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!

how could i forget...

upon returning home, we discovered that the big fern that reuben gave us (for fear that it might attack his infant) had invaded our kitchen curtain during our leave of the city. i wanted to cut it back and restore order to our nook but instead kept leaving it one more day to ponder the tenacity of nature. now i can't cut it. so instead, an argument between organics and plastics is playing out across our window. or maybe i am being a pessimist. maybe they are mating. or canoodling.

i wish my pictures did it the right kind of justice.

window dressing.

photo by massdistraction

i am not ashamed to announce that i will be coming out of my button making shell this sunday when i will find myself on delicate display in the window of one of my favorite chicagoland stores, uncle fun. i will be there making buttons for your amusement and fascination (and my own stamina challenging). since many people make buttons (chicago is not wanting for button prodigies by any stretch), i have decided to do more than just make buttons. instead, i am focusing on a redoubling of efforts in the security envelope department. were i seven different people, security envelope button production would never have slowed. but i am one person and there is sometimes rent to pay.

regardless of any of that, this sunday will see me turing a big heap of envelope guts into a smaller (but still impressive) heap of 1" buttons. marvel at the calming monotomy! wonder at the smallness of modern day factory manufacture! watch garbage become accessories! press your faces against the window and weird me out!

saturday will also see aitor doing unflattering portraits in the very same window. just sayin'. at the time of posting, there are still appointments left. scoop 'em up!

hair today, gone tomorrow.

this reminds me, today i booked a free haircut for my return to toronto. i am really looking forward to the freedom that a bit of debulking will do.

no sleep till.

oh, you know the rest.

we have returned to the place that used to terrify me with its loud sounds, horror drivers and finger-nail-sullying air. over the years, it has grown to be populated with friendly faces and familiar places. i can even handle the bqe without crying now (usually).

we rolled into brooklyn and went straight to etsy. our charming hostess, melissa, teaches public school until later in the day and anda opened herself up to some chilly canadian hugs so we had a place to land. when the etsy offices aren't entirely overrun with activity and meetings, our old friends there are usually able to offer the ability to plug in. after all, in the indie craft community they basically are the internet (no offense to other ethereal craft exploits, but...c'mon...they are our world's equivalent of the borg).

after some frantic chatting, some emailing, some wandering, some leg stretching and some eating, we made our way over to melissa's. we decompressed. we got a little caught up. then we motivated ourselves to make it over to melody lanes for a late game of ten pin before they closed. we are all atrocious bowlers but the place is great...and not just because of this guy (who got aitor a little too drunk on tequila).

oh yeah, i won. 78 is a pretty hot score, right?

all business philly day.

today we stole some children and did some very important business around town. we started with a visit to our friend paul's brand new print shop, fireball printing, to pick up some of hazel's ghost prints. the place is huge as are so many such spaces in philly. i was also excited that a clean cut man in black pants and a tie was repairing one of the copiers when we got there. he looked like an old timey door-to-door solicitor.

shiny new prints in hand, we all went down to northern liberties for a meeting with art star. me, aitor and hazel all had appointments. it was hazel's first store meeting which i am happy to report went very well, indeed.

hazel's first store sale, caught on camera. look at that pile of cuteness. those are art star proprietresses, erin and megan sealing the deal. after a successful day out, we decided to push our luck with a very long and misguided goose chase to south street. lessons learned: if you take directions from a fifteen-year-old, you might end up peeing in a scary alley for lack of working bathrooms in the vicinity. in spite of our long pointless journey, we did stumble into some points of interest (see below). what else is new?

grand day out at the italian market.

did i mention the amazing picnic basket that i thrifted in ohio with a full mustard coloured set inside? it has totally changed and improved my portable display. this is a good thing because at ten dollars it seemed beyond my meagre budget at the time.

it helped a great deal today in devising a card-table-sized display to bring to the italian market. we accompanied julie who both has experience in guerrilla street vending and the italian market connections to find somewhere to set up without hassle. it was a minimal display but a step towards the craft fair holy grail of portability and acceptable aesthetics.

this has been a pretty self-absorbed posting, so i will leave you with this to help find your way out of here: