movin' on over to wordpress!

hey all, I know I haven't exactly been the most communicative blogger in the last year. I mean, my last post was in JULY? Really? Well, perhaps times are a'changin'!

I hadn't been all that energized this past year to be self employed. The economy sucked, business was HARD, and sharing my studio space with a friend who was supposed to have a different schedule than me, but then turned out to be around all the time after all (no fault of hers, its just that the best laid plans and all that) lead me to a lackluster year of crafting.

But my house projects are done for the season (hello rain!) and my studio is 100% my own again, and I'm feeling like getting my craft back on!

I'm not sure what i will be making. For sure I'll be putting energy back into Tigerpup Embroidery. Papaver Jewelry is being downscaled to just the Bottlecap Line, and the bestsellers of that line at that. Only things I wanna make, nothing that's to time consuming, cause I have other things I want to do!

It's been a year of weddings, and wedding crafting. First my best friend's wedding, I designed the cake toppers and I LOVED doing that. I'm feeling like custom cake toppers would be a fun way to move. Also decorative stuff.... So many ideas are swirling that i need to take a step back and figure out what is feasible...

So big changes around here, there's gonna be a new version of PapaverStudio.com, with some new goodies on it, and the new papaverstudio.wordpress.com!

Go there, and keep reading!

Thanks, Maggie

Webpage move!

Hi All,

Just a quick note to say that the Papaver Jewelry website/URL is closing! But don't fear, you can find the exact same site at www.papaverstudio.com, just click on the "papaver jewelry" link on the main page.

My brother (aka, tech support) has spent months trying to get them to lower the price of my jewelry webpage, which was bought and built years ago, in the age before the six dollar a month webpage. For whatever reason, we can't get the price down, and I see no point in paying for it anymore!

In the coming months there may be more changes here, as my life moves in a different direction than it had been. More working on the house and at the job, less time and energy for jewelry production! I'm still working out what I want to do, but I will figure it out!

Thanks, Maggie

Chicken coop remodel.

With two new chickens that will soon be added to the flock (pictures below), it was time to remodel the chicken coop. They needed a second story to their henhouse. So the above picture is of the henhouse with the top pulled off, it was a one story house, which fit five birds snugly. They mostly spent their nights sleeping outside of the house on the roof and the perch next to the roof. I got tired of cleaning bird poop off the top of the house (nasty), so I decided I needed to just make the house go all the way up to the roof of the coop!

The thing is being built entirely out of scrap wood in my yard, and a large glass window. Its nice to finally use up some of the random wood scraps piled up in my back yard for something other than firewood! Thats as far as I got today, shown below. I have three sides and the ceiling attached, I just ran out of daylight before I could get to the final fourth side. But thats okay, its a warm night and the girls like to sleep outdoors anyway!

Svetlana and Winnifred are both getting antsy to move into the big house. They are about half the size of the adult chickens, but I think I may let them out in the next week or so from their little pen into the big one. I worry that they will get picked on, cause they will, thats just how chickens are!

Check out Svetlana's hairdo, its amazing.

And Winnifred was very curious about the camera, as you can see here:

She really is adorable, I promise!

Maggie

Fresh Patterns out at stores now!

If you are in the Portland area, I've restocked Fabric Depot and Twisted (okay, so Twisted will be restocked sometime this week, but it will be soon!). And I've been added to a new store about to open in Belfast Maine! It sounds intriguing, and I'm excited to have my patterns be in the store! Sadly, I can't remember what the name of it will be, and if thats because I forgot (shame on me!), or if she forgot to tell me in the email I don't know! I'm sure I'll find out though, when she re-orders.

So go out and get some! I'm going to be working on embroidering up some dish towels with my new "fifties chickies" on them. When I delivered the order to Fabric Depot I sort of did some shopping too and got a couple yards of some very cool dish cloth material.

Around the little Urban Farm here things are flourishing. The new duck Sammie is-I think-almost done growing. We also think he may in fact be a "he," and I think I am happy about that. Perhaps there will be some baby mixed-breed ducks next year. Sam and Lou Lou seem to be making friendly overtures, so we'll see.

The turkey is getting bigger, and its head is getting redder. I don't think I will get a white bird again next year, they look permanently bedraggled out there in my chicken pen. The young chickens are outside as well, they are in the duckhouse and run, next to the other ladies to get them used to each other, but safe from being pecked to death. I think they need to be a bit larger before I turn them loose.

