TOMORROW!!!!!!!!

As I catch my breath momentarily this morning, at the tail of a long busy week of last minute planning and prepping and calling and ordering and taping and measuring and flyering and postering and voting and mailing and printing and printing and mailing and cutting and pasting and lugging and schlepping and painting and counting...
I realize it would be remiss of me not to send out a heartfelt THANK YOU to my fellow Charm City Craft Mafia members. Here it goes:
Dear CCCM: You are all beyond wonderful and have made Baltimore a place that I feel at home, after years of being unsure of the city. I'm so privileged to work with every last one of you, and feel an almost undeserved support from each and every one of you. I believe in all of you exorbitantly- in your art and in the way you are using it to make Baltimore a more wonderful city. I have boundless energy around you, feel more positive when thinking with you, and I can't even begin to collect the words to describe the enormous pile of pride I have from being a part of everything we've accomplished so far. Thank you for this, and for loving what I love.
Yours,
Rachel
see you ALL tomorrow, from 10am-5pm at St. John's Church in Charles Village!

Bible Studies

Nick Gurewitch, writer of The Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip (and someone who I've mentioned before on this very blog) will be at Atomic Pop in Baltimore tomorrow night signing his new book, "The Trial Of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories." It's nothing short of hysterical, and a wonderful holiday gift, for people who can read, and aren't allergic to paper or fun.
Be there or be square!!!

Also tomorrow- if you're in Baltimore and up early enough, you can catch yours truly being interviewed for HOLIDAY HEAP this weekend! Three cheers for sleepy sleepy fame!

Upcoming Show Schedule

Want to know where to come and shake our grubby little hands in person, or buy things somewhere other than our website or our regular retail stores? Come visit Red Prairie Press at the following shows:

Holiday Heap-December 1, Baltimore, MD
Merry Mart-December 2, Baltimore, MD
Craftland-December 1-22, Providence, RI
Poppytalk Handmade Market-Dec 10-Jan 4, online
Bust Craftacular-December 8, New York, NY
Holiday Booty Market (w/ Craft Mafia)-Dec 15, DC

maybe we'll like you!

5 Things about Rachel Bone

I was "tagged" by Imogene's Annie Chau, and I'm supposed to tell you 5 random things about myself, so, here it goes:

1. Peanut Butter. There is no food more worthy of my attention than peanut butter. Natural, unnatural, chunky, creamy, salted, sugared, on toast, on celery, on a spoon, on a finger. I am so full of love for peanut butter, it turned my hair orange. There are two loves of my life after peanut butter. Phil and Mr Sammy. (oh okay, AND Marmie & Dad. They tie too).

2. I like farm animals. I would like some of my own some day. Chickens, Ducks, Goats and Donkeys make nice friends. The chicken in the photo is not mine. She's just a friend. (please note that if you click on phil's name in #1, it will bring you to a page featuring a photo of his foot and a rooster. He is NOT kicking the rooster. The rooster is leaping at his foot. The rooster didn't like him. Most animals do like Phil. Phillip means "lover of horses")

3. My first job was at an ice cream and burger shop. I was "let go". Here is a list of all of the jobs I can remember after that:
-Nanny
-Environmental Camp Counselor
-Bulk dishwasher
-Costume and Prop Maker
-Photo Archivist
-Deli Counter Worker
-Scanner of Nature Images & Illustrations
-Printmaking Teacher
-Brewery Hostess
-Letterpress Platemaker and Envelope Embellisher (same job)
-Commercial Screenprinter
-Art Supply Store Associate
-Printmaking and Papermaking Teacher
-Office Manager and Print Sales
-Red Prairie Press Owner, screenprinter, Office Manager, Artist, Saleslady, Schlepper-of-heavy-things.

4. One of my cousins is a French Count who is also in a rap group. (It's called "St. James").

5. I get invited to weddings because I'm the person who will dance.

I'm tagging:
Jennifer of Cotton Monster
for 5 things about herself.

