Rehab & Retail

Kinsey in Recovery

Lots to blog about this morning. First things first. Kinsey’s home! She has nine ghastly looking stitches in her little leg (and that’s just on the outside!) and is feeling a bit fragile, but she’s eating up all the attention she’s getting, as well as the scrambled eggs – her favorite! We gave her a good three-quarters of our bed last night (as opposed to her usual half) and she slept soundly. This morning she’s here in my studio with me, soaking up the sun through the French doors and keeping her eye on the bird feeders outside. At least she can bark at marauding squirrels, if not chase them! Thank all of you for the good juju you’ve been sending her way!

My second Farmers’ Market was outdoors this week. It didn’t pour rain till the last ten minutes. Here’s my little display, including the beautiful racks Tom's made for my cards and matted prints, and the spectacular dahlias my neighbor Ed Black contributed. They sold like hotcakes! Every last one of them!

I wish I could say the same for my cards, books, and prints – I could have paid the vet bill out of my proceeds! – but I did better than I did last week and I'm still quite encouraged by this new adventure in marketing. I grabbed this original pen-and-ink drawing on the way out the door and it was the first item I sold yesterday.

Cormorants on #2 Bell

5" X 7" Pen-and-Ink

2007

When I returned home from the market, I had a new PenPets commission on my email from someone who had just picked up one of my fliers that morning. Speaking of which, here’s a recent commission for all you cat lovers:

Arlo

5" x 7" pen-and-ink

2008

Arlo is a cool, calico cat from California, and “he” is really a “she,” even though she was named after Arlo Guthrie.

Finally I’m experimenting on one of my best customers. Thea recently sent me a photo of her beloved Sugar, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, to draw. However, the image of the dog was so small in the photograph that I didn’t think I could see enough detail to make a really good drawing out of it, so I carved Sugar in linoleum instead. I made her quite small, because Thea really only wants greeting cards. I’ve hand-rubbed this one to send to Thea. If she likes the linocut, I’ll hand-rub a boxed-set of cards for her. It’s more labor intensive than slapping my drawings on my Copystar and pressing the "print" button, but I do like the process.

Sugar

3.75" X 5" linocut

2008

Wew! That's enough for one day! Thanks for putting up with me and all my blogging.