floresita: things I’ve made

Rob Ryan fabric kit, cursed be the day I saw ye


Because now I want this skirt SO BAD. You know how bad, don't you? That awful burny, tingly sensation you get in your chest while your pupils dilate and your brain drones, "Must have, MUST HAVE!" (the last time I felt this way, by the way, I was 7 years old and staring at an E.T. t-shirt) That's right people, I got it bad.


{Rather gorgeous close-ups: here and here and blogged here.}


But just look at that price - £46.00? That's $89.34 in US dollars! (And I'm sure international shipping is no picnic, either.) And it's a kit, which means I'd have to sew the skirt myself. Sheesh. I still want it. Oh, you lucky UK-ers, you. You get all the good stuff. :)

November vacation pics

Saline Beach?

I've been meaning to post the rest of my November vacation pictures for oh, months now. Yesterday I finally made myself sit down, think about them, and upload them all. I know I'm one of the most fortunate people on the earth to have been able to see St. Martin twice in my life, and in November, St. Barth, for the first time.


My favorite spot in the villa we stayed in was a deck perched high up in a cliff with hammocks, surrounded by flowering bushes. I'd spray on some insect repellant (there are some serious mosquitoes there) and lay in the hammock, drinking in the total quiet - just the sound of wind in the greenery, the distant drone of cruise ships, and lizards small and huge lurking in the leaves...


view of the harbor

Here's a view of the harbor far below, and if I had a zoom lens you could see those are multi-million dollar yachts (he he, none of them belong to me, of course). One thing I found odd about St. Barth is how the local guides (and people) boast that there is "no poverty." If I was feeling cheekier, I might have asked what I was really thinking: "Are poor people not allowed in St. Barth? Or is it just too expensive for them to live here?" Not to paint a bad picture of the locals however, because they were all extremely welcoming and friendly and are almost all descendants of French settlers who came there in the 1700's.


People who know me well know that I'm obsessed with wildlife. And people who know me really well know that that includes lizards:
lizards always know where you are


I love how lizards always know exactly where you are. They're so aware of you, of your proximity, and have an exact distance they allow you to approach before disappearing.


So yes, these all involved the zoom function on my camera:
hello lizard


At least once or twice a day on St. Barth it would rain:
the deck


The rain would typically come at the hottest part of the day, when the sun had really begun to pound into your skin. The sound of the raindrops on the leaves, the tiny sudden creeks of water that would stream down the cliffs, and the huge, incessant chirping of joyous tree frogs and bananaquits. The entire world smelled green and wet and streamed with life. It was all incredible, and I know I'll never forget it.


What's a bananaquit? It's a tiny, yellow-bottomed bird with a black, curving beak that nested everywhere on the island. As soon as the sun came out, the birds would bathe in the cool pools of water that had gathered in the leaves and lizards would come to lick raindrops off of every wet surface:
bananaquit bathing in rainwater


All the beaches were incredible (of course) but this one was our favorite:
our favorite beach


We returned there 3 days in a row, braving the New York-like absolute lack of parking and crazy mountain roads so thin, so rocky, unpatched and treacherous-looking. The water was calm here, just an occasional swell of waves but nothing to knock a person over. And the water, so clear, so clean you can see, reflected in bluish tones, your feet, tiny minnows, and the occasional flash of yellow and black finned fish.



What about you? What is the most beautiful place you've ever been? And you can say your own backyard... for the longest time that was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen (and it still comes in 2nd or third on my list)... :)

I'm working on / notes on Cinco de Mayo

a little something

Having posted so many vintage patterns on my other blog, Vintage Transfer Finds, I find myself in the unique (and unenviable position) of having WAY TOO MANY possible projects. I could do DOW (days of the week, to the uninitiated) towels until I was 85 and still not use up my store of patterns. I could monogram the underpants of every family member. I could make personalized bibs for the spawn of every brother, sister-in-law, and online acquaintance. I could add "style and pizzazz" to my workshirts and slacks by smattering them with sparrows, floral baskets and tasteful nosegays. That said, I'm lucky if I churn out a project here and there and try to be on time for birthdays...


