Eleventy

Cross-stitch iPhone case

2012-02-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

Here’s a fun project I did over the holidays. As a gift I received a do-it-yourself iPhone case made to be cross-stitched with your own design—how cool is that? It's basically a plastic case with a grid of holes for stitching.

People who know me might know that I have a penchant for big old sailing ships, the pirate-y-er the better. So here's what I made:

I made blank grids as a template for myself so I could sketch out the design. After a few iterations, I was happy with it and got stitching.

There's something about the Christmas holidays that just makes me crave a needlework project! In fact I am pretty sure my in-laws assume I am cranking on some project at all times...While I wish I were that industrious, it's just that we mostly them on the holidays, they almost never see me without a needle in my hand. :-) In any case (oops, no pun intended), it was a perfectly-timed gift!

Skinny chalkboard from full-length mirror

2012-01-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

I decided recently that I needed a good-sized chalkboard for my work area, but my wall space was limited to a single skinny wall between a door and a window. To maximize the narrow space I needed a long, tall chalkboard, so I made this one from a full-length mirror and some chalkboard contact paper.

When we moved into our apartment, the previous tenants had left an over-the-door full length mirror. Noticing that it was just the right size for my sliver of a wall (and noticing also that it was free), I started researching how chalkboard-ify it. I was worried chalkboard paint would come off the glass too easily when scraped with chalk. Contact paper seemed like the ideal material, and it turned out that, yes, they do make one that has a chalkboard surface. Reviews on Amazon confirmed that as long as it’s mounted on a very smooth surface, it accepts chalk and erases pretty well. One review also gave a tip about prepping the surface which I'll explain below.

The most difficult thing about applying the contact paper was laying it down without any bubbles or dust specks underneath. Since the glass is so smooth, bubbles and other aberrations would be very noticeable. And since it’s not porous at all, you couldn’t work out the bubbles without peeling the paper all the way back to the bubble to let the air out (and then laying it back down without creating another bubble). On such a large surface, you could keep doing that for hours.

I developed a pretty good method for laying the contact paper down in sections so I could make sure one section was good and smooth before moving on to the next, minimizing the re-dos.

Here's a visual summary of the process from beginning to end, and I'll follow with instructions in case you want the details:

First I cut a piece of contact paper 1/8" larger than the inside dimensions of the frame. I wanted a tiny bit extra all the way around to tuck under the frame, leaving no slivers of exposed mirror around the edges.

Then, I sliced the backing only into sections so I could pull off only part at a time. (In order to do this without cutting the contact paper, you have to pull back part of the backing, cut it, lay it back down, and then do the other side—that keeps part of it anchored so you can lay it back down in the same place.)

I strategized how to divide the sections and came up with the plan in the top-right pic. I knew it would be easiest to keep the thing centered and straight if I worked from the inside out. I wanted that first center section to be small, so that I could easily reposition the contact paper until it was in the right place. I also wanted to lay the outside edges last so I could tuck them in as I went around.

Starting with the center strip, I pulled off the backing, positioned the contact paper, and smoothed out the section, working out any bubbles. Then I pulled off the backing to the next section over and laid it down slowly, a half-inch at a time, continuously rubbing back and forth to make sure there were no bubbles. Once I did all middle sections I moved on to the outside strips, using a paint scraper to tuck the edges under the mirror frame as I went.

Once I had a perfectly-applied chalkboard surface, I followed the Amazon customer's recommendation and prepped the board. All you have to do is color in the whole thing with the side of a piece of chalk, and then erase it. Having that base layer of chalk on the surface makes it easier to write on and erase later. It's a dusty process though, so you may want to do it outside or put down a sheet like I did.

Then I chalked my first design! (With the obvious inspiration of Dana Tanamachi...LOVE her.) Okay now, time for some ideas!

How to make and hang a 100 lb sculpture (with no casualties)

2012-01-29T15:54:00.000-08:00

NOTE: So I composed this post a long time ago, and I just saw it was marked as a draft. Not sure what happened there—sorry if this creates a repeat post, but I'm going to go ahead and publish it again!

