(Inside A Black Apple)

Dolls & Moving & Marie Antoinette

Hello, loves. I have multiple, but distinctly separate, things to chat about today...so let's have a few different "segments" for today's post, yes? Yes.

1.) On being pretty and being strange
Thanks to all of those sweet, thoughtful notes on my last entry I feel about 10 feet tall. I, of course, didn't expect or intend for a rush of compliments to come my way...but it always feels nice (nobody can lie and say anything to the contrary!) for so many lovely people to insist that you are lovely!
I am in the middle of sending out loads of big and small orders, and also trying to get my ducks in a row as far as packing goes, but I will try my darnedest to respond to all of those sweet, personal comments you all sent. And I hope I never jeopardize any, as that dollface Hillary said, growing "crushes" you might be cultivating with my heart-on-the-sleeve ramblings! :)

2.) Luster and Lack, ultimately.

We went to see Marie Antoinette this weekend, and it wasn't half bad. It wasn't particularly good, either, but it was precisely what one would expect from a film directed by Sophia Coppola, that self-crafted peddler of isolation, but that is also quintessentially decadent. I had been kind of dreading this film since the abrasive and annoying trailer showed up about 6 months ago. I am really troubled by films that use a great deal of contemporary music for a period piece (do you hear me, A Knight's Tale?!) even if it's my favorite music. I feared the whole film would be plagued with every New Wave/Punk hit that would fit. SO. The film is as incredibly extravagant as it promises, and the most successful moments (to me) were the ones of exuberance, of life. Some of these were extravagant and decadent, but some were more quiet and lovely and faux-pastoral.
The centerpiece of the film, for me (and this is  utterly subjective, obviously) is an enormous masquerade ball set against a sonic backdrop of Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Hong Kong Garden", which begins with a quiet, orchestral string arrangement of the song before bursting into the full-on, dancey-punk gorgeousness of the original track.

What doesn't work (for me), and this is kind of a sad thing for ol' Soph, are the "signature Sophia Coppola moments of nothingness". I totally understand the desire to humanize and bring depth to this cartoonish and reviled historical figure. And that is a compelling and worthwhile task. But Sophia's obsession with illuminating and expounding upon the "lack" and emptiness and loneliness of
individual experience just grows so tiresome. The long, silent, (dare I say it?) angsty shots of Marie... I mean, it is this single-minded and ultimately empty ennui that makes The Virgin Suicides virtually unwatchable for me. And it feels incongruous being shoved into every spare, quiet moment of this film.

3.) People are making such cool dolls!
I took myself out to a lovely sushi lunch date with a few new magazines and a neat new book (it's an illustrationy book called Handmade, and has a lot of street art, cute drawings, etc.)
I knew I had to share these little gems:

I love the monochromatic elegance! This is definitely one of those things that I would never do myself, or never think to do, but the end result appeals to me so much. Wonderful.
In the newest issue of Juxtapoz, there was a little blurb (which was ultimately a teaser, and I'll tell you why in a bit) about one of my favorite artists Camille Rose Garcia and her doll company.

To make a longish story short, I jumped up from my bed (it was about 2:30 in the am) after spotting this, and ran to the computer, determined to find out how to make one of these guys my own. The website for her (future) toy company can be found at Prosthetic Industries and is only a place-holder right now! I am sad. I want these toys to show up SOON! And I want to be able to afford one. I hope they are not 1,000 dollars when they do materialize.

As I type this, a really sweet boy is driving up the east coast to rescue me from the clutches of Brooklyn. Maybe I should start tackling the massive amounts of clothes I've accumulated...
hearts, hearts, hearts, my dears.
Happy Monday to you!

Sweatery & Funny-looking

    So initially I was just going to write one of my silly I-love-my-clothes posts. About this sweater. Because it is so sweet it hurts my teeth, and against all odds, is very flattering for a tan, chunky, winter sweater (it has some denser stitches that you can't really see here that define the waist and make for a cute little silhouette). It is from H & M from a few months ago, when I was just dreaming about it being cold enough to wear this sweater...and I had kinda forgotten about it. That is problem (well, one of many) when you are a pretty clothes addict. I'm always on to the next pretty thing, and other things get crumpled, forgotten, rejected. It's really not very nice of me.

    But then something occurred to me when I logged into Typepad, and went to upload my photo of me + sweater. I suddenly became very aware of the fact that I post loads of pictures of myself, and I feel like I need to explain. A little bit. Maybe this is totally unnecessary, but still.

