JD McPherson: A Gentle Awakening

Oh hel-lo JD McPherson! Do come and play a show in Austin soon!

Waris Ahluwalia

Waris Ahluwalia of House of Waris. Love him.

Cul De Sac Design

I love how cheeky these ceramic dishes are; created by self-taught ceramicist, Laura McKibbon under the guise of Cul De Sac Design, in Vancouver.  They are so cute and appeal to my kitchy sensibilities.

 

Falling In Love...

"Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness."

~Osho

via Shotgun Season

Sewing My Wardrobe From Vogue

I fell in love with Peter Lindberg's fashion shoot featured in the January 2011 edition of American Vogue, modeled by Daria Werbowy and actor David Strathairn, called Brief Encounters.  I especially loved this dress by Yves Saint Laurent but would never in my life dream of dropping the amount of money needed to grab this little number off the racks, so I jerry-rigged my own version out of Vogue pattern 2960.

The Make Room on Urban Barn

My man and I recently purchased our very first house.  All of a sudden I feel like a bonafide and stable adult, while also feeling more broke than I have in a very long time.  Every time I get a lovely paycheck from work, it just flies out the door because we buy an oven, or a dresser, or countless gallons of paint; then I'm right back in line, eagerly anticipating my next paycheck.  And I no longer understand the idea of a quick trip to Home Depot-I always leave with my pockets much lighter, in increments of $100 at a time.

This is our little house and by the time we're done renovating it 30 years down the road, it will probably look much different than it does now-at least I hope it does.  I found a link on Pintrest to The Make Room on Urban Barn and it's brilliant!  Super easy to use, The Make Room is an online tool to help you plan out your furniture layout in your new apartment, or in my case, where I want to put my new walls.  It makes it so much easier to visualize how we want our future awesome house to look.  Check it out.

Our current set-up.

 

Our future awesome house.

How To Be An Anthro Girl

A friend sent me a link to an article by a Miss Kara Banderbijl on This Recording, entitled How To Be An Anthro Girl.  As most of my friends and I will hesitantly admit, we are all enamoured with Anthropologie.  And yes, we all "probably spent more within their four walls than necessary."  So this little humor piece bites right down into me and my friends' Anthro-loving souls and makes me chuckle.

 * Be wealthy, but not the kind of wealthy that makes anybody feel bad. Rather, just chuckle softly whenever you mention your latest trip to Europe or the top of the Empire State Building. “Oh, we rode camels out to Petra,” is the phrase most often uttered at the end of your summer vacations. You justify long periods of inactivity on white-sanded beaches by making sure they took place in third world countries, and you donate a dollar or so to whatever charity is currently advertising on Tumblr.

* Be a ‘natural’ woman. Nothing about you is put on; nothing about you is askance. You are at all times completely genuine and completely within your element (earth or water). You respond to crises by lighting a candle, by fingering plush towels. Plucking is out of the question. You crochet on demand, but only in penumbra.

* Never match. Yellow shoes are always acceptable. Plain black? Never.

* Never be in a picture with a man, ever. You roam alone, from room to room, lit golden by the chandeliers in your lacy nightgown. Your wallpaper is peeling at the corners near the ceiling. You like the culture it creates. Another living being would upset the balance, put the brightly colored throws in disarray.

Italized text by Kara Banderbijl in How To Be An Anthro Girl.

Etten Eller: Jewelry

Brooklyn-based jewelry company, Etten Eller, has a fabulous concept for naming their designs; pick an interesting date in history and assign it to a piece of jewelry.  They cover everything from "The day the first canned beer was sold (1.24.1935)" to "The day Elvis Presley becomes Federal Agent At Large for the DEA (12.21.1970)".  It completely appeals to my history-buff sensibility and really, names for jewelry is kind of arbitrary, right?

Each piece is defined by a date in history.  Jewelry, like dates, act as tools in marking memories, leaving us with symbols to remind us of significant events.

Marketplace: International Craftsmen

I hear Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal almost everyday on my way home from work.  For the most part, my car radio is parked at either NPR (god, I'm such a liberal!(eyeroll)) or Austin's comedy station, 102.7.  Usually on my way home I super briefly get sucked into Mr. Ryssdal talking about the declining economy in either America or Europe, but occasionally he broadcasts a little snippet that really grabs my attention; such as the trend for sports stars to wear eyeglasses, or this one below about the relevance of the crafts in our current economy.

"Everyone, including the department stores, are looking to distinguish themselves." Marylin Kawakami is the former president of Ralph Lauren Womenswear [...]  "For the most part, fashion  here in the United States right now, has been homogenized.  You can find the same thing at H&M for $15 as you can see on the runways for $1500."  She says it's the authenticity of handmade crafts and the back story that distinguish these goods.  So that same trend of globalized mass-production that erodes traditional markets also makes these goods more valued by US retailers trying to make a stand-out."