Early in the life of this blog, I posted about an inspiring artist named Aaron Kramer. Well, Aaron recently sent me photos of his latest project, and it is quite an impressive piece. His flickr set about the sculpture, which was commissioned for a Renaissance Hotel in DC, is particularly interesting because it documents the process of creating the piece from start to finish, complete with sketches, in-progress photos, and even videos. Since the thing weighs a hundred pounds, and it's diameter equals about twice the height of a human, Aaron faced several logistical challenges. How (and where) to make the giant hoops, how to transport them from his Santa Monica studio, literally across the country, and how to safely assemble it on site, all required solutions unique to this particular project. And on top of all of that, Aaron's vision was that the hoops move, rotating within each other in a natural way, so he had to engineer a systems of bearings to facilitate that.

Here is a sampling of the in-progress photos, and for a full narrative and many more pics, visit the complete set on flicker.

Home is where the 27-inch monitor is

2011-10-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

Wow has it been that long since I last posted here? It has been tough settling into a new creative routine…moving can be very disruptive, especially when you're as easily distracted as I am! So what's happened since March? Well in short, our temporary move to San Francisco became permanent (when Mike's job did). We found an apartment over the summer and moved our stuff from Texas, and I've spent the last few months settling us in and looking for work.

How about, for my first post from our new San Francisco residence, a little housewarming party where I show off my new workspace? It won't take long—moving from Texas to SF requires some downsizing! But I love my new little nook beside the stairs:

Everything I need is within reach. And it's impossible to feel cramped anyway when a look to your left brings you this incredible view…

But the two best things about my new creative space are: one, my new 27-inch Apple Cinema Display (I can't believe how long I spent working within the confines of my laptop screen!); and two, the awesome desk I scored at the Alameda Flea Market.

The vendor told me it came from an old post office, which was verified by a stamp on the underside. I love the "standard issue" gray paint color of the wooden base, the utilitarian brass drawer pulls and screwed-on metal trim, and most of all, the incredible patina of the worn greenish vinyl that covers the top surface. (Not least because it means I don't have to worry if I make a mark on it!)

So now you have a picture in your mind of where I'm writing from, or when I don't post for another six months, where I'm not writing from! :-)

More of my day job: Artwork for Camille Cortinas' latest album, Taken Apart

2011-02-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited to share this latest project of mine! Some background: In the last few years, I reconnected with an old high school friend who had turned out to be a talented and successful singer/songwriter, Camille Cortinas. And, since I had turned out to be a designer, we started working on projects together. She was kind enough to hire me to do her band's album art a few years ago, then t-shirts to help launch her solo career, and now, her first solo album. It's called Taken Apart, and it's available for download at CD Baby as of yesterday. (It will be distributed next month in physical form and other digital outlets.)

So I don't have a printed disc yet, but I can share the artwork. Camille didn't want to create a bunch of excess packaging, which I was totally on board with, so we decided on a simple 2-sided cardboard sleeve:

front of sleeve


back of sleeve

disc label

When we started the project, the album didn't have a title yet, but Camille told me the theme was evolution, change, growth, that type of thing. The image of the nesting dolls just sort of came to me, as good ideas sometimes do when you're lucky! We explored a few other concepts, but decided we liked the dolls idea best. Originally we considered doing blank dolls, which they sell for crafters to paint their own designs onto. I liked the graphic simplicity, and also was having trouble finding a painted set that I liked. They all had a kind of fake-folksy feel too them, hard to explain, but just cheesy-looking. But then I found this random Russian shop with literally thousands of these dolls (called Matryoshka dolls), and the guy had this one set of vintage dolls I just fell in love with. They weren't quite like all his really old antique ones – they were probably from the 60s or 70s. And they also weren't like the contemporary fake-folksy-cheesy ones I was finding everywhere. They had much more authenticity, with kind of a retro feel, and fantastic, bright, almost neon colors. We snatched them up and staged a photo shoot in Camille's dining room. Camille looked beautiful, our photographer was her talented sister Megan Cortinas, and I stood by lining up the dolls, fidgeting with the lighting, and generally getting in Megan's way as art directors do :-) The images came out great, I finished up the artwork, and all that was left was to fill in the title. When Camille emailed me and said they had come up with the name Taken Apart, I couldn't think of anything more perfect to complete the concept.

I can't wait to see it on the shelves! I got to hear early versions of some of the tracks, and they sound wonderful. If you like beautiful female vocals with pleasant folk arrangements, you should really check it out. You can preview and buy the songs at CD Baby, and fan Camille on Facebook for the details of the big release next month.

