hello friends!

we had a racoon living on our back porch this weekend. Yeah, that was awesome. I almost had to armwrestle him for my herbs (which were very promptly brought inside come daylight). Boo raccoons. As a side note: dear second and third floor neighbours: did you know how cool it is to keep garbage and recyclables on your porch? About 40 lbs of raccoon. That’s how cool. xo, your neighbour.

my raccoon exchange went something like this:

me: ok – going to get my basil so it doesn’t freeze.
unlock door. go onto porch. walk to basil.
realize there is about 40 pounds of raccoon staring at me from behind one of our deck chairs.
raccoon: bllink. blink. movement.
me: aaah! bye!

this is the raccoon trying to look all tiny while in fact he was huuuuge (but is it bad to also note that he was cute as a button?):

on friday night we went to see the Akron Family and Born Ruffians at the First Baptist Church. It was about 5 kinds of amazing – and I’m looking forward to the next show the church hosts. Amaaaaazing acoustics.

Saturday was herb-bringing-in day. The basil came in (I so hope it doesn’t die on me!) and the coriander, lemon basil and english mint all got chopped. The catnip plant is very popular with Charlie, who gets adopted tomorrow. Maybe I will make him a little bit of a catnip care package to take home with him. We are *sooooo* going to miss this kitty.

inspired by the lovely shim and sons to do something with my patchy scraps, I made myself a wall-organizer this weekend for my studio. With loads of scraps always sitting around in bags and baskets looking decidedly unpretty, it was nice to get out some of my favourites for this – who says I can’t keep the stuff in my stash for myself?

In other crafty news, this is the time of year when crafters are cornered by too many contests! To name a few:

• Inhabit’s pillow design contest is almost over – enter soon to win pillow fame!
• VenusZine is working on it’s 4th Annual HOTT list. Are your favourite crafters/rockers/films on there? Vote & nominate your favourite folks in craft, music, film and other fun categories for the December issue of the magazine. They will love you for it. (Deadline is October 15th….act fast!)
• Rag & Bone is looking for hip new designers for their paper goods line (journals, albums and other stuff that’s nice). Learn more on the rag and bone blog.

PS – Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m madly working trying to get some leftover items (and new stuff like those bike seat covers) up into my online shop – this is the first of a few “new stuff” posts.

On a lark (disclosure: suggestion from brett), I made buttons for the last ladyfest show in june. Kitty buttons. Buttons full of Neko and Maki and Ted and Kit and (for kicks…) Orville and Felix and Winston and Matilda and Alice and the whole gang. They were meant to be a token item – a filler of space, and agood laugh for a friend of ours who had just adopted Neko and Maki. Except, change of plans, they sold. As in they.sold.out. I was astonished.

So I did what any smart lady-fester would do, and this time around I made more. And they sold again. People came by my table just to buy the *entire* collection of cat buttons. They would pore over the table, making sure not to miss a single cat, and hand me their treasure trove of buttons to inspect because “I would know if they missed any”.

So now, since they seem to sell locally, I’m selling them here. And instead of the proceeds lining my pockets, they’ll go to line kitty cat cages, and to other good purposes. All proceeds from the sale of these buttons will go (at the end of the year) as a donation to the Ottawa Humane Society.

Take a look (there are more photos) or pick up your 3-pack today (and yes, you can request specific kitties if you so desire).

A little while ago I was contacted by a company who wanted to send me a free phone because I was a blogger, and because I have blog visitors (that’s you), and they’re looking for people to buzz about it, a viral campaign of sorts.

At first, I was all “oh, I don’t know about this free stuff for blogging – is that selling out?”. But then I came to my senses when I remembered that the day before we left for China, the day I got back from Las Vegas with the most vicious food poisoning, like, ever, I accidentally dropped my cell phone (a shiny, pretty, barely four months old motorola razr) onto the concrete. Right in front of my house. Via a parking meter (as in, bounced off of). Ever since then it sometimes works a little strangely. But it was accidental and I love the thing an awful lot. Anyhow, I digress.

SO, I took the free phone. After all, it was harmless, and there was hardly any “committment”. I didn’t sign a contract and I didn’t *have* to blog about the phone if I wasn’t into it. And so I haven’t. Blogged about it, I mean.

And the only reason I’m going to blog about it now is because, well, I don’t really like it.

It’s true. I tried really hard to like it. I abandoned my sensible motorola interface that let you intuitively know how to get to your Contacts list to make a call for a mobile operating system that was like trying to pronounce IKEA part names, which we all know is impossible unless you are Anna the ikea drone self-help robot.

So rather than continuously beat my head against the nokia-brick-freaking-wall of an interface (because seriously, shouldn’t getting to your contacts list be easy? And obvious?), I sensibly put down my new phone so I wouldn’t throw it. And I vowed to try to pick it up again in a few weeks. And I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Don’t get me wrong – we’ve managed to take a few aimless videos with it, and some rather un-pretty camera shots, but for the most part, it’s been sitting on my desk, staring at me, whining because I don’t love it. And I don’t love the headset either (though I think *some* of us like it’s space-age appeal). But it does take video, which, when your only digital camera is an SLR, is kind of a nice treat, come to think of it. If I could figure out how to use the phone itself, it might grow on me.

When it comes down to it, it’s not a bad phone. Just a bit clunky, a bit too “shiny pearl” coloured for me, and well, un-intuitive. And when you spend your days trying to do “good design”, bad design really gets on your nerves.