stitchpixie

so I have these plants in the garden and I can't tell friend from foe. while i've found a lot of the perennial ground cover at local stores (see image immediately above )........................no nursery or plant center i've been to has anything that resembles these two entities:
( friend or foe? )

( help me identify these two plants!! )

aside from the bemused/delighted/inquisitive reactions i get when people come across a sperm purse for the first time, the most common question i get is: "how do you come up with so many ideas?" where do i draw my inspiration? my products are definitely suggestive of the whole flora fauna imagery, but i feel like my designs are so far removed from nature, so far removed from anything i'm capable of photographing, or even drawing. i have a great sense of realism about my sketches and i've always balked at "art" that features an admittedly cartoon-y character with one eye larger than the other. being part of the indie scene, i've grown somewhat used to it, and while i used to think that these artists couldn't draw, the fact that they can replicate their images time and time again with consistency makes me have a new appreciation for the style, but i still can't bring myself to incorporate that into my own work.

i have a great respect for my high school art teacher, who, among many things, also taught my english class and spent hours after school with laila and i while i played with her slab roller and lumps of clay. she traveled with me (and laila, and jenn) to russia where we ate porridge topped with a pad of butter and avoided some raw fish delicacy while laila ate something like cocopuffs alongside orange juice for breakfast. she was the one who shook her head with wisdom at my aspirations to become a child psychiatrist (translation: 14 years at UBC), and told me that i would soon discover that med school wasn't the biggest achievement in the world. she had once been one of the thousands of young science undergrads at UBC, gunning for med school, until she realized she was spending more time in the dark room than her science labs. for me, the realization hit about two weeks too late, two weeks too late to drop out of my ridiculously boring and unapplicable physical chemistry course without getting a "W"....sure all my med school pre-reqs fit nicely into my pharmacy electives, but i could have taken more naked drawing classes without them!

on the note of once-discarded advice, she also told me - why draw so realistically when you could just take a photograph? this lady also impressed upon me what has now become the backbone behind st*tchp*x*e and the reason i'm a pharmacist and not sewing for 8 hours day or trying to support a family on art: do not make your passion your career, it'll suck the fun out of it.

back to my original thought: i certainly rely heavily on ideas from nature, but it really is just a random concept that enters my head in somewhat of an attention-deficit-disorder kind of way, rather than drawing inspiration from a bird that i come across while in my backyard. someone was so sure that i'd spent time in japan because my tri-chromatic mount fuji design and cherry blossom images strongly made that suggestion. as for my signature skyline pouch, it's just a coincidence that i live 20 minutes from seattle now. it becomes a different city to everyone though - i get an immediate, almost knee-jerk reaction from people who pick up my skyline pouch, and it's often different, depending on where their lives have taken them - most times it's seattle, even when they're not in seattle, other times it's toronto, sometimes it's vancouver, and once it was calgary (calgary?).





about four years ago, a photographer friend told me that taking pictures of flowers was challenging. this photo at right is an image of mine from back then. perhaps in large part thanks to my 18-200mm lens, i think i've overcome this challenge. i'm glad i've been able to overcome such challenges almost effortlessly, like being shocked at my Language Arts class blemishing my perfect A report card in seventh grade, followed by my private school acceptance letter a few months later that commended me on my strong math skills but indicated that i was below average on the reading comprehension, as revealed by a standardized test....and then somehow, i suddenly had the skills to analyze writings and concepts that i never thought i could understand(existentialism anyone??). at my high school graduation, i was so humbled to accept the top student award in english and a copy of les miserables to commemorate it. however, i feel entirely incapable of taking a worthy photograph of this fantastically retro plant below. while my cherry blossom handbags look nothing like what i'm capable of photographing, if ever there was something in nature that i would directly translate into a st*tchp*x*e design, this would be it.

there are bands that i'd like to see, indie and popular alike, but when i think to actively look for their tour dates, i find they've just passed through town. i stumbled upon an article for Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová coming to seattle by happenstance last week at work, and then debated over the weekend whether i wanted to go or not. i realized monday, when i finally decided to go, that i hadn't read the article closely enough; the concert was on wednesday, and not tuesday, and it was at the moore, and not the showbox sodo, and.... it was sold out. so to craigslist, from whence i made andrew drive out to u. village to snatch up four tickets, and then to craigslist again to successfully sell the second pair since we couldn't find anyone to go with so last minute.