In the garden, all my five different squash seeds that I potted up in the greenhouse sprouted. Along with some bush beans, marigolds, sunflowers, borage, and corn. I'm pretty excited because most of those seeds have spent at least two years in the back of my refrigerator, and I wasn't sure they would germinate. and they did, ALL of them. I'm being ruthless with my volunteer sunflowers too, because last year I wasn't and while I had a very nice sunflower patch, I didn't have much of anything do well! So this year, I'm pulling them out with my eyes closed, because I hate taking them out!

What? a new embroidery freebie?!

Check it out! I got all inspired to work on my website and well, my business (sorry business, I've been busy and not paying you the attention you deserve!) and well, I made a new freebie! It's been FAR to long.

So enjoy the Keep Portland Weird freebie. Yes, it is very much inspired by the bumper stickers, I have one on my own car. I want one of the " keep portland beered" stickers too, but Jonah says its his turn to put some stickers on the car. Sigh, sharing.

I think I'm going to put this on an old T-shirt to give it some new life. There are three sizes for your embroidery pleasure. Make something!

Maggie

17 creatures and counting....

When you already have two adults (me and ann), a toddler (Ayla), three dogs (two large and mine, one small and Ann's), a cat, five chickens and one duck, living in one house, what else do you need? Oh, I know! More birds! And perhaps, a male human! We need to balance out the male to female ratio a bit, being as all we have in the house right now are two neutered male dogs.

So about two weeks ago we added in some birdies. The living room is now the temporary residence of one white broad breasted turkey (Turkaloo), A crested duck of some sort (Sammie), A Polish Crested chicken (Svetlana), and an adorable little Transylvanian Naked-Neck chicken named Winnifred.

In the picture below you can't see her little wrinkly bald neck, but thats Winnie in the front, with Svetlana in the back. You can see Svet's fluffy Russian looking crest though! It will end up a big, crazy feather Afro when she grows up!

And Sammie and Turkaloo are buds. They all are really, but Sammie grows about one Winnifred every day, so she is rapidly becoming to big to hang out very well with the others. And she is so clumsy, when she flips over on her back, she can't turn back over, her wings are too tiny!

And this is our last addition to the house, Jonah! As you can see, we have a little bit of space for him, somewhere under all the dogs. He'll be moving in in a few weeks, so I am having fun going through my stuff (tackling the attic today!) and getting rid of things so that perhaps some of his stuff will fit. And yes, we will be finding storage space for alot of it until my housemates move sometime later this year!

So for now that's seventeen creatures, with one more coming! Good thing Jonah doesn't have any of his own pets to bring with him...

Home Depot Paint Sales Associate, thats me!

So, a few weeks ago I gots me a job. As some of you might know, I want to be an electrician someday. I know, sort of random change from Jewelry and Embroidery pattern maker, but well, I'd like to pay the billz while making art, and art just wasn't cutting it on its own anymore in this economy. As you also might know, I am sort of obsessed with home projects, and so becoming a residential electrician seemed like a good idea! I like crawling around in attics, I like making homes more useful, and I'm not scared (anymore) of electricity!

But well, getting into the electrician's union and becoming an apprentice takes time, and I needed money now! And so I applied at the Home Depot's online application thingy. And a short and crazy week later, I had a job as a Paint Associate! Paint!? How perfect! I LOVE paint! So many colors.... so many things to paint....

And its fun. Ya know, as much fun as a joby job can be. The people there are all super nice (sorta freaky nice, but in a good way), the store is HUGE and full of things I want to buy, and there are all those paint chips.

It turns out that I like customer service, which is something I never really thought of before. I mean, I've worked CS jobs all my life, but I never really thought about it, ya know? But I like solving peoples problems, and I like educating folks about stuff. And here I get to solve their home improvement problems and learn about how to fix my own stuff and its great! I don't want to work here for the rest of my life or anything, but for a part time, hold me over til the electrician thing happens thing, it is perfect.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post: I am resigning from the Saturday Market. Thats right, no more weekends sitting in a tent outdoors for me! After eight years, some great, some not so, I am done. I emailed off my resignation yesterday. You see, Home Depot people have to work weekends too. But on the up side, its for a max of eight hours (instead of the ten or so at the market), get lunch breaks, and can request time off! Good deal. Of course, on a nice weekend I don't make as much money, but I'll take it for now!

My website is still up and running, you can still order from me there! You can also find my jewelry at Splurge on NE Fremont and 14th street, along with pins at Made In Oregon stores. I'm not going away, I'm just changing things up a bit!

Oh, and I'm picking up some new baby chicks on friday.

Maggie