Let there be colour.

It's February! Joy!

In celebration of it being no longer January I thought we should probably revel in some colour. A little brightness and vibrancy to bring relief to our poor, mouldering eyeballs.

Here are some of the things that I would like in my life right now.

this gorgeous top is by my friend Myf who is absurdly talented. She makes clothes and accessories with silk/hemp blend fabric and hand dyes them with natural dyes. Her shop is here and if you happen to be in Northcote Melbourne, she is running a workshop in natural dying using plants from your garden on March 16th, which I really wish I could go to. 

colour. Sweet sweet colour, by Emily Green. 

More experiments in vegetable dying, by Raw Colour. 

Sunshine in a cup. 

I wish I'd bought this when it was for sale on Achica, to go with my growing collection of brilliant yellow prints. 

This kitchen from David Mikhail Architects is my dream. I really want a bright pink dining table, at the moment we're using a cheap ikea kitchen worktop on some very cheap ikea table legs. I can not for the life of me find one though. And I can just see Nye's face when I suggest it now. Although he was accommodating enough to let me get the pink table legs. 

And this skirt. I'm almost certain if I lived in Melbourne and went to Myf's workshop (and had her teach me to sew), I could make this skirt and be effortlessly stylish for ever and ever and ever, the end. As it is I'm just going to make do with this picture by Jasmine Star. 

Life without the internet.

Jake Davis, 19, was arrested a year ago for being part of an internet hacking thing I don't entirely understand but which I admit, I found rather amusing. One of the conditions of his bail is No More Internet. I'm probably not the only person who finds myself envying him this, just a little bit. (I'm not so much envying the potential extradition to America, where they don't like people who make them look silly.) I found the whole article about Anonymous fascinating but Davis' piece about his forced exile from the internet was unexpectedly moving.

'Things are calmer, slower and at times, I'll admit, more dull. I do very much miss the instant companionship of online life, the innocent chatroom palaver, and the ease with which circles with similar interests can be found. Of course, there are no search terms in real life – one actually has to search. However, there is something oddly endearing about being disconnected from the digital horde. 

It is not so much the sudden simplicity of daily life – as you can imagine, trivial tasks have been made much more difficult – but the feeling of being able to close my eyes without being bombarded with flashing shapes or constant buzzing sounds, which had occurred frequently since my early teens and could only be attributed to perpetual computer marathons. Sleep is now tranquil and uninterrupted and books seem far more interesting. The paranoia has certainly vanished. I can only describe this sensation as the long-awaited renewal of a previously diminished attention span.  

 For it is our attention spans that have suffered the most. Our lives are compressed into short, advertisement-like bursts or "tweets". The constant stream of drivel fills page after page, eating away at our creativity. If hashtags were rice grains, do you know how many starving families we could feed? Neither do I – I can't Google it.'

*Jake Davis, in last week's Observer  

Image by Emilie Bjork, via East Side Bride.  

tattoos.

The ones I love are nearly always birds. Freedom and independence, it would seem, are things that I need to be reminded of regularly, prone as I am to forgetting that they're mine. The ones I love are nearly always painterly, works of art on a living canvas. Muted colours, but not afraid. Sometimes I just fall for a reminder, or a record of a life lived.   A print of Jen Bandini's collarbones lives above my sofa, it's probably my most prized piece of art, it catches my breath every day. 

About once a day I think about tattoos, about where I would put what and how I won't because I don't want one badly enough to deal with the prospects of infinite choice, commitment and paying people to hurt me, but how I love the beautiful ones and what an amazing thing it would be to carry around a piece of art that is mine and mine alone. 

. image source. Tattoos by Berit Uhlhorn

chalkboards. YES, chalkboards.

Yeah yeah, we're all so over chalkboards. Whatever. 

1. Miss Pickering

2. Shanna Murray

3. Typetoken

Hugh Fernley Weddingstall.

Guys, did you know that you can get married at River Cottage? And have Hugh Fernley Wittingstall cater your wedding? River Cottage. Fernley. 

Amazing.

(I'm aware that this will mean absolutely nothing to you if you don't live in the UK, but trust me, it's a big deal to a British eco foodie type.)