I am SO BAD with birthdays (almost as bad as I am with names). I could write a novel on how extraordinarily bad I am with birthdays, only it would be a pretty boring affair and only render me unlikeable. I like the concept of birthdays. I'm just a ruffian when it comes to their execution. So you see, above, a late present I am working on for someone very, very special to me. God forbid someone should ever die the day after their birthday and I be left, sobbing over their half-finished present. It at least might substitute well for a Kleenex... :)


Another holiday I was remiss in posting about was... Cinco de Mayo:
monkeys are best not left alone with tequila

le Carotte had a series of clandestine adventures which are summed up well with... monkeys are best not left alone with tequila. Ask any Mexican-American like me what Cinco de Mayo commemorates, and they'll respond with a rousing... look of confusion. It's about some battle or other, fought in Mexico (I'm not sure who won) and the general gist is that you commemorate it by drinking tequila and giving a few "gritos". In New York city, Cinco de Mayo (or "sinco dee may-o" as our cousins up north refer to it) is celebrated by throngs of non-Mexicans pledging solidarity by mobbing every Mexican restaurant or theme bar. We're not big into the bar scene so we celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a glass of wine and tasty pizza. And if I knew how to do a grito, I would have, I was so happy I wasn't being jostled by every other person in New York while consuming a burrito of questionable quality... :)


What about you? How do you celebrate your Cinco de Mayo? :)

Yes, these are more flowers...

little yellow centers

I know I run the risk of boring you with all these flowers, so I apologize in advance... in my defense - there are a heck of a lot of beautiful flowers blooming out there!


Like bleeding hearts (which I saw for the first time in my life, on Sunday afternoon) - in red:
hearts



and white:
in a row



and lilac bushes (I'm always amused, by the way, by people who say "ly-lock" instead of "lilac" - is this a New York thing?)
lilac



and just plain green:
green


I swear I'm doing other things and not just shutterbugging random flowers. Like today at lunch I walked down by the river, smelled the salty air, and watched a mockingbird fly back and forth from a lightpost, to a grassy field, and to its nest with flies wriggling in its beak. I also watched gleamingly white people struggle to sun themselves - one of them, an attractive man, really should have left his pants on... :) The air was hot and sweet with the smell of flowering bushes that were pulsing with huge, clumsy, fuzzy bumble bees. For those things I have no pictures. Just the lingering sense that the very air in New York and life itself were very calm and sweet today.


I fell asleep reading this book and had happy dreams of alien in-laws. Hope life is sweet for you as well...

Friday archives: Germany and Texas

criselda

Above is a picture of my friend Criselda that I scanned May 1, exactly 3 years ago (though it was taken years earlier) on my one trip abroad to Munich. It was quite an adventure. She'd flown home the day before I flew in because her father got sick suddenly and was hospitalized, the person she sent to meet me at the airport couldn't find me, and... choas ensued. :) There I was, a stranger in Munich with no knowledge of German, no phone, and wearing pants that were... a bit too tight. By the way, Germans are extremely kind to people who can't speak their language - they just roll their eyes first, sigh, and let you know what a bother you are, but are really very nice in the end... :)


Somehow I found my way to her doorstep and sat there on my suitcase for hours (I had no money for a hotel). A young Polish guy next door took pity on me and let me wait in his apartment and even fed me yogurt. However, his kindness was unmasked to me years later when watching a movie and seeing the English translation of what he and his friend were calling me. Must have been the pants. Drat those rogues, anyway!


english garden

To make a super-long story short, a friend of hers finally found me and I was able to sleep safely in her apartment. The next day my friend flew back and was kind enough to show me all of Munich, stressed as she was. My favorite was the English gardens (above) which have a pungent smell of wild garlic in the undergrowth, and Castle Neuschwanstein. :)


moving train

Today, 3 years ago I also scanned this, my favorite picture of my best friend Steph, also taken years before. There are few diversions in San Antonio, Texas, and that day we went to an old, decaying bridge, watched trains pass, and snapped pictures. This is my favorite dress of hers, she's the daughter of an artist, and you can see that even in the clothes she wears... :) Hope you all have a great weekend - and how about you? Have anything special in your "archives?" :)

Springtime restlessness

last of the tulips

The time of the tulips is so brief - this was just a week ago, but already all the tulips have begun to wilt, brown at their edges, and lean heavily towards the earth. It's cooler this week, and grayer, although the sun emerged for a little while yesterday and this morning. I love the Spring, but I've noticed I get very restless around this time - the air itself seems full of possible things, unspoken things, dreams, and I feel anxious to accomplish something...



