She's Just Not That Into You

I'm Into You

Here is the lambie i made from scratch for the Magic Pony Stay Gold show. Lambie took a really long time to make. Hundreds and hundreds of stitches. I started with a felt base using a simple pattern and then pulled the hand-knit slate grey angora over the body. It was such a loose knit, i had to keep layering like papier-mache. Yeah good one. I was working through some things obviously. Lambie is available through Magic Pony at a price that seemed like a typo. As in: Major Deal. You heard it here.
"Did you say my name?" So lambie is inspired by my two priceless Steiffs. One i bought with grant money in 1999 (it's My Art) and the other was a gift from Lisa Prentice a couple of Christmases ago. She *gets* me. Smile. Oh yeah so my two Steiffs..i usually have them on display with a bunny riding them. They are in storage right now so i miss them. I hope to make some more lambs. stay tuned. I'm in a lil over my head right now with work. like way.

more and more

Ok this is a bunny made from a sweater wearing a sweater made from a different sweater.

Ta da!

"Did You Say My Name?"
Bunny in a mohair cloud. Long gone from the Stay Gold show.

I've been ordering packing materials from this company ULINE. They have good sturdy envelopes for sending out giclee prints and other unbendables..and a million other things. Hall And Oates played their staff party. They have incredible customer service and turnaround. I asked for two flat 9X12 mail samples and they sent them out immediately in TWO SEPARATE BOXES with about a mile of kraft paper plus three thick catalogues. I couldn't believe it. They could've sent me the envelopes as is. Just stick a stamp on it. I wrote a complaint letter about the waste. It was farcical. I'm still using the kraft paper for mail-outs. hello! Just one of the millions of reasons why Mother Earth is being sent to hell in a handbasket. C'mon!

i just saw that movie 'He's Just Not That Into You'. Even just typing that out felt like a waste of my time.

Notes:
it's pretty mediocre. big surprise!
it's always weird watching hollywood celebrities playing normal people being normal playacting "our" rules. whatever that means. copies of copies copying. copying something that doesn't feel real in the first place.
sometimes my mouth was agape so i had to sit in the PACKED theatre with my hand over my mouth. just in case.
sometimes i would laugh
i like ginnifer goodwin. she's fun and *into it*. i enjoy her positive bubbly energy on Big Love. Her character was way, way, WAY over-the-top. The whole theatre was cringe central for every 'stupid shitty thing' she did. But YES it is TRUE. She put herself and her heart out over and over and over a billion times more than any HE ever would. (exceptions to this rule of 'he')
jennifer aniston is good. she's the most 'grounded' lisa and i agreed.
kris kristofferson made a ghost appearance as her dad. that was bonus.
drew is just a bad actress. i'm sorry. i actually dont mind Drew. I like Drew. I grew up with Drew. we all did. i find her extreme articulation practiced speech a bit annoying...like how come every character she plays talks like that? Answer: she's not acting.
she just wants to play characters who are her and can wear clothes that she wants to wear.
she executive produced it which explains why she was onscreen for about 5 minutes playing her kooky self
yay drew!
(for a good time, i suggest renting or streaming MAD LOVE (bad/hilarious/drew having a breakdown/great scene with her cutting and pasting thousands of eyes from magazines on the wall/i always thought would be a great installation) or POISON IVY good as in AWESOME. just get it)

oh yeah back to the movie. i dont know.
i think the sad reality is that this demographic (packed theatre. lisa and i were the only 'weirdies' there everyone else was Total Mall) is DESPERATE. Desperate to understand themselves and The Opposite Sex. What is the problem here? come on people!
but i have to say...some of the DATING/RELATIONSHIP b.s. things brought up were relevant to me..so much so that i was doing a mental check list the whole way through: oh yeah. i did that. i did that. i experienced that. i did that YESTERDAY.
dating! waiting to see if The Date is going to order just one more drink. Playing chess. just not that into it.
anyways, it's a very embarrassing title and dont get me started on the book. maybe i'll write more later. i'm still processing. everything. in the meantime here are some pictures!

oh yeah PRODUCT PLACEMENT...like they practically shoved American Spirits up our noses..practically lit the smoke and handed it over to me in the audience (and i occasionally smoke those things..i started when i was dealing with my ex in vancouver last fall. i'm not hooked. ironic). Also: Crest whitening strips..there were a few more randoms..but AMERICAN SPIRITS. I guess the cost of making that movie and paychequing all those heavy hitter Talents was hella expense. hella spendy. need lots of sponsorship. so yeah it's a big commercial as well as being an 'important film' and a 'wake-up call to The World'

oh yeah: scarlett j ("ScarJo") as a yoga instructor/struggling singer. She thinks she's so marilyn monroe. sorry lil lady. think again.

