Inspiration: framing vintage bags

I have a few bags that I especially treasure but they aren't the normal ones you'd bring to work... or the ones you take to the races even... they're the type you want to display... maybe to a summer wedding or the opera.

I have one of my favourites propped up on my "dressing table/cabinet" but would love to frame it up ala Unabashed Repetition.





What I like about this is that in no way is the bag pricked by mounting pins.. or anything. A couple of superstrong magnets, shadowbox and pretty paper.

I'd love to do this with my bags. Pity the Ribba frames aren't deep enough... (and pity I have enough stuff hanging on my walls. Husband and I counted 75 items... and growing rapidly.)

Still. A project to keep in mind! Thanks for the inspiration!

I thought I'd showcase some talented bag makers on Etsy:

By Etsy sellers:
First row: 1. The Leather Store , 2. DanicaDesigns, 3. Dschicboutique;
Second row: 4. daphenen, 5. katwhitt, 6. PacoandLupe;
Third row: 7. LooptheLoop, 8. fiazco, 9. OhGosh

Because mass e-mails are so impersonal

There are some new developments in my life! And if you are reading this blog, you might care about them (emphasis on the "might").

1. I have a new job!

I have been hired as a waitress at a new restaurant opening in the financial district. It's called Exotic Sushi and Tapas. Which is an odd combo, but hey, I'm trying to keep an open mind. I hope people still eat sushi during a recession. I plan to, at least. I could never give up Dragon Rolls.

Yum.

2. I have joined an a cappella group!

It's called Downtown Crossing. I haven't rehearsed with them yet, but I miss singing and performing so I'm looking forward to getting started. And apparently, a cappella is having a bit of a renaissance, what with Ben Fold's Five's new album featuring collegiate a cappella covers of their songs, and the upcoming Conspiracy of Beards (all-male a cappella group that sings only Leonard Cohen) concert at the Highline Ballroom in New York.

3. I am writing for a new sex blog!

It's called The Sex Appeal and I'll be posting twice monthly, on alternate Mondays. In homage to my name and the infamous hard-to-find spot, I hope to call my column The Silent "G". My first post should be up this Monday. It will be a review/adult perspective on Judy Blume's racy teen novel "Forever," which got me quite hot and bothered when I read it at age 11. Will it still seem as raunchy now that I've actually done the deed? Tune in Monday to find out.

So that's all the latest...apologies to people who read this blog and have no interest in the personal life of its author.

Update: Jacqueline Kennedy: the White House years

Woo heee!!!! I just received a heads up from J.Mette letting me know that the Jacqueline Kennedy poster has been reprinted and is on sale again at the Field Museum at Chicago!

I discovered it way back in Jan 2008. Thanks J.Mette!



Get yours today!

Nutcracker costume by Rachel Papo

really inspires me and makes me feel happy... but at $600 a print... that's just something I'll have to enjoy onscreen and printed out on my home colour printer to stick onto my inspiration board.



Purchase Rachel Papo's print at ClampArt Gallery.

Brian from ClampArt kindly also referred me to a MUCH more affordable print by Rachel Papo at 20x200. Entitled Nastya Before Class, St. Petersburg, Russia for $20.



Thanks Brian

Hope you all have a lovely weekend! We're going to be busy clearing junk in our house for the council hard rubbish collection on Monday!

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

This week's selection is a lovely and sad villanelle by the late Rad Smith. Smith died of lung cancer in 1998 before his one and only book, Distant Early Warning, was published -- his wife sent out the manuscript and it was eventually picked up by Tupelo Press in 2005.

I chose a villanelle to demonstrate that "archaic" forms, even those that incorporate rhyme and word repetition, can be applied to modern themes very successfully. Smith's poem sounds like idiomatic speech and is a very distant cousin of Roethke's lofty poem in the same form, "The Waking" ("I wake to sleep and take my waking slow/ I learn by going where I have to go"). Villanelles are surprisingly diverse, tonally.  I like them and think contemporary poets should tackle them more often.