~Jeff Tyler at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market

Conner Finn, craftsman

William Eggleston: Photography

By William Eggleston. 1970. 

via They Roared Vintage

Alain Mikli: How Eyeglasses Are Made

Made in passion from Kode on Vimeo.
This is the best video on hand making eyeglasses that I've seen so far.

The Sundance Kid

Robert Redford and Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

via A Well Traveled Woman

Wanted List: Jewelry

I'm totally into jewelry right now.  It's probably because I'm trying to sign up for a jewelry-making class at the community college in the fall (barring the need for my new meningitis shots) but I can't get enough of some amazing jewelry I've found on Pintrest lately.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

Gretchen Jones

 Antique bracelet circa 300BC, found near Macedonia. via Pintrest

 Via Prepaganda

 

By Philip Sajet via Marzee

via A Well Traveled Woman

Best Made Company: Axe Makers

I love this growing movement among my peers of highlighting and honoring craftsmanship.  I've seen it across the board from farm-to-table food, to eyeglasses, to tools-as in the case of Best Made Company.
 

Best Made Company was founded in 2009 by graphic designer Paul Buchanan-Smith.  As an avid outdoorsman, having worked on cattle farms and paddling and portaging the lakes of his native Northern Canada, Peter saw a need for a better axe.  According to Peter, the axe is the oldest and most invaluable tool known to mankind; he saw it as a window into the wilderness and a way to inspire people to reconnect with their hands, craft, and nature.  The popular Best Made axes are often purchased to be used, but can be seen as objects of art as well.  The axes are painted as a measure of respect, in tradition with their history.

 

 

via  The Makers

Griel Marcus on Germans

"There are a lot of Germans here, both because in the first half of the twentieth century Germans probably made more history than any other people, and because in the second half of the century they looked so fervently to culture not only as a substitute for history, as a means of escaping from it, but also as a field for making history, for changing their and anyone else's sense of what history is."

~cultural historian, Greil Marcus in the Dustbin of History

P.H. Fitzgerald Photography

 

 

 

 I love all the women featured in Portland-based photographer, P. H. Fitzgerald's flickr stream.  They all seem like people I would want to be friends with.

Musical Style: Betty Davis

When Light In The Attic Records re-released Betty Davis' 1973 album, They Say I'm Different, a couple years ago I was captivated by her music; it's great music to play while cooking dinner.  I then found out that she's originally from Durham, North Carolina--my neck of the woods--and I'm a huge fan of most artistic people who hail from NC (also see Nina Simone, Ava Gardner, Edward R. Murrow, Tom Robbins, Thelonius Monk).  The more I learn about Miss Betty, the more I adore her.

She moved up to NYC to study fashion design at FIT and ended up being successful as a model; appearing in editorials in Seventeen, Ebony, and Glamour.  She quickly associated herself with a seminal group of artists in Greenwich Village, such as Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stallone, and eventually married jazz musician Miles Davis, becoming his second wife in 1967.  Betty Davis was the one who introduced Miles to both Hendrix and Stallone, which resulted with Miles creating his hugely experimental album, Bitches Brew, and the birth of jazz fusion.  It was rumored that the reason her marriage to Miles was short lived was because of an affair with Hendrix however, we'll never know and she'll never tell.  She's generally a total bad-ass and I admire her a great deal.
info via Wikipedia

 

Betty Davis via Musthear.com

Miles and Betty Davis 1969. By Baron Wolman.

A couple more articles about Betty Davis: Bold Betty Davis, The Real Betty Davis, & The Beautiful Dichotomy of Betty Davis

Daily Outfit: 15

Dress and belt from Madewell, shoes from JCrew

Marfa, Texas

Conner and I took a long 4th of July weekend and drove up to see my folks in southwest New Mexico.  Since both of our parents live in that part of the country, we've been up and down the terribly flat and boring I-10 that cuts across west Texas, so this time we took a quick detour and headed to Marfa for the night. 

Despite the fact that almost everything was closed for July 4th, I had a good time and it's true, Marfa is adorable.  Settled in the early 1800's, the town has been the setting for the Marfa Army Airfield, artist Donald Judd and the Chianti Foundation, and the filming of Giant with Elizabeth Taylor.  I'm still leaving this little town on my "To See" list, but next time we'll have to go when there's some sort of festival and things are open.

I loved the colors of this building.

Where we stayed at the Thunderbird Hotel

Playing with shutter speed, right after a torrential downpour