postcard set winner

thanks to everyone who took the time to write a comment and share their book suggestions. i wrote everyone's name down on little strips of paper and had jeremy ceremoniously pick a name out of knit cap while i made that drum roll sound (are you doing it now) and he picked......

squidinkie! thanks!!

via peralton

i love these! by hayley carmo on flickr and etsy....

Here also is a list of the recommended reading left in the comments for you to check out. i wish i had more time for reading. it seems like i'll never have the time for everything. i think i decided to listen to Middlesex since it's been on my list for awhile and three people recommended it. here are the others.....
The Year of Magical Thinking
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The Learners by Chip Kidd

Middlesex
Madonnas of Leningrad
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G
Dharma Punx by Noah Levine
Alice in Wonderland
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I wish someone were waiting for me somewhere by anna gavalda

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
She's Come Undone

Stuart: a life backwards by Alexander Masters
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
White Noise by Don Delillo
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
A Clockwork Orange
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

a halloween recap....

we went to queens county farm museum to pick some pumpkins for carving and maybe some pie making. i was pleasantly surprised to find there were animals to coo over, pet and pester. i love petting goats! i chased around the poka dot feathers, which i learned are from female peacocks, and was generally happy to play in a farm and watch all the little kids in their costumes.

later jeremy carved the cat pumpkin and roasted the pumpkin seeds. the ears kill me. we watched a bunch of horror movies and i worked on a new batch of books to prepare for the my shop update yesterday.

what did you do? did you dress up?

ps thanks to all the comments with book suggestions below!! i'm going to compile a recommended reading list.

update and give away....

Miniature Rhino shop update 11.2.2009 at 2pm eastern time...

really excited about this!
i have a few new things for this shop update including these postcards. they are images of little collections and come with something special- a set of vintage stamps enough for mailing one postcard. each set in the shop will come with this little extra.

receiving mail is one of the best gifts and i equally enjoy sending and receiving it. so to celebrate this update i thought i'd share the mail love and offer one set of postcards to, maybe, you! just leave a comment here and i'll pick a winner randomly 2.7.09. tell me about the book your reading or recommend a good one. i need to pick a new book since i forgot to cancel my membership to audible.com just like i said i would.

i hope you can stop by for the update! and thanks to all in advance for your recommendations!
i'm reading The Road currently....

it's halloween!!

happy halloween everyone!!

the little drummer in yellow is my Mom!! her little high water pants just kill me. so sweet!

she told me that every halloween my grandmother would pull out a box of costumes and that everyone would pick an outfit and that she would always want to be "the drummer". i love hearing these kind of stories about my family.

i'm bummed to not have had time to make an outfit or dress up. are you dressing up? what are you!? what will you be!?! let me live vicariously through you.... this was on the back of the image above. i love the notes we write on the back of images....

happy halloween!!

a little thank you...

my sweet friend vanessa came over a while back to help me. she also took some photos while i worked. more here. the one above is my favorite, because it shows my crazy cuttlered little bedroom/workspace. i can't wait to have a dedicated studio space!! and look how the bug takes over. he is forever where i need to be.

i've also been wanting to thank the nice people who write nice little blog post about my work and share links to their sites. here are a few from a week or two past. click the image to be interneted into more things to look at....

Black Eiffel- some constellation inspiration there is some crazy good photography on green wedding shoes!
swimming with the stars- i learned of mothology from her. dangerous. great finds!lara is a nice etsyian who features lots of other makers, and she was just featured in the storque in the regular feature, quit your day job. she had great tips. read it here.

wishlist 2...

the ever so kind anabela of fieldguided is hosting a giveaway with All Modern...

you can win this lamp. i'd love, love, love this hanging in my home...or these vellum placemats!
i entered and you can too by visiting anabela'a blog here....
(if you win will you share the lamp with me?!)

thinking and eating...

i'm not a big cook, but i've been gaining such an appreciation for food now more than ever. once we started with our csa i found inspiration in fresh vegetables, where i had never before. i mainly steamed broccoli and that was about it. this insanely big sandwich features our csa veggies. lately i've been struggling with where my food comes from, how that makes me feel, and its effects.

