MY NEW LINK
April 27, 2008
Lower Haight
April 27, 2008
Lower Haight, originally uploaded by ReclaimingMissHavisham.
The weather has been so good lately. It’s really weird to see really familiar everyday things on flickr. These are all pictures tagged Lower Haight, my neighborhood.
Here is my own Lower Haight contribution. This is a picture out of my living room window today:
well played, nature
Read Moar Blags!
April 25, 2008
from xkcd
So doing my regular tour of duty reading blags I couldn’t help but be a little put off by Holly from decor8’s article in Real Simple titled Cutting through the Design Blog Smog which was referred to on Apartment Therapy Los Angeles.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people spending less time on the computer and getting out into nature or whatever, but I don’t know how cool it is to urge people to limit their blog reading to ten or less.
Blogging is considered the whipped fluffy topping on the writing community so it’s seemingly acceptable to tell people to limit their intake. While there are some really shitty useless blogs (mine being one of them) clogging up the world, at the end of the day each blog is the efforts of a real person to put their own words, voice and opinions out into the world to be judged by strangers. It’s not always easy. It’s a bad analogy but you wouldn’t tell someone to limit how many books or periodicals they read. That Steinbeck can be a real timesuck.
I guess it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to read that my words and the words of other small time bloggers are considered internet “smog”. This is an easy attitude to have since decor8 has tens of thousands of daily readers. There’s no chance of that blog not making the cut when people shave their reading list down to 10. She doesn’t come out and say “limit your reading to the top ten design blogs” but obviously that’s what would happen if people were to choose. The big blogs are sponsored. They have things like contests and give aways, and the authors are emailed tips from designers and artists directly. If people only read 10 blogs, that would pretty much mean the end of things for the rest of us.
Perhaps Holly can remember a time when her blog had a small readership and how many of the people who supported decor8 along the way are bloggers themselves. Are those blogs part of this smog? I’m sure they’d hate to think their writing is thought of as the big purple stretch mark on the thigh of society.
I don’t live in communist china. My media and information consumption is not controlled by 10 people. What I love about blogs is the constant flow of NEW thoughts, NEW opinions, NEW ideas. It’s important to reach out to different blogs, you never know what you’ll find.
There is a solution, folks. Google reader. Say it with me, gooooooogle readdderrrrrr. You can even use any RSS feed reader, actually. Just subscribe, check your reader along with your email, skim the new posts, star the ones you want to come back to. You can follow tons of blogs and spend as much or as little time in one sitting as you want reading them. No one reads every word of every post. You skim until you find something that you want to read. Or you just look at the picutres. It’s not that hard or time consuming, and you are exposed to a spectrum of styles and opinions. There aren’t enough eames rockers in the world for us to all read the same blogs…
Now I want to thank all of the blogs I subscribe to, and the ones I have yet to even discover. You guys could never smog up my life. Thanks for keeping it fresh and always remembering to take it to the max!
All Things Bright and Beautiful
Do I have a future as a t shirt designer?
April 24, 2008
Here’s what I’ve been doing with myself for the past hour:
Yup its a t shirt I want to have custom printed for those of us in my department. Clearly I have too much time on my hands.
Take it to the Max!
April 23, 2008I’m part of the camp that believes in living every week like it’s shark week. I like to take it to the MAX, and then push it past the point of comfort, safety and appropriateness. Start a riot, vote for mickey mouse for president, mix nyquil and dayquil, give out free and unqualified medical advice on the bus, drive with your eyes closed, don’t wear underwear, wear the underwear on your head, put a santa hat on a goat and walk him on a leash, challenge your mom to a drinking game, write something offensive in the memo line of your checks, start a cult, make every friday at work jello shot friday, invest in a potato cannon….you see where I am going with this
You can be simple and peaceful when you’re dead. Here are some inspiring rooms for anyone who’s ready to take it to the next level:
Hint: It doesn’t have to be busy or vividly colored to make a huge impact (see above)
You think those chairs give a shit about what you think of them? No. Because they are extreme
So this isn’t what you had in mind when you said “bird bath”?
image from Rachel Jones
I think even Miss Havisham would know to draw the line here though:
MY EYES!!
images from Taverne Agency and Location Works
Shut up, ovaries.
