Missy Diggs

I finished chemo a couple of weeks ago (yee-haw!) and while I am feeling quite a bit better I am still not quite up to par. I took the Vivid Girl on her class end-of-year field trip extravaganza the other day (boat ride on Ladybird Lake, then swimming and lunch at Deep Eddy Pool), which was immediately followed by Trophy Day at gymnastics…. and now it’s three days later and I’m still not back in full swing.

Meanwhile I have been taking a fabulous Artist’s Way workshop, based on the book by Julia Cameron, and it has stirred up some creative energy that I had lost touch with for awhile. Unfortunately, I am still at a point where I have more energy to dream up things to do than to actually do them.

So my list of Virtual Crafts (crafts I don’t actually do, but which I investigate on the Internet) is growing and growing. And I am doing a lot of pretend online shopping too, in which my wishlists grow longer and longer.

Here are some of my favorites right now:

Go to Etsy.com and do a search on “steampunk.” Thousands of fabulous items will appear! Including this awesome Kraken necklace and this gorgeous and lavishly priced dress!
Also this lovely journal and this awesome magnifying lens that clips onto your glasses and makes you look like a mad scientist.

I have also been spending a lot of time looking at the Retro & Mod fabrics on fabric.com and imagining myself spending the summer looking cool and crisp in swirly dresses.

Of course, that means I have to go back and read all the archives at A Dress A Day.

And sometimes I have to watch old movies with great dresses for inspiration. A recent fave: How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. You can Watch It Now on netflix.

Yesterday, we welcomed our new Saturday babysitter into our life (the Vivid Girl is so happy to have a babysitter again she wanted to throw confetti to welcome her!) and Mr. B and I went to the Blanton (WARNING: JAZZ! or try this link) to see the Birth of the Cool exhibit. It was good, though not quite as extensive as I had hoped. In particular, there were no clothes and not enough pictures of clothes. I also would have liked more furniture and objects of a household usefulness. More of everything! There was an awesome birdbath and some great architecture photography. We also popped upstairs and enjoyed looking at the fabulous Antiquities and Modern/Contemporary Art (some of which we thought was crazy though someone obviously loves it and some of which we loved though other patrons clearly thought it was crazy).

After that, we hopped on over to the east side to check out the book store Domy. It was awesome, and we both want to go back and spend more time there. The people working there were super nice and helpful as well. They had the kidrobot Luckies zipper pulls designed by Friendswithyou so we got some and mine was a cute little swirly piece of candy which I immediately put on my new puffy night vest. They also had the new book What It Is by Lynda Barry and Mr. B bought it for me as a gift. He said there was so much stuff he wanted in the store that he couldn’t narrow it down to what he wanted the most so he will have to budget some money and go back with time to decide. The store sells gift cards so I think we know what Mr. B is getting for his birthday (coming up on June 5)!

And now I am tired of doing the links and I just took my chicken out of the oven (Sunday dinner!) so I am going to say bye y’all! and I hope to be back soon!