mirthful hexmas and a harpy new year.

i know i said [in the last post] that i wouldn't be back 'til 2010. well, i changed my mind. one last post for the year, i guess. holidays are weird for me now and my cats are wild minions so this is as festive as my lilting white tree gets:

it's mostly lights and pearly garlands. i have antique suitcases FULL of vintage glass ornaments in shades of pink silver and blue-y grey. however, after the first year of losing almost 1/4 of what was on the tree to naughty kittens, i am reduced to keeping my pretty old ornaments captive in a hidden gable closet upstairs in our house.

in other news, here is a brief list, mostly for fun's sake [and personal documentation] of what i received gift-wise this year:

♥ HUGE victorian stained glass window
♥ antique cameo brooch
♥ chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate
♥ coffee, coffee, and more coffee
♥ leather gloves
♥ teapot
♥ 2 vintage virgin mary statuettes
♥ pink cuisinart kitchen utensils
♥ amazon gift card
♥ lots of books, mostly humorous animal-related, but one 1935 medical advisor
♥ various sundries
♥ diamond skeleton key pendant necklace from my sweetie
♥ a 'man' watch (because i have big hands and can't wear little watches)
♥ an iPhone perch for my car
♥ bungee cords
♥ target gift card
♥ antique surgical forceps and extractors (macabre, yes...but also good as sewing implements)
♥ victorian game cards (good for collaging!)
♥ vintage enamel 'meat' drawer from an old ice box
♥ a little bit of spending money (i'm going to have my 1930s sofa re-upholstered!)

that's all i can remember. i'm sure i'm forgetting something really lovely that someone has given me and they'll see this and remind me and then i'll be embarassed. so, um...apologies in advance for that.

lastly, i'm sure you're wondering what katinka does when she takes a few days off for a mini-vacation after a year of crafting madness. she decides to sit down for 2 hours and sort through her collection of vintage thread on wooden spools, organize them by color, and then string them into a garland of sorts.


these aren't just any old spools of thread, mind you! they are all on their original wooden spools, many still holding onto crumbling bits of their old paper labels. these came out of my granny's estate and some flea markets and the colors are just incredible. i heart the spools of silk thread the best...they are so pearly and luminous they almost look like they're glowing! i haven't decided where i will hang the garland yet (it's very long!) but we have been talking about moving the piano into the dining room and making the parlor/music room more of a library/office where i can house and display my collections of odd curiosities without fear of the aforementioned naughty cats doing them any harm...and this will be a perfect place for the thread garland.

that is all! i'm off for a few more days of R+R and then it's back to the grindstone, mon amis!

xoxoxo

breathing.

ahh. the hexmas madness is over. i can breathe again. the adelante trunk show was really, incredibly lovely....many thanks to the wonderful ladies of adelante that made it all possible and for sharing their beauteous boutique with me. i sold an incredible amount of goodies...there will be some very happy holiday gift recipients, i'm sure!

sunday brought about a day of not doing much. not much other than finding someone with a tractor to wench the mister's truck out of the mud at the farm {where he so very accidentally practically buried it the night before in an attempt to hog-hunt}. then i worked on organizing my office. i cleaned off part of my desk and found THREE almost unused tubes of e6000 glue! i knew had bought several tubes recently and just couldn't figure out where they had gone.

monday, however, was a FANTASTICAL day! my mister is on vacation this week and so we lazed around watching the travel channel all morning, then spent a little time in the winter garden (salad greens, anyone?), talked to the chickens, and then headed over across the street to the neighbors house to see if they would finally let us look through their late mother's house o' stuff. et voila! we succeeded with flying colors and a crisp $100 bill brought home piles of vintage dresses, fabrics, doilies, lace, an old metal radio flyer style wagon, and LO.....a most incredible assortment of old broken jewelry bits and bobs for making into new frippery:

oh yes, this spring will bring a whole new slew of crazy mrs. havisham-inspired ornamentation to le shop!
speaking of spring....i have been walking to and from the posty now for several months and my goal to lose 20 pounds by my next quarterly doctor's appointment is proving fruitful. i walk and walk and walk. and my petticoats make pretty shadows in the late-afternoon winter sun:

this is odd, but worth mentioning, i think. the ladies' bathroom at the Spiderhouse Cafe in ATX is awesome. a fan of public bathrooms i am not, but it seems they have converted the original bathroom of the house into a multi-commode'ed powder room by adding a couple walls and hanging the original solid wood paneled doors on what is essentially a sliding barn door track:

i find it to be a very ingenious use of space-saving technology...and one that employs recycled materials (the old door), to boot.

also on the agenda for spring, sweet + dainty headband frippery:

some very exciting things are percolating in katinka-ville right now! they are all to be kept under wraps for now, but the end of january promises to be full of excitement, bien sur. i am so excited for the neue jahr...i am ready for all sorts of new shows, meetings, parties, vacations to exotic locales, gardening, and watching my nephew continue to grow and learn new things.

lastly, a huge hug and thank you's all around to everyone that sent such lovely holiday cards, emails, greetings, and sentiments....i hope everyone has a wonderful winter holiday and a fanciful new year. see you all in 2010!!!

xoxoxoxo

katinka

pictorial.

firstly, vintage optic lens necklaces are back in le shop.

last week i took some pictures of my nephew, jj, at laguna gloria in austin. it's a lovely art museum on even lovelier grounds. it has been my standby/go-to for portraits for as long as i can remember.

i know, i know...if you don't have kids of your own, it's usually not a ton of fun to stare at pics of other people's kids. but jj's pretty cute and i was pretty pleased at how the pictures turned out. that kid never stops moving! i practically had to wrestle him into facing the camera most of the time.

