2 AM right now. And I am going to make you a diptych.
A scene from an old photo shoot and a collaboration of some sorts with Sandra’s sketch.
Fall essentials, ready, set, Go!
Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!Ready for Fall!
Ok, I’ve really suffered enough heat exhaustion to keep me warm for the upcoming winter, so bring on the cool weather! My sister and I are vamping up our closets with some newer, flatter, more room efficient hangers and it’s only getting me more excited for autumn and all the fashion that goes with it! Summer was fun and all, but I’ve really been waiting for the temperatures to drop so that I can wear all my favorite clothes. I’ve got all my fall essentials ready to go:
favorite coat
my go-to yellow pashmina
Rosebud (a lip gloss I absolutely swear by)
my vintage-find flat boots that will probably last me a few more years until I completely wear out the soles
Lollia Breathe perfume
black tights
lace up booties
some good old Starbucks coffee
my stash of fall magazine issues
and best of all,
my Mamiya medium format camera. It’s my favorite time of the year to go shooting..
and lest I forget, the most daring essential of all,
rouge…
{for “I feel like it” days :)}
turtle mail, Hotaru style
I love it when I come home to find packages that have finally arrived after weeks of anticipation. Every time I place an order, it always feels like a scene out of Gakuen Alice where Hotaru sends her turtle mail to Mikan and it takes a week to get there. And every time, its always the same sense of euphoria when I finally receive those packages. It’s like a Christmas quickie, and in a brief flash, I forget that it was me who ordered these items.
A mini edition of Birds: The Art of Ornithology by Jonathan Elphick. It has lots of bird prints and watercolors other than Audubon’s famous images.
And the new LP You Can’t Take it With You by As Tall As Lions! It’s been a long time coming ever since Roshan introduced me to them a around a year ago. The first time I heard their self titled album, I just drove as slow as I could on the way home until I finished listening to the entire album. I haven’t fully gotten a chance to enjoy the new tracks yet since my record player died on me, but from all the online streaming, the album does not disappoint. And bonus points for the boys for making the vinyl clear. It’s just lovely!
Lost My Mind
A favorite track already, Lost My Mind. I’ve been replaying this track over and over. It’s so beautiful and for some reason, the only other word I can think up is moody. If anything, this song is how I feel at the moment.
One of my all time favorite ATAL songs. Reminds me of a fleeting moment as I passed a boy who was smoking in the rain.
The North American Wildlife Project
Ta-Da! So inspired by Olympia Le-Tan’s Catcher in the Rye felt book cover, I tried making one for one of my most beloved books that had such a beat-up old cover. There were several images from the original book cover to choose from, but I went for a simple design since it was my first endeavor at sewing details. The pine cones are a really lovely touch, I think. They’re definietly my favorite part of the cover. The stitching took a lot longer than I anticipated. You can probably tell by looking closely at the letters where I grew tired and started going crooked. I’m so used to using a sewing machine to do all the handy work, I couldn’t help but feel like a sweatshop kid at work, except, without the satisfaction of getting paid a nickel for the job. Lesson learned from this project: try not to sew so much at night. I’ve decided that if Mary Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie wasn’t blind, she most likely would have ended up so because all she ever did was sew in the dark.
I want to tackle a bigger project for my next book cover, but I think I’ll wait it out a bit until I have more free time. My Where the Sidewalk Ends book could really use a cover, but that one is definitely going to involve a hell of a lot more stitching skills. I really want to replicate the exact cover Shel Silverstein has for the book, and that includes many line work and minute stitching details. But I can’t wait to get started! I can imagine the finished product already.
Golden Horse, memories of a glowing dandelion
I think there’s nothing more satisfying these days than being in good company. Last night, I got a chance to catch up with friends and we had a great dinner a Aka. Than we went to the warehouse to check out Oscar’s woodblock prints and slide show of the recent La Capacidad projects from San Salvador. It was so inspiring to see all his beautiful prints and it made me miss Cathy Hunt’s printmaking classes so much more.
When I drove home last night, I took Allen Parkway as usual and I saw the dandelion water fountain and it made me remember so vividly that first moment when we were in the car driving down that same road and seeing the fountain glowing for the first time. Downtown was lit so dramatically in the back ground as we drove towards it, and Andrew exclaimed what a cool piece of art. I think we were high on Amy’s ice cream, our hands full of photo booth pictures. I remember comparing that moment to a scene from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, when Charlie and Sam drove through the tunnel towards the city. “Do you guys feel infinite” I asked everyone, and we all laughed, but I couldn’t help but think we all did feel that way. So this is me now, 24 years old, feeling so much more older than I should, thinking about that moment only several years ago, and how young I felt to just be driving down that road with the same people. Sometimes I wish things were the same, but that would mean we would all be at a standstill forever, never growing up, never learning new things. And if we were stuck that way forever, could we appreciate the past like we would now? I really don’t know… And this is probably the cheesiest way to end an already sentimental post, but if I could express what I’m feeling right now any better, I would. But I’m no writer. Take it away Bono.
{pieces from a journal I haven’t touched in years}
psaugust.com 