*Image from a spectacular River Cottage wedding, by Aneta Mak via Reverie magazine. 

Helen Fay

 

Last week I found myself in the city centre with the girlies. We'd been at the bank pretending to be grown ups. Instead of getting the train home  we went for a walk and before long I found myself passing a gallery, not one of those family friendly ones with crayons and interactive displays, a trendy gallery. It was empty. Looking in the window I was immediately drawn in by the (frankly amazing) photography exhibition and when we were done with that we wondered next door into the connecting print studio. Looking through the racks of prints thinking maybe I would find one for our house (ha! Maybe if I sold a kidney. Or a baby.) I came across these prints by Helen Fay and I could not stop coming back to them. In theory you wouldn't think that prints of dogs and penguins shouldn't be much more than 'kind of cute' and then passed over for something a little grittier, but these penguins and dogs really grabbed me. There's something so moving about them, so soulful. There's nobility and strength and perseverance; solitude, struggle, dignity. For reals.  The Glasgow Print Studio only had a couple of pictures but when I came home and looked up Helen Fay's website, her etchings of apes and monkeys quite literally made a lump rise in my throat. How can they be so emotive? I don't understand. All I know is that they might just be worth selling a kidney for. Any takers?

 

 

All images copyright of and reproduced with the permission of Helen Fay

pinning

Do you pin? I pin. I pin like Madeleine Albright (to quote the inimitable Kidchamp.) I've even added a little Pinterest linky button whatsit over on the right there. (look! It's a pinboard! It's clever AND pretty.)

I know I'm a bit late to this party but I'm still hearing an awful lot of 'I don't really get pinterest' which sounds an awful lot like 'I don't really get my VCR.' In other words Dudes! IT'S NOT COMPLICATED. Pinterest is a place for keeping track of things you like and things you find weird and things you think other people might like. Or it's an enormous black hole of things other people like, which is mostly grotesquely sickening recipes (white chocolate salted caramel cupcake,cookie dough truffles anyone?) and diet 'inspiration' (read: Starvation Motivation).

It's both a place for you to keep virtual pinboards of things you like and a place for you to browse things that other people like. Which is both wonderful and awful. Wonderful because there are people out there with very good taste (and some with TOTALLY insane taste, which is amusing), awful because there are a lot of people out there with very good taste and one can lose hours, days weeks lost in that shit.

I try to avoid too much browsing of other people's pins and keep it as a place to save pictures and gubbins that I like. Which becomes interesting when one looks back on one's pins after a few weeks and discovers what it is that one likes.

It seems that I mostly like:

tattoos 

stripes

things with boats on

peculiarities

sexy men with babies. 

 reassurances

and rabbits

Surprise! 

There are rules though. When you pin something it links to the page that you found it on. If that page is the front page of someone's blog then that link is not going to stay very useful when that someone updates their blog. SO. Either take 3 seconds to open the actual blog post that the thing is in or even better, if it's not that blog's original content then click through to whoever made it and pin it from there. Then when other people click on your pins they are taken to a link that is actually useful and credit is given where credit is due. Okay? Okay.  

Credits: 

1. Tattoo, 2. Stripes,  3. Boat Blanket, 4. Coffee Dog,  5. Sexy Man With Baby, 6. Absurd. 7. Rabbit,

Small spaces

These pictures, along with this article, made vivid by memories of this holiday, combined with 1000 square feet of cold, rubble-strewn rooms have me longing for the smallest and cosiest of spaces to live in. Spaces where each object and each belonging is chosen with care for space is the commodity you have the least of. Spaces where relationships are closer, clutter is less and decisions are fewer.



* image of Elodie's apartment, by Elodie and via decor8

Perpetuality

My first thought when I came across these pictures was what kind of crazyassed genius is this? My second thought, once I'd figured out just what I was looking at, was fuck yeah! I want one!

This perennial calendar from Little Brown Pen is too clever for words. It overwhelms me with cleverness. And beauty and talent and and and wow. I mean, it last forever. How often do you find a calendar that last forever? Almost never is how. It is made up of lots of little photos of Paris and you can buy your little piece of clever here. Or here.