i read Against Meat by Jonathan Safran Foer (everything is illuminated) and it struck me hard, especially this:

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of sushi “lunch dates” with my mom, and eating my dad’s turkey burgers with mustard and grilled onions at backyard celebrations, and of course my grandmother’s chicken with carrots. Those occasions simply wouldn’t have been the same without those foods — and that is important. To give up the taste of sushi, turkey or chicken is a loss that extends beyond giving up a pleasurable eating experience. Changing what we eat and letting tastes fade from memory create a kind of cultural loss, a forgetting. But perhaps this kind of forgetfulness is worth accepting — even worth cultivating (forgetting, too, can be cultivated). To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

i'm a vegetarian and live with a vegan. i enjoy my eggs and cheese and push out the idea that these things come from factory farming, which is a horrible, cruel existence for an animal. so i question my daily decisions, my cravings and how that effects not only me but the animal and you. factory farming is the number one cause of global warming! i think about this and safran's story daily and it makes my head spin. i eat my homemade egg and cheese "mcmuffin" that i obsess over making and wonder if the loss of that taste is worth forgetting.

jeremy made these Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Panino sandwiches the other day. the recipe is from Vegan Yum Yum. we love her food and her photography is killer. anyone who can get me to knowingly eat eggplant is a winning chef. believe me. served on my favorite handmade dishes by folded pigs. eating on anatomical hearts and cockroaches is oddly enough, my cup of tea.

dear david sedaris,

i like you.image via NY Times/ Suzanne Opton/Time Life Pictures-Getty Images

i just finished listening to when you are engulfed in flames, by david sedaris (above left), which i downloaded for free from audible.com. you can too here, but you'll have sign up, give your credit card details and all, and then you get one free book download- any book. remember, you'll get charged membership fees after 14 days. just watch, i'm posting this reminder and i'm going to forget! i thought the book was funny, poignant, and now i want to live in japan!

wishlist 1....

i thought since the holidays are (already?!) upon us, why not make a public declaration of all the "i wants" out there to want. there so many, like this colorful print little collections by lizzy janssen. stones, textures, colors and little drawings in nice ordered rows the better to pour over...little collection by lizzy janssen

things to come...

knots! i'm planning a big November shop update and plan to introduce a lot of new things, like this piece that satisfies my love of boy scouts and nautical imagery. here there is no beginning and no end....

good bye vacation...

...hello NY cold and piles of work. here are some pics of last weeks travels. so much to share...

i said jump! and he did. my parents are in the background and the washington memorial too...the back of a joseph cornell piece. swoon. he made some of my favorite things and is an incredibly interesting man.

the library of congress is a-ma-zing. one of, if not, the most beautiful buildings i've seen. maya lin's vietnam memorial. the old house we stayed in had a closet full of these. i think they are player piano reels?hadn't seen my mom in a while and i love her new hair did. red.my parental units taking pictures of me taking a picture of them (pictures of pictures, of my favorite things) at the botanical gardens.i had a "ding" moment looking at these bottles in a nautical museum in boston.a detail of a painting of st. lucy at the national gallery. i thought she was the saint of photography, but i was wrong. that's st. verionica. lucy is the patron saint of the blind. my confusion was that her name is derived from the word light, lux. i love this stuff. we ran this whole trip to trying to see it all. little things like this make it memorable.

away we go...

...nyc to dc to bean town. oct 3-9th...

these images are from my last brief visit to dc- i think i was there a whole 6 hours! this trip will be the first time i've seen my parents in about 6 months and it's a big one for us. we are celebrating my father's and my own birthday, as well as my parents 31st wedding anniversary! all these things are spread out over months, but since we don't see each other often this is our time to celebrate. we've all been waiting for this trip together for a long time. so glad it's here....

while i'm away i've put my shop on vacation. i feel sad about it, like i've left my child behind or something. it's hard not to think about work when i'm away- emails that need responding, work thats not making itself and so on, but luckily much of what i do is portable and i have a little bundle of things i'm taking along to stitch on our luxurious bus ride from ny to dc....

eagerly awaiting...

