Handmade Spoils

It's so long since I've written anything here, but I've been sitting on some pictures I wanted to share of some lovely little handmade things I picked up over the holidays, although Christmas has long since come and gone. I went to the Bazaar Bizarre in Boston in early December with the intention of doing some holiday shopping for others, but as it happened, everything that caught my eye was just perfect for me, me, me, so Santa visited me a little early.

Because I am always blowing my nose (mild cat allergies? bad habit?), a little mini tissue holder in a mermaid-girl print from (I think!) Wonderland Q.

Scuba girl! Well, I don't know who she is, but I liked her intrepid (if a tad perplexed) adventuress look. The artist, illustrator and comics artist George Pfromm II, had a tableful of pen-and-ink characters, original art from his recent Honolulu Dogfight show. It was hard to decide which one to choose.

I love, love, love this mug from Hijacked Ceramics, so much so that I think I need to buy one more so my heart doesn't break if something happens to this one. Wait, let me go take care of that right now, before someone else snatches up the one I have my eye on ... okay, there, it's ordered. The mug is a nice, generous size with a big handle, feels good to hold, and has a beautiful, sanded-down texture that makes me think of time-worn painted tiles in faraway places like Morocco and Spain. Yes, I expect quite a lot from my morning cup of coffee.

I've still found it difficult to carve out time for making things, myself, with Baby H now in the picture, so I've been settling for micro-projects (and things like knitting that can be picked up and put down at will). Here's a paper garland I made from kimono-print origami paper (which now has a second life decorating the window in the baby's room). Originally I thought I would use it to decorate the tree, but I liked it so much I gave it pride of place over our fake fireplace.

So, until next time -- hopefully not another four months -- happy Groundhog Day! I love how ever since the Bill Murray movie, I think of it (and am sure I'm not alone in this) as a day that keeps happening over and over, instead of a peculiar holiday involving a small animal, shadows, and the promise of spring.

Shopping with the Stars

When I go to New York I always look up a few places I've been meaning to visit, stores or restaurants I've read about, stuff like that. This time I spent an afternoon in Soho checking out the knitting shop Purl, and also Global Table, a kitchen and tableware shop that seems to be referenced in every issue of every home design magazine I've ever read.

Both turned out to be small, appealing, packed with carefully selected goods ... and a little disappointing. Perhaps a bit like seeing a beloved celebrity in person and discovering them to be a lot smaller and normal-looking than they appeared on the silver screen. Each of these places is name-dropped so often by the style cognoscenti, my expectations had been built up for something more.

True, the Purl storefront glowed like a happy rainbow on the gloomy, rain-spattered afternoon that I stopped by, and the fibers filling its cubby-lined walls were brilliantly colored and exquisitely textured to the last skein, but I can think of three or four other knitting shops off the top of my head that offer an equally scrumptious selection of yarn, with more to choose from, more inspiring books and gadgets, and a more comfortable setting. There was nothing wrong with Purl, but I don't know that it deserves all the special attention it gets.

As for Global Table, while it does bring a lot of interesting items together in one place, it felt kind of cluttered and messy, and didn't have much that I hadn't already seen elsewhere. Though it's possible it was just spoiled for me from having seen all the goods before in those endless "what we want NOW" magazine spreads.

I think the bottom line is that the people who work for these magazines mostly live in New York, and they've got to dredge up ideas for their stories the same as any journalist. At the end of the day, it's easiest to scout for merchandise within walking distance. And while these two stores (along with the rest of the editorial darlings) may be perfectly good, or even great, it's always going to be difficult to live up to the hype created by all that shiny editorial language. You know, kind of like when you read that a store "glowed like a happy rainbow."

Of course, knowing it's all marketing and spin won't stop me from hunting down the little hot-list boutiques, any more than it will prevent me from keeping my eyes peeled for famous folk, however small or ordinary they may appear in the flesh. It seems that as long as you pay attention, and particularly if you visit one of the trendier neighborhoods, you're sure to see somebody, though there's no guarantee it will be someone you care about. I enjoy how random this is - unlike a movie, where you know going in whether it will be peopled with stars from the A, B, or D list, the New York streets are not delineated by velvet ropes ... at least not yet. Everyone's just out there milling around and doing their thing, just like you or me (but with more money).

I suppose I should try to be blase about it, but I can't help it: I'm totally star-struck. I haven't run up to talk to anyone (so far), but I do tend to sidle around looking out of the corners of my eyes in a really obvious way, trying to take in the presence of the mythical celebrity beast in my own humdrum reality.