Reinventing an old book

2011-02-16T23:27:00.000-08:00

So here's a fun project I've been meaning to post. Last fall was the birthday of one of my besties, a gal who has a thing for kitties. Well way back in the summer, I had run across an old library book at an antique store – a children's book from the seventies called I Like Cats. This two-dollar treasure featured hilariously cheesy photos of kids and kittens, paired with profundities like “Cats are fun. I like them.” I knew that in some form or another, it was going to become a gift for my kitten-loving friend, so I bought it without much of a plan.

I'm sure at some point this book had a dust jacket, but by now it was long gone, leaving a blank surface of that plasticky linen texture that certain old books have, like enamel-painted cloth. That shiny mustard-colored canvas was begging for embellishment, preferably something in an equally jarring color. A hot-pink kitten, of course!

Now the ideal method for an application like this would be screen printing, but the elaborate screen-preparation process only really pays off if you're doing a whole run of a design, and I didn't have any immediate plans for plastering kitten silhouettes on things. (Though now that I say that, I'm not sure why not... :-) ) So, I opted to make a stencil out of contact paper, and use it to paint the design on in acrylic. I ran into a bit of a glitch along the way, but I think it still came out well.

First, I found pictures of cute kittens on the internet. Just about the easiest thing there is to do, really! Though, I did have to limit myself to ones that would produce an easily read silhouette shape. I selected the one with the best outside contours, printed it out to size, and used my lightbox to trace the outline onto the contact paper.

I can't remember why, but I decided to stick the contact paper to my clear cutting mat, and put the picture underneath. I think it was because with the backing attached, the contact paper wasn't laying out flat enough – it was a scrap that had been stored rolled up for a while. I then cut the shape out with an Xacto, peeled up the stencil, and pressed it down again on the book.

I applied a few layers of acrylic paint until I had a nice even coat. And then I found my glitch: the stencil hadn't really adhered very well, and I had major bleeding under. I'm not sure if this would have happened or not if I hadn't stuck and un-stuck the contact paper. It may just be a function of the bumpy texture of the surface of the book. Next time I will just go ahead and get proper stenciling supplies. Anyway, the kitten was suddenly much, much fluffier than I had intended, and in a very messy-looking way.

All I could do was go with it, and paint all the edges over by hand, so that it at least looked neat. This rather negated the benefit of using a stencil, because in the end I had to form the edges of the shape by hand. But at least the center part was a nice flat coat, which would have been hard to achieve without the stencil which allowed me to use broad, unidirectional brush strokes. And, since kittens come in varying degrees of fluffiness, the resulting shape was still entirely believable. But it's a good thing I didn't start out with a Persian!

Colonial Homestead vintage dinnerware

2011-01-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

I should begin with a confession: I have a dishes fetish. My former roommate can attest, if I run across a cute set of cups or some novel plates at a garage sale or thrift shop, my impulse is to hoard. (Me, returning from an estate sale: “Look, I found some fondue plates!” Kim: “Neat...how often is it, exactly, that you make fondue?” Me: “See, they're divided into little sections!” Kim: “Do we even have a fondue pot?” Me: “It's a whole matching set, of ten!”...)

Having said that, I really think this set of dinnerware I found at an alley-way antique sale in the Castro is a great find:

Each dish displays a deliciously kitschy illustration of a scene from an Early American home. The dinner plates and serving platters show an entire room, and each smaller dish features a vignette. The details and illustration style are just adorable.

The set I got is incomplete, but that just gives me more to find! Here's what I got:

Serving platter with handles

Bowl

Saucers and dessert plates

Cups and milk pitcher

The stamp on the bottom of some of the pieces identifies the pattern as “Colonial Homestead” by Royal China, and a little searching told me that they were sold in the 1950s. Further research revealed that some of the unstamped pieces in the set I found are actually from a similar Royal pattern called “Old Curiosity Shop,” which is often mistaken for “Colonial Homestead” – but they go so well together I plan to collect both and use them as one set. (You can see the differences in the borders: the saucer on the right pictured above, and the dessert plate on the left, with the illustrated hinges and pulls instead of wooden planks, are “Old Curiosity Shop.”)

Dana Tanamachi's chalk installations

2011-01-20T12:19:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine from design school sent me a link to the work of Dana Tanamachi, who also graduated from our same program, Communication Design at The University of North Texas. She does these beautiful chalk installations, for businesses, events, or even inside your house for you!

I just love the delicious lettering and the intricate details. It looks so perfect, and still totally hand-made.

Apparently she's gotten lots of blog coverage over the past week or so – it's so awesome to see a fellow alumna out in the world, creating amazing typography, and getting some nice attention for it too!

