onepaisley

Friday, October 31, 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

today's heroine :: edith head :: costume design

tuesday night i went to see the movie "city of ember"... the costumes- mostly knitwear- were beautiful. so much texture, the costume designer ruth meyers did an amazing job.
therefore, i felt inspired to blog about one of my favorite (cliche or not) costume designers of all time, edith head.
is it a coincidence that all of my heroines wear amazing glasses or have funny bangs? i think not.

"...Head was a very private woman, a trait well illustrated by the dark sunglasses that became her trademark. Originally the lenses were blue, but later they were dark shades of gray. They were worn originally to see how the clothing would appear in black and white. The glasses and her unchanging hair style helped her to hide her true age. In the 1920s, she wore a Colleen Moore Dutch boy cut, but in the 1930s she noticed Anna May Wong's style and copied it: flat bangs with a chignon at the back. She would wear it for the rest of her life. These features and the consistency of her appearance over the decades helped make her an instantly recognised figure. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Head

also, if you remember the movie "the incredibles", i would like to note the remarkable resemblance between edith head and the silly little seamstress "edna more"...

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

the end of fall

cue the magic words..."and a chance of flurries"

"take a hike" or "go felt yourself"

a week ago i went on a short hike with my parents. i spent most of the hike picking up leaves and acorns and at one point found these awesome fungi and decided it would be a good photo op for the iphone case i made out of felt. (this is about the point where i heard my mother who was further up the path yell "are you ok!?!").

Monday, October 27, 2008

SAORI :: my current fibercraft

i recently started taking a saori weaving class and am finding it more enjoyable, relaxing and intuitive than previous fibercraft endeavors.

so with that said, let me introduce you to SAORI:

"The "sa" in "SAORI" ("ori" means "weaving"), is a Zen Buddhist term that means "each thing has its own unique quality" or "each person has his or her own unique quality." So, because of these spiritual roots, as experienced and expressed by founder Misao Jo, SAORI is more than just a technique. It is also:
A philosophy that all people are artists: each of us has a latent intuitive power that SAORI can awaken
An aesthetic that embraces the natural beauty of unintended "mistakes" and encourages exploring the unknown.
A social movement towards bringing diverse people together to learn from one another. It is especially a movement to include within a larger community people who may be isolated or marginalized because of disability, age, income, overwork, caregiving, ethnicity, or other reasons. An artistic yet practical path of meditation, therapy, rehabilitation, trauma recovery, stress reduction, identity-building, community-building, economic self-reliance, and holistic human devlopment."
http://saoriworcester.com/what.htm

my teacher bobbie had to get permission from the city of osaka to open a saori studio outside of japan. pretty crazy eh? i however do not drive to worcester for classes, but to a studio in penacook, nh. the photo on the left is misao jo who is now 95 yrs. old.

monday boos

i heart henry

it seems like every time i hear or read a poem and like it, it ends up being by longfellow. though i enjoy the way "iambic pentameter" rolls off the tongue-don't mistake me for a poetry buff, i've just been getting back into it lately.