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.

Eric is everything I’m not: male, young, tall, and ok… thin. It follows that his designs are almost the complete opposite of mine, but I love them just the same. We’re going to start printing some of his stuff to run parallel to mine, or maybe to crash into it and explode. Either way, it’s Eric’s World and I’m just pleased to visit.

(Pay no mind to the chaos behind us, it’s just another day at the office!)

Here’s some of Eric’s work, which should show up in the (almost fully re-designed!) store tomorrow.

ABOVE: “California Dryin’” Guest Towels
BELOW: “Yours / Mine / His / Hers / Whose? / Booze!” Napkin Set

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.

This is Claire wearing Love & Kisses which I’m sure she gets a lot of. Claire is half French, lovely.

Today we’ve been busy but scattered. Workin’ on an Etsy account and playing catch-up after about a week off (I was in North Carolina and Eric was in Chicago). We’re back, we’re inspired…

Today we’re taking inventory for all of Butterfly’s garments and it seemed like a fitting time to share some images of our latest models. Ezra looking good in Chicago!

Ready for his closeup, Noah from Texas sports this tee with attitude.

I might have to make this shirt in an adult size for Eric who can’t stop eating my chocolate chip cookies and downing cartons of milk. After reading this article from the NY Times I baked the best ones I’ve made in 40 years of baking! Read the article or in a nutshell, here are the secrets:

•let the batter rest 24-36 hours

•make them big enough to get 3 textures; crunchy on the outside, moist on the inside, and toffee-like in between.

•salt, yes salt.

Hi, this is Eric. I’m Carol’s newest employee, reporting from Butterfly Headquarters in Los Angeles, CA. I’ve been here for a couple months now helping with everything from printing napkins to eating cookies. Enough about me, though, we have some exciting news over here…

As hinted at a couple weeks ago, there are indeed some new things going on. For one, we are happy to announce the switch to 100% Linen for the cocktail napkins and recently-debuted guest towels. Seeing as how the last batch was 55% Linen / 45% Cotton, I think it’s safe to say these are at least 45% better! Check them out over at the store. They really do feel wonderful — you might start asking for Butterfly & Co. pillowcases!

Perhaps more obviously, we’re working on a whole new look for the blog, website, and brand. If you are looking at this page then you already have a good idea of what we’re going for. Bear with us as we try out colors and layout options. Not too long from now we will be settled on something very special that will be implemented across the lines and hopefully help Butterfly stand out as we expand our reach in the world of product design.

Feedback is always appreciated!
Eric

Here’s a look at a design that’s going to be featured on the latest line of Butterfly guest towels. This also marks my first blog post in a very long time, but you can count on a marked increase in activity here in Butterfly country over the remainder of the year.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This is Claire wearing Love & Kisses which I’m sure she gets a lot of. Claire is half French, lovely.

A little sprite named Summer wearing How Love Grows Tee.

If you send me photos of you or your kids wearing Butterfly Tees this is where they will go. If you want to give me a first name and a city or state, funny story or factoid that would also be great but not necessary. I’d also love to put up interesting photos of your refrigerators..you know, with all the stuff held up by magnets.. and all that they say about you and your family!

I’m including a picture of my boy Nick who is now 19 and giving me a very hard time of course. You can see that not even a fat baby boy could stop me from cooking.

Here’s a picture of Sonia from N. Carolina. I love the way she mixed her plaid pajama bottoms with the Give Peas a Chance tee; very fashion forward! Love her cool bracelet too.