Enormous Tiny Art Show #17, plus an etsy sale!

The Enormous Tiny Art Show is back! Over the holidays, I took a two week break from house construction and the vortex of chaos+debris we have been enjoying here at Hungry Raven Hill over the past many months. While Matt and his sister drove to Duluth to visit family, I spent my (working) vacation at Mom and Dad's house. Besides stuffing my face and cuddling the cat, I drew these six new works for ETA17. This is a really fun, diverse show with work by over 40 artists. If you can't see it in person, here it is online: Enormous Tiny Art Show. The drawings above are available on my page.

And also, there's a sale in my etsy shop! I'm moving my tiny studio into my teeny house, and there isn't room for all this art. Would you like some? zoetilleyposter.etsy.com

The settling in

I've found it difficult to write here lately, and I think it's because this house is a big hungry gobble-monster, and what it likes to eat best is creative energy. So I just don't have much left over to write with. But I'm going to try.

We finished the drywall, and vacuumed up all the dust. The gobble monster doesn't eat dust, but it does make dust. You see.

That was a happy day, the vacuuming one. An even happier day was when we finished painting, just this past week. I belabored the point of choosing a color, as I am wont to do, but I can make fun of myself now because I picked the perfect one! It is a warm, smoky gray with a little lavender and orchid. Pictures are going to look really good on the walls. Cacti in bloom are going to look really good in the deep window wells. My cat, when I get one, is going to like this color. It's going to run right in the door and curl up in a sun spot because it feels so at home.

We have a loft for sleeping. I am pretty sure it is a bad idea to move into a sleeping loft just when you are becoming an arthritic old person, but oh well. There is also the problem of having to pee, because the ladder in the middle of the night is kind of extra discouraging. But oh well again. I have discovered in recent months that there is a lot a person can get used to, and besides, the loft is very cozy and fort-like.

Our insulation and passive solar are working! We have not yet burned a cord of wood, and if the sun is beaming in the windows, the temperature rises fast and there is no need for a fire. Sometimes there is a need to run outside and stick your head in the snow, but that is an okay problem to have, as problems go.

The tent collapsed under the heavy, wet snow that also knocked out our power for a week in December. We were not in the tent (we'd moved into the house), so it seemed quite funny. Important belongings were salvaged, and the rest will wait til spring.

Matt is spending a lot of time in the utility closet, where he has two tanks, an electric panel and a whole bunch of pipes and wires and conundrums. Sometimes he comes out for snacks.

That's just about everything! We have rounded the corner from feral beasts living in the midst of an itchy debris heap to domesticated children sleeping in a pile of sticks with a clean warm blanket. That feels like a milestone.