Jellyfish are the new owls

So I've been working on this theory that, in terms of the hot new indie-craft animal mascot, jellyfish are poised to knock owls off their twee little branches. I love owls as much as anyone else raised on Tootsie Pop advertising and "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" environmentalism, but there's a saturation point for everything and owls may have reached it.

Anyway, I wanted to be on the early side of what I'm predicting will be a jellyfish explosion, craft-wise. (I just looked on Etsy, and found 44 pages of results for "jellyfish," while "owl" yields 842 pages.) I've been embroidering some baby t-shirts:




I'm not super happy with either, which probably has to do with the fact that the t-shirts themselves were bought secondhand and most of the composition is a result of trying to cover up various mysterious stains. (People whose babies I may be giving these shirts to, please know that they are, in fact, washed and clean. I'm trying to avoid buying new t-shirts from American Apparel for myriad reasons — shady labor practices, sleazy-ass CEO, vomitously sexist advertising, etc.) — but no one else seems to sell blank t-shirts.)

I actually don't think jellyfish will ever outpace the owl as far as craft iconitude, for the same reason the octopus (Etsy page count: 190) won't: jellyfish are fucking terrifying. Have you ever seen one? Even the dead ones I've seen give me the shivers. Even the baby dead ones. And if you've ever read Starring Sally J. Freeman As Herself...well, the Man O' War scene is like the prepubescent girl's Jaws. (Unless you also saw Jaws as a prepubescent girl, in which case you, like me, probably haven't been a fan of oceans since.) That's why these jellyfish are smiling. And, you know, made of thread.

Grandparents!

I finally finished my portrait of Briar's grandparents. How cute are these people? I really hope I did them justice in the portrait.

There really are few things cuter than a.) elderly people who are clearly in love, b.) elderly people wearing jeans or pocket protectors, and c.) elderly people riding bicycles. I couldn't really get bicycles (or jeans, really) into this portrait because I had to be true to the subjects, but lucky me, Briar's grandfather was rocking not one but TWO pocket protectors in the source photo she gave me. Cute squared.

Jeff did some fancy-schmancy selective-focus close-ups. I definitely had the most fun doing the trees, probably because I could chill out, watch my Project Runway, and not worry about whether I was getting the likeness right or putting too much cleavage on Nonna.

It's from Drugstore Cowboy, okay?

This is the piece I submitted to Reading Frenzy's Valentine's Day Invitational, which is up at the shop through February. I was about three-quarters of the way through before I realized, "Huh, it's not exactly a valentine, is it?" But Chloe, Reading Frenzy's proprietress, e-mailed me this morning to say that she'd claimed it, so I'm happy it has a good home with a fellow appreciator of the morose dialogue stylings of Kelly Lynch.

Also, working on this piece was a reminded of how nice it can be to have deadlines.