Cat lady

Everyone I know who has cats have too many photos of them.  I am one of them.  But they are such strange animals that I'm intrigued, grossed out, and amused.  Look at them!

Smells like teen spirit... I mean lavender

Those who know me know that I am overly sensitive to smells.  It's sometimes hard to have this "neurosis" and live in NYC, especially in the summer time.  To keep things even more smelly, I work in Midtown West where many men use phone booths and scaffolding as public urinals.  Oh New York... even though you smell, I still love you.  Now that's love right there, folks.

Needless to say, I like my home to smell nice - though "nice" is relative.  I thought a bunch of reed diffusers would be pleasant to have around.  Preferring natural scents, I couldn't find any pre-made diffusers that I really liked.  Many of them were too heavy and had several scents, oils, flowers, herbs - all in one bottle - enough to make my nose ache.  Wanting a simple clean scent I decided to make my own.

When I did some research, I found that I can get the exact simple scent I want for a very low cost {bonus!}.  I also found that I can partake on another one of my obsessions - lavender -!  I know some people dislike lavender and think it smells medicinal, but to me *true* lavender has a subtle clean aroma that just makes me relax and happy.

Sooo... if you want to make your own diffuser with your favorite essential oil, just gather these ingredients and follow these simple steps.

*Remember these bottles I collected from the Dead Horse Bay?  Well, I finally put them to use!  You'll need medium to small bottles that have small top openings.  This is so your essential oil doesn't just dissipate into the air, and instead gets soaked up into your reed sticks.

You will need:
1. Glass bottles
2. Reed sticks
3. Dipropylene Glycol
4. Your favorite essential oil
5. Funnel
6. Paper towels


Pour in about 70-80% Diproplyene Glycol and about 30-20% essential oil into your glass bottle(s).  Stir the mixture up a bit with a reed stick, and put some more sticks in the bottle - you know, enough to have a nice "bouquet" of sticks - and voilá!  Isn't that easy?  Enjoy~!

 

P.S. Thanks for your comments! I very much appreciate it :)

You inspire me to post more...

Ikat?

Ikat has been everywhere, especially this summer.  Though summer is over, I still want to be surrounded in it!  It might be my Colorado upbringing, but something about the South-western feel about this pattern that just gets me, you know?  I've seen many variations on interior fabrics and clothing.  And definitely wanted to include it some how in my apartment.

image from here: 1,2,3,4

At first I thought I needed to paint my own and do the whole sha-bang myself, but when I saw these on Etsy, I just couldn't resist.  I still need 4 more pillows, so may be I can get crafty with those...

Pillows, pillows, and more pillows

After searching for fabric in fabric stores, I still have not found exactly what I want to do with the pillows for my living room.  I did find 2 fabrics that could work as a combo, the navy and the zig-zag pattern.  But I realized that I'll need 4 sqiare pillows and 2 shorter side pillows.  I'm not sure that I want to commit to just 2 different fabrics.  I want the pillows to look sort of handmade and not mass-produced.  Not to say that handmade has to mean poor construction and finishes, but little details that give them character.  Is this too much thinking about pillows?  I want to them to seem *alive*.  OK, so now I'm going overboard...

Aren't these fabrics on Sri Boro Textiles web shop AMAZING?  I think finding these images definitely changed my direction for the pillows.  I can hardly contain myself, seriously.

I forgot to show the finished whale that Naomi Kazama printed on Zach's old t-shirt.  As you can see, Clio liked the results.

There was a time earlier this year when I kept up on many of the blogs I read on the web.  It felt like an accomplishment looking at as many visually stimulating images as possible.  Let's just say that now... I'm really behind.  It sort of feels good, but I also feel out of touch.  Does anyone know how I feel?  There's so much digital stimulation now that it's hard to get time off of the computer!  Is there a good balance?  I tend to go for long periods of one or the other.  Like read several blogs linking to one another for several months AND look up anything I'm interested in, and ~voila~ it's at my finger tips.  Convenient, right?  Well, I'm trying get more balance in my life.  It will take some practice.

So today I did one of the only things that make working in Midtown West worth while.  Fabric stores!  When you need it, it's usually here along with other sewing accoutrements anyone would want or need.

Starting on the pillows for my sofa!  (If it ever gets here!)

Naomi Kazama

I'm finally out of jury duty and back to my regular life!  OK, so it's been about 2 weeks since I've been released from my civil duties, but life has been really busy, you know?  My little attempted project to build a cat toy-wall-sort-of-sculpture didn't pan out.  I ended up making one part of the toy and experimenting, see here.  But as you can see, it was sort-of-a-flop.  I was trying to lure the cats into playing with the fancy scratch pendulum (I admit the shape ended up being suspect).  They were more interested in the laser pointer (no surprise there).

Luckily last Sunday, Naomi Kazama showed up on my block to live screen print his art work, and inspired me to stop making such complicated project choices.  Oh ya, and he also got me excited enough to post about it.  I really should be better about this posting business... though {I think} not too many people read this, I enjoy doing it.  Maybe I'm just a record keeper at heart?

Anyhow, back to Mr. Kazama.  He was the coolest!  We brought some of our old plain t-shirts and he printed some of his art on them, using his marble technique.  Immediate art to go, just around the corner from my apartment.  Need I ask for more?  Check out more of his work here.

