Chewbacca on his first day of school

Josh found a link to this on reddit and sent it to me. I tried to find it myself, but can't, so I have no idea who drew this - but it is all kinds of nerdy adorable!

Josh also sent me this, by animator and artist Greg Peltz:

Go visit his blog for more awesome steampunk Star Wars paintings!

This arrived in the mail today

Here are some close-ups:

Love it. Though if the designer were a true Tolkien nerd, I think she would have replaced "Sunday" (in the key) with "Sunnendei", "airport" with "Eagle", and "National Rail" with...er..."National Horse TRail" (!!!) Just sayin'.

*design is "There and Back Again" by Reagan H. Lee. T-shirt from threadless.com.

KitchenAid

My two best friends from college threw me a lovely wedding shower last weekend at my parents' house in Pennsylvania. The weather was kind of gross and humid, but I had a fantastic time, and got to see some folks who I haven't seen in waaaay too long.

Almost a dozen of my family members combined resources to get us a sleek, matte grey KitchenAid, which now sits proudly in the center of our kitchen:

We christened it last night by making some Greyston Bakery brownies (the same brownies that go into Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream!):

Let's just say that between the mixer and the brownies...we're in heaven right now. :)

Wall Street Journal

My fiance is in the Wall Street Journal!

He's involved in a project with the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation to archive all of Cunningham's work into "dance capsules" - each containing all the choreography, design, music, and lighting notes for a particular piece of work - that will be made available to dance companies who wish to perform full stagings once the Dance Foundation formally closes in 2012.

Details are in the article; look to the bottom for Josh's name!

That which we call a rose...

I've been sadly absent from Etsy for the past couple weeks, but today I finally broke my Etsy-fast and made a new treasury! I'm not usually one for frilly, floral stuff but here's a virtual rose garden for your enjoyment:

Featured listings (in order of appearance):

Bud vase by juditavill

Rose and black pepper thumbprints by whimsyandspice

Depression Glass creamer & sugar by scdvintage

Raw silk bolero by maryandangelika

Red rose necklace by blossomstowear

Mod rose bouquet necklace by balance9

Royal Breakfast Blend tea by lilithsapothecary

Rose quartz briolette strand by lilysoffering

Beige floral shawl by mucar

Rosettes clutch by DavieandChiyo

Rose mini bath bombs by ElegantRoseBoutique

Granulated natural rose cut diamond ring by JanishJewels

Tasmanian rose myrtle vessel by rosannacoyne

"Roses" giclee print by MaiAutumn

English Rose ruffle dress by Lirola

Scarlet satin flower necklace by RiRiFisch

The Toy Truck

I've been MIA. Again.

Reason #1: Josh and I have been hard at work on my jewelry website, which I've wanted to do ever since I opened my Etsy shop. My friend Katie of Making This Home recently unveiled her new site, Gadanke, to sell her handmade journals, and between the inspiration from seeing such a beautiful new site and Josh's semi-constant reminders to start designing mine, we finally sat down, hashed out a mock-up in Photoshop, and dove right into Wordpress. It's still under construction - but looks, if I may brag about my fiance's imposing php skills, FANTASTIC - and I'll post the url here when we're ready to roll. Though from my shop and blog names, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. ;)

Reason #2: Lost. I never would have guessed it either, but I got bored one day while Josh was out. That's what happens when you poke around netflix long enough. Long story short, I started leisurely in early/mid April, kicked it up a bit when I realized I could watch an episode on Hulu over my lunch break every day, and knocked it into high gear when a colleague asked if I'd be caught up in time for the series finale (yes, I said, I will gladly finish two whole seasons in one week if it means increasing my hours awake : watching Michael Emerson act ratio). Result? I did it. It may have done some weird stuff to my head (I have a minor, slightly distracting obsession with Ben Linus now), but yeah, it happened. Thoughts on the finale? Short answer: I'm ok with it; it got me thinking about a few things. Long answer: ...maybe I'll save this one for another time. Until then, I leave you with this, courtesy of afore-mentioned colleague:


(I tried to embed the video, but it's being wonky. Here's the link: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291)

You know...if we knew where the toy truck came from, I think everything else would have made a whole lot more sense. Just sayin'.

The Influential Books Game

So much for posting every (or almost every) day. I've been very pleased with our wedding planning so far, because it's been surprisingly low-stress. And then we hit our RSVP due date. I guess it's still not super-stressful, there are just a lot of things to do and remember now - forms and lists to send to our venue, a dinner tasting to go to (ok, this part I'm really looking forward to), a photographer to haggle with, honeymoon flights and accommodations to book...I feel like there's always at least one thing that I'm forgetting to do! It doesn't help that I started watching Lost last month, and I'm totally, tragically hooked. I found out this week that Hulu has the entire series, so now my lunches are 43 minutes long, instead of 30. Yikes.

