A little more time for "curl"...

We are heading out early this morning to speak at our friend's "professional practice" class at Cal State East Bay, so I'll be posting this week's photo assignment later on today, hopefully around 4pm or so. This gives you a little more time to submit a "curl" photo! In the meantime, here's some inspiration from one of my favorite photographers, Karl Blossfeldt.

Shoppe Correspondence

One of my favorite things about owning a store is getting to work with all of my favorite artists and designers, who will sometimes even say YES when you ask them to create custom designs for your shoppe. Case in point: our new awesome shoppe correspondence cards, courtesy of the über-talented Rose Lazar of The Great Lakes. These postcards are handprinted on chip board, and I can't wait to start sending them out!

Tour Guides!

Last month we were thrilled to be featured in the SF Chronicle's "On the Town" column, where local residents are asked to list their favorite spots to visit, eat, shoppe, etc. in the Bay Area. You can click here to check out our entire list, which includes the Randall Museum, Yamo, and the Headlands Center for the Arts.


Unfortunately we weren't at the shoppe on Sunday, but evidently a group of people came by to let us know that they were out visiting every single place on our list! We couldn't be more honored, and we hope they had the time of their lives!!

Fall/Winter Wardrobe

This season I am challenging myself to make any and all new additions to my wardrobe, in an effort to learn better sewing techniques and save a little money. It's frustrating that buying yarn and fabric sometimes ends up costing more than purchasing new clothes, but I found that with some extra hunting, bargains can be found! Then there's the question of whether or not you'll be satisfied with the end result, whether or not it will fit, etc etc etc... but I've come to terms with the fact that this is a learning process, and if you accidentally sew the zipper to the bottom of the skirt (which I did) and it takes more time ripping it out than it did to sew it in, that's just part of the JOY of making things for yourself.

Owl Sweater

The pattern for this sweater was a free download from this website, and I found some natural wool at our local yarn store for real cheap. Only had to purchase two skeins, and I have a ton leftover. It was fairly easy to knit, and I learned how to make short rows in the process! As soon as I sewed the button eyes onto the owls, I really fell in love with it.

Denim Skirt w/ Pockets

The fabric for this skirt was leftover from our shower curtain project, and the design came from an old Butterick pattern of my Mom's from the '70s. In my opinion, all dresses and skirts should have pockets, so I was really excited when I came across this pattern in my stash. The best part about making this skirt was the $2 invisible zipper foot I bought that actually worked. My first invisible zipper! It's a miracle and I can't believe I never tried using one before.

Red Cape w/ Hood

I've been wanting a woolly red cape for a little while, and thought I'd finally be able to afford the 2.5 yards of fabric during the last day of our local fabric store's 40% off sale, but $25/yard was still too pricey, even with the discount. Fortunately though, I was able to find two identical scraps of red wool in the remnant stack for $8/yard. I took about 6" off the bottom and sewed button holes instead of attaching loops like the pattern suggested. Looks like I might end up being Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween this year...

Working For the Weekend!

I know it's early in the week, but I can't help mentioning how excited I am about this weekend. There are two events coming up that I've been looking forward to all year.

The first is the Grand Opening of Southern Exposure's new home here in the Mission. For those of you not familiar with SoEx, it is the most innovative, generous, exciting, inspiring, active, and amazing arts organization in the Bay Area (and beyond). I've had the honor of serving on the board for a while now and I'm constantly amazed at how incredibly important SoEx is to artists and the arts community here in San Francisco. Look around, if you see something cool happening in the arts, chances are SoEx has something to do with it.

We're celebrating SoEx's gorgeous new space (and 35th Anniversary!) with a 2-day extravaganza. Friday is the Member's preview party and first look at the inaugural exhibition "Bellwether" featuring an all-star lineup of amazing artists from the Bay Area. There will be tons of free food and drink from some of San Francisco's most delicious restaurants. I highly encourage people to come to this very, very special event. If you're already a member, See You There!!, if not, you can easily sign up right here, right now. You can also join Friday at the door. It's $50 ($30 for artists) and there are tons of great advantages of becoming a member (including a very special gift of a limited edition poster created by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes!!!), and there's never been a better time, or reason to join. On Saturday we'll be opening our doors to everyone! We're blocking off the street to continue the celebration with lots more food and drink for sale from the neighborhood's famous street cart vendors. We'll be there both days, hope to see you too!!

Sunday, we're heading out to the Treasure Island Music Festival! It's the best curated music event of the year, and we're huge fans of every band on the bill. We're especially excited to see our friends Thao (of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down) and Tommy Guerrero. They're amazingly talented and always, always, always blow us away. So excited!!!

