AWESOME PACKAGE FROM MESHELL!!!!

I was richly rewarded for my work on Miss Bunny (Petunia!) by this MINDBLOWING crazy-pretty sewing goodies bag from Meshell. It is amazing! For one, just check it out overall- it's a beautiful and artsy sort of composition. And then, there are so many cool little details to discover. Even the thread colors are pretty and fun. It was obviously alot of work, piecing and composing patchwork and colors, hand-embroidery, covered buttons....!!!!!

I'll be the envy of all when I whip this baby out to get my seam ripper or safety pins, scissors, thread, etc. I really love it. Every bit of it is very thoughful. I feel so "up" looking at it, like I just drank a gallon of fragrant jasmine tea.

The colors of the striped fabric are so inspiring. They are like cantaloupe, strawberries, raspberries, chocolate, and mint. I want to make a whole blanket with those colors.

I also love how there are these mellow colors on my bag like light pink and sagey-green, right in there with this really vibrant bright orange (with a subtly mottled dye! I dyed some orange fabric a while back and it looked like that!) and it so completely works because it gets pulled together with these circles of lime and bright aqua and bright pink. Take a look!

Don't forget to check out the cute red covered button with the tiny white polka dots,the fun yellow flower button and the chunky green button, the red and white half-swirly button, ALL THE BUTTONS,the happy coffee beans/flower, all the cute little stitches, and the tiny gold kangaroo pin, the shiny stripey grosgrain ribbon that ties it together.....

I must be sort of a pain in the butt, because instead of just saying "oh, I think my favorite color must be...GREEN" or something almost as simple like "I love black and silver." , I insist that I love ALL COLORS, and then I email pictures of paintings by Beatriz Milhazes and say I want something like that. I got it too! I feel so lucky.

I also got funny postcards, pretty postcards, and the candy totally ruled! I always loved gummy candies, and now I am afraid I will not like them as much, because they can't possibly be as sweet and soft as FORBIDDEN FRUIT. What's with the apple and the orange making out? The pineapple guy looks pretty satisfied. Guess he already got some.

The vegemite was AN EXPERIENCE. My boyfriend had fun taking the pictures and laughing at my funny face.

Thank you so much Meshell! It really did feel like Christmas today, and it's been super fun emailing and crafting for you.

I'll have to post another pic after I've arranged all my stuff in all the handy pockets. I stuck the pins in right away, since I stuck my tomato pincushion in Petunia's butt to give her a little more weight and stabilty.

More Miss Bunny

I took ALOT of pictures of this project, and I can't help myself, I must post MORE.

Miss Bunny Pics!

I still can't sleep. I found out that Meshell got my package, and I'm just so pleased that she was so pleased! These are my pictures of my first attempts at a crocheted animal....... that I ended up mostly sewing.....

Can You Handle Helsinki?

Hel Looks showcases a wide variety of styles in their streetfashion photos of Helsinki.

Other Street Fashion Blogs and sites:

New York City: The Sartorialist

London: London Street Fashion

Paris: Face Hunter

Tokyo: Tokyo Street Style

Now that I've spent a bunch of time thinking about what everyone else in the world is wearing, (yes I know that is an extreme exaggeration and the world is alot bigger than 5 cities...) I should probably get back to making things.

But if you know of more online street fashion sources, please comment and tell me!

Up & Close-Harajuku ( photos by AJPSCS)

I don't know jack about japanese street styles, but I do know that ajpscs has posted 87 pictures he took of the Harajuku District in Tokyo in a flickr set that you should see.

Getting Dressed Was Fun In The 90's

Before I got all worried about what I was doing with my life, and began the process of madly de-cluttering, and setting goals, I had a wacky style that developed from waking up hungover, rolling out of my messy bed into a messy room with a huge closet full of mismatched costume shop cast-offs and constant thrift store missions, and throwing on ensembles of all kinds of everything, to hit the coffee shop downstairs from my flat in the Lower Haight of SanFrancisco.

I regret that I only have pictures of my tamer, less colorful outfits. The days of sticking plastic aliens and sharks into my ponytail to spice up my crappy hair cut from my (flash-in-the-pan) boyfriend when we were drunk, or trying to put together the goofiest wing-nuttiest outfit possible, and then figuring out that I really liked it and just had to take it outside, have truly fallen into the un-documented cracks.

When I packed to go to Osaka,Japan (in 1998) late into the morning after a party that was still raging in our apartment, the downstairs apartment, and the apartments to the side of us, I just had to stuff my fluffy orange petticoat and blue dress into my massive duffel bag. I figured I would look like I was from outer space, but hey, I had to be me!

Much to my surprise, my style really paled in comparison to the wackiness of the outfits that crowds of kids were sporting in Amerika Mura.I saw girls with multiple petticoats, elf shoes that curled up at the toes, circles painted on their cheeks....

A street artist in Osaka told me about the magazine FRUITS, which I had not heard of at the time, but have since run into in a bazillion SF bookstores. There is also a Fruits-japanese street fashion flickr group.