Fall already???

Usually, I'm clinging onto summer like an ex-boyfriend I don't want to break-up with... but these past few days have been really rainy with cooler temperatures, so yes, I'm thinking of fall. It also doesn't help that my job is to think of seasons a year in advance. The site I visit often for inspiration is Maryam Nassir Zadeh. If I could, I would buy almost every single piece from her gallery/store. Here are some of my pre-fall and [lingering] summer faves for the week and the weekend.

Wrecked street cars

The other day Mr. Z and I went to Fairway Market in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Red Hook is pretty interesting because it's very quiet and sort of desolate, dotted by artisanal shops, hangouts, and vacant industrial buildings.  After our shopping, we took a little walk to the water and saw these old street cars. They look like they were built in the late 40's or 50's, but not quite sure... I'd be great if these were functional now, but supposedly they were really inefficient and dangerous.  I just love the green/blue they were painted!  Here's a little history of the street car in Brooklyn. (photos taken with Hipstamtic)

Refurbished shipping containers

On man, oh man... this happens every year at about this time. The weather gets sweltering and I'm on slow mode. It's been so long since I've posted anything, but I do have lots to share in the works. Especially home renovation photos! But for now, I'll share some exploration I did this past weekend. A friend told me about the Dekalb Market in my new hood so we took a slow walk in the sun to check it out. Brooklyn is full of craft and flea markets, especially in the summertime, but the Dekalb Market has an extra layer of creativity... shipping containers! Isn't that great? Artists, craft-ers, and gourmet food and drink vendors showing and selling their stuff in shipping containers turned store spaces. I've always loved the way these things look piled up in rural parts of the country, and this family actually built their own house out of them.

I forgot my camera, so I searched on the net for images, and found these by photographer Leonel Lima Ponce on inhabit.com. I didn't think to look so closely at the construction of these mini buildings, as Mr. Ponce did... pretty amazing. Oh, and I did snag a little gift for myself there by Wada Africa. I got a skirt/top (not shown), but after looking at the site, I think I'll have to get a pair of these pants, that polka dot top, and necklace too!

dotted

I love these dotted ceramics by Matt Merkel-Hess at IKO IKO!

Dead Horse Bay (sort of)

This past weekend Mr. Z and I took a very long bike ride to what we thought was Dead Horse Bay, but it turned out that it was the bay south of it. This bay still shored garbage and antique bottles, as well as some remains of its history as a landfill. It was still quite eerie and disgusting, but fascinating at the same time. We didn't (however) see any horse skeletons, as the real Dead Horse Bay supposedly has. Oh well, we still scavenged some antique bottles. I'm not sure what we'll do with them yet, but once the apartment is closer to complete, I'll get my (detail) creative gears rolling. For the record, I did boil the bottles to sterilize them as I'm a bit of a germ-a-phobe ;-)

this weekend is about... COLOR!

That is... wall colors to be exact. Usually, I've lived in white and grey. I'm always afraid that I'll get tired of the color I choose for walls, but for some reason, our new place calls for COLOR. Yes, people always say that it's easy to paint over paint, but lemme tell you, it's not as easy as people make it sound. It's sort of a pain.. ok, a real pain. So, I just want to be able to live with the colors I choose for a bit and maybe, just maybe for a looooooong time (forever?). I saw this post on seesaw. with art work by Courtney Price "rectangular objects" that got my eye excited to go color crazy this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to take some photos of the results.

RESCUED JUNK by old crow farm

Now that most of our boxes are unpacked, there's so much to do, so much to buy, so many decisions to make... and this is for a small space!  I can't imagine what I'd do if I had a whole house to make my own.  In the mist of looking for things to contain my sewing things, and possibly get me inspired to start making things again (eventually). I found this store on Etsy.  I especially love the way the products are shot.  The metal drawers caught my eye first.

160 Hall St.

In conjunction with my moving process, I'm reading "Just Kids" by Patti Smith. It's probably one of the best books I have ever read, or am reading. Since there's plenty of press coverage summarizing the book and what it's about, I won't do it here. However, I will provide the fact that her and Robert Mapplethorp's first apartment together is just a short walk from Mr. Z's and my new place (what a coincidence!).  So, I took a little bike ride to 160 Hall St., Brooklyn to see their old digs to take in the brilliant history they made together as life partners, best friends, and artistic muses.  The building did not disappoint me, as it's a beautiful brick walk-up that looks almost Gothic. I think she said that they lived on the top floor...


I'd like to make this post a homage to Patti Smith for... just being, Patti.

images found here

a NEW beginning!

Mr. Z and I finally moved! It has been a long and arduous process, but we are in the midst of boxes in our first place of our own. We love it here in Fort Greene (in the heart of the neighborhood), with everything at our finger tips including trees, 2 parks, farmer's markets, great restaurants, the list goes on! I can't believe I was able to pull off working, packing, restoring, working, packing, restoring, and repeat for over a week. I'm relieved that this weekend will be a 3 day one. Hopefully I can get some more inspiration up here on the ol' blog, as there will be plenty to do to make this apartment our own.