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....