Seems lots of people are making moves these days. Turbulent times call for tiny trinkets! I once saw a little girl’s crayon drawing of a house with a crooked little roof and a sweet chimney and have been copying her ever since. One of my brilliant customers (Alice Saunders from Raleigh, NC) gave me the idea to do house warming cocktail napkins so I did the whimsical house and the interior of Cassilhaus, modern and gorgeous architectural home here in Durham.
I think customizing with the new address would make a special gift.

Jillian Visser from Los Angeles mailed out these save-the-date napkins for her upcoming March wedding. I hadn’t thought of that but what a great idea! I worked with her designer Abbie Gong
at Passing Notes (http://www.passing-notes.com/). Abbie has such a lovely sense of style and appreciation for hand made; she was a total pleasure to work with.

PASSING THOUGHTS:
How do you feel about “grey” vs “gray”? Today I think grey is crisp and classy whereas gray is dull and lifeless. Then I found an old note to myself where I’d written “do you get a different feeling from the words gray and grey? I do. I prefer gray; it feels more 40’s. ”
It’s amazing how liquid our inner world can be, I guess that’s because we’re 60% water.

Getting press is exciting but “getting” press is fun. Thinking of places that might like linen cocktail napkins and guest towels (fun), contacting people you don’t know who have interesting jobs (fun), and hearing back from them (super fun), seeing your items in a magazine (thrilling), hearing from perfect strangers that they like your stuff (rewarding).

I love the internet because it is a dream come true, really; since i was young I wished I had a library in my home and didn’t have to go out to the library..how amazing that it happened! Speaking of not going out…I love not going out…I could live in a cave (a very chi-chi cave) but I think things are about to change. I’m moving in 2 weeks to Durham, N. Carolina after 30 years in California so Butterfly will be going on vacation from July 14th-July 31st while I dig my way out of boxes.  It already seems like a place where neighbors see neighbors, where you mix and mingle, where opportunity to connect lays down right in front of you and you’d be a fool not to be open to it.

Also, beginning to work on a couple of new linen items: placemats and table runners. When I have samples they’ll go up here. If you need either of those it would motivate me to get those projects going and I’d give you a reduced price in gratitude.

Eric and I had a fun art smackdown yesterday. We wanted to come up with guest towels to coordinate with the Indian Flower cocktail napkins so we took an hour to come up with sketches. He won; we used 4 of his designs and 2 of mine. Eric goes off to grad school at The Art Institute of Chicago when I go off to Durham. I don’t know how I’m going to get along without him.

Indian Flower Cocktail Napkins and coordinating Guest Towels

That’s all she wrote.

Mr Wendell spreads joy and poetry and joyful poetry on the corner of Bundy and San Vicente in Los Angeles.

Here’s his father’s day poem.

I’ve been 30 years in California and am moving to North Carolina in July. It’s got my mind refocusing on things like…visiting Baltimore and the American Visionary Art Museum for the first time..visiting New Orleans more often to see mom…and hiking and canoeing, especially canoeing. Peter Doig’s canoe paintings are so lush. So, all this canoe talk made me think of my favorite camping recipe…

Bring a box of Bisquick. Break a branch off a tree and
using your pen knife scrape off the bark until you get to the green part. Add water to Bisquick. Form dough around bottom of stick.

Cook over campfire. It will contract and fall easily off stick. Fill with jelly. Eat. Be a satisfied outdoorswoman. Lets call them Jelly Sticks.

I saw these on the so interesting site boing boing and found them so smile inducing i decided to share. As Lisa Katayama describes them:

“A cool new way to keep tabletop plants in the house without the hassle of fallen leaves: Domsai, or little light-bulb-shaped bipedal plant-people with ceramic legs and a variation of plant-heads by Italian artist Matteo Cibic. The artist imagines they could double as virtual pets, Tamagochis that don’t whine if you don’t play with it.”

And then, looking further into Lisa Katayama’s blog I got a good laugh from this one. She quotes “John Kostiuk” as saying:

I took this photo with my iPhone on the Hibiya line in Tokyo. I patted the guy on the back and said Naka-Meguro a few times (the station was coming up) but got absolutely no response.

Maybe we Americans shouldn’t try to work as hard as the Japanese afterall.

My dear friend Sandra who married my dear cousin Arthur…(see her Vanishing Blueberry Pie recipe in an earlier post) takes wonderful photos. She possesses a fierce talent for making people laugh and feel good which explains why she has always been able to send policemen smiling as they drive away without giving her a ticket. Of course there was the time she rode her bicycle into the back of a police car for no apparent reason bewildering the innocent guy and making me cry with laughter. Her stylish eye can be seen here in her recent photos…

… and a shot of her 40 years later — not too shabby still.

A boy,
a small boy,
a small mind, a president,
with sawdust,
for brains.

A man,
a skinny man,
a large brain,
a president,
who’s all ears,
and listens.

-CP

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