the long weekend

So I didn't post over the weekend after all... I just didn't feel up to blogging. The past week was really long and I've haven't been sleeping, so I was rather exhausted all weekend. But hopefully these vintage images I'm sharing will make up for the absence??

I was going to try to spend the weekend “dissconnected”. I thought it would be a great way for me to catch up on some crafts (namely those Christmas cards), do some reading and homework, generally unwind from the feeling of stress I’ve had over blogging lately. I should have known it wouldn’t last because by early Friday evening I was already back online, Googling something I wanted to find some pictures for. It snowballed from there when I just “peeked” to see how many blogs had updated lately (over 100... I know, insane!). I just gave in at that point because I’d figure it’d be no good to feel that magnetic pull of the laptop all weekend. ;) I’m so weak...



Got some work on the Christmas cards done--half of the batch is officially finished, which is just in time. I plan on giving my teachers cards this year, and I need to do that this week since the semester is nearly over! I mounted the embroidered cards on the folded, colored cardstock. After that I whipped up a quick design on the computer for the inserts with the season-appropriate sentiment and attached those. Done--just needs envelopes. Which is where these small (and therefore very cute) manilla envelopes come in. I got a pack of 25 for (get this!) under $2 at Target. How cool is that?! I'm sorry I have no pictures to share of these right now; I had a school function that cut short my camera-time this afternoon. :p

Over the past few days I’ve spent some time looking through a new-found treasure I discovered in the campus library the other day. Marimekko: Fashion, Fabric, Architecture is a beautiful, highly pictorial look at the Finnish design company best known for it’s modern, yet organic textile designs. I already have a deep appreciation and love for Scandinavian designs--I spend literally hours oohing and ahhing over the clean, modern lines of furnishings, decor and textiles at Ikea (seriously, its a problem...). I had previously only heard the name “Marimekko” in passing, and didn’t know that much about it, I’m sad to say! But now that is remedied and I have found yet another expensive pictorial to add to my miles long list of books to buy (along with the zillion other art, design and fashion books). Beautiful photographs fill every page, colors spilling out everywhere, lively and playful patterns and designs abound. It is a visual feast for me--I felt that I could stare at the book for months and still find something new, some new point or detail I missed (I do that with my beloved Gowns by Adrian, which I’ve had for quite awhile, read countless times, and still find something new to inspire me every time I open it!).



Speaking of inspiration I stumbled on a "new" (new to my anyway) blog over the weekend. Authored by an American woman living in France, it has lovely photographs and accounts of life in France (which I find particularly intriguing as one of my goals for my 20s is to get to France, even if it means backpacking!). She recently wrote a post about visual perceptions and challenging oneself to take a different viewpoint. Its a short, but inspiring post that I think sums up a lot of what I've been trying to train myself to do more over the past year. The more time I spend in art classes, out in the big world and experiencing new things, the more I realize how much visual treats are out there if you only look. I am constantly trying to push how I perceieve things. In one of my design classes during the spring semester, my teacher was constantly deviating from the "curriculum" to show us new ways of seeing things, to experiences new sights and sounds and push us further in our artistic experiences. It was a heady mix of early 20th century Dadism, Beat Poetry and long-winded PBS-esque documentaries of artists work. The most important thing I got out of that class was not how to put together a collage, the difference between tonal values of grey; I was encouraged and put on the path to learning to see. I do believe that some people are born with a certain measure of ability to "see" things differently than most people. I also think that even those people can and should be taught and encouraged to push themselves perceptively. I suppose this comes from having been unschooled through highschool and having a rather radical view on learning, but I do find that life is best approached as one big school. I'm never "there", I have to keep learning, understanding, seeing, and most of all giving myself "permission" to perceive things in a way that might not be "right".

I got a little long-winded there. ;) Anyway, enjoy all the pictures I included in this post; they're from a 1955 Vogue Knitting book I bought early in the autumn for 50 cents at a thrift store. I know... sometimes the junque gods do smile on me. ;) lol. Click on each photo for a description on my Flickr page. :)