Married to the Sea

I love Julianna Swaney's work (just purchased this print from her and couldn't be happier), so how did I not know about her awesome embroidery?

Weekend Pairing - Maintaining Intentions

Another weekend of playing with the new kitten and trying to capture her on film (most of my shots are just of little black blurs--hold still, Echo!). Being a November-born cat, she spazzed out over the unseasonal beams of sunlight shining into the kitchen, leading me to the startling realization that she had likely never seen such sunlight before in her short, Seattle life!

This part of the winter always feels very overwhelming to me. The holidays are over and it's a long, rainy, windy, and cold way until Spring, but I am trying extra hard this year to retain the positive atmosphere I cultivated in December through these in-between days. People make fun of New Year's Resolutions these days and indeed, "resolutions" seem silly and easily broken to me. I did, however, make some purposeful intentions for the year that I am very passionate about keeping up, even when the warmth and light of Summer seems a long way off.

Light as a feather, sturdy as a rock

Pretty Agate necklaces from Stone & Honey--I think the purple one with the feather is my favorite, but it's a tough choice.

Girl Pretty

Everyone knows that certain kind of girl movie (long-suffering boyfriends and husbands especially): the ones full of British accents, lavish dresses, gorgeous scenery, and perfect period details. I love this kind of film as much as the next lady (Emma Thompson's Sense & Sensibility remains one of my favorite movies ever), but I must admit, I'd gotten a bit tired of them lately. The last few I'd seen seemed to lack heart, and without that they were just...well, just pretty, and not much else.
Young Victoria had it all. It was indeed visually lovely, but the romance between the queen and Prince Albert was such a real, sweetly enduring love story that I've found myself thinking about it often over the last few days. While Emily Blunt was beautiful and regal, it was Rupert Friend who made the movie for me--more than just a pretty face, the quiet strength he displayed as he supported and encouraged his powerful wife was marvelous to see.
Also, I dorkily only put two and two together at the end of the movie, but of course Britain's Victoria & Albert museum (possibly my favorite museum in England) is named after this couple. For some reason, that makes me like both the museum and the movie even more.

Pause

photo by Linn Heidi Stokkedal

You know how sometimes when you have a lot going on--even it it's all mostly good things--and you just get overwhelmed for a little while and need some space? Well that's me for today, and even if I can't actually go there, I choose wherever this photo was taken as my reclaiming-my-focus-and-taking-things-one-at-a-time space.

More real or less?

Nealy Blau's photographs have always made me do double takes. I see them, glance away, and then quickly look back at them again, examining them deeper and realizing what I didn't realize at first: these seemingly real (albeit dreamy) landscapes are actually photographs of natural history museum exhibits! Of her work Nealy writes:

"Viewing dioramas inside natural history museums can be a deliriously disorienting, slightly eerie, and discordant visual experience. Yet photographing them, I often feel or sense a presence in them that parallels my experiences in nature in fascinating and subversive ways…"

I imagine that seeing these photos on the computer only further distances the experience.

Smell, Taste, Touch, Sound & Sight

I don't read a lot of non-fiction. Don't get me wrong--I read a ton, it's just that 99% of what I read is fiction novels. So I probably wouldn't have picked up Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses if a friend whose opinion I value highly hadn't recommended it to me. I'm very glad she did pass on this recommendation, however, since the poetic, thoughtful, and extremely interesting short essays within this book have been immensely enjoyable to read. I've been folding a tiny corner of the pages with some of my favorite passeges on them, and now just about half the pages in the poor book are turned down. Here's one of my favorites:

"Both science and art have a habit of waking us up, turning on all the lights, grabbing us by the collar and saying Would you please pay attention! You wouldn't think that something as complexly busy as life would be so easy to overlook. But, like supreme racehorses, full of vitality, determination, and heart, we tend to miss sights not directly in our path--the colorful crowds of people on either side, the shapes left in the thickly rutted track, and the permanent spectacl of the sky, that ever-present, ever-changing pageant overhead."

An Egg of A Different Color*

I've been doing some rearranging in my kitchen lately, finding better jars to hold my ingredients and little bowls and saucers to keep track of bits and pieces here and there. Too bad I didn't find these Good Egg containers from JFish Designs earlier--they would have been perfect! Maybe I'll just have to get one or two and then come up with something to store inside them after the fact.

*I know, I know--my hilariously lame (or lamely hilarious?) titles need some work.

Alice in Wonderland

I'm loving these paintings by Alice Case. Watching the slideshow of her work on her website, it's a lot of fun to see her paintings transition from representational pieces to wilder and more complex abstractions.

Weekend Pairing - Mid January Already?

This weekend was essentially the weekend of "The Kitty" (as my boyfriend calls her) or of "Burbler" (as I call her, because of the adorable burble-chirp noise she usually makes instead of meowing). I found myself making excuses to lounge around on the sofa doing nothing specifically so that Echo, our new 11 week old, black & white kitten could fall asleep on me.
I did stand up enough to make some cranberry syrup for our Saturday morning pancakes, however, along with a pear & almond tart for my Mum's visit tomorrow.

Catia Cheng

I had a pretty impressive collection of children's books when I was young. My parents kept me well stocked with books by "the greats": Barbara Cooney, Chris Van Allsburg, Audrey and Don wood, etc. and I spent hours pouring over them.
I'm pretty sure that if I'd had books as a child with Catia Cheng's illustrations in them, I wouldn't have been able to put them down.

Folk Folk

Lately I've been on a big folk music kick. And I'm not talking about folk music-lite, like Iron and Wine and Fleet Foxes (though I love them too). No, I'm talking about folk music: the more traditional, sometimes very dark ballads and story-songs, full of betrayal, deaths, and star-crossed lovers. Heavy stuff, I know, but also beautiful and haunting in a deeply Romantic way. Rachel Unthank & The Winterset and Jackie Oates are two bands that are interpreting these old songs and putting amazing and intense spins on them. I've been sipping tea and listening to these albums on repeat--highly recommended.

Swytak's Still-Lives

Beautiful still-lives by Laura Swytak. I saw the first image in person a few months ago at a group show and it was by far my favorite piece in the show. It reminded me of some of John Singer Sargent's work (I immediately thought of this painting) and I imagined Laura's piece as the breakfast scene instead of the evening birthday on the table in Sargent's painting!

Coniferae II

Carving some pinecone stamps--can't get this motif out of my head recently.

Lizzie McQuade

Unique "head accessories" (for lack of better words, since they're not really hats but are clearly more than just hair ties) by Lizzie McQuade, made from hand-dyed and vintage fabrics.

Call of the Cuckoo

If I had an extra £220 (I'm not even going to translate that for myself into US dollars) to buy a limited edition silkscreen print by Sanna Annukka, I would frame this beauty up nice and find for it the most fantastic place of honor in my apartment ever.