Blue

I have been invited to participate in this lovely event:

This is my first Minneapolis gallery exhibit, and I'm super excited! I'll have three pieces in the show: Ishamel (the sea creature that was in the Plush You show in Seattle), a kelpie, and this guy:

I tweaked the pattern slightly from the previous dragon I made. I wanted this dragon to be less cute and cuddly, so I gave him long fingers over a wire armature and made his face slightly longer and more angular. He's made of buttersuede with cotton scales, polyester ears and wings, and hand-painted acrylic safety eyes. His wings are also wired, and his arms and legs are jointed with plastic safety joints.

I'll be attending the opening reception on February 6; please stop in and say hi!

A New Year

So, I'm a little behind on the New Year's post thing. I'll just come right out and admit it: I'm a bit of a procrastinator. Always have been, always will be. Another confession: I don't really do the whole resolution thing. My feeling is, if you want to change something in your life, why wait until the New Year? Also, given my tendency to procrastinate, I figure, why impose limitations on myself or set potentially unrealistic expectations? If I need a New Year's resolution to start or stop doing something, maybe the time isn't right to start or stop said something. Also, why make things that are enjoyable feel like chores by putting shoulds around them (I should blog more often; I should produce more plushies; I should network more)?

But I do like celebrating the new year for all the possibilities it holds. Just as tomorrow is always another opportunity to start fresh or to finish what was started or to just plain start over, so is the new year. 2009 is full of possibilities for me to blog more. To create more. To do more networking. To try new things and to stop doing things that are no longer working for me. Plushroom Soup is a fresh start for me, business-wise and creativity-wise, and I have no idea where this new venture will take me. But I'm excited to find out.

I'm also excited to share this journey with all of you. I have lots of fun stuff cooking that I can't wait to show off. But it's still simmering, so please be patient. I'll leave you with some images of what I have so far managed to do more of this year:

Spinning—something I'm trying to get better at. It requires lots of practice and patience and time. Three things I always seem to have in short supply. But I'll get there, albeit slowly. It's not a resolution, it just is. Life is what it is, and the best that I can do, that any of us can do, is to just take each day as it comes. To greet each day, full of possibility, and say: what do I want to do today? Not tomorrow or next week or next year.

Happy New Year. Wherever this new year takes me, takes you, may all the todays in it be full of hope and promise and accomplishment. And plush. :)