the truth about watermelons

i will try not to apologize for not blogging. i usually apologize for anything, being 2 minutes late, being 2 minutes early, even for being on time! but not today. i have been busy busy busy and something had got to give, and it wasn't going to be feeding my baby, so...

speaking of food, for some obscure reason i have been receiving Rachael Ray cooking magazines i haven't subscribed to, and although i find nothing in there that inspires me to cook,  the other day i saw these beautiful photos in the latest issue:

"get fresh with watermelon", photos by Plamen Petkov

they now live on my wall and have inspired me to start a new collection: fresh! here's the first pattern.

fresh!

so this week's first lesson is: never underestimate the usefulness of a useless cooking magazine.

lesson two: it turns out watermelon is a vegetable and not a fruit.

at least you did not read this post in vain... (can you discern the subtle apology? i can't help myself, can i?)

in which she naps and i dream

the other day when my daughter woke up from her afternoon nap, and i asked her, as usual, "did you have a good nap?", she said "yes", and added, "what did you do?" i told her i worked. but it really didn't feel like work.

i did this:

and next time you napped i did this:

and then you napped many more times, and  i made many more of those, and came up with this, which is still a work in progress, so please keep up the nice and long naps!

so while you were napping, my lovely, and having sweet dreams, i was trying to make my dreams come true. little by little. but sometimes, like now, i wish i could just nap as sweetly as you do.

MOYO 4 is here!

...and i am in it! this was such great news to come home to. my ankles hurt  and my eyelids are drooping, so unfortunately i can't read the issue right now (what do ankles have to do with reading, you ask? i say, don't ask) - but i can proudly share the fact that my design (remember the time i thought i was lucky?) was the first runner-up in the MOYO Floral Twist Design Brief. congrats to the winner, Antonija M, second runner-up, fellow designer friend Majo BV, and third runner-up, Rebecca Beck.

below are my entries:

flower bed 

flower people

flower stems

these are from my flower power collection, and they are the first florals i have ever designed. i am glad the judges thought they are "simple and effective". i always strive for simple, bold and playful.

ok, this was old work. next time i will share new work. i am working on it.

i don't have time to write this!

i am not sure how much time i have before my baby wakes up - just checked on him and came back - so i have to make this one brief. here i am, drinking tea with one hand- tea bag tea, no time to make real tea - eating mana'eesh with the other- google that if you don't know what it is, no time to go off topic - and typing with both. this week, whenever i have a small window of free time that i can spend awake, i have been drawing these characters for a kids' product i am working on.

i am sure you can guess the theme.

i would like to draw worms. i am tired of owls. today designer Onneke feels fish are the new owl. i love them. i think worms would be great too.

everyone is still asleep . yes! now i can post this and maybe get some rest.

what was i thinking?

recently i have been thinking what was i thinking when i was planning to blog regularly, or to blog at all...or to get anything done other than changing diapers, nursing, singing lullabies, rocking, cooking, running around a toddler begging her not to wake the baby, taking pictures, doing the dishes, the laundry, filming my babies, and loving them to death. 

but as i said when i started this blog, i am not fully satisfied with myself unless i am working on a creative project. so there have been days when i have felt empty, but also days like today when i find the time and energy to achieve tangible results and meet deadlines. yes! deadlines! what was i thinking?

i can't share much at this point, but here's a little peak into one of the designs i am developing for a line of kids' products.

i have also been obsessed with worms. but you will have to wait to hear all about those. hopefully a day like this will come by again soon. when i can just listen to the birds, sip tea, blog away, and miss my sleeping babies.

red tulips in my city

my thoughts have been scattered lately. it's partly hormonal (if you're new here, i had a baby almost a month ago), partly due to lack of proper, uninterrupted sleep, and partly due to recent events in my beloved cities of boston and cambridge (i am sure you read the news, not just blogs!). so times have been crazy, to say the least, and i need to reorganize myself. so that's what i mainly (and unsuccessfully) tried to do today (in addition to meeting a deadline about which i can't blog yet.)

i also went on a walk to clear up my mind. it was a warm day and red tulips were everywhere.

if you like flowers and florals, you should check out prolific designer Michelle Drew's (who says she would be even more prolific if she could design in her sleep) fun A-Z Flowers Project at Pattern & Co. and you can join in the fun, if you like! i am hoping to do so before she reaches the letter "T", but i am not sure that will happen. i am hoping to get organized first. i am not sure when that will happen. i am also hoping to be able to blog regularly. friday evenings, more specifically.

till then, i am hoping to have a plain, regular, normal week.

an unfinished circle

today i woke up to great news. well "waking up to" is a figure of speech here, since i didn't really sleep  - my 3 weeks old son made a lot of noise all night - so the truth is "i switched on my laptop to great news." 

the big news being that one of my main goals for this year was accomplished: studio aliQue was featured on Print and Pattern, which is THE BLOG when it comes to pattern design. you can read the feature here.

exactly one year ago, it is on the Print and Pattern blog that i found out about the online course The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design, offered by Rachael Taylor and Beth Nicholls. thanks to what i learned in that course, my work has now been featured on that same blog where my new journey started. it's as if things have come full circle. although i am not sure this figure of speech is appropriate either, since it sounds like an ending, when things are actually just beginning. 

so here's to unfinished circles and new beginnings!

note: starting next week, i will try to blog on thursday evenings. we'll see how that goes. please don't expect any masterpieces, just making sense and using proper grammar is good enough at this point - it all depends on how many hours of sleep i am allowed by my tiny boss, this funny high-maintenance new little creature in my life.