a new leg.

we are back on the road again. it is real. not that we were ever really not on the road. we just happened to be in toronto for two weeks. but now we have reemerged into the gothic wilds of michigan once again. soft rubble, flat a's, wild bunnies. it's a pleasure to be back.

i remember stephanie once talking about how sad it felt sometimes to live in a place about which nobody would ever write anything that was 100% nice. seattle, she said, could have flowery travel pieces in glossy magazines; detroit's virtues were always "in spite of." well clearly i am proving her right at the moment - hopefully in a relatively gentle way. my comments about rubble should not belie my true affection for the motor city. i always have a good time there and am very glad to have gotten to know it if even just a little bit.

today we went to some favorite haunts just outside of the city - a craft supply store about which i have been sworn to internet secrecy and an antique mall. aitor made a pretty awesome investment at the antique mall. i think i need to wait on its reveal until i have a good enough picture. it's worth a picture.

it's too bad we didn't have much time to dally. i really like hanging out with stephanie - chatting, laughing and talkin' craft. but we had to make it to chicago by night and wanted to make a quick stop in a nearby town where i have never been - ann arbor. but why?

right there is the unassuming non-storefront of online retail genius, shana logic (well, the shop is called shana logic, the genius is just called shana). i "met" shana years ago when i was just a young buck trolling around on craftster. i was one of her early vendors and she was one of my first retail outlets. almost everyone else i went into business with around that time ripped me off. it was a bad scene that taught me a lot about running my own operation. shana, though, has been a totally different story through and through. she focuses on her business with such keen vision, she is hugely respectful of her artists (and tolerant from my spinny experience) and she has badass skills when it comes to design.

of the many things i learned on our brief warehouse visit, the most shocking was that i have been silently mispronouncing shana's name in my head for years. it's hard to deprogram. i also learned that shana rarely shows off her office space for fear that its windowless brick walls do nothing to express the intense cuteness of her site and approach to graphic design. me, i am impressed with a streamlined business hub...or anything with a devoted shipping centre, for that matter. at sweetie pie headquarters, the shipping centre is an impossibly cluttered secretariat that also serves as fabric and button part storage. colour me impressed, shana. it was so lovely to get to meet you in person for the second time in our five year stranger-friendship.

oh, that? that box up there is my in-warehouse avatar. my crate defines who i am in the great logic of shana. swe, yo!