interspecies love

home

I grew up for the most part with my grandfather. at the end of the month my grandfather is selling the house that I lived in the longest (I moved around a lot before then) and moving to a different town. I have never seen this new house. when I come back to visit him from now on, I will no longer have a home to go back to, not in the same sense that I use to. I will have a bed and a room, but they won't be mine in the same way. I feel a little sad and it's an unexpected feeling.

doctor who

doctor who is such a ridiculous show, infuriatingly devoid of logic even, but I love it anyway. sigh.

new design

a new collage.

hedda Gabler and the Sirens

A little preview of a poetry zine thing I'm working on. among other things, it's inspired by the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Isben. great play, great character. the tone of the poems is  kind of desperate self-absorption with a good measure of black humor. you know, alienation, mania, that kind of thing.

the lazy costume

I like the idea of casual costumes. does such a thing exist? Kind of the same idea as a tuxedo tshirt. you're expressing a complicated, rather fancy sentiment in a laid back, casual way. most people probably wont even know its a costume, but I can still feel nifty while wearing it.
This is a t shirt I modified recently to be a star trek next generation starfleet uniform inspired tee shirt! I can wear it in an everyday setting or to something cooler, like a marathon watching night with friends or something. (the com badge is a pin from the new reboot, but I don't have a next gen version and I haven't got around to making one.)
What I like about this shirt is that without the pin or with a cardigan over top, it looks like a plain ol' regular t-shirt, meaning I can basically wear a star fleet uniform anywhere.

what I wore

when I come home to Canada to visit, I find myself couch surfing a lot of the time. Since I hate lugging around a lot of stuff (its inevitable) I have been trying to plan my outfits better by using the same items over again and being able to go from warm to cold weather. Here's some shots of when I was planning a week's outfits using a vintage denim vest, vintage loafers, a star trek t-shirt (modified by me), and my usual vintage black hat.

Semiotics and clothes

ever think about how subtle and complex a language clothing is? One piece of clothing means a billion different things in every different context. We negotiate this intensley complex system of signs every day, sometimes conciously, sometimes unconciously. some examples I was thinking about today:

Combat boots worn with a tutu mean something different than combat boots worn with army fatigues. Combat boots worn with a current official military uniform mean something different than combat boots worn with a wife beater. Combat boots worn with a wife beater and a buzz cut and a swastika tattoo means something different than combat boots worn with a wife beater and a fake swastika tattoo at a film costume party as a risqué costume interpretation of Edward Norton’s character in American History X. Dirty combat boots mean something different than pristine combat boots. Combat boots covered in dirt mean something different than combat boots covered in paint stains. Combat boots worn by a twelve year old mean something different than combat boots worn by a fifty year old. Combat boots from the army surplus store mean something different from doc martins which mean something different from combat boots bought at hot topic. Combat boots with rain bow laces mean something different than combat boots with black laces.

more...(and a slightly nsfw picture)

wearing draperies

forgot to post this when I made it. Back in Paris when I was at the giant flea market an antiques dealer who was just closing up gave me a heap of badly damaged eighteenth century draperies with a french toile pattern. it made my freakin day! I ended up making a little skirt out of the material, which was difficult for 2 reasons a) the material was weirdly shaped so I couldn't cut out all the pieces in a continuous horizontal direction and b) my sewing machine is still broken so I had to sew it by hand. have I mentioned how much I hate sewing by hand??
once again, didn't use a pattern, just kind of lined it up with another skirt. It's a bit wonky but I expect that I will "fix" it when I get my sewing machine fixed.

I forget the name of this town

about a month ago we took one of our spontaneous car rides through the hills and we stopped at the little town with a little lake and i took these pictures and I never posted them. now's as good a time as any, right?

 

I remember it was one of those days when it poured rain for 15 minutes and then when the sun came back out again every thing caught the light and sparkled.

DIY monoprint tank top tutorial

This is an old project I did last summer and just found again.

symphony of science

I'm a fangirl of the natural world. I'm a fangirl of the cosmos. I get honest-to-god emotional thinking about the vastness and the awesomeness that is the universe. Not going to go into that now, but man, I dig shit like this:

I have a lot of catching up to do

I'm currently reading Malcom Gladwell's book The Outliers. Having read Blink, I'm already turned on by Gladwell's mixing of sociological studies, pop economics, and great story telling. I love how he intertwines the stories of real people with statistics and abstract ideas.
I have to say though, now that I know that it takes about 10,000 hours of something no matter how much talent you have before you can master it, I feel a little behind. Behind in what? I don't know. I've always been good at several things. I suck at most things mind you, but my abilities in certain things, like drawing and writing and my enjoyment of them have been noticeable since I was a little kid. But my mind and my interests wander soooooo much. I've wanted to be like a billion different things "when I grow up".
Now I've finished art school and I've decided that although I enjoy drawing and making things, and I think human creativity should be something that is fostered in every person's life, I dislike the art "world"; as an institution and industry, and I have no desire (or aptitude) to do the professional tasks that go along with being a serious artist.