I feel like I've been in a rut, but I look at these photos and see I've been busy... I guess it's just the Spring restlessness coloring my vision...
sleeve


Here's my Ipod holder - a pocket I cut from an old jacket. I added the embroidery 2 days ago during lunch - just a single strand of red sewing thread and I didn't even draw the image first before embroidering. It felt more like drawing than embroidering...


Here are a few things I doodled while listening to the Craftsanity interview with Jenny Hart (which you really should listen to, if you haven't yet)...
day 24 of 365 Sketch: doodles
I felt like I learned so much more about her - I've always loved listening to artists talk about their work...


And finally, here's the super-slow progress I've been making on the monkey for a friend (sorry! if you are reading this!)
dress
I've been thinking long and hard about that tiny white dress - I want everything to be perfect! Now it's time to return to a gray, chilly New York... sheesh. Anyone else feeling a Springtime funk?

random reminiscences

us

The other night, I had a sleepless night. No reason in particular, just thoughts I guess. I wrote a little in my journal: "I replay my life, as if I try to see a hidden message there." In the process, I pulled out a scrapbook I put together when I graduated from high school. It has all the photos I'd furtively swiped from our family album as a child, and really random things - movie ticket stubs, old photo IDs, notes my friends passed me in class, and letters from friends. Nothing was safe, I taped everything in that scrapbook. :)


So that photo above is one I particularly love - it's my family on an outing to the house of an old church friend. There's me, on the outer edge, in my favorite coat because it was this funky brown faux-fur that reminded me of a teddy bear. There's my older sister, in the middle, looking beautiful in her letterman jacket and holding her school notebook. There's my brother, proudly displaying his Uno cards. :) And my parents, my abuelita almost hidden in the back, and the kind woman in her equally funky coat.


And here's another, me at 12 and a half, maid of honor at my sister's wedding:

I'm sure I was a rotten maid of honor. I mean, I was 12 and a half... But she was so sweet and patient with me and threw all the festivities herself, and claimed I had a hand in them. I remember being sad. We'd been so close as I grew up, she was almost like my second mother. She told me recently she'd watched a video of the wedding and noticed I was crying, and yep, I was. It was a rough time for me, especially being in the 7th grade and being such a dork - losing my best friend that day... Of course we're still close, but that day was hard.


And now, a final random memory, my prom:
prom
In high school I compensated for my lack of self-confidence by acting out a lot and wearing weird clothes. (Truthfully, though, I still gravitate towards weird clothes... :) I started my tradition of drawing my wardrobe with this pencil drawing of my prom dress - a beautiful custom-made champagne-colored dress with a Neiman Marcus tag (that I bought at Goodwill for 8 dollars). I'm sure I was likewise a rotten prom date - thanks to my strict upbringing I had no clue how to dance and also thanks to my strict upbringing, I had to be returned home promptly afterward, with no parties.


prom

I'm not sure what made me think of all these things, except maybe having re-discovered and re-connected with an old friend who knew me through almost all those times. Just feeling a bit nostalgic this weekend and wanted to share, a few of the beautiful ghosts populating my mind... Hope this finds you well and in the middle of good things in your lives... :)

update on painting, drawing, and monkeying

lunchtime monkey painting

Here's a springtime monkey, painted in honor of the beautiful Spring weather in which I finally sat outside, drinking in the quiet and birdsongs and painted during my lunch hour. It's watercolor on paper, which I'm beginning to love more and more for capturing these fleeting little ideas that pop in my head during the day...


