My needles are on fire at the moment as I’ve realised that the actual monkey has to be finished by the end of November for there to be any chance of her having clothes by Christmas. I start attaching the arms tonight.
She can sit due to a little bag of rice in her posterior end. Note that the pattern designer added a little shaping to the waist to give her some ladylike curves. Truly the Joan Holloway of sock monkeys.
One of the things I enjoyed most on our recent trip to San Francisco was visiting the Fillmore neighbourhood (thanks Victoria SFGirlByBay for the recommendation!).
It reminded me a lot of my adored Notting Hill (still my spiritual home) – the quirky restaurants and shops, the people milling about (unusual to see in the US), even the colours of the white stucco buildings.
Fabulous interiors stores included Nest, Zinc Details and Jonathan Adler. Yes, I finally got to visit an actual real life Jonathan Adler store, as such as thing has not yet materialised in Seattle.
I was doubly thrilled when I got there as they now have the ‘Mod Model’ cushions back in stock. I’d added her to my Christmas list two years ago, but she she sold out too quickly, never to return until now.
I’ve thought about her a lot in the intervening two years, so this time we snatched her up even though she is fiendishly expensive. I’m a great believer in buying stuff you’re slightly obsessed with, whatever the cost. It works out more economically in the long run than buying a lot of cheap stuff that doesn’t quite float your boat. Or that’s what I tell myself anyway.
Here she is on our new sofa. She is very charismatic – like a portrait whose eyes follow you around the room.
I thought you might also like to see some pics of the Minx really, really, REALLY enjoying shopping at Jonathan Adler. (Though we already know she is a great fan of JA’s hubby Simon Doonan).
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Cheryl Maeder carefully controls focus, blur and colour in her photos to create impressionistic but fleeting glimpses of an idyllic world – childhood nostalgia in art form.
I have no real idea how she does these. But they make me want to grab my camera and start experimenting right away.
You can buy Cheryl’s photos or check out her ‘Dreamscapes’ portfolio here.
The Kate Spade brand is not well known in the UK, but that should all change with their new month long pop-up shop in London’s Covent Garden.
If ‘mirrormirror’ were ever to turn into a physical bricks and mortar shop then this is exactly how I envisaged it in my mind. In fact forget about shopping, I just want to move in and live there.
Of course the stunning Georgian house with a its gracious staircase and light, bright rooms provides the perfect backdrop to all the pretty – does anyone fancy lending me £10 million?
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More pics here and fab vid below.
Have any of you Londoners been yet?
Once upon a time when the Internet was still young and I was working as a management consultant, I remember musing with a few folks that it would be a great idea to set up a ‘shopping engine’ for craftspeople and artists to give them a standard template shop under one umbrella and save them the hassle of setting up their own websites and doing their own independent marketing.
Yes, things would be very different round here if I’d held that thought and founded Etsy, rather than just sitting on my arse.
Perhaps I would be working in gorgeous offices such as these. Etsy’s HQ in Brooklyn has been designed by Hangar Design Group to reflect the quirky, colourful, handmade nature of the brand and decorated using many pieces commissioned or bought from Etsy sellers.
Those lamps are incredible, does anyone know where they were sourced? I’ve been searching everywhere. And I love the crochet granny blankets on the wall.
The combination of geeks and gingham is such a winner I find.
Junkprints installed the record wall
The desks are all handmade. And see the ‘Craft’ area to the left below? Every office should have one.
Plush toy makers Zooguu designed the individual phone rooms. This has made the Husband and I are consider installing a British phone booth door chez nous, though for the full authentic touch I hope the room beyond stinks of stale urine and cigarettes.
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Seriously, there are about a thousand fabulous ideas to steal in all this, though I am left wondering whether all the geeky programmers feel comfortable in this space – in the startups I’ve worked at, the geek squad seemed to think pizza boxes and beer cans were decorative objects.
{via SwissMiss}
As you will doubtless know by now, I am a dyed-in-the-wool Project Runway fan, even in seasons like this when the fashion really is nothing to write home about.
So I’m loving this fabulous project happening on the blog Kat Knits where Kat, and also her friend Susi, both take 15 hours to follow each Project Runway challenge to the letter and create outfits for a doll.
