Walter has wings

I fixed Walter's wings so they were not so floppy (using a grommet maker and some grosgrain ribbon), and he was really happy with the adjustments. Consequently, he taught my entire dance lesson while wearing the wings — which I guess makes sense since it is Halloween. It was pretty delightful, actually. I mean, seriously. How often do you get to take a salsa lesson that has morphed into a tango lesson, with a great dancer, who happens to be wearing black wings and a fuschia tee shirt? Maybe once in your life, if you are lucky.

Word Nerd

Yesterday, Christina loaned me a copy of her Visual Thesaurus, which I tried to install this morning. My Mac Book Pro was acting finicky so I had to buy the online version of the software. Ok, I am totally loving this program. I want to spend hours playing around with it, typing in words to see their synonyms.

So tonight, after coming home from my yoga class, I typed in "tired." This gave me at least 50 synonyms for the word, all of which I can click on to lead to other word maps. I then picked "drooping," which led to a word I have never even heard of before: cernuous, which means "having branches or flower heads that bend downwards." I am going to try to work that into converstation tonight before I sleep. Which means Kenny and I will be having a discussion about gerber daisies that have lost their little plastic support straws.

10 steps to an almost perfect Sunday

1. Get a manicure and then meet a childhood friend for lunch at Cookshop. Order a rare cheese burger with pickled onions and very good french fries.

2. Pick up two brioche at Le Bergamote. Envision owning your own Patisserie. Leave before buying two of everything.

my free strawberry

3. Go into Balducci's and if you are a lucky, a guy wordlessly will hand you a perfect little strawberry to eat. Pick out a new honey, some chocolates and taste a delicious parmesean reggiano — opt for the Cobb Hill Ascutney Mount (cheese).

classical music at 42nd street

4. Take the S (shuttle) train to get from the west to the east side. Stop for two minutes to listen to a string quintet play in the subway station. Marvel at how effortless it was to go from 14th Street and 8th Avenue to 78th Street and 2nd Avenue in less that 30 minutes.

5. Spend the afternoon helping a friend weed through her bookshelves, while eating a bar of marzipan and orange chocolate. Take a snack break and eat the brioche with honey. Your honey will be disgusting (Buckwheat honey is an acquired taste, it seems) so throw all $10.99 of it into the rubbish bin, and eat your friend's lavender honey instead.

papa pumpkin and his son, baby pumpkin

6. Walk down Lexington Avenue to train. Notice cute Halloween decorations in shop windows, such as a big pumpkin about to roll over and squash a little pumpkin.

7. Walk home from train. Have a child thug try to rob you of your Treo 650. Thank a higher power above that the child thug is an amateur who trips on a sidewalk crack and loses his grip on your hand and your phone. Think of snappy comebacks (other than "What do you think you are doing?") the remainder of the walk home.

8. Cancel dinner plans and clean bathtub instead. When you realize that you cannot take a bath because you have no tub stopper, take a very hot shower instead. Pretend you are taking a bath.

homemade pumpkin and raisin muffins for dinner

9. Make a glass of ginger tea with the rest of your own lavender honey, and have a pumpkin raisin muffin that your childhood friend made and brought you this morning.

10. Get into bed with Haruki Murakami's newest book. Read one short story, but not the Crabs one. That one is a little bit gross for before bed reading. Stretch out toes on cool sheets.

Veggie Tales

A little blurry, but still recognizable as a pea and a carrot.

We went to Sheri and Marc's house for a Halloween party this evening. Which means that I spent all day sewing my pea dress, and Kenny's carrot headdress. And although I love to sew, I am thinking that when I leave stuff like this to the last minute and I have bribe myself to finish it, then it is no longer fun — it has become sort of like work. But since this could become a rant about my procrastination, and not a happy thing, I will focus on how pleased I was with Kenny's carrot headdress. At the last minute, I decided to stuff it with stuffing, to give it some dimesionality. This made it into a quasi stuffed animal sort of thing, that he was wearing around on his head all night. I found it quite cute — although Kenny pretty much hated the whole costume, and the headdress in particular. Regardless, it was worth it in the long run because we had a great evening with everyone. Check out our pictures, here.