i love the look on his face here. but you can see my hand under his arm holding him in place. i could crop it out but i think it would make the picture a funny size so i'm just gonna roll with it.

in other news, i'm done hexmas shopping and all that's left is to continue churning out lovely things to schlep and peddle.

i'm already ready for spring shows. which reminds me,

DEAR SAN MARCOS ART IN THE PARK FESTIVAL,

please do not schedule yourself on the same day as eeyore's birthday this year (as you have done every year past as long as i've lived here). i like both festivals and hope to attend them. both. so please CHANGE THE DATE THIS YEAR.

thanks.

katinka

wheeeeeeatsville!

firstly, thankies for all the lovely comments on the last post! i wanted to respond to them individually, but i was working from my iPhone all weekend and it doesn't seem compatible with blogger, sadly.

as a remedy to my winter hat emergency i was reminded of big fuzzy russian hats and, unfortunately not being able to locate one that i thought was floating around the house somewhere, i pondered and brilliantly thought of heading over to austin's own Banana Bay, the local source for all things military and outdoorsy. et voila! they had just what i was looking for:


it's not real fur in case you're wondering. i heart it ALOT and i swear it SAVED me from freezing to death out at wheatsville arts fest this past weekend. FOR REALS, YO. it was BITTERLY cold, y'all. it snowed the day previous (albeit only a dusting of flakes for about 3 minutes) and i am not a cold-tolerant person in any way. oh! also, at 8am saturday morning as i'm leaving to set up, my truck failed to start.

FREAK OUT.

i was picturing myself pulling a little wagon of goodies down to 30th and guadalupe but thankfully (and mad props to) my brother who graciously got up from a dead sleep and jumped my old F-150.

set up went smoothly and i was more pleased with my booth than i've ever been at any show i ever done before.

after doing lots of shows with jewelry hung on little trees or draped around bottles, i decided straightforward was the best approach. i hung the more delicate pieces, but simply laid out the longer junque-jewelry necklaces on my table. i think sometimes people are afraid to mess up your display or they are just uncomfortable removing jewelry from a prop. sure enough, people touched, tried on, and BOUGHT. lord, they bought.

lots of people had great reactions to the necklaces with the wee pocketknives, and many commented that they remembered their grandfather always having a little knife like those. it makes my heart warm when my wares elicit childhood memories like that.

i also sold some of mine and my mum's collages. everybody seemed especially fond of the saint/icon/mary collages. understandably, of course! i mean, who doesn't like mary? you don't have to be catholic, or even religious i think, to appreciate the peacefullness that mary represents.

in the picture above, you can see my poor fingers were swollen and unhappy from the bitter cold. ouch! by the time i got home i wanted to just submerge my hands in a tub of warm lotion. i don't know how people that live up north can stand it!

earrings! i sold so many that i started to run out! i had to re-arrange the displays several times to re-distribute and even out the empty spaces. then i ran out of earring cards! thankfully, the mister came to visit on sunday and brought me more!

i kept the displays pretty simple. it had quite a lovely effect, no?

suitcase o' collages.

i was very pleased with my old wooden ladder-turned-headband-display!

overall, i thought my little tent looked like a tiny little pastel-y, chippy, fripperous booth. exactly how i envisioned it.

okay, okay...enough with the booth pictures already! how about some winter wonderland katinka-garb:

brr!

my mister showed up in his finest gypsy garb (with exotic tiny oranges, to boot!):

he embellished these pants himself!

one last katinka photo to prove my cold-bravery:

look how wet the toes of my boots were! i kept wondering if my feets would get frostbite (even though by sunday afternoon the temps were in the low 50s). still, cold + damp does not a happy katinka make. at any rate, wheatsville was super fantabulous and i'm so thankful for all the lovely people that braved the weather this weekend to shop local. i can't wait to do it all over again next year! xoxoxoxo!

winter weather.

brrr! suddenly, it's freezing here. snow in dallas and forecasts of ice for central texas this weekend. WHEATSVILLE WEEKEND. wtf?! why the face?! (fans of modern family know what i'm talking about). well, i hope my fellow austinites (and surrounding citizens) are prepared to shop al fresco because i'll be out there with hot potatoes in my pockets and lots of fancy frippery to peddle:

hearts and stars!

the grave digger's daughter:

i was in a bit of a snit yesterday...prepping for shows always stresses me. i feel overwhelmed by a need to have one of everything and something up my sleeve. i have reoccurring dreams of working a show and every customer that i talk to asks for something that i almost made but decided not to. i had a long chat with the husband yesterday and came to a resolution that i don't need to make so much stuff. just make what feels pretty and run with it. i get in these ruts where i ask myself what the 'customer' wants and i realize that i need to break free from that. think outside the box, if you will.

as an artist, i think it's important to free yourself from any sort of self-imposed creative restraint. stop worrying about what anyone else will think, what anyone else would buy. think of what is beautiful and lovely to you, what makes your heart pitter-patter and feel like it might burst forth with stargazer lilies and blushing roses.

that said, i do hope you will brave the forecasted cold weather this weekend and join me under my lace-covered tent for some holiday shopping! you can find me at the wheatsville arts fest annex @ 30th and guadalupe from 10 to 5 on saturday and sunday. there will be all sorts of lovely music and art and good food, i'm sure!

dear universe,

sorry for all the lame things i've done in my life. sorry for all the feelings i've hurt and bridges i've burned. i promise, that deep down, i really never meant any harm.

sometimes my brain + mouth just get ahead of themselves and i've been working really hard to correct this.

that's all. carry on.