I know I've said this before, but the inside of my head is very messy. At any given time I have 100's of ideas floating around and at times it's hard to keep to just one thing. Nevertheless, I finally finished this little acrylic on canvas painting started so many moons ago (when it was still chilly outside):
monkey painting: il fait froid
He says: "il fait froid, mon amour" or "it is cold, my love." (I hope!) :) I added a little snow and struggled to paint the tiny letters with an eensy brush.


I did a lot practicing beforehand, but it was still rough:
day 23 of 365 Sketch: doodles
I really like the face in the middle left, by the way, even subsumed as she is by practice lettering... I recently started carrying around a mini notebook (only 4 x6 in.) and I've loved scrawling in a quick sketch or two while on the train. Over on the right are a snazzy pair of shoes I saw on a very dandy-ish gentleman who looked like he fell out of the Bloomingdales men's catalog...


day 22 of 365 Sketch: thoughts and shoes


And, lest I forget, over on the left, I was thinking of some sweet graffiti I saw in San Francisco a couple of years ago. How cute would that look embroidered? Or that little girl as a rag doll? Yet another of the kajillion ideas keeping my brain warm... :)


And finally, here's a little monkey in progress that I'm making for a friend:
little project in progress


My friend had very specific ideas for this monkey, so I'm doing an extra bit of planning to make sure she's perfect.... You can see the pins holding her in place since I haven't sewn anything down yet. I love how the brown fabric and felt make her look extra monkey-ish... Hope you all have a great weekend, and thanks for all your encouraging comments on my cross-processing and Brooklyn Botanic garden posts! :)

fake cross-processing in Photoshop

Let's face it - even with a good digital camera, photos rarely look great straight out of the camera. I always do a tiny bit of tweaking, adjusting levels and upping the contrast a tiny bit. But ever since I discovered Curves in Photoshop, I've gotten addicted to a little extra tweaking:


processed

I love cross processed and expired film like the kind I see in the photos of my good Flickr friends Olivia, Mika, Julia, and the incomparable, mysterious Cristina. These women continue to be my inspiration #1 in trying to be better at taking photographs and it's such an honor to be able to see their work every day, what they love, and what inspires them. But since I'm too lazy to shoot and develop real film, I've been doing "fake cross-processing" in Photoshop and I'm amazed at the results. (tutorial here)


For instance here is the before and after of that cherry bud:
unprocessed processed


The shadows are so much deeper and the mood (to me) has changed entirely... Here's another:
processed


Before and after:
the blossoms processed


The tones, the shadows, what is light and what is dark - everything changes with a few tweaks to Curves... And another:
processed


Before and after:
bright white blossoms processed


And a last one, the tulips:

processed


Before and after:
purplish processed


So what do you think? Are these changes very subtle to you, or do they change the whole mood of the photo for you? Are there any you don't like "after"? Sometimes I stare at these so long that it's hard to decide which I like better... :)

a visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

the blossoms

I love being outside in the Spring. But I'm picky. I don't count "being outside" as skulking around the dank New York streets, smelling the rank smells, running into cranky, stylish folks and double-wide strollers at high speed. I gotta have some green. Some flowers, too. Space to walk, fresh air to breathe. In short, I need a park. Enter our beautiful day at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden...



Each Spring, my favorite part of living in New York has been seeing the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden:
bright white blossoms


I love this brief time each year in which everything is blooming and fresh and the light changes. It's an incredible transformation. The weather was perfect for our visit, very warm and sunny and a tiny bit cool, just enough to raise a goosebump or two on your forearm...


Le Carotte also seemed to enjoy the cherry blossoms...
le Carotte enjoys the cherry blossoms


Everything makes me feel wonder at this time - I love to touch, see, and smell everything...
tiny


And then, of course, there's the tulips:
tulips


I'd never seen tulips until I moved to New York, and they still inspire me with wonder. They're so bright and incredible, and such a rage of amazing colors...
purplish


That's about all for now, just enjoying the Spring. Also, I think I've gotten addicted to cross-processing using Curves in Photoshop, but that calls for a separate post. I'll show you some "before" and "after" shots and see what you think... Hope the Spring is treating you kindly... :)