Pea + Carrot

It is Halloween time, yet again. And I am loathe to wear a costume that: obstructs my vision, causes me to sweat, show cleavage just because its Halloween, or makes it uncomfortable or embarrassing to be seen in public, in any way. This means that instead of creating some elaborate get-up, I just slightly modify my normal everyday wear in order to transform it into something costume-y.

So this year, I will be a Pea. And Kenny will be a carrot. And being the procrastinator that I am, I have left the sewing of the Pea dress until tomorrow, the day of the party I am attending in my required costume. But since I made the above sketch, I now feel like I have done at least something towards making my costume, and don't feel like I have left it all to the last minute.

Ts cost extra

I have heard of the term Thug Life, but never Hug Life, which I think, has to be the absolute opposite. First of all, I love the attention to detail the person spent on drawing the letterforms, and secondly, the mental picture of Hug Life is quite delightful. It sounds sort of gangsta-like until you actually think about what you just said. Hug Life? That is like, uh, embracing life. Instead of killing people indescriminately, you hug them. Could you imagine if wayward teens went around hugging the people they had issues with? Guns would become obsolete. Gang wars would turn into giant love fests. People would become more sensitive. And underneath all of those tough exteriors would be people who actually cared about [the finer things in] life.

Sample dialogue:

Thug 1: Put your hands up. And give me a motherfucking hug. In fact, make that two hugs!

Thug 2: Yo man, here's some love..., ok? So chill. And damn, your sweater, is that a merino-cashmere blend? Its so soft.

Have fun with your 401k!

Kenny kindly has made me a very nifty little 401k calculator via Excel spreadsheet that allows me to type in my salary and the percentage, in dollars, of my deduction, and violá! My paycheck amount, pre- and post-deduction, shows up in the indicated cell. I know that this is like breathing for some of you financially freakish people out there. But personally I think this spread sheet is really awesome. I can't stop playing with it. So, if you are like me and fiscally challeneged, you can download the spreadsheet by clicking here

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Better than coffee

Project Projects

Giampietro + Smith

Alan Dye

Barbara de Wilde

Laurie Rosenwald

Esterson Associates

Background notes:
While eating my whole wheat croissant this morning I was reading some of my favorite blogs, as a way to get creatively inspired for the day. (For the record, I only read the Grey's Anatomy blogs in the late afternoon, when my sugar craving slump kicks in.) As usual, I started at Design*Sponge, where I read about an ornament swap hosted by two other bloggers, Cake+Pie and freshly {blended}. When I clicked on the link about the swap to send it to my friend, Sheri, I ended up on freshly {blended}, where I perused Nicole's regular reads links to see if we had any favorite blogs in common. This led me to Cake + Pie's blog (she's a graphic designer living in Nashville), where I was reading through Kathleen's postings about making glitter pumpkins and so forth, and then further down found an entry called Wednesday Already?, where she lists some sites she had been visiting. This in turn led me to a site called Ace Jet 170 (which is a blog by a graphic designer living in Belfast). So, again, I am scrolling down and reading through the Ace Jet's postings, and I find a post called High Priority from September 29.

Point of my blog entry:
Ace Jet's post was about New York Magazine's High Priority section in each week's magazine. Michael Beirut talks about this section in much more detail here on Design Observer, or see my excerpt, below, for those of you too lazy to click around (but you should go anyway, to see all 64 of the High Priority illustrations. It will make your morning, and you will think to yourself, "Oh, man. This is why I am a designer." And you will hopefully heave a big sigh of relief, and feel both validated and inspired, and put off changing careers until at least next week.

Every week, the editors of New York magazine identify five upcoming "can't miss" activities in the magazine's back-of-the-book listings section. And every week, New York's design director, Luke Hayman, and art director, Chris Dixon, select a designer to create "High Priority," a typographic illustration using these five selections.

The rules are simple. The illustration is 4.4 inches high by 6.875 inches wide; it has to include the five events, the dates of the week, and the words "High Priority;" and it can only use two colors, red and black. The designer gets the text late on Thursday, provides a sketch late on Friday, and the finished artwork by the end of the day on the following Monday. The result runs at the start of the listings section in the issue published the following week. This exercise, with its prescribed limitations and one-swing-and-you're-out intensity, is as close as the graphic design world gets to an Olympic event.

Since Hayman and Dixon started "High Priority," over 60 designers, from the legendary to the up-and-coming, have taken the challenge. The list is amazing: it includes Pierre Bernard, Laurie Rosenwald, Allen Hori, Neville Brody, Marion Deuchars, Fernando Gutiérrez, Barbara deWilde, Vince Frost, Julian Morey, Jonathan Hoefler, Ellen Lupton, Martin Venezky, Alexander Gelman, Bob Gill, Milton Glaser, Barbara Glauber, Chip Kidd and Todd St. John, to name just a few. And every week, the readers of New York get to see the same old problem solved a brand new way.

Birdy

So, I am really digging Thomas Paul's website. The birds subtly rock back and forth, and hop up and down. When you roll over a particular bird, a thought bubble comes out of his head, and becomes the navigation, with each bird representing a different set of colored pillows. When you click on the other products link, you fly through the tree and into the birdhouse. It is really simple, yet there is something a little magical about it. After looking at boring websites all day long, I find the navigation on this site to be really refreshing.

I love Lucy

While researching Halloween costume options for a friend, I came across Lucy's bio on the official Peanuts website:

Lucy Van Pelt works hard at being bossy, crabby and selfish. She is loud and yells a lot. Her smiles and motives are rarely pure. She's a know-it-all who dispenses advice whether you want it or not--and for Charlie Brown, there's a charge. She's a fussbudget, in the true sense of the word. She's a real grouch, with only one or two soft spots, and both of them may be Schroeder, who prefers Beethoven. As she sees it, hers is the only way. The absence of logic in her arguments holds a kind of shining lunacy. When it comes to compliments, Lucy only likes receiving them. If she's paying one--or even smiling--she's probably up to something devious.

Second to Woodstock and Snoopy, I like Lucy the most. I can appreciate her crabbiness and bossiness. And I think that there are many days when perhaps I am a Lucy. By the way, for those of you who love Peanuts, don't forget that this Friday, Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is on ABC at 8pm EST...so set your TiVos.

Oh my!

So this looks like a regular old fashioned doughnut, right? Well, let me just point out that the above doughnut is made from whole wheat. ... ! It is like someone just legalized doughnuts for guilt-free consumption. So, of course, I am eating it, and loving it by the way, and feeling like I am doing something nice for my body by feeding it a whole wheat doughnut. As if the whole wheat part cancels out the fact that it is completely fried and most likely 400 calories that are not really doing anything for me. But somehow, in my mind, it sort of does cancel out. And now this yummy whole wheat doughnut has made it into the same category where I put the whole wheat croissant, you know: whole wheat baked goods that are wholesome, but not really healthy. Whole Foods is whole-wheat-afying all of these foods I don't really need to be eating, and and the simple fact of it being whole wheat now makes it ok for me to eat, according to my mental dietary laws. (Which boils down to: white flour is bad, whole wheat flour is good.)

Shorn socks

The left one is the after, the right one is the before.
You click on the picture to see it larger, if you want.

