:: in search of new inspiration... ::

Happy Thursday, everyone! Thank you all for your sweet comments about my work being featured at Vintage Indie!

I’ve lately been thinking very deeply (perhaps too deeply as I have a tendency to do!) about the direction of my “artistic talents”. As I’ve mentioned before, I really identify with Tasha Tudor because she considers herself a “Jack-of-all-trades”. I dabble. I explore. I try things, play around with techniques, appropriate what is helpful to me and then move on. The world is just so full of things I could learn; I have quite a long laundry list of crafts I want to try:

+ spinning (drop spindle and wheel)
+ loom weaving
+ how to create knitting patterns
+ become more proficient at embroidery
+ traditional camera and photography
+ gardening (because right now I have an excessively brown thumb!!)
+ traditional printing techniques
+ wood carving (I guess whittling would be a better term)

... just to name a few. I’ve lately become curious about improving my embroidery skills (or lack thereof; I tried embroidery and cross stitch as a child but lost interest when my thread tangled repeatedly!). The above picture is of just a couple books I've picked up during a quick stop at the library yesterday! So many ideas and inspirations!! I think I am truly mad even getting out this many books. But the pictures! Ideas! Techniques!! I am a sucker for pretty pictures and helpful-looking tomes. *sigh* What are some skills you would like to learn?


Finally, the little “surprise” I was so excited to share and mentioned yesterday! Look what came in the mail on Tuesday:


The Fabric of Society: A Century of People and their Clothes, 1770-1870 by Jane Tozer and Sarah Levitt. I found this book years ago on the library shelves, marvelled at it, returned it when it was due and later found the library had gotten rid of it! (Sacrilege!) Its a beautiful book of essays and photographs on clothes. Published in 1983 by the Laura Ashley Company (ah... those were the days of romantic dress! hehe), it is chock-full of interesting bits and pieces. Here are a few snapshots of the interior pages:


Some of the chapters include “Fine Linen”, “The Gent”, “Dressmaking and Millinery”, “Working Class Clothing”, and a whole chapter on shopping for clothes!


There are so many big “compendium” books these days (like my favored Fashion), but there seems to be a gap in fashion-related publications that are just pretty. This one is pretty and useful (as I mentioned its got lots of clothing essays), but has a certain charm that is lost in the more exhibit-catalog style books published now.


Anyhow, I was finally able to track down my own copy on Alibris and am now the happy owner of another, beautiful costuming book.

I’m off to spend the evening working on my knitting!

Cheers & Creativity,
♥ Casey [ email me ]

p.s. Remember to be sure to adjust to your feeds and links to the new blog address! I’ll be posting here for about another week, but after that all the new entries will be on the Wordpress blog!