Bag Lady

CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED MATERIALIST: I can't seem to bring myself to believe that I own any clothing worthy of pulling off a bag from Baltimore's Pistol Stitched- a company run solely by fellow Hampdonite (and Craft Mafia member) Ali Dryer. In a sea of handmade bags, and hand sewn this-and-thats at every fair we attend as vendors OR shoppers, I'm always shocked by the difference in quality between Ali's flawless and sturdy sewing and the rest of the game. Not to mention, the entire design being a heap more sophisticated than your average recycled fabric duct-tape-job. Sure, DIY has it's charm- frayed hems, mismatched threads, uneven seams... ensuring everyone will know you hit up your local craft event, and not your local Target certainly holds it's show-off appeal. But knowing your purchase will stay together after stuffing it with all the cannon fodder from your old purse... er...tote bag, in my case? This is what makes a Pistol bag more priceless to me. Ali's bag patterns are all her own designs, and are beautiful. I mean... spectacular. They seem to be inspired by origami. You'll have to see in person and open some of them to know what I mean. The handles are sanded by hand, and the fabrics? Carefully picked vintage and recycled prints, often only availble for limited editions of a bag, and usually as thick as upholstery fabric (in fact, I think some of it IS upholstery fabric). While I maintain that, based strictly on my lack of presentable wardrobe, I just don't think I could pull off the smaller more "evening" oriented purses, I'm sure you non-New-Hampshire-borns easily could. I myself remain goal oriented in scoring one of her oversized round "overnight" or "knitting" bags....so long as I don't have to learn to knit well and can stuff it with my sandals, nanna sweaters and snacks.
www.pistolstitched.com to snatch one up before (or after, or during) the holiday rush.

A fun pledge to take!

Our Calendars are IN!!!!!!

Thanks to the kindness and hard work of the lovely and talented Emily Wilson of Palolo Deep Design and my dear sweet Uncle David for helping me with layout and printing, we are thrilled to present the Red Prairie Press 2008 Calendars, featuring paintings and calendar month design by yours truly! These debuted at Handmade Arcade this weekend, which proved to be a phenomenal show- worthy of another post altogether! Thanks to all in Pittsburgh for the outstanding response to them and all of our stuff...and thank you all for coming out in the cold. We are so so excited for these Calendars, and we hope you will be too. Just $15 on the website!
Get 'em while they last, and contact us for ordering more than one- we're happy to discount for bulk orders.

Towels for two.

This weekend we'll be in Pittsburgh, and we're missing the wedding shower for one of my Baltimoron couples back here in Charm City. I decided to make a present anyway, and came up with these handtowels, printed with an old Red Prairie design favorite- the culinary print (seen HERE on our navy shirtdress, modeled by the bride receiving the towels) in honey, bark, and dark chocolate inks. As much as I love making everything we make at Red Prairie Press, it's sure fun to make something one-of-a-kind every now and then, and I can't help wanting a set for myself!

Handmade Arcade This Weekend in Pittsburgh!

Elementary

I came downstairs to this on Sunday morning. It seems my fuzzy sidekick is ringing in the cold season with the old hide-in-a-totebag-and-look-adorable tactic. He looks like a stock photo for one of those..."HANG in there" posters.
WE however, are welcoming the cold season with warmer clothes! Scarves and longsleeve girlie tees (coming soon) in nature prints!


Cold weather and Harsh Elements? I bite my (frostbitten) thumb at you!

Lick This Spoon

Amy Stevens is an artist that combines two of my favorite things in the entire world: birthday cake, and vintage pattern. It's a project that began as a thesis show on Stevens' 30th birthday: She would bake 30 cakes for herself, and decorate them in crazy and gaudy patterns and then find patterns in real life to match them. Now, well into the 60s in cakes-baked-to-date, Stevens thrifts vintage fabrics first to inspire and theme her decorated masterpieces. Once frosted, the cakes are paired with their fabric muses, and photographed together - the result being an almost tacky but deliciously clever matching of gaudy pattern and 50's housewife symbolism. Absurd and overdone... domestic and particular... matching and color coded. They could be used to disect a generation of stay-at-home-moms, or they could be looked at and simply called "spectacular." (my own personal reaction). Beautiful birthday trophies- a tribute to life, pattern and tastiness.




While I'm heartbroken to hear that Stevens discards of most of the cakes after they're captured on film, she points out that after sitting in her studio for a few days, they can be used as a weapon more effectively than as a foodsource. (I think she means because they are stale and hard, but I get the feeling one might also be sent into extreme diabetic super-shock after consuming them ... another effective weapon, I suppose).
Amy Stevens latest confection collection - "Yummy" - will be on view at Nexus Foundation for Today's Art in Philadelphia from December 1-January 31.

Laure Drogul and Orchestral Knitting

Baltimore performance artist Laure Drogul won the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize last year for her installation art and is at it again this friday at Atomic Pop with her latest, "Apparatus for Orchestral Knitting," a device which amplifies the clicks and whirs of knitters needles and scratchy yarn as a rhythmic sound symphony. Drogul will be joined by NY based Sabrina Gschwandtner (a knitter, artist and author of "KnitKnit: Profiles + Projects from Knitting's New Wave") and performances/booksignings will run 7-9pm. It's also first fridays in Hampden, so be sure to stop at Double Dutch for their 10% off sale, Red Tree for their b-day bash, and lots of other shops & galleries that now stay open late on the first friday of every month!

Just Sayin....