At any rate, here's an interesting little activity that Claire (provider of all links funny, whimsical, and gorgeous) forwarded to me ages ago: The Influential Books Game.

In mid-March, a blogger started a listing exercise, urging readers to compile a list of the top ten books that have influenced their view of the world, and recommending a "go-with-your-gut" approach, rather than thinking about it for a long time. Another NYT blogger wrote an opinion piece on the idea, and listed a few other bloggers who had compiled their own lists; they made my head hurt (he says of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past: "This is still the best book on interiority". WHAT?! Who says that?!) until I realized that most of them are economics bloggers and thus their "literary" range just barely intersects with mine. This is the original blog post. This is the NYT article it was in.

Firstly, these comments from the original blog post make me giggle in their earnestness:
"Heidegger is out of fashion."
"...the claim about [Willard van Orman Quine's Word and Object] demands an explanation. It strikes me less as a heterodox reading and more of a non sequitur."
"Hayek adds an informatics complexity element that some of the other authors mentioned simply don't. Also missing from the list is growth theory, in which case a bit of Solow would be a good addition too."

*cue my brain exploding*

And secondly, here are my top ten influential books, in vague chronological order and mostly without defense or explanation:

1) The Little House, by Virginia Lee Burton
2) The Stray, by Betsy James Wyeth (illustrated by Jamie Wyeth)
3) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
4) Love in the Night, by F. Scott Fitgerald
5) Watership Down, by Richard Adams
6) The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
7) "The Maze", "The Ogre" and "The Unknown Citizen", by W.H. Auden
8) Othello, by William Shakespeare
9) The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
10) Galatea, by Philip Pullman
...er, I mean, top 15:
11) Lamb, by Christopher Moore
12) The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
13) Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (lay off - it got me all riled up in a way no book had ever done before)
14) The Giver, by Lois Lowry
15) The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass

Eat it, economists.

Animal House

It's Treasury Day at Etsy! A couple weeks ago the admin opened up Treasury East, a beta page for an upgraded version of the traditional Treasury section of the site*. In celebration of this fantastic new feature, today has been dubbed "Treasury Day", and all the lists featured on the front page of Etsy consist of lists created in Treasury East. I made this fantastic Sherlock Holmes collection the day Treasury East opened; intrigued at the chance to get a list of my curation up on the front page, I assembled yesterday afternoon, and guess what? Front page! Ok, it was featured at 5:30 this morning (no, I wasn't up that early. How do I know? The Crafcult Vault!), but I'll take what I can get.

Here's my treasury on the front page! This one is called "Animal House" and was curated with a "zoo" theme in mind. Go visit, and leave a comment if you've got an Etsy account!

Featured listings:

Crocodile pencil holder, by Leocardia

Steampunk serpent snake ring, by chinookhugs

Octopus tote, by smidgebox

Peacock hair clips, by BridalShoppe

Rhino watercolor, by dimdi

Giraffe linen pillow cover, by branchhandmade

Seal toy knitting pattern, by cheezombie

Elephant wall hook, by monkeyandsquirrel

Monarch butterflies headband, by kaang

Dolphin teething toy, by littlesaplingtoys

Tree frog gardenia soap, by GentleSuds

Morchella handbag in camel, by morelle

Penguin peppermint & lavender soy candle, by kennycoop

Toucan Sam necklace, by anastassiadesigns

Monkey boatneck shirt, by NYILLUSTRATION

"Face Your Fears" silver halide print, by risamay

*For those of you who are unfamiliar with Treasuries: these are collections/lists of items chosen by Etsy members, usually centered around a theme (from weddings, colors, shoes and gardening to Stormtroopers, polka dots and barbecue). Etsy admin browse the treasury page constantly, and frequently post all or part of a list to the front page - this is fantastic exposure for the featured listings, and nice for the curator too, to connect with the sellers they're promoting. The original treasury limited the number of active lists, which always expired after three days; it also ran in Flash, which was extremely inefficient. The new Treasury East is NOT in Flash, and allows members to create as many lists as they want, whenever they want, and they don't expire unless the creator deletes them (this is both good and bad: right now there are 357 pages of lists, with 20 lists on each page. Yikes). But it's a work in progress, and I love the opportunity to post my treasuries here and know that they'll still be viewable three days later. Enjoy!