ben affleck was playing a shadow of his former self. it was weird. is he depressed?

he stole the show by finally agreeing to marry jennifer aniston after she dumped his ass because THAT IS WHAT SHE WANTED ('i can't do this anymore') after 7 years of living together and it's what ALL WOMEN WANT even though he doesn't believe in marriage but HE WANTS TO MAKE HER HAPPY BECAUSE HIS HAPPINESS DEPENDS ON IT. Which might explain the depression.

I guess the key word for 2009 is HOPE.

i'm sure more will come to mind.
xo

god is in the radio

ben gave me this plastic jelly bean. it opens up. i love that thing.

i've been making pincushions. white on white on white with *pearl*. my penpal James T. Boyd of Oakland, CA sent me those buttons. He said, 'yeah some canadian artist..i dunno i bought this book of her drawings to cut up'. i'm all: james, that's my friend!. what a lil brat! bought the Drawn and Quarterly book of hers (Milk Teeth) to hack up. He did a nice job. James lives in the Purple House featured in the Punk House (Interiors In Anarchy) coffee table book. Hi James! Paradox! James sends me the BEST mail. Anyways, back to hacking: there was a Taschen Marilyn Monroe book that came out a few years ago. It's MASSIVE. 20"X25" or something. It is beautiful. It comes in a box replicating the old Kodak film box her original shots came in..even grease-marked. The book is printed in silver ink. It was $300 retail at the time. I wanted to buy it so badly but i wanted to buy it to CUT UP. i thought it would be funny to get grant money to cut up expensive books. Not FUNNY, really. cos..that's My Real Art.
i got all these beautiful antique mother of pearl buttons from my old family friend Edwina over Christmas. I collect these buttons. I was on the phone idly pinning them onto the pincushion. see that is how ARt happens. when you aren't even thinking about it. that's the best kind. lesson #1.

the cushions are made out of angora sweater remnants from bunnies. i keep all the scraps.
i'm back on my QOTSA *thing*. bad.
and ben just told me DAMAGES is back on. That show was my favourite show from last year.
that's julie morstad at the top. i love that self-portrait.

i'm dying to try

this is my current lame-ass kitchen sitch. i might as well be living in a trailer or on a boat...see the part between the stove and the sink? that's my COUNTER SPACE. what fool designs this? good thing i'm a lady of systems. the system usually goes: how can i get this done as fast as possible??? i apply this system to errands and chores b/c with my art process takes FOREVER so i have to save time where i can. the picture you can barely see is a girl kissing the white-haired blonde boy from that van sant's Elephant. I'm hopeless.

yeah yeah i gotta get the mexicola pix up!
i have to sort, edit, re-size, upload....write a bunch of dumb witty comments about, y'know, a lone birkenstock on the dance floor...
all on a volunteer-basis.
but in the meantime - here is my PET. Her name is SNOWY. My pet is a POSTER. She is also the picture on my cellular phone so i basically stare at this image all day. There is a photograph of me aged three with this exact expression.

so my FAMILIAR right now is...a long-haired white female cat. this is a real switch up b/c my last familiar was a little short-haired black boy cat FRANCES (dear god let him RIP). see. it all balances out. the yin yang can sit static.

PS this is a toronto sublet..most of that is not my stuff. my stuff is all-white. my stuff is clear. it's see-through. i'm still a gypsy roller who can't commit. lately i've been thinking about portland..thinking: i have so many beloved friends there...people really like me there. then i told C on the phone (or was it B thru Skype?), 'i walk really fast, maybe i should move to new york' and then sarah suggested in a letter i should really consider Los Angeles cos of the constant sun for moods..i love california. i do. i am just not sure where i should live for ultimate thrive-a-thon. hmm. keep ya posted.

till death do us part,
sonj

PS hey J recognize the 'filmy hanging thing' from the lamp? yeah that's the lacey ghost from DAWSON.

50 Years Later

i'm coming back. i promise.

soon.

ok J? ok???

PS i kind of hate sock monkeys but not. my mom has this incredible collection of them..but the ANTIQUE ONES..like Depression-era. they are so, so special. so i love the sock monekys too cos she loves them. i'm more a rabbit teddy bear dollie girl.