This morning, I went to go put on my socks and was horrified to see that they were covered in what can only be described as, "sock burrs." My feet were cold, so I had to wear these socks, which are made from some fuzzy sort of animal fiber, and not my usual cotton ones. This meant that my only choice was to dig out the sweater shaver from under the sink, and give my socks a haircut. This took about 20 minutes (there was a lot of fuzz), which made me exactly 20 minutes late for work. However, I felt that having tidy socks was important, and therefore, worth being late. I mean, seriously. It's all about the details.

Knitting on company time

This is Sarah knitting a blue scarf.

This is Megan knitting a leg warmer.

I learned how to knit about four years ago when my co-worker at the time, Anna-Kari, taught me one day during work. Consequently, I ended up knitting Kenny a very long, gray scarf that was knitted in in the tightest knit stitch ever. I have always been really grateful to Anna-Kari for teaching me how to knit, and since then I have always felt that I needed to pass on the skills to my co-workers in the same tradition, i.e. during work hours. So, today, I taught Sarah and Megan how to knit at lunchtime. And it was so great. I loved being able to share something that I enjoyed so much, with two people whom I really care about. Plus, I was surprised that somehow over the past few years, I really learned how to knit. Enough so I can teach someone else. I can fix all sorts of snarly problems, and I know the difference between what a knit and purl stitch look like. And I can even rip the knitting off the needles and stick it back on again after tearing out multiple rows, without even freaking out.

A new perspective

This photo does not really do the room justice.
It looks much better than pictured. I swear.

Yesterday, Kenny and I rearranged our bedroom. After we moved around the furniture, we wondered why on earth we had placed our bed the way we had it before, as our bedroom now looked huge. Like twice as large as before. The bed is now positioned so I can lay in bed, and look out the window when I wake up. Which is a very good thing — we have a nice backyard and it is lovely to see trees while still laying in bed. And, I woke up feeling really relaxed and calm this morning. Which makes me think that the whole feng shui-ness of the room is much improved.

This evening, when I came home and walked into the bedroom, I was like, "Oh!" I had forgotten we had rearranged the room. And somehow I went from not really liking the bedroom at all (drafty windows, too many spiders building webs, waking up looking at a blank white wall) to absolutely loving it.

Oh, and it also helps to sleep on a sheepskin from Ikea. (It increases the cozy factor to like the nth degree.)

Hello, you won an award

I was flipping through the 2006 PRINT Regional Design Annual this afternoon and saw this print campaign for the Camp Lilly May School for the Deaf, designed by Door Number 3, out of Austin, Texas. The campaign really appealed to me. I appreciated the simplistic references to childhood, and for some reason, I just found it nice, and it made me happy. (Although I have to say that I am not really crazy about the rough borders — I would have preferred them to be clean edges, in more primary, school-like colors — a red, a kelly green, and sunny yellow. But that is me being a picky art director.)

I also saw a few items from Martha Stewart's Creative Services. Which made me happy as well. However, I did not feel like showing a photo of the items that won, cause, well, because I think it was me who entered them into PRINT in the first place, last January. But, a big shout out to those who worked on the Ready To Assemble bath and furniture packaging. And to those who worked on the kitchen towels packaging. And for those of you non-designers who want to see how nice this packaging looks, you ought to hustle on down to Kmart before all of the aforementioned items are repackaged in orange. Seriously.

I heart knitted vandalism

these pictures are from www.knittaplease.com

I read about Knitta last year and have since absolutely loved the idea: which is to subversively adorn outdoor artifacts, such as lamp posts or bike racks, with a knitted cozy. Or as the Knitta knitters like to say, "Warming the world, one car antenna at a time..."

Anyway, tonight my friend Helen brought me this article from the Oct 12-18 issue of Time Out New York, which featured Knitta in New York — thinking that I would appreciate their mission.

Birthday hair

Check out my niece's ponytails — they are priceless. This is her "my third birthday party hair style" and throughout her entire party, those ponytails reminded me of the chenille little Yip-Yips from the Sesame Street, who had little sprouts on their heads. At one point, she had one of those cone shaped birthday hats wedged into between the ponytails.