Oh, and um, no. There won't be Peonies and Polaroids calendars this year. I thought about it, I even decided that it might be quite a good idea and then I tried to do it and well, I cried and I stamped my feet and I snapped at my husband and it was horrible. Maybe next year. This year there will however be Peonies and Polaroids gift set type things, which I'm very excited about. Peonies and Polaroids Gift Set Type Things only provoked lip chewing and hang wringing and a few what-am-I-doing-no-one-is-going-to-buy-these's which is a lot better than the aforementioned calendar situation.

If you're going to buy a sheep...

"If you're going to buy a sheep buy a good sheep"




These words strike me as Very Important to Remember.

words: farmer Adam Hanson on last night's Countryfile, which we have taken to watching with our dinner of a Sunday evening.

picture: a Very Good Sheep at this year's Royal Highland Show. An award winning sheep no less.

A chronical of time wasted

I don't know where time goes. I sit and I work and I don't do an awful lot else and yet by the end of the day, after 7 hours in front of the computer I've done about 3 hours worth of anything useful. Perhaps I should start chronicalling my days.

. images from Alyson Provax's Time Wasting Experiment. Prints available on etsy

Happy Monday

Yes yes, I know it's not Monday but Boy and I were working on Saturday so we pretended yesterday was Sunday and had a day of wondering and the cinema and cardamom buns and visiting mothers and grandfathers (two mothers, just one grandfather) and chatting round the dinner table and driving home in the dark trying to stay awake. So today is Monday. Yes it is. Because I say so, aright? Good.

This Monday I'm thinking about big wheels, and thus (of course) Coney Island (baby) and I'm listening to songs that make me smile. Elsewhere big wheels are called ferris wheels. I like our name better, mostly because big is a good sensible word and ferris is a silly word, the meaning of which I'm not entirely sure.

I'm thinking about big wheels because the fabulous racheljan has started a new flickr group called Ferris Wheel Love, from whence all of these beauties came...

The songs that I'm listening to that make me smile and make be happy and make me glad that it's Monday and I'm getting a little work done are this one and this one and this one and this one.

I hope you're having a happy Monday, or whatever day it is where you are.



credits:

1 Ferris Wheel, by youaremyfave
2 I Love Them by racheljan
3 untitled, by Simply Hue
4 Bucket Seat, by youaremyfave

Big Dog Small Baby

For the last few years I've been desperate for a big dog. I've also been quite keen on a small baby (I waver more on the baby than I do on the dog).

This series of pictures by Emmy Anne at A Dirty Blonde however has convinced me that there is simply no point in having one without the other.

So. Big dog and small baby it is then. One day

pictures via A Dirty Blonde

What Christine Did Next....

My lady friend over at Pretty Pretty Paper has been up to all sorts of magic, turning a tired old shop into a beautiful new Custom Invitation Studio, Paper Goods and Miscellany Store. It's clearly exhausting work (ask Frances) but look at what she did....

So if you happen to be within sensible distance (damn Scotland, damn it to hell) of Los Alamos California and need some custom invitations, paper goods or miscellany get thee to Cevd, post haste.

(you might just find a little something made in Scotland there, one day soon. In the meantime Cevd is the exclusive stockist of Jamie, Ms Desertfete's new line of paper goods. )


. images from Pretty Pretty Paper

rabtz

In obsessively scouring Design*Sponge looking for a little inspiration for our little home, I came across this little home. This little home with rabtz.

So the boy and I aren't nearly hip enough for all that orange and vintage formica but I love anyway. Because there are rabtz. And because they have made the place very very their own, which is what we want to do with our house. And because there are rabtz. With their own little specially designed bunny box. Note to self: find a less visually offensive house for the rabbit.

This place belongs to Kristen of deluxa and her musicy boyfriend. And their rabtz.




* images by Lorie Reilly and via Design*Sponge and Kristen's blog

wild things

hullo chickens, sorry I've been gone. I have a broken husband you see, and a lot to do. And a bathroom that doesn't work and a head that's slightly fuzzy. And whenever I stop working (and sometimes when I start) (and occasionally in the middle)- a tailspin of panic. So, I've been working. Working working working. Working so much that I worked right through an appointment that I've been waiting 21 months for and didn't realise until 5 days later. Whoops. I also forgot to blog, or answer emails or, well pretty much do anything.