I also enjoyed this time-lapse video of her doing that last piece from start to finish:

Thanks for the link, Megan!

The Museum of Craft and Design: Transference

2011-01-18T11:53:00.000-08:00

As I said in my last post, San Francisco is a great place for crafting inspiration. In fact, they have an entire Museum of Craft and Design. It happens that they are between buildings at the moment, but the museum is hosting a series of “pop-up” exhibits around town. My first weekend here, I discovered it was the last weekend of their exhibit Transference, an installation by artists Andy Paiko and Ethan Rose.

Images from Portland's Museum of Contemporary Craft, who previously hosted the installation

The installation is a collection of glass bowls in various sizes, each one mounted with a mechanical arm. They create sound the same way you would if you rubbed the moistened rim of a wine glass. It's also similar to a short-lived musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin called the “armonica” (not to be confused with a Cockney harmonica :-) ).

Here's a video that shows how the two artists, a glass-blower and a kinetic-sound-installation artist, collaborated to create the piece. You can also hear the sound that you would experience at the exhibit: a hypnotic overlay of the bowls singing at random intervals, one or two or maybe three at a time, and the collective mechanical whir of all the contraptions in the room.

I'll be staying tuned (haha, no pun intended!) to see what and where the museum pops up next.

New look, new city, new year!

2011-01-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to present my new blog template, featuring a larger area for photos, some new gizmos over there on the right, and an overall clean look which I think is appropriate for a visual-based blog. (If you receive my posts via email or in a reader, head over to the site and check it out!)

Also, can you tell these bytes of blogging are coming at you from the West Coast again? This time a from little further north. Though it wasn't even a year ago that we moved from Los Angeles back to my native Dallas, TX, I'm now broadcasting from our new apartment in San Francisco...never a dull moment for the Duckworths! The Bay Area has so much offer, specifically in relation to modern crafting and the arts, so I should have some new inspiration for blog posts.

Here's to new adventures!

Folding Typography Advent Calendar

2010-11-26T11:16:00.000-08:00

(Note: my template design is messed up for technical reasons – please ignore! Unless you subscribe in a reader...then you shouldn't notice any difference, in which case please ignore this "please ignore" :-) )

So about a month ago I hatched this idea for an Advent calendar where the flaps actually turn into the numbers counting up to Christmas. I finally got the chance to work on the production of it, and I finished just in time to get it in my shop for December 1st delivery.

So when you get it, it's a blank page (with cuts), and as you fold, the numbers are revealed:

It's made of two layers of paper, both of which are screen-printed in red ink. The backing is a thick stock with a solid square of red. The top layer is thinner (so it folds easily), and the design is printed on the back.

The purpose of the solid red is two-fold (no pun intended): it provides a color to show through when you fold the flaps, but also it masks the design from showing through the white page on top. You can see the red lines faintly through the page, but if it's back by solid red, it hides the lines.

On the top page, I printed not only the lines and circles that are part of the number design, but also guide marks to show me where to score for the folds and where to cut the slits to tuck the flaps into.

I scored the folds with the blunt end of a small crochet hook (because that's what I had handy that wouldn't tear the page):

And I made cuts with a regular Xacto:

The most fun of all of this, though, was designing the numbers. They actually "work" without the red and white stripes – those are just to make the design more fun. All you need are the cuts and folds, and it turns out to be a pretty cool typeface. Some day I will finish the alphabet and make a whole font!

Oh Happy Day!

2010-11-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

In addition to it being my first birthday as a Grown-Up (if being thirty is enough to qualify you), it's one week and a day from the first birthday of Eleventy's Etsy shop!

It's no wonder I have cake on the brain, as do some other shop-owners it seems...

Adorable Chocolate Chunk Cake illustration by shownanonna

Marie Antoinette Print by 3LambsGraphics

Brilliant Upcycled Tin Bundt Cake Light by BootsNGus

French Country Cake Stand by TrueLoveHomeDecor

Deceivingly tempting Spice Cake Plush Cupcake by cherylasmith

Have a happy day!

Is it still Halloween...?

2010-10-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

I've had two Halloween posts in my head all month, and for no reason at all I've been putting off writing them up. Last chance, I better get on it!!

