Well, I’m a van owner now. Her name’s Li’l Peppa, and we’ll be spending a lot of quality time together pretty soon. (I’ll share photos, too!) As we enter the final count­down to our big Austin moving-roadtrip, I’m squir­reling away sundries for the drive, throwing going-away parties (above & below), and living/working in a packed-up room that some­times feels like it belongs in Storage Wars. It’s fantastic.

While we’re gearing up for this big adven­ture, I’m also gearing up to share some of the fun along the way. If you’re inter­ested, you can track our progress on twitter, check back here for updates, or follow my Instagram photos on Gramfeed.

(Speaking of, I’m having a lot of fun using the Gramfeed inter­face to vicar­i­ously visit my Austin happy places from afar. It lends some flickr-esque func­tion to Instagram photos, which I’ve really been wishing for lately.)

If you want more details about our Austin trip, or are wondering about logis­tics for an upcoming project you’d like to work on together, feel free to refer here for the rundown.

So the weather is changing here in DC — my toes have been cold for the past few days. Maybe I should finish my crocheted slip­pers from last winter (the ones I haven’t made for myself yet)? As I start getting into the constant-cup-of-tea routine, my summer nostalgia begins. Not so bad, though, for two reasons:

1. The crum­mier the weather gets here, the closer I am to my early-2012 move to Austin(!!!), and
2. this is the perfect prompt to review all my undoc­u­mented summer projects.

This is the start of a series of posts high­lighting some of the funnest stuff I’ve done in the past few months, and first up are these totally radical bicycle helmets I made for auction at WABA’s Bike Fest!

I’m a humon­gous propo­nent of helmets: I even started & ran a small free helmet program for about a year in Richmond at one time, called HELMET YEAH! Plus I haven’t had many design oppor­tu­ni­ties to play with spray paint and paint markers in recent years, so this was an absolute thrill for me in all ways.

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Man. I just really enjoyed making this today. Picking through the yard for the right twigs, working those X-Acto skills — and more than anything, watching it move. There’s such antic­i­pa­tion, as it twists itself into some­thing read­able, and then the word falls away again. This will bring me hours of enter­tain­ment, probably.

I photographed this as a (still) edito­rial illus­tra­tion, about including young people as a true part of move­ments, and (duh) remem­bering that they count as “real” human beings. The word “resist” here is meant as a response to oppres­sion, but as I watch it rotate in a daze, I wonder if it would also secretly tell babies “resist…don’t go to sleep…imagine all the fun they are having without you…”

I would. ;)

My research mate­rials & notes. Yay, magazines!

I’m on the brink of absolutely swim­ming in work for the next couple of weeks. Standard summer activ­i­ties, like beach trips and days spent lounging with sweet tea & mojitos will have to wait ’til we’re approaching July, but I’m not complaining. I have the incred­ible honor of redesigning Left Turn magazine!

Left turn is a quar­terly publi­ca­tion written by activists, for activists, and the edito­rial collec­tive has embraced their mission to amplify voices of dissent for over ten years. I’ll do absolutely every­thing I can to ensure they look pretty damn good, too.

Austin, to be specific. In early 2012. February, we hope.

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For some reason, it struck me this after­noon that I don’t think I ever docu­mented this screen back when I made it. (Five years ago.) So, now I have.

It’s just one more little thing on the list of reminders that I’d like to start being creative with my hands a bit more consis­tently. I’ve decided not to return to AU for Fall 2011, to devote myself more fully to making designs, to being more prolific, and to prepare for some bigger cool things coming up in the not-so-distant future. I used to make prints fairly often, and maybe (maybe) this will allow me some time to get back to that. This sort of creative work is good for my brain and for my heart.

A quick Friday note to say, you can now choose your eythink subscrip­tion experience:

A. new work only, or
B. blog posts only — and remember, you can always choose
C. both A & B!

I entered my lil droplets motif in the Rain-themed contest over on Spoonflower. I’ve never run for anything before, so this feels strange to say: Vote for me!

As a way to democ­ra­tize their voting process (admirable…) Spoonflower random­izes the order of patterns for each voter. (Two –izes in one sentence!) So ya gotta click thru to find me, but you can vote for as many different entries as you like, so have fun along the way.