our household for the past week and two days has been hit simultaneously by an adult incidence of illness, with requisite puny days and schoolfree week. bless those year round schools. a week's a nice long time, and we could have done so much more. in my ideal freelance future, i can visualize a three day field trip (and i mean really, like a field with a trail and some trees in it or a field with some sheep in it) but reality intruded, unpleasantly, but was treated to many cups of hot tea.
therefore with these protestations, i must submit my second shared love installment a little late but with no less love. i don't give myself a break on anything else- i was still working (on things that will be felted and thus washed in really hot water) and cooking, etc, so i cheesed out on uptalking another something cool. but here it is.
song for today: yael naim's "new soul" - really too cute.
which fits in nicely with this week's very cute new friend: gossamer, of portland
i cast the net wide on a day when i felt a little puny and the smallest person in the house needed some out time. we managed to catch a beautiful sunny day in the 50s. i made a list from google maps of several yarn/fiber places i'd yet to visit; needing fiber, a needlefelting pad and a good shove towards just getting started on that already.
gossamer was our first stop, and i'm so glad it was. the window beckoned with fairies and skeins of lamb's pride in shades of green (and i'm a sucker for lamb's pride/lanaloft. confronted with a rainbow of them, i'm apt to grab a skein or two of some unlikely shade partly because it's just so darn useful. even more so now, but i'm getting ahead of myself) and once inside we were greeted with natural/ambient light and the warm sweet scent of beeswax. jewelry afore us, lamb's pride to my left, felting supplies aplenty, not to mention work on the walls and lots of books. and a cheery, chatty, knowledgeable proprietress busy at some work on a central table. cozy, without feeling small and homey without being run-down. all questions were answered amiably as i fumbled through wool fibers of several colors and flipped through sheets of all-wool felt, in fabulous shades. (and made in europe to their stringent children's safety standards!!)
sweater scraps, organized by color, and the lamb's pride too. i adore places that organize by color, my thriftshop trained eye is pleased and enjoys browsing that way. the (local) beeswax was the source of the gorgeous scent and many bars stood proudly on the shelves.
i also got to touch a piece of nuno felt/scarf and touching it immediately made thirty or forty new ideas scan across my brain.
needless to say, this was an enjoyable shop that will no doubt become one of my favorites. i like the neighborhood (e burnside) but don't make it that way very often. as i'll be out and about more due to upcoming employment, i will certainly make a stop to visit. and i see on the gossamer website that there is an open crafting time, which if i ever have a tuesday evening to myself, i would like to visit.
gossamer
also has an etsy outpost, on which she sells her beautiful and colorful dutch merino felt. i love how she's got the color groups assembled, and i do believe that she's one of those darling shop owners that would put together a custom set for a buyer.
however, should one make it to portland, her shop is worth the visit- it's part craft/education supply shop, part boutique, part gallery. beautiful felted paintings line the walls- the shading is incredible.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
and of course my visit finally precipitated a felting flood, which is kind of closing in on the finish to my mad de-stash. i didn't realize de-stashing takes so long, but it's okay. the new stash does call, but this needlefelting thing is so awesome that it's a huge distraction. at this point, i'd rather felt, but there's no more felting to do. only buttons. which don't thrill me, but i have to be very serious about as it's such an important part of the piece. i have some new pouches and purses which will appear in my etsy shop as a trickle over the next several days (after buttons and photos, that is).
Showing posts with label etsy shop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label etsy shop. Show all posts
2009/02/23
2009/02/15
sharing the love
so, it's valentine's weekend and all; and as over all the consumer holidays as i'd like to be, it's also headed full-tilt towards the end of winter and spring is afoot. we walked to the grocery store yesterday (fantastic exercise when you're walking back in a hurry to start dinner and your re-usable bags are strapped variously about your person) and i had to stop and pet the fuzzy little buds that my husband calls pussywillow. soft, and sweet, and it's enough to inspire a little lovey-ness even into me. (i'm usually so distracted at making that i'm not all fluff and ruffles with the loveyness. unless you're a kitty.)
so, having some good feelings, i'd like to share them around. today, we'll be sharing the love with someone i met at the craft/art show (still working on that "craft" word) last week:
jose klein.
jose (and his too-cute family) were representing at the show last weekend with some plates. i didn't think much of it at first, like, "oh, plates." plates for eating, decorated plates like you see on late-night infomercials capitalizing upon the success of our most recently elected president, decorated plates that you see in terrible parade magazine and coupon inserts in the newspaper, china you got from some second hand shop and forgot and put in the microwave even though there's gold decoration on?
however, when i took a second to stop by his table a couple hours later, i was quite pleasantly surprised. by this:
"RUTH!" i shouted, having some sort of 13 year old riot grrl, who hungrily read ms magazine, and our bodies, ourselves, and naomi wolf and gloria steinem and even dworkin and mackennon (the last two not with complete agreement, but with interest anyway).
