Wherein my piece goes live over at the IAF auctions:

“I have been fascinated with shape-shifting for a good many years, and ravens even more. Like most writers, I am also fascinated with symbols. Back when my husband and I lived on opposite coasts, his letters and emails were riddled with symbols and it wasn’t long before they began to arrive in the mail: a leather notebook that he made himself, a wishing stone, captain’s bars. “I’m very talismanic,” he said. I took that as a good sign.

So if I’d been the one gifted with a feather and a vision at the top of Inwood Hill (a perfect place for both, by the by, though I must confess that living in Brooklyn, I don’t get here nearly enough), you’d better believe I’d be searching for clues. Not having any raven’s feathers, I wanted to make a piece that evoked their essence. A piece that reminded me of raven’s wings, but left plenty of room for meaning.”

The price is already up to $62, over twice the opening bid. This kind of stuns me.

I love the design, though. As I mention in the Artist’s Statement (the rest of which you can read here), I first made this necklace about 10 years ago and haven’t since then, though I’ve thought about it many times. The knotting is a lot of work, but the end results are really worth it.

I think the next IAF auction should be knitted and crocheted accessories. There must be some fellow knitters in the interstitial crowd.

I’m feeling a little run-down lately. Lots of good stuff going on, but the minute there’s a void, something seems to rush in to fill it. The Newsarama retailer interview is getting linked around, which is nice. People have told me that they got a lot out of it, which was the idea.

What else? Started Barth’s Tarot novel, The Magician And The Fool. Is wicked good, as we say up North. I love the way he’s bringing Tarot’s Renaissance origins and its occult machinations (traditionally the cause for crankypants among purists, perhaps rightfully so) together in a big ‘ol lovefest. Brilliant! Being a huge fan of having my cake and eating it too, I daresay I’m smitten.

Years ago, Leland had a Queensland Bottle Tree. He really enjoyed growing it, so we bought some seeds on eBay. Things are coming along quite nicely; in fact, we now have two bottle trees growing:

Speaking of symbols, they seem to be a fine one for where we’re at right now.

Our anniversary is next week, right after the full moon. Ooo!

Can you believe I’ve written out a bunch of posts for this dang blog? “Where are they?” you’re asking. Well, one of them is next to me on the Levenger pad here, but it’s long and speaking of long, I’ve been sitting at this desk too dang long.

But it’s been a productive day after all. I shall end it with a quick list.

1. Just when I didn’t need yet another social networking site to sign up for, here comes Indiepublic. Oh, brother.

2. That post on the muses that I wrote for Kris is here. I like it. Lisa Hunt also talks about her new deck, the Fantastical Creatures Tarot, which I personally cannot wait to get my hands on and wonder if I can hornswoggle Llewellyn into sending me one, here.

3. Thanks to Gwenda, who has been posting thoughts and wotnot on this book, I’ve had Sassy magazine on the brain. I was one of the original subscribers to Sassy. Bee remembers when the ad announcing this new magazine arrived in the mail - I brought it to school to show her and scoffed. “Oh look, they want to talk to us, not at us. Yeah, right.” Right.

Anyway, I have the first 20 issues or so in the closet here in Brooklyn, lovingly tended and guarded all these years, and they’re in near mint condition. I am really, really getting the itchy trigger finger to scan them in and post them on the Internet. What are the copyright legalities involved in posting 20-year old magazines? Does anyone know? Because believe me, that’s the only thing holding me back.

I’ll need to pick up the book. I have to admit I was skeptical, but Gwenda has me sold. Check out her essay here.

We’ll stop with three. 3 is a nice, round, magical number. The most magical, in fact. My tattoo says so.

Truly, I could smooch WorkPalNick for letting me know about this:

(Yes, this picture is way too big but at the moment I’m too lazy to fix it!)

Free open houses are Wednesdays at 4. Whaddaya know, it’s Wednesday! It’s just crazy, these coincidences.

Finished pass 1 of the mad dash FRANKENSTEIN thing I’ve been working on. Handed off to the artist (who is awesome; I would say who he is but I haven’t asked). He really dug it except for a few shots that were “too Berni.” He is, of course, absolutely right. The stuff just got burned into my eyeballs, is all. Next up: settling in for the dialogue. Early 19th century, something I never do. To get in the spirit, I ordered that really bad Kenneth Branagh remake from a dozen years back. I remember going to see this in the theater with my crazy roommate. I haven’t seen it since then, yet I still see images of Branagh flouncing around the laboratory; shirt off, chest heaving and muscles rippling. Burned into my eyeballs.

