toucan; sahara; lacquer: 500 colored pencils

happiness is... a subscription to 500 pencils. It's terrific how excited these guys are about their set of 500 pencils, and all the love they've put into marketing it; I particularly like the idea of their display case, for an entryway, a living room-- any place you currently have a bunch of assorted pens lying around. Write notes and to-do lists in color!

unsalted butter and radishes make a great sandwich if you have good bread

don't think i've ever seen a more beautiful salad than this one of heirloom radishes that penny los santos, a national geographic photographer, created and photographed for d*s.

ps: doesn't "radish pink" sound like the best pink you've ever heard of? pink can get awfully frou frou, but radishes are peppery and spicy and crisp and I'm going to start calling everything radish pink from now on.

vintage illustrations & where the wild things are...

Loving the splattery, scrawly look of mid-century illustrations right now...

and the flat, bright surfaces of these 1930's world's fair posters, too....




Thanks to illustrator "ward-o-matic" and his flickr set for the first image. And thanks to Vintagraph for the two world's fair images. Both of the latter are available for purchase in a variety of sizes.


Great link, btw: wardomatic's recent and wonderful analysis of some of Maurice Sendak's choices in Where the Wild Things Are. I am one of the people who know that book quite well, but I'd never thought hard about the role of "white space" in the story. Such an elegant, simple, and powerful strategy. Dazzling.

still writing...

still writing, writing, writing. (almost done though.)

Thought you guys might like to see a scene from my writing desk. Recently started working at home and it's kind of wonderful! The silver elephant figure is Ganeshji, god of new beginnings, Remover of Obstacles, and Patron of Writing Sessions. He still has a dusting of magenta powder on him (click to see close up) from when he was last annointed, a year ago, at a ceremony that happened before our wedding.

I love using teacups as little vases....

personifying the world around us is too easy when things look like this

Image of Sanno-Iwa ("three rocks"), taken by my brother James, who's currently living in Japan.

If only Blue Note Records had limited edition prints....

Found these, and others, over at an incredible Japanese website while researching images for the poet Major Jackson's favorite poetry covers. Click over and you'll find a treasure trove of Blue Note album covers, and others. Just an incredible resource. I'm dazzled, and longing for images big enough to frame.

.

If it's crumbling....

While researching the covers that David Lehman chose for the feature on poetry cover design that I'm doing at the Best American Poetry blog, I came across this wonderful image that has absolutely nothing to do with Kafka, but turned up on the Google image search: "Kafka" "Castle." (It's from a NYTimes article in October '08.)

Don't you just love the cheerful curtains that turn a wreck of a room into something altogether cheerful?



PS: The image it comes to us from BLDG BLOG, a great looking architecture blog that now has its own book. Possibly not for those who come to Silk Felt Soil via the glam, effervescent likes of Oh Joy, perhaps.... but if you're interested in contemporary architecture and surrealist wit, take a look.

writing on book design at Best American Poetry this week

This ravishing smudgy birthday-card painting is by David Lehman, poet and founding editor of the Best American Poetry series.... click on the image to see it up close. so good. (notice how words always somehow sneak into poets' paintings......!)

I mention this today because I'm visiting as a guest blogger at the poet-painter's Best Am Po blog this week, writing about book jacket design, and interviewing poets on their favorite cover designs. so much fun!

come visit!

bacci,
p

the english for "elaichi gulab" is "cardamom rose"

if you would like to practice your hindi, this is a good place to start: "ek glass cardamom rose cocktail milega?" which means, "may i please have a glass of that stunning pink drink?"

neckware

I "Lova" this tie.

"I will really feel like celebrating when they are here on earth again"

I'm perennially fascinated by our human longing to see vastly, and the artist's interest in recording that longing. See here for another post on this.

Today, the New York Times has collected some incredible images of July 20, 1969 in honor of the 50 year anniversary of mankind's first walk on the moon. It is really moving to see and read of the exhilaration that people were experiencing that day. This woman's postcard, above, is one example: "The moon's surface is so interesting. I can't wait to see color pictures in Life magazine etc.... What a fantastic thing to see on live TV!... What a day!"

Someone else wrote in about what it was like to be a little boy at the time: "I was only 7, but I did not sleep the whole week! My eyes were trained on Neil Armstrong the whole time."