Ruler of the Wild Things, originally uploaded by Roadside Projects.

where the wild things are, the movie and there will be a book too! Dave Eggers novel, The Wild Things, will be released alongside the film. Heres a little excerpt from Egger's Max at Sea, and the full text here on the new yorker.

So he had a choice. Would he stay behind the curtain and think about things, marinate in his own confusion, or would he put on his white fur suit and howl and scratch and make it known who was boss of this house and of all the world known and unknown?

the image above by, Roadside Projects, who makes amazing cut paper dioramas, was in the show Terrible Yellow Eyes. The show has it's own blog full of works inspired by where the wild things are....

just sharing...

i swear my right hand is swollen. i tried stitching this week with my left. no good!

once wed...

photography: belathee, via once wed

...oh so nice to MR in a wedding! thank you to once wed and alyce for sharing! there are lots more pictures over here in a three part post of alyce's wedding.

they only come out at night...

recently i completed my first big order for 3 sets of stars. seeing them done got me inspired to document them all together. i thought this dark and glowy image represented my idea of these pieces and how i see them well.

painting with light is easy. its a fun photographic experiment with serendipitous results. while looking for a how-to link i came across these "spray can" lights, by Aïssa Logerot, made for "painting" with light graffiti stylie. so good. how smart is it that when the batteries run low you recharge them by shaking the can. snap.

birds of sadness...

images via studio on fire found via Dain & Mallory

studio on fire has made this letter press poster for a show, sweet hair, which benefits locks of love. it took me just a second to fall hard. letter press has such a nice texture and i've long been interested in hair, as a material and in victorian hair work and mourning objects.

the whole text, a chinese proverb, reads, "you cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair."

find the poster available here...

last week...

...i thought it would be nice to occasionally sum up some of my weekly finds and inspirations...

reference library / laurie brown jewelry

+ a well articulated post by the small object about a crafter's role in a culture of consumerism and how personal the connection is between seller and buyer can be:

"When you buy handmade directly from an individual, you are investing in me. And not just in me, but in my products, in my ideas and in my own well-being. When you buy something from me, you just gave me a double high five. We just connected and shook hands like mad. Seriously, its the most wonderful feeling to go buy groceries and know that I am buying groceries this week thanks to the support of Anna, Todd, Margaret and a boutique store in Australia. They made it possible. It is truly the most beautiful experience."

+ i love the style of this new to me blog, reference library. it's like a museum, with interesting ebay finds/misses and vintagey goodness, like that wedding day textile image up there.

+ visited the show, don't perish, at leo koenig inc. projekte. it's amazing conceptually, because it's not just a gallery show, but a food bank and gathering space for bi-weekly potluck dinners. the gallery space is lined with shelves for donated food and built in fold down tables for dinning in the gallery space. i want to go to a dinner night, tuesdays and saturdays, but you got to bring a dish to share. if you are in ny you have to go support this show and bring a canned food donation! go, go, go! i need to do a post just about the show...

from the opening of dont' perish at leo koenig inc.

dear bug,

a cat love letter. strange how much you can love a little fuzzy thing whose kinda a jerk...
heres wishing you a great weekend...

help MR and vote...

...in the DIY Wedding Crafts Contest with Martha Stewart & Etsy. I made the pieces below for real weddings. remember 100 Layer Cake hosted a contest to helped me find the brides.

well now it's time to vote. they haven't made it easy though. there are over 3,000 entries and you can only see 8 entries per page, with no means to search out contestants. it seems like only the first few easily accessible pages will be seen/ voted on. on top of that you must log in to cast a vote. so i need your help.

if you like the pieces and feel so inclined i would greatly appreciate your support...Please vote for the my Custom Heart here or the Custom Tree Stump here...thanks!!!! you can see all 3,000 or so the entries here.