On January 18, 2006—exactly six years ago—I started this blog. Since then, there have been:
I am a little shaken by how much time I spend on this blog.
*goes outside for the first time in 6 years*
Take a look at this beautifully meticulous, hand-crafted paper alphabet by Sabeena Karnik, a caligrapher, fine artist and illustrator/ typographer specializing in paper sculpturing and acrylic murals.
When I was in middle school, one of my classmates bought a braided leather belt about 10 inches too long. The guy was always meticulously dressed so, naturally, I wondered what he was doing. The pendulous accessory hung down his khakis below the pockets and swung as he walked down the hall in a phallic, eye-drawing manner. In retrospect, it was probably a little risqué for tween fashion in the hallowed halls of my midwest alma mater, Portage North Middle School. I’ve never been too fashion-forward, nor interested in following the trends of the day, so I diverted attention from the guy and passed it off as a fashion faux-pas.
Within a week, however, I noticed a few others had adopted the strange, over-sized accouterments. Within a month, there were dozens of other braided belts accessorized over the in-crowd’s fashionable attire. Then, it caught like wildfire an even teachers and staff were seen following the trend. I found it a little perplexing to watch the style grow in my little microcosm and attributed it to flukish nature of a town secluded from fashion. What I hadn’t realized, however, was that that, in itself, WAS fashion. This is how the world worked. Fluorescent macramé necklaces, rat tails, sillybands, metal-snapping bracelets, waterfall bangs, pegged jeans and acid-washed jeans ruled the day. And at some point, with each of these trends, someone undoubtedly shared my befuddlement: what was going through their minds when they decided to wear that to school?
Following Hurricane Irene, my heat pump stopped working. Thankfully, the good folks at my insurance company picked up the tab for a brand new Lenox pump, with an indoor heat exchange. Unfortunately, the new unit was about 4 inches deeper than the old unit, forcing the installers to rip off the front of my utility closet.
So with a few supplies from The Home Depot and some elbow grease, I managed to restore the closet to it’s previous design, plus about 4 inches more. I’m still waiting for two cabinet doors to arrive from eBay, but you can see much of the home improvement work in the gallery below.
As part of the newly launched Pantone Moods Facebook application, the world-renowned color gurus asked us how we could make the social phenomenon (a quarter million moods have been posted, to date) more exciting for users. Color enthusiasts have had the ability to share their emotions and tag them with Pantone color chip values for the past three years. However, in addition to tripling the color selections (Pantone GOE, and, now, Pantone Plus and Fashion + Home libraries) and and interacting with other members, mood-posters now have the ability to share their gender and location information with the world of users online. In league with OKCupid Trends and Mint Data, Pantone Moods users can see who has posted similar moods and color chips. They can even filter down by Facebook location, gender and time of post to see whose emotional spectrum is the closest to their own. Read more
