mason knits!

ok, he doesn't really, but he DOES make a good lap warmer while I'M knitting.

and a mural is DONE...

two days! 14 hours! completion!
isn't it just so sweet?! (am i allowed to say that about my own work?)
i'm quite pleased with the final mural. particularly the crew alligators, the birdies on the wire and the sweet birds listening to the stories being shared from the family photo album.
i tried to include a lot of details for little Nate to explore as he grows up (that was always the kind of art i liked most... still do! the kind that keeps pulling you back in).

i like the color a lot too.

i tried a few new things with this mural and i think they worked out well. i usually measure and calculate and hand render everything from the sketch (which is always very polished) to the wall... but i invested in an overhead projector, which aside from just being fun to have (if not bulky and oversized) is very helpful to muraling! one thing i noticed is how much freer it made me, in terms of "painterly" painting--- not having to stay within pre-drawn lines (but rather using the projected image as a guide which i could turn on and off at will) and then being able to determine when to outline, if ever--- i think there's more depth in this piece because of it.



SO, you might think that i, having spent two days bent awkwardly, straining and stretching and crouching would be done with murals for a little while... well, no. i'm actually starting a new one at the walters art museum this coming monday. i wont tell you what of, but i will keep you posted. or maybe i wont and you'll have to bring your kids to the Family Art Center to find out. yes. i like that. that's what i'll do. xoxo, danamarie

weekly dose of cute

little man! are you kidding me, mason? you can not be that cute. it's too much. no one can take it.


i implore you... please take your cuteness down a notch or 4.

so, baby mason will be 3 months old on Saturday. he's going to the vet tonight for his next set of shots and i'm gonna guess that he's... 5 lbs now (he was 4.1 last time). he's gotten longer, but not taller. and yes, since you were clearly going to comment on it, yes, he is continuing to get cuter.
he's developed this very serious expression that i am currently finding very funny. i mean, you're pocket sized. why so serious?

and a mural is born...

it was off to the city of brotherly love this week for a little mural-ly love. these are some of my favorite things; opportunities to take a plain white wall and make it into something bright & (hopefully) inspiring. this particular piece? for a not- yet- born little man named Nate.

the wall is about 10 x 7 ft and the theme of the mural is family: here & there.... geography of the heart and the people and places that are important to family, no matter where they are. the focal point of the mural is a "family portrait" of the current "children" (3 cats and a dog named Annie, who befriended me and checked in on my progress throughout the day).

8 hours later, i have all (most of) the basic color blocks in place and am ready for day two: detail!

crabbe: my "swap" knitimal for theneedle.org

my new friends over at the needle organized a plush swap. i don't know who my plushie will come from but i know where mine is going. i can't spoil the surprise, so i'll just say he's heading west young man. we were supposed to base our doll on our location, so Crabbe is (naturally) based on the Maryland Blue Crab! i hope he'll be well loved in his new home. *also, on the "i thought this was the greenstarstudio blog, not the DOG blog" front, i just want to point out that i made this little guy whilst crate training. yes. go me. mason assures me he WILL let me get back to work soon.* xo, danamarie

shiloh's birthday & mason's first trip to the dog park

yesterday would've been shiloh's 11th birthday. in the week before we lost her, i'd decided i wanted to take her to the dog park ( a place she should NOT have gone to, as she hated dogs and dogs were sure to be there; but a place i thought, what the heck, bark yourself silly). well, fate didn't have it that way, so instead we decided to wait and take Mason there on Shiloh's birthday (and she tagged along, of course). he's still really little and not fully vaccinated yet, so he spent most of the short time we were there in our arms (ps... it was 30 yesterday and no joke, 70 degrees the day before). after a brief memorial service and a woman asking he we restrain ourselves from biting him (the answer, as any of you who know me would guess, is, i don't), we packed up the kids and headed home. it was short and sweet. we were pretty sure shiloh would've wanted it that way... but with more chicken mcnuggets. xo, danamarie

