elephantine

hound fall/winter 2011

The new collection is right up my alley.

fiction friday: machine

   Without the instruction manual, she was having a hard time getting the time machine to work. If she had the manual