Some light reading.

Oh by the way....Cat featured me in a great article she wrote about Artomatic!

Click here to read it on Toledosnightout.com!

Half a sigh of relief.

I have the best boyfriend in the world. He's put up with the past week of me freaking out, second guessing everything I'm doing for Artomatic, and basically being a tiny tyrant-aka "MORE TO THE LEFT!!!!!" Without him, my display would have been a halfassed table and not the awesome tree we built. I'm so excited for next Saturday now! He's been my biggest cheerleader and put up with 3 months of "No we can't go out, I have to knit." So excited for our year and a half anniversary next month-we have a big date of Olive Garden and going to see Arthur planned.

Today was the best day ever. Woke up, laid on the futon together and watched Napoleon Dynamite, (even thought everyone knows Gentlemen Broncos is FAR superior. Then again, people obviously DON'T know, since that movie went nowhere.) Got up and showered, got our stuff together, and finished the installation with zero mishaps. To celebrate our accident and divorce free weekend, we ordered a ridiculously huge amount of White Castle (I didn't even know it was possible to spend $18 there,) came home and watched The True Story of Wrestlemania which I have been dyyyyyyyying to get. So far only the first of three discs is on Netflix, but it was SO GOOD. I know I'm probably totally losing people here with my utter nerdiness, but sorry. I love WWE wrestling. Ryan and I call it our stories :P After that was done we started watching another documentary about the 50 greatest WWE stars of all time.

I should really do a post about Netflix recommendations. I watch some pretty oddball stuff.

The display is almost done!

Just a sneak peek-all these monsters still need finishing touches, and there will definitely be more monsters added!

Motley Crue

So after the first part of the day went well enough, we actually had to build the display.  I go to get the now infamous sketch out of my bag....and dig...and realize it must be wrapped up in the paint filled tarp we left downtown.  You know, just the one piece of paper that has all the measurements we need on it.  Excellent.  We go over to my parents so I can take my dad's truck.  The trailer is still attached to the truck, so Ryan and my mother assure me that the back of the Hummer is big enough to bring home the wood.  I am skeptical-just putting that one on the record.  So we go to Menards....wood comes in 4' or 8'  Four is too small, the Hummer probably tops out at six feet wide.  Menards only cuts 2x4s, not actual wood.  Do we see an issue here?  Ryan suggests tying it down to the top of the car.  I suggest me having a resulting anxiety attack.  We go home and un-trailer the truck (aka Ryan takes the trailer off, I stand there and hold a wheel) all while in cold yucky rain.  Go back to Menards, get the wood, get in line...and realize we forgot the Astroturf.  Finally get out of Menards.  I freak out the entire way home because its a short bed truck and two feet of wood are hanging out the back and "wiggling" and I'm convinced its going to blow away/snap in half.  Once we pull in the driveway I realize Ryan was right and we should have left the tailgate down.  Oops.
We cut, and cut, and cut, and cut.  No one loses a finger.  Considering a hand jigsaw was involved, I consider this a big win.  Not #winning.  Why not?  Because I'm over people thinking severe mental illness/psychotic breaks are funny and publicity worth.
In the midst of this, I devise an all new project.  Poor Ryan.
I use lots of spraypaint.  Despite the bandanna over my face I'm still blowing out green snot two days later.  Healthy!
You would think this all sounds like its going well enough, at least post-wood buying.  Except for when I look at the display and say to Ryan, "There's no way this is going to stand on its own." He says, "I've. been. trying. to. tell. you. that. all. day."  Me: "Well.  You know that sometimes you just need to be firm with me!"  We think we have it figured out...we think.

So the current result is....I'm still way behind.  I still need to make the shelves and we have to figure out how they're getting attached/how this whole thing is getting stuck to the wall.  I still need to cut things out of styrofoam and paint things.  All those monsters in the above photo still need mouths.  I have a whole herd of monsters that still need stuck together/random limbs knitted.  All by April 2.  Aaagh!

Refer to the sketch

Re: post title-Otherwise known as "A comedy of errors."

So this is how Artomatic 419 prep Day 1 went.

Load car-ladder, paint, roll of paper, tarp, screwdriver, chalk, paintbrushes, etc.  We are ready to GO!

Get to space, drag very heavy things up three very long flights of steps.  Realize we can not possibly listen to any more "sexy sax man" jazz coming from the other side of the building and load up Pandora on my blackberry.  Commence listening to "Pussy Money Weed."  Upgrade?  Not really.  Ryan at some point takes over the station and turns on High on Fire.  Luckily we had no one else working on our side of the floor, I doubt they would have been pleased with either selection.

