boo!

Halloween greetings from my grandpa! Perhaps he is the origin of my dry sense of humor. Happy haunting everyone. 

needles and pins

A recent find: Lion pincushion, complete with dainty little scissors that turn into eyeglasses and a tape measure tail. Ingenious I'd say.
Some discoveries from the top secret stacks at the Minneapolis Central Public Library. A rainy day at the library last Wednesday was certainly a bright spot in a weary week...

I do enjoy a good grid. And also this bonnet and matching mittens. Quite fresh.

And just in time for the holiday season: A potpourri of wonderful and bazaar gift ideas! 

And! Before the Searchers, before Tom Petty, before Johnny, Joey, & DeeDee Ramone...there was Jackie DeShannon. And still it begins, needles & pins.

obamarama

In eight days we will all crawl out of our beds, put two feet on the floor, and realize the power of our democracy: VOTE, a little play on Counterforms for Obama, by El Conejo:

Pour Monsieur Brandt: Danke, Grazie, Merci.

Obama love: buttons by Village.

"Every four years, a presidential election gives Americans a common purpose: to choose the leader who will best serve our interests as individuals and members of a society. Make that several societies. More and more, we live in Venn diagrams of intersecting cultural, occupational, and geographical communities. We may be urban homesteaders cultivating vegetable patches, or rural entrepreneurs building online empires. We may be single parents, or part of a cluster of spouses and exes, impoverished yet hopeful, prosperous yet despairing. We may have marital partners who are the same gender as us and children who are a different race from us. As any designer aquainted with the multidimensionality of human experience knows–and that would be all of you–Americans are increasingly unsimple. This state of affairs...is why I.D. is endorsing Barack Obama for president." 

-Julie Lasky

I.D. Magazine

skills, tips, & life lessons

The Official Nancy Drew Handbook! Full of such tasty tips as how to determine a man's character by the shoes he wears, how to tap out a morse code message with your high-heeled shoes, how to pack the perfect handbag for all contingencies, and how to tell a good guy from a bad guy:

"Nancy has a sixth sense when it comes to sniffing out a bad guy. There's something about him that gives away his nasty secret; underneath that nice suit and hair pomade lurks a man with underhanded plans. It could be his wild bushy hair, his shifty penetrating eyes, or his crude scowling face. Whatever it is, Nancy spots them easily."  

Rather amusing, I'd say. Published by Quirk Productions, Inc., design by Bryn Ashburn. 

sugar high

Since when was food ever this fun? Koogle and Zonkers and freeze-dried ice cream cereal? Mmmmmm....sugar. Surely my dentist would approve.

face time

This is me last night round midnight after sitting in front of my computer screen for almost four hours, surfing the internet instead of doing homework. Over the course of those four hours I watched an average of ten YouTube Videos, listened to the latest episode of This American Life, shopped for shoes, ebayed, read some blogs, and wikipedia'ed a vast array of topics. But it's okay, because apparently surfing the internet improves brain function. Will technology ultimately be detrimental or supplemental to the evolution of the human mind? I didn't get any work done, but I did re-discover Roland Orzabal and this classic 80s music video...

best friends forever

Hmmm...really? Foreva? Foreva-eva? Though it is quite refreshing to to hear of politicians getting along, now isn't it? (Taken from last week's Time magazine).

Oh! And speaking of bff's, my new bff: Loy Bowlin, aka the Original Rhinestone Cowboy. Hmmm...too bad he's dead. 

R.I.P. my dear Loy B. You were truly a diamond of a man. 

a happy lil' ending

The perishing ceased for a moment as the sun set over an averred new day, warming the carpet of a hillside that I wished was far away.

iceland is drowning

The economy in Iceland has crumbled, far worse than the U.S as of late. The quiet little island is drowning, but we are too worried about ourselves to spare a life jacket. 

When everyone's wrapped tight in our own self-absorption, when we make friends based on our vanities and desires to get ahead, it is the quiet, peaceful places that are left behind. Do honest, loyal people still exist? Or is a mankind with morals simply a myth? 

in an instant

I redesigned a set of book covers to create a new system for the "instant" language guide books for Kindra Murphy's Publication Design class. I think they are one of the few things I have made lately that I have been quite happy with, despite some flaws. Maybe it was because I got to use gold spray paint.
Also, due to an unfortunate incident with the corner rounders at the school, I scraped together the last of my spare change and bought one of my own. Quite cute I'd say–and it's pocket-sized. Looks like I just clipped a bunch of toenails.

The economy is a basket case, morale has been so low, but at least all my corners are perfectly rounded.

quelques animaux...

un chat=a cat

une grenouille=a frog

The crazy collages of Hisham Bharoocha bring joy...

un éléphant= an elephant!

A small sampling of a petite book I made recently about the death of an elephant. Perhaps elephants are capable of more sincerity and ingenuity than humans. Babar was never able to truly fit in to the human world, although I often used to wish he actually existed... 

un oiseau=a bird

un lapin=a rabbit

une biche=a doe

un hippopotame=a hippopotamus 

Animal bowls by Hella Jongerious. Oh how delectable it would be to dine with a doe, to dip a chip next to a hippo, but these bowls are simply too pristine to eat off of...

animals and french lessons=good clean fun

it's autumn in stockholm

Because I cannot afford the real Stockholm, I awoke this morning and embarked on a pilgrimage of sorts, to the lovely little town of Stockholm, Wisconsin, population 97. The fresh fresh air blew through my hair as I drove down winding roads, and the vibrant hues of mid-autumn were out in all their glory...
There were racks of blue bikes to ride, but considering the town's size, I chose to meander on foot.
The storefronts were garnished with hand-painted signs, and everything was covered in lady bugs (or asian beetles...apparently they are considered as pests). I especially liked this piece of pie, because it looks like a face who has just lost its cherry nose.

I happened upon a cozy cottage filled with old-world delights and cotton candy floors, wherein I purchased this beautiful antique tin for tea.
I also met my fairy grandfather, who sold me squashes from the back of his truck and let me wear his hat for a time.
Stockholm was discovered by a certain Eric Peterson back in 1851. It was settled by Swedish immigrants. Hence the name. There was even an Ingebretsens! 
Goodbye Stockholm! The drive home was filled with ideas and introspections, and some fairly unfortunate roadkill. Poor little possum, you had so much life ahead of you.

of remembering

I attempted to recreate a moment from my childhood in a symbolic effort to remember the moment better. An old photograph was broken down into 862 pixels, and I then set forth to recreate the image, pixel by pixel, in three sections, using only my memory of the original photograph as a guide. The inaccuracies of the final outcome are a reminder that time forever marches on, clocks continue to tick, and those carefree days of my childhood will continue to overlap and distort, until the day when they all blow away...I cannot dwell in my past, yet the dwelling seems important now as my days get older and darker, for these memories serve as souvenirs of what was once happy and carefree. 

After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the artist William Utermohlen attempted to understand the losing of his mind through a series of self portraits. "The paintings starkly reveal the artist's descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened, and details melted away." Read and see the series here. 

symmetrical cicadas

Two dead insects from my collection, just hanging out and shaking their groove things (yeah yeah). 

obama, out and about

"Our destiny is not defined for us, it is defined by us."

-Barack Obama, 

during yesterday's speech

 in La Crosse, WI.

That and these just made by day.