How beautiful is this?

I left something at Leigh's house and she sent it back in this. I mean, c'mon! How beautiful is this envelope?

Little Dog

A few months ago I sent a box full of stuffed animals and other crafts to Amy for her new book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People. This little dog was one of my favorites, and look! It's here on the preview cover for the book, which I just noticed is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

I'm not sure I can wait until November to see the whole thing!

Southern Exposure Auction This Saturday!

A reminder to all that Southern Exposure's Annual Auction is:
THIS SATURDAY, MAY 8th!!
Click here for more information!
Click here to buy tickets!
Click here to see some of the artworks up for auction!
For those of you who can't make it, you can visit SoEx any day this week to check out the work and place absentee bids!

This is always one of the best, most exciting, most fun art events of the year! Can't wait to see you all there!

Here are a couple pieces I've got my eye on:

Jeff Canham

Scott Oliver

Marci Washington

Paul Wackers

Brion Nuda Rosch

Homesteading Hootenanny!!!

Friends!

Join us at a super fun event happening this Thursday at Southern Exposure! It's a Homesteading Hootenanny put on by the fine folks from How-To Homestead and our pals at SoEx. In addition to all sorts of Homesteading activities (food, drink, films and such), there is going to be Square Dancing!! Not sure if you're aware of this, but it is physically impossible to not have fun square dancing. We know from personal experience.

Thursday, April 29, 2010
7 pm - Midnight

$10 / FREE for SoEx Members
Or FREE with homesteaded goods and items to share (including home brews, seeds, fermented vegetables, pies and more)

**ALSO** Another great reason to JOIN as a SoEx member!!

Hootenanny Schedule:
7:30: Screening
8:30: Tasting
9:00: Square Dance with Pearsons Pork Pies
11:00: Dancing with the Goat Family

From the website:

Join the How-to Homestead Crew, led by Melinda Stone, for a down-home hootenanny of movies, tastings, song, and dance! The evening includes free tastings of home-made beer, booze, fermented vegetables, and other homestead goodies; new homesteading movie shorts, some with live accompaniment by the How-to Homestead house band: the sk8 sisters; square dancing with Pearsons Pork Pies and the night concludes with free-form dancing with the Goat Family, a nuevo-traditional jug band on the old-timey exuberance and infectious tip.

Birdhouses available online!

People visiting our shoppe gallery over the last couple weeks have been all a-flutter over the amazing birdhouses that Jeff Canham and Luke Bartels created for their "For the Birds" show. They are now available on our website! Check them out here.

The Curiosity Shoppe + THE THING!!

Just wanted to pass along an invitation/reminder to please join us for an exciting and fun event with our pals from THE THING!

On Friday, April 30th as part of Joseph del Pesco's Society of Secrets event at the Berkeley Art Museum, The Curiosity Shoppe will be partnering with THE THING to host a secret undisclosed back-room parallel black jack tournament using Ryan Gander and Europa's Issue 9. Not sure how to play? Don't worry, it's really simple, we'll send you the rules ahead of time...or you can always purchase the cards (which come with playing instructions) from THE THING or the Curiosity Shoppe.

The games will begin at 5:00pm and go till 8:00, and admission is free for players. We are looking for 64 participants in the tournament, which is first-come, first-serve. The ranks are filling up fast, so we're not sure if there are any spots left, but if you're interested please send an email to Francois at: support (at) thethingquarterly (dot) com. The winner will receive a cash prize of $100 from THE THING and a $100 gift certificate from the Curiosity Shoppe.

Even if you can't be in the tournament, it's gong to be a great event and a great night, and we'll hope you'll come join in the fun with us!

A little decorating

One Sunday a couple months back, we set out early in the morning with our friend Paulina to do a little decorating on the side of a big empty building in our neighborhood. She had the idea to make pennants out of some colorful vinyl she had laying around her studio, as part of a larger project she has been working on, called Tu Y Yo. Tu Y Yo focuses on public art collaborations, community and positivity. We say yes to all of the above!

Unfortunately our installation didn't last more than a couple days before someone removed it, but here are a few pics for you to enjoy.

Small Stakes book launch party and signing!

