For Molly every day is a Sunday. When I leave the house for Things That Need To Be Done I often feel jealous of her, seeing her lying on a chair, sound asleep without a single care or worry in her world.
Today we finally had a quit Sunday since weeks. So we sat next to our Persian princess to read, think and generally do nothing in particular. I envy her for being able to do that every single day.
My Love gave me the book ‘Misfit‘ about Hella Jongerius’ work as a present. Most foreign people know Jongerius for her design of the PS Jonsberg vases and wall hangings for Ikea, furthermore she’s one of the most influential Dutch designers of our time (and that still doesn’t do enough justice to her enormous efforts for Dutch design and design in general). I visited an exhibition about her work in the Boymans van Beuningen museum a while ago, the book is a perfect addition for those who want to learn more about her work. I love the way Hella Jongerius combines industrial techniques with good old craftmanship and how her designs seem to have this conceptual, raw look, like the wallhanging for Vitra on the picture below. That said, I also think her work is very accessible for people like me that have a difficulty with understanding the meaning of a lot of art movements (Like the ‘Hey-look!-A-pile-of-cow-dung-on-a-stick!-That-must-represent-the-way-people-hang-on-to-their-life-and-to-the-world-in-general’ kind of art movements.) To come to the subject of this post: when I worked on my first bigger-than-usual-Hermione-the-Rhino-prototype, I wanted her to have this raw finish too. Not that I feel the least worth to even stand in Hella’s shadow (I’m not that stupid ;-)), but I’m quite happy with the raw result of this project.
I made this Hermione on my sewing machine by the way, which was again a very nice and recommendable experience (recommendable because, if you’d still feel reluctant to use your sewing machine, you should really just go for it! If I can make it work, anybody can! And things go much faster on the machine, which is also very nice for an impatient person like me.)
I closed the shop for a while for I felt it was time to work on some new ideas and get creativity flowing again. Sometimes it’s good to step back, look and think, to keep going and keep liking what you do. I love this time-out and I hope it will bring me more and new inspiration for new creations for my little shop. So, I’m dying to know: do you like this new rhino? Please let me know, I’d love to hear your comments!
(July 9: Perfectionist as I am I changed the photo of the prototype, I kept feeling the other one wasn’t postworthy enough!)
So..that’s what I’ve been up to this weekend. And now I’m here, you can still join the apple oilcloth give-away ’till the 11th of July, so don’t miss out on that one!
Larie! (loosely translated as Gibberish!) is one of my favourite Dutch labels at the moment. Me and Alja (the sweet and super funny lady behind the label) have been Tweeps for a while and a couple of months ago she invited me to visit her at her lovely Larie! studio for a real Tweetup. *) Alja creates the most lovely and original iPhone sleeves, keycords, bags (and lots more) with her embroidery machines (she has like, five different sewing machines, I couldn’t stop drewling by the sight of so many cool machines…and her beautifully decorated studio. I mean, there was some serious drewling going on man!) I almost kidnapped the (not for sale) horse on the picture below and I almost lured Alja’s sweet dog into my car, so I guess she was happy that I left the building with only one bag filled with Larie! goodness in the end of the day. (And my Love was happy he didn’t have to pick me up from the police station.) So.. this first tweetup ever was a big success (and I think Alja is happy to hear that the pictures with her on it turned out too dark…even though I promised her I would not post non-flattering pictures of us here :-D) Thanks Alja, you rock!
Check out the Larie! webshop here (and make sure you bring a big bag with money with you…and don’t say I didn’t warn you)!
*) Tweeps = Twitterian for friends, tweetup = meet-up (I was a total nerd when it came to Twitter until I joined a while ago, so a little translation wouldn’t hurt eh? I often wonder who thought of that silly but yet so funny Twitter gobbledygook. In the beginning I was determined to resist all that Twitter nonsense, but here I am now…heavily addicted. I might even invent some Twitterian myself in the future…)
I replaced the once blooming and now terribly dry (and bit sad) branches I kept in the Jonsberg vase with this fake bouquet. The most fun about fake flowers is that you can put together all kinds of flowers that, in real life, would never bloom in the same period. Furthermore, the search for flowers big enough for the huge Jonsberg vase was getting a bit too annoying (one way or another, I kept buying flowers that completely disappeared when putting them in the vase). So, no more annoying flowers quests for me anymore, I will have blooming cherry branches and Anemones in the middle of Summer, Autumn and Winter…happy happy joy joy!
A dear friend of mine bought me the cute apple-oilcloth. It comes from a super nice Danish store and since she bought me two, I’m giving away the other one to one of my dear followers. Just because it’s Summer and because I enjoyed my last give-away so much. And don’t worry, giving away the 2nd oilcloth won’t cause a big catfight with my friend, I got all the angles covered (in case you were wondering). It measures 200×140 cm (that’s, if I’m correct, 79×55 inches).
What you have to do to join?
Leave a comment and of course, I would really appreciate it if you’d become a follower to this blog, if you aren’t yet. You can join where ever you are. I’ll draw a winner at the 12th of July!
