Pink of Perfection

I have kind of a cozy fetish, which we’ve discussed here before, but which continues to motivate many of the decisions in my life. Like, for instance, my insatiable appetite for period dramas about small English towns and novels about the Dakotas in winter. Basically, if the characters are largely relying on horse-drawn carriages, candlelight, and the goodwill of neighbors, I’ll probably like it. Particularly if there are a lot of kitchen scenes.

This cozy fetish is also why I love, love, love these holiday cards from Hello! Lucky. The letterpressed card fashioned after cross-stitch up top first caught my eye, but I am equally in love with the folk art-style woodland creatures above. Perhaps even more so.

Add to all this that I am nursing a crush on the couple behind Lab Partners, who designed the ring-a-ding-ding! style cards above with yet more cozy town scenes in winter, and well, you can pretty much see that I am a holiday goner.

Do you mail holiday cards every year? Is it something you always mean to do but don’t quite follow-through on (paging Miss McColl)? Are they another stressor on the “should-do” to-do list this time of year, or something you look forward to?

Katy and I were so flattered and psyched to participate in something Margaret Roach had brewing (you may remember her profile). When I was first sending over pictures and recipes, the entire project was still shrouded in mystery (what can it be?) but has just been unveiled. The Sister Project is the newest property in Margaret’s developing digital empire, and is a gorgeous and smart exploration of what it means to share the same DNA in different proportions. If you are a sister (either literally or metaphorically), you’ll definitely love poking around the site, exploring the blogs, galleries, featured artwork and quotes about sisterhood from Louisa May Alcott and Toni Morrison.

I really couldn’t be happier that we got to participate in this project, even if it did mean sharing weird pictures of the two of us on public transportation (see above) and cooking in sweatshirts and bright pink lipstick (you’ll have to click through for that gem). We also shared favorite recipes, anecdotes about afternoon-long lunches and times that have truly sucked, and seriously, just looking at the site fills me with glee about being a sister and having a sister. Check out the full piece here. Thank you so much to Paige and Margaret for thinking of us.

Saturday, November 15, marks the official grand opening on Flirt’s design studio, class space, and retail shop filled with unique home finds, Home Ec. If you head down to the space on Saturday from 12-6pm, you’ll be treated to free craft tutorials for kids and adults alike, snacks, 15% off purchases and class sign-ups, and a trapeze performance (whoa). The Flirt ladies are super great and just look how cheery this place is!

I love the idea of this space, not least of all because I’m particularly fond of the notion of home economics, especially in its modern incarnation (and one of the many reasons why I love Jean Railla‘s Get Crafty: Hip Home Ec). But maybe most importantly, I also love the feeling that comes from a community of people engaged in creativity together. It’s amazing what a sense of connection you can feel for the person cutting out a pattern next to you while the two of you discuss the finer points of  Rock of Love. That is, after all, what the real magic of quilting circles was all about: bringing women together under the auspice of practical creativity, when the end result, of course, was so much more meaningful than a warm blanket.

If you’re in the nabe, go!

Home Ec
303 3rd Avenue
between Carroll and 1st Street
718 852 2889

May I be totally honest? I am not a great sewer. I love handmade items, and I feel super inspired to create while browsing fabric stores, but I’m still a beginning (very beginning) seamstress. And if I were to be really, truly, brutally honest with myself, I’m not sure that I’ll ever have the unfailing attention to detail or exquisite patience required for projects like this.

So when it comes to something like my dear little laptop, I want a cover made by someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. And then I found fernfiddlehead on etsy and my heart leapt right out of my chest. I fell in love with this woodland creature fabric as soon as I saw it, but when I noticed the dear little details like vintage red buttons and twine, I was more than sold. All this charm for the awesome price of $25. Cathy chooses great fabrics, makes iPod covers and various other bags and pouches, and packages things up super thoughtfully before shipping them off to you. And no, she’s not paying me to say any of this, I’m just a really, really happy customer. Would that all shopping experiences left me this satisfied!