Zen and the art of the home haircut

In these tough economic times, we've had to scale back on some of the luxuries we have grown accustomed to, which for us includes visits to the salon. Monthly for Derek, and every couple months for me. I've tried cutting D's hair at home before, but never touched the top, for fear that I'd leave a big gaping hole in it or end up cutting off way too much. This week I finally felt confident enough to give it a try, and I'm happy to report that it was a success! (Thank goodness he has such thick hair...)

D's hair, pre-haircut

D's hair, post-haircut

My rules were as follows:
- Don't say "oops", no matter what happens
- Cut a little at a time, and go back to trim more if it's not enough
- Don't get overzealous with the electric trimmers

It probably would have helped if I'd watched a how-to video or two beforehand, but then again my false sense of confidence proved to be enough! I'll do a little research before the next cut, though. For myself, I've decided to let my hair grow out again, with an occasional at home bang-trim every few weeks. We'll see what happens... (Cut to photos of both of us in 6 months with long, shaggy hair...)

Bee Boyz

For any of you out there who share our love, wonder, and enthusiasm for bees and beekeeping....here's a real treat. Man, how much better would our little video have been if we had rapped over it...??

(via mental floss)

Thursday Photo Assignment: Point

Another amazing collection this week! Thanks to everyone who sent in a photo! Next week's theme is: "curl". As always, please email your photos to: smartsandcrafts@gmail.com before next Thursday if you'd like to participate.

Derek's photo


Lauren's photo


Tony's photo


Jonathan's photo


Lise's photo


Lydia's photo


Kalli's photo


Leigh's photo


Caroline's photo

We'll Take It!

There was an interesting article in the Times yesterday about the works of art the Obama's have borrowed from galleries and museums around DC to decorate their private residence at the White House. It reminded me of a little game Lauren and I play every time we go see art called, "We'll Take It!!". With that in mind...here are a few choice pieces we'd like to borrow for our home from some local art institutions.

Three Black Fishtails by Alexander Calder, 1960

From the Doris & Donald Fisher Collection

The Rebel Albert Camus: Twenty-Five Typographic Meditations, by Jack W. Stauffacher, 1969
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

Promenade Deck, M.S. Brimanger, Pacific Ocean, by John Gutmann, 1933
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

Alameda Gran Torino, by Robert Bechtle, 1974
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

Water Tower, Toledo Ohio, by Bernd and Hilla Becher, 1978
Fraenkel Gallery

Model for Total Reflective Abstraction (after Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi), by Josiah McElheny, 2003
DeYoung Museum

Step 1: Bathroom Redo

I wanted to get the bathroom done first for a couple reasons: it is the smallest room with the least amount of options (no rearranging of furniture, etc.), and I have been itching to get a new shower curtain for the longest time. When we went to New York in August we stayed at the Ace Hotel for a couple nights, and I was inspired by the simple, utilitarian decor and the little pouch that acted as a makeshift medicine cabinet for us to store our toiletries.

Inspiration: the Ace Hotel in NYC
(image via notcot)

Our bathroom


Rather than buy a new shower curtain, I walked over to our local fabric store, (which happens to be having a 40% off sale right now!) and spent $15 on 2 1/2 yards of lightweight denim and some silver grommets.

I stitched up the top and bottom, added the grommets, fashioned a little storage pouch, and it's done!

The best part of this bathroom redo has to do with the fact that I spent an entire afternoon cleaning and reorganizing everything in it, top to bottom. Got rid of all the old makeup, shampoo, hairbrushes, expired cough medicine, and everything else that we don't use on a regular basis, and put everything else into labeled bins. We hung a couple pieces of art on the wall and are contemplating a new paint job, but for a one-day room redo and less than $20 in expenses, I'm pretty pleased.

Finally, I hung all our back issues of Housekeeping on the back of our little storage closet door, so I can read it when I'm brushing my teeth in the morning. Housekeeping is a free, one-page, double-sided 'zine of sorts, consisting of random newspaper clippings, obituaries, stories and recipes that some friends of ours in New York put out every now and then. It's really, really good stuff!

Smarts & Crafts Update

We were very honored to be invited to speak last night at Chronicle Books as part of their new "5 Speakers 5 Minutes 5 Questions" series. The topic was about design and blogs and we had a blast talking about Smarts & Crafts. The real fun though was meeting the other AMAZING and INSPIRING presenters, David from BoingBoing, Joe from Typophile, Dave from Grain Edit, and Suzanne from the Chronicle Book's blog.

And the timing couldn't have been better. We've been thinking a lot about Smarts & Crafts and what we can and should be doing with it. We've been having lots of fun with the Thursday Photo Assignments, and This? or This?, and filling you in on what's going on in the Shoppe and what not, and now we're about to embark on a new, more personal experiment.