Photographs taken by the then-22-year-old photojournalist David Burnett; more about his prescient choice to take shots of the onlookers, here.

pistachio ceilings soften an industrial-chic restaurant in melbourne

What I adore about TRUNK-- the melbourne restaurant that I just discovered from an astonishingly gorgeous blog with a pitch-perfect design sensibility that I also just discovered (lark about) -- is that it marries

THIS aesthetic (fundamentally, that of the 19th c. draftsman's study, an aesthetic vocabulary that we sons and daughters of architects, many of us anyway, speak fluently...)



with THIS...


or rather, a hint of this....



While Trunk is clearly leaning in the Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch direction, with those dark dark floors and lots of dark shelves and dark tables and industrial lines everywhere, that pistachio ceiling elevates the whole room into something beyond direct historical quotation.

The thing is that my design roots always take me in the direction of wonderful, pre-pre-war architectural bones, deep dark woods and slates and the rough, "quick, grab a pen-- let's sketch it out now" kind of feel. But I am also a girl who loves design elements that are a little (or a lot) more opulent, a little unabashedly pretty, a little delicate and delicious and dazzlingly chromatic.

dear Trunk, we tip our hat.

(& we may even get out our paint chips...I've got two mammoth bookshelves to paint and I'm thinking that a dull absinthe green on the wall, and glossy black for the shelves, might complement and punch up our foamy grey living room...)

watercolor silhouettes, in reverse

refreshing and beautiful pairing of the crisp, sharply defined letter and the playful fluidity of the stained, saturated paper. would be great for cards to friends, large posters, homemade book covers, numbers for tables at weddings...(no need to do the watercolors so brightly, right? could do them in soft pinks and navy, or as you like...)

or try an animal shape-- a flamingo, an elephant, a giraffe, and paint over them in a range of tones of the same color, for a series.


spotted on AT's children site...

this octo-marvellous print by little rock artist paul michael dellostritto is available here for $7. via sfgirlbybay.

summer over-brimming a pimm's cup

Pimm's Cup is my favorite summer cocktail.

It's not really a "thing" here, but in Britain, at summer garden parties or university parties down by the river for boating races, or in a thermos when you're going on a picnic, ideally by boat, and you've got a big hat and a couple of friends and a punnet or two of wild strawberries, it is most definitely a Thing.

yesterday, the New York Times published a recipe for "Pimm's Saigon," which has ginger in it & sounds super divine...


Pimm's Cup inspiration board (with classic recipe) by Polka Dot Bride; she has a good eye for color and her boards are lovely, great for weddings but also parties, and even rooms. check them out here..

film/reading inspiration:
- Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
- Iris (a memoir about Iris Murdoch written by her husband, John Bayley)
- Sylvia (about Plath, the best bits from which take place in Cambridge, UK..)
- and, far, far better than any of these is The Wind in the Willows, the ultimate tribute to "messing about in boats"

a man's watch on a woman's wrist

viva lauren hutton...



viva men's watches...





viva the two together.


love especially the buoy-hued first of these two men's watches from gnomen... the first, $580, here; the second, $360, here.

speaking of vats of flowers

nicolette camille is one to watch. her work is opulent yet wonderfully low-key, and her sense of color seems to be the real deal.

thanks to the-soon-to-be-san-diego-based joy for her post on nicolette...

naomi leff

ode to naomi leff...
ode to dark walls and creamy vaulted ceilings...
ode to great huge vats of flowers as a masculine room's feminine flounce...

lest we forget the rectangle

so you wish to ground and balance a feminine, slightly cluttered room? try layering rectangles, especially in dark colors.

the black door alone does so much, no?




kate spade, the maharani of rectangles... her website, her logo, her first bags from the early '90s....

thomas paul sale...

quick public service announcement....!

thomas paul pillows and totes and such will be on highly discounted sale on wednesday, 6/24 at the gilt groupe... (love that "e" on the end; a little ye olde shoppe, no?)

if you haven't yet heard, gilt is an addictive sample sale online; by invite only; feel free to use my link to join.


ps: unfortunately I don't know how to invite you without potentially benefiting financially if you join and then make a first purchase. (gilt uses a gift certificate thing to encourage people to invite others.) just wanted to let you know so as to keep silk felt soil 100% above board.

bare shoulders, white feathers, and french paste

best hat (excuse us: "fascinator") at ascot...

