Three new friends: Opal, Gladys and Elliott. You can see the photos and read their stories on our Flickr page, and you can check them out on our Etsy shop.

Our new little friend Pico came to us from just south of the border. He made his way North after he was downsized from the entourage of the feared, mythic creature- El Chupacabra.

It seems that with all of the stress and strain on the global economy of late, people are not spending quite as much time in leisure activities and pursuits. This decline means that it’s become fairly lean, income wise, for creatures like El Chupacabra, Bigfoot, The Strawman and UFOs as more and more people are focused on dollar retention. And sadly, less vacations translates to less sightings-translates to less income-translates to Pico being on the streets.

So, what is a 6″ out of work monster to do? Well apparently, Pico caught one of our TV ads at 2:00am advertising our placement services and decided to see if we could help. After hiring a coyote to get him across the border, riding several box-car trains and hitchhiking his way through the West Coast, he ended up on our door step looking fairly disheveled.

It has been a couple weeks now, and we are happy to say he has his wonderful orange glow back. He has started working on his memoirs, “Mi Chupacabra es su Chupacabra”, and is looking for a safe, quite environment to add the last chapters to his seminal work.

Craft Flickr Pool Weekly Roundup (June 14, 2008)

National Hot Fudge Sundae Day (via nowpublic.com) – We were asked to contribute a photo of a recent trade (between us and the fab Love and a Sandwich) to a story on National Hot Fudge Sundae Day.

Meet Sam and Pete (We made their “Plush Goodness” section)

Tinymeat (Friends are good to have)

Pop’s Book Shop

Thanks again to everyone for your support.

We were to thrilled to receive our half of a trade we recently initiated with Dawn Ramerman of Look What I Can Do. Jill contacted her on the off chance that she might be willing to share one of her wonderful creations with us in exchange for one of our pieces. Thankfully, she was up for the trade. Patty the owl came to us a few days ago in the mail, and we just love her. The craftsmanship (craftswomanship) of the piece is top notch and her choice of fabric was wonderful.

The art of the trade is something that is essential to the DIY/craft experience. There is so much wonderful and talented work out there that if two artists are in mutual admiration of each other’s work, it’s wonderful when a trade can be arranged between the two to foster that mutual appreciation.

If you are interested in seeing the piece we sent Dawn, you can check out her post on the Hanetori we sent her and all about here work on her weblog. Better yet, after you’re done with that check out her Etsy store to see what she has available for sale. Her pieces would surely be a welcome addition to any home.

Thanks again Dawn!

Here are a few of the pieces we’ve put together for the upcoming 2nd Sunday Sustainability Fair being held in Portland on February 10. All the pieces we are bringing with us will either be made from mostly recycled and/or reclaimed materials.

Jill and I have learned quite a bit about the extent to which we can push certain types of reclaimed materials while getting ready for this show.

There were several designs that we made it quite far into the process with, only to be abandoned because of limitations and flaws that surfaced due to the types of reclaimed materials we were trying to use. It’s also allowed us to take some mental notes on our processes and eliminate certain types of reclaimed materials because they are simply too hard to work with.

Our newest friend up on our Etsy shop.

A little back story perhaps? Sure:

Percival is extremely fond of techno, dub, trip hop and downtempo music. He’s been known to attend a variety of rave and house style parties, spending days grooving to the hypnotic, repetitive musical structures while hopping around in a semi-trance like state alleviating his cares and concerns.

He’s extremely mellow, widely read and loves to talk about a variety of subjects. Despite being a bit squinty from a variety of strobe light induced corneal burns, Percy is extremely friendly and outgoing.