So, I happen to look cute in most hats so I own a lot of styles of them, but I can never wear a cowboy/Aussie/gaucho hat without feeling like a walking cliche of some sort of community theatre group in a play set in in the west or Texas... They don't look BAD on me, they just make me feel imposter syndrome cliche and I slip into an Appalachian accent pretty constantly while wearing this style hat even if I haven't visited in a while haven't been hearing it.... Pretty sure everyone who wears cowboy/gaucho/Aussie style hats does so by making a conscious decision to cosplay as a community theatre cowboy, lol. Like you just put it on and accept that it's the mask identity you chose for the day and hide your real self within the role the hat forces one you. I still wore one yesterday for most of the day to protect my part from getting sunburned AND because I like that one and it was super cute with the calico dress. 

 

 

I did take the hat off before the outdoor show at Surly brewing Festival grounds though because at that time the weather was prediction like a half inch to inch of rain per hour right at the end of the show and that sort of rain would destroy that hat... And then it got hot and sunny and I ended up pinning up the pigtail braid into a crown instead. So during the Nickel Creek show, I had the Princess Leia crowned braids vibe, not the community theatre production of Shucked or some sort of western/Texan play, lol. I could have kept the hat and the book in my purse because the rain actually never materialized though until after the show ended and we were able to get on the road back towards Madison. (Some really heavy downpour bad storms though along the way, from like River Falls til Tomah or so.)

 Also... Good news bad news:

Good news: This year I didn't get sunburned at all until Bastille Day, well over halfway through the year.

Bad News: I got sooooo badly sunburns this weekend... Ouch.

My aloe gel is all at home, but I definitely was excited for tonight's thunderstorms so I could go outside and stand in the rain to pull out the heat and soothe my skin (and make my skin/hair super super soft!!! Rain water makes my skin and hair so velvety!) There was also a HUGE lovely bright double rainbow in the most golden hour luminously glowing honey colored air at the end of the rain!!!

But yeah, just a little bit sunburned today... This is before the rain, when I first got home from Art fair and it was starting to develop:

And this is how bright red it was later tonight after dancing in the rain to cool the burn and help the skin to heal AND a bit of a nap to help facillitate healing (and because I was exhausted, didn't sleep too much the last two nights) and the rain had brought the curls out so the bobby pins started springing out and I took down the ballerina bun:

 

Definitely very sunburned, definitely NOT going to like anything that isn't gently along my chest/upper back and arms...  

Also though, how adorable are those earring and the chyrsocalla/Peruvian blue opal (I don't know which, I'm going to dm the artist on insta to ask her which it is, but not tonight because she had to pack up her booth all by herself tonight)  necklace?! They are both from art fair today, the earrings are from a Mayan artist now based in Chi and the necklace from a Peruvian artist now in St. Louis. And both of them are delightful delightful humans! Also, I held both up fell in love with them and my maman was getting herself some jewelry at both of them and loved them for me offered to buying them both for me as just because gifts.

The earrings are the first thing that called to me as for ME to own (as opposed to things I loved but not for me) and thus the first purchase for me of the day. After I picked out decided to hold up this pair of earrings, which are unlike any other shapes/colors I own and there were others I LIKED but had similar ones, when I decided I did want this pair and wanted to wear them out, the female of the two owners who was standing by the entrance working on making more macrame earrings (they use a silk thread, and she had offered if there was any color or style we particularly loved but would want to pair another color/style she could make it before end of day) and talking theatre with us and a random other art fair patron who had just bought a pair of earrings heard us discussing our most recent APT and wanted to know how it was because the other lady is seeing August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom this coming week and then we discovered in talking we were at the SAME performance of Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool. Anyway, after I picked out these sunny July feeling really uniquely shaped earrings (they make me think of Incan and Mayan sun imagery, my mum says they remind her of seahorses) the woman owner smiled shyly and tucked her hair back with a grin to show us that she was actually wearing the identical style/color combination earrings. She then showed me the other colors but agreed with my choice for the bright red sunshiney summer combination. She also was admiring my larimar copper wrapped necklace (which I love and have been wearing a lot lately) assumed I had made it and I had to tell her no but then I mentioned that recently I've been thinking about learning to wire wrap because every time I pick up stones and crystals I can just feel/and see how the stone would like to be wrapped to be worn. She lit up with that and waxed enthusiastic about how it was easy and I should do it if the stones were speaking to me and her husband (running the register) also laughed and quietly said, "Careful, you never know where jewelry making will take you once you start on it -- next thing you know, we may run into you as our neighbor vendor artist at a show."  And then I spent the rest of the show getting complimented on the earrings and helping send business (including other vendors) over to them as we walked the art fair, lol.

The necklace was actually the last purchase made, my mum had really loved her anklets and was regretting not having bought one so we went back to find her and the cheaper simple/small macrame Peruvian stone necklaces she put out later after we had stopped by. (She remembered me from the earrings and my other necklace pendants, especially since she loves opal) and then it was end of day and I was admiring the necklaces and this one called and to me immediately I told it that it was beautiful and she smiled said, "If any of those call to you, I will sell it to you for $10 off." And then when I said how they were all lovely but that this was the one called ot me I wanted, she put it on me to see it in the mirro and just started grinning over my shoulder and my mum was just like, "O! The stone was beautiful, but when she put it on you, it just started singing got more beautiful." And then my mum said she'd cover the other $40 buy me the necklace along with her anklet to only have to run one credit card fee for the artist. Also, before I even fell in love with this pendant and was just admiring them and she mentioned she had put them out later after our visit to have a cheaper/smaller option,  Kathy Fields was super adorable and she was like, "Please find me on instagram!

