GETTING STARTED

I'd special-ordered a long blazer from Dace for fall which, sadly, never materialized. Boo-hoo, I shed a little tear, picked my sorry self up off the floor, then remembered I don't have any money to spend on clothes anyway so yippee!

But I still wanted a long blazer. Story of my life.

Lucky I know how to make one so that's what I did this Saturday & this is how it turned out:

And the nice thing about making your own blazer? You can totally give it a leather collar and line it with kasha for cool weather which makes it even more perfect for you than the one you had ordered in the first place. I'm so excited to finally be making things for myself again.

STAYING FOCUSED

{beautiful photos from saipua}

Having recently jumped back into the floral design profession, I find myself lacking the confidence I once had with arranging. It can be so easy to lose one's own sense of what is beautiful when constantly told it should be this way or that way. Now I once again have the freedom to prove myself and to please others and frankly I just can't focus on one idea at a time. Luckily there are plenty of florists posting their amazing pieces on the web, reminding me that I have something to aspire to.

GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS TODAY...

...It's new camera day! I'm going to go pick it up right now, well, ok, just as soon as I get out of bed.
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!

OLDIES

UGH. Still no camera and it's driving me nuts.

Spent a portion of last night looking through old sketchbooks and found this beauty from the '90s! yo. It always amazes me how little my drawing style has changed in 10 years -- not necessarily a good thing, I know. It's called growth friends, I need to learn it.

Anyway, it was a nice way to waste time as I avoid the great closet clean-out of 2009. Seriously, the situation is out of hand. I need to get rid of at least 2/3rds of what I own to make my bedroom remotely liveable again. Am I wrong to believe that this will greatly improve my quality of life? After all, I've never been one to deal well when I have too many options - menus are my nemesis.

THE LIFE

{photos mostly from M O O D and viva vena cava}

CRAVINGS

{from top left: Juma shawl cardigan, Raquel Allegra top via Assembly, A Detacher charmeuse jumper via Creatures of Comfort, Complex Geometries wool tabard, Acne metropolitan heels via Gravity Pope, Thieves sweater}

The prairies have warmed a little lately, still I feel the cold creeping in and must prepare for coming months of winter + dark + forced hibernation. Already I'm finding reasons to not leave my house while endlessly fantasizing of escape from this great cruel north. I don't know how much longer I can pretend to be content here.
Earl Grey tea and Station to Station provide a little comfort. So does window shopping. I'm currently craving woolens and fancies and, with so little time left to wear them, completely impractical shoes. Dreaming helps make it through the long cold nights at home, be careful though, so does drinking.

ps. Cross yer fingers that my new camera arrives in store this week so I can finally start posting photos again.

SHADOWS AND TEXTURE

I took some photos on my lunch break the other day. The gallery where I work captures the feel of a hidden desert, or more so a little oasis, locked in time in a much different climate than Southern California. Everything in this small white room is brought down in scale to suit the houses and the offices of the Vancouver elite. It's the scale of all these plants that is now so interesting; each plant is family sized so to speak, but in the safety of the gallery, behind glass and doors, bathed in the warmth of the south-facing sun, one is able to quietly admire and inspect these organisms in a way otherwise quite unattainable in the wild. When you are this close, these species are no longer just unique, or beautiful, they are alive, they are threatening, majestic, unpredictable, and resistant, but ultimately fragile because they have been taken from where they belong and now they must live within these walls where it is clean and boring and safe. A much different silence than the desert.