Hello Friends:
Wow! Busy week! In addition to our gallery opening tomorrow evening (see post below), we are also super excited about an event we hope you will join us for on Saturday. Our friend Jason Munn—the wonderful wizard of rock posters—will be launching his brand new, utterly amazing book The Small Stakes Music Posters at our Shoppe. We are truly honored to host Jason and can't wait to celebrate his incredible work. So come on by and meet The Man, buy his book (and get a special limited-edition print!!). There will be snacks to eat, and posters for sale.

WHAT: The Small Stakes Book Signing with Jason Munn
WHEN: Saturday April 10th, 5-8pm
WHERE: The Curiosity Shoppe, 855 Valencia St. (btwn 19th & 20th)

For the Birds Opening!!

Hello Friends!
Please join us this Friday evening to celebrate the opening of our new gallery show, For the Birds! Our talented pals Jeff Canham and Luke Bartels have created an array of amazing abodes, perfect the urban bird. There will be refreshments to peck at.

WHAT: For the Birds opening
WHEN: Friday, April 9th 7-9pm
WHERE: The Curiosity Shoppe 855 Valencia St. (between 19th & 20th)

*More images and a write up on Cool Hunting right here.

Seriously Curious Confections

We've always admired Mary and Matt's great taste in art and design, music and fashion, and so on and so forth... And then—as if to prove their excellence in a whole different realm of "taste"—they started making mind-blowing, explicative-inducing chocolate. They recently sent us some samples which we shared with customers throughout the day. Everyone fell in love. Now you can too!

What Derek Made This Weekend...

Oars!! Thanks to the lovely Mariah and the fine folks down at the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, Lauren and I are now the proud owners of 2 beautiful douglas fir ready-for-rowing oars. The icing on the cake was the leather straps we laced on to protect the wood in the oarlock. So pretty.

The class was amazing and fun and educational and I can't wait for more. If you're interested in taking a class down at the Historic Hyde Street Pier, get in touch with Mariah at mgardner(at)maritime.org.

Pop-Up Magazine Issue No. 3!

Hello Friends:

We wanted to give you all a heads up that tickets are going on sale TODAY (Thursday) at noon for Pop-Up Magazine Issue No. 3. For those of you not familiar with it, Pop-Up is an evening of readings, photography, documentary film, facts, art, and radio performed onstage by an amazing group of extremely talented folks. Lauren and I are the magazine's Creative Directors and it's been a wonderful experience helping to curate and organize this very special event. I encourage anyone who's interested to check out Pop-Up's website for more information and ticket information.

The show is one night only, Friday April 16th, and if you're interested in attending we recommend you check your calendar now and get tickets as soon as possible. We have done Pop-Up a couple times, and it tends to sell out very quickly. We've moved to a larger venue this time, the gorgeous Herbst Theatre downtown, so we're hoping everyone who wants to make it can get tickets. There is going to be an after party at the Herbst immediately following the event, with tons of drinks and delicious food.

We hope to see you there!

Drawing, and drawing, and drawing...

Almost missed this article from the LA Times about our very talented pal Jason Polan. He's on a mission to draw all 8 million people in New York (amongst other things). The article also mentions the Taco Bell Drawing Club, of which we are proud card carrying members...

Jason was nice enough to create some very limited edition art sampler packs for us recently. There are still a couple left here.

Comforter at the Curiosity Shoppe!

We're very excited to invite you to the Shoppe this Friday, March 12th to celebrate the opening of Comforter, our new gallery show featuring drawings, sculptures, and a gianormous quilt by the multi-talented Emily Sevier. Emily is an amazing artist and curator whose colorful (and often cuddly) works play with notions of personal comfort zones and emotional attachment to objects. She has created a beautiful collection of pieces for our space and we're thrilled to share her show with you. Please join us Friday to check out the work, meet Emily, and have a drink and a snack. See you then!!

WHAT: Comforter, works by Emily Sevier
WHEN: Friday, March 12th, 6-8pm
WHERE: The Curiosity Shoppe (855 Valencia St. btwn. 19th & 20th)

*There's so much great art happening this Friday, why not make an evening of it? Come check out Comforter here at the Shoppe, and also make sure to hit up "It's A Sign" at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery featuring work by the amazing artists from New Bohemia Signs (the folks who made The Curiosity Shoppe sign and sandwich board thankyouverymuch!). And then of course there is an epic show at Southern Exposure called Alchemy curated by our pal Sarah Smith.

Wunderkammer Crochet Workshop!!

