muxtape.

even though it's stillllllll cold {feels like it always will be} i made a summer themed 'muxtape' to share. check it out here.

cruisin'

i already own a beautiful bike, but these cycles are so alluring it makes me want to have a back-up cruiser. {even though i'm sure they are heavy as sin.}



first off, as i love the netherlands the best; jorg & olif's dutch city bike, sweetly named "scout".



next, from italy, the "granturismo" by abici.



and a something with a little more flare from great britain, the pashley "tube runner" in double scoop. mmmm. that one is my favorite!

colorful meals.

fishs eddy has their pantone collection of dishes, mugs and bowls on sale right now! i might be moving soon and i don't currently own any of the dishware in the house and having an actual matching set might be nice.




hmmm....payday is tomorrow and at over 50% off it's not too much of a splurge. ikea pricing, but a little more unique. w2products has a different version of the mug that i like a lot better, but unfortunately they don't ship outside of the EU.



ps. fishs eddy also has a pantone totebag {$2.38} and airline flatware {no knives}.

to seek and to find.

can we just talk about walt whitman for a minute? ok.
i love walt whitman. i have a whitman tattoo. the names of both my blog and flickr, the tattoo quote and a few embroideries that i've done, all come from my most favorite poem of his:

the untold want
by life and land
ne’er granted
Now, Voyager
sail thou forth
to see and to find.

those six lines just say so much! many of the poems in leaves of grass speak of love, the strength of the individual, the wonders of the american life; subjects ranging from how great president lincoln is and celebrations of the soldiers of the civil war to poems that are so frank about love and sexuality that it was deemed 'obscene' upon it's first printings.

here is my favorite portion of song of the broad-axe:

11
her shape arises,
she, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;
the gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d;
she knows the thoughts as she passes—nothing is conceal’d from her;
she is none the less considerate or friendly therefor;
she is the best belov’d—
it is without exception—
she has no reason to fear, and she does not fear;
oaths, quarrels, hiccupp’d songs,
smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes;
she is silent—she is possess’d of herself—they do not offend her;
she receives them as the laws of nature receive them—she is strong,
she too is a law of nature—there is no law stronger than she is.

i wouldn't say that i'm a poetry fan by any means, but his writings are just so beautiful and they have inspired me on so many levels. there are loads of copies for sale on ebay, from 99¢ up to a first edition for $110,000. you can also read them all here, although i recommend reading them in book form because as whitman said himself, "...read me in the open air, i am nearly always successful with the reader in the open air." favorites to read: o you whom i often and silently come, there was a child went forth, i dream'd in a dream, among the multitude, and song of myself.

dream one.

a nice way to end a so-so tuesday.



one of my favorite belle & sebastian songs {actually, all of them are my favorite} and quite possibly the best music video of all time. when you're done watching this video you should probably watch the one for "century of fakers" because that one's great too.

flickr of congress

the library of congress has it's own flickr page and with over 3,000 photos it's a good way to spend 4 hours at work when there is nothing else to do except update broken links in indesign, and who really wants to do that anyway? right now they only have images from the first-half of the 20th century, but i can't wait until they get to the sixties and seventies so we can see some nice mod dance parties and hippie commune shots. here are a few of my favorites so far:

+books.

since the beginning of 2005 i've been keeping track of each and every book that i read. overall i'm at an average of one book every 1.58 weeks. not TOO shabby, but my ultimate goal is 50 books in one year. the greatness of summer and the outdoor fun that it brings usually gets in the way {and rightly so}, but i'm off to a great start this year {started my 17th book this morning at work,[ yes, at work]} so i think i'm off to a good head start. i've got a pretty long list of books i'm looking forward to reading, but i decided to look up pulitzer prize winners in order to read some books that are very likely to not stink. after looking at the list i realized that i've only read 4 winning books! to remedy this terrible, terrible situation i've added 10 books to my library queue.

hippie eggs.

here is my weekend attempt at dyeing eggs naturally:



i used boiled red cabbage to create a blue color {and a smelly kitchen!} and marbled them with veggie oil. since we didn't already have alum on hand, but did somehow have two jars of cream of tartar and they are almost the same thing, i used that as a quick replacement. i think that might be the reason why they came out looking very glam rock {glam egg?} and covered in crystals! it was pretty fun, but the instant gratification part was definitely not involved, as it took approximately 3 hours from start to finish. i could have left them in a bit longer to get a darker color, but i had already finished my book and was ready to go to bed. woo, exciting weekend!