I also picked up some wood bookmarks from a Willows Woodworking -- I actually have quite a few wood bookmarks, but these were from scrap remainders of exotic unusual woods that she makes them and they were only $5 each. She doesn't stain or paint any of her woods, just curates them for the grains/colors, dry cures them for at least a year, and then seals them with Osmo clear wood oil. Also, I have a major thing for pretty woodgrains, always have always will. I had the hardest time not also picking up a sparled maple and a bubinga and black poplar bookmark as well and I'm still a little sad about that hard choice to not get those, lol. We definitely reached the point that I turned my back on the remaining bookmark display (that looked like samples of the woods she uses in her geometric designs) and both my mum and Crissy were like, "Dani, they're $5. The time you're debating trying to cull down from five is worth more than the extra $5." The Patagonian rosewood was the first to call to me, then the holly, then the Bocote (which makes me think of a tiger) then the redheart (which has the most amazingly dense colors in the very straight grain pattern1) and then the osage orange for the color of it! The holly, like the lacewood she also had which I didn't pick up but Crissy bought one of the lacewood bookmarks, has some incredibly interesting shimmer in the flecks through the wood....

I also picked up a couple little bookmarks from Dragonmar because she had some new originals I loved but I also couldn't drop $200 on an original and while she had many prints I loved (her prints are $10 or $20 depending on the size) there were none that were my style other than ones I already have. Well, she DID have a print of Boop! which is a new one of a polar bear with a butterfly on its nose, but the print turned out redder, especially the eyes, than the pretty brown of the original.  So I figured I will pick it up in the future perhaps as a print on a run that the eye color is browner not so reddish. I actually have the angel crows bookmark as a print, but I liked the owl bead with the print.

I also picked up prints from Pete Sandker (who I own a LOT of his surrealist symbolist nature art works, mostly the foxes and crows but also some other) and a mountain landscape from Charlotte Fung Miller and her daughter (there were some new originals, the Mount Fuji series and the colorful cranes which I LOVED, but couldn't afford and I didn't think would work for the colors of my current living space) but the mountain landscapes will look nice in the colors and other art and calming blues/greens I have in my bedroom.  Interestingly, the two have a very similar color palette -- I was

See what I mean about the colors playing nicely together? This Pete Sandker piece may actually be hung in my bedroom along with the polar bears, cranes, landscapes, and calligraphy I have in my bedroom. It was also adorable (and a huge compliment) while we were talking to Charlotte and her daughter and I was saying how it was the bright colors, the reds and golds calling to my aesthetic today but that I didn't know where the color schemed of them would fit in my home. And Charlotte goes, "Really? I feel like you're always called to the reds and golds bright colors." And then I mentioned that I do have some matched red/gold rice paper and flecks Chinese calligraphy form her (chi and love) and her daughter quietly said, "It's because she wears them a lot, like today. And she has such a bright chi to her." And Charlotte just nodded, "Yes, the red and gold in your chi are always bright when we see you. You're like a dragon visitor, always a caffeine pick me up from your red-gold energy when you stop by and how the brightness lingers, even late on long hot days." And it's just such a pretty compliment to have your soul light chi complimented -- and for someone who does traditional Chinese brushwork paintings and symbolism to tell you that you have a red gold energy is such a beautiful auspicious thing to say! (In Chinese culture, Red = luck joy, happiness, prosperity and Gold = good luck power, longevity, happiness)

Also. Unrelated to me being cute or art fair stories/art purchases. But astro poets... not only are Libra and Pisces once more in dialogue and the only ones in dialogue this week and the only ones on this same theme instead of poetic imagery, BUT the messages got even stronger promises about the love there for this coming week, lol. 

"Week of 7/14 in Libra: In the peaceful sense of it. All you feel is love. What reflects upon the water sees the sky as immense as it is. Somewhere there is the sense of everything. Pure love is what you feel."

"Week of 7/14 in Pisces: There is a hard sense to the word. But then it lights up in the very essence of everything. You know this to be real. You do what you can. And then you do it over again with love."

Aren't those lovely? Especially given all the dialoguing building love story between the Libra and Pisces horoscopes from them? It's such a beautiful unfolding story between these two signs dialoguing in the astro poets weekly horoscope emails. And just these two signs. Week after week after week.....It's so far beyond serendipity into the realm of synchronicity at this point. And it's so beautiful!

Ooft. Dayumn... My sunburned skin has gotten to the point of sun poisoning of "radiating intense heat, especially under my hair or if I put a sweater on, but I have goosebumps and chills without more on me"  This is within the realm of sunburns that, even when you take a shower as cold as possible, after it touches the sunburn it's scalding hot by the time the skin heated water rolls down onto the unburned portions of your skin. Fair skin redhead gene problems man... Lobster burns happen fast with me, even with reapplying sunscreen....  The sun feels good on me to bask in it, but at exactly 7.5 minutes of sun exposure and it goes from pleasant to feeling like microderm needles puncturing my skin and the sunburning starts...