A cat wearing trousers

Yes, we needed all of this stuff.

Lara and I met this afternoon for brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, and then so that we could knit — she on her mitten thumbs, and me on a "kitten in britches," pattern that I decided to knit as my neice's holiday gift. The pattern is here, on Knitty, in case you feel compelled to knit a stuffed cat in pants, too.

The beginning bit is ridiculously tedious, and I ripped it out at least six times. And this was after I decided that the yarn it specified (Lion's Pride, in three colors I am not in love with, which I actually ordered — to follow the pattern like a good little knitter) was too fuzzy and too ugly for me to waste my time knitting into a stuffed cat wearing pants. So, Lara gave me some Debbie Bliss yarn she disliked, the color is similar to PMS Warm Red, which was loads better than than the stuff I had intended to knit with.

If anyone is interested in this pattern, and decides that they want to knit it exactly as the pattern calls for, I will gladly sell you my yarn for $2 less than what I paid, per skein. It was normally $7 a skein. I will sell you all three for $15 + $5 shipping, so, for $20. You will save $5.

A New Species

I find the new Jeep Wrangler campaign by BBDO Detroit to be quite clever. I love how they have incorporated the stuff on top of the cars into the element you notice first, making this campaign all about the Jeep lifestyle. Not about the car, itself, per se. Interestingly enough, or maybe it's not, it is all about buying into the experience these days.

No one is selling a product anymore, people are buying into a lifestyle.

Let's get emotional!*

A, nagareboshi da!
あ、流れ星だ！
Oh, that's a shooting star!

Maa, kirei na nagame nee!
まあ、きれいな眺めねえ｡
Oh my, what a nice view!

E, Shigoto yameta no.
え、 仕事やめたの｡
What, you quit your job?

Masaka sonna koto ga aruhazu nai yo!
まさかそんなことがあるはずないよ！
That can't be happened!

Hee, sore wa yokatta ne!
へえ、それは良かったね！
Wow, that's great!

Naruhodo, sou iu koto datta no ka.
なるほど、そういうことだったのか｡
I see, that's the way it was.

Yare yare, nante koto da!
やれやれ、なんてことだ！
Oh boy, what a disaster!

Ureshii wa.
うれしいわ｡
I am glad!

Shiawase da wa.
幸せだわ｡
I am happy!

Zannen nee.
残念ねえ｡
I am sorry to hear that.

Kanashii wa.
悲しいわ｡
I am sad.

Sabishii wa.
さびしいわ。
I am lonely.

*Since I am a girl, these sayings are the female version. Some are expressed in a slightly different manner if you are a guy.

Semantics

These flowers are cheerful, but not necessarily happy.

These flowers are happy, but not necessarily cheerful.

Today I happened to see Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men books at Borders Bookstore. Remember those? I used to be obsessed with the Mr. Men series when I was younger — I would spend hours drawing all of the guys in the series, using pencil and then crayon to color them in. I think that these books are what started my fascination with collecting things. I felt like I had to have every last book in the series, in order to, I don't know...live a normal life, or something.

So I decided to buy both Mr. Happy and Mr. Cheerful (although I am sure I own these already and they are at my mom's house, unless she tossed them out), because I could not decide between the two. I also wanted to see what the difference was between the two guys. Seriously, what is the difference between being cheerful and being happy? Can you be happy, but not cheerful? Or vice versa? For example, can you be really, really dark and depressed, yet still maintain a cheerful front? And is it possible to be a really happy person, while still being bitchy and difficult? I guess probably it is.

Anyway, I found it very interesting to see how Roger (we are on a first name basis) chose to illustrate happy flowers versus cheerful flowers. And apparently...it's all in the eyes.

With a fried egg on top.

At lunch today, Dana gave me a little gift — just because. Check it out! It's a fabric fried egg. Which is something I know that everyone secretly wants. Or at least, I have wanted one since I saw it at Kido.

