sort of searching for new elements to morph into my illustrated art. I am not sure what I am searching for, but I discovered in the meantime that I REALLY like to make little houses.I guess they combine a lot of things I like in one form. I have been making them in small numbers, giving some away, and I listed a few in the etsy shop, too. All the house innards are made out of recycled cardboard, like cereal and gift boxes. The fabric roofs and bases are all made out of small scraps of fabric that I repurpose, either from old stuff or the detrius of other fabric projects. I really like the idea of making things from nothing.