April 22, 2008It’s important to remind your ovaries who is boss sometimes. Mine start tingling whenever my mom sends me pictures of whatever she is working on (she is a children’s clothing designer) OR when I watch THIS VIDEO (childless women should NOT watch this video as the cuteness is unbearable to our eyes. It’s like the flame on burning magnesium….don’t look directly at it and don’t say I didn’t warn you) Here is what mom sent me that she has in the works. She doesn’t want me to post these on the internets because the new stuff isn’t finished as you’ll see and she also muttered something about how all designers rip each other off especially via the internet, but she can just add this to my ongoing list of bad daughter offenses:
Anywho, Everything home interior design related has started to piss me off so I’m going to blog about whatever I feel like until conditions improve (i.e. there aren’t so many owls all over everything) A little while back Vintage Indie sent out a plea for stories of crafty family business or trades. I don’t have anything solid enough to submit, but it got me thinking about my mom as a designer and what I took with me from her even though I’m not a designer. And THAT made me think about what I took with me from both of my parents and how I’m watching myself turn into an amalgam of the two of them.
Crafty-wise, I can sew, follow a pattern, create a pattern from my own clothes, work a sewing machine, serger, pleater, and do some smocking and quilting. When I got my new sewing machine in the mail even after years and years my hands still knew exactly how to thread the thing and use it.
I come from two people who reinvented themselves at awkward points in their lives (like Madonna). Mom was writing for the newspaper when she had my older sister. She made and designed clothes for her for fun and somehow got it in her head to turn it into a business. Dad was in his 40s when he decided to study for the CPA exam (he wasn’t an accountant before…just randomly decided to change careers) He passed it along with the 25 year olds with accounting degrees. (he didn’t study accounting in college either) I was very proud of him. My older sister taught tennis at a resort in Telluride, began to work for the criminal justice system, then waited tables, and now she just graduated law school and fired out a baby.
I think that’s why I don’t panic so much about what I’m supposed to do and what I’m supposed to be. I’ll do this right now and I’ll do something else another time. So many people my age feel like the career decisions they make right now at 25 are going to lock them into place forever. It’s just not true! Right now I’ll work in bio-ethics and laboratory animal welfare. In my 30s I’ll write the great american novel. Then in my 40s I’m going to open my own bar/restaurant. Who knows what I’ll do after that or in between or ever! And while it’s not a craft persay, it’s the King family way.
Are you absolutely crazy? There isn’t anything I can’t do!
Creature of Habit
April 22, 2008
Even though I feel like I am constantly changing my mind and feel overwhelmingly scattered, I really am a creature of habit in a lot of ways. While I’m in list making mode I decided to share the 5 style items I could not live without. The above set is so weird to look at because its pretty much what I wear everyday. Without the following items, I just wouldn’t be me:
1. Faryl Robin shoes
If someone could drill a hole into my brain and extract from my shoe lobe (everyone woman has one) exactly what I would want in a pair of shoes, Faryl Robin would be the result. I buy at least one pair of these shoes a year and I still wear the ones I bought years and years ago. They are unique, COMFORTABLE, and so fucking rad it makes me want to slap my mom.
2. Black cashmere
Everyone looks foxy in a black cashmere turtleneck. Period. End of story. I have three
3. The Body Shop vitamin E Illuminating Moisture Cream
Wash your face with some sort of exfoliating scrub. Put a glob of this shiny stuff on each cheek, forehead, and neck and then blend foundation directly into the lotion on your face. Sit back and wait for the compliments. I have a friend that calls this stuff “flippin’ glow lotion” so that’s the name I’ve adopted for it.
4. Gap Jeans
I went through a phase where I kept dropping 2 hundred clams on Citizen for Humanity jeans that I ripped not once, not twice, but thrice all while doing wide lunges (there is a lot of lunging in my life, baby gates and livestock pens) I’ve gone back to the Gap. I’ve also discovered that if I wear the ankle length pants in their “tall” line, they fit perfectly! My legs are exactly the right length for a tall person’s capri pants. It’s sorta embarrassing
5. Chanel Makeup
I honestly dont think make up brands matter unless it comes to this one. There is chanel makeup and then everything else. It’s expensive but it could make Janet Reno look like Reese Witherspoon