    I'm not a vain person. Really. Or perhaps I am, but I spent so many years getting the memo from the world that I was an ugly duckling that I've been assuming all this time that it is impossible for one who is perceived as ugly or funny-looking to have a vanity problem. Am I making any sense? I mean, children are cruel to one another, I know, but the treatment I received at the hands of other kids & plenty of adults from Kindergarten to High School was pretty damaging. And alot of that had to do with the fact that I was weird looking. I wasn't cute after about age 5. There is not other way to slice it.
    I mean, I was precocious and a bit of a smartass, too, but we all know that alot of the economics of those formative years, including how grown-ups (other than family, hopefully) treat you, is determined by how adorable you are. How conventionally adorable you are. It ended up making me super sarcastic and self-deprecating. That little shell is what protected the part of me that is absurdly sensitive. This is why, and I know this is silly, but I am already worried for my potential littles. I know they'll probably be just as strange-looking as me, and I don't want for them to experience all of that nonsense. The feeling  of alienation and helplessness. The grotesque name calling and vulgar insults. Because there isn't a damn thing a kid can do to stop being funny-looking.

    But do you want to know the twist in my little O. Henry-ish tale of woe? The secret?
The secret is that I always though I was pretty, all along. Of course, the only person that agreed was my own dear mother, but we all know what small comfort that is.  So now I've got what someone very dear to my heart coined "cult classic" beauty. And the strange thing is that now there is a handful (a small handful) of people, (besides me and mom) who seem to think I'm very pretty, who get it. And I learned to totally own the fact that I'm strange looking. I'm not thin. Not at all. I've got utterly bizarre hair. But I do think I'm pretty. The fact that I always have, and I never stopped, is I suppose, my ultimate middle finger to all of the jerks I knew as a chubby, befreckled, unfashionable little girl.

So much cute...

Since I just had the one painting to show you yesterday, I am presenting you with all of the other little ones I've had up my sleeve for the last day or two.
Two new drawings, Bookgirl & So Many Teacups:

 

and one, two, three new little paintings:

Here are Spoolgirl, Dog on Wheels Friend & Cuckoo Clock Girl, pleased to meet you! All of the new work is up in the shop. I love them all, but the little cuckoo gal is obviously a direct influence of all the cuckoo mania that's been going around blogland lately. I don't think I'll ever get tired of girls with object-bodies! Oh, maybe I will. But not any time soon.

I worked for the Black Apple today from 11:00 am to, well, currently I suppose I'm still working (1:02 am?). I haven't really stopped, except when I stopped into ye olde  American Apparel  (has anyone noticed how hard it is to find longsleeve shirts that are cute and flattering?) on the way home from a big P.O. run.
I'm a little bit beat. I would certainly give myself a raise today if I was that kind of boss.
All of your comments about what a worker bee I seem to be + how much I get done are very sweet, but I am always a little surprised and flattered that you think so! I am prolific, I suppose, but also you should remind yourselves that this is my job. My only job. And I really just have 3 friends in the place I live right now. I don't have any littles (yet). In short, I have a very simple little existence right now. And it revolves around the ol' Black Apple! I think that is why I've been feeling such an affinity with Amelie lately...I mean, I've loved the film since it first graced U.S. theaters, but living this relatively solitary, funny, whimsical, sad little life for the last 6 months has given me even more of a kindred spirit feeling with her than I did before.
That's right. I feel like fictional characters are kindred spirits. (Don't we all, though?)

Actually, fiction-land really gives the real-world a run for its money... its got Alice, Marla Singer, Amelie, Elizabeth Bennett, Wendy Darling, and heck, Jo-everysmartgirl-March (while I'm listing).
Off to sleep now.
Off to visit my friends in fiction-land. Maybe some real-worlders, too.

Mysterious Genevieve

Thank you so much for all of the sweet comments about the cards! I am super-excited about them, too...I think I'm going to get some fancy, beautiful red Paper Source envelopes to go with them!

Things are a baby-bit helter skelter around here right now, but I do have another new painting for you on this Autumn Wednesday:

She's here, and she's so strange and pretty, no? She's got a touch of the Halloween about her I suppose. I really love her though...after looking at her last night and all today, I really want to keep her. But then I remind myself that I am going to have to buy an apartment's worth of furniture in a week, and I feel better about sending her to live with someone who would undoubtably love her even more. Sarah's amazing little red-headed shadowbox peep (which I see has been snapped up now!) also gave me the same round of anxiety. I wanted her so much for my very own, but then I thought about the couch that I need to buy. And, I'm sad to say, the couch won.

This rug also won:

It's from Anthropologie (I'm always full of suprises, right?) but be assured it was very on sale. It's here in their webshop, and it is really pretty incredibly priced for a 5 foot circle of prettiness for my new living room floor.
Happy Wednesday, loves!