(see jose's Ruth Bader Ginsburg page here. don't worry, his approach to the english language is a little more professional than mine.)
here, at this craftshow in our unexpected basement location, i'd found another nerd. not the kind of nerd who made me wish that i'd brought my 12-sided die, but more like the kind that made me wish i'd finished my polysci minor. (it's okay, as the learning continues, and i still got so much valuable class time with the esteemed dr. saliyeh)
immediately i asked, but alas, no sandy. if i had a pair of plates honoring ruth bader ginsburg and sandra day o'connor, i would need a boudoir. a room that had my own private mirror so when i fortified myself for the day, i could look in the mirror and see these women over my shoulders and have a greater handgrip on something like resolve. on something like inspiration.
i digress, and jose even said that the pair, while not complete at this moment, could be arranged.
on his etsy profile, jose refers to a childhood tradition of plates and markers and reclaiming this- i see it as revisiting that prior, more innocent(?) experience of creation with all this baggage of accumulated experience and knowledge. i am particularly interested in those of us who revisit things we did in our childhoods; it makes for a long evolution. my great grandmother taught me about poetry and crochet when i was little, she crocheted constantly and was the only one of my relations that kept any sort of notebook as far as a knew/know. when we repeat these things we learned at such young ages, they are markings of our passage, cave paintings on the walls of our lives, if one will.
i also see a connection between drawings, oftentimes colorful and interestingly rendered due to the background of in-court drawings. court illustration is so obscure that looking up the history of the practice is somewhat frustrating to do on an "on the fly, while writing" manner. i know i've seen many many of them and am tempted to chalk it up to the practice of drawing the proceedings in a pre-video media era for wider dissemination and posterity. perhaps with a hint of the human tendency towards political cartooning.
but more on topic, part of the goal jose states is the effort "to put faces on the names buried in law school textbooks" and for that matter, the names and dates that we all ran roughshod over in highschool and college assorted history, government, and politcal science classes. these things that affect our every day lives, whether we realize it or not, these things woven into the social fabric of the time and place we live are as mundane and un-thought of as the plates we eat our food from. yet, one could argue, we'd be a great deal less civilized than we are now without them- with salad in our laps and a great deal of disorder.
in addition to images featuring supreme court justices, jose also makes plates representing different facets of law, focusing on "a set of important Interstate Commerce Clause cases, a set about punitive damages, the First Amendment and a set about executive detentions." this may all sound like dry stuff, but as previously mentioned, these things shape our daily lives and often go unnoticed. some of jose's images on the first amendment and executive detentions are somewhat chilling and thought provoking, to which i say "good!"
these plates remind me greatly of a show i covered in brief while i was writing little blurbs for the houston press. julie green does plates that she exhibits as a collection that she calls "the last supper". painted upon these plates, sometimes in pictures, sometimes in words, she features the published requests of death row inmates' final meals.
which is also quite interesting, in and of itself. i'm interested in this idea of plates, and by extension food, being so easily taken for granted; a symptom of a largely comfortable culture, survival wise. even the most foodie types among us who will spend half an hour in rapture over a cayenne accented dark chocolate truffle (who? me!) take it relatively for granted that we will have food over which to obsess and triumph. we take it relatively for granted, upon assumption, that the meal we're currently eating will not be our last. we take it relatively for granted, upon assumption that the products we buy are safe, that we can say what we like without being spirited away to some place either overdark or overbright in my imagination, for punishment.
to learn more about jose's work, background on cases and all kinds of other interesting thing, visit his blog at http://www.learnedhandmadeplates.blogspot.com/ and his website at www.joseklein.com
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
i think sundays are a good day for sharing the love. look for this to become a weekly feature, like our weekly family dinner. i'd love to invite you to the latter, but we've only got four mis-matched barstools and one very tiny kitchen.
on the menu tonight? a very lowbrow american feast in honor of presidents' day- buffalo chicken dip, salad, veggies, some of my artisan bread and for dessert? in honor of the washingtonian whopper about the cherry tree, individual cherry pies, in tiny pie pans i've never used. we'll see how that goes.
so, having some good feelings, i'd like to share them around. today, we'll be sharing the love with someone i met at the craft/art show (still working on that "craft" word) last week:
jose klein.
jose (and his too-cute family) were representing at the show last weekend with some plates. i didn't think much of it at first, like, "oh, plates." plates for eating, decorated plates like you see on late-night infomercials capitalizing upon the success of our most recently elected president, decorated plates that you see in terrible parade magazine and coupon inserts in the newspaper, china you got from some second hand shop and forgot and put in the microwave even though there's gold decoration on?
however, when i took a second to stop by his table a couple hours later, i was quite pleasantly surprised. by this:
"RUTH!" i shouted, having some sort of 13 year old riot grrl, who hungrily read ms magazine, and our bodies, ourselves, and naomi wolf and gloria steinem and even dworkin and mackennon (the last two not with complete agreement, but with interest anyway).
