Snail Mail

Look at my new cute return address label! I ordered a bunch of them from Stand Out Stickers and they turned out beautifully! A snail for snail mail! hee heeThe stickers were a great way to spruce up my new promotional mailer (and spare people from trying to read my handwriting). The woodland theme was rounded out by awesome evergreen stamps from the post office. This is the first time I have not sent out a postcard, and I thought a nice vellum envelope would be fun to give folks a peek at the illo before they even open up the card. It is a good feeling to have all the cards in the mail and on their merry way! Just in case I don't blog again before the New Year, here's wishing you all the best for a safe and happy holiday season! :)

My First Interview

I was just thrilled when the lovely ladies over at The Sketchables invited me to do an interview, and they posted it yesterday! Hooray! My sincerest thanks to Kelly, Heather, Diandra, Joy, and Priscilla for being so amazing and inspiring. What a wonderful group of gifted artists! They are as kind as they are talented, and I feel honored to know them. :)

Oh, and in "Minnesota Blizzard News," we figure that we ended up with about 15 inches of snow in our neck of the woods! Hope you all had a great weekend!

Readmill

My New Year's Resolution was to read more books, specifically for myself. I am very proud to report that I have read five books this year! Cool, right? :) We read picture books by the boatload at my house and are starting to read some middle grade (and YA for me). Books for grown-ups have their appeal, of course, and I have some in the queue. As anyone who knows me knows, I am generally sunny. Writing in-depth, thoughtful, comprehensive book reviews would be pretty pointless because giving glowing reviews is pretty much all I'd want to do... so here are the books I read this year and a little bit about why I loved them:

The Art and Flair of Mary Blair was a wonderful biography. Her work was brilliant, vivid, and inspired (and I never read biographies).
Thirteen Reasons Why had me wanting to find out what would happen next, and not wanting to find out what would happen next... and wanting my kids to never grow up.
I sat down with The Invention of Hugo Cabret one lovely afternoon when my kids were getting along famously and devoured it. It is absolutely magical.

Shiver is a book for all your senses. Well-written and compelling. I can't wait to read the sequel.
Stargirl was fantastic. The last book that made me cry when I read it was Little Women, and that says a lot.

Oh, I bet you are wondering what Readmill is all about... I started reading books while walking on the treadmill! It has been working out great! 2 mph is a great speed to read (so the book doesn't bounce around too much). Don't worry, I promise not to ever walk and knit! Hahaha

The Week In Review

Hello, Hello! The beautiful painting I won from Bonnie Adamson arrived this week! Isn't it lovely! I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Bonnie over in twitterland. She is a very kind lady and an extremely talented illustrator. Please go here and here and here to see all of the cool things that she has been up to! Thank you, Bonnie!!!
Here is my newest sketch for the Sketchbook Project. More bugs! (click to see larger)
Also, I can knit now! I ordered a knitting board over a year ago and re-discovered it a month ago when we lost power for a couple days. Knitting was always something I wanted to learn how to do. Learning to knit the traditional way will have to wait for another day! Here are a few pics of the process:
You wind the yarn back and forth along the nails in an alternating fashion and use the hook dealie
to lift the bottom yarn loop over the upper loop. I think they have tutorials on the website...
It isn't really tricky and the stockinette stitch looks really nice on both sides.
This is how it looks from the top before you wind the yarn around another time (and this is a good example of why I don't write directions for a living- ha!).
Here is the scarf! You finish it off with a crochet hook, and if I could do this you could for sure! Pretty fun! This scarf is going to be a gift for my husband, who really is the best guy ever. Back before I was a Mom, I used to cross stitch a bunch. It is fun to have something crafty to do again that is easy to pick up, work on for a bit, and put aside again. Hope this finds you well! Thanks for stopping by! :)