Shadowplay & Christmas Elves

I recently acquired some of the loveliest little "shadow puppet" cutouts from my favorite bookstore here in Williamsburg. The shop, in case anyone is visiting or lives here and has just been missing out, is on Bedford and is called "Spoonbill & Sugartown". They carry art and design books, and the occasional funny little card or stationary or, in this case, Victorian toy.
I strung them up on some of my beloved candy-striped bakery twine:

The only thing that is a little funny is that there is only one lady-arm! (She's the "swan" puppet, of course).  I had such a nice afternoon in the company of these little things. This is the first day in a long time that I really just painted all day, and I'm planning to continue painting well into the night. I really only left the house this afternoon to stretch my legs, and get a bagel. It was a really good bagel, though...it had just come out of the oven. It occurred to me that I had never experienced a truly just-made bagel before.
Back to the painting business, though. Tomorrow maybe we will have a bit of showing and telling of what I have been working on. I am pleased to say, though that this afternoon I finished the "Christmas card" image, and I have her here to show to you:

Aren't they sweet? I really love a mix of super traditional Christmas colors with a bit of pink, a bit of chartreuse, a bit of grey.
And of course I love a hedgehog, any hedgehog, but especially one bearing gifts!
The original painting will be up in the shop shortly, and then the actual cards will be available in sets with matching envelopes when the card-sending out season really starts to commence. I am going to be so tickled to send out my own little Black Apple-ish Christmas cards this year...
More paintings tomorrow!

PS: If you are in need of a laugh, please look at today's particularly hilarious entry from the always hilarious Go Fug Yourself fashion critics. It killed me for some reason...

Soft Things

Hello, loves. Nothing like pots of tea and a few soft things on these blustery days!
A few of my recent ones:

Another wee pirate lass from over the weekend...

My little Emily (paling-in-comparison-to) stitched approximation of Jenn's incredible, adorable party hat needle felted kitties:

I had to make a little party cat-girl for myself! I always, always miss all of Jenn's sweet creatures, so matter how dilligent I try to be on her sales days. And this makes me very, very sad.

I painted and sketched a bit this weekend, plotting out the Christmas/Holiday card image (I'm so excited about this!). I want to finish it today, so hopefully I'll be able to show you tomorrowish. All of the holiday industriousness over at Small Object Sarah's blog is making me excited about how lovely it is/how crazy it can be to be a little cottage industry proprietress at le holidays! I've also got a few other original paintings up my sleeve, so those will make their appearances soon enough.

And, in case you are not a regular visitor to the fountain of loveliness that is Alicia's blog, stop over and read today's post. It is so wise and so beautifully written, and I so greatly appreciate that little mantra she ends with.

Oh, and one more soft thing:

I'm snuggling up to this little jacket today...2 guesses on where it came from (wink, wink). I'm so predictable.

Pretty Children + Pretty Storage

Hello lovelies.
I started off my day with a messenger from an undisclosed Conde Nast publication coming all the way down to South 3rd street to pick up some of my work! Tres exciting! I then breakfasted on the amazing pie (which we now know is "Jeffrey's victory pie") and the rest of the afternoon, I packed and shipped another big round o' stuff, and then traipsed off to the P.O. When I got home I had a lovely package waiting for me...and what was it? What could it be?
Oh, it was just the oversized, AMAZING copy of Milk Magazine that the lovely, lovely Jenny toted home for me all the way from France! It is didn't disappoint, oh no. I've only flipped through it (I'm doing that thing where I want to kinda save it so I'm not really "looking" at the pictures yet. Just glancing.)
The cover (along with a darling babyish mini-magazine that came with it):

Here are some highlights, even though...seriously? Now I feel like I would pay the overseas subscription price. I know I balked before at the $140ish price tag (EDIT: I'm a moron. I think it actually works out to about half of that amount...silly me!) but now that I've seen how INCREDIBLE this magazine is? The photos! The interiors! I feel like it's so wonderful it's going to kill me:



so, yay yay yay!
I hope these make you guys as happy as they make me :)

More on the beautiful children front is the new (ish) monograph from artist Loretta Lux :

The book is very inexpensive, and incredibly clean and beautiful. I like to think of her work as a sort of "paintings" rather than photographs, because I've always been annoyed by the notion of her as a photographer. I like to think of her as a portrait artist. If you haven't seen her work, you gotta take a look at it!

Lastly, the pretty storage:

It's the good ol' Jackie Shapiro for French Bull and you can buy it loads of places (here, if there are no cute kitcheny places in your neck of the woods). What a difference pretty tupperware makes brightening your fridge and housing your leftovers.

Whew! I need to nerd out about this happy, adorable stuff because I discovered today that my credit card was stolen (last weekend our apartment was burglarized for the second time in the last few months). We thought they had just taken Sarah's laptop and blackberry, but they apparently also riffled through my desk enough to find my credit card that I never use. Creeps!