Manage to tape off the space without divorce resulting.  Get geared up to paint....only to realize MY MOTHER (ahem) had not tamped the can lids down firmly and one of the gallons had dumped over in the plastic tub.  Not a lot, but still enough to get all over the plastic bags and box of chalk, etc.  Throw on one coat of paint, mercifully it covers!  (We were prepared to paint...and paint...and paint...to cover that sacred heart.  Have you ever tried to repaint a red room?  Yeah, now you see why I was so nervous.  We probably could have even got away with just one coat.)

Drama.  Oh the painting drama.  I wish I could have recorded all the horrification that ensued over us painting over that mural you see above.  Mind you, the painting is totally 'legal.'  You're allowed to paint over whatever was in the space.  I had this exact coversation.

Older couple sees us taping off the wall:  You're going to paint over that?!
Me: Mmhmm.
OC: Really?!?!?!?!? *dissapointed faces*
Me: Yep.  In about 5 minutes actually.
OC:  There's no way you can work with it?????
Me: No. No.

Seriously.  What about a sacred heart, cherries, and dice says "Yay!!!  Cartoony land of monsters!!!!!"?  That's right, nothing.  Gleeful painting followed.

Take a break to let the first coat dry, try to walk to Jed's, Jed's is closed, we go to Frickers.  I go to the bathroom to wash the paint off my hands...and get stared down by every table.  Perhaps it was my Tupac-style bandanna I was wearing to keep the paint out of my hair and my Bayside CULT hoodie?  I don't know.

Go back to the space, paint, realize we need to leave the tarp there to dry because there is paint everrrrrrrywhere.  Have the weirdest most awkward encounter with our space neighbor that we're still talking about ("How do you think BILL is going to feel about this?", manage to carry a ladder down three flights of stairs without injury, pack up the car, and leave.

Throughout this whole day, every day Ryan asks a question,  I inform him to "refer to the sketch!" which is a a folded up piece of notebook paper I've been carrying around that I drew up in 30 seconds to try to explain what the hell I mean when everyone asks me "You're knitting monsters?  I don't understand."  My lovely carpenter/painter threatens to walk out if I bring up the sketch one more time.

We get home, unpack everything.  So far so good, right?  

She keeps a corpse under her bed.

Ryan referes to this as "the tomb.". Its the container that all the monster body parts get put in, then we slide it under the futon.

Not after today!

Visions of knitting patterns. Not presents.

Oh man.  I hate to be a total non holiday bum out, but I just straight up got so stressed about Artomatic that I'm actually nauseous.  Seriously.  Under four months.  Even though I know I'm under zero obligation to sell from my booth, it really is my goal...and it's really my goal to kill it and make some money.  Even worse, I think my main focus is knitwear...and for those not in the know, you don't just wiggle your ass and have a scarf appear.  I mean, maybe some do, but I think that's a whole other show going on.

Oy.  I'm just going to go bowl on my DS because I can't knit anymore tonight.  I was taking a break and doing non-retail knitting anyways, teeny eeny knitting for my darling little Thea!!!!  More about her in a special post of her own! <3

Artomatic 419 2011 Space Sneak Peeks!

Low content, high image. Here's my sneak peeks of the Artomatic 419 space for 2011. There's 3 floors but all of my photos are of the third because honestly, I don't like the other two and I'm only concerned about the third, and God willing they'll do picks like the previous years and they'll be based on the order that you signed up in...which in that case I'll be guaranteed third floor. So blah blah blah, these are more for Rob's benefit so he can see what the spot looks like. Isn't it fun tho? Ryan and I totally want to fix this floor up and live there! I love the windows.

Not pictured: Giant boat hanging from the ceiling. Yeah, you heard me. We didn't understand it either....especially because those are some narrow ass staircases. Its some loooooong skinny kayak canoe type thing.

Artomatic 419 space!

Here's my little baby space for Artomatic that I claimed yesterday! It's the red line in the middle of the floor with that pink piece of paper in front of it. My initial pics were those drywalled spaces behind it, but they were taken, so my mom claimed a space way back in that corner with the scaffold is....but when I got there, I found out they were building all these areas in the middle of the floors, so yay! I like this spot way better. There's no one at all on one side of me, and only someone to the right angle of the other side....since I'm rolling my whole background, I think it'll look way better than having this bigass 10' x 8' painted block in the middle of a row of displays. I can't wait!

Tonight: Outrun the Gun and Goodbye Blue Skies....with Dave (incidentally, ex-OTG) playing bass. Love Dave!






Also, why didn't anyone tell me all this time that I should have been watching Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia?!