On the 2nd Day of Christmas:

I have written a personality quiz for you!  Yes, me, my own self, I tirelessly studied the intricacies of human interaction in order to present you with this quiz about you.  You're welcome.  I actually wrote it as an excuse to make use of an observation I found terribly funny, and I meant to post it directly on the blog, but the site is being terribly wenchy so I have been unable to embed it properly, but here is the link to it in the meantime: 4 Temperaments Quiz.

The 4 Temperaments is very limited, however, and honestly the Myers-Briggs is so much more satisfyingly in depth, so I recommend checking that one out too.          

Anyway, if you do take the test, leave a comment and tell me if it seemed accurate.

Merry Christmas, all!

Anti-dis-in-no-nonsense

The evolution of language is mostly pretty cool.  Also, pretty cool is the English language.  I have a passing acquaintanceship with Italian (minimal), a forced working relationship with Latin (Try as I might, I couldn't get away from Latin.  I attended insane schools that insisted on Great Books curriculum, and Latin was a requirement to get through the core.  My interaction with Latin was like a co-worker you don't like but always get scheduled with and you don't realize you actually have begun to like until they quit the position), and also a wee bit of German (a pathetically wee bit.  I learned how to order food and ask for directions in German and that was it.  I relied very heavily on the panicked, flailing gestures and Deutsch-lish to get by...when my fluent friend was not nearby.)  Anyway, while the romance languages are incredibly musical and pretty, their regularity gets....boring.  English pretty much rocks because more often than not the words actually sound like what they describe, which is ever so much better, for poetry and musical lyrics and just making yourself generally understood.  It is a language of extreme onomatopoeia.  As is German, English's linguistic cousin.  For instance, merde could be anything really, whereas scheiße! most certainly sounds like a frustrated, but mild swear word with scatological roots.

Anyway, why am even talking about this?  I'm not really sure.  I haven't posted in a bit, and I thought I should do something, and I recently experienced a wordsmith revelation.  "Nonsense" is a cute word.  There are things that make sense, and there are things so ridiculous that they are a total absence of sense: nonsense.  What bothers me is the existence of the word no-nonsense.  A double negative that, if anything, obscures the actual meaning of the word and sounds very silly when you think about it.  No-nonsense basically means sensible, but the word is terribly gangly, and sounds made up when you say it 5 times.    

The motivation of this post is obscure even to me.  This weekend has been extremely successful in catching up on sleep and not much besides.  After a couple of beers, pondering in the corporate mire in which I spend my daily hours, this is what I came up with to discuss.  Cheers.                      

Blog of the Day!

I would like to have some kind of organized theme for this blog because my mind adores categories.  Something like favorite styles on Mondays, featured products with photographs on Tuesdays, featured artists/designers on Wednesdays, nothing particular for Thursdays because Thursday doesn't count as a day, and movie recommendations on Fridays.  Unfortunately, while my analytic mind adores categories and likes to imagine sleek organization, I am easily distracted and my ambition holds no follow-through so it's more like transporting water in a sieve.  If you could read the blog in my head, you would be amazed I tell you.  


That was an attempt at explaining the slightly illogical post title.  I can't really have a blog of the day if I've never featured another blog before.  It's more like blog of the blog.  The gist is my dear friend Monica sent me a blog post and I have been reading the blog, Hyperbole and a Half almost ever since.  This blogger is hilarious, and reminds me of the startling witty, over-the-top and somehow still amusingly understated humor of my friend Mel and the manic intensity of my friend Elizabeth.  And she illustrates her posts which is darling.  I recommend you check her out.


Thursday out.        

Featured Designer: Carri Perani of Iridescence Jewelry

I have been so excited to share this with you guys for ages.  OK, intro: my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Randy stalk garage sales, vintage stores, and estate sales for random treasures, and the stuff that they manage to pick up is kind of amazing.  I really need to make a weekend visit just to join them on scavenger hunts, and they will be the masters and I shall be the pupil.  Which reminds of that time when I was like 6 and was dead-set on ditching my family and just living with Kathy and Randy, even though Uncle Randy tickled me so much I think I stopped breathing long enough to do brain damage, and Aunt Kathy was kind of sarcastic, but I could totally tell she was cool with me and that made me feel very urbane.  Anyways, during a scavenging adventure, they found a jeweler that Aunt Kathy told me about, and I want to share with you.  


