clever corner

Hi there!

Can you believe we're only five days from Christmas?  I feel like December was just erased off the calendar this year.  I hope you're enjoying the holiday festivities!

I recently came across this fire hydrant wearing a jaunty chapeau.

At first I thought it must have been put there after someone dropped it, but now I'm pretty sure it was intentionally placed-- a wintery yarnbombing!

for anyone not familiar with the term, yarnbombing is using a knitted item to decorate a public object-- like yarn graffiti.

A few days ago, this appeared on that same corner-- a mysterious blue box...

...which is full of poems!  I just love this, I love when people make creative, interactive public art.

The poem I chose at random was "The Snowflake" by Walter de la Mare. 

This was such a charming, whimsical surprise.  

I'm a fan of anything that wraps poetry up warmly and sends it off into the world.

♥

idiom

One of my favorite parts about going to FIT is seeing how different people interpret the same set of guidelines for projects.  I think it's so interesting how a group of people can receive the same information, but each end up with a vastly different result.  So when I heard about the Idiom Photo Project, I was instantly intrigued.

It's run by two photojournalism majors at Ohio University, one of whom I went to preschool and high school with, and the basic premise is that participants are given a new phrase and a new individual word every week.  Then they go out and take a photograph that captures the meaning of that word or phrase to them.  At the end of the week, all the submissions are posted on the Idiom site.

Can we be honest for a second here?  We can do that, right?  Okay.  So, I am not a photographer.  I'm just a girl with a little pink point-and-shoot camera (yes, it's pink.  Of course it's pink.) who likes taking pictures.  My school program can get pretty stressful, and I like having a creative outlet that isn't graded.  I really wanted to submit a photo to the Idiom Photo Project, but I was nervous that mine would be somehow less legitimate because I don't study photography or have a DSLR camera (although learning more about photography and getting a grown-up camera are on my list of things to do eventually).  I waffled for quite some time before convincing myself to click the send button on my submission email.  But I eventually did, yay!  The photo I took was for the 'Here Comes The Sun' phrase assignment, along with some gorgeous photos by other people participating in the Idiom Photo Project.  

Have you ever wanted to do something, but needed to muster up some creative courage?

♥

christmas kitty ♥

It's so close to Christmas!

I've had so much fun playing with this adorable game from Everyday Cute.  It's dress-up Pusheen the Cat!

Here's one of the ways that I decorated Pusheen and her cute little world.

make your own dressed-up Pusheen here.  You can decorate her Christmas tree, too!

♥

sunflower

♥

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and

sat down under the huge shade of a Southern

Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the

box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron

pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts

of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,

surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of

machinery.

The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun

sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that

stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves

rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums

on the riverbank, tired and wily.

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray

shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting

dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--

--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,

memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem

and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes

Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black

treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the

poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel

knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck

and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the

past--

and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,

crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog

and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--

corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like

a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,

soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays

obliterated on its hairy head like a dried

wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures

from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster

fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O

my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man's grime but death and human

locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad

skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black

mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance

of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--

modern--all that civilization spotting your

crazy golden crown--

and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless

eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the

home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar

bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards

of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely

tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what

more could I name, the smoked ashes of some

cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the

milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs

& sphincters of dynamos--all these

entangled in your mummied roots--and you there

standing before me in the sunset, all your glory

in your form!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent

lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye

to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited

grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden

monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your

grime, while you cursed the heavens of the

railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a

flower? when did you look at your skin and

decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?

the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and

shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a

sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me

not!

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck

it at my side like a scepter,

and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul

too, and anyone who'll listen,

--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread

bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all

beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed

by our own seed & golden hairy naked

accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black

formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our

eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive

riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening

sitdown vision.

--Allen Ginsberg

♥

the cyber monday sale has started at Julie Rose Sews on Etsy!  Enter the coupon code 'CyberMonday' at check-out for 15% off your order.

♥acorns♥

one of my classes this semester focuses on creating prints, plaids, and knits.

my favorite part so far has been designing this acorn print!

working on the print...

...playing with color...

...and using the acorn print in a garment!

hope you're having a great weekend!

♥

resistance is futile.

Washi tape has taken over my life, and I am powerless to resist it.

