check your head

this is a little summer straw cloche that i am working on. the vintage straw has been repurposed from a crap 80's sort of bridal hat that i found at the thrift store. i just reblocked it with a little steam love and separated and reshaped the brim. i sized the crown with my handy dandy gelatin sizing and voila! i'm leaving the brim unwired to give it a softer shape. it is still kinda mid process and the velvet ribbon will actually go around the exterior of the crown(not just the front, i was feeling lazy for pics). i heart it so. but i may want to list it in my shop. my goal(dare i talk about goals???) errrrr my dream is to do more projects like this ie. repurposing sad and unloved vintage millinery and breathing new life into them. i have another smooshed up old beater that i am just starting to play with. is beater a word? did i make that up??? i think it actually means junky car, but whatevah. k, i'm off to pollinate my squash plants. oh don't mind the self-portrait, that was thrown in for good measure.

on a train...

saturday i took the silver and blue surfliner down to oceanside to go to my beautiful and brilliant little superstar sister's 20th birthday. i was worried that i wouldn't make it when my original train got cancelled due to as the amtrak agent put it,"a trespasser on the tracks." i was confused by the trespasser part because at first i thought...what, like a bandit? but then she clarified and said that some miserable person had woken up with a death wish and stepped in front of the train.creepy. sad. most unfortunate. but all of that was forgotten once i was on a later train and rollin' down the track like a johnny cash beatbox. i love trains! they are an incredible way to travel.the trip from l.a. to oceanside is just under two hours and so much more relaxing than dealing with traffic and freeway baloney. if only long distance train travel was more affordable...

50 million ideas and a grey sunday...

my weekends just don't seem to be long enough to do everything that i want to. it takes me at least a half day to just recover from the chaos of my previous weeks work. i am just counting the days until april when everything will simmer down a bit. i spent saturday evening finishing up bracelets for the boutique. i am pretty happy at how they are turning out, but as i am in such a creatively prolific period right now, i just want to crank out pieces like a machine. unfortunately, i am also easily distracted. this means that i also went thrifting(found a most excellent and huge mirror), poked around the library, played with the dog, broused at the nursery(picked up some mint and an heirloom tomato plant after much deliberation), and experimented with baking macarons(and failed miserably yet tastily!!!).
i also made a second visit to the "rat house." i was so in love with that apartment and i thought sure that it would be ours, but after less than five minutes in the place and hearing the movement in the walls i was running for the door. i had gone by myself this time just to listen and poke around and think about this maybe being the next place that g. and i would move to. scratch scccccrrrrraaaaattttcccchhh. it came from two different sides of the living room. one side being in the vicinity of the fireplace. it was such a creepy feeling...kind of like being watched and i was having flashbacks to watching salem's lot on tv as a kid and how the old scary house had vampires living their undead lives in the walls. spooooooky. vampires and/or rats are a real deal breaker, so greg and i will stay in our smaller apartment..stupid nosferatu...stupid fear of the plague.
i did manage to snap this pic in the mirror of the built-in in the dining room. this was literally seconds before the scratching and shuffling sounds in the walls started up.


took another trip to the huntington today with some friends. it was fun to act the part of bumbling docent and then to just sit on the lawn in a bed of clover and pass the afternoon.

a visit to my new "backyard"

i have become a member of the huntington library and gardens. this was a big decision for me as it is a little pricey to join(well just over a hundred dollars) and nowadays i am trying to crack down on errant money fumbles...but this is so worth it and just a bike ride away!
so today, even with the grey gloom, i wandered around for a bit and sat on a bench by the lily pond(pictured above) and tried to read my darwin biography. i couldn't concentrate though and it was a bit chilly so i walked around and found loads of cherry blossoms and beautiful dried up pomegranite bushes...and then, i remembered the "beautiful science" exhibit in the library. so instead of reading about darwin, i was able to examine some of his and other naturalists of that eras(and before) work. i love the self~portrait of me looking at hand blown glass bulbs that are AGES old and kept in a special box that allows them to be hooked up to electricity but will not drain them of their oldey timey juice. it looks like i am wearing a crown of stars...