BUT

I love this picture of this lil dog. stoled from internet while browing for monkey pictures to do a drawing for my mom's birthday card. phew. glad that worked out. she liked the drawering.

i haven't had Drawing Patience for awhile now. you have to CLEAR the space for drawing and i have no surfaces right now. every surface is full. plus i am slow and so much time goes by between drawing sessions, i have to RE-TEACH myself how to draw every time i sit down. then there is all this anxiety around that like: I suck. I can't draw.

BUT then i remember. drawing as a kid was part of my survival. plus a way to Make Friends. i drew with both hands as a 3 year old.I drew at school. I discovered I could draw crowds from my live drawing. I drew Peanuts characters by rote and the kids made a hushed circle around me while i drew and drew. a boy with beautiful white yellow dutch hair said, 'charles schulz would be jealous'.

Back to the drawing board.

i have to go sew some bunnies now.
ciao!

xo

i'll put up the ridiculous mexico trip pictures shortly!

christmess coming

'all the lonely people/where do they all come from?'

'you talking to me?'

i have to find ways to make christmas okay.
i think because i've worked retail in previous lives - my body goes into instant adrenalin trauma mode because of unexorcized cellular memories.

but it's really okay!

i love many things about it. i like egg nog lattes. umm...alot.
(reduced fat ones..i do try and only smalls and only once in awhile).

coral is my red for christmas. and a single mitten stocking with a bunny hiding inside.
(coral and lavender look nice - an unusual combo. I used to think that red and lavender should be outlawed till i saw it together one day).

plus it is magic. no matter. i think that everyone's heart is far more open in december than any other time of year.
I don't know what that statistic is for world population of who even cares.



i just discovered www.playlist.com last night by accident.

woah yeah. hello! it rules as much as it can rule.
come be my friend and share playlists.

(my playlist is a mess right now and kind of guilty pleasure messy like an embarrassing *obscure* song by HOLE from the 'any given sunday' soundtrack..that oliver stone football movie cameron diaz al pacino, ann-margret, crazy cast (not that i've seen it or plan on it but i wouldn't put it past me) the song is called BE A MAN from 1999. The Video Is Scary. The kind of thing i watch w/ my mouth slightly agape. Sociologically speaking. I'm 100% wtf courtneylove?

"Be A Man" this is a weird coincidence b/c i'm doing alot of writing on men cliches using 'mad men' (DON DRAPER) as reference..plus a song came out of that too on a bike ride home one night in the pouring rain after a pink mountaintops show (steve mostly alone playing). i make up songs while i'm riding my bike around (and promptly forget most of them but if i remember when i get home i sing it into my computer for reference for a secret project i'm working on).

but back to playlist.com

it's better than downloading. there are more songs available...i was able to find more Unwound and other slightly obscure..well.. you know. i'm re-listening to old music i haven't heard in years. it's fun. i love unwound. sometimes it is the sound inside my heart. (especially 'corpse pose').

i have to curate my playlist.

why is everyone GenY all helvetica? playlist.com is all helvetica too. (plus a million dumb ads) do they think we are so removed from cursive now that the serifs will further confuse? too extraneous. i dunno. it sucks b/c i used to like helvetica. now it's just boring.

kids won't even know how to handwrite in the future.

they'll just type a post-it note on the computer.
mind you, i can barely pick up the phone anymore. i'll email someone in the same room as me.

xo

Office Art/WHAT IS THE ARTIST TRYING TO SAY?

possibly most favourite collaboration of all time..well, top 5. What you see here and below is a collage of photographs i took over the last month - lisa smolkin and i did an art room at the Gladstone Hotel. We hung hundreds of lisa's paintings in..4hrs. 4 of us gunning it. me on 2 hrs sleep/jetlag/insomnia. it was great. So lisa brought the salt lamp and i spontaneously threw the pointe shoes in my bag on the way down. Grant Heaps works for the Toronto Ballet and has been saving shoes for me! i have an amazing collection. They are gold to me. So we threw down the salt lamp and the cord was in the way and i'm all: someone's gonna trip on that so i covered the cord w/ the shoes...it's so beautiful. the colour scheme. those lamps are marketed as HEALING..and interestingly..all those shoes/soles/in agony/in a row/ leading up to/ some salt lamp heal-age. Heel.
some of the other pics are from a mini art tour w/ Dark Hand And Lamplight. FUN!
i'm making a poster out of this. Found @ London Museum in their art office. This explains All Art Ever Made And To Be Made(inthefuture). i'm really into offices and i'm into making art in an office and i'm into making art out of office supplies. i'm still into The Office. Much of my art is organized in an elaborate filing system - just like..an office. I used to work in an office when i was a post-teen.

my art

Living Legend

shareballs taking the lead. she did 5 times more work than we did.

