#257

Hello, everyone.
We have some new pieces on the website since I wrote to you last, so be sure to check that out. . .



I hope you all had a tasty Thanksgiving on Thursday, and continue to enjoy the leftovers. Here's a tip from Captain Hobo for enjoying your leftovers . . . you can roll just about anything up in a tortilla and eat it with one hand, leaving your other hand free to set a fire in garbage can, thumb a ride, or play the harmonica (not recommended.)
We celebrated Thanksgiving in Lincoln City on the coast with Jo's folks. We stayed in a trailer in their yard, which is their guest room. The bed is several inches from the ceiling, so I'm recommending to Jo that she wear a helmet next time. I tried to keep count of how many times she bumped her head, but it's difficult to count when you're nursing your own concussion.

-Dylan

I'm back!
Sorry to have been gone so long.
We finally have some new pieces listed both on etsy and our website.
Click away. . .



Our daughter will be coming home soon for one of the longest Thanksgiving weekends I've ever seen scheduled, about 9 days long. I say she's coming "home" but she doesn't call this house home. She calls it "my parents' house" since she never lived here. But we want it to feel like the home she knew before we moved, so we've transformed the craft room/ junk room/ guest room into something that resembles her old room. We painstakingly peeled the springtime themed decals off the walls and painted over the worst shade of pink ever mixed in a paint can, choosing instead a nice off-white. We put up a few decorations, and suddenly it became the best looking room in the house. To be honest, the other bedrooms weren't giving it much competition. Would you believe that our bedroom isn't decorated in the slightest? I know. I'm surprised too. It kind of looks like a room in a halfway house, without any art on the walls and a cheap particle board dresser in the corner. I guess after living and breathing art the rest of the day, Jo just wants somewhere void of all art to collapse and recharge. Our son's room is definitely no match for our daughter's new room. It looks like someone placed a bomb inside the dirty cloths hamper.

-Dylan

#255

Hi, all.
Here are two great places to find us: our website and etsy.

I hope you all had a memorable Halloween. This might be the last Halloween our son will go trick-or-treating. He's 15, so he's just a growth spurt away from scaring people into turning off their porch lights, which is how I knew it was time to retire from trick-or-treating when I was a teenager. Jo made his costume this year, like so many costumes before. He was a lumberjack, complete with a homemade beard and paper mache ax. Here's a picture. . .


This is the first time we've lived in a neighborhood that had an actual shot of attracting costumed candy beggars. We've always lived in places hidden from the road or off the beaten path, but we're in the suburbs now. The number of solicitors we've had ringing our doorbell in the last few months was the first indication that we'd better stock up on candy for Halloween. We did in fact get enough trick-or-treaters to satisfy us and drive our dog crazy, but the serious candy collectors went straight for the rich neighborhood around the corner. All the streets leading into it were lined with cars parked on both sides. Shameless! I could hardly find a spot to drop off our own group of kids.

-Dylan

#254

Hi, friends.


There's still some Halloween pieces of ours on etsy.
And don't forget to visit the little house of art on our website.

We're home now after a trip to visit our daughter at her new collegiate home, and I'm jealous. It's an endless cycle of reading, naps, pick up games of flag football, and lots of nighttime entertainment like Gypsy Jazz bands and improv comedy. I'm not quite sure it prepares them for a world of working, paying bills, and vehicle repair, but who cares? Let them have their fun.
Our daughter supposedly has two roommates, but we have only spotted one. The other one might be a decoy to get a bigger room, I'm not sure. However many girls actually live there, they all live at the same level of sloppiness, which is a good thing. We wouldn't want our daughter to feel pressured by pockets of tidiness around the room. Our daughter has a lonely fish that mostly plays dead at the bottom of its empty fish bowl. It's lack of activity has earned it the name Stoner Fish.
The other thing I love about campus life is that everyone either rides a bike or walks to their destination. Our daughter wanted to take us to her favorite restaurant, specializing in pumpkin pancakes, but she only knew how to get there by walking on the railroad tracks. She seemed disappointed and a bit disoriented when we took the car. I tried to explain, "We're not walking on the tracks in the rain. We're just going to breakfast, this isn't Stand by Me."


-Dylan

#253

Hi, friends.
We've got some one-of-a-kind pieces up for auction on ebay.
And there's more Halloweeny pieces of ours on etsy.
And then there's always the little house of art on our website.

I realize I haven't taken too many work-in-progress pictures for you. That's usually covered over on Jo's blog, where coherent thoughts are artfully combined with colorful images. But one out of two isn't bad here on my newsletter, so pictures it is. I'm particularly excited about this one, even if he is only half-way finished. We'll be retiring the fork-footed crows soon, and I wanted something in the same spirit to replace it. The forks have become too unpredictable for me to keep working with. The kind that bend well look exactly like the kind that snap in two, and I don't think they'd be too happy with me at the store if I tried to figure out which was which before I bought them. . . although I have performed such stress tests before while no one was looking. Anyway, forks are out, darling, where have you been? Wooden landing gear is all the rage. So I present to you Hughes. . .or the ghost of Hughes, at least until Jo paints him.





You know we're excited about a piece when we name him before he's even painted. He's named after Howard Hughes, of course. Aviator, billionaire, genius inventor, and completely missing a moral barometer. . .all the right ingredients for an interesting biography. So look for Hughes on our website and etsy in the coming weeks. We're headed to parent's weekend up at our daughter's college later this week, so there may be some flight delays for Hughes. But it will be worth the wait.

-Dylan