A Farewell to Concrete

You know, it's not as easy as I hoped to find a converted warehouse in San Francisco, or even Oakland.  We found a place in a old electroplating shop that has been completely gutted and redone.  The unit has a huge, amazing window, which makes up for the Berber carpet and weird room layout. Sort of. 

I'm on the hunt for something more industrial for next year so I can hack open clocks and spread metal shavings and sawdust with impunity.  Performing vivisection on a gear box is not something  I like doing on carpet, if only because cog shafts and gear teeth are not something you want embedded in your flooring.

But anyway, here is a shot of my new, gorgeous view of the Berkeley hills, with the Boy in for scale.  Not bad. eh?

Is This a Marathon?

Jeez, I turn my back for one minute and whole months have gone by. Well, the Boy and I spent the whole of May jouncing between coasts like a rubber ball, and ended up in Wyoming to photograph my friend's wedding. Aren't they cute?

Then we went back to San Francisco. And rented an apartment. So we're moving in two weeks. Hah!

Ah, the Sweet Scent of Publicity

Good news! My new Fairy Lights were spotted on Apartment Therapy for their Etsy Scavenger today. This is the best birthday present ever. Yay!

Fairy Lights Available on Etsy!

After working out some kinks, Fairy Lights are now for sale at my Etsy shop! I have many colors to choose from, in two sizes. The large version is 22" x 12", and the mini is 14" x 12".

I am also considering a table top version, a cylindar luminary. I would need to order some lamp parts, so please let me know if you would like one and I will add it to my Etsy shop as an exclusive. Thanks everyone!

Back in the Dawn of the Intarweb. . .

Do you remember this? I love the Skeleton Hootenanny. I wish I knew what the song was, though. First person to post the correct answer gets free Steampunk jewelry!

Mortar Combat

I admit it. I am an avid cook, but I do not own a pepper mill. I've bought several over the years, and they were each as flimsy a piece of equipment as I have ever seen. Most broke within a month, the most memorable being my last purchase, which cracked on the third use. Needless to say, I have grown rather disenchanted with pepper mills and have lately resorted to grinding pepper in my massive granite mortar and pestle. I have yet to meet the spice that could stand up to that. I swear I could grind quartz into a fine powder in this thing. Not that I would, but you know what I mean. Anyway, this is not an ideal situation. I have been seeking a solution.

Yesterday, I was bouncing back and forth between the Bliss UK and Bliss US sites, wondering why America deserved only Nigella's cookware line (lovely and orbular though it is. Salt Pig - mmm.) yet the British have things like this:

I saw the ceramic hand on a design site a few days ago (Apartment Therapy? I can't remember. It was in a bathroom, for holding bracelets), and was trying to source it, though I'm not sure that the $60+ it would cost to get it here is ready to leap from my wallet just yet. But I did find this: Oliver Hemming's Spice Boy. And, as it happens, Unica Home has sweetly provided an American distribution point, so that I can ignore the dollar's pathetic slouch next to the British pound. And they have it in blue!

A Quick Brown Fox. . .

I was looking out my window the other day and was more than a little surprised to see a huge fox sitting near the sidewalk. I've seen both grey and red foxes south of here, closer to the Cherry Creek canal, but never this far north. We don't exactly back up to a wooded area, unless you count the fenced construction lot or the small adjoining park that has, I think, eight trees. I grabbed my camera, and got a few shots before it trotted off. They came out fairly fuzzy, due in large part to the screens in my windows, but I am glad I was able to record the moment.