the new puppy!

what a photogenic little peanut

Here’s Laika! she’s so cute!!! We couldn’t survive for long without a dog. I didn’t want to rush to replace our lost pups too quickly, but we realized that summer is really the best time to start out with a new dog, and we just fell madly in love with Laika’s cute face on petfinder. Right now we are just fostering Laika, we haven’t formally adopted her yet. She has a really tenacious urinary tract infection that hopefully will be all cured after a few more weeks of antibiotics, and then if all goes well, we will finalize the adoption. She seems just as healthy and happy as any puppy, she’s been a crazy little monster all morning and now she is napping sweetly at my feet. Laika is around six months old, she’s a rescue puppy and she was brought up to Maine from a high-kill shelter in Arkansas. Nobody knows what she is, she was billed as husky and german shepherd but we’re thinking she could also have some australian shepherd, maybe even a little bit of beagle? for sure she is 100% puppy. She’s only been with us for a day and a half, but so far I can tell that she is CRAZY about food, any and all of it, she is smart as a whip and busy busy busy all the time. She seemed to fall in love with us just as quickly as we fell for her! She’s an expert counter browser, she knows her name and usually comes when you call, she’s very very curious, she likes chasing butterflies and chickens and trying to climb into the dishwasher, she doesn’t know how to fetch yet but I’m trying to teach her.

farm life in gorham

while we’re working away on our future house, we’re staying with my parents in gorham for a while… enjoying a spectacularly beautiful maine summer and doing fun country stuff like helping out in the garden and learning about bees… my mom just got her first hive of bees! actually they’re on loan from her friend Joanne, who stops by to check up on them now and then. We got to taste the honeycomb when they opened up the hive, it was SO GOOD.

lettuce row, and garlic scapes

amazing BEES!

wildflowers in the pasture

roses by the front door

blueberries!

chickens

tiny fuzzy chicks

Back in April my mom got her annual spring order of baby chickies! She picked them up at Blue Seal when they were only a day or two old. Their box had a US Mail label on it – so crazy that you can send baby chickens in the mail! They were postmarked from Idaho. In the box were fourteen little Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks, peeping and scratching and peering up at us. For the first few weeks they lived inside the house, in a big cardboard box filled with sawdust, then they moved up to a bigger cardboard box with a roost and a tree branch in it.

three days old

two weeks old – little feathers growing in!

After a few weeks they got to move outside into the big girls’ chicken coop! We’ve had an annual problem with foxes raiding the coop and carrying away our chickens, so each year my parents have to upgrade security on the hen-house. Last year they re-built the whole chicken coop entirely, and it is pretty much a high-security luxury chicken palace. Before they could move in, we had to finish shingling the roof and staple hardware cloth all over the ventilation holes to keep out sneaky rodents. The first day they were happy scratching and running all around the fenced-in yard, they’d never had so much space before and they had to try out their wings, making crazy flapping leaps and jumps all over the place. It’s a little bit sad because at that age they are little tiny birds with big wings and they can almost fly, and you can see them thinking “whoa, this is awesome.” But then as they keep growing, their wing-to-body ratio just gets worse and they will be stuck on the ground like the rest of us. Poor little gals.

about a month old.

Anyway, the first night, it started to get dark and they were all out in their yard and didn’t know how to get themselves back inside the chicken house, and they were all settling down to sleep underneath their house, or in the tall weeds around it. We had to go out and chase them and grab them and put them up inside their house, one by one. Chasing fourteen tiny squealing chickens around through waist-high weeds in the dim twilight is really really hard, it took us nearly an hour to grab each one and put them all to bed. Happily they’ve learned to put themselves to bed now. They all sleep in a big snuggly heap most nights, or sometimes a few sleep on the roost like grown-up birds. They’re still little but they look like small adults now, some have tiny red combs and wattles and they’ve all got grown-up feathers instead of fuzz. Judy says we could expect them to start laying their first eggs in the fall.

