Felted penguins in a dish! From the newest addition to my Japanese craft book library. The ones with the little closed eyes are the best!
Also can't get enough of the felted sprouts. I mean, c'mon!
And here are Derek and I as Simpsons characters. Create your own Simpsons avatar here.
Better late than never notice for 2 fun things happening today that anyone and everyone should come out and enjoy with us.
Come one, come all! Hope to see you there!!!
I was so thrilled to see these new Orla Kiely-designed tents and sleeping bags on her site the other day! They were produced in collaboration with a British outdoor goods company called Millets, are affordable, and in traditional Orla style, they're bold, graphic and absolutely covetable. Makes me want to plan a camping trip right away!
We just received a shipment of 7 new Suspicious, Talking and Combination Paintings from J. Richel, and they're for sale in the Gallery section of the shoppe! They each have so much personality, and we could sit here for hours making them talk to each other and give each other sidelong glances by pulling on their tabs. I'm especially into this lovely lady with her cat-eye glasses. She looks timid in this picture, but trust me, she's a talker!
Ever since making that quilt a couple weeks ago, I've had quilt fabric on the brain. My mom and I spent a long time in Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley the other day, just ogling all the different prints and beautiful solid colored cottons they sell there. I decided that it would be fun to make one quilt per year (which is only way I'd be able to add quilting into the mix with all my other current projects/hobbies). That way you'd have an ever-growing collection of handmade quilts, you could take your time picking fabrics and piecing them together, and perhaps even hand quilt them.
We can't get enough of all the delicious fruits and berries that are in season right now! We've been making jam like crazy, and eating bowls of berries for breakfast every morning. (That bowl on top there matched my woven dishtowel sooo well that I had to take a picture of it!) Bon Appétit everyone- enjoy then while they're ripe!
Ever since I picked up this book a couple weeks ago, I haven't been able to put it down. It's a recipe book from the Rose Bakery in Paris, called Breakfast, Lunch, Tea, and it is delightful! I haven't made anything from it yet, but I keep flipping through and admiring the beautiful photographs and type. Check out that cover!
I think I got my first pair of Converse when I was a freshman in high school. They were purple. Since then, I've gone through who knows how many pairs, replacing them when they become threadbare and the heels are worn down to the ground. (Pictured above are the three pairs I currently have in rotation, 2 of which are about ready to be retired.)
What the?! How did we miss this? We love Modest Mouse, we use Apple computers...??? So evidently there was a contest put on by Apple where they posted a bunch of camera shots of Modest Mouse playing "Missed The Boat" and encouraged people to download the shots and make their own video "using Apple editing tools." Well, some of the best ones are now making their way around the blogosphere, this one was emailed to me this morning by a colleague over at ReadyMade who found it through the Wooster Collective. It's pretty darn brilliant. Check out the other entries and finalists here.
Last week I made my first ever quilt (pictured above) from a pattern in the Denyse Schmidt Quilts book, which is based on the traditional "Flying Geese" pattern. I just love how the triangles look like little pennants- they remind me of the flags that fly over christmas tree lots and used car dealerships (is it strange to be inspired by a used car dealership?? Anyway...) It is a crib sized quilt, and a gift for my sister who is about to have a baby. The process was fun, a little confusing and very exhausting, but I finished it in time for the baby shower yesterday and I thought I'd share some of pics of what it looked like in the various stages of construction.
My favorite part of the whole quilt-making process was laying out all the triangles of cut fabric and moving them around until I was happy with the design. Then I numbered all the rows and stacked them up so I would know what order to sew them in.
The numbered stacks of cut fabric. There were 14 rows of 11 triangles each.
Here is a completed strip, with all the seam allowances pressed towards the colored fabric pieces so they wouldn't show through to the front. (Good idea, right?). Those little triangles of fabric were snipped off before proceeding to the next step.
Next, I took all the numbered strips and attached them one by one, until I had my completed quilt top.
Then it was time to make the "quilt sandwich". I layed out my bottom piece, (which was a twin size sheet cut down to size) my cotton batting, and my quilt top, then hand basted all three pieces together so they wouldn't shift once I started quilting on the machine.