Take time to smell the...flowers.

Kenny brought home some flowers last night. Due to extreme starvation from my yoga class, I walked right by them, ate a huge piece of lasagna for dinner and watched a rerun of Grey's Anatomy, all before Kenny had to finally point them to them out to me.

Tonight, when I came home, I set the mail down and took a moment to sniff them. And appreciate them. And although they look a little droopy this evening, they still smell delicious — like something pepper-y and spicy.

My four most favorite words

THE HEAT IS ON.

At work at least. Thank goodness. Although my creative director mentioned something about turning on the air conditioner. Which is blasphemy. Since the heat is not on at home, I am forced to wear five layers of clothing at all times. Making me look larger than life, and a causing my laundry to pile up five times as fast.

I love the smell of freshly turned on radiators!

This is nice for a Monday:

I think the enemy of creativity is conformism and being scared of what others are going to think about what you're doing. You have to disregard any kind of judgement from outside, because as soon as you start asking around too much for advice, you're finished.

— Camille Bidault-Waddington

Oh, and just in case you were thinking to myself, "Cool! I am a designer fighting against conformity!" well, think again. We are no longer "designers," we are now called "innovators". And I am sure that Carnegie Mellon will change the Communications Design program to become the "Communcations Innovations" program. Which sounds awful, despite the catchy rhyme.

So, check out Michael Beirut's very interesting article on this subject, here.

Let's do brunch!

Dane made brunch for Steph and I this morning. Check out how awesome the table looks — those are lady apples in the glass vase-like things. Not only did the table look fabulous, but the food was also yummy as well. She made a strata with canadian bacon, a fruit salad with grapes, apples, kiwi and pomegranate seeds, bread and jam, fresh orange juice, and blueberry muffins.

We had a lazy brunch, and then played with Isabel a bit before we took a walk in Central Park. It was such a delightful morning.

Hello, baby!

Steph + Isabel

Dane + Isabel

I saw Steph today for the first time in more than eight months, which in itself was wonderful. And the other terrific part of today was that I was able to finally meet her baby, Isabel — the super adorable child posing in the above pictures. What you cannot see is that Isabel is also wearing little shoes with peas on them.

The N train

The N train was running local today, because all of the trains are messed up. Why? Because it's the weekend, and I feel bad for any tourists who come to visit the big Apple — they are never going to understand what the hell is going on with our subway system.

Anyhow, I get off at the Prince Street station, (this was on the downtown side) and saw the above mural on the wall. And it made me really appreciate the MTA for a split second. Some of the stations have such great murals, or art installations, and I really appreciate them being there. Today for instance, I got off the train and immediately saw this art piece/mural and thought to myself, "How could I have never seen this before? I have lived here for 10 years and I have never noticed this mural-y thing on the wall!" It was a nice feeling to see something unexpected and so pleasing, in the station. Because you never know what you might find wheny ou exit the train. (Example, yesterday when I exited the train, I tripped over a homeless person sleeping on the platform right where my subway car door opened. Seeing art on the wall is much more pleasant.)

Custom Ketchup

Now, I do not really care about ketchup. I never buy it. Rarely do I use it (Kenny has gotten me hooked on the fries with dijon mustard thing), and I am disturbed by the fact that it contains corn syrup. However, I could totally get over all of those issues, just because I love the above packages. And tonight, after randomly walking into a grocery when I did not need to buy anything, I was very motivated to buy some Heinz Ketchup. I know, these have been out for at least 3 years, but since I never buy ketchup, I am still a newbie to the packaging.

Apparently, you can create your own ketchup labels, here, and mail the bottles off to your friends and family as gifts. Should your friends and family find a bottle of personalized ketchup a satisfying and thoughtful gift, that is.

Out of the three, I wanted the "Life of the Patty," bottle, but came to my senses at the very last minute. And went off to buy some Coach Farms (yes, by the same people who started Coach handbags) goat cheese, instead.