First, my BFF in LA sent me some adorable photos of how they spookied-up their entry way this year. A while back, they painted the hallway light gray with beautiful white birch trees. They were inspired by the recent wall decal trend, but they created the design themselves (using masking tape and paint) for a fraction of the cost. For Halloween, she turned the design into a haunted forest, complete with bats, cobwebs, and jack-o-lanterns:

The brilliance of this, besides its incredible cuteness, is that she created the additions with white contact paper, so she can simply pull them off later. She told me she already has plans for snow and tree ornaments to add for Christmas...

The other thing I wanted to share was a cooking project I took on this month. I was invited to a Halloween-themed dinner party, and I had a bunch of butternut squash from the produce share I belong to that I needed to use up. I roasted it one night just for a side dish, and then used the leftovers to make homemade raviolis. To make them fit the theme, I made them round, and carved little jack-o-lantern faces in them with an exacto knife. They turned out very cute:

And here they are with their delicious sage butter sauce:

I pretty much followed this recipe, which is a slight adaptation of this recipe, except I cooled the ravioli after they were cooked, carved the faces, and then reheated them before plating them with the sauce. (I had to carve them after they were boiled so that the filling wouldn't just seep out. I reheated them by sprinkling with water, covering with plastic wrap, and steaming them in the microwave for a minute or so.)

Okay, I feel better now that I got all these pics up. (I had almost resigned myself to ignoring them completely... bad blogger!)

Happy Halloween!

Urban Bazaar a success!

2010-10-03T16:01:00.001-07:00

After I get some sleep :-) I'll post more details, but the Bazaar was a total blast. Thanks to all who came out!

Farm-fresh Pearpourri

2010-09-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I joined this food co-op and local produce share called Urban Acres. It's kind of like a subscription for fruits and vegetables: every two weeks I show up at the store and they give me a big bin of whatever is fresh, local, and in season.

The only challenge has been keeping up with eating everything before it spoils, and for the most part, it's been way easier than I expected. For one thing, there's always the freezer. But also, I have discovered a great way to deal with some of the occasional fruit overload: slice it, dry it, and keep it around as homemade air-freshener! Here's what I did recently with a pear back-log that had been collecting in my crisper drawer:

This is a mix of different varieties of pear, but most of them were Asian pears, which happen to be more mild. So even though the fragrance isn't quite as strong, they are still quite beautiful. And while I was actually drying them in the oven, the smell was amazing.

Here's the steps I followed, collected from tips I found around the web:

Slice the fruit about 1/8" thick. (The exact thickness isn't as important as getting them as even and uniform as possible.)
Arrange in a single layer on sheets of parchment paper (or baking sheets) and bake in a 250º oven for a couple of hours, until no longer moist at all.
Allow to cool for a few more hours, and put in a sealed container with a bunch of salt to keep it fresh. You can also add your spices at this point – cloves, cinnamon, etc.

You can keep it sealed up for a long time, and put it out whenever you want. Or even better, simmer some on the stove with a few spices, and it fills your whole house with the most lovely smell.

By the way, all my Dallas readers need to check out the produce share program at Urban Acres whenever you have a chance. I love it because I never have to decide what to cook that week: the bin tells me. Also it inspires me to try out new recipes, because there's inevitably one or two things in there that I don't normally cook very often. And for those that don't live near their main location in Oak Cliff, they have pick-up spots all around town. (And if you aren't in Dallas it's likely that you can find something similar in your area if you do some digging. If you know of one already, post a link in the comments!)

Eleventy joins the Book of Faces

2010-09-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

The upcoming Bazaar has inspired me to get all my ducks in a row with my "online presence," since I'll be promoting my Etsy shop and this blog to lots of new faces.

To this end, I've created a facebook page, because, you know, that's important. I'm seven fans shy of getting my own facebook URL (probably will go for facebook.com/eleventyhandmade). So, friend me! I just might offer a special coupon for my first twenty-five fans... (That's the minimum for the URL.)

Also, check out my profile pic for a sneak peak of my new look, which will eventually make its way to my Etsy shop header, and this blog. (Same logo, new colors.)

Haven't yet decided if The Twitter will be on the horizon for me. What do you guys think?

Update: I did get facebook.com/EleventyHandmade – go check it out!

Octoproject (Work in Progress)

2010-09-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

So I'm in the middle of R&D for this flat-pack-able sculpture of an octopus, inspired by those pendant lamps you see all over that are made of twisted panels of plastic. Still working on the design of it, but I think I may have found a local fabricator to help me make it...

It's basically just eight of these, folded and tabbed together:

I'll post updates as I get it further along! I may even sell it at the bazaar if I can get it together in time, with an optional light kit to make it work as a lamp...

