love forever

Hansel from Basel

These photos from the Hansel and Basel fall lookbook totally crack me up. And the socks are way cute too.

Laura Letinsky

Love these beautiful photographs (Yes, they are photographs! Don't they look like paintings?) by artist Laura Letinsky. I love that they have the feeling that someone was just there having a great time and these are the remnants of a party or a wonderful meal.

Even though the photos are stark and devoid of people, they don't feel lonely to me.

via Please Sir

Beauchamping

Super-cool black and white prints from Beauchamping. I want every single one of them!

Blog Tour: Crochet Adorned + Crochet in Fashion

I am so excited that Linda Permann is stopping here on her blog tour for her fantastic book Crochet Adorned. To be completely honest, I am not very good at crochet but reading this book really makes me want to pick up a hook and improve my sad skills. 

Crochet tends to take a back-seat in crafting to knitting (but not for long!) but you can do so many amazing things with crochet. Linda's book is all about adorning and embellishing your clothing with crochet elements: a garden of flowers on a cardigan, a little trim on a simple shoe or a yoke of crochet on a blouse. I love the contrast of crochet with fabric: it's very feminine and the play of textures is really cool. Plus, I love a project that you can finish in a night! 

Linda and I were talking about crochet and fashion and we thought it would be fun to show runway looks that are crocheted. As designers, we often turn to runway shows for inspiration. Though most people don't ever own one stitch of designer clothing, I like to think of runway shows as fashion fantasy. Remember that part from The Devil Wears Prada when Miranda (Meryl Streep's character) tells Andy (Anne Hathaway's character that even though she thinks she is beyond fashion, pretty much everything that people buy to wear trickles down from the runway? Oh, it's so true. Runway fashion may not be affordable, wearable or even make any sense from time to time but it has an undeniable affect on every designer, from a large team at a big box store to a small designer hand-sewing her collection.

Here are some images of crochet on the runways from the last few years:

Clockwise from top left: A Detacher Spring 2009, Collette Dinnigan Fall 2007,Kenzo Spring 2009, PPQ Spring 2009, John Rocha Fall 2008, D & G Fall 2008

Now, on the other hand, designers right now are highly influenced by crafters. Crafting as a hobby gets more popular every year and things that feel or look handmade are getting more highly prized in our increasingly disposable culture. Fashion designers have always looked to us, the people, the street, for cues just as we look to them. So it's a give and take, a free exchange of ideas and creativity. 

To find out more about Linda and her book, visit her website.

Are you consciously influenced by runway fashion? Do you look at the shows every season?

Kirsty Hall

I have written about UK artist Kirsty Hall and her Diary Project before (check out her Craftypod podcast here too) but here are a few more pieces of hers. I love their obsessive quality, there's something really beautiful and meditative in the repetition.

Says Kristy, " My work involves the accretions of large numbers of small objects- pins in fabric, knots in string or hundreds of envelopes- to make sculptures or performances that deal with fragility, decay, loss, repetition, obsession and time. My work is never fabricated by teams: when I burn 3,533 matches, tie thousands of knots in string or repetitively pin a length of material, it is my time and my work that is being measured."

toffee keys

Quiver, an installation made with pins and sheer fabric

thread drawings

Requiem, a piece made from burnt matches

an apron that Kirsty is covering in sequins

You can see lots more of Kirsty's work on her Flickr page.

Collar necklace, in progress

I had to abandon this necklace for a bit due to a few freelancing project but I think I m going to finish it tonight. It's been really fun to make knowing that it's mine, all mine and not destined for a magazine or customer.

Getting Organized

On Saturday, Mr. Loveforever and I went on a little drive to the Lambertville, New Jersey to do a little flea marketing and antiquing. Lambertville is the cutest town ever! The Mr. and I found ourselves fantasizing about opening a cute little shop right on Main Street. We got a few things at the Golden Nugget Flea Market and then drove into town for lunch. A work friend recommended that we check out No. 63, a great little vintage/gift store that specializes in that mid-century/industrial look that we all love so much. 

Well we went in. And we fell in love with an industrial filing cabinet. And we bought it! That was the easy part.  The not-so-easy part was getting this thing out of the store and back into our apartment. There was a point when we didn't think it was going to happen and that we would have to leave our beloved filing cabinet behind. But we did it: dollies were borrowed, people were bribed, cash was exchanged and we got it home!

I spent all day Sunday organizing all my craft supplies and putting everything into my new favorite piece of furniture. Oh it was bliss.

How to Hang a Picture Just Right

I am not a person known for precision (I have a tendency to eye-ball things) so this isn’t so much about measuring as it is planning.

I have a ton of art, most of it vintage and inexpensive and I like to hang it in big collections gallery-style. Since most of the art is cheap and fun to collect I think more about the collection as whole rather than each individual piece. Every time I move, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with my paint by numbers. In our last place, we had them in a crazy meandering line across our bedroom walls. The room was really tiny and all the paint by numbers made it feel like a cozy cabin. Our new place has really high ceilings and feels more modern so I tried to come up with a more modern way to hang them.

I took most of the paint by numbers out of their frames, leaving just a few with the frames that I liked the most. I decided that I wanted to hang them in our living room in a square shape but that I didn’t want the square shape to be perfect. I started by laying out all the paintings on the floor and moved them around until I got the right arrangement, then I took a picture.

I measured the width and height of the arrangement and then figured out where on the wall this size square would work best, taking into account that I will probably buy a console table or bench for this wall at some point.

Starting at the bottom left, I hung the first painting on the wall and worked my way across the first row, referencing my digital photo. Since the square didn’t have to be perfect, I ditched the level and just went by what looked right.

Note the USA Paint by Number by Something's Hiding in Here, a nice variation in shape from the rest of the paintings and just perfect for this arrangement I think!

And the Winner is...

Jump for joy! The winner of the Kanzashi Giveaway is... Heidi Jo!

Heidi Jo wrote, "I have a gray tee that I would love to wear with this. I think I would use a fabric belt at the waist and then stick this flower on the buckle part. So pretty!"

Congrats, you won an incredibly lovely kanzashi brooch from Diane Gilleland. For all the rest of us, we can make our own from her great book, Kanzashi in Bloom!

photo by Josh Goleman via {frolic!}

Margo Slingerland

Artist Margo Slingland makes some beautiful objects.

fabric and lace teacups,

handbags from discarded materials such as garbage bags,

and papier maché tea sets.

via The Style Files.