Recently I found a flickr group: wardrobe_remix, that is not wing-nutty but is meant to encourage people to take more risks in their outfits. People post pictures of their own outfits taken on days that they feel like they're rocking them. It looks like fun. Getting dressed used to be fun for me, and I believe that at some point it will be again, even if I don't go all the way out there and dress like a wing nut. Maybe I could try being classy but flashy, or something.....I'm 30, which my friend Rita informed me is the new 20 (That's good news!)...so I need a cool new style to rock.

Mary's Minami Map

These are the helpful words to know, and a map, that my friend Mary so thoughtfully wrote out and drew up for me way back in the day when I went to visit her in Osaka, Japan (1998).

The directional words were definately more helpful than I had wanted them to be, and the map was my trusty friend. I could find my way from the station to all the fun stores in Amerika Mura, and then use it to find my way to meet her in front of Tower Records when she got off of work. It was also helpful in figuring out how to make my way back when I'd gone too far, (or to help japanese people know where I was headed so they could point me in the right direction when I couldn't figure it out). It looks all very simple to navigate, but I have absolutely no sense of direction,and Mary knew that could be a problem, besides the fact that I knew nothing of the language. And it was really comforting knowing that I could pee in the bathroom on the 2nd Floor of Tower Records.

So, Foxylady, don't forget: unless things have changed in the last 8 years, there's a bathroom on the 2nd floor of Tower Records in Minami!

Sharon Boggon Is The Queen Of Details!

I discovered the most amazing blog when perusing pics in the flickr group:CrazyQuilting.

In the About section of the rich resource that is her blog, In A Minute Ago,Sharon Boggon explains her content in much more specific terms then I would, so I thought I'd lift a few bits from it directly to share here:

"In a Minute Ago is a blog of online resources which relate to contemporary and historical textiles, embroidery and needlework, quilting and crazy quilting, fiber arts, paper and book arts. It also performs a “whats new” function for my site, and documents current projects which are of a textile nature.....
Another area of my site is the Stitch dictionary which I hope people find useful. Each stitch is illustrated in step by step photos and I have categorised each stitch as to its degree of difficulty.....
For Crazy quilters there is also diagrams of embellished seam treatments....
For needlework enthusiasts I have also put online images of embroidery samples I have stitched. Some are simply ‘doodle cloths’ others are designed as samplers....."

She writes about samplers and the way they developed in aesthetics and function from the 15th to the 19th century, the broad cultural themes that influenced them, and the way that you see can see this history reflected in these handmade works.

That is so exciting because I had been thinking about doing a sampler quite a while ago, and I knew it had alot deeper meaning than just cross-stitching some cute stuff and maybe your name and the date, but the needlework and embroidery books I had just didn't get into it, and I did not have computer access at the time.

ie:"Before printed pattern books, embroidery designs were passed from hand to hand, many travelling through Europe from the Middle East. The recording of patterns and motifs on fabric for future use was an essential method of storing information. This stitched reference resulted in the creation of a sampler. New patterns and stitches were avidly collected and exchanged...."

On top of all this, she is featuring 100 Details For 100 Days, which is now on Day 66,and is a vast wilderness of inspiration for ways to be expressive with combinations of stitches and trims and buttons! Thank You Sharon B!

As if that wasn't enough, she is offering 2 online classes at Joggles.com. I am thinking about taking this one:Develop A Personal Library of Stitches that she explains as "a new class which is aimed at people who are interested in exploring and designing stitches".

I'm interested! I don't think that I'll have time to mess around with thread when it starts in November, but my mind is tossing around the notion that I could possibly, MAYBE, be able to make the time....

Miss Bunny Sneak Peek

Miss Bunny Is Packed For Her Trip!

The soon to be re-named Miss Bunny is ready to go to Australia, to live with her friend Meshell. She is just so over the USA.

It took me (nearly) forever to make this bunny, and then it seemed to take forever to actually get her into a labeled box ready for transport. Whenever I thought I was about to pack her up, I had something else to do....

At this point she is FINALLY packed, and tomorrow she is FINALLY going to the post office. At first I was a little worried about her comfort, but not anymore. She will not be cramped, or even bored, thanks to the wonders of traveling in STASIS.

It Is Super Cool to Eat Your Greens

It Is Super Cool to Eat Your Greens, originally uploaded by Probiotica.

I feel so very fabulous whenever I eat dark leafy greens. I feel a surge of strength, positivity, and regeneration, much like popeye, whenever eating spinach, collards, chard, or kale.

The above shirts are not hardly what you can call projects: green t-shirts lettered with a sharpie, but they were really fun to make, and I wear mine with pride.

The World's Healthiest Foods is a great site with extensive profiles on these wonderful life-enhancing greens and why you should eat them, as well as healthy cooking method demos on how to prepare all the things that you can eat as a gift to yourself and your quality of life. ie: How to chop and shred and cube and saute and braise and broil......

Live long and craft alot! Create a body of work that will live beyond you! Be ambitious, make a quilt!

Baby Chickens Are Cute

Their mama took off without them. She has about 13 or 14 chicks, so it's easy for her to lose a couple of them. I took care of them for the night, and then gave them back to her the next day when she finally showed up again. She showed her gratitude by repeatedly trying to attack me.

They are so cute, I had to take a ton of photos. You can see them on my flickr album: Chicken Overload.