The coolest needlepoint project I've ever heard of

The coolest needlepoint project I've heard of was a designer's gift to her parents. She needlepointed on several pillows some of her family's random catch-phrases (in her case, clueless things her father had said that had become classics).

We all have these things that we say to each other -- private jokes with friends, punch lines to family stories, phrases that come out at holiday dinners year after year, ways that we speak with the closest people in our life when we're remembering and reaffirming our lives.

Wouldn't it be amazing to celebrate some of these phrases on pillows?

KNITPRO is a free online application that will make a needlepoint or a knitting pattern from anything you choose to upload.

Or if that's too much work, there always are the classics.........









(from the Well Appointed House)


update:

- a site to get started

- a site that sells audubon canvases and others, eg this fabulous bee one

2 or 3 things i know

stunning blog alert.


random ps: cool tights.

have little darlings? let them eat brioche.




ok, sweetiepie in the west village, you are all girly and bird-cage-y and 1950's-crossed-with-marie-antoinette-y but i bite! i mean, i really bite.

every city should have an old fashioned ice cream parlor with tufted cushions that serves stylish healthy comfort food for mothers and kids and girlfriends and has crayons and balloons and in the evening can be turned into a wes anderson style dinner party with zebras on the walls and candlelight.

i mean, really. why not?

(bostonians: 3 alternatives--

the classic, upstairs on the square....
(just met deborah, who co-owns it and designed it herself... she is lovely! we talked about color...)

the new, "Sweet"

doesn't have any lunches, but it does have smashing cupcakes. we'll get there...)

and the really new, Clover, which has won my heart. not girly, not indoors, but certainly for kids... and they host pancake breakfasts outdoors with real maple syrup.

cherry blossom festival

happy spring from hirosaki!

(taken by my brother james, who is a photographer and is living in japan)

whahn eet ees sprang i feelluh like speekeeng en frahnsh

dearest dearest readers....

je vous embrasse... i am really touched and delighted by the little comments I've been getting, even after it's been quite a while since I've been posting regularly...

the trees are out, the birds are singing, and it is absolutely lovely outside, and on and on my little manuscript goes....

There is some design news which will be making its way onto silk felt soil when things have settled down. a little taste:

- for the girls out there: wedding pictures! accumulated thoughts on planning a wedding/ designing a wedding... how to do flowers, how to personalize things to your liking, how to spend gobs of money, if you're so inclined. :) I actually had two weddings, a wedding at my parents' house (oh yes!) and a dreamy destination one up in maine, so i'll give you the scoop about both kinds...

- my thoughts on domino's demise, and what we all must do about it!

- some new purchases chez moi (massive custom shelves, glorious shelves!), and potential purchases...

this all will have to wait awhile, of course, but I had to let you know that I'm thinking about you.

baci, besos et bisoux
p

in search of lost time

the new york times magazine had a stunning, clever editorial on men's watches this past sunday, titled "in search of lost time"... this one, with the dinosaur and the little "leaves" of goldleaf was beautiful... and i loved the tomahawk one too...




this is by way of saying that i am myself in search of lost time... finishing up a manuscript, and will return to silk felt soil in the summer.

xx p

who needs sugar plums when you've got industrial steel credenzas dancing before your eyes

sometimes in the early evening, when the sun is setting, i start to dream of industrial shelving.... and I dream that I live in the Loire valley and have many many euro to spare.

a view from the milky way: our invites

ahhhh! our starry invites are out... this is part of the image that inspired the verso of the cards, in midnight card stock with pewter metallic ink. true to form, the über-talented elisabeth did an incredible job, as did our fabulous calligrapher.

and silk felt soil has come full circle-- asa smith's astronomy, from which the image is taken, was merely a gleam in our eye when we started; I lucked out, found the entire book on ebay, have been saving it ever since for something really special.

flowers that remind of me of a starry night

as you guys might know if you're longtime readers, i'm getting married in september! our wedding theme is "UP!" ( the monogram of our two first names ), so i'm loving all things glowy, twinkly, night-sky-y right now.

these flower arrangements are so inspiring.....!

first image from Grace Ha-Kim's studio, Vale of Enna (seen at Brooklyn Bride)...& second photograph by michiko kon (via moon river).