“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.” (Confucius)

Danke, Mutsch.

Edun comet tee at adili.com

Vintage travel case ...but modern

These cherry, mustard, sand or chocolate coloured soft leather travel cases from the 1950/60/70s are so very much more elegant looking compared to their plastic predecessors which do not look nicer the more worn they are. However the old-fashioned cases are also less practical than the hi tech rolling models or the back-pack option. That is, unless you are creative and add some dee-eye-why to that cool retro case with some shoulder straps!

Found this crafty solution on my friend's blog, who is based in Australia; his comment was: "saw this guy on the train today. he was traveling light in style!check out his home made suitcase / backpack solution.". Ditto, Rob, ditto. http://robert-stuffilike.blogspot.com/

Have a beautiful dark yellow-y one myself actually, one of several small vintage treasures I have recently inherited but which are still in Germany... to be retrieved and shown here as soon as I have collected them.

Long lost friends found in the blogosphere

Well... not that long and not very lost either... but it's been a while. I am referring specifically to some talented young designers I met during my placement at Puma 2 years ago who's blogs I found ---

--- one of which got me particularly excited... the lovely Nadia had gone to the same uni as me and came from the same village as my ex-boyfriend. She was on placement 1 year before myself at Puma and initially returned there to work after graduation. She then took the brave leap into freelancing to start her own label Nadinoo! And am I impressed by the stuff...?!?! Beautifully dreamy, as sweet as a cupcake, uniquely cute and very wearable indeed. She only just launched her online store last Wednesday and all the pieces are carefully hand sewn by her little self.

Yesyes, those images there are Nadinoo designs- flowers and frills, bows and bells which you can look at here: http://nadinoo.blogspot.com/ and purchase here: http://nadinoo.bigcartel.com/.

Nice umbrella too :)

Pun-tastic Postcards

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/harvey-nichols-pun-tastic-postcards/ for more pun fun!

Subversive Spaces at the Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester

The subversive spaces exhibition at Manchester's Whitworth gallery looks at the relationship between surrealism and contemporary art. It includes work from Sarah Lucas, Douglas Gordon and Gregor Schneider, alongside pieces by surrealist past masters such as Paul Delvaux, Brassaï, Dalí and Magritte. Subversive Spaces runs until 4 May 2009 so I will hurry over before I miss it and as soon as I have a free rainy weekend; I find surrealism fascinating.

Photograph above: Kinderzimmer (2009) by Gregor Schneider; Photograph: Joel Chester Fildes , from http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/mar/25/subversive-spaces-whitworth-gallery-in-pictures?picture=345030227

Japanese fabrics... cutesyheaven

Admittedly I came across this on http://blog.urbanoutfitters.com/. I must express my love for etsy a second time. An etsy shop bursting with printed Japanese fabrics, also selling buttons and other trims?! ARGHA hmmmMM...!!! Tiny little prints and a million polka dots to choose from!!!The fabric&button fanatic has spoken.

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5172818

My first etsy love were those wolf earrings I had blogged on here a couple of weeks ago (sent with the sweetest hand written thank-you note and wrapped in pink tissue paper and even a free little pair of earrings made internet shopping quite the opposite of impersonal&cold).

Clean graffiti

So I was flicking through http://www.nylonmag.com/ and came across their blog featuring Ellis G fire tagging. He is most known for outlining shadows with chalk in the streets of NYC.

This reminded me of another kind of unconventional street art. After some knitting with the droppin' stitches group, my fellow knitter Janine and I were strolling down the streets of the Northern Quarter which features some street art (but most of it actually on NQ cafe/bar walls) and came to talk about reverse graffiti. It is created by *removing* dirt from a surface and therefore not only actually defacing objects and legal! Big corporations have already used this method for advertising, cleverclever, there is even a company specialized in exactly this http://www.dirtystreetadvertising.com/.

Apparently the 'Keep Britain Tidy' group oppose reverse graffiti. Practising artists such as Moose aka Paul Curtis have been charged but no one has ever been able to make a case against him; he says, "No one owns the dirt." I also prefer viewing it as alternative street art that removes dirt and leaves nothing but a piece of green, clean art.

http://www.reversegraffitiproject.com/