I quilted 11 vertical lines down the center of each triangle, and then "stitched in the ditch" around each white triangle, which took FOREVER! My sewing machine was not happy with this chain of events, but we made it through.
Finally, I cut a bunch of 2 1/2" wide strips and sewed them together make the binding. which was pinned into place, attached with the machine, and slip-stitched by hand to the back of the quilt, which Derek was kind enough to stay up and help me with until the wee hours of the morning on Saturday night. I learned a lot and of course have a whole new appreciation for the art of piecework and quiltmaking. I'm already looking forward to picking out fabric for my next one!
Living in San Francisco, we are definitely spoiled by all the incredible farmer's markets that sprout up every weekend. Most Saturdays, we go to our local farmer's market in Noe Valley, but last weekend we decided to mix it up a bit and check out the Alemany Farmer's Market, which is a 5-10 minute drive from where we live. We were amazed and overwhelmed by the the amount of awesome produce and flowers for sale, and the prices were cheap, cheap cheap! We stocked up on cherries, tomatoes, strawberries, basil, roses... and can't wait to go back next weekend for more.
Flowers galore!
Gigantic celery!
Fruits!
Greens!
They had sooo many different types of mushrooms that we couldn't decide... maybe next week we'll get some.
A half-flat of strawberries that we brought home on the scooter and made into yummy jam later that day.
So last weekend we sat down to barrel through one of our Netflix "queue killers". (You know, those movies that sound good at the time so you add them to your Netflix and when they arrive you have no desire to watch them whatsoever?) Well, this particular "killer": Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen (Even Dwarfs Started Small) is an early '70s, black and white film directed by Werner Herzog about rebellious patients at a mental institution. Oh, and the entire cast is made up of dwarfs. And it's in German. Long story short, it's actually a very beautiful and disturbing and funny film. But the absolute best thing about it is the commentary. Herr Herzog has the most amazing voice. Seriously, he has this lovely, charming accent and speaks so softly and fluidly...he'd make a wonderful hypnotist. But that's not all. He was joined in his commentary by my #1 favorite weirdo Crispin Hellion Glover! So not only does Herzog point out interesting factoids about the movie (the insane location, the haunting music, intra-cast romances) he is goaded on by Crispin to regale us with tales from his crazy life: walking around Germany—by which I mean literally walking around the perimeter of the country alone on foot, being tortured (to the brink of death) in an African prison, jumping into an enormous cactus after losing a bet...and this is the same guy who has famously boiled and eaten his own shoe, been shot while in the middle of an interview, and randomly pulled Joaquin Phoenix out of a car wreck. So fascinating! I can't wait to watch the rest of his 50+ films, many of which are available on a new dvd box set from his website. And also check out this hilarious clip (via Your Daily Awesome). It's a scene from Even Dwarfs...set to hyphy music (which the young folks tell me is a funky new Bay Area rap style...) in which the mental patients do a little ghostriding, hyphy-style.
Best concert ever?!?! We were so thrilled to see that this show is coming to town. Couldn't have picked a better lineup ourselves! And it will finally force us to visit Treasure Island, something we've been wanting to do forever, but just haven't gotten around to. Oh, and the icing on the cake is that we already got our tickets, even though they don't go on sale until Sunday. How'd we do it? We randomly ran across a link that gave us a secret password to get tickets early. So get your ticket now. Password is "gold".
Ok, that's a misleading title. The PTA (Personal Trend Alert) I'm experiencing right now has less to do with guys who sing like girls, and more to do with the fact that most of the great music I'm listening to right now features Men-Who-Sing-In-Higher-Registers (which doesn't sound quite as clever as Dude Sounds Like A Lady...). Anyway, I've always loved Jimmy Scott, and Neil Young has been rockin' my (free) world for a long time, and I've even been known to croon a little "Danke Schoen" Ferris Bueller-style in the shower, but there are a couple bands that I'm constantly recommending to everyone, and it only recently dawned on me that they share this similar trait. Take a little listen for yourself (with recommended songs):
Martha Stewart Crafts is having a 10% off sale for friends and family! (And we're all friends, right?) The sale goes through next Friday, June 22. Just go to www.marthastewartcrafts.com and enter the code MSCFF107 at checkout.
