lacy

I don't remember where I first saw it, but have loved the work of Cal Lane for a few years.

 

While looking for something else, I stumbled on it again today and remembered all the reasons why. 

in hiding

Gus went to get his summer haircut today and Ollie hid under the bed, under the desk, and under the table completely depressed waiting for him to come back home.  

evening update:  Ollie was so excited when Gus got home he peed himself. It was gross, but he hasn't done it since he was a baby.  I guess next time we should send them for haircuts together, if only for the sake of the rug.  

flower power

3 years ago I spent $18 on a dinky little double flower helleborus and Steven almost killed me.  (The single flower sort were 1/3 the price and twice as big.)   I knew it was ridiculous, but I'd seen a photo of the double flower and I had to have it.  

The last few years it hasn't done all that well (it was in the path of the pooches) but last year I moved it and it's going gangbusters now!  

Steven even admitted it's way more than 18 bucks worth of pretty.   

lucky girl

Steven and I were gardening in the front yard yesterday.  About and hour into our digging and planting, from the opposite corner of the yard, I heard Steven say, "holy s***!" at the exact time I said, "oh my god, look!"

We've got morel mushrooms growing in our front yard.  My most favorite food, is just popping up wild all over the front yard. 

now, don't everyone worry, I am taking the mushrooms we picked to the Washtenaw County MSU Extension (it's their job to help farmers, so I hope they can help me) to see if they really are morels and safe to eat.  

I thought our years worth of landscaping efforts might eventually make the front yard look pretty good but I diddn't know that we already have the best front yard ever!   

green day

I am completely garden obsessed and would love to have a green wall of succulents or something somewhere in my house one day.  (Steven says that I should focus on the 2 gardens we have outside, one at our house, one community garden plot, at least for the summer. He's got a point.)  

I love these ceramic wall tile planters made by Maruja Fuentes that were featured at the Milan Furniture Fair.   

via inhabitat

100

to celebrate the president's first hundred days in office whitehouse.gov has a 300 photo slide show of Pete Souza's photos.  They are an amazing sneak peak into the presidency. 

see it here.

copper and wool

Our 7th anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks (I can't believe it's been 7 years!).  We have always stuck with giving traditional gifts, first anniversary is paper, second is cotton, etc (whole list here) and I love it.  My favorite was the fourth, fruit and flowers.  Steven gave me a dogwood tree and I gave him a service berry tree.  (The service berry is blooming right now!)  

But this year the traditional gift is copper or wool and I am stumped.  Spring has sprung so wool is unappealing, and the only things I can think of that are copper are pennies (even though they aren't really copper anymore) and plumbing. (image here)

 

If I decided to think of copper as a color,  I could get him a Japanese Maple (image here), but we don't really have a place for one in the yard.  

Or I could get him a Pomeranian puppy!  But I'm pretty sure Steven would kill me because two dogs is enough, and I'm pretty sure he's not a Pomeranian kind of guy. (image here)  

If anyone has any ideas, help! 

rejected

The Wall Street Journal has an article this morning about college rejection letters, the good the bad and the ugly (one school accidentally sent out acceptance letters to students they rejected and then had to reject them again! ouch!).  

The meanest is from Bates College.  Their letter was translated by one 17 year old recipient as saying, "you have been rejected because you suck."  

Years ago when Steven was in the "apply for everything, more than once if needed" phase of professional development (he calls it the "be like a fly on poop" strategy, and if you can suffer through the piles of rejections from grants, residencies, jobs and exhibitions, it actually works pretty well) he had an idea to send a letter to some place that had rejected him and reject their rejection. 

Something like this:

Dear _______,

I received an unusually high volume of high caliber rejections this year, from many qualified and compelling institutions. Unfortunately, I am just one person and can only accept a certain number of rejections each year. I regret to inform you that I will not be able to accept your rejection at this time.  

I appreciate your lack of interest in me and wish you well as you prepare for my arrival.  

My decision is final and I will not be accepting appeals. 

Sincerely, 

Steven

I wish he'd done it, it would have been hilarious. 

portraits

To further my case that someone (Steven? Mom and Dad? Mom and Dad and Steven?) should get me Sihouette Digital Cutting Tool for my birthday, I thought I'd share some drawings I made a few years ago where I used maps to make portraits of people.  

the top two are of Steven.  Maps of the provence he was born in, the provence he grew up in and the two countries he is a citizen of make up the drawing.  (Attiki, Greece, Lombardy, Italy, Belgium and Lebanon.  long story.) and the other drawing is of all the places Steven and I had lived since we started dating.  All our addresses overlap at the center of the drawing.  (Snowmass Village, CO, Alfred, NY, Buffalo, NY, Stuttgart, Germany, and Birmingham, MI) Maybe I should remake it and add the 3 places we've lived since.

cut it out

If somebody (Steven) were thinking about what to get me for my birthday in a few weeks, he or she should really think about getting me a Silhouette Digital Cutting Tool.  

It's like a printer that cuts instead of printing.  It comes with 50 patterns, but much more importantly you can make your own with their easy to use software.  

more info on Craft Critique 

walk a mile in her shoes

looking at Hella Jongerious website for the last post, I saw that she's making shoes for Camper.

I like the paper experiments (top photo) and I am curious to know what the finished products will look like. But I think they might be the kind of thing I will enjoy seeing on other people rather than wear myself.  