The Lost Years

Ok, so they weren't actually lost, they just weren't documented on le blog. (Yes, you should read that like the bit in the "End of the World" animation where the French lady won't fire the missiles because she's "le tired".) It's crazy to think of everything that's happened since my last post in 2007; I'm in a completely different place than where I was or ever imagined I'd be. And that's good! Just speaking of my professional life alone, the past two years have brought changes that were very unwelcome - and others that were fantastic - but in retrospect I wouldn't change a thing.

(During class one day my twelfth grade English teacher said that a friend asked her what she would change about her life if she could go back and do things differently; she replied, "absolutely nothing". Even at 18 years I remember being totally awed. Really? Nothing?! But of course, if you could change things, you wouldn't be the person you are today, and I rather like the person I am today.)

Sure, a higher-paying job in a field I'm actually interested in would be brilliant, but if I had that, would I be able, in good conscience, to quit that job to go on a 2-month backpacking honeymoon around Europe? I'm not sure. I don't like my current job, but giving it up come July won't be too difficult...and if I wasn't so frustrated with it to begin with, I might not have the Etsy shop that gives me the challenge, excitement, and creativity that data entry so tragically lacks. So yeah - all in all, I'm quite happy with where I am now.

But where exactly is that, you ask? Let's see, on the first of May 2007, I was:

• living in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, with two musical theater majors, in a room that sometimes smelled vaguely of cat pee
• working tirelessly yet exuberantly at the Tribeca Film Festival
• single

On the 22nd of April 2010, I am:

• living in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, with my fiance, in an apartment with sunlight and plants and a park two blocks away
• working diligently but spiritlessly at a legal media firm as a data entry rep in the newspaper subscriptions department
• 2.6 months away from marrying my favorite person in the world (aww)

In between, I:

• started dating my favorite person in the world
• went to Germany, Spain, and Belgium for the first time
• left Tribeca
• went on unemployment
• went to California for the first time
• started working at Barnes & Noble
• got an amazing job at Human Rights Watch
• got engaged
• watched the Madoff scandal unfold
• lost an amazing job at Human Rights Watch (due to the Madoff scandal)
• kept working at Barnes & Noble
• started temping
• started temping at my current job
• went to my brother's wedding
• opened my Etsy shop
• got hired at my current job
• opened another Etsy shop with my soon-to-be-mother-in-law

You win some, you lose some. I'll take a boring job any day, as long as I've got my guy, my family, my home, and my beads. And a little time to travel... ;)

from Doyle & Doyle

Dutch department store

My dad sent me this:

HEMA is a Dutch department store that first opened in 1926; there are now 150 stores throughout the Netherlands.

Instructions:

1) turn you computer's sound on, and get a pair of headphones if you're at work (unless your colleagues want to see too!). Make sure you've got flash installed.

1) go to the URL below.

2) wait for the page to load.

3) don't click anything.

4) wait for it...
5) enjoy!

6) nog een keer (or) stur door.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Their web programmer has way too much time on his/her hands.

Three years on

Well folks, it's been a while! Almost three years exactly - and oh, how the time flies. I don't think I've looked at this little collection of posts for about two years...strange to think I've had it turned off longer than I had it turned on.

But I think it's time to change that. I've expanded "A Certain World" beyond this original blog incarnation, into the name of the Etsy shop I opened last October, and the corresponding domain name I've registered for my as-yet-unbuilt website for the same business. I've even got a facebook Page! It was actually through a recent conversation with a fellow Etsy seller that I was inspired to resurrect the ol' blog; I've been Etsy-chatting with Katie of makingthishome about our struggles and trials with shop-promotion and lackluster sales. Just trying to get a shop noticed *anywhere* on the behemoth that is Etsy can seem utterly impossible sometimes, but Katie was sweet enough to give me a shout-out on twitter the other day - which seems to have drawn some extra traffic! - and I wanted to return the favor. It's high time I started giving my shop a voice outside of Etsy, and until I get a website design into photoshop and up on wordpress, this seems the logical place to start. It's also high time I started spreading the joy of all the shops and links and funny little blogs that I've kept locked away in a google doc for months...

So, to start: Making This Home!  Katie, a US expat living in Berlin with her German husband (hmm, sounds like me someday...), has an adorable shop featuring a line of whimsical and refreshing journals, diaries and notebooks made with German and other European papers (what could be better?). I found her shop a couple months ago when I had the idea to make a German-themed treasury for Etsy's Euro Week; I included only black, red, and yellow items and organized them so the page looked like a German flag (black items across the top, red items in the middle, yellow items along the bottom..and then some extras. I'm so clever), and Katie's rhubarb-red writing prompt journal fit in perfectly on the red line:

Unfortunately I didn't screen-shot the treasury while it was still active, but perhaps I'll see about re-creating it now that Treasury East is open and lists don't expire!

More beautiful, handmade things to come in subsequent posts...

Cheers!