Old Lovers

Best never to revisit them unless

years afterward, you're still tormented,

or it's late, and you are willing to say yes

if one asks you to unzip her dress

in the dimly lighted room you've rented.

Best never to revisit them unless

galloping stallions don't distress

you, or you've forgotten how she once said

I'm late. And you are willing to say yes

to an invitation with no return address

on purple stationery hotly scented.

Best never to revisit them unless

you can bear the heartlessness:

ravaging hands, teeth, a scorched bed.

It's late. Are you willing to say yes

yes yes to a devouring caress

despite the wreckage last time you consented?

Best never to revisit them unless

it's late, and you are willing to say yes.

Loosely based on something that may or may not have happened at some point

Nowadays, it seems like every movie trailer I see comes with the claim that the film is "based on a true story." Just the phrase "true story" seems problematic enough, but I'm fascinated by our cultural obsession with authenticity. Like saying something is "based" on something real makes the movie better. I mean, one could argue that everything is loosely based on something true-- James Bond is loosely based on some British spy, Napoleon Dynamite is a composite of various teenage nerds that actually exist, and Clark Griswold is clearly based on everyone's well-meaning but hapless fathers.

So "The Haunting in Connecticut" claims to be based on true events. That could mean ANYTHING. It could just mean that once, someone thought a house in Connecticut was haunted. I have a theory that my refrigerator is haunted (it makes some seriously wack sounds and my cat won't go near it) but I'm not about to write a screenplay about it.

I wish we still valued straight-up imaginative stuff -- everything that comes out now on stage or on film is an adaptation of something already written/created or (supposedly) based on something real. There are movies based on plays (Frost/Nixon, Doubt), plays based on movies (Grey Gardens, Legally Blonde) plays based on movies based on books (High Fidelity), movies based on plays based on earlier movies (Hairspray), and even movies based on theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean).

The trend continues: in the 1990s, 27 films based on true stories were released. This decade, the count is up to 101 (source: Wikipedia). And that's not counting all the adaptations of stories from other mediums. Sadly, it seems like originality has become passé.

Queenscliff's Ashby House

There's something visceral about owning something a genuine antique from another culture, another land. Especially when you know the provenance of said antique. I have no desire to own a Malaysian/Balinese antique, but to own a French or Swedish antique would be divine. I love to have just a few choice pieces of French/Swedish antiques in the home (rather than fill it will the same style -one would wonder if it was all repro!). I always remember the living area of Something's Gotta Give with the one Swedish horloge comptoise.



I really enjoyed the long weekend two weekends ago when husband, Hannah and I went to Geelong district in Victoria. I love the houses there and the sea air. Of course, I visited my favourite haunts in Geelong... but we also did some exploring.

We went to Queenscliff, about 40 mins on from Geelong, a lovely touristy seaside town. Whilst sharing a raspberry gelato, we discovered Ashby House, a gorgeous French shoppe, selling antiques, homewares and linens.



What sets them apart from the other French-style furniture stores is that Ashby House is full of GENUINE French antiques. Michael and Julie Melican visit France twice a year (what bliss, husband and I would love that life) to buy for their shop. They come home with containers full of the best things!



Like this giant Spanish antique armoire, from the 17th century. I don't know if you can see from the perspectives of the room, but this armoire is huge. It barely misses the ceiling!



There was also a unique armoire ... with two side sections with shelves but a glassed middle section with four wide, deep shelves... I loved it.



Michael and Julie treated us to a special stay-past-closing-hour-to-yak! I loved this French antique grandfather's clock and mentioned it to Julie, who was keen to share more about it. Turns out Michael and Julie pick these up, broken or not... and brings them home. Michael's taught himself to repair these great things. Apparently these are not "grandfather clocks"... these are "horloge comptoise", or clocks meant for the working folk, the unique thing is not the look, but the strikes. It strikes on the hour once, ringing out the hours, but then in 30 seconds it repeats itself. This is because people who are working in the fields, barns, stables etc don't often know the exact time, but hear it ring... and then they know in 30 secs they will get to hear and count the strikes again. Fascinating! (for me).



