Want to come live and write in Seattle for a year? Apply to be a writer-in-residence and live in a downtown Seattle cottage.
The Hugo House is accepting applications now! You can even bring your significant other and he-or-she can McJob it for a year as a barista or something.

The Richard Hugo House is a great Seattle writers guild with tons of classes, readings, and writers groups. It’s on Capitol Hill, a very arty district in Seattle, and they’ve scored some historic housing from the Parks Department for their writers. The Hugo house that will provide two writers with subsidized housing in Seattle’s historic Belltown Cottage, plus the opportunity to teach in Hugo writing classes. The deadline is June 1st and the year of residency begins Sept 1. I couldn’t find the information on the Hugo House website. So I included everything that was emailed to me in this post, so read on to find out the details.

Oh, won’t someone fun come write and play with me? Read the rest of this entry »

For the past three weeks I’ve committed every Friday to finishing one project. Here’s a couple that I finally wrapped up.

I finally finished the piggle! I’m sure I knitted the thing 6 times over. Catie wears it to school everyday.

When I started walking more for this month’s habitude, I realized that it was still a little chilly out for skirts. I designed these WastekNot legwarmers, made out of yarn leftover from other projects. These are for the kids, and they got to pick their own buttons for the cuffs out of our button jar. Want a pair for you or your kiddo? An email and $12 will get you a set. They take about a week to make. Email moi at magpie-girl dot com. :-)

I got into the habit of knitting and lining these little bags. I use them for everything from double point needles to a case for my Zune. I got inpsired by some vintagesque fat quarters at the fabric store.

and I got this far on brown bun bun and an orange bun bun. Soon they will be finished up like these:

Melissa finally got to wear these roller girl legwarmers after I mastered double points. Now they are ridiculously easy.

Make a new plan Stan…

It all starts with a plan. Pick one goal. Outline the steps it will take to get there, and get moving!

11) Get motivated by cold hard facts. If stats are your thing, spend an hour finding your carbon footprint (how much carbon-based fuel you use.) It’s intriguing and inspiring.

12) Then pick just one thing to do from this list of ways to offset your carbon footprint.

13) Reprogram your heater now to run 1-2 degrees lower whenever it kicks in. Ditto with the air conditioner, keep it 1-2 degrees warmer this Summer.

14) Make a bike your second car. The new Townies are super hip and designed for mild city riding, and if you live in a hill-heavy city like mine, an electric assist bike like this beauty can help you get around for less than a second (or first!) car.

15) Share. Only need a car (or a second car) occasionally? Join a club like Flexcar. You’ll be tempted to drive less and you’ll save money to boot. Some even offer small trucks which will help with that strip to by organic produce for your “slip out the back, Jack” projects.

16) Fix your flight consumption. Flying for travel or business? Offset your flight’s carbon emissions by donating to a CO2 reduction program like this one. For instance, $13.60 will offset a short-haul flight by funding reforestation in the Great River Valley in Kenya. How cool is that?

17) Reach for the Sun. Live in a sunny clime? Time to think about solar panel, especially if you have a pool. Start here and see what you can figure out.

18) Don’t get into hot water. Turn down your water heater 3 degrees and reduce your carbon load in seconds. You can also check your local utility to see if they offer cost incentives to household who switch out old waterheater for more energy effecient models.

19) Unplug appliances when not in use. Electric appliances draw a small amount of energy even when they are not on. Unplug your blender, toaster, and coffee pot. Get really ambitious and unplug the microwave, TV, and computer printer as well.

20) Don’t overcharge. Once your computer or cell phone battery is full, you can unplug it and save energy.

I’m pleased as punch to announce my first online offerings of vintage clothes over at Magpie Girl Goods. Oh, I do so get distracted by sparkly things! Come see my collection!

Special thanks to Tonya and Emily who modeled and photographed the evening away!

Yours,

Rachelle

“Just slip out the back, Jack..”
Backyard ideas for going green(er)!

1) Use organic plant food and fertilizer in your backyard. I like these guys.

2) Grow steppable ground cover instead of grass, which demands lots of water, fertilizer, and weed work. I like “pygmae” which has yellow flowers. I put in a half dozen each year to gradually (and economically) replace some of our turf. My local garden store carries this line , but why not go all out and find an organically grown alternative? (Tell me if you find one!) Read the rest of this entry »

Reposted from here, because I think it still matters.

Well, here I am back at work and ready to finish up the collage journal I’ve been working on since last Summer. Alas, the scanner refuses to play nice with the computer and I can’t get the last two pages ready for print! Stymied from bringing even just one project to completion, I am a frozen by the possibilities of tinkering with dozens of unfinished or yet-to-be-started projects. It’s been two weeks without creating anything more solid than Christmas cookie dough. I’m not stuck exactly, just sort of stiff in the artistic joints. “So,” I say to myself, “Let’s warm up with a nice little blog.”

Let’s talk a bit about the creative process shall we? It’s a long and bumpy one, by most accounts. Paintings do not spring forth from your brush fully executed, nor do novel pour out of your fingers without numerous backstrokes long periods of chewing on the ends of your hair. Read the rest of this entry »

Well fellow tree huggers, yesterday it happened. I hit the ½ tank mark in my car. My goal for the month was to survive on half a tank of gas, and I am woefully short of that goal. I didn’t want to use the car AT ALL, and my compromise was to get it down to ½ a talk (half my usual monthly gas consumption.) But alas!

Even though I won’t hit my mark, I’ve still reduced my car usage. Here are some things I’ve learned about being car-free in Seattle. Read the rest of this entry »

Unfinished projects that lurk in my studio….

-Write authors bio for my literary agent. (Man, that sounds good!)

-Finish prayer beads cards for recent sales

-Finish assembling four month old Prayer Flags for Monkfish Abbey
(sew flags, print iron ons, iron on, hand sew to rope, hang)

-Finish last remaining Vintage Faith Rosetta
(buy one bead, string)

-Create Spring/Summer Zine (very bawdy! A front-and-back double feature of female saints and sinners)

-Knit Rebecca’s (new version)bunny for Lindsey. (From Last-Minute Knitted Gifts)

-Assemble Rebecca’s bun bun for a coworker.

-Finish Myra’s orange bun bun for baby boy Waddell. (BTW, this pattern is from Knit Wit: 30 Easy and Hip Projects (Hands-Free Step-By-Step Guides), which is a pretty good beginner’s book.)

-Turn collaged pages into a journal to sell on Lulu.

-Post list of religious books for sale.

-Finish number two of Miz’s purple-and-chartreuse roller girl legwarmers from Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation

-Knit ‘Manda’s WasteKNot speed racer legwarmers (my own design!)

-Knit a couple pair of kid’s WasteKNot leg warmers for buy magpie.

-Re-read collection of kid’s stories Paul and Rebecca published for me on Lulu and see it they’re ready to sell.

-Make personal slogan bracelets out of vintage type letters
(buy glue, file)

-Write up tons of referrals for the magpie suggests page, and consolidate the ones I’ve posted on the general blog like these.

-Custom embroider two women’s jean jackets with designs from this cool site. (I already finished one for Eden with mondoMadonna on the back.)

-Make prayer flag kits
(sew flags, write directions, assemble w/iron ons and rope)

Oooo…look what ‘Becca did over at my Urban Abbey site! Vote for me pretty please!

You can vote more than once, I think, if you vote on a different day. Click here.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Zoë.

Zoë looked like an ordinary girl.
Zoë did ordinary girl things.
But Zoë was not an ordinary girl.

Zoë had a secret superpower. Read the rest of this entry »