April 25, 2013

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.

April 18, 2013

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.

April 5, 2013

the clouds before the quiet

i have decided to take a mama break for a couple of weeks. this means i will not be blogging regularly, but whenever i have the time, energy, and desire to do so. sorry if this sounds too philosophical, or too cliché, but life goes by so fast and i want to stop and cherish these moments. obviously, all moments are precious, but i want to live these first weeks with my son slowly. i want to watch him get used to this world, and notice how my daughter grows to be a big sister. i don't want to feel (as i have done in the past) that my life is full of joy but i am not there to enjoy it. there is nothing more sad than that schizophrenic state (in which i have been) when you feel like you are happy, but cannot enjoy your happiness, as if you were watching your life as a movie, where good things are happening to an actor who is playing your part. ok, i'll stop here. 

a fact about me - in addition to the fact that i have occasional bouts of philosophical gravity like the one you just witnessed -  is that i don't like unfinished projects. so before taking this little break, i wanted to complete my cloud family. here are the latest members:

Baby

Swimmy (hommage to Leo Lionni)

and here's the bunch of them:

cloud family

before i go to live my happiness, i want to share words of wisdom i read in my daughter's first book which was a gift from my mom, called "Awake to Nap" by Nikki McClure. it is an unfinished alphabet book. at the end of the book, there is a note by the author:
I made this book while my infant son napped. I could only cut the pictures while he slept so the pictures are small and quick gleanings from my new life as a mother. The dining room table became my studio. I would put down my pencil as lightly as possible so as not to disturb the baby, hoping for a few more moments of work before I, too, had to take a nap.
The alphabet was never finished intentionally; the naps were too short and life too thrilling to justify going all the way to Z. I no longer had the attention span and neither did my baby. We were too awake.
in a way my mother's gift to my daughter was also a gift to me. a gift that told me to know what's important. i don't always know, but i am learning.

i am looking forward to not seeing you next week. maybe the week after. but please don't take it personally.

April 1, 2013

a growing family

so in case you noticed, i didn't blog on friday. i was busy giving birth to our son, Kami. it didn't take the whole day, by the way, just an hour an a half. but obviously, blogging seemed so irrelevant, even if i had the time and energy to do it.

Kami means "strong wind" in armenian, so today i added Windy to my little but growing cloud family.

Windy

life has been busy, the past couple of days, and it will get busier and busier. i do need to take a break, and might not blog as often. i will keep you posted.