bricolagelife

productive weekend + a loop scarf preview

despite the fact the we ushered in the weekend with a disheartening break down of the old volvo's breaks on friday afternoon (and the demise of the steam iron on saturday), i managed to have a happily productive 48 hours here. four freshly stitched and stamped summer loop scarves are photographed and ready for the shop, new links and badges have been added to my sidebar here >

and i spent some lovely quality time with a few of my very favorite persons. an unexpected act of kindness came my way as well when a faraway flickr friend surprised me with a gift renewal of my account, which had expired last month. tho 2011 has been particularly impecunious for us, goodness, generosity and joy continue to balance out the adversities and keep us afloat. just when we feel we are surely sinking this time - we are reminded there is something to smile about and be grateful for. 

which starts this playing in my head :) happy monday everyone!

see what i see :: best buds

all it took was that one unseasonably hot day on sunday, when we left our coats in the car and felt our shirts stick to us in the heat again. by the time we took our walk on monday afternoon buds were bravely opening up on trees and shrubs everywhere. their yellow, green and fuzzy white tender leaves were a welcome sight.

as we turned on the bridge to make our way home for dinner, a tiny lucky ladybug lighted on w's shoulder. hello there, long-awaited signs of spring!

 

 

found photos :: more fun with bud and amelia

in september we returned to the antique mall by the lake where i had fallen in love a year ago with a small stack of old photos of bud and amelia. this time as i stood in a cramped booth digging thru another bowl of black and white images i was amazed to find a few more. it was startling, like running into an old friend unexpectedly. the icing on my treasure hunting cake was when i leaned over the counter to pay for my finds and met the woman who had attended the estate sale and helped empty the house where amelia had lived. stories were handed over along with my brown bag of snapshots. this is what i learned:

after confirming my assumption that amelia and bud were living together, unmarried, in an era when the arrangement would have been considered unseemly, she added that bud was also "dating" one of amelia's four sisters. (the news broke my heart a little, as i had developed my own happy romantic image of the couple.) and apparently these sisters, sharing careers in their local public school system, had very sticky fingers. as the house was cleared after their demise, cases and cases of purloined school supplies were discovered stockpiled in the basement. glue, scissors, paper, tape... (my eyes widened here) most had never been opened. when they all retired from teaching and principling, the women took jobs in the town's department store where they continued to bring home the merchandise they just couldn't resist. oddly, the antique shop proprietress commented, they had identical taste in shoplifting (as they'd apparently had in men). duplicates of every item pilfered from the store where uncovered in drawers and closets throughout the house, tags intact. 

if every picture tells a story... the story i imagined, the story revealed, and all the secrets still withheld, in this case they could tell a whole book.

 

 

 

cyber surprises

i was pleased and surprised last week to find my flower face photographs featured in november in "some things i liked last week" on one of my favorite design blogs, bloesem! i have a couple of these flower face prints left in the shop. find them here and here.

i also missed this feature on rearranged design's things we love series back in october. click on the image and enjoy each little card in the collection.

see more of my photographs and collages featured here, including a few that made the best of the first year list at W5RAN. as always, my photos are available upon request as custom order prints in sizes up to 16 x 20 - just ask :)

WORD :: winner!

hey mallory - you are the lucky winner of a copy of jen + jen's new book, WORD!

congratulations!

thanks to everyone who participated and a special thank you to jen + jen for this great giveaway. and if you didn't win one you can still get one here :)

WORD :: giveaway!

{photos by jen shaffer}

happy friday, people! i am thrilled to be able to offer you an awesome giveaway today. from friends jen and jen (jen shaffer and jen victoor, the creative eyes behind the viewfinders), this gorgeous book is the culmination of a two year collaboration between two photographers with two polaroid cameras. every month a word was chosen and each jen produced a beautiful polaroid image that defined the word for them. i have happily followed the project online and loved seeing the visual pairings, getting to know a little bit about the stories behind the images. i think you will, too.

{photo by jen victoor}

simply leave a comment here by midnight sunday december 5th with your email address and a winner will be randomly chosen on monday morning to receive a free copy of WORD!

this lovely book would make a wonderful gift for the holidays, so you may want to pick up a few copies to give away yourself. 

purchase your WORD here. or here. and here... or the book and prints here.

read more about the project here.

thank you so much, jen and jen!

poncho love

my first-ever poncho has arrived in the post from france. and i am in love with it. beautifully made, so simply and elegantly designed by the lovely pascale of // between the lines //, this soft fine grey wool single seam poncho will be a staple of my wardrobe for years to come. i got mine in a giveaway on her blog - but you can make one, too. many of her gorgeous projects are available in easy to follow tutorials.

thank you, pascale - i love it!

making stuff : embroidered tea cozy surprise

teatime with spottie. hand embroidered and appliqued on linen, stitched onto vintage cotton polka dot fabric, lined with new wool and trimmed in vintage bias tape. a commission for a friend's new kitchen.

she knew i was working on a tea cozy for her this week, but she didn't know i was embroidering her beloved spottie dog on it. so i couldn't show it here until i gave it to her. and i couldn't wait to see her face when she opened it! last night i handed it over. she was truly surprised and she loves it. i'm so happy about that. yay!

thinks on :: nesting

i have been shut in the apartment for two solid days cleaning in preparation for an upcoming feature (more on that later) and cleaning for me inevitably leads to rearranging... if not all the furniture, then at least the displays. are you wired this way, too? it's been my habit since i was a child, placing things just so in my space until they felt right to me somehow. a powerful instinct from an unknown source, it always makes chores take longer - but makes them a little more pleasant, too. overcoming the urge to repaint the rooms or a few pieces of furniture or reupholster everything was quite a task. i kept my head down and plowed thru the dusting, washing and vacuuming, tweaking the existing details as i went. making things a little more balanced here, more efficiently organized there, until i fell into bed the night before the professional photographer rang the bell at noon on tuesday. she is the first person to shoot my rooms besides me and i am eager to see what she saw. and unlike most of my shots - all in focus, too!

meanwhile (a little unrelated attention deficit browsing distraction)...

seeing this made me want to build a wall or table out of books.

seeing this made my heart pound. and wonder if its possible to take out a bank loan for boots?

seeing this made me wish i was as clever as kirsty.

seeing this makes me laugh until i cry. seriously.  no matter how many times i watch it. thanks, josh and pam :)

 
 

 

surprise! my collection photos on apartment therapy

i'm still struggling with the what, where, how and why of my facebook fan page and google analytics account. its a bit of the blind leading the blind, or rather, the ignorant diy. but last night i sat gazing in wonder at the colorful pie chart of referral sites and noticed a hefty blue (or was it green) pie slice of visits generated from apartment therapy. after hunting around i found this. which made me very happy, especially seeing my photos sitting beside some of my favorite photographer's images. what a lovely surprise!