marina and the diamonds

haha, for sherlock fans:

in ruins

the ruins of a hotel

DIY star wars tunic

I made this tunic/ mini dress out of an old tank top and some vintage star wars sheets. I had to sew it by hand thanks to the untimely demise of my poor sewing machine. (also, I was having a kind of bad day so that's why the expression on my face is so unenthusiastic...)

I loosely followed the instructions from Talk 2 the Trees' blog. I added a zipper in the back because with less pleats and a more structured waist it was too hard to get in and out of without one. Her tutorial is here, by the way: http://talk2thetrees.blogspot.ca/2010/07/how-to-make-easy-high-waisted-dress-for.html

marradi

another spontaneous sunday car ride through the mountains. We had gelato in Marradi and chased some ducks and I almost stole a cat.

spoonflower contest entry

I entered the spoonflower/Robert Kaufman Fabric 8 contest yesterday. The theme is pen and ink dawings colours with watercolour paints. So I took it literally and drew my design in ink and coloured it in watecolours. I've had so many other things on my mind latelly that I kind of left it to the last minute, but I did spend the weekend on it and I think it's pretty cute. my first time entering a spoonflower contest (or any contest really) so fingers crossed! Here's a preview of the pattern in repeat:

website

new website! joined the cargo collective and used one of their lovely templates to build me a pretty little website for my designs. screenshot:

fox in the garden

I drew this yesterday on the train on my way home. it's black ballpoint pen. feels good to draw again.

anticipation

I had an interview in Como yesterday (very north of Italy) at one of the Gucci studios. I got offered an internship in the scarf design studio and I am super excited. The studio is moving locations though and the Mass Sea Migration (a.k.a Italians' summer vacation) is nearly here, meaning the internship wont be until autumn.
I'm also going to be going home to Canada to visit for awhile and when I return to Italy I will be moving into a new apartment that is more centrally located in Florence.
Over all it's going to be a hectic summer, but after the depressingly comatose winter I've had I'm ready for some action.

it poured rain the entire day, but I decided to make the most of the opportunity anyway to walk around the city and snap a couple photos. it rained so hard I could barely take my camera out but it was still pretty anyway.

oh, tumblr

I really love tumblr. the templates are so beautiful and their are a lot of tumblr blogs I visit frequently just to drool over the beautiful images. but I don't feel comfortable having one. a lot of blogs on tumblr don't have any visible sourcing and don't even link back to the source. I never liked finding my own work on other peoples' blogs without credit (or there's your username very small and almost invisible and you know its very unlikely anyone will ever click to actually visit your blog) and I never liked the idea of gaining popularity from other people's images for myself. When I want to collect images for my own inspiration or to share them with friends, I use pinterest. at least on pinterest it's obvious that it isn't your own work and the pin links automatically back to the source (usually....unless it's just linked back to tumblr and the tumblr source hasn't sourced it!)
what I'm really sad about is that there isn't a middle ground between blogger and tumblr. I just want my blogger blog to be slightly as pretty as tumblr. those new dynamic view settings on blogger just don't cut it. oh me oh my.

bright flesh

found a birdie

a little bird has made a nest and laid eggs on the terrace.

I have no aspirations to become a photographer, but I enjoy taking photos every once in awhile, not just while traveling. After looking at some of the work of Pia Jane Bijkerk, I decided to take a few pictures of something in my own home inspired by her work. Her website and blog is here, and this is a little example of why I think she's awesome:

random thoughts of psychopaths and yawning

I was in the elevator after leaving class today and the guy next to me yawned. I yawned. That made me remember recently reading something about how yawning is linked to empathy and how instead of simply being a contagious phenomenon, the more empathy a person has, the more likely you are to yawn when someone else does. So my brain says: does that mean I could tell if someone is a sociopath if he doesn't yawn when I yawn? and then I kind of did one of those inner laughs that makes you smile and wish everyone could be inside your brain to they could see how amusing your random thoughts are. (not really, that would be really awful. I have a phobia of telepathy...the worst part is that I don't even believe in telepathy).
Anyways, as usual I decided to ask my pal mr. google. Here's a couple of cool articles:

first green

green is slowly taking over the browns and greys. it's finally spring time in Mugello Valley. I took these photos in the country side and the woods in the area we live while we were out for a hike/picnic.