happy new year!

When I was studying near Geneva as a callow youth, one of my favorite things to do was visit thrift stores*, especially a Catholic one in a huge old building. Unfortunately I didn't have the wherewithal to haul home any of the beautiful old wood wardrobes, but I did buy my share of more portable items, including some wonderful old photos.

Front (very New-Year's-Revelry-appropriate):


And back:{Loose translation: "24 May '33/ Burial of the boy's life** [illegible, at least to me]/ at [illegible's] place"}


*Things haven't changed much....
**[I interpret this to be some sort of farewell to a carefree student life?]

"shoulderette"

An easy pattern from one of the wonderful stash of vintage knitting books my sister has given me:

(Click to enlarge to readable size.)

This would be a good project for someone knitting lace for the first time but not wanting to do a scarf. The lace pattern is simple and easy to remember, but just complicated enough to not be boring. I couldn't see any reference to gauge, but I think that as long as you use the needles specified (or even one size up or down) and come up with a reasonable-looking gauge, the end product should turn out fine. A shrug is, after all, a rather forgiving garment when it comes to fit.

Here is the cover of the book it came from--look at those nice saturated mid-century colors!

the omnipresent sheepskin

A very fun just-finished project for my sister's online magazine.

a seemingly empty room of ninjas!

Such a neat idea, both in theory and in execution: screen-printed illustrations of collective nouns! Examples include "a hush of librarians", "a fish of surrealists", and "half a glassful of optimists".

vancouver island

On the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve coast trail.

auroville

This month's Condé Nast "Where Are You?" quiz led me down a wonderfully weird and interesting wormhole of odd communities. I had heard of Auroville* quite a while back but forgotten about it; when I got to the part in the quiz question about it being near a Francophone former colony, I got way off track and started investigating Suriname!


*Must they use a font so closely resembling Comic Sans on their webpage? When their architecture is so interesting?

random article!

When I checked the availability of "random article", of course it was taken. So what better method to find an alternate blog name than wikipedia's "random article" function? Of course I thought that "common bluebell" had a nicer ring to it than "Qatar at the 1988 Summer Olympics" (although that does have a certain charm, it seems more appropriate for a band name).

Random findings of the material and esoteric sort to follow soon.