the new high-security chicken fortress

a pair of inquisitive young ladies (around two months old)

studio

I have been working like mad on the new house! So much to do, and the summer is flying by already…

studio room: before

We picked a big room upstairs from the kitchen to be my studio. It’s got six beautiful windows and lots of open space. On the negative side, the floor is in bad shape, it’s got damaged old wood planks with a few big gaps where you can see through to the kitchen below, all covered over by vinyl flooring which is peeling and curling and torn away in a few spots, then covered in some places with a second layer of peeling and curling vinyl, it’s hideous. And the walls are covered with seventies-style fake wood paneling which someone partially painted forest green and then gave up and just punched a few holes through the wall instead of finishing the paint job. They even painted over a few random sections of the cruddy brown trim with what looks like black nail polish.

ugh.

I don’t need my studio to be very fancy at all, it’s just a place for making messes anyway, and we’re supposed to be focusing our renovation efforts on the kitchen and bathroom downstairs, so the studio is like the last priority for real renovations. But the ugly splotches of green paint were going to drive me crazy, so I decided to do a quick and dirty paint job just to give the place a little bit fresher look.

first order of business: cover up those crazy patches of green paint. I can’t possibly concentrate on work if I have to look at that crazy paint job all day.

I even primed everything and then painted it all some historic shade of greenish-blue. (I will admit that I have a strong urge to paint EVERYTHING in the whole house greenish-blue or bluish-green or robins-egg blue or dusty aqua or anything along those lines. I am going to have to use a lot of self control to avoid making the whole house look like a swimming pool.) Anyway, I haven’t totally finished painting but it’s looking a lot better already. I was in a rush to get working so I could print up a bunch of t-shirts and new cards for the Renegade Craft Fair, so I had to start filling up the studio and working in it even before the painting was done. I swear I am going to finish the paint job soon!

it’s not all painted yet, but at least one entire wall is done…

silkscreen printing table

silkscreen set up! My first screen made using my new light table!

I found some small shelves for free on craigslist, and got some more cheap sturdy shelves at a big box store (ugh). Shelving is the one thing I can never find used at the salvation army or on craigslist. My parents gave me a beautiful, incredibly heavy, big long work table (I think maybe an old army mess table?) which they’d in their basement for eons. The table-top is too rough to print on directly, so I made a portable printing station with a smooth, flat slab of wood and silkscreening hinges. I covered the wood with a layer of clear acetate so it’ll be easier to keep the surface clean. For drawing at my worktable, I found a super comfy giant office chair by the side of the road in Limington. For drying printed t-shirts, I strung a clothesline across the back of the studio and tied little loops for hanging clothes hangers at regular intervals. For drying printed cards, I found a beautiful folding drying rack by the side of the street in White Rock, what luck! (I have a sharp eye for free stuff, right?) The biggest studio project was the light box which I need for exposing photo-sensitive emulsion to create my silkscreen stencils. It’s just two long fluorescent shop-light fixtures inside of a big box, on legs, with a thick sturdy glass tabletop. I built one a few years ago when I was setting up my first studio in New York, and it took me a few days in the workshop with my dad’s help. But this time I whipped it up in just one day, in my dad’s workshop, with just a little help from Mike to screw in the light fixtures that evening. And it works!

building my new light table (in Richard’s workshop) … and the finished product!

At the moment I’m using the icky, windowless downstairs bathroom as my darkroom though I would like to eventually build a little darkroom in the closet attached to my studio, I just need to do some major clean-up in there, and hang a door. And I’m using the garden hose for all my washing-up needs, but one day soon we will get running water and plumbing in the studio! I found a utility sink in the back yard at limington (perfect!), and my parents have been trying to get us to take this old claw-foot tub that’s been sitting in their back yard in Gorham for thirty or forty years at least. I think the tub and sink will go side-by-side on the back wall of the studio, by the chimney. I can use the sink for cleaning up small stuff like paintbrushes, and the tub will be excellent for washing out big screens. And gorgeous too. I am going to have such a great wash-up station! The studio’s definitely not finished but it is really exciting to have ONE room in the house that is actually functional. I spent a lot of hours in there during the past few weeks, working late into the night. It’s a great space already.

busy designing

I’ve had no time to post anything because I’m so busy working! My online Typography classes at the Academy of Art have just finished and I’m reviewing final portfolios (they all arrived in the mail this week!) and finishing up paperwork, submitting final grades. I’ve got some more freelance work (t-shirt graphics for OshKosh), and the biggest project of all, I’m working on new Morris & Essex products for the upcoming Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, which is just one week away!

