emily’s Neighborhood

Hello everybody,

today was really cold outside. Although just about one week ago it was so warm outside that the flowers started to bloom again, the winter came over us all of a sudden last weekend. Now fields and streets are covered with snow and you can see your breeth while beeing outside.
I used the cold days to finally get back to my own sewing machine. what came out is this little pouch. It is made from a really beautiful antique dark linen fabric with blue stripes. i added some lace and button for the cuteness and even embroidered a little heart on it.
It remembers me of the Shabby Chic or Country style . the inside fabric is a cute polka-dots cotton print fabric from Japan.

It has been added to the shop as well as the below two projects which i already made a while ago but always missed to update them. Hope you like them!
It´s a set of 3 crochet doilies in beautiful snowflake colours and a set of four coasters for the table.
  
Last, but not least, two ongoing projects. i made one of these flower pincussions which are always beautiful and you might have recognized the little embroidery piece below. It´s already finished by now but i still have to decide what project i will use it for. Curious now? ^_^

Love,
*Tea

music: a little MV from Youtoube of one of my favorite romantic movies ever!
enjoy!

It´s been some time since the last update.
Mr. P and i spent some wonderful days together the last two month and been busy with visiting friends and rediscovering nearbye places.
But i have not been lazy or forgot about my tiny girls ,).
Two new dresses are in the shop:

I specially like how the crochet piece came out. it´s so tiny and really cute. She looks like a little princess in it.
i plan to make another one for my own girls and also to crochet some for my ACB Florentine. She should look darling in it too! :D

love,
*Tea

No music video today, but instead a link to the trailer for Avatar the Movie - Aufbruch nach Pandora
i can´t wait to see it in theatre!

It is with great pleasure and relief that I am able to announce that the second volume of The Ba-Ba Box Set is complete.  The song selection and ordering process took me twelve hours.  I'm not exaggerating either; it literally took me an entire day (spread out over a week) to compile this mix.  And I'm not even counting all the time spent uploading the songs.  I'm just talking about the choosing and ordering.  Let's say I had difficulties and leave it at that.

You might be thinking "sophomore slump", but I say "screw that".  The sophomore slump is for losers.  Volume 2 might go down in history as one of my Top 5 compilations of all-time.  When it comes to finding a great number of great songs that all feature a particular vocal idiosyncrasy and then compiling them into a series of mixes that nobody will ever hear, I totally kick ass.  I'm the best in the world.  Of course, I couldn't have done it without the help of my Vox neighbors.  Homebody, Silverchimes, and Hotrod each recommended two songs that made the cut for Volume 2.  Genuine thanks go out to them...and to everyone who has sent song titles my way.

The first volume in the series was called This Is What It Sounds Like.  I've decided to call the second volume Hey, Let's Try This Again...But With More Songs About Car Crashes.  It had a nice ring to it. 

Here's the track listing for Hey, Let's Try This Again:

1. Chrysanthemums - Care of Cell 44
2. Jessica Fletchers - I Got News (buy)
   
3. Flatmates - I Could Be in Heaven (buy)
   
4. Beards - All About You (buy)
   
5. Crabs - 1863
   
6. Heavenly - Escort Crash on Marston Street
7. Beulah - A Good Man is Easy to Kill (buy)
   
8. New Pornographers - The Electric Version (buy)
   
9. Julian Cope - The Greatness & Perfection of Love
10. Teenage Fanclub - I Need Direction (buy)
    
11. Orange Juice - Wan Light (buy)
    
12. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Jennifer She Said (buy)
    
13. Jenny Toomey - Breezewood, PA (buy)
    
14. Go-Betweens - Heart and Home
15. Kingsbury Manx - Grape to Grain (buy)
    
16. Velvet Underground - Who Loves the Sun (buy)
    
17. Dream Syndicate - Until Lately (buy)
    
18. Yo La Tengo - Wizard's Sleeve (buy)
    

Once again, I couldn't just make a playlist.  I had to make cover art, too.  Last time I made a picture file out of each songs' original cover art.  I thought that worked fine, but this time I drew up a mix-specific rudimentary drawing in red ink.  I like the red ink art better, but I also made the old kind of art just in case I got tired of looking at a sleepy-eyed me surrounded by ba-bahs.  I think I'm going to go back and make some red ink art for Volume 1.

I got these guys as a surprise early Christmas present.  Homebody bought them for me from a place called Aaron's Tin Toy Arcade.  They've got a bunch of fun stuff over there for the weirdo on your shopping list.  Just know that you shouldn't bother paying the extra $5 for the gift wrapping.  They'll charge you the $5 and then forget to wrap your present.  Your Christmas will be completely ruined.  And the "Made in China" stickers lead me to believe their "Japanese" Tin Toy Robots aren't actually Japanese.  Very suspicious.  Still, the robots are awesome and they don't look particularly Christmassy, so I'll be able to leave them up all year round.

I'm not supposed to buy music in December.  I'm supposed to leave some things for potential gift-givers, but I haven't been doing a very good job abstaining.  I accidentally bought an intriguing LP by a band I'd never heard of before.  Broken Strings?  I tried to look them up online, but their website is broken.  Their record isn't bad, though.  It sounds like lo-fi Elephant 6 with strange rants about surfing and climbing trees thrown into the mix.  They're on True Panther Sounds, but I bought the LP because the sleeve was purple with shiny art.  I like shiny. I also bought a bunch of cheap CDs including one by Material Issue that I remember listening to many years ago with the guy who lived across the hall from me in college.  He was really into a song called "Kim the Waitress".  The band sort of sounds like a non-shitty Weezer.

Nostalgic moments since Andrea G. said she's coming to visit in January:

Andrea and I (as NAZIRECTIONS) playing in Portland at Reed College.

In retrospect, it really was just drunken noise.
Later that same night I remember falling on my face (not because I was drunk) because I jumped from the top of a staircase (because I was drunk) and waking up with a fat lip. I deserved it.

In other news, last night Ben and I were interviewed (videotaped) and photographed by these young local filmmakers wanting to talk to young designers (I think---it all happened so fast). There were all these cameras positioned around me and people looking at me while I worked. It wasn't unpleasant, just unusual.

Anyway, one of the questions they asked me was if I had any advice for someone just starting out (as if I'm not).

Well, first of all, I had all my words together and basically said that you need to have a plan and goals in mind. And that you need to stay focused and keep good records. You need to know where your money is going! OKAY.

And then I finished it off by messing up my words...
Instead of saying "you need to hang in there", I said: "You need to stick it in."
I guess I was trying to say, "You need to stick with it."
I don't know. But it keeps playing over and over in my head.
I'm not really embarrassed. I just keep thinking how dumb I was. Dumb!

In OTHER news, we shoot our look books on Sunday, which is cool.
We're both really (very) busy with getting samples ready for this AND getting holiday orders out. I leave for Texas on December 16th. So, the last day to order anything from Cubist Literature until 2010 is December 13th!

SELF PORTRAIT THURSDAY!
12.10.09

I was in my car.  Sitting at a stoplight.  Fake drumming to a $2 CD by a band called the Pooh Sticks.  I looked over to my right and saw a young woman pumping gas.  It was about 30 degrees out and she was obviously very cold.  She was doing a little stay-warm-by-shuffling-back-and-forth-thing.  You know, putting all her weight on her right leg and then switching over to her left.  Back and forth over and over again.  The interesting thing is this: she was moving in perfect time to the song I was playing.  If she'd been listening to the exact same song at the exact same moment, she couldn't have possibly displayed superior rhythm.  She couldn't have danced any better.

Please pardon the language, but I live for shit like that.

This weekend was devoted to the loft bed that has been sitting in pieces around the bedroom and apartment. We've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor in an unfinished loft bed frame for about two or more months now. Quite the eyesore. I thought we would have gotten around to fixing up our bed a lot sooner than we had, but when you work a lot, many things suffer. Beds, social life, hygiene, sleep schedule, etc.

The bed was a whole lot of drama we just didn't want to deal with, I guess.
It was given to us. It's from Ikea, but Ikea doesn't make this design anymore.
And as luck would have it, we lost some important hardware that Ikea ALSO doesn't make anymore.
(We found that out halfway through constructing the bed, which is why we were sleeping in a frame.)

Anyway, we figured out another way to make things work.

And here you go:

Cats panting.

I didn't leave the house today.