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we're off to new york!
i hope to: leisurely spend time in a bookstore or coffee shop (enough time to doodle on our coffee cups), knit in the round, give gifts, eat some of my favorite foods, play scrabble, chat, buy some fabric for sofa pillows and runners, finish my book (julia child's memoir), and laugh.
i'm not sure i ever showed the couch we ended up getting. there was a floor model for sale at room & board and it made us open up to the idea of charcoal gray. the fabric (which is discontinued) has some brown in it, which i think warms it up a bit. plus, it looks great with our 70s orange velvet chairs. while in ny next week, i hope to stop by purl to pick out some faric for making pillows and a runner for our coffee table.
we've also been hanging up a lot of our artwork, including this print i received a few weeks ago from lisa s. (not to be confused with lisa lou s. our buddy from quito).
she also sent some other goodies, including russian chocolate wrapped in an illustration of a baby in a babushka. thank you lisa!
babooshka (based on the spelling of the kate bush song, i think) also happens to be the name of the place where i'm getting my hair cut today. (woohoo! otherwise, i'd need to start wearing a babushka.)
and in case you didn't know, in addition to a headscarf tied under one's chin, babushka means grandma in russian. it can also be used as a term of endearment. or to refer to mean old ladies who work for the government.
i will share more mail (and maybe vocabulary) later this week.
1.
you should see juno. today. buy your tickets now.
2.
you would look adorable riding this bike. (via joy)
3.
when considering where to live, you should consider each city's crafty to non-crafty ratio (aka the CNC ratio).
it is quite fun running into talented blog friends like stephanie outside a local fashion market and meeting cool artists like mike, whose work i previously admired on several design blogs.
crafty folks are amazing online, but they are even more awesome in person.
it may be a restaurant, but i can't help imagining that the inside looks like denitsa's home:
did you notice the hearts on the floor?
have a great weekend!
ps-thank you for agreeing to accompany me to sweden! tomorrow i'm going to start saving for shoes...
most days i wear flats, but for some reason the piles of snow outside make me want to wear heels.
any of the following will do:
the pixie market solo heel (found via the shiny squirrel),
the olot by chie mihara (red shoes are always appealing),
and my new favorite, the shoe i want in every style and color, asa westlund's high heeled clogs (found via emma). anyone want to join me on a shopping trip to sweden?
i am excited for the release of sea serpent and me, illustrated by catia chien. i love catia.
she also has some great new things in her shop.
i followed her her link to the nucleus site and found this adorable tee:
with artwork by jon klassen.
ps-thanks for saying i'm not self-centered.
pps-you can see my dressing room on cruststation.
i accidentally type risa first. does that make me self-centered?
speaking of self-centered, i wish that biggie would make me lunch every day! (warning: lunchinabox.net may steal hours of your day.)
bento boxes are the coolest.
this set is beautiful.
simple is good too.
typing this made me hungry. i need to go prepare myself a snack.
another one of my favorite childhood books is the best-loved doll by rebecca caudill. i tried taking photos of the cover of my copy, but it is so faded and torn that the photos were terrible. my version has a pink cover, which i think may be the original cover from the early 1960s.
it's the story of a little girl who is invited to a birthday party where each child is invited to bring a doll and prizes will be awarded for categories such as "best-dressed" and "oldest" doll. the main girl decides that she will bring her favorite doll, one that is not particularly old yet has matted hair and and patched cheeks from constant play.
i love to go back and re-read the books i loved as a child. even though i read these books hundreds of times, i always notice details i didn't as a girl (like the simple smiley faces on the girls).
i like that i was exposed to both traditional girly influences along with '70s progressive influences such as the free to be you and me record, where it's the boys playing with dolls and the girls who want to be athletes and firefighters. (can anyone else still sing every song from this album?) it's interesting how when reading the best-loved doll i never thought to myself, "wow! this book is really girly!" and yet i do remember thinking after listening to the song "william's doll" that it shouldn't be a big deal for william's parents to buy him a doll, even if he defies the lyrics of the song and decides not to be a father.
thanks to door sixteen, i now know that the designer who chose the color scheme for our bathroom was following a chic art deco trend. it makes me think our tiles may be original to our 1920's building.
(photo of ernest hemingway's florida bathroom taken by arlo617.)