As we were standing in the mean June sun, Sebastian (who took all these pictures) asked why in god’s name the Renegade is always held on the brutalest of summer days. I should have knocked on wood as I said, a know-it-all to the end, that it’s the one time of year when it’s guaranteed not to rain.

But it rained, and it rained hard. Luckily, by the time the skies opened, we had taken refuge at a table set on an uneven, creaky wood floor in a restaurant that, bless them, still observes happy hour.

But back to the fair: few things make me happier than seeing vibrant, creative people doing their thing. I am somewhat embarrassingly chatty with vendors, but I can’t help it. To know what makes you happy takes serious smarts. To do what makes you happy takes tremendous guts, and to put it out there to the world takes a pluck I admire more than anything.

I walked away with beautiful prints by Jennifer Judd-McGee of Swallowfield and the marvelously joyous work of Julie Meredith of Etui (I scored that languorous lady in an inner tube above). It was such a thrill to see in person work I recognized from the online world, and also to fall in love with new things I’d never seen before. I’ve even got my eye on who I want to design our wedding invitations.

Assuming all work escaped unscathed from the downpour, it was a pretty terrific day of inspiration and creation, and the kind of sweltering heat that can only be followed by a super summer rainstorm. You can’t ask for more than that.

After a day in the city, when I step out from the mouth of the subway onto Brooklyn pavement, I can feel my shoulders unfurl and my breath get deep. For all of New York’s annoyances (and there are plenty), I love my neighborhood and its million delights: the constant baby parade, the dogs, the husband-and-wife-team restaurants, the creative buzz, the trees with leaves that fall to the pavement and get slick in the rain, the brownstones, the lovely little shops. And while I am mourning the loss of Rare Device, I have some new Brooklyn loves I wanted to share, all of which you can appreciate whether you live in the nabe or not:

D. S. and Durga has some very fancy colognes for both ladies and gents, but its their facial toner that has my heart. The tonic is one maharanis have used for ages; all I know is that it makes my skin super soft and makes me feel like a very down-to-earth princess.

Buttercup & Ivory makes beautiful embroidered linens with a sense of humor. I’m loving the formal place setting tablecloth on which you could serve Chinese takeout or linen coasters with wine spills that take the pressure off.

The soaps from Red Hook shop Saipua are lovely and the hand-stamped paper they come wrapped in even lovelier. But what I truly love are the lush, romantic flower arrangements and the pictures on owner Sarah’s blog that give a sense of the pretty, charming details in her world.

Do you read A Chicken in Every Granny Cart? If you don’t, you should. Ann’s blog captures all the nuances and big, grand vistas of living in Brooklyn with her lovely pictures, great stories, and recipes you want to gobble right up. None of them know it yet, but I totally want to invite Ann, Valerie, and Cathy over for supper.

Two things I want to know: Have any of you ever met blog crushes in real life? And what do you love about where you live? I’m all ears.

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Wouldn’t holiday shopping go down a lot easier if you could skip chain stores entirely and browse handmade goods with a cocktail in your hand while bobbing your head to Le Tigre? As if you were looking for another reason to love Bust magazine, they brought us the Holiday Craftacular for the second year in a row.

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Until three years ago, craft fairs came in your standard grandma, dried eucalptus, church lawn variety. Enter Chicagoan crafters and visionaries Sue Blatt and Kathleen Habbley. The two saw the craft movement gaining serious online momentum but realized there were no fairs to accomadate the new generation of crafters. And so in 2003, the Renegade Craft Fair was born in Chicago. Met with huge success, the duo brought the fair to Brooklyn’s McCarren Park last year, and their baby grew fast. This year there were nearly 200 vendors selling handmade goods: comic books, purses, cards and stationery, rock posters, puppets, t-shirts, jewelry, and pretty skirts.
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