mason face

so, bringing you up to speed on mason's training... he's still not cool with being left alone. poor little guy. its simultaneously annoying and adorable at once. his lung capacity is better than mine (can i get a "what-what" from all the asthmatic dogs out there?!). what is the limit to how long you can bark before you tire yourself out? i can tell you what its NOT... 8 hours. it is not 8 hours. i also have a question to both the makers of the Kong toys and those of you out there who have them and whose dogs love them... how do you make that happen? mason "likes" his, but only in the light of day with all of his sides, top and bottom free to roam... in the crate? well, in the crate the only thing of value is getting OUT! still, i'm holding my resolve and repeating my mantra: "i dont see you. when you bark, you are invisible. when you are quiet, i magically appear. for now, however, you are invisible and i don't see you". during playtime, we are LOVING the way he runs--- it's this fabulous sideways run run run skip thing. his front half is wider than his back half and his legs are so sweetly bowed, even sitting is adorable. oh! and when he runs... his ears! yesterday we were afraid he'd be swept away by the wind like a little paper glider. he pees really cute (i'll spare you the pictures of that). he has this terrible habit of trying to jump on the couch and bumping his noggin on the coffee table (we ARE working on stopping that). he periodically rounds up all his toys and stuffs them in his crate. that's pretty awesome. and of course, when he's curled up asleep... it doesnt get better. in the moments when he ISN'T barking (or sleeping), i try to catch and appreciate the amazing little cutenesses of his being. and thus, i present: "studies in cuteness":


a puppy licking your nose-holes. (ok, cute & gross). he does this a lot. A LOT.



a puppy chewing on a similarly sized doll's nose



a puppy's "magic hairs" (as they are known in our household)... look at them! so long!


a puppy's sweet tiny little face

*addendum, added at 2:30am: must remember how cute he is. must remember....

sleep is cute

isn't this cute?! i mean... a sleeping puppy? so good, right? yes. yes a sleeping puppy is very very cute. except when it only does it during the day, on your lap, and when you're trying to do anything else.

Our first night with mason was... er... rough? (or should i say "RUFF, RUFF, RUFF, RUFFFFFF!"). I'm not a squeamish person; I've had puppies before. They cry. I know this. I babysit. I've cared for infant. They cry. I know this. Puppies are essentially infants--- look, i get it and i can handle it; i'm strong and tough. Our first day with Mason we took him to Petsmart to pick out some toys and training treats and other things to make his crate training experience more pleasant for all involved. Unfortunately there are apparently no treats known to man who can make this an easy road. Anyone out there ever crate train a dog? Anyone ever crate train a DACHSHUND? Let me tell you something... when you read breed descriptions and an animal is described as "stubborn, head strong, willful..." these are not just words that people are saying to fill a dog description quota. Oh my GOODNESS is this little man forceful. After the first night (where he cried off an on for 6 hours until at 5:30am i decided it was officially the next day and would just get up--- did i mention i've got the french press pot filled with coffee at all hours?), he got better at night sleeping. In fact, if we stayed up until 12:30 or so (which we do, to watch law & order: criminal intent in syndication) we can get him to sleep, in the bedroom, in his crate, after just a minute or two of crying. From the beginning, he's slept pretty much straight through the night (a couple of "my bladder's gonna burst" squealing moments, but otherwise nothing). The problem (and likely of my own inadvertent doing) is that this little man is convinced that his world will implode if he can't see me. Heck, even if he CAN see me, but I'm 2 feet away from him. I can't even sit at my desk (um, hence no art making) or sew on the couch (hence no new Knitimals) without him freaking out to get in my lap. I swear i didn't spoil him! i did, however, spend the entire first week of his life in our home, alone with him. I'd crate him during the day and listen to him scream his little head off for hours; if i stepped near the doorway to the bedroom he's quiet long enough to qualify to be let out, and then... well, he wouldn't go back in. Of course EVERYONE who writes about this online talks about how well behaved their dog is during the day and how impossible they are at night. Not here! I guess i should just be thankful that he's not keeping everyone up at night ( i mean, screaming during the day isn't cool, but at least the building is basically empty). We are currently employing a technique called "Nothing in life is Free" or NILIF; basically you make your dog work for affection and attention (not like hard labor, just good behavior or responding to a command); and the most popular part of our day is the "i'm ignoring you" time, where we try to get mason to remember/ realize how much fun his chicken stuffed bone is... with OUT us. he'll love all over his toys and bones, even in his crate, while we're in the room... as soon as the door is shut its like his toys are invisible and his goal in life is getting the heck out of that crate. luckily (or not... i haven't fully formulated a thought here) i work from home almost every day of the week and AJ works just around the corner, so he'll be able to take Mason out for potty breaks, but the little guy needs to learn to be alone at some point right? as i write this, Mason is in his crate in my friend's basement, while her daughter naps quietly 2 floors up. I remember when she was a baby and cried and cried and cried if i put her down or god forbid, tried to go to the bathroom alone. Now she pushes me out of her room to make me "surprise soup" and sleeps without a pacifier in her own bed.