Carri Perani began Iridescence Jewelry in West Virginia at the end of 2007, making the transition from a job in a corporate office.  Though she has not had any formal art training in jewelry design, she learns techniques from local goldsmith, Gene Conley of Touchstone Designs, in something akin to an apprenticeship.  Carri tells me that she is currently studying silversmithing with Gene.  (And I just need to break off for a moment to say that it makes me really happy to know that there are still apprenticeships.  Apprenticing needs to come back in a big way.)    


She generally works with sterling and 14k gold, but she also has a line of jewelry called the Rabbit Hole Collection which is what got me so fanatical about her jewelry that I bought two pieces right away.  Carri said, "The Rabbit Hole Collection is about recycling/repurposing & using what's already available. I've traveled all over the continental US, to Hawaii, New Zealand, and to several islands in the Caribbean.  Traveling is so inspiring to me because it makes me realize just how much beauty there is in the world."  She actually named her jewelry line during a walk on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida, inspired by the beauty of thin iridescent shells.  She collaborates with close friend, Cara, who started a buy, sell, trade clothing company called Journe Wear in Steubenville, Ohio.  Together they shop thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales & buy odds and ends from people like Aunt Kathy & Uncle Randy.  


The Rabbit Hole Collection

Gold Scalloped Earrings

"I think the beauty of these pieces is that it is open to interpretation, you can write & rewrite their story because every piece has it's own long lost history. You look at a piece and wonder, who did this belong to? where has this been? It all has so much character & mystery attached to it. That's what I think really draws people to it. I also think people find the rabbit hole collection intriguing because we are using found objects in very creative, unthought of ways," Carri says.

Soaring Swallow

Vintage Teapot Necklace

The Steam Punk Collection

"Steampunk places great importance on the value of beauty that reflects unusual or antiquated ideals. The steampunk culture takes its cues from the Victorian era, and speculates on how our world would be different if steam power had become the driving force behind our culture."

Nerdly Couture

Hello lambs!  It's been a long sabbatical, mostly because this clinging, lung-bruising sickness is stalking me like a gollum, but I have too many things to share to wait any more.


First, one of my friends (the friend I need to live nearby again eventually because, among many, many other reasons, I miss borrowing her clothes like I did when we lived together while we rambled on and on about film and art and love, and whatever else happened to catch our education-expanded minds.  Sigh, college: where you meet people to love for their wonderful minds and better fashion sense) sent me an email alerting me about these clutches by French designer Olympia Le-Tan.

  Natalie Portman had one during a Black Swan (wanna see it) junket:

It's a shame she looks so hungry and cranky.

I think I love these, but I also think I'd be a little irked when I absentmindedly opened the clutch during a lull to read a few pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four and just found my keys and lip gloss.  And, yes, I bring books with me almost everywhere, so I could totally see myself doing that.  I squeezed my gigantic copy of The Brothers Karamazov into the precious little space I had in my book bag for my trip to Berlin.  I read like 150 pages of that sucker on the train, and I would have been really bummed out if my copy had morphed into a clutch halfway through.  But still!  Books!  Books as fashion accessories!  I just don't know.  What are your thoughts?     

                           

The Faces of Autumn

The blog title doesn't make much sense, but I'm still groggy from the creeping death so I'm not going to be too hard on myself.  We explored the gorgeous campus of SMU during our glorious Thanksgiving weekend to more fully enjoy the autumnimity.

The photo above makes me laugh.  I was just talking with a friend of mine about the awkwardness of posing for pictures because generally you forget what to do with your face.  She still looks pretty in her pictures, if wearing maybe an expression slightly different from her usual one.  I somehow end up with cartoonish expressions of exaggerated emotion.  The one above is "actor in an 80s television drama portraying a spy playing it cool".  Anyway, it was a gorgeous day.

Sweater: Gap

Scarf: Mossimo

Necklace: Thursday Island

Pants: Gap

Shoes: Converse

Jacket: Priorities