A poem, mainly

Although this is a cool painting I did, recently listed on my etsy site. http://krummenacker.etsy.com

I hope you can read LOLcat speak, as the poem is not written in normal English.




Cheezeburger Cat sez:
I CAN haz cheezeburger!
Not question; statement--
Way of living.
Az ceiling cat iz witness,
Never be hungry again.

Life full of things,
Some I DO NOT WANT.
But embrace invizible stuff
And they will be there.

Believe in ur cheezeburger,
And nom. nom, nom.

Who?

Allan Krummenacker, that's who drew this. :) My husband and I both love owls, and barn owls, with their heart shaped faces, were perfect for his "love birds". The name of the picture is "Moonlight Rendezvous", and while we gave the original to his mother, we did make prints which I've just listed on my Etsy site.
http://krummenacker.etsy.com

Seems like the perfect poetic finish for this will be one of my love poems...


Kiss me into heaven, with each tiny touch a stair.
Kiss me into heaven; let me know how much you care.
No words can yet express
The way you do with each caress.
With you alone, I dare to give myself to happiness

Thank You, Tracy!

My friend Tracy helped me out by modeling my hairsticks. I'm afraid I had a little trouble holding the camera steady enough, but I got one usable photo on each, which, combined with better focused pictures, should help people solve the question of, "But how to I *use* them?"
Doesn't Tracy have lovely hair? We had a great visit, besides.

I wrote this poem years ago, back when Tracy, some other friends and myself, had a pretend Assassin's Guild going, and I was fascinated by reincarnation and Asian history...

The wheel turns--
Clans at war, locked in struggle.
Lord kills spy, love kills lord,
Ripples on a pond.
The wheel turns.

A new item from Allan

Doesn't he do beautiful work? Okay, I'm biased, being his wife and all, but I love how well he creates a sense of dimension on these calla lilies. There's even a sense of the slightly fleshy texture of the flowers--my parents have a huge bed of calla lilies outside their house and I used to play with them as a child.
Actually, when I was about 5, one of my favorite games to play by myself was "magic potions", which was basically inventing ways to process substances and imagine what a mixture of them, with the right spell, could do. The calla lilies were one of my favorite things to work with because of the interesting textures within them.

and here's a little poem I wrote about a form of "magic potion" that I have long been skeptical of:



The masquerade begins.
Glimmering promises of beauty
In colors bright or shy,
Perfectly matched,
Tantalize the eye.
Photographs like romantic dreams
Gaze at you,
Or romp through sunlit fields.
Like a gypsy tune,
The call of magic,
Your youth recaptured,
Your wishes fulfilled,
Sing the ads,
The catalogs
Of a billion-dollar industry:
Cosmetics.

My mom has an art blog now

http://artid.com/members/Caroline/blog/

She's really been my main muse; she read us the best books while we were growing up. She's done wonderful writing, from nonfiction, to poetry, to novels. And as you can see, she is a truly talented painter. You might say she taught me the art of finding ways to show people the world through your own eyes.

Also, I wish to mention that some of my poetry will be going onto part of the FAE website. I don't know what the exact links will be, because our webmistress is remastering the site. But I can give you a sample for your reading pleasure now

Enter the Dragon

A dragon tries to fly against the wind;
How valiantly he struggles to ascend
A sky forbidden long to such as he!
Though others rise upon his vast wing-breeze
(And seem to soar aloft with such bright ease,
Surpassing him in height but not in might),
He’ll not content himself with lower flight,
But roars, insistent that the sky be free!

Oh, valiant dragon, dropped before your time;
Oh, cruel curse to interrupt his climb:
And yet, the dragon’s legend still remains,
And lifts up others, following his name.
The dragon has, at last, achieved his fame.
Do you see him in the clouds, atop the sky?
Remember him, and he will always fly,
A pioneer, rewarded for his pains.

A quick way to see what FAE has been creating

Click
here to see items from FaeEtsy's talented artisans

Moon River

I love working with real stones, and pearls. They have a wonderful feel to them, and seem to interact with personal energy even as I work. The chatoyant pale stones are moonstone, and the blue central stone is amazonite, thus Moon River is a sort of play on their names. Freshwater pearls unite the themes-- the moonlight-like gleam of white pearl, and freshwater for the river. Silver seemed the natural choice of metals to go with, being associated with moon and water in magic.

Design is a great pleasure; if one has enough materials to choose from, it is possible to layer a wealth of meaning in one simple item.

Here's a poem I wrote with a watery theme, although not fresh water. ..

Sing me the love song
That the waves sing to the beach
Embrace me like the tide.
Where we touch,
We merge,
Reshaping one another
In the landscape of life.

In California, winter doesn't tend to last long

And so I've been focusing on spring and summer themes. The FAE team is doing a Storybook Romance competition/exhibition right now, and whether I have something suitable or not in my story may depend on what is considered fantasy. BTW, no one has bothered commenting on my questions on the FAE blog as to how the lines are drawn, anyhow.

My asthma has been worse lately; it seems our rains have been doing more to encourage mold than scrub the air.

I sometimes fret, and sometimes seethe,
When I find it's getting hard to breathe.

Playing with something new

I sanded down and painted a little tin with acrylic craft paint and mod podge, added glitter, an owl I'd made from salt dough, more paint and mod podge, and it is cute as can be. I am not, however, convinced it is 100% as durable as can be, so if any of my readers work with metal and know the right cleaners and paints to get a really durable finish, please let me know.
The tin is the size of an Altoids tin, but came as a promotional thing in a box of tea. I didn't much see people being interested in tins with tea related graphics on them, but the owl is just the sort of thing the people *I* know love.

I'm afraid I only have one poem with an owl theme, and it's a bit grim. The muse is lost in thought over a cup of tea and not giving me new words, so here it is.
Death awaits,
An owl perched watching,
Waiting to swoop,
To lift the stray in its talons
Aloft in the sky.

New year; new listings; new sale

Happy 2008, everyone.

We will probably be moving soon, so I'm offering free shipping on everything in the US and normal US shipping costs for people everywhere else. I'd like to have less stuff to pack and move!

I also might get a day job afterwards, so I want to get plenty of listings up before then-- it takes less time to check the site and ship as opposed to wrestling with listing information. Don't worry about me becoming less efficient, though; I will, as always, have my husband's full cooperation in getting things shipped.
He HAS to help-- I'm selling his art, too, as can be seen from Autumn Melody for Wind and Strings show here and drawn entirely by him in soft pastels (the medium, not the color).
I've got a lot of new jewelry I want to list, once I have good photographs. And bookmarks-- everyone can use nice bookmarks, although it's a bit tricky to find good materials to do masculine styled ones.

And the muse is quite friendly today; this is a brand new poem:

Shadows of the past year
Slowly fade away;
Soft lights shine above, here,
Heralding the day.
Hope for new beginnings,
Brilliant joys, arise.
The future's underpinnings
Reflect upon my eyes.