The wild coast of Bohemia

I'm sure most people have seen this. But yes, he's so right to be angry.

When I read about these a few months ago I found the figures hard to comprehend. They make the sub-prime thing look like chickenfeed. I suppose the only optimistic note is that by the time this fully hits there won't be many banks that aren't under government wings (or entirely taken over).

 

We live in strange times. This is a good video for getting a quick understanding of the basics of CDSs:

 

Watch CBS Videos Online

Well, at least the first two.

I wasn't sure these could be done - it's been hard to find copyright-free images in a decent enough resolution (these fabric prints demand good resolution) but these came out well. Admittedly after a good deal of work from Alex. I think it's been worth it though.

I bought a Liberty's varuna wool vintage shawl in "Hera" pattern some time back and then - typically - fell in love with it. However, it had some quite bad moth damage in one part when we bought it so I finally accepted that it really should be cut. I'm actually really glad as the bags turned out to be just drop-dead gorgeous. One had a moth hole (Romana spotted it too late once it was sewn) so I grabbed that one. It's become my new small bag for carrying things in my messenger.

It's hard to do these bags justice in a photo, They are just luscious. You know, some things just work out SO well.









They are only on Etsy for now as I need to upload a whole heap of things to the main shop. By the way, they're a little more expensive than our usual bags as the fabric in itself is quite pricey and collectible now.

A friend sent me the news that Lon Milo DuQuette has worked out that Sarah Palin's name in Hebrew enumerates to 666.

Hard to know how to react to that really.

I think I will get back to working on the toile - "hubble, bubble, toile and trouble"  that is.

Another wonderful one from Bird and Fortune. It really does convey the attitude.

This one is for Alex (edited, okay, these two are for Alex). Sorry, I did say I would stop posting Palin stuff, but we all need a laugh now and again. Sorry about the ads, I couldn't find a decent ad-free version of these.

Totally fired up tonight by an exhibition on Biedermeier - we rushed when we realised it's due to finish today. It was a thoroughly nice experience and we were given free posters by a very friendly man at the door as they had some left over. Nice.

Anyway, I came away with lots of thoughts about bags I want to do next year. Nowadays it seems that a new bag shape (pattern, samples, fabrics etc etc) takes at least six months to develop - so it's not too early to be thinking about next summer. I do love doing this work - fabric has always been one of my very favourite things and I always miss it when I am doing pure "flat" graphics - texture is important to me.

For now, here are some very typical Biedermeier chairs. I love the way they used wood, though I'm less certain about how these would actually be to sit on. Also a bag that I wouldn't actually have thought of as Biedermeier, though it is from that period. Absolutely gorgeous though, however you describe the style.

I LOVE it. Sent to me by Shay Black, who I knew way back in my late teens, early twenties. Great guy.

We are ordering a big batch of bags (sans printed flap) from a great maker we've been working with. These are the infamous replacements to our current shoulder-bag. The designs I have been working on since last March - really.

The new bags are landscape format (wide and not so deep vertically) and are going to be very beautifully made - more of a real workaday bag than the current ones, but still very spectacular.

They will be in Thai silk-mix (not pure silk as I think the silk mix may wear better in this smoother style silk). But - the big issue now is colour. We can only do four or five colours. My current thinking is:

Black
Teal
Bronze (it's the bronze we are using right now, it actually flashes red and green and is kind of extraordinary)
Silver
and...

It's hard. I mean, I might go for something wild like fuchsia, but it would never sell. I don't want gold as the bronze is already our "yellow/brown/red spectrum" colour. Purple? Tends not to go with many of our prints. What about a denim blue? Maybe darker than our current denim blue?

Ho hum, ho hu. I'm sitting here surrounded by silk samples - books and books of them and trying to work it all out.

Any thoughts much appreciated.

Why do I care about this? Because not only is it going to affect us all in the West but it HAS already affected us. I really am sick of the "super-rich" and the growing gap between them and everyone else. I bought my first house when I was a teenager - in those days it was possible to buy a very modest house (we had no heating, it was damp, but it WAS a house) on a very modest salary - now even that basic is just impossible in much of Europe. People are struggling more than ever and this financial crisis is just going to make it harder.

And WHY could they not see it coming? I mean, even I could see this a few years back. Not in detail, but it was obvious enough that there were huge imbalances in the system and that everything was being pumped by bubbles that had to burst and credit that had to reach a limit.

Anyway, nice to see someone get truly angry about it...

Back to bags soon. This blog is temporarily focused, it seems, on banks and bags. Oh well.

From the LA Times
_____________________

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury
Henry Paulson
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/09/nigerian-e-mail.html

I asked for input about bags on Aeclectic Forum some months back. One thing that came out strongly is that people want Pre-Raphaelite and Medieval options. We like those images too, so we've been working on them. Here are a couple of examples.

It's really hard to find either type of imagery in high quality copyright-free form so Alex had to do a lot of work on both of these. I do think they look good:
Sorry - our sites just went down as I was putting these in (the host has an announcement up so at least they know). So here is just a small upload of one image for now.






 

It's a good, confident and likable talk and it comes across well. But... about three-quarters of the way in when she talks about Etsy's turnover there is a somewhat outrageous "finesse". See if you can spot it. It's not that she is saying anything untrue - she isn't. But the context in which she puts it does give a very misleading impression. I have no idea if that was a mistake or deliberate. Interesting.

It's amazingly appropriate to the current situation. All we need now is the thunderstorm.

Having not watched Eurovision I had no idea he was on it.

Anyway, a nod to the odd mix of fatalism and energy that you can find in this region.

As I wailed and fretted about the imminent meltdown of the entire Western banking system this week Alex smiled and said, "Ah yes, we had this at the end of the Soviet Union. One survives. Look, we're all still here."

Indeed. And I think I want one of those hats with the pink flowers.

We actually did take this one from a CD collection. We hardly ever use CDs because the quality tends to be awful, but this one just needed a bit of work - and it's so beautiful that it was worth it.

It's a picture by Warwick Goble - I just LOVE the colour combinations.

Good article. As the current model of American capitalism goes down the plughole - and a lot of us get caught in the waves (is that a mixed metaphor?)  it's good to at least understand some of the reasons why.

Buffett made a gloomy prediction half a decade ago. "The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear," he said. "Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/15/lehmanbrothers.wallstreet

Well, with all the serious stuff now going on the dreamscanwork blog, I can play here a bit more. So here is one thing we've been working on for a while. It's an animal toile, based on an antique toile and Grandville's animals.

We've been having some trouble with printing it, firstly because it's large and secondly because I just feel that the fabric should have a bit of texture (why I'm not sure). We're going to try a good dupion, but not real silk as our printing method does not work on silk. Sounds simple, but after I don't know how many attempts to get what I have in mind (something really NICE and with some weight to it) I finally had to get it sent from a shop in London's Brick Lane that I used to visit quite regularly. At least I know that they know their fabrics.

The real thing shows quite a bit more detail - we worked at very high resolution - and will be printed in three variations:  indigo, black and dark plum on cream. All of which is very traditional. Then it all goes off to be made into cushions - I think combined with either taupe or black silk, don't you? Yummy and fun.