But this is my favourite piece. A small ceiling lamp ($1200)... Perfect to hang above the my "dressing table" area in our bedroom.



People, it's worth a visit. Queenscliff, Geelong and especially Ashby House. Check out their fine white linen, their antique silverware and silver compotes, their large French antique furniture, their gorgeously selected artwork, their clothes and even garden settings.

45 Hesse Street
Queenscliff VIC 3225
Australia
+61 3 52581907

Credit card instructions FAIL

but, one could argue, Stripping WIN:

Photo courtesy of Mike Pincus, taken yesterday at the AMC Loews Boston Common 19.

Our Anniversary

Today husband came home with a gorgeous bunch of pink gladioli in honour of our 5th Wedding Anniversary!



So sweet :)

I've put them in vases in twos and threes here and there :) More of a punch in just one vase! (Plus I can spread the joy around the home!)

Have a great weekend!

Don't watch this if you already think cats are creepy

I can't really think of anything to post today, so I'll just share this extremely bizarre scene from a Swedish horror film called Let the Right One In.

A Dollhouse Inspired: Barbie & Me

I can't afford my favourite dollhouse ever.

The Bozart Kaleidoscope House

Or the M112 Pod, my second favourite dollhouse, ever.

The M112 Pod, via Mini Modern

But I did pick up this Barbie dollhouse for Hannah for $8.50 at the local Salvos about a year or two ago. It's got almost no furniture left, stickers are in the wrong spot and the front door and fold out counter is missing. No Barbie doll either. (But the phone and microwave work...)



I didn't think I could make this into something designer-esque, although I have been dying to get my own modern dollhouse (adult only!).

But mazzie22 has shown me the error of my ways! I found her Flickr set this morning and am particular inspired by how she's changed hers.

Look, look look!









I'm so inspired. Watch this space as I steal this underused Barbie house to designer-esque it up!

Speaking of ultra inspiration to Barbie homes, check out Haute Doll's photographer Michael Williams a.k.a. mawphoto's EXCELLENT Jonathan Adler-esque Barbie home!















And of course, to celebrate Barbie's 50th Anniversary, he was invited to the Barbie House, designed and decorated by extraordinaire designer, Jonathan Adler! And here are photos of the Barbie house:


You can't see this here... but that sunburst mirror above the fireplace is made from Barbie dolls!


And those chandeliers are made from Barbie hair!

Barbie & Jonathan Adler photos by Michael Williams/Haute Doll Magazine

Glitzy home... or...?

Isn't this the best home? At night, bathed in light, surrounded by glass walls... imagine it in the daytime!

I just saw it on my rounds in the 'hood... felt so voyeuristic! But just fell in love with the house!













Gorgeous huh? No, No I haven't become a peeping Tom, skulking around with a camera, spying on people living in glass houses at night :)

This is the fantastic work of Aburahouses, on his freaking-tastic dollhouse!







Want one? Contact Aburahouses here.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

(part I-lost-count in an ongoing series)



I'm in San Francisco, a city I fall in love with every time I visit. Yesterday, I toured the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. I don't go to art museums that often; sometimes they wear me out, physically and intellectually. But my visit did inspire me to post this next poem, by Lisel Mueller. I hope you like it as much as I do; the first time I heard this poem (I heard a recording of Mueller reading it while interning for The Poetry Center of Chicago), it almost made me cry.

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no halos

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don't see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors: fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don't know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent. The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and changes our bones, skin, clothes

to gases. Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms.

Ananda Khalsa

I am madly in want of a piece of Ananda Khalsa's jewelry.
They are so fine!
So whimsical, so precious, so unique, so Christmas/anniversary appropriate :)



Ms Khalsa creates these heirloom-worthy pieces out of Asian art, natural forms, and the cool sleekness of metal. She hand paints each piece on paper and then sets them behind hand-ground glass in fine and sterling silver. Then she accents her pieces with 22k gold. (Which is so good to hear since Asian gold is 24k and that is what I've always grown up with.)



Ms Khalsa even accepts Paypal! heh!

Any of the below will do quite nicely.