I’m developing new t-shirt and greeting card designs, so I’ve been working on new design ideas, selecting a few classic favorites to bring back, researching and ordering t-shirts, and building my new screenprinting studio so I can start working! I built a nice big wooden light table for exposing my screens, I built a new printing station with screen hinges, I found a great big old mess table in my parents’ basement to use for a printing table, bought screens and screen-making materials and emulsion, inks, squeegees, etc. I used to have all of these things in my studio in Brooklyn but when I moved to Argentina I had to sell them all so I’m starting over again from scratch, sigh. Cleaned out the studio space at the new house and started priming and painting the walls, set up shelving to store all my supplies, unpacked boxes of art supplies, set up a drying area to hang wet shirts, got the whole studio set up and I’m printing now! I’m having a bit of trouble with the photographic process, namely my “darkroom” (a windowless bathroom) doesn’t seem to be dark enough and sometimes causes me problems, hopefully I’ll figure out how to make that work a little better this weekend. I’ve printed a few of my designs already and I’ve got a bunch more to go!

And I’ve got new card designs too… two brand-new designs, letterpress printed. So I’ve ordered the paper and custom-mixed ink colors, had type-high metal plates engraved from my designs, and I’ve been driving out to Scarborough to work with my letterpress printer, Mark at Dunstan Press, each day, basically standing by the press with him and making sure each stage of the printing process is going well, colors are correct and registration is perfect, etc. It’s really fun to see it all happen! I’ve ordered envelopes and little clear boxes and sleeves for packaging the finished product. I’m hoping I’ll have time to do some screenprinted card designs too, we’ll see how next week goes. It’s going to be a crazy week.

Back to work! Photos and more details to come, probably not until after the fair is over!

dogs

oh god how do I write this. on sunday may 16th, both of the dogs were killed in an awful freak accident. i don’t think i can write the story here, but it’s unbelievably hard to lose them both at once. they’re gone and we miss them more than any words can say. life is so different now, sadder and quieter and emptier. it’s been a month now and we’re still crying and grieving but we are also starting to think of finding another rescue puppy to take in. maybe sometime this summer. and we’ve still got my parents’ two sweet and lovely dogs to lick our ears and console us. but of course no other pup can ever be quite like cuddly little emmylou or our beautiful wild inga. we miss you an awful lot, girls.

first weekend at Intervale

Mike, Paprika

shipping cargo from Argentina

our stuff arrives in a big truck!

This is most of it. It doesn’t even look like that much stuff!

We had all our stuff shipped to Maine from Buenos Aires, Argentina, by cargo freight ship! It took a long time and caused lots of stress but it was cheap and … miraculously, here’s our stuff! delivered to our doorstep. Arrived on Wednesday, right on time!

A few people have asked us for details about how we shipped all our cargo from Argentina home to the United States, so here’s the nitty gritty, as much of it as I can recall: We used a shipping agent called Pluscargo Argentina. Our contact person there was Agustina Villanueva. I don’t know if I would recommend it… we were looking for the rock-bottom-cheapest price quote, which is why we went with PlusCargo. We explained that we could handle EVERY aspect of the shipping, all the tramites and paperwork and packing and transportation and everything, except for the actual cargo ship. So we asked for a cheap price and bare-bones service and that is what we got! It ended up being really complicated and pretty stressful, my spanish is pretty good so I was able to navigate a confusing maze of bureaucracy and paperwork, though it took a LOT of time and energy. The worst problem was that our shipping agent never really explained to us what we needed to actually do! She was just like “OK, here’s the name of your ship and the departure date, you do the rest” and didn’t always answer phone calls or emails when I asked her to explain more. So I was bouncing around from one agency to another, asking questions and begging everyone to help me out and tell me what to do! This process is normally handled by shipping agents who know the whole process and are friendly with everyone involved and take care of all the paperwork, so it’s very strange for a person like me to show up in the customs office with no contacts and idea what I’m doing. If you decide to go with a bare-bones service like this, it will probably help you a lot to actually know what the steps are:

• you need to pack up all your stuff in boxes and estimate the volume (in cubic meters) of your items, in order to get a price quote from your shipping company. Use sturdy boxes, as they’ll be shipped in cargo containers on high seas. We used lots of bubble wrap and were very careful with fragile items. Wooden crates might be helpful. We did everything in cardboard boxes, some of them (containing clothes) were a bit smashed-up when they arrived but nothing was broken, even glass stuff arrived in one piece.
• you need to keep a detailed list of EVERY single item that is packed in your boxes. You will need to show this to customs.
• be careful with WOOD items such as furniture. Customs requires a certificate to prove they have been fumigated before they can enter the USA.
• be careful with ART of any kind. Whether it’s childrens’ drawings or a cheap magazine photo in a picture frame, anything that looks remotely like art, or anything in a frame, will raise red flags at customs. Argentina is very concerned about fine art being illegally removed from the country. You are supposed to contact some agency (perhaps affiliated with La UBA?) and show them photographs of every piece of art or framed picture you are transporting. They are specialists who certify that it’s NOT a valuable work of art (or if it is, they value it and you have to pay proper duties on it). People have said this is actually not such a difficult process, but we didn’t want to deal with it so we just took all of our “art” (nothing valuable) out of the frames and folded or rolled them or otherwise packed them up in a way that made them not look like valuable art.
• EMBA (Estación Marítima Buenos Aires) is the govt. agency that handles exporting personal effects. Their office is located down by the port, in the general area of Retiro – you probably will want to take a taxi over there, though you can walk from Retiro. Get the address from your shipping agent, I can’t remember it!
• your shipping agency should give you a checklist of tramites, from EMBA, that you must do, and documentation that you must provide. I forget all the stuff on it. You need to have an escribano certify a copy of your passport showing that you are a US citizen, and a copy of your working papers or residency papers or other evidence that you’ve been a legal resident of Argentina for at least one year (I was not a legal resident but my boyfriend DID have a working visa so we shipped everything in his name). You need copies of your list of what’s in your boxes. You need a booking sheet (from your shipping agent) that tells what freight company and what boat your stuff will be traveling on. And I think there were a few more…
• if you have a shipping agent who will handle the tramites for you, you will need to have an Escribano write up a form that gives your shipping agent the power to handle all duties related to exporting your personal effects for you. If you are going to do it all yourself, you don’t need this “poder.” The people in EMBA seem to work with an escribano named Emilio Perasso (Paraná 123 piso 7, 4372-4341) but after visiting his office twice, we finally figured out that we don’t need to work with him at all, since he handles the “poder” which we didn’t need to do. We went to a cheaper neighborhood escribano to have the residency & passport copies certified.
• discuss insurance with your shipping agency. We decided to forego it since we mostly were shipping things with emotional value but little monetary value. But for valuables I’m sure it would be a very good idea.
• your shipping agency should give you the name and address of a cargo-storage “deposito fiscal” down by the port that will receive your boxes and hold them until they are packed on the ship.
• once you’ve assembled all your paperwork, bring it in to EMBA at the port. Make sure you don’t go at lunchtime when everything is closed!! If they approve your paperwork they will send you across the street to a customs office that will take a copy of your packing list and make an appointment for you to have your boxes reviewed by a customs officer (he will come to meet you at the deposito fiscal and do the inspection there).
• talk to the deposito fiscal to find out exact procedures and hours to drop off your stuff. You should drop it around a week or at least a few days before the ship departure date.
• hire a flete (truck and driver) to pick up your boxes and bring you, and the boxes, down to the deposito fiscal. Again, make sure you avoid the lunch hour! We had a hell of a time with this step of the process, it ended up taking AN ENTIRE DAY because we were missing some certification from the customs officer so the deposito fiscal did not want to let us in. Again, they are accustomed to seeing familiar faces of shipping agents who normally handle this process, so they didn’t really know how to handle us and I think part of the delay was just them being like “who are you? what the hell? where’s your shipping agent?” We had to keep the flete waiting, on the clock, for like 6 hours while the whole thing got worked out. Again, you’ll need to present copies of all your paperwork at this stage.
• the customs officer should meet you at the deposito fiscal. You will need to fill out more paperwork and get a security badge to enter the storage facility with him. He and his team will open up about 25% of your carefully-packed boxes and rifle through your stuff to make sure it’s not contraband. He was very nice and they taped everything back up very carefully when they were done.
• Afterwards we got more papers and tracking numbers, confirming the cargo had been delivered to the deposito fiscal.
• then go pay the shipping company and give them copies of the papers from the deposito fiscal. We gave them our address in the USA where we wanted our boxes delivered, and they contracted with a US cargo transporter to have our boxes picked up at the port in New York and delivered by cargo truck to our address in Maine.
• Then … wait! It took about 6 weeks for our cargo to arrive at our doorstep in Maine. The US cargo company handled the customs paperwork on the US entry side, and charged us an additional fee for US customs clearance. The customs clearance took about a week, as our boxes got pulled out for special x-ray inspection and then further personal inspection by hand. The US company did complain that PlusCargo Argentina had not filled out their part of the paperwork correctly!
• The total price was around US$1000 for less than 1 cubic meter of cargo. I think we paid about $850 to PlusCargo and the rest to the company in NJ that handled our US customs clearance. This was only for shipping and handling and stuff, We did NOT have to pay any customs charges to the country of Argentina or to the USA, since we were able to prove that all our goods were just personal effects, nothing for sale.

