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I have never flown…
So far I’ve watched this Japanese motocycle crafter video 3x. It takes my breath away.
I first saw it on Seesalt, a beautifully simple website for encountering little moments of art.
This quote helps me understand motocycle drivers, as I never have before:
It feels nothing like how violent it looks from the outside
It’s very serene
The ground and the sky are so white, there is no boundary between them
I have never flown, but it feels like flying in an airplane using a reciprocating engine
I can’t tell you how peaceful it is.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/13159991]
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Boston Embroidery Hoop Art
I
swoonsmile happily over these pretty earrings and elegant embroidery every time I walk past E.R. Butler on Charles Street. I like the varying textures of the tree with the thickly knotted trunk. That texture combined with the steely butterflies and droplet pearls is so lovely.
Recently I learned that the woman who made the embroidery hoops for the shop is on Etsy, and lives in Boston!
She, Mary Louise, says she was inspired by the changing tree colors in the Public Garden, a spot Lux and I escape to regularly. Look at these pretty options!
I would love make something like this someday, but mostly I would love to pay someone else to do it better and more beautifully than me! These are $45 each. Which color are you drawn to?
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My favorite sandals, already!
Sharing a good sandal find among women is a sacred tradition. I picked these up at Steven Alan while I was in L.A. and have worn them around Boston for several straight days. No blisters and no tired feet! And I love the colors (I bought the hip orange ones, which are called “clay” for some awful reason). If you are loving the nude-on-nude shoe trend, they even have a color for that!
How much? Less than your grocery bill but more than your Comcast bill….$88. And they run small. I’m seriously considering ordering another pair, because I dread the sandal hunt each summer.
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Goodreads, and the Yelp syndrome
Goodreads is the yelp of the book world. Like yelp, they are the chosen venue for their genre of reviews: they have more than 7 million users and offer a variety of ways to track your interactions with their chosen field: progress updates, themed bookshelves, snooping your friends recent reads, and of course: reviews.
Just like Yelp, read the reviews, and you are are plagued by the problem of no-elected-critic: some people seem to trash a book for personal reasons, some careful cite their opinions and then forget what they were talking about and meander on a different topic, some arbitrarily nominate their recent read as the greatest book of all time because they happend to be drunk while reading (this last one happens more with yelp than goodreads, but still).
And yet, just like Yelp, I read dozens of these strange strangers’ opinions; squinting as I read, trying to spot their neuroses and discover whether they match mine or not. If you both think slow service is cause for complaint (oh my goodness no. stop reading of this person’s frantic life immediately), or if you both think quirky signage makes it worth the trip (yes!) perhaps you can share an opinion or two.
I liked my friend Kate’s careful specification of what exactly each star means to her (you can click the photo for a close up). Goodreads should adapt her specifications and suggest these boundaries to you as your review. She’s a librarian, so of course we can count on her to guide society towards agreed upon organization.
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the friend with food
Molly went crabbing on Christmas eve, accompanied by her friend Renee. Renee sounds like exactly the kind of friend I want, and the kind of friend I want to be.
I like how she captures it here, split by the photo:
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simmering chai
a friend gave me homemade modern chai for Christmas, in a weck jar. isn’t it pretty? It’s my first weck jar, and I pause to admire it while I wait for my oatmeal to boil every morning. This is my second hand-mixed chai to receive as a gift. It’s the best looking thing to have in your drawers for cold afternoons. Simmering milk, water, black tea and bits of other things is totally my style.
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a voiceover seduction
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/34564370]
my friend Kellyn sent me this and I thought it had that just-so touch.
she’s into him; but she’d rather go shopping with her hot french friends, you know…
not safe for work, or most home life: lots of undie shots.
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Catalog stacks
Every few weeks I stack up the ten most recent catalogs we’ve found stuffed in our tiny mailbox, look up their 1-800 numbers, get some nice young one on the phone and say “pleeeze take me off the list.” And they readily agree.
But like a blessed jar of oil, they keep flowing in.
However, while looking at this behind the scenes post by Free People, I was struck by the enormous amount of work some companies put into their catalogs (this one featured was shot in Greece). I can’t resist paging through them, just to see the new colors, the countries they visited, the lovely paper they’re printed on.
Sometimes I wonder where our culture’s master artisans are hiding out. They aren’t all at the craft fairs or on the graphic design blogs as indie business owners. Some of them are surely working away at these commercial monthly frescoes.
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Maxx & Lucy
damn this is good baby photography.
all photos of Maxx and Lucy from Maxx & Lucy (click over there just to see their header, cause it’s good looking). Some photos by Christopher Kuehl.
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A Kitchen App
Oh man I’ve needed this app for awhile. Thank goodness for friends who share what free + delightful apps they’ve discovered. A ridiculous story: I lost my 1 teaspoon, months ago, and somehow I got it into my head that I should find some beautiful silver or ceramic, or french pottery, or whatever at a flea market and that would replace it. So here I am, months later, (a meticulous measurer, mind you) using my half-teaspoon for everything.
The free and beautiful designed Kitchen Dial app.