[side note: if you haven't watched the movie once, it's fantastic. irish guitar-playing man meets young, classically trained pianist with a czech accent, and they make music. in real life they don't seem all that different from the characters they played in the movie]

andrew asked if i knew where it was, and then i realized, through some vague recollection, that the moore was three doors down from a shop that i sell st*tchpixie goods in: fancy + pants (there's a collection of shops along that building which include Schmancy as well as Nancy)


he played the same skeleton of a guitar that he played in the movie, and despite (or perhaps because of) the holes, it had such a full sound that almost made me think it was a 12-string. his voice can be sweet and contemplative, but there are times that it has this incredible affect to it, so powerfully visceral and i love it - i imagine he would push his voice like this a lot more when he headlined for The Frames. she, with her gentle personality and all bohemian in her long skirt, shared one mic with him as he played an electric guitar for one song in something that gestured at an image of johnny cash and june carter 50 years earlier. at the end, their opening act came out to sing a bob dylan song with them, and i was amazed at how much like bob dylan the singer sounded. with those words that are sung....almost while inhaling sharply so they don't quite trail off, but are cut short...i don't know quite how to describe it. andrew and i had seen bob dylan in concert last year, and in addition to the fantasticness of his policeman pants with the yellow stripe down the side, he did his bob dylan dance-y thing. the opening act-guy may have pulled off the song better than bob dylan ever could have, but he definitely didn't have his moves.
images courtesy of z e r o s t u d i o, duckfluff, and rachel brooke at flickr

the mister and i worked at the same store yesterday, which never happens, and is never supposed to happen. i went through the day in a daze, unable to recall simple facts like zovirax dosing for herpes simplex, and staring blankly at the wall of liquids with a doctor holding the phone line while i tried desperately to jog a memory of the product she wanted to have prescribed for herself, something she'd told me not 20 seconds earlier. despite my inability to extract simple information from the reccesses of my brain, i wanted to crawl back into bed for no other reason than i had my period. i'm not really that type of girl, but i guess it happens to everyone of us. i'd also foolishly decided to wear lacey underwear, which, although i was prepared with period-related supplies, was not my cup of tea for an eight hour day on my feet. so i wanted to go home, whip out my comfy ae cotton boy-cut underwear, and crawl into bed. i tried to pump myself up all day to go to my dance class after work, and it literally took 10 hours for me to wake up. i'm slightly hesitant to address this topic, knowing all the google search strings associated with my name alone, because it's going to bear more permanence than i should be comfortable with. but i think i'm a pretty forward person. and if jenn can post about her legs with such candor, and if my favorite writer, the utah-based, non-mormon powerhouse of a woman behind dooce.com is so very frank and straightforward about things that would be mundane in anyone else's words, then i can write about how i got home from work, and within 10 minutes, a shower, contact lenses, and a tampon turned my day around.

i heard at work today that it's going to hit 68 degrees this weekend. while this fahrenheitical statement would normally not make any sense to me, i do know that i set the temperature in the house to a nice warm 68. so that sounds pretty exciting to me!

although i could whip up the most awesome purse in a matter of minutes, i've half finished many-a-clothing-projects, and i'm happy to report that i successfully made a test dress. becoming disillusioned with finding the perfect cocktail style BM dresses on macys.com, and fueled with a bit of frustration and rage, i went out and bought patterns. i abhor patterns like i abhor sewing pins.

measure twice, cut once is a mantra my dad taught me. it applies to everything from sewing, to metal work, to wood work, to restoring cars. he's an upholstery mechanic by trade, but i do about 99% more sewing than he does. he's probably part of the reason why his only daughter can happily sew through anything 3/8 of an inch thick but when it comes to lighter fabrics i'm done for. i was tempted to get some great, heavy, upholstery fabrics that i imagine the dress at left would be made of, in my sewing world, but i made sure to steer clear of delicate fabrics and bought some cute cotton to work with.