If you have a little bit more money to spend, I would suggest seeking a slightly more full-service agency because this whole process gave me a lot of grey hairs and I might’ve rather spent my last days in Argentina drinking wine in San Telmo, not sweating in the cargo port. Although for me the hardest part was actually figuring out what we were supposed to do, since nobody would tell us all the steps and how to do them! Hopefully this info would be helpful for somebody else trying to navigate this maze on their own, and perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult if you go into the process armed with this knowledge.

Here is another place we considered because they had a relatively low price quote. No idea if they’re any good or not. http://internicmovingservices.com/eurotransport/us_booking.php

Hope this helps anybody who’s thinking of trying to do the same thing!

Our first visit to the new house

our first visit to our new house! My mom made this beautiful banner out of paper towels and the letters cut out of feed sack. The house was very cold but exciting to see.

here, now

We’ve arrived in Maine at last! Got in to Boston mid-morning (beautiful snow falling all around) and made it to Gorham in the afternoon, after about 23 hours in transit. Feels like a miracle that we made it here. Dogs didn’t enjoy the flight, but are still alive and are now in high spirits. Today we went to SEE the house for the very first time! It was mostly just as I expected it, after seeing photos and videos. But I was really struck by how BIG and cold and messed-up it is. It’s like a maze that just goes on and on. The walls are basically totally uninsulated and it was bitter cold today. And it is a mess! A beautiful, rambling shambles. There is so much stuff left behind by the previous tenants; in the ruins of the upstairs ell apartment, the bathtub is filled with baby clothes, a large old beige computer monitor and a smallish plastic christmas tree. The fridge and freezer are still filled with stinking, eight-month old food. In other rooms their traces are fainter, just cigarette burns and half-painted walls. It’s weird and a bit creepy but oh, it’s ours, and filled with possibilities. The room that might be my studio is huge and has six windows and a beautiful peaked ceiling. The dogs went nuts running in the yard, Inga was careening around, crazed by more open grassy space than she’s ever seen in her life.