One of my co-workers has a beautiful scarf and she sent around the website for where she bought it (A Peace Treaty). There are so many inspirational items on it! These alpaca-silk scarves are hand-knitted in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, and according to the website, the designs were inspired by the Bauhaus weaving workshop:
Here’s my bag of fingerling weight sock and shawl scraps, left over from my socks and shawls. It’s so inspiring! I thought to myself, if only I had some fingerling weight solid to do some fair isle in. Guess what? I looked in my Bin of Stash, and I have a whole ball, plus maybe 20% of another ball of light blue alpaca, left over from the hood hat I made my sister. I am chugging along on these really cool mittens–photos to come tomorrow of the work in progress.
Since I’ve been knitting my log cabin blanket, I’ve become re-interested in quilts in general (a common side effect of log cabin knitting, I think). I went through a brief obsession with quilts as a kid (probably because of a book I read–I think it might have been a picture book, but I can’t remember the title), but nothing ever really happened with my obsession, besides a quilted pillowcase. But I recently discovered the website for the International Quilt Study Center, (it happened to win a prize in that freelance project I was editing a couple of weeks ago) and the interface is really terrific. The image above is from some of the examples that come up for “log cabin.” You can spend quite some time playing with its explorer feature. I also found a really cool knitted log cabin quilt on Ravelry (registration required), by a user named Bubbie Ann (she has a Flickr photo of it here, as well).
Okay, I know everyone is sick of the whole shallow coverage of Michelle Obama versus Carla Bruni fracas and/or thinks that this is the wrong economic moment to focus on fashion, but I am loving the fashion coverage. I think they both look great. I like Carla Bruni’s ’60s bourgeoisie-in-Dior look–she’s straight out of a housewife-gone-bad New Wave flick. Carla Bruni is definitely going demure, but we know your supermodel past, girl!
I like architectural details at the neck–Michelle Obama is wearing something with some interest at the neck here, too. Mrs. Obama is more modern than Mrs. Sarkosky–her looks aren’t very retro, even if they have a retro detail to them.
Thanks for all the comments on my last post–clearly, I need to fact-check my blog posts, instead of just rambling. But oh, how I love rambling. I’ve updated the post to reflect the new, correct info.
Anyway, when I went to see He’s Just Not That Into You the other day (I enjoy a rom-com, shut up. Read this post written by these guy friends of Adam’s who all watched Music and Lyrics, the fine fine movie with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.) and I noticed that Jennifer Connelly (an actress I dislike normally–her eyebrows! I just can’t deal!) was wearing this short-sleeved sweater with a long-sleeved shirt underneath in most of her scenes:
I think this might have been the wardrobe department’s idea of using clothes to signal that her character is uptight, but I kind of liked the look actually. There’s been a long tradition of guys wearing long-sleeved t-shirts under short-sleeved t-shirts, which was popular even when I was in high school, and probably best shown on tv by the O.C.‘s Seth Cohen (Adam Brody):
But that’s shirts, not sweaters. I think the layered look is cute, and I found this free Classic Elite pattern that uses this same kind of styling. What do you think? Cute but impractical? Or does it only work with thin sweaters, not bulky ones like the one below? (By the way, the Classic Elite site has tons of great free patterns. I think they can come in a weekly e-newsletter too, if you want.)
The New York Times ran two obituaries, an official one and then a more profile-y one of Estelle Bennett, one of the Ronettes, earlier this month when she died, and they were both sad. I love the look of the girl groups from that era, especially their hair. Every now and then for parties, I’ll try to do big beehive hair, but unfortunately, I just don’t have the hair for that kind of volume (plus, I think it requires a good half a day under those old-fashioned hair dryers to get those beehives into place. I was, however, lured by some product on television I saw the other day that was a plastic bump that promised this volume for modern hair). Anyway, I’ve always loved “Be My Baby,” which I remember learning in junior high music theory class* that it had the same bass line as Pachelbel’s Cannon. I also fact-checked a story about the backup musicians from this era a couple of years ago, (favorite quote from a source, “It was the ’60s, honey, it was one big blur”), and I got oddly fascinated with Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and his relationship with Ronnie Spector. In fact, I was so into it, I was confused when my friend and then-co-worker said something about going to see Regina Spektor, and I was like, “Phil Spector’s wife?” and she was like, “No! Your brain has been addled by talking to all these old musicians!”
*Yes, I was a nerd.
From this week’s New York magazine’s Look Book feature. Here’s a nice variegated hat (Missoni, natch) worn with an all-black outfit. Yay for those of us who like the often-ugly variegated yarns.
Adam suggested I do an inspiration day every week, and I groaned. I was like, noooo. It’s hard to find good images of stuff that hasn’t been blogged everywhere else, and I can’t just link to The Satorialist in every post, you know? Anyway, here’s an image from Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2009 collection this year. Yes, she looks like a deranged clown, but the design on the sweater is great–I think it would be a cute motif on a hat, or yes, dare I say it, a dog sweater. And I don’t even own a dog. Or maybe a felted handbag.
Oh, and sad news for those of you who don’t follow the media death march as I do–Craft magazine is going online only.