I've scoured the internet looking for advice; read training books and even harassed animal behaviorists i know and all seem to say the same: this is what puppies do. let them do it. eventually, they will stop.

thank goodness they're so cute when they sleep, right?
xoxo, danamarie

and then there's mason

it's the end of an era (granted, it was a very short era); an era of doglessness, silence in the apartment, an era wherein the only smells were ones of our creation, the only toys mine. yes... we have a puppy. his name is mason and he comes from pennsylvania. he was the first of 5 puppies born on december 1, 2007; and now he's ours. we named him mason as an homage to shiloh (what? that doesn't make sense to you?)... ok, we used to call her mason because sometimes when she slept her face scrunched up a little and her one eye looked like it was rolling around in the socket. it wasn't a pleasant face, per se, but it made her look a heck of a lot like mason verger from "hannibal", which i LOVE (but not nearly as much as a love Silence of the Lambs and really, let's not pretend that they are on the same tier, because they aren't), nevertheless, Hannibal has some great moments (pigs trained to eat people? yes). now, our mason is much cuter than the character gary oldman played... who by the way, carved his face off, at hannibals behest and fed it to his dogs (did i mention i make children's art?) and is a miniature longhaired dachshund. he's 4.1 pounds and he shouldn't get to be more than 11 pounds, so he needs a strong name. the other part of the story is this: shiloh wanted us to get a mini doxie. she told us. about a year ago, my mom sent me a link to a picture of a particularly amazing mini doxie for sale. i printed it. his name was binky. i showed the picture of binky to shiloh and asked her if we could have him . she gave me her paw (that meant yes) and i asked, can we have him now? (no paw, no). so the questioning went on for a few days and she kept telling us we COULD have him, but not yet. eventually, i posted his picture above her food bowl with a note that she should let us know when we COULD have him. occasionally we'd get impatient and ask her again and finally, in late november, she said we could get him... tomorrow? (no), in a week? (no), in a month? (no), in a few months? (yes). YES?! oh we were so excited! of course we knew we couldn't really bring a new dog into the house... she'd never go for it.

Cut to a few months later; our house is empty (except for a now very confused cat), and there's little Mason, available and waiting in PA. Our ride back to Baltimore was rather uneventful (except for the fact that AJ or i would occasionally say "we have a puppy!?"). Mason slept on my lap, chewed bears face (bear was one of Shiloh's toys), looked out the window, slept, chewed, slept.

Our next project is crate training and housetraining. He's really good on his pee pads, but it would be nice to have a dog who pees outdoors... or in a litter box, that's my other project. So, for now, expect more puppy pictures than ART pictures for a while. I have a feeling we'll have our hands full with this little guy! xo, danamarie

valentine knitimals stuffed with LOVE!

ahhh love....
HAPPY (almost) VALENTINE'S DAY!
for those of you looking for a SPECIAL gift this year...
give WOOL! wool's better than diamonds (cheaper), chocolate (no calories), a card (softer).

meet: abdul "the snuggler" worm, huggs, keeses, luv, sweetz & x.o. exoh
what better way to say "you're the only one for me" than
with a truly one-of-a-kind piece of huggable art!?

these 6 brand new Knitimals are looking for warm, loving homes
for Valentines day. shipped to arrive just in time for hearts day, each one of
these lovely little guys will be shipped with candy, festive
tissue paper & a handmade valentine (just let us know
who we're sending it to!) at no extra cost! wow!

Available now, on ETSY! go to my etsy store to adopt one today:
adopt some love!
*transactions must be completed by 12am Sunday, Feb. 10th to ship & be
received by Valentine's Day

**the photos are a little blurry (sorry); i'm going to re-photograph them and update the images soon. if you are interested in one of them and would like a different image, just let me know!