Fiddle me off to sleep oh eyes of Johnny Doe You make these fun house mirrors straight You make this fun house feel like home. Alice the right size Not squished, not too tall You like Pale girls With moonstone eyes Blood jumping at the sight Of the spelling bee queen- Thank you for breathing me in like rare earth Thank you for breathing me in like the rain Thank you for leaning into the embrace For remembering the beginning the time, & the place The mugwort tea moonrise The spell that I cast The spell that worked too well,... Continue reading

Floor-length tresses Make tremendous nests for the biggest birds in the whole wide world. The rooks have nothing on us now We carry the sun through the Spanish sky We squeeze siblings through chimneys tornadoes through windmills & the fattest of camels through the needle's thin eye. The tears roll off her cheeks- she's more newsboy than nymph The fat silver scissors Coil the snakes at her feet hissing pritt-teee hissing spesssshul She trembles, then leaps: Surprise, you are free The path to the ocean becomes obvious, she is running there, lungs wide one thousand miles an hour Every electron... Continue reading

Gospel morning All's calm The winning egg grows glorious on her throne While the ladies in waiting overthink and overdrink The world made of men And so many of them uncourageous It can make a woman feel God didn't put her parts right together But the Queen is calm Sailing smoothly The figurehead razoring through the brine Girls on deck Winding and unwinding rope Swabbing and scrubbing Think about your problems later, calls the Queen Sit down and have a good, proper think: but later. Right now the salt air fills our lungs and there is no earth beneath our... Continue reading

Mouch, aka Mouchie, Mouchander, Mang, Mandables, Moops, Pistachio Panther 2005-2015 Let's start at the very beginning The only good place to start: Man gets your mercy and God gets your mystery But the bones of that cat got your heart. How soft was his muzzle How sincere his kiss His whiskers a wing brush Remember now this: The thrill of your Dailies The rush of routine The fire in the eyes of pistachio green When you sit on that rock When you sit, and don't talk He is there, though he cannot be seen And while regular vision Lacks a... Continue reading

How the stone became smooth In between sea and cloud How the sky became earth How silence became sound photo: Yuba River, March 2016, after the first real rain in years Continue reading

The Sentry The full moon is so famous As a feast for werewolves Maniacs, plate-throwers Streakers in fountains Drunks falling off of stools Their drool tiny creeks Swelling into streams of swear words, rivers of impulsive tears Latticing the delta of the temporarily insane But when the moon no longer rises Smack-dab on the button at sunset When there is nothing for the headlines When small talk has forgotten it That's when my molecules begin to buzz with the old electric blue ache As she debuts later, a little later each night The maniacs lay splayed out, gravity-drunk after their... Continue reading

It's been a long while since I blogged... a year and a half, to be precise. I kept paying for my blog service, even when it was hard to do so, unwilling to let the idea of blogging die, but, frankly, my words would not come. I even forgot the password to my blog account. There are a lot of reasons for this. When I entered blogging, it was the era when a blog connected with a business supported the idea of a "lifestyle", and it was not considered savvy to show any weakness. Weakness was what I was feeling,... Continue reading

It was an aimless, meandering roadtrip through the backroads of Yuba and Butte Counties.The day was Sunday, and the girl was Summer... Sunday drivers, unite. Continue reading

Last week, on the most perfect May day ever created, me and my friends dressed to the nines and headed out to a gorgeous meadow with our friends Bluebird and Dylan from the band Lasher Keen, to shoot their new music video. Without giving anything away, I will say that there were nymphs, satyrs, chasing, dancing, and magic... here are some behind-the-scenes shots to wet your appetite! Big meadow, and big oak Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair... Creature feature our hostess, Bluebird, getting punchy me and Summer, making eyes at the camera again scene from a... Continue reading

I know it's shocking, but I don't actually have a smart phone... which is fine with me, most of the time, except that this means that I also don't have a small camera that's handy at all times. Lately, however, I started constantly carrying a little camera in my bag, and as a result, I have been taking soooo many more spontaneous photos. Here are some scenes from the past few weeks: me and our kitten, Lily Belle my friend Kirsten from Arabesque Aromas making a new friend wild life/ still life band members making wishes Rainy Day Chia at... Continue reading

What better way to bring in the May than with beautiful friends, music, and food? The sacred ritual of women- getting dressed A Victorian ghost floats down the stairs Leonna Sapphire prepares beautiful food in the kitchen A Hungarian skirt, and roses for head wreaths Girls grab instruments and walk to the May Pole site, preparing to call the men forth with the pole The pole is placed firmly in the ground, and the dance that weaves the ribbons begins: Contests to choose the May Queen and May King- the ladies jump over a broom, while the men, with backs... Continue reading

You might have noticed the Mount Whateverest tshirts flitting through my Etsy shop lately. I am having so much fun exploring the world of iron ons..... transforming cool shirts into Band Shirts with a nip, a tuck, and applied heat. I am starting my third month at the studio, and I've really settled in... it's my home away from home. It's soooo nice to be able to spread everything out and leave it there, if need be. Space truly allows opportunites for creation. I am so grateful! Continue reading

My mom came up for an Easter visit, and of course I had to take her to see the tulip display at the Crystal Hermatige Gardens in North San Juan: There are 13,000 Dutch tulips in this garden, artfully arranged to make the eyes happy and the heart sing. We brought Kirsten from Arabesque Aromas with us, because her middle name is Tulip... and because she smells really good. I literally get chills looking at this part of the garden. This year, the white Dogwood and purple irises were in bloom at the same time as the tulips, which usually... Continue reading

