The Word on the Street, August 22

Liz spent some time last weekend painting a big Totoro on one of the walls in the house of her friends Aaron and Melanie.  Aaron’s birthday is coming up, and Melanie decided to transform the Florida room in their house into a Totoro room for Aaron.  They have been hard at work since buying the house less than a year ago, so Melanie actually painted an accent wall in the Florida room while Liz painted Totoro. It was a paint party (a great kind of party, in case you’re wondering).  Needless to say, Aaron loves Totoro.  Liz’s fiance, Eric, helped to get Aaron out of the house for long enough for Liz to get Totoro painted.

Isn’t he cute?  Liz was pretty proud of her work.  This Totoro is almost 3’x4’ - a pretty big size.  Since Liz had never painted a mural or other wall illustration, this guy took about 5 hours to complete, including a dinner break for some excellent vegetarian Thai food.  If you’re not familiar with Totoro, well, now you are (Liz hasn’t actually seen the movie or read any of the graphic novels herself *gasp*).  Edit: since writing this post last week, Liz actually did watch the movie My Neighbor Totoro recently while nursing a hangover.  It’s really cute!

This week, Liz hopes to continue on some big projects that are taking a while to complete.  Ask her to crochet a hat for you and she’ll have it done in an hour, but afghans and detailed illustrations are hogging several weeks of time.  She has a short work week coming up before taking a few days off with Eric to head out of town for some upstate Michigan beauty and wine tasting.

Erica hasn’t crafted much this week, unless you count two rows on the (house cover) afghan for her mom that she’s been working on for almost a year. She and Kevin have been working hard on booking DJs, lining up hotels, and designing wedding invitations for their wedding in November.

Sam’s been crafting away, but a few things she's made are presents, so she can’t share those just yet. She did make a pair of these mittens for Applefest:

Cables and stripes are going to play a large part in most of what she’s making this fall. More pictures to come!

That’s what’s keeping us busy this week!