so i basically did this as a test run. 5 hours later i learned the value of
a) the measure twice cut once rule....however, even though i saved myself from cutting the pieces along the wrong run of the grain, this rule didn't manage to save me from picking the wrong pattern! i didn't want the halter top option! oops! so here's what it would look like without straps that tie up around your neck.

b) pinning. i managed to pull off a dress, made to fit me without the use of any pins, because i abhor using pins in my sewing, but i do admit they would have come in handy. three random needles sufficed.

c) even though i chose the smallest possible pattern size, which allowed for a 24" waist, it did nothing to decrease the cup size from a double d. i had been tempted just to sew all my pieces together in one go, but that would have been disastrous...see second half of d)

d) press open the seams with an iron. no really. it's important. and if i try on the outfit and realize i made the skirt portion too big for my waist, don't just sew it smaller! unpick the bodice, sew it, then press open the new seams.

although i usually like my images to match the width of my text blocks, i couldn't stomach the thought of showcasing myself 410 pixels wide several times over. damn, i think i'd better start practicing my look-casual-and-candid-but-still-look-pretty poses....i've got a wedding coming up! so without further ado, me with a fire-poker:

my dad once dubbed me "an indoor girl." i don't hike, i don't camp in tents, i don't do outdoor sports, and in the summer, you'll never catch me out after dusk for fear of mosquitos.

i think i need to get a new coat that hits just above my knees, because i used to walk outside on crisp winter nights and say, "it's so nice out," referring to the scent in the air, refreshingly cool and laced with whatever pheromones westcoast foliage emit. now i avoid checking the mail for days at a time because it's too cold out. the dampness of the area adds an element to the cold that cuts through you in ways that perhaps make the prairies slightly more tolerable. i don't know what the american equivalent of "the pairies" is. the midwest?



it snowed yesterday. i call today an indoor day. apparently it's 43.2 °F, which, in canadianspeak is 6.2 °C.

the upside is that an indoor day means lots of sewing and catching up on stitchpixie orders that have gotten tossed to the wayside in the wake of wedding planning.

everyone has their wedding-related calling. to many, it is making favors, to others, perhaps tackling a cake....my wedding-related talent, however, is a bit of a moot point: photography. because no one wants to see a bride hauling around a huge digital SLR on her big day.

so with my main talent out the window, i'm still left with my strong diy-ethic and artistic ability. i can draw but i am no means a graphic designer, and i'm the farthest thing from being able to vectorize my own photographs. enter new miss milkshake blogging topic: invitations. and it ain't like those other bees who either a) have them all done and show off their pretty finished products or even b) who still have them all done, but managed to take detailed pictures of the process to share with the community -- four months before my wedding and i'm at the very beginning stages. so any feedback you can give will certainly help me along on my journey!

after finding no appropriate images on the net for blackberry related images (it pleased me that blackberries = august fruit...and i could perhaps incorporate real ones atop my simple cake), line art and photographs alike, i sat down with a pen and paper. but even after re-drawing my images much larger in a thicker pen to shrink down later via photocopier to make a more "letterpress-ready" image, i just wasn't getting the look i wanted. damn my scoffing at cross-hatching in art class.

this one below came close, but then again, i think it's a magnolia or something entirely unrelated to blackberries.

when i drove an hour out of town for the gown that i finally slammed down the visa card for, i had to kill an hour in the town till i came back to witness the size 2 bride buying the only sample of the dress that i never got to try on....not only was it my size, but she snagged it for 50% off! the positive spin on my impulse buy was that i spent my hour at a bookstore where i scoured their shelves for botany books for those letterpress-y images (i had been entirely unable to even find books with these images to buy on amazon and ebay). i came home with two, and i've now thrown out the blackberry idea in favor of great letterpress-ready (i hope) images.

an invite to fit into one of those square envelopes? no way! greeting card sized invite? no way! i'm really liking the long look, with rounded edges, to be put in an envelope like the one on the left (i'm strangely giddy that i was able to "draw" that on the computer because I couldn't find any images of the envelope i'm envisioning...i grew up with corel photopaint and i find that performing simple functions in photoshop incredibly difficult...ie making line art, or any image for that matter, with rounded edges. why is there no rounded edge-making tool!)