(see jose's Ruth Bader Ginsburg page here. don't worry, his approach to the english language is a little more professional than mine.)
here, at this craftshow in our unexpected basement location, i'd found another nerd. not the kind of nerd who made me wish that i'd brought my 12-sided die, but more like the kind that made me wish i'd finished my polysci minor. (it's okay, as the learning continues, and i still got so much valuable class time with the esteemed dr. saliyeh)
immediately i asked, but alas, no sandy. if i had a pair of plates honoring ruth bader ginsburg and sandra day o'connor, i would need a boudoir. a room that had my own private mirror so when i fortified myself for the day, i could look in the mirror and see these women over my shoulders and have a greater handgrip on something like resolve. on something like inspiration.
i digress, and jose even said that the pair, while not complete at this moment, could be arranged.
on his etsy profile, jose refers to a childhood tradition of plates and markers and reclaiming this- i see it as revisiting that prior, more innocent(?) experience of creation with all this baggage of accumulated experience and knowledge. i am particularly interested in those of us who revisit things we did in our childhoods; it makes for a long evolution. my great grandmother taught me about poetry and crochet when i was little, she crocheted constantly and was the only one of my relations that kept any sort of notebook as far as a knew/know. when we repeat these things we learned at such young ages, they are markings of our passage, cave paintings on the walls of our lives, if one will.
i also see a connection between drawings, oftentimes colorful and interestingly rendered due to the background of in-court drawings. court illustration is so obscure that looking up the history of the practice is somewhat frustrating to do on an "on the fly, while writing" manner. i know i've seen many many of them and am tempted to chalk it up to the practice of drawing the proceedings in a pre-video media era for wider dissemination and posterity. perhaps with a hint of the human tendency towards political cartooning.
but more on topic, part of the goal jose states is the effort "to put faces on the names buried in law school textbooks" and for that matter, the names and dates that we all ran roughshod over in highschool and college assorted history, government, and politcal science classes. these things that affect our every day lives, whether we realize it or not, these things woven into the social fabric of the time and place we live are as mundane and un-thought of as the plates we eat our food from. yet, one could argue, we'd be a great deal less civilized than we are now without them- with salad in our laps and a great deal of disorder.
in addition to images featuring supreme court justices, jose also makes plates representing different facets of law, focusing on "a set of important Interstate Commerce Clause cases, a set about punitive damages, the First Amendment and a set about executive detentions." this may all sound like dry stuff, but as previously mentioned, these things shape our daily lives and often go unnoticed. some of jose's images on the first amendment and executive detentions are somewhat chilling and thought provoking, to which i say "good!"
these plates remind me greatly of a show i covered in brief while i was writing little blurbs for the houston press. julie green does plates that she exhibits as a collection that she calls "the last supper". painted upon these plates, sometimes in pictures, sometimes in words, she features the published requests of death row inmates' final meals.
which is also quite interesting, in and of itself. i'm interested in this idea of plates, and by extension food, being so easily taken for granted; a symptom of a largely comfortable culture, survival wise. even the most foodie types among us who will spend half an hour in rapture over a cayenne accented dark chocolate truffle (who? me!) take it relatively for granted that we will have food over which to obsess and triumph. we take it relatively for granted, upon assumption, that the meal we're currently eating will not be our last. we take it relatively for granted, upon assumption that the products we buy are safe, that we can say what we like without being spirited away to some place either overdark or overbright in my imagination, for punishment.
to learn more about jose's work, background on cases and all kinds of other interesting thing, visit his blog at http://www.learnedhandmadeplates.blogspot.com/ and his website at www.joseklein.com
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
i think sundays are a good day for sharing the love. look for this to become a weekly feature, like our weekly family dinner. i'd love to invite you to the latter, but we've only got four mis-matched barstools and one very tiny kitchen.
on the menu tonight? a very lowbrow american feast in honor of presidents' day- buffalo chicken dip, salad, veggies, some of my artisan bread and for dessert? in honor of the washingtonian whopper about the cherry tree, individual cherry pies, in tiny pie pans i've never used. we'll see how that goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
