Daydreaming

photo by 11nightmares

+ I know this is D&G from 2008, but these dresses and photos just make me swoon. They seem like this campaign's Romantic older sister.

+ As a new, first-time cat owner, I found this feline fact sheet both hilarious and informative.

+ Sandra's latest crocheting projects make me feel guilty about my neglected, been-working-on-it-for-3-years-now granny square blanket.

+ It will be a while before I pursue an MFA (if ever, really), but how awesome would it be to go to this school in The Burren?

+ A pretty Lunaria Flickr set and some cozy, jealousy-inducing snow photographs by Michelle Arcila (Seattle, why have you let me down on snow this year?!)

Happy February First!

Weekend Pairing - First, Last & Beyond

Well, our hiking plans were foiled by the weather (honestly, for Seattle in January, I don't know what we were expecting) but we had a nice time just being lazy instead and munching on the oatmeal-raisin-coconut cookies that I'd made to take on the hike. The soundtrack to the weekend was this bootleg on 100% repeat (because I am beyond jazzed for the album).

So here's to January! You were new and productive, dear First Month of the Year, but now it's time to move on to February: a 28-day month that will hopefully really settle us all into 2010.

Have a wonderful weekend! I think I might make it out to the falls for another hike, so I'm crossing my fingers for some nice weather.
Also, I've been super enjoying a new blog (discovered via Good Long While) called My Scandanavia Retreat. Browsing through it, I keep asking myself, "Could that elusive, particularly Scandinavian aesthetic be any more awesome?" My Answer: No.

In The Woods

Wooden Rounds & Antique Gold Necklace . Wooden Keepsake Box . Alright Alright Print .
Fern Hemp Zip Purse . Collecting Feathers Print . Long Horn & Brass Necklace .
Vintage Japanese Sweets Mold . Weeping Willow Pillow . Turquoise Branck Napkins .

Some neutral and nature inspired Etsy finds for Friday morning.

Have One On Me

Oh my goodness, guys. Oh. My. Goodness. It looks like the crazy-voiced Joanna Newsom does indeed have a new album coming out February 23. And it's a triple album! Be still my heart. If the album's good I have a feeling that this will make my month.

I know that lots of people can't stand Joanna Newsom, and I used to be one of those people. I had tried, really tried to like her, but I just couldn't get past that voice that she had. Then my roommate while I was studying abroad in college played her albums over and over in our apartment and I found myself humming the melodies later in the day without realizing it. Once I could connect with the patterns and rythyms in her songs, I found that the dreaded voice didn't bother me anymore, and now I count Joanna Newsom as one of my all-time favorite artists.

Rainbow Stones

I know I shared some earthy inspired jewelry last week, but when I came across these necklaces from the awesomely named Unearthen, I had to post them too. Such gorgeous colors! Paired with a sleek black outfit, any of these pieces would look super dramatic and classy.

Home

Beautiful photographs of bird nests from Richard Barnes' Refuge series. I love how magical and otherworldly they look, when they are really just small clusters of twigs, leaves and debris!

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.