Discovery!

Last Thursday was a rough day. I made a pretty big mistake at work and then got home to discover my bike stolen. Silver lining: I was jostled out of my ordinary reserve and had a great chat with fellow bocce baller Gus after Sunday's match. We started talking about illustration- he's currently a fashion illustrator- and his new team t-shirt designs.

I think I have to take a moment to explain our bocce league a bit more. We play in a bar in Brooklyn on Sundays, though there are also Saturday and Monday divisions. My friends and I formed our team, Boccenalia, and joined the league in its second season and we're now stalwarts, with a few member shuffles as people move. Our first season, we saw that some teams had costumes and decided this was the place for us to excel while learning the game. We've had various incarnations (wreaths, tutus, chains) but right now were felted. We also have tshirts, all designed by one of our founding members, Christina, and screened first by another fab friend Gina and then by me. Here are our shirts, v1 then v2.



Beyond being a really great group of people, our team, in our inaugural season, won "Best Team Style". I believe the award was retired after that, but we've kept our overall style high.


Iris, our first and fearless leader, made flyers for our matches when we started.


This one was the inspiration for our MIA flag (those are bunnies chasing bocce balls, hand appliqued by Iris).


Team tshirts have become a big deal, about half of the teams rock them now. And we got a huge compliment when Gus told us on Sunday that one of his new designs for the Mud was inspired by our bunnies! Though, looking at the bunny getting crushed, I'm not sure how to take comment on our skill. I guess I can forgive it as the Mudskippers (go look at Gus's other designs for the Mud) are a great team, in sport and spirit.


Whew... that was more than I thought I was going to lay out. Anyhow, Gus and I were chatting with Michele, fellow Boccenalian and editor extraordinaire, and I think I shared by love of children's books (hey, I'm a literacy person) and maybe we decided to make one. I'm excited to at least talk more about it. Gus's style is so different than mine that I think we'll have some interesting ideas.

I pulled out some old illustrations I made and started a new one- buy far the most complex yet. It feels good to work on a larger scale sometimes... the little cards are a challenge to get details in and larger paper means less very tight spots. At least so far.

Moral of this long and winding tale: new projects and things to be excited about pop up when you don't expect them.

On a more related to the purpose of the blog note, I found a super cool site: CraftCult. The heartomatic feature is too cool, especially since I love love love finding out more about people who have visited my Etsy shop. It pretty much pulls up stats and hearts for your shop and items- Etsy centric analytics. And it saves me from the click pattern if I want to check this actually on the Etsy site.

And the shop has a secret admirer. I don't know anything about you, but love you back!