Oh My Hell (Renegade Craft Fair Part I).

Oooh, Renegade Craft Fair, can I just tell you?  SO awesome. So overwhelming.  I will be updating with pics tomorrow (The Black Apple!  The Small Stakes!), but first, I have a matter of business:

TO WHOMEVER HANDLES BOOKING AT FORT MASON:
Please be advised, you are on my list. 

Forever.  

Since you are obviously not clued in, let me offer my assistance.  The Renegade Craft Fair is awesome, and pretty popular in a hipsterville like San Francisco.  People want to go.

However, the Zac Brown Band is pretty dang popular, as well. I'm not much of a country fan, but I am "with it" enough to know that they have won quite a few awards, like Grammy's n'stuff, and therefore people are going to want to see them play.  Enough to drive the cowboys to San Fran in droves.

When parking in the Marina area is already pretty hard to come by on a sunny Saturday, as a majority of parking spaces are reserved for boat owners, this becomes problematic.  Because both of the above events require parking.  

Like, I said, problematic.

However, when you book a Barney's New York motherlovin' SAMPLE SALE on the same date and time and location as the above two events... by the Will and Grace of God I'm glad my children were not with me.  Because I'm 99% sure a well-dressed gay man or a housewife with a residence on Chestnut Street would have murdered them for my parking spot.

Which, by the way, took an hour to find.  An hour.  Do you not know what I had already been through just to get to the city?  That it took an hour to drop my car-sharing husband off at work two hours early (bless his heart), and my kids off at the long-suffering in-laws?  That it took me an extra half hour to go buy formula because I forgot it at home? That it took me TWO hours to even drive to Fort Mason, thanks to a brush fire and a Giants game?  

Have you been adding all this up? Because I did, and it's a grand total of four. and. a. half. hours. 

Lucky for you, the fair ended much later than I thought it did.  Lucky for you, I eventually found parking and had two glorious hours of craftdom.  Lucky for you, I had an understanding mother-in-law who was happy to keep my kids twice as long.  Because when you put that "LOT FULL" sign up and I thought the fair ended in half hour, I was a woman scorned.  There were tears.  Lucky for you, I was triumphant in the end.  Otherwise, you would already be dead.

So consider yourself fortunate; you got off easy this time.  But be warned, I will be back next year. And if you ever, ever, EVER do this to me again, I will load up a VW bus full of renegade craftsters and drive them straight to your door for a smite-fest.  

Regards,
 ~Alyssa

Renegade Craft Fair!!!

Have I mentioned that I'm going to the Renegade Craft Fair in SF tomorrow?  It's going to SO intense. Full on double rainbow craftaganza all the way!

(Side note: You HAVE seen Double Rainbow, haven't you?)

I've been wanting to go for three years.  Do I sound excited?  I'm excited.  Hopefully my husband will forgive me the damage I am going to do tomorrow.

Meet me there?

Daily Drop Cap

ave you seen the marvelous "Daily Drop Cap" from designer/typography/illustrator/artist Jessica Hische?  (Nearly) every day since Sept 2009, Jessica has shared a gorgeous hand-drawn letter (drop cap) for bloggers to use on their posts.  See example, left.


She recently did an art show of alphabetic creations.  AND you can buy beautiful letterpress printings of individual letters!  I so want two "A"s and a "W" for the munchkins. (Maybe I shouldn't have told you that.  Save some for me, ok?)

I do so love letters. Especially pretty ones.

Hi.

Hello friends.

Obviously, I've been gone awhile.  I swear I didn't abandon you.  I just took some time off.

I was so excited to finally get all my creative thoughts out of my head and into the blogosphere that I took a flying two-footed leap into this new world of blogging. and. did. nothing. else.

Nothing.

And as fabulous as immersing myself in the rabbit hole that is design blogs, with a full time and three kids and a house to clean... yeah, that only worked for so long.

So I took some time away from the Interwebs for a while and just was.  Was a mom. Was an employee. Was a wife.

And then... all my favorite sites started calling my name.  My RSS feed kept tapping my shoulder.  And once I started browsing again... well, you know how it goes.

So I'm back, and in a good place. Dreaming. Being creative. Starting ventures (slowly).  Writing again.  Re-acquainting myself with this wonderful community of artists and bloggers whom I hope to one day call my peers.

I'll be blogging again, but maybe not quite as frequently.  But often.   Because I've missed you.

Will you join me?