Poor broken husband isn't faring too well either. He busted his knee, it hurts, it makes him grumpy (although he's doing an admirable job at pretending it doesn't make him grumpy) and aside from 2 hours at the hospital he hasn't left the house for 10 days. On the upside... I'm a jumpy kind of a girl and it doesn't matter if he enters a room slowly or quickly, quietly or loudly, while my back's turned or while I'm facing the door, the sudden appearance of my husband in a room that I've been alone in for more than 5 minutes scares the crap out of me. But not this week! He can hardly leave he sofa and when he does he has to lean on a broom handle to walk. What with the clunk clunk clunk the bugger's not going to be sneaking up on me any time soon.


In other, completely unrelated, news. Don't you love love love the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are*? It's booful. And have you seen Away We Go? It's funny. Very. And did you know that Battlestar Gallactica isn't sci fi boy crap but is actually terribly good? (Um, yeah, I've been spending all that time that I've been not blogging and not answering emails watching sci fi boy crap on the sofa with my husband)



* can you believe that I'd never heard of Where the Wild Things Are until husband mentioned it to me a few years ago? Before you write off my childhood as entirely deprived of literary culture and learning though, bear in mind that by the age of 8 I could recite this great work of genius by heart. I still can.

back and forth and back again

Hello darlings (and hello lovely new darlings who have found their way over here from Joanna's coop. Welcome! Please stay for I think I like you.)

I've been away but now I'm back. For three nights until I'm away again. Sigh and triple sigh. Live is busy, August is crazy. Weddings weddings everywhere and not a drop to drink. Or something along those lines. In the last month we have travelled 3562 miles. Two weeks ago, over the course of four days we took fifteen trains and slept in four different beds. We now have 24,000 photos to edit and all I want to do is take a big nap. But no time, no time, no time at all.

In the meantime, until hotel room number seventy two and wedding number six hundred and forty one, I'm really really going to try and give you some new posts. Because I like you and want to give you pretty things and say thank you for your lovely comments which make me smile muchly in the month of mad mad madnesses.

. photo by Toshi*

Poetry is....

"...the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning."

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Some days poems are all that speaks to me. Words make no sense except in the fragile order that only a poet can capture. Other days it is pictures that move me, photos that open my eyes and stir my heart. This week I feel drawn to both, to words and to photos, written and captured by people with the kind of talent that I can barely dream of glimpsing, let alone holding. The kind of talent that leaves me empty, deserted of words of my own, my own pictures recoiling with humility.

And so this week I share some of those magical images, those magical streams of worse that inspire me and I will hope that they inspire you too.


words
1. Dana Gioia
2. Emily Dickinson

. photograph by Jaime M

their space

You can keep the news, the sport, the business section and the advice column (ok, I lie. I kind of like the advice column, you can't keep it) my favourite part of the Sunday paper is always the feature showing the private rooms of the talented and the famous.

The studio in which ethereal gowns of breathtaking beauty are designed, the bedroom where the crazy designer of bizarre handbags sleeps, the study where the former poet laureate writes his words, the conservatory where Britain's favourite fabric designer hides with her jasmine plants, the sitting room where the daughter of an icon and oner of a kinky boutique screens films about Burma for her friends and family (can you guess which room this is? Clue: the poet laureate doesn't have a marble cock on his sideboard.)

I love these rooms because they're lived in. Yes, of course they're edited and polished and the mugs housing banana skins and an inch of cold peppermint tea have been removed before the Observer comes to call but there's still something gloriously real about each and every one, wouldn't you agree?*

*(except maybe Fay Ripley's kitchen, which is just a little too Elle Decoration to be true)

Alice Temperley's studio, Celia Birtwell's conservatory, Andrew Motion's study,
Lauren Child's kitchen, Sam Roddick's living room, Lulu Guiness's bedroom, Fay Ripley's kitchen,