 They'll be in production next summer.  

flower vase

I love Hella Jongerious's new work showing at Galerie Kreo.  The ceramic, glass and plastic vases filled with ceramic, plastic, wood, and felt flowers are lovely, and I have loved the ceramic snail vase and especially the cardboard and tape version for a long time.  

via style-files

walking on broken glass

I stepped on a piece of broken glass, had to go to the doctor to have it dug out and get a tetanus shot.  I'm completely fine, aside from feeling a little stupid and having a  sore arm and sore foot.  

But the weirdest part?  They X rayed my foot even though the doctor, nurse and x ray technician all said that glass doesn't show up on an x ray.  Did they think I dropped a glass on a bed of rusty nails?

overrun

I mentioned that I am running out of room in the sunroom for all my seedlings, well, this is about how it feels in there.  

photo from world of interiors

he can fly, he can fly

I am in love Jan Von Holleben's Dreams of Flying series.  

check the rest of it, and the rest of his work out here. 

too much of a good thing?

My seedlings might be doing a little too well.  I got heating pads for them when the weather was cold and that seemed to make them very happy and grow very very fast.  (some of my squash seedlings are getting ready to bloom!) 

It's still a couple weeks until I can get them into the ground, but I am totally out of room in my sunroom!  

molehill out of a mountain

Yesterday and today we got together with our fellow Project Grow gardeners and went to work on our community garden plot.  We had a whole bunch of compost delivered but the whole plot is 60 by 125 (twice the size of  standard city lot!  our share is 30 by 25) so we needed everyone to spread it out.  

We raked and shoveled for hours and hours but eventually got it done.  

It will be tilled this week and then next weekend we'll build a fence and get to planting!  

I'm so excited to get my seeds and seedlings into the ground.  

hammock

the weather is so beautiful I want to do this all evening.  

have a nice weekend!

spring has sprung

it's going to be 80º today!  and tomorrow!  

I'm going to get to work in the garden this weekend and may build some raised beds.   Aren't these the most beautiful ones you've ever seen?  

via remodelista

happy little clouds

No, it's not an episode of Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting, it's Stuart Semple's performance at the Milan Furniture Fair. (One day, I will plan a visit to my sister in law in Milan at the same time as the Furniture Fair.)

It's delightful.

via wallpaper

rubber band

Aren't these animal shaped rubber bands cute?  wouldn't want to make a giant rubber band ball with these babies.

available here.

double dutch

After stumbling on Susan York's website yesterday, I started thinking about other people who came as visiting artists while I was in grad school and thought of Anton Reijnders.

Anton came late in my second year and a few months later, just after graduating, I had a 3 month residency at the European Ceramic Work Center in Den Bosch, The Netherlands where Anton had worked. 

Anton, his wife Netty van den Heufel, and a few other people started the Center, but no longer work there.
Anton and Netty still live in the Den Bosch, though, and have the most beautiful studio you have ever seen, so, happily, I got to get to see them again when we arrived in the Netherlands.

He and Netty (her work above), generously invited Steven and me over one night and we had the longest, loveliest, most delicious, wine soaked dinner and conversation in their courtyard.

See more of Anton's wonderful work here.

And Netty's amazing work here.

watch out high school friends

Andrea Wachner hired a tattooed stripper to pretend to be her go to her 10 year high school reunion, and I'm totally doing this for our next reunion.  

(actually, I went to my 10 year reunion and had a blast.  I smiled and laughed so much my cheeks and stomach muscles were sore the next morning.  I was lucky to go to high school with some lovely (and funny!) people.)

via abcnews

hooked

It's a perfect, warm, sunshiny, spring day here so it's a bit weird to be writing about wool hats, but I just found this delightful website, Golden Hook, where you can design your own hat and then pick a granny to knit it for you. (she'll even sew your name on the label so you won't lose it!)

check it out here.

via here

the garden

The Garden is a documentary about the battle over the South Central Farm in Los Angeles. Created after the riots in 1992, South Central Farm was the largest community garden in the United States until the city sold it to developers in a closed door meeting, the developers evicted the gardeners and bulldozed it.  (as far as I know, the 14 acre lot is still empty). 

Part of me really wants to see this Oscar nominated film because it is supposed to be wonderful, but part of me really, really doesn't because it'll completely break my heart.  It opens friday in LA, everywhere else sometime after.

More about the movie here.

More about South Central Farm here.

one at a time

An old man walking along the beach at dawn saw a young man picking up starfish and throwing them out to sea.  

"Why are you doing that?" the old man inquired.  

The young man explained that the starfish had been stranded on the beach by a receding tide and would soon die in the daytime sun.  

"But the beach goes on for miles," the old man said, "and there's so many!  How can your effort make any difference?"

The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and without hesitating threw it to safety in the sea.  He looked up at the old man, smiled and said, "It will make a difference to that one."

The president told that story yesterday as he signed the Edward M Kennedy Service Act.  He said that it's a story that Teddy Kennedy likes to tell when speaking about service but I think it's a good thing to think about on Earth Day, too.  As we make small decisions, using reusable bags at the grocery store, turning down the thermostat, composting, riding bikes instead of driving, eating local and organic etc, it can feel like those things don't really make that much difference.  But they do, a little at a time.

watch Obama's speech here (he tells the story at about 17:30)   

image from Life

shards

My first year of grad school Susan York came as a visiting artist and critic.  She showed us her work and then had one on one critiques with everyone in the department.  

She was one of my favorites.  

I just stumbled on her website.  check it out here.