Naturalia

Dear you guys,
Thank you so very much for all of the incredibly thoughtful comments to my worrisome little post the other day. I swear, I need to read and re-read those comments 10 times over to try and absorb all of the wisdom that you gave. I am the eldest child, which may be part of why I feel especially happy and fortunate whenever someone will share advice with me...especially such kind and smart advice. I've noticed that several people touched on my openness or bravery... and even if I wasn't just a heart-on-the-sleeve die hard, I think I would still feel comfortable and happy being open on le blog. Because I feel so beautifully understood by the people that read this.

So, now I'm going to take you on a wee little "reenactment tour" of my trip with K&C to the Natural History Museum (my second visit in as many months!). As you can see, I really have a thing for the fish-ish dinosaurs (sea monsters! real ones!) and also for dioramas in general.

and then, my personal favorite:

"Portrait of Keith with Komodo Dragons"

Later on yesterday evening, we went to see the famed Avenue Q, which really was as hilarious and charming as everyone seems to think it is.  My houseguests were so wonderful. Even when I was dazzling them with my traditional singing of "My name is Stegosaurus" (a song I learned in kindergarten, and oddly still remember every word to) when we reached that part of the dinosaur wing of the museum.  Hey, little one and taller one: I heart you guys times 100. Really, I do.

Today I'm back to the usual packing and Post Officing, and then, after Sarah gets home, we are going to make our traditional yummy Project Runway night dinner! I'm thinking maybe Alicia's apple pie again, because it is damn good. And I think I'll obnoxiously refer to it as "______'s Victory Pie" when we learn which of those fashionistas wins. All season, you KNOW everybody (myself and my apartment included) was thinking Michael Knight was an absolute shoo-in for the win. After seeing those sequin patches, though, I think we all know that tonight is anyone's game...

Hey, there now.

I am alive, I just have have been having wonderful, pretty much nonstop fun-time with visitor friends. That last week of Black Apple proprietress-ship was a doozy...so much new stuff made, many enormous mailings, the huge "pendant sweep" of 2006. I could go on, but it was a big week. So this week is a bit of the silly, good-for-nothing (well, almost nothing) younger sister of that week. As Keith (visitor A) told his someone on the phone today (as the answer to the "what have you been doing" question, presumably) "eating, walking, shopping" have been the order of the day around these parts since Thursday!

Some non-fun stuff behind the Black Apple curtain as well, but I suppose I should expect that stuff to rain down on my head along with the good fortune that is charming me these days...

Item 1 (the practical worry): Where the heck am I going to live when I go back to Athens-town? I thought I had kinda the perfect place, but when I called to talk about "sealing the deal" (as much as I can from Brooklyn) today I was informed by Mr. Landlord that he was going to give it to someone who he could actually see and shake hands with and had actual money to wave in front of his face right-that-minute, instead of waiting the day or two for my check to arrive in the mail. Thanks. Thanks a whole bunch, mister.

Item 2 (the emotional worry) The notion that, although I am only 23 years of age, I already feel a bit buried under a big pile of loves and people and memories...all I'm trying to understand is: How do people do it? How does everybody walk around & get along, all the while being a veritable graveyard of feelings and ghost-people? This whole idea of doing this for 60+ more years, collecting along the way even more feelings and memories and more ghost-people...well, it seems a bit impossible task for me. Will I find secret wells of resolve and grace or little forgotten/undiscovered tin boxes of faith or love to help me out a little, as time passes? I mean, when the pile gets so high that I can't see over?  I hope so. 

I'm going to try my darndest to put my worries to rest, but that is not my specialty. Put your worries to rest, too, and when you've figured out how, won't you let me know?
In the mean time, happy week, little pumpkins. The blog'll be back to its regularly-scheduled eye candy soon enough!

Yay Thursday

Click to blow it up and make it more reading friendly! It's the Alternative Press piece that is finally in my hot little hands. I'm so, so pleased and (blush) pretty damn proud of the ol' self & the ol' shop. Ye olde shoppe, if you will.

In other news, it's scarcely 2:00, and the pendants are disappearing at an alarming rate as we speak..er..type. So hop over to the shop, and take a gander. If your fave is not around, remember I'll be restocking a bit later on tonight (especially for those of you on the other side of the world!)..maybe 2:00 AM-ish. Okay, my lovely friends are getting here any minute, so I'm going to run around and get ready to be a lovely hostess.

And, hey. Thank you, you guys. I've been feeling the love a whole, whole lot these days. I mean, I feel it all the time, but especially lately. Hearts & acorns and cinnamon cupcakes all around!