My cousin and I saw Anna Paquin shopping in Nolita last fall, and this summer Daniel and I passed Jimmy Fallon walking along with his head down and a "please don't notice me" expression on his face, but my most random and amusing "star" sighting was this last visit, and was the best because it was such a non-event: I noticed Ken Burns at the J. Crew in Soho, into which I had ducked to get out of the rain. Now, I am aware of the work of Ken Burns, respect what he does, and even watched a good bit of "The Civil War" many years ago, but I am by no means a devoted fan, so mainly I just found it funny that I recognized him at all, much less instantly. Also, because as he walked through the menswear department he gazed at the chinos and sweaters with the same slightly creepy, wide-eyed intensity you see when he appears on PBS, and pointed out various articles of clothing to the people he was with as though they were researching a documentary on the history of preppy clothiers in America. And who knows, perhaps that is his next project.

It's unfortunate that there isn't some way to sign up in advance for celebrity sightings, perhaps via Gawker Stalker, so the person glimpsing the celeb fully appreciates the experience. (No offense, Jimmy Fallon, but while I was excited to recognize you, you were otherwise wasted on me.) Maybe we could somehow barter them, à la craigslist ... let's see, on the day I saw Ken Burns, I could have swapped him for a Kristin Davis or a Jennifer Garner (with Violet) sighting. Though the mere fact that I consider Ken Burns a "celebrity" probably indicates I was the right person for the job.

My Kind of Sole

It's years since I lived in Chicago, but in all the other cities I've visited I still haven't found a shoe store I love as much as Lori's, "The Sole of Chicago." Every time I go back I try to steal at least a half hour there, whether I really need new shoes or not.

The store stocks quite a range of shoe styles, from cheap and trendy to luxe leather designer, and that's what makes it great, but the reason I truly love it is this: all the sizes are right there on the floor, available for shoppers to try on at will.

It really bugs me to have to ask a clerk to go get my size when I'm shopping for shoes. You try a few pairs, they don't fit or look bad once they're on -- how many times can you send the poor person back to the stockroom? Once, as a teenager, I tried on nearly every shoe at the Parkway Slipper Box on Diversey, and I'll never forget the look of exhaustion and defeat on the face of the poor man who helped me, knowing long before I did that it was a lost battle. At some point, you have to stop trying stuff on, even if you're not done looking for your perfect shoe. At Lori's, you could try on shoes until the cows come home, kick over the lantern, and burn down Mrs. O'Leary's shed, and then try on shoes some more.

I've only ever seen this set-up at places like Payless and shoe outlets, never at a store that carries new, stylish, well-made shoes. If there are other places like this please tell me, because I want to go to them.

Incidentally, Lori's is where I experienced my first credit card rejection. I was 18 or 19 and decided I'd use the family "emergency only" card to buy an expensive silver necklace. (I presume I planned to pay my parents back for it, but our records of this transaction have conveniently been mislaid.) The sale didn't go through, perhaps because the card had only ever been used to purchase my flights to and from college. I was visibly mortified, but my salesperson, Lori herself in those days, was the essence of reassuring breeziness, thus passing on to me the womanly art of rationalizing credit card debt and charging it in the name of style. "Oh, that happens all the time," she told me. "It doesn't mean anything. Do you have another card?"

Apparently I did have another card, because I still have the necklace. Lori's still has lots of great accessories in addition to all those shoes, by the way: this time I walked away with a new fall bag. And, reader? I charged it.

The store has several branches now, but I noticed Lori there in the original Armitage shop on this recent visit, talking business with one of her associates, and she looked pretty much exactly as I remember her back then. How does she do that? It must be something in the shoes.

Threadless Central

We felt pretty lucky on our Chicago visit, catching buses quickly, happening to visit the pricey Museum of Science and Industry on free day, stuff like that. Among our lucky moments was stumbling upon the new Threadless retail storefront, the first of its kind, on its opening morning (a few days before its Friday Grand Opening).

I didn't know a whole lot about this company other than hearing about it from time to time, but the clean, stylish, techo-savvy decor of the shop had me instantly smitten. Each T-shirt design was stacked beneath a sleek new flat-screen monitor displaying it on various models and in different shirt/hoodie styles.


The pièce de résistance would have to be the set-up that lets you photograph yourself inside the store, then run outside to see your face appear on a screen atop one of the T-shirts in the display window.




Not easy to see with the daylight reflection, but it was there!


On a more practical note, the store even has dressing rooms - kind of unusual for a place that only sells T-shirts, but such a good idea. At least for me, I would otherwise have chosen my shirt in the wrong size.

The staff was super friendly and understandably excited about the store's opening. (They gamely posed for the photo above, even after I told them it was for a blog that gets "as many as ten readers a day." Whoohoo, major press coverage!) They were handing out reusable Threadless shopping bags - bring it back next time, and you get a dollar off your purchase. If we'd still been in Chicago last Friday we also could have gotten free tickets to a concert at the Metro celebrating the grand opening.

So which shirt did I get? It was a lucky week, so I went with this one: the Luckiest T-Shirt Ever.