I am about as excited as this model this morning. I'm going out with friends & their little kids to a Halloween neighborhood block party bash thingy tonight. It's heaps o' fun so I'll perk up. I'll be wearing this on my head. Lots of blogs I link to, here & on Giulia Geranium, have terrific Halloween posts. It's a favorite holiday; someday I'll get it together before the morning of & post my own pix.
If you're stuck for last-minute ideas for Halloween, I highly recommend Martha Stewart's site. If I could find the proper wire in the next 10 minutes, I'd make this headband. If you're all caught up & feeling smug (boo;), these pepita recipes are fast & very tasty.
Meet me back here later this week to tango. Seriously. xoxo/Susan
(Jason Wu lace mask on Vogue Italia)
I'll be going to this exhibit at The Phillips Collection more than once, I know. I remember a reproduction of a Degas painting & some (repro) drawings at my maternal grandmother's house. I never had the reaction that others did of "oooh pretty." I liked them very much but I remember saying/thinking: They're working so hard that it might hurt. And also it might be boring sometimes. I learned not a few years later (through a sister & later on, friends) that this could often be the case. Not that they would trade their training for anything. So there you are.
There's also a Degas exhibit on in Boston (nudes) & one at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. There are some good articles in the New York Times & a good slideshow on The Guardian. Here's the Degas label on The Guardian, too, so you can see all the article titles at once.I hope to post more regularly as autumn marches on. But I've said that before. Part of the problem is deciding how to use the space. I've not been writing from prompts as much as I did at the beginning. Maybe I don't have to define what I'm doing but it feels like I should.
(Dancers at the Barre/Phillips Collection via Wikipedia)
I just walked in from a belated birthday lunch & it was wonderful. A chilly breeze has made everything a bit too cold & Julie is asleep in a pile of blankets next to the desk. The area around the desk looks much like this photograph from Toast (though I made my jam).
Toast has a little blog, Toast Travels, where they post on a wide variety of topics. I particularly like the latest one In Defence of Darkness.
The other online thing I loved this weekend was looking through Jilly's Menton Daily Photo. I'm behind in everything but enjoyed the ongoing wedding series. You have to follow the thread back as there's not a dedicated label. It's worth it. (I really really really get sick of everyone's wedding festival look-at-me stuff - this is so very different.) Also, Jilly's photographs of (male) flamenco dancers are gorgeous.
Have a lovely start to the week tomorrow.
(Happy Monday to Australians)
I've seen several butterflies the last few days; it's awfully late in the fall for them to be hanging about. Plus, it's quite rainy & windy. I thought they, well, that they went somewhere. I love them & I am frightfully ignorant about them, as it turns out.
Here is a link to lovely butterfly drawings by Nabokov. And there are a gazillion butterfly earrings, here. Turns out: not my thing. Or maybe what I had in mind is not available. That happens with everything from shoes to bags to clothing. It's in my head but nowhere else.
(photograph by Taesang via Автор)
I'm in one hell of a mood. Be glad that I've not been around to comment for a couple of days, though I will be later today/tomorrow evening. Will restrain self from snarling. The thing is this mood goes from distracted moon-swoony to full-out tooth gnashing. Wah.
I've started to pay attention to my Pinterest boards, after a year or so. Nothing like the fear of spending money to get that going. (I just deleted about two grafs of semi-rant re: many images people pin over there. It's their thing, I'll let it go. Until comments here, if any.) If you'd like, you can request an invite on the site. It's not as exclusive as many designers/bloggers/etc would have you believe.PS: Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday greetings in late September!
(Paris photograph by Darien Chin)
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass
Oh, Ira. I love you. (photograph by Stuart Mullenberg)
I am about as excited as this model this morning. I'm going out with friends & their little kids to a Halloween neighborhood block party bash thingy tonight. It's heaps o' fun so I'll perk up. I'll be wearing this on my head. Lots of blogs I link to, here & on Giulia Geranium, have terrific Halloween posts. It's a favorite holiday; someday I'll get it together before the morning of & post my own pix.