At this point, I've probably accumulated more than I'm ever going to use.  But it's just so cute!  I wanted to be able to look at it in a more convenient way than having it on my desk all the time, so...

on Pinterest, as usual

Please, if we're out somewhere and I attempt to buy more washi tape, stop me.  I'm good.  I don't need anymore...

...mostly.

♥

dreamworld

I first found Twig Hutchinson's beautiful styling work when I was looking for the original source of a photo that I was including in a blog post.  Her entire portfolio is just as warm and lovely.

all photos from Twig's (adorable) portfolio site.
Can I live in her work?  Pretty please?

♥

space cadet

I've been listening to these two songs nearly constantly for the past two days while I've been working on my portfolio... apparently space-themed songs work best for me?

What music do you play to help you feel inspired and creative?

♥

fields of light

one of my favorite things: Bruce Munro's lighting design installations...

♥

urban flowers

I love the photography/digital art mix of the work from Urban Flowers Living.  These are offered as wallpapers, but I think they would make beautiful framed prints, too.

 

♥

falling garden

so very in love with this installation by Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger

♥

trust 30 project: day 2

♥

Today will be about adapting, learning, patience, and trying.

and I told this to my cat.  totally counts, right?

♥

trust30 project

it's the last day to enter the etsy shop giveaway!

and this giveaway?  mind-bogglingly awesome.

♥

trying something new...

I've been wanting to do some sort of blog-writing challenge for a while now, and when I heard about the Trust30 project from a post on The Wishkeepers Creativity Collective, I got pretty excited about it.  So I'm going to give it a try.  Basically, to celebrate what would be Robert Waldo Emerson's 208th birthday, there are 30 prompts written by a bunch of interesting people (this is a really simplified synopsis, obviously, there are a lot more details on the Trust30 site), and the aim is to answer one every day, either by writing, drawing, journaling-- any sort of creativity.

I've felt lately like I just haven't had anything to say here in blogland.  Which isn't surprising, I guess-- I'm home for the summer and while I'm enjoying the serenity of being somewhere so quiet and peaceful, I don't really do anything worth writing about.  There's a lot of cat-snuggling and knitting involved.  I'm going to be starting the Trust30 project from the first prompt, even though it technically started on May 31st.  So here goes.

Day 1

     I know the prompt says 'story,' but if I've only got fifteen minutes left, I'm not going to be writing fiction.  I think I'd try to pass on the things that I've learned. 

Don't be so scared all the time.  It isn't worth it to miss all of the opportunities and chances that come your way just to spare yourself some nervousness or embarrassment or hurt pride.  You can heal from pretty much anything, even if it takes some time and you feel like you're never going to be quite whole again.  There are just as many chances for things to go really, really well as there are chances for them to go badly.  Love as much as you can, and try not to go to sleep angry.  Don't worry too much about anything because everything is always in a state of change.  There's no use in regretting the past, try to use it to shape your chosen future instead.  Never despair, despair is only for those who know the future beyond doubt, which nobody does.  There's always hope.  Tell people you love them whenever it occurs to you, it's so much better than wishing you'd said it more often.

♥

If you decide to take part in the Trust30 project, too, leave a link in the comments, I'd love to read your take on it!

Oh, and here's the etsy shop giveaway.  Juuuuust in case you've missed it.

♥

inspiration

just a few things inspiring a design project I'm working on...

1.2.3.4.

In other news...

yaaaaaaay!!!!!!

♥♥♥

cutest mailday ever

Bryce left me a sweet little note on facebook yesterday to let me know to check my mailbox here at school, and today, something wonderful-delightful-adorable had appeared in it!

so, so, so cute.  And the messages inside the cards were absolutely lovely.  According to Bryce, the three words that describe me best are 'lovely,' 'darling,' and 'wonderstruck.'  I aspire to live up to her opinion of me.

Thank you so much, Bryce!!! I can't help taking the cards out of the envelopes and putting them back in and then beaming at them and I completely adore you.

♥♥♥♥♥

treehouse

One of my summer projects:  figuring out how to make my dorm room look like this next year.  So, so pretty.

this is just to say (again)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

--William Carlos Williams

Because sometimes you know and know and know that you shouldn't, but you just can't help yourself.

♥