favorite shop friday: cathy cullis

Cathy Cullis is an artist. Her ink is thread and her paper is linen, newsprint, and yellowed novels and the result is beautiful!

With trailing threads, unfinished fabric edges, sketchy figures, there a sense of the improvised in her work but, as Cathy puts it, her pieces are still "carefully constructed, considered." In fact, Cathy calls her work "visual poems" and I think that's the best way to describe them because they are certainly lyrical and while they have an abbreviated quality there is quite a depth to them, I think.

Expected to believe:

Fashionable:

Her pieces can but framed but can also be worn like this beautiful pendant and brooch:

Cathy's beautiful work can be found at http://cathycullis.etsy.com/.

schwäbisch gmünd churches

We visited three different churches during our day in Schwäbisch Gmünd and they were all very different from each other.

The first was St. John's, a Romanesque church built between 1220 and 1250. It was being restored and the inside floor of the church was littered with the original gargoyles and saints from the outside of the church.

I climbed up the church tower where I got a beautiful view of the next church we visited...

The Holy Cross Cathedral is a Gothic church built btween 1315 and 1521. It had a big beautiful organ and pretty side chapels and gorgeous windows!

The last church we visited was really a chapel. Two chapels, actually. And it was very unique! St. Salvator was built on a hill overlooking the town in 1617. The path going up the hill has little chapels containing sculptural vignettes of Christ's Life.

The two chapels (an upper chapel and lower chapel) were built into caves with beautiful carvings both inside and outside cut into the rock.

All three of these churches were very beautiful and represented a completely different era in architecture. It was so neat to see a mini history of church design all in one afternoon!

schwäbisch gmünd

Yesterday, Karl had to go to a small town called Schwäbisch Gmünd (say "shvay-bish g-moondt) on the far side of Stuttgart and I decided to tag along. The town was charming! As Karl was busy with business, I wandered around the charming town, and then we met up together and wandered around some more. Here is some of the charm we explored...

We actually also saw three very interesting churches and the coolest library I've ever seen but I'm going to save those photos for another day!

favorite shop friday: swellkid

Carrie's wonderful shop, Swellkid, helps us learn our ABCs by taking us back to the day when boys dressed sharp and Q stood for Queen for a Day!

These retro alphabets are so much fun! They'd be great for a baby's room or your own rooms.

Carrie will also gladly take cutsom orders so that your letters can stand for whatever you want: M for merry-go-round, modern, or...?

Find her swell alphabets at http://swellkid.etsy.com/.

etsy baby shower

There is a regularly-held virtual baby shower held by Etsy sellers...it's kind of cool: any seller or buyer on Etsy can add their name to the mom-to-be list and several sellers are assigned to ship them a free baby or mommy gift. I've participated before and it's pretty fun to meet new babies around the globe!

Here is the little quilt I made for this spring's baby shower for Boxie's new little baby girl (front and back views):

I just used scraps I had on hand to do a pink and yellow tummy-time quilt. It's fun to surprise a distant mom with a little bundle of love! And Boxie let me know that her little angel is already getting a lot of cuddle time with it! I love knowing my quilts are getting the cuddly love they were made for!

i just thought this was kinda funny...

The 31. Annual European Juggling Convention is in town! How cool is that?!

Outside the convention center as I walked by last night there was juggling galore along with other juggling-related activities like tight-rope walking and unicycle riding.



And, have no fear, there was an ambulance on hand to take care of any juggling-related injuries.



I had no idea that the juggling community was so well organized that they had conventions!

And what do they do at juggling conventions? Discuss the latest technological advances in bowling pins? PowerPoint presentations on the physics of throwing and catching more things in the air than you have hands to hold? Sale subscriptions to some industry-related magazine called something like Juggling Today?

And this convention is going on all week! Is there really that much going on in the world of juggling to convene about? I am really really curious as to what goes on at this convention! Besides lots of juggling! Actually...maybe that's enough. I imagine jugglers and the sons of jugglers aren't the popular kids in school and maybe it's just enough to get together with your fellow jugglers and for once not be the weird guy that can throw and catch a dozen balls in the air at once.

favorite shop friday: be happy now

I love the name of today's shop, Be Happy Now, because you can't be but happy looking at Jenny's absolutely charming, happy artwork!

Someone tied to the tree:

Happy Rain:

Creatures that live in the sky:

She just finished her degree at an art and design academy where she wrote and illustrated this charming book for her final project...but you can buy her other tiny books filled with her artwork, too.

Jenny lives and works in Jerusalem and has so much creativity coming out of her not even the toilet rolls are safe from her artistic eye!

Her artwork can bring you instant happiness, I'm sure! Find her happy shop at http://behappynow.etsy.com/.