i haven't decided on any colors for my wedding, thinking it would be easier to leave it open (although my indecision is at times, perhaps, a larger force to reckon with than the logistics in color coordinating everything in tiffany blue, for example). i'm testing out the of white text on dark paper, above, but i'm not sure how well this works with letterpress...

and then i'm playing with other images because i'm a very indecisive person. i like that there's something strong behind even the most simplistic layouts.




i do think i like this combo the best, and while the rsvp card does seem a bit busy, who cares! if i get cute notes from all my guests, i'd rather have 100 of those to save than 100 boring cards where they simply ticked the box and wrote their names in.




so ... feedback?

i came home from my first ballet class in ten years yesterday, barely able to walk from my jazz class the day before where, to my surprise, i pulled off several split switches the (not me in that photo; i can no longer jump 4 feet off the ground), and i was so very excited to have reclaimed something great of my childhood and was equally excited to take a couple photos and blog about it, but my mood was deflated as if my pretty blue pickup truck had just gotten sideswiped by a semi-truck. my maid of honor put in her resignation. i considered stopping writing, and briefly entertained the idea of deleting the entire wedding blog, because what purpose did it really serve anymore? it was originally started an outlet for me to organize my wedding thoughts and keep in contact with my bridal party.

i got home from a gal bible study group tonight and they all had their condolences for me. in my last bible study group, people had a lot to say about tithing - that they wrestled with it, and prayed about it, and despite their financial woes, and in the end it provided its own unexpected rewards, but i just chalked it up to crazy protestant talk... (although i believe it is catholics that are more fervent about that ten percent). but i guess it's god's turn to "put it on my heart." i've sponsored a child in zambia through world vision for a few years now, starting back when i was a college student with no income, but wanting to put my st*tchpixie earnings toward something. i'd wanted to sponsor a child in high school, and attempted to rally friends to commit to $30 a month between us, but my parents brushed it off as something that i was not expected to do. so i rebeled in college and did it by myself, without an "after school job" to speak of.

so i sat down and made these donations tonight that i thought were very st*tchpixie-appropriate:


10% of st*tchpixie earnings have always been saved towards sponsoring a child, but i feel like my target audience for my product - vegan/left-wing/feminists is often at odds with the admittedly christian organization. i remember being at craft fairs, and people's faces would brighten up at seeing my 10% sponsors a child signs. then they'd ask me what organziation i went through, and i was heartbroken about the reactions i got when i said world vision with all its christian connotations. regardless of what background people come from, i think a lot of them are hostile toward such organizations and brush them off, saying that very little of your dollar actually goes toward helping the child and it gets eaten up in administrative fees. but i found the expenditure breakdown from two big organizations, so you can see for yourself that they're not out to rob you of your money.

it snowed here in seattle yesterday! and apparently in vancouver, bc it's like christmastime today.

ben foster seems to be a hot up and coming actor who embraces gritty roles...he's even in alpha dog. but i can't take him seriously! because he's Tucker! the boy-next-door to Becca in the world of the 1990's disney series Flash Forward. we sat down to watch 3:10 to Yuma last night and there he was - Tucker. on screen with the other 90's teeny-bopper heart-throb turned 200X dark actor, christian bale. but they're not even teeny-bopper in the same sense as jonathon taylor thomas. i did "stage" (aka musical theater) when i was younger, and one of our dance songs was from the movie newsies, starring christian bale.
i had the role of doogie howser's best friend, the movie narrator and supporting actor to bale. bale flaunted his dancing in swing kids and pulled off broadway style song and dance numbers in newsies. i was a little more than surprised to see him in Batman, nearly ten years after his last notable movie, and i was secretly waiting for him to break into a highly choreographed dance routine with katie holmes the whole way through, but i finally got over my preconceptions of the once-teen-actor when he won me over with the Prestige. the Prestige was fantastic. however, with ben foster's inconcievably short role in Xmen, and his crazy, bristly bearded character in yuma...i'm not quite sold on him as a grown up. because i loved him as tucker! he had that winnie cooper-kevin arnold relationship where they're at that age where the girl is taller than the boy, but becca doesn't remotely have that ice queen persona that winnie exudes. with loveable tucker on the brain, i somehow can't "flash forward" to his roles today....maybe it'll take a few more movies.