Clothes Crush: Kreayshawn

Someday, I want to be Oaklander (Oaklandite?) Kreayshawn.  I want her ink and her ice and her rhymes. I want to ride around on the hood of a car in the East Bay with my posse. I want to wear a bow bigger than my head and still be adorable in a totally hardcore way.

"There were never such devoted sisters."

Subtitle: In Which I Expound Upon the Awesomeness of My Crafty and Adorable Big Sis.

Kelly on tour (plus one stolen dog?)

There is so much "crafty" going on in my family.  Quilting, knitting, crocheting, ice-cream making... My sister Kelly is pretty much the "Jill of all Trades" when it comes to DIY goodness. Her blog Stitchy Quilt Stuff is one of my absolute favorites... I get to keep track of her new projects and get exciting ideas for cute-ifying my apartment. 

Brunch at Kelly's. (See the quilt on the wall? She totally made that.)

Kelly also guest blogs over at Memory Makers (a great scrap-booking resource) and surprised me by doing a special post for my birthday!  (I actually haven't received this card in the mail yet, but the post will suffice....HINT, KELLY.)

In order to keep up with all of this, I've been honing my knitting skills (a new habit I'm using to replace a... well... bad habit I've very successfully given up recently.) Knitting is slow-going for me, especially after years of becoming a crochet master.... But I'm getting there!

Source: Lea Knits

This being said, I leave you now to go work on my thesis, clean out my refrigerator, and enjoy another rainy day in San Francisco.

Explosive Heart

Karin Dreijer Andersson's "Fever Ray" is the best thing I've heard in a long time. (Originally of The Knife, this was her solo debut in '09.)

Photo courtesy of Diafero Collective.

The album is embedded below, but I also had to post the video for "If I Had A Heart" because it's exquisite. And makes me have intense dreams.

   Fever Ray by Fever Ray

Trifecta of Happiness: Round 1

1 book + 1 movie + 1 song = heck yes.

I finished "The Chronology of Water" in about 48 hours (meaning, I couldn't stop reading.)  I become leery when I see "memoir" (a conversation that has been beaten and bloodied on lit blog after lit blog) but Lidia's work is poetic and charged.  (Not to mention, this was a lovely mini-vacation between last day of classes and first day of off-the-grid-thesis-writing.)

An amazing documentary about art, trauma, what "inner life" can mean... and Barbies.  I feel certain I will watch this again.

Dance it out with The Rassle.

School Supply Shopping for Grown-Ups

Today is my last day of MFA classes.  Read: Tomorrow it is time to start cracking down on the thesis in a serious way.  A love of school supply shopping has not dissipated since the days of new crayons, skinny markers, and trapper keepers.  What better way to get motivated and inspired than stocking up on one's Absolute Necessities for Academic Success?!

And so, I bring you my favorite (and absolutely necessary) tools for this summer's write-a-thon:

1) Itoya PointKeeper Pencils - They look wooden. They are mechanical. They make the finest, darkest lines a girl could ask for. They're sustainable.  Love.

2) Moleskine Ruled Cahier Notebooks - The only notebooks for me.  Stitched binding, back pocket for scrap-storage, sleek and clean, durable yet bendy.... Poetry perfection.

3) Rickshaw Zero Messenger Bag - Perhaps my most decadent purchase, but well worth it. These urban messenger bags are made exclusively in San Francisco and are ZERO WASTE! Check out their website for customizable options and more details on the company's amazing ecological stance. They're terrific for biking with, too.

4) Summer Reading Part I (all purchased at City Lights) - 

And we're off!

Songs for Writing Theses (Part I)

 

 

Begin Here.

Makes it sound so easy... "Begin here."

A sneaky summer in San Francisco this weekend meant that there was less of the above getting done, and much more Dolores-Park-Playing, restaurant-patio-chatting and adventuring in convertibles.  Vacationing in one's neighborhood is, come to find out, an extremely solid way to stave off work-week worries.

A local artist's new Mission District mural in the making.

Today is Day Seven of "Poem-A-Day" for the month of February.  I am so in love with this project, mostly because I anticipated the results so poorly.  Really, I mean that I had expected the poems to be more individual, rooted in the daily and specific to the rapid "now" that the project demands.  Instead, they are creating something collective and sticky that makes me yearn for a potential end-of-the-month chapbook build. Twenty-one more days to find out what this will become!