We were listening to a great segment the other day on To the Best of our Knowledge called "Reconsidering Crafts". One of the guests was sociologist Richard Sennett who spoke about his book The Craftsman. We really appreciated his definition of "craft" as "any job a person commits to executing to the best of their abilities" We couldn't agree more, and that is a very nice description of how we're trying to live our lives—constantly working at getting better at what we do, and exploring and trying out things we haven't done, and sharing our enthusiasms and experiments with anyone who will listen. So our plan is to be more diligent and open with our lifelong adventure of Learn, Make, Share.

For the majority of our adult lives we've moved about every two years. Well, it's been two years now since we moved into the tiny 500 square foot apartment above the Shoppe and we're getting restless. We're not moving, but we need to shake things up a bit. So for the forseeable future we'll be doing regular posts detailing our renovations. And these aren't just apartment re-dos, we'll also be posting about our "lifestyle renovations" as well. We'll be sharing DIY, craft, and design projects as we customize everything and anything in our home, we'll talk about our ongoing battle with clutter and our attempts to organize the crap out of our crap. We'll talk about our forays into urban homesteading (bees!!!), and post the "life hacks" we've been working on over the years to create a lifestyle that is creative, and productive, and above all, Fun.

The posts will be casual, fast, and loose. We're going to enjoy doing them, and we hope you'll get something out of them as well. First post will be up soon. It's about our bathroom. Yikes!

Everything is Invented.

A little inspiration for this Tuesday morning. (via Maira Kalman's NY Times blog)

Getz/Gilberto? or Time Out?

**Refresh your ears by listening here, and here.**

Deb's Spooky Photo!

Congratulations Deb! You sent in the "spookiest" photo, and will be receiving a copy of Alive in Necropolis as your prize! Special thanks to the SF Public Library for suggesting that we collaborate on a photo theme! Next week's theme is: "point". Please send your photos to smartsandcrafts@gmail.com before next Thursday if you'd like to participate.

D+L on the Big Screen!!

Yes, yes, it's true! Lauren and I are in a movie! And this is your big chance to come see it! "Sorry, Thanks", co-written and directed by the extremely talented Dia Sokol will be making its West Coast premier at the Mill Valley Film Festival Sunday, October 11th at 9pm. Neither of us has seen the film, so we can't tell you much about it other than its been getting great reviews at all sorts of film festivals, stars Wiley Wiggins (of "Dazed & Confused" fame), and Andrew Bujalski (the writer/director/actor of indie hits "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation"). I play Jonathan, a bumbling publishing executive (a huuuuge stretch for me), and Lauren is listed on IMDB as "Office Superior" (a part she was born to play).

You can watch the trailer and get more information here: http://www.sorrythanksfilm.com/

Lauren and I (as well as a number of other local cast and crew members) will be at the 9pm screening on Sunday, October 11th. We really hope you'll join us!!

These things tend to sell out, so please gather up all your friends and pick up your tickets soon!

What: "Sorry, Thanks" West Coast Premier
Where: The Mill Valley Film Festival
When: Sunday, October 11, 9pm

Click here to buy tickets now!!

Thursday Photo Assignment: Spooky

Look at all the spoooooky photos we received this week! Please let us know which one you think is spookiest in the comments, and that person will receive a copy of Alive in Necropolis, courtesy of the SF Public Library. The winner (and next week's photo theme) will be announced at 1pm tomorrow!

Derek's photo

Lauren's photo

Jonathan's photo

Andrew's photo


Tom's photo


Becca's photo

Scott's photo

Leigh's photo

Joelle's photo

Deb's photo

Pop-Up magazine

Just wanted to do a quick post about last week's Pop-Up magazine. Thank you so much to everyone who joined us, especially the amazing, amazing contributors! It was such a wonderful, exciting, interesting, fun, funny, and very special evening. There's no documentation (on purpose), but the picture above will give you a sense of the good times that were being had by all, as the audience and contributors mingled and drank and ate for many hours after the event had ended.

This was our Table of Contents, and below is a list of the contributors who made the magic happen. I've included links to many of them, some of them are either too prolific (thus difficult to pin down with Google...) or too lazy (and don't have websites), or very likely both:

Evan Ratliff, Steven Leckart, Farhod Manjoo, Marc Hawthorne, Bonnie Tsui, Philip Wood, Aaron Ximm, Jon Mooallem, Steven Okazaki, Joshuah Bearman, Elena Dorfman, Nate DiMeo, Darcy Padilla, Jeff Chang, Daniel Alarcon, Sam Green, Dave Cerf, Wayne White, Paul Schiek, David Maisel, Amy Standen, Elif Batuman, Tiffany Campbell & Andria Lessler.

Thanks again everyone...Hope to see you at Pop Up #3!!!