telluride

At the end of last week, headed out to Telluride, Colorado for a few days of hiking, perfecting my book-to-scenery-line-of-vision equation, and dog cuddles. I hadn't been to that part of the country at all, but some family moved there a while back and I finally made it out there. It was one of those situations where I wouldn’t have visited this very beautiful place if they weren’t living there and I would have visited them if they didn’t live in a very beautiful place.

It turns out that I picked the perfect weekend - the aspen trees were at their brightest goldenrod and I got to skip out on the Texas heat for a bit and break out my ankle boots and a light jacket.

Telluride has a fairly tiny year-round population, but there's usually a festival in town (the film festival and Blues & Brews are the biggest, but there are so many more) and, of course, ski season is a big deal, but I'm not one for winter sports so I'm happy to have missed those crowds.

The town itself is supercute.  They don't allow franchises, so it's all local businesses and there were plenty of fresh flowers everywhere.  I set up a bit of a residency at a coffee shop that generously rewards patrons with free pastries and refills, because life requires caffeine and family visits require a safe space to duck off to.  

I also stopped in a string of smaller Colorado towns in between mountain passes - all equally adorable and full of the particular brand of rugged whimsy that relatively isolated locales breed, like a jail converted into a thrift store.

Pretty much everyone has a dog and you can take them everywhere. It's great.  This is Loki, who is massive but still a puppy on the inside.

My family legitimately lives in the mountains.  This is a a picture I took from the gondola that takes you from the town of Telluride to their neighborhood. Yeah, man, their public transit is a fucking gondola.

I have long maintained that being on mountains with dogs is an important activity to participate in as frequently as possible, and I've gotta say, I had some of the best dog/mountain time of my life on this trip.  You can't tell here, but I was actually very high up a few feet away from a pretty intense drop, so if Loki had decided to misbehave, he could have sent me flying off a cliff as he is much stronger than I am.  It was cool, though - we just played! Good dog.

Super into the black and white patterns on the trunks of the aspens.  

whatever, man...fashion!

Whenever fashion week rolls around, I ask two questions:

1) To myself: "do I care?"

2) To the designers, who are not listening to me and who have no idea who I am: "how are you going to make me care?"

And that, at its heart, is why I still keep up with runway shows.  Because I feel like fashion, as an art form, is all too often on the defensive. When I see a collection that feels like its on the offensive, it's an exciting thing.  

I haven't quite come across any New York collections that did it for me, but London Fashion Week has gotten off to a promising start!  

ERDEM

Easter egg snake prints!  Psychedelic florals! Neon pom-pom looking things!  Sure to be called "country club on acid" by many lazy people, but certain other lazy people might just predict what the first set of lazy people would say.   

ACNE

Here's something about me that you might not know but hopefully will not be surprised to learn: I hate hate hate Renaissance Faires. There is nothing redeeming about them; they are simply the worst.  I got coaxed into going to one last year, though, after I worked on a dress for a Ren Faire production that cost upwards of $1000 and kind of wanted to see it in action.  "It will be fun!" they said.  It was not fun. I showed up at about 11AM and quickly started drinking so I could be drunk for as much of it as possible before sobering up to drive home early in the evening and ended up spending all those hours not doing much of anything because everything was really expensive and wouldn't have even been worth doing it it had been free. At about 5PM, I was sober and more than ready to head home, only to find out that I couldn't leave until after the Faire was closed for the day because I had taken advantage of the free staff parking and my car was locked in.  I was escorted to the camping area to wait it out, and a bunch of gross dudes kissed my hand when they introduced themselves (get it? chivalry?) and then I had to listen to them talk about how potential employers expecting them to have professional-looking haircuts is "sexist."

This comes back to Acne because at some point while I was there, I got conned into posing for one of those awful Old Timey photoshoots where they throw a sepia filter over you and want you to pay crazy amounts of money.  If you are a drunk girl wandering aimlessly, people are going to try and sell you all kinds  of things, but I did not purchase a copy. Anyway, the costumes they give you do not function as actual clothes - they tie in the back, so you're wearing half a dress over jeans and a t-shirt.  That's what this Acne collection reminds me of - princess and court jester costumes tied over everyday clothes. But, like, in a good way!

I had not heard of Marques Almeida, but checked it out on a tip from my girl Ana, who knows about these things.  It's sort of easy to glance over it quickly and notice how much it has in common with the Acne collection (flowing lavender and white, chunky 90s sandals, etc.) but I get different vibes from the collections. Marques Almeida is more "Fuck this! I'm going to the beach!" and Acne is more "Fuck this! You don't know my life!"

So yeah, thus concludes a very professional blog post about London Fashion Week.

Quilts by Meg Callahan

In the past week or so, Tricia and I made a few jokes on our Twitters about how we'd like to quilt, start a quilting circle and just be all around craft-divas. Jokes aside, if I could create anything remotely as spectacular as the quilts by artist Meg Callahan, I can guarantee you that's about all I would be doing. Her collection of textile designs are just as impressive and just as coveted by yours truly.