This Saturday, March 6th, we are thrilled to welcome the amazingly talented Jessica Polka of Wunderkammer back to Shoppe! Jessica will be hosting a crochet workshop based on the delightful Seahorse Crochet Kit she created for us! If you already crochet, come on down and learn some new tricks while Jessica walks you through the pattern. If you've never picked up a hook in your life, now's your chance to learn from a very friendly, very patient pro. We'll have all the kits and supplies on hand, and there will be snacks!
WHAT: Crochet Workshop with Jessica Polka
WHEN: Saturday, March 6th, 2-5pm
WHERE: The Curiosity Shoppe (855 Valencia btwn. 19th & 20th Sts.)
COST: Workshop is free. Kits $20.

See you Saturday!

Behold!!!

Aya Brackett "Kyoto"

We finally got the chance to do something we've been wanting to do for a long, long time. Thank you so much to Suzanne Shade for inviting us to be Guest Curators at the Beholder! It was so exciting and fun and inspirational to check out all the amazing work on the site. We had to keep our choices to 10 (which was HARD!), but we managed...So go check out our little curated collection and spend the rest of the afternoon exploring all the other great artists on the Beholder.

Fabian Geyrhalter "Precision"
Lisa Bartleson "the couch, the chair, the rug, the table"

Calling All Soup Lovers!

We are majorly in love with SOUPLOVE, a new recipe book we are carrying at the shoppe. Especially now that it's mid-February when the contents of our CSA box pretty much consist of leafy greens, root vegetables and even more leafy greens. When this book arrived at the shoppe last week, we flipped to the "Winter" chapter and there was an amazing recipe for Potato Leek and Winter Vegetable soup that pretty much used up everything in our box and fed us for an entire week. For more, check out this awesome review at 101 Cookbooks!


(All the recipes are vegetarian, but that didn't stop us from adding bacon to our soup... it was even better the next day when we pureed all the leftovers. Yummmm!)

Classes On the Waterfront!

Our good pal Mariah, aka The Landlubber, is helping the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association put on some fantastically fun and exciting classes down on the Hyde Street Pier. Seeing as though we San Franciscans are practically surrounded by the stuff, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to get more acquainted with the beautiful bodies of water we're lucky enough to have right down the street. There are a bunch of maritime-related classes and activities to choose from, we're looking forward to Oar and Paddle Making in particular. Space is limited so register now!

(That picture up there is from a LIFE magazine story about the Oakland Women's Rowing Club. You can see some more awesome images here.)

Survival Annex Shop within the Shoppe!

Signs advertising the wide array of objects for sale in Aurora Crispin's Survival Annex (a shop within the Shoppe) that opens tomorrow, Friday January 8th 2010.

2010 is definitely starting off with a BANG here at the Curiosity Shoppe! Our wonderfully talented Shoppe Manager Aurora has curated an insanely ambitious show in our gallery space. A super artist herself, Aurora has wrangled up a long, long list of the most exciting and talented folks around to contribute to her shop within the Shoppe called Survival Annex. She and the awesomely talented Jesse Schlesinger have built an amazing structure in our gallery space that looks like some sort of surreal Gold Rush-era general store. It's beautiful and jam-packed with all manner of creative and unique and gorgeous objects. To learn more about the project, and see the list of participating artists/vendors check out the Survival Annex blog. Lauren and I also contributed to the Annex. I'm offering up 100% Raw Honey from my beehive ($10), and Lauren has created a series of crocheted spiderwebs ($25).

We hope to see you at the Grand Opening of the Survival Annex tomorrow, Friday January 8th, from 6-9pm inside the Curiosity Shoppe (855 Valencia St. btwn. 19th & 20th sts.)

Mission Holiday Block Party!!

We are so very thankful to have a shop in such a wonderful, vibrant, and unique neighborhood. Much of what makes the Mission District of San Francisco great has to do with our fantastically creative and hardworking neighbors. We are very excited to be participating again in this year's Mission Holiday Block Party. Please come down this Friday, December 11th and visit each and every one of the friendly, independently owned businesses in the neighborhood participating in this festive and fun event. From 5 to 10pm we'll be offering 10% off everything in the Shoppe, as well as free drinks and snacks. We've got tons of great new stuff arriving every day, so now is the perfect time to come say hello and pick up a little somethin'somethin' for all your friends and family. See you Friday!!!