Sunday, November 28, 2010

Studio Log: Starweek Eleven- Flying Solo Mini Post!

Hi, you guys: it's Nora! This week has been a little quiet around the studio. Lucy has been in New York for the Thanksgiving holiday so I have had the Burrow all to myself! I've been getting a lot of "work" done (and by "work" I mean "Netflix watching, hot chocolate drinking and sock knitting"). But don't worry: there are still cats here to take photos of.
  • Studio Project of the Week:

By popular demand, the stump pillows debuted in last week's post are now available on my etsy! Buy one for your house! Drawn by Lucy and Hand dyed! Hand printed! and Hand sewn by yours truly! Chicagoans can also buy pillows (as well as other sewn items) in person at the Lill Street Textiles Holiday Party and Sale next week! December 3rd, from 6-10pm. Stop by and say hello!
  • Studio jam of the week:
Lykke Li's "Little Bit"


No seriously- I have been listening to this song non-stop for, like, four days now. It's a little bit, a little bit, a little bit catchy. Love!
Cat photos of the week:
Sun Bunny!
Perched and clearly thinking: "I miss my real mom and need much consoling."


Hope you all had great Thanksgivings! Catch ya' next week!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Studio Log: Starweek Ten

We've had a hard work week here at the studio. Punctuated by the usual nerdy outbursts and midnight movies. How are YOU?

  • Studio Projects of the Week:
1. Stump Pillows! Hand-drawn, hand-printed, hand-dyed and hand-sewn (BY HAND!), these pretty little pillows will be available to buy from Nora at the Lill Street Holiday party/art-sale (December 3rd, 6-10pm).
Stump Pillows


2. Marsupial Cloth Stickers and Applique Patches! Drawn by Lucy and printed/prepped by Nora! These will also be sold at the Lill Street Holiday party/art-sale.
After!
Nora will also have bags and other items for sale at Lill Street
(which is an awesome arts center in Chicago).

  • Studio Happening of the Week:
We hosted a little Pre-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1 screening get-together. We made tiny sexy pies, cockroach clusters, butterbeer and pumpkin juice!
Tiny Sexy Mince Pies for HP7 Party

Our Butterbeer Recipe:
Cream soda
A few drops of artificial butter flavoring (from the baking section)
Coconut rum
(Mixed to taste)

Our Pumpkin Juice Recipe:
Apple cider
Canned pumpkin
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
(Mixed WELL)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1 Party CAKE!
We hope you had a great HPWeekend, everybody!


  • Studio Jam of the Week: "Mean," by Taylor Swift

(Our apologies; there are NO better videos of this song...)


Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch!


  • Studio Obsession of the Week:
Because Lucy was too devoted to The X-Files as an adolescent to stray to other television, she sadly missed the Buffy Boat. So now Nora has been giving her a long-overdue education in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's coming along quite well. We're up to the third season, and should graduate to Angel by New Years.


(Sub-obsession: ALL OF WILLOW'S CLOTHES)


  • Kitty Photo of the Week:

Koala Face Cat
Have a smooshface week!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Studio Log: Starweek Nine (or Eleven... Depending)

So we missed a couple weeks there. Sorry! Holidays and illness and travel prevented us from sticking to our regular update schedule, so we'll try to make this post EXTRA GREAT to make up for the missed weeks.

  • The Burrow hosted a Halloween studiowarming shindig!
It was a really fun time. As we'd been planning for a while, we constructed a photobooth and backdrop in our Room of Requirement (our tiny back room where we make art/take photos/grow plants/do interpretive dances). It involved lots of shiny fabric, spray paint and twinkly lights!

Deep Sea Kitty
The cats really loved their new "underwater" fortress.


Here's what we did for the actual photobooth mechanism:

Photobooth Mechanism
A spray-painted cardboard box with a hole to fit a camera on a tripod,
which was connected to a remote shutter release button.


We spent a good deal of time figuring out how to light the damn thing (neither of us are photographers), but in the end it looked pretty great, and people seemed to have fun taking lots of awesome pictures.

Mustache Ghost
This is our friend, Katy, as Mustache Ghost.


Later that weekend, we ventured out of the The Burrow to parade our costumes around the city of Chicago.

Sharky and Squiddy go to the bar
Team Burrow on location!


Despite the FREEZING COLD, we took the scooter around town.
It looked something like this:

halloween
(but with helmets)




  • Only a few days after Halloween madness, The Burrow took a field trip out to Easthampton, MA for New England Webcomics Weekend, where Lucy was exhibiting work (and Nora was assisting).


IMG_3819
Photo by Magnus Champlin


The show was great-- lots of awesome comics people and fun times.

New England is the capital of diner dining, a food form that we (as good North-Eastern girls) love and revere. So first on our list in jolly old New England was a trip to a for-realz boxcar diner, complete with table-juke (of which Lucy was very fond).

True Love

Nora is from the area, so we bunked with her parents and regressed into 14-year-old cable-tv-loving basement dwellers for the parts of the weekend where we weren't at the comics event. Which leads us to...

  • Studio Obsession of the Week/s: BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH


    With Martin Freeman as Watson, Mr. Cumberbath plays the new Sherlock Holmes in the BBC Masterpiece Mystery!'s Conan Doyle adaptation.
We stumbled upon the first episode of this three-episode series on our first (of three, conveniently) nights in Massachusetts (where Nora's folks have actual TV, whereas we have only internet TV). WE PROCEEDED TO FALL. IN. LOVE.
GO and watch this amazing series-- it's available free online for a limited time on PBS.org! THEN GO ON AND TELL US THAT YOU DON'T LOVE IT.

And to read more about our new favorite person on the earth, we particularly like this blog's profile: Geeky Girls Love Sci Fi




As if all that wasn't enough heartthrobby excitement for two weeks, we were DELIGHTED to discover that one studio obsession, The Very Potter Musical, was crossing over with another studio obsession, Glee. (Darren Chriss played Harry in the VPM). So in our minds, this is just Harry Potter singing a love song to Kurt; our favorite character on Glee.

We've reached our secondary Manatee goal for the fundraiser. To celebrate, we bought our plane tickets to Orlando! EEEE! You can still reserve your copy of the comic and donate to the studio on the kickstarter site until January 8th.

We're very excited.