From creating a stunning handbeaded element for the couture challenge
and its ready-to-wear counterpart
to printing a custom fabric for the fabric challenge
to knitting a tiny ensemble for the sportswear challenge
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to punching out from ribbon and glueing hundreds of tiny circles for the ‘party store’ challenge
and knitting tiny accessories for the team challenge.
There’s much more to see on the blog, including all the workroom ‘drama’ and if you haven’t discovered it already go and say hi to Tom and Lorenzo at Project Rungay for everything you ever wanted to know and then some about the show (which is where I found out about this blog).
Update
I can’t wait to see what they comes up with for last night’s ‘Design a Grey Shapeless Sweatshire for Heidi Klum’s Vanity Line’ challenge. Best of luck to them both.
I’ve been looking at a lot of food photography recently, but, sometimes, dare I say it, it can get a little same-y – put your food in a pretty dish, lay it on a cunningly folded napkin, place everything on a textured table and play with depth of field until the background is artfully blurred.
Rinse and repeat. (And yes, I know I do this too.)
So it’s wonderful to see food photography that is completely out of left field and so very beautiful, for, of all things, an Ikea cookbook.
Photographer Carl Kleiner worked with stylist Evelina Bratell to create fabulous still-life patterns out of the raw ingredients for each dish.
The photos of the finished articles are witty, pretty and original too.
Unfortunately I think the cookbook is only available in Swedish and from Ikea in Sweden at the moment, though hopefully an international edition will be available shortly.
And wouldn’t those prints look wonderful as kitchen artwork?
And maybe I was onto something when I took a picture of my pot roast ingredients back in February? I should have held that thought.
Once up a time Canadian artist Heather Benning, then the local artist-in-residence in Redvers, Saskatchewan, decided to create a real-life dolls house art installation.
She acquired a derelict, isolated farmhouse on the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border, rolled up her sleeves and set to work.
She had the interiors painted in 1960s pastels; furnished the house with vintage 1960s furniture from the time when the house had last been inhabited and loved; and had huge plexiglass windows installed to one side.
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And created the house of many a grown-up little girls’ dreams (except perhaps for the huge Plexiglass windows).
THE END
What a shame my birthday has just passed, as I’m rather enamoured of these and can think of quite a few places they’d fit in our house. I may have to sneak one or two in.
The cushions are hand silk-screened on sturdy barkcloth by graphic designer Erin Flett in a variety of gorgeous on trend colours.
I think this chair is crying out for one, don’t you? Going to see if I can get some in the shop too. Find Erin at www.erinflett.com and buy her pillows on Etsy.
I thought I’d update you all with a bit of knitting. My most recent finished project is a pair of socks I started knitting in the South of France. Socks are fabulous things to knit on holiday as they are so portable and the little wooden toothpick-like needles I use never get stolen by airport officials.
These socks became nicely imbued with seawater, sand and suntan cream and bring back many happy memories – particularly of turning the heel sitting in a lovely cafe’ in Aix en Provence while sipping a citron presse’. It’s one of the unsung pleasures of knitting – wearing the finished items always brings back memories of the actual process.
(The pattern is Hedera and the yarn is a Limited Edition sock yarn from Sundara Yarns. All details are to be found on my Ravelry page).
When people see my handknit socks, I always get told ‘you should absolutely sell those’. Which is very lovely and everything but if you add up the $25-$30 including shipping for sexy sock yarn and then conservatively estimate 20 hours of knitting at $8.55 an hour (Washington state minimum wage), it means that I’d have to charge at least $195 per pair just to break even.
So you can imagine how happy I was when a big hole started to appear in my previous pair of $200 socks. Desperate measures were clearly called for, so I sat down in front of my computer and an instructional video on YouTube and proceeded to darn my socks. I felt just like a character from Little Women (minus the computer and YouTube obviously).
It wasn’t that difficult, was very satisfying and actually looks OK despite this being my first attempt (though it’s lucky the hole is hidden in my shoe).
The darn from the inside
And from the outside
Finally, don’t tell the Minx, but I am knitting her a sock monkey for Christmas. Her name is Carmen Banana and she comes in a kit from Knit Picks with the patterns to make a huge wardrobe of lovely clothes. So far I’ve only made some assorted limbs, but I’ll keep you updated on my progress. You will notice that I have ‘knit a sock monkey’ on my list of 101 Things.