(As a side note, thank goodness my crazy roommate phase didn’t last very long. Only two years and I was out on my own.)

I received a ping yesterday from an editor about a very cool recurring gig. Not comics, in case you’re wondering, but just as cool. Looks like it’s a go. Want to yell from the rooftops. Darn, I wish I didn’t have to be so oblique.

[wistful sigh]

Some amazing soul has made the PagePacker, a little application that lets you take DIY Planner’s Hipster PDA templates and arrange them on an 8×11.5 piece of paper, a la PocketMod or, of course, my one shot tutorial. This produces a handy little portable and disposable 8-page planner.

However, it only works on OS 10.4. I’m not allowed to complain about this, as the amazing soul mentioned in paragraph 1 is a well-known Mac programmer.

Goshdarnit, why can’t Apple make their shit affordable?

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Originally uploaded by ebess.

… so I made stockings. Pattern adapted from Martha, of course.

So there I was in B&N, making my bi- or tri-weekly magazine run, because magazines (especially craft magazines) are kind of one of my weaknesses, and I’m tooling around, uninspired, and in the back of my head the voice is niggling. “There’s something here, something you’re not seeing… something wicked cool… just keep walking…” And it’s not showing up, and all the mags are pawed over and crumpled because this is a B&N in Brooklyn (forgive me, guys, but it’s the truth). And I’m about to walk out, when… there, hanging out on an endcap by the bargain books all by itself, there it is, my personal savior of the season:

She shoots, she scores!

Yes!

And right there next to it lay the “collectible cookie edition” of EVERYDAY FOOD.

Life is good.

Making zines is one of my favorite things to do in this world. And since you can take the girl out of the zine (by loading her plate up with tons of other projects) but you really can’t take the zine out of the girl, from time to time I’ll be offering special “one shots” that you can download, print, and even distribute if you want. Here is the first:

SCHEHERAZADE promo #1

And here’s a Flickr tutorial on how to put it all together — also includes a diagram or two so you can make one of your very own design:

This first one’s a little something that I’ve been using to spread the word about SCHEHERAZADE. Feel free to download it and read it, or, better yet, give it away. Others in the series will be self-contained stories, both comics and prose, with work that you won’t find anywhere else.

And do make some of these yourself, with your own words or art or whatever. They’re easy as pie and incredibly satisfying.

FYI: from here on out you’ll find a link to a promo page with all of my one shots and other goodies in the left sidebar with the rest of this blog’s static pages.

Been getting caught up on WhipIt and found a new neat thing:

What You Make It: an online art zine of sorts

I love the spirit and I love the design. One of these days I’ll take my sewing machine to my zines.

Some of this month’s discretionary income has gone to clip art, too — with some of the promotional ideas I have in mind, I figure it’s time to start a little collection. So I came home from the Strand with six books from Dover the other day, and checked in with Miss Mary.

Also: O’Reilly’s CRAFT zine blog is up. I cannot wait for this magazine. Cannot wait.

Holy smokes: is it after midnight already?

1. First, thanks for the positive responses to the SCHEHERAZADE promo. I’m very excited about this, not the least of all because the series is designed to let me mix up myth, folklore and comics the way I wanna.

2. I’m not usually one to invest a lot emotionally in comic book movie casting choices, but I just heard that Heath Ledger will play the Joker in the next Batman movie. I am stunned. And disgusted. The Joker is supposed to be played by a dirty old man, like Jack Nicholson. The Joker’s a freak. He’s mean, and I don’t like him; ergo, Jack Nicholson is perfect, even if he played the Joker already and it’s not 1989 anymore. Meanwhile, Heath Ledger is cute. We know I have a thing for the tall/lanky/sandyhaired/blue-eyed types. Hollywood, don’t do this to me.

3. I have notes on about a zillion possible book proposals on my hard drive; here’s one that someone else took care of for me:

A modern zine how-to for young people. Huzzah! I know it sounds nuts what with these Myspaces and YouTubes and all, but paper never goes out of style, and there’s a thriving zine culture out there. There’s an interview with the author, Mark Todd, in the latest ish of Comic Foundry magazine, which went live today.

Another bit of gloriousness brought to my attention by the folks at Fall of Autumn:

ZineWiki

Is this cool or what? I need to know instigators and co-conspirators. I need names, people! So we can send them a box of chocolates. Meanwhile, I’ll need to add myself, PLATFORM and Streetfables.