Urban Bazaar!

2010-09-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited about this. I've been gearing up for participating in this very cool craft fair in my neighborhood, and now it's just a couple of weeks away!

Make sure and come by to visit me: October 2 & 3.

Things Organized Neatly

2010-08-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

So my blogging's been spotty lately, and the main legitimate excuse (i.e. aside from laziness) that I have is that I've been hard at work getting our house in order from the move. I love a move for that – the chance to reassess and reorganized every one of your possessions. I'm in the home stretch now (no pun intended), so it was great to get a final boost of inspiration from this fantastic tumblr feed, Things Organized Neatly. I'll just say, it is Things in the broadest sense, but that they are Organized Neatly is inarguable...

Thanks, Melissa!

Typography Tuesday: TTBOOK Font Episode

2010-08-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

My local public radio station airs an excellent program called To The Best Of Our Knowledge, and this week they devoted an hour to fonts (mp3 here). They interview the designers of Gotham, the font used by President Obama, and Verdana, the font developed by Microsoft for the Internet (and which Ikea infamously adopted in place of Futura last year, to the chagrin of many vocal typophiles). There is also an interesting discussion of whether the single font on the Kindle, Caecilia, homogenizes the reader's experience.

(Ikea image from here.)

Back online

2010-07-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

So I've had my Etsy shop on vacation mode for the past couple months during the move, and I am pleased to say I'm now taking orders again!

I have lots of more interesting things I want to share, and I'm waiting at the car dealership with a bunch of time to spin some posts, but sadly I copied the wrong photo library to my computer before leaving the house, so I don't have any of my pictures to show. Oh well, another day!

Decorating with books

2010-07-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

One thing we have a lot of (and I mean a lot) is books. I have my husband to thank/blame for that – he's a writer and he can't help himself. I'd say he brings home a couple new ones a week, on average.

Personally, I consider it an infinite supply of decorating material. I love to decorate with books. I am a big fan of this blog which has a Bookcase of the Day post about every week.

My mom was in town a couple weeks ago to help us unpack into our new (again) house, and we had fun creating a built-in bookshelf wall in the breakfast nook. (We simply removed the doors from the cabinets, and lined the shelves with about half of Mike's book collection.) I'm feeling too lazy to take pictures of it right now, so I'll post a before and after later. Maybe I'll submit it to be a bookcase of the day!

Jiggity-jig!

2010-07-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

I just got the keys to our house today! I went by to visit her, and she doesn't look a day older...

(For anyone who doesn't keep up with every detail of my personal life for some reason: We moved from Dallas to LA two years ago, one month before the world got its economic panties in a wad, couldn't sell our house, had to rent it out, ended up moving back to Dallas right as our tenants were moving out, and tomorrow, we move back in! So it will be kind of like the old Steven Wright joke in reverse, or on a different scale, or something ... just click, he tells it better.)

I think it's safe to say I'll be obsessing about redecorating for the coming weeks. When I see a sight like this, my heart palpitates and I start to drool a little:

All that space that needs my love and attention!

I was especially excited to see the master bathroom again. Shortly after I moved in with my husband, we gutted it and I got to design it from scratch. Now I get to put my thumbprints over the whole place...

Mostly, this afternoon was sweet reunion, but there was a little bit of what every owner fears when they rent their home. Namely, that you walk in the kitchen to find one of the cabinet doors split from its hinges, and then discover the rest of it laying in the corner of the bedroom.

All in all, not bad, considering.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to clicking my heels three times some more.

Fiona Banner installation at the Tate

2010-06-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday during my morning skim of favorite blog feeds, this photograph stopped me dead in my scrolling, and I am not being dramatic, I had to catch my breath.

When I was little I would have these crazy dreams of being in an enormous, impossibly deep indoor swimming pool, and I would discover that there was a giant whale, a huge dark silent beast, gliding below the surface. That was the feeling I remembered.

Harrier and Jaguar 2010 by Fiona Banner (photo by the Tate); found via but does it float.

Hilarious: Catalog Living

2010-06-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

I was just turned onto this hysterical blog called Catalog Living.

"A look into the exciting lives of the people who live in your catalogs." Brilliant!

Here's a sample post from the other day.

Elaine was not amused by Gary’s passive-aggressive response to her request to “garnish the cocktails.”

Visit the blog on tumblr, and prepare to waste some time. I hope they do a book!

Thanks, Jamie!