My band, Mount Whateverest, has been hard at work to bring you some rather psychedelic new material- we just released a new EP for "Flaming Eye" on our Bandcamp, downloadable for free, and a new music video made by our own Steve Melendez. Huge thanks to my friend Jessica Henry at Brightest Star on Etsy, who was the source of the amazing gold dress that I'm wearing in the video. I hope you enjoy! EP artwork by Chris Streng Continue reading

Springtime is my favorite season to get dressed- it's not too cold,and not too warm, and that means you can go sleeveless or with sleeves, long or short, any fabric, any shoes, and it's still okay to wear any hat, even a wool or faux fur one-- it's the greatest number of wardrobe choice of the entire year. It also is the season when you can stop thinking about the layers of tights and undershirts and overshirts and jackets and just wake up in the morning and throw on a dress. This is a new favorite, with a Balinese batik... Continue reading

It's Springtime and all the windows in the studio have been flung open, and there are so many projects bubbling! It feels like a lot of the work of the past few months has been laying the foundations, in the physical and conceptual planes, for what is unfolding now. Chia, celebrating the beautiful 60s maxidress (gifted from Shawna- thank you!) that decorates our central communal work space for Cosmic Dancers- upcycled silver moccasins (size 10) Drawstring dresses with appliques handmade from 1960s psychedelic fabric My studio fundraiser last week went off like gangbusters- I actually exceeded my goal! I became... Continue reading

I did manage to make a solo album this winter, but I had no plans on playing live until my friend Sara Zahn asked me to be on a bill with the amazing Future Twin from San Francisco. I thought they were so cool that I said yes before my logic could intervene (aka "you're a busy girl!" "you have enough going on!"). I definitely experience some stress leading up to the show, because since I don't usually play under the Sasha Sylvanaut moniker, I didn't initially know exactly what I was going to do. I considered trying to recreate... Continue reading

We do like to have a good time on St. Patty's Day, aka Irish Appreciation Day: A drop may have been taken. Maybe two. "Whiskey in the Jar" was definitely sung. Fashion lovers: there happened to be three antique clothing experts at this particular party, and so I got an in-depth consulation about my green dress. It was decided after some debate that it is an Edwardian nightgown made of silk crepe. I knew I loved it, but I had no idea it was so old! Continue reading

Springtime has arrived in Northern California with a profusion of blossoms- cherry, plum, forsythia, redbud, and a million little wildflowers peeking up from between the brand new blades of green grass. This season is the last chance for us to have any real rain until late Autumn, so we are loving the cloudy skies that are visiting us this week (with rolling thunder! hooray!). It's natural for me to resonate with everything bright and florid and exuberant in fabric this time of year, especially the tropical prints from Hawaii that have been a huge influence Californian fashion for decades. In... Continue reading

As someone who lives in a 750 square foot house that is also a band practice space and home to a husband and two cats, I had been feeling a little cramped lately. When I started to work on my upcycled "fabric collage" pieces for the shop, I grew out of my little space beneath the eaves upstairs in a single sewing session. Still, I never thought that I would have a studio space of my own, since keeping our overhead low is not a preference, but a requirement. It seems that I have an angel watching over me, however--... Continue reading

It turns out that The Twist is very popular in Spain right now... some things never die. In 2013 I danced my way across many rooms, many stages, and the occasional Spanish dance club floor, which is where I gleaned this important piece of information. "The Twist" is one of the many popular dances mentioned in the 1965 hit, "Land of 1000 Dances", performed by Cannibal and the Headhunters, which comes from an era when knowing the latest steps could mean the difference between getting to third base and getting nowhere. I love everything about this song, including the wildly... Continue reading

I try to be very grateful for what I've got right here in beautiful Nevada County. People travel from half the world away to having mind-altering, consciousness-expanding experiences here my own big beautiful backyard, and I am lucky enough to actually live here with the trees, the river, and the stars. If I am ever weary of this particular kind of bucolic paradise, I can drive to the mountains, the desert, or the ocean; if I need to escape the rural town for a city, San Francisco, Reno or even Los Angeles are less than a day away. Ah, but... Continue reading

I just realized that today marks the four year anniversary of Astral Boutique- whoa! Time passes so quickly.... that means I have been running my Etsy shop for half the time that I have lived in the Sierra Foothills. Somehow in my mind my time working as a receptionist in the local acupuncture and Naturopathic clinics seems to take up almost all of my Work Memory, and it still feels like Astral Boutique has just begun. I guess that's because my work feels like it is always changing- constantly new clothes, new photos, new challenges, new goals. As a celebration,... Continue reading

Wow- okay, I have been busy. I did my last Catch Up post in March! A lot of fun stuff has been happening since then... lots and lots of band stuff (full steam ahead with a European tour this Fall!), seasonal celebrations (aka parties), friends, food, and the Yuba River... here's a review in pictures: ******************************************************************** Beltaine Bluebird, Sunshine, and myself Leonna makes floral head wreaths Summer and Charles, creatures of the forest our friends from San Francisco, going wild in the country late night outdoor jam session, Dylan on horn ***************************************************** Rock n' Roll All Night photo by Laura... Continue reading

I have always wanted to make a video lookbook, and I decided that this was the perfect time- the height of summer, with endless sunshine and warm water to play in. I took some of my besties and tried to give the feeling of little poems, dreams of summer come to life.... Astral Boutique Lookbook Summer 2013 from Sasha Soukup on Vimeo. ********************Some still shots from the shoot********************** Cynthia at the Yuba River: Summer, picking sweet peas on the hill behind my house: Chia (who runs Out of the Mystic Vintage on Etsy!) at the Yuba River in a Gunne... Continue reading