meow...

i'm thankful for all my best friends i've had throughout the years... but i'm so glad i've been friends with alissa this last year. seriously, what a good time to meet a super encouraging inspiring artist friend. and it's often hard to make good friends, and then some people you just click with...and that's awesome. and getting to know all her other inspiring friends...that's super rad too... hooray!

my grandma still hangs out with friends from kindergarten, and college. and this weekend my dad's sailing with his two best friends from high school/college... so yeah... most of my friends i've had the longest i met in high school, and then just in the last few years...

but i want to have friends for a long time, and i was glad this year that i ran into and reconnected with two best friends where we'd had weird break-ups sort of (mostly my fault..eep). the awkwardness was worth it, just to know we don't hate each other. and it's not like we've hung out much yet, but at least that huge weight is gone, and our friendships are opened back up, so whether we hang out a lot or never, everything just feels better.

and then there's friends i still think of every day, but we just got busy with school and life and never hang out. but i hope we'll be able to hang out eventually...rollerskating. or something. cuz friends are really important... and part of why i'm who i am right now is cuz of being good friends with certain people in my life. they changed what music i listened to, what hobbies i was into....

and a year ago i wouldn't've been posting drawings online... cuz last summer i was like "i suck at drawing." so who knows, maybe next summer, i'll be riding bikes to the IPRC. hehe!

old friends...

i found some old friends in the attic. there were a lot of others, and of a more colorful variety, but i'm not sure if i still have them all.
peaches, kitty, and bunny (he's wearing a teapot cozy that accidentally was shrunk in the wash and became his sweater.)
these are from class a while ago, positive/negative space.

felted watermelon bag for brianne. made out of left over yarn from other projects.

bicyclette

so!!! i rode a bike yesterday! this may not seem like a big deal to people who ride bikes a lot, but it was kind of a big deal.
yeah, i love bikes! i hate cars, and hope someday portland is a biking city. i rode bikes a ton when i was a kid but just around my neighborhood, and sometimes we'd take them to a park or a school by my house. but ever since i outgrew my pink schwinn with banana seat, i haven't really ridden bikes. the last time was in norway, 4 years ago and the bike was old enough to have back pedal breaks, which is what i'm used to, cuz my kid's bike was like that. we rode for a while in norway and it was okay, but i was still pretty unsure about it. and it was good, because there weren't many cars because we were in the country, sort of. so yeah, besides that, a few years ago i fell off a bike on my street cuz it wasn't the right size and i don't know, i just wiped out. and then one time i went on another semi-terrifying bike ride on a bike that wasn't really the right size, around lots of cars.

yeah, i'm definitely a biker-wanna-be. but cars make me so nervous. also, the sw is pretty hilly and we don't have sidewalks or shoulders on the roads really, or many bike lanes (it depends on where you go) so it's hard to bike here.
so, yesterday i borrowed alissa's bike, and we adjusted the seat shorter, and it fit pretty well. i'm still totally not used to hand brakes, but it was flat enough that i didn't need to brake that often. so who knows, but eventually i want to be better (or at least not afraid) of biking. cuz i love love love the idea of bikes and it would be useful for going places near my house, maybe though there are lots of hills. or i could just eventually move to a part of town that is more bikeable.