My precious laptop. so full i fear 'SONNY' may blow up. this was taken on the canzine day. i laughed hysterically at the d-listed 'these belong in hell' expose on the CROC snowboot 'ugg' wannabees. wtf? it's hard to see. that foto is too po-po-mo (post-post modern) I could not stop laughing.

some of my favourite pieces were text-based: "Fuck the Government" and "I Am Not A Christian". alright lisa!

Robert Dayton in one of his kitten sweaters. he has a collection of cat sweaters.

i'm doing an online market right now through Poppytalkhandmade. Go have a look see! It is a virtual online streetmarket. who'd a thunkit in 97?

ETSY CUSTOMER OF THE WEEK!

ETSY CUSTOMER OF THE WEEK!

first things first, my etsy store:
www.makeitawesome.etsy.com

Ayumi! She resides in Tokyo with her new black bunny. Here is a photograph she took of BB in his new crocheted swing! and with her cat!
Ayumi says:
I am a housewife who loves my family(my husband and my cats), music(a big John Mayer fan) and anything sweet&natural&handmade.

(john oscar mayer weiner)

Obvs Ayumi is perfect.
She special ordered a custom bunny today - a white furry one that is more childlike. She's so amazing she went through my etsy store and noted the different grades of angora. she was able to detect the angora content! WOAH. Why don't i just move to japan? this is stupid. Details-oriented. highest of quality. cares. all day. all night.

plus she signs all of her emails: Your friend, Ayumi.

She also took note of the eyelet skirts i designed...she noted TUCKS :
(see first photo. why can't i stick the photo in here? does anyone know?)

I am sorry....seems I made a mistake! The apron I mentioned was the lacey 'skirt' as the mummy bunny is wearing. The lace braid is very pretty and the skirt is sophisticated with its tucks not gathers.

I just noticed that the mummy bunny was also made of white angora as well but looks somewhat different from the touque bunny's angora. Have you a lot of angora sweaters? The touque bunny's angora might go well with the child bunny. So if you still have that kind of fluffy angora in stock, I hope you will make the child with it. Thank you!

Well, it is very windy now but very sunny, lazy golden afternoon......

AND she noted how much WORK it looked like i had done for the etsy store..as in: made all the bunnies, photographed all the bunnies, edited the photos in photoshop, uploaded all the pics...etc.

i need to be in japan.
i want an onsen tour (public hot springs/baths), constant karaoke, kyoto, my friends who live there, my favourite store, sushi trains, ice cream lamps/lit up cones, temples, gardens, zen gardens. you name it. all.

etc.

i need to do more work on my blog. i realize that. i need to make time for this. i am very busy like an octopus lady. anyways, if you want to be linked or have any Blog Betterment suggestions can you please email me?
Also I am looking for people who would like to buy my bunnies. People who appreciate Steiffs and other handmade special doll and toy items.
Maybe they are in Germany? Maybe in England. Not sure yet. Maybe because I'm German/British and Japanese.

sonja.ahlers@gmail.com

thank you!

xo
Post script: i am completely into The Office. As in: the American One. wtf? i vowed. i said. i said. no way man. i'm a purist. it's UK or nothing! not this watered-down biznazz. i guess i got swayed for a few reasons:

1. my friend lisa smolkin made me take a pact to watch it six months ago. i did nothing.
2. listening to cbc last week they kept going on about a special episode where Michael Scott (steve carell who i used to strongly dislike. i was wrong. he is *TALENT*) takes a business trip to WINNIPEG.
3. I finished Mad Men and i need to be 'watching' things while i sew those bunnies you see above.

This show is hilarious.
PLUS i see that gervais/merchant are involved in the project,so it's all good.

speshul thanks to sydney vermont for introducing me to SURF THE CHANNEL DOT COM

i'm also into late 90s 'horror' movies...i just watched Scream and watched the poor man's Scream: i know what you did last summer (really bad. opening scene w/ a late 90s mall 'intense' cover of SUMMER BREEZE by seals and croft) the whole neve campbell..i guess cos of party of five..i was watching that for a moment. the show that 'defined a generation'. is this the show that kicked My So-Called Life off the air????
what???