Ada Quilt

Harrah Quilt

Spine Quilt

Just Another Fashion Post

Long time no see! Tricia and I are cooking up a few new blogging ideas (VERY SECRET IDEAS) which we'll hopefully be revealing to you soon. Until then, I'm going to fangirl over a few of the latest collections from this past week. To be perfectly honest, there's only about 3 collections I peek at during fashion week. I find I just get way too overwhelmed otherwise and there hasn't been a Rachel Comey or Steven Alan collection I've seen and hated (although I didn't really LOVE either collection 100% , some of it seemed a bit ill-fitting, but there were definitely a few stand out looks).

Rachel Comey

Steven Alan

Images from http://www.fashionising.com/ & http://www.fashionista.com

stay home club

Stay Home Club (the brainchild of illustrator Olivia Mew) recently launched to brighten the spaces we should probably never ever leave because the world outside is terrifying.  The shop is currently stocked with pillowcases featuring the work of some of our faves and plans to expand to include a greater range of limited run textile-based home goods created in collaboration with supercool artists.  As if we needed convincing to avoid getting out of bed!

Tea towels by Olivia Mew

 Caitlin Shearer and Rik Lee

 Olivia Mew

Becca Stadtlander

brigette bloom

Photographer Brigette Bloom recently put together a small book of her photos, which you can find out more information about here.  To order a copy, just donate what you can via PayPal and you'll get sixty pages full of fields, forests, mountains, beaches, plenty of cute dogs, and the occasional human (most often in combination with the aforementioned elements.)  You know, the good stuff.

You can check out some of my favorites from her rapidly expanding body of work below and much more on Tumblr and Flickr.

 

thoroughly digging right now: neutrals edition

After a lot of excitement and truly appreciated face-to-face time with people I love, I'm beyond thrilled to be hunkered down for a bit devoted to semi-solitary pursuits.  This includes finally focusing on my writing for the first time too long and going at it for real this time.  Though I'm currently catching up on a few things I've already promised to people, I will be looking for more more more to do very soon, so if any lovely readers want to point me in the direction of people/publications to pitch to, it would be much appreciated!  FULL SPEED AHEAD ON MY DREAMS

Another cool thing is that I'm also back to liking things again! Honest to god appreciation, y'all.  It's a good feeling, so I thought I'd share.

URSA MINOR

Obviously, Ursa Minor is the best name for anything, and so I'm quite happy that Elizabeth Hudson's clothing and accessories line is so good and full of the other things I'm super into when I'm not too busy loving bears and space.  These shots for Fall/Winter by Francesca Tallone capture the perfect dark-meets-light, dreamy, and unfussy thing that I'm always going for and never achieving quite this well.

 

VIVIAN GIRLS SIDE PROJECTS

Vivian Girls is one of those bands I'll always have a certain affection for, and so it's pretty cool that they all have side projects and that their ex-members (like Frankie Rose!) do cool things too.  Earlier this year, bassist Katy Goodman released her second record as La Sera entitled Sees the Light, which was the perfect happysad break up album.  Cassie Ramone's band with Woods' Kevin Morby, the Babies, will release Our House on the Hill later this year and I'm looking forward to it.  I think the Vivian Girls charm for me, personally, is that they always seem to provide something I need at the time.  Like, right now I'm inching towards the end of summer and it's still too hot and I'm just over it and tired and I don't really want to talk to anyone about anything.  These bands are perfect for indulging my angst without getting too deep into it.  

THE BABIES - "Moonlight Mile"

RENNES & METRODE

Rennes and Metrode are a collaboration made in heaven.  I was impressed by the quality of the Rennes pieces I handled at Myth & Symbol when I visited and have dug Metrode's aesthetic for a while now, so I'm naturally smitten with these beauties. It looks like I've already missed out on the tote, but perhaps there will be a pouch in my future!

AUBREY PLAZA


Despite compelling evidence to the contrary, I find it pretty hard to actually care about celebrities.  Gossip's entertaining and all, but I typically don't feel any sense of personal investment.  Now and again, though, I do get fixated on certain people who I will almost definitely never meet, and right now I have it bad for Aubrey Plaza.

I love her on Parks & Rec and have always thought that she's really, really pretty...but it wasn't until watching an interview with her (and then like a dozen more interviews with her in rapid succession) that I really became obsessed.  Like, I cannot even tell you how much I want to be her. Well, I could, but you would definitely judge me because it's super pathetic.

MAGGIE

My sister got a kitten recently and, though all kittens are wonderful, this one is especially great, I think.  The day I met her, she spent a full hour napping in my lap and, though I was exhausted myself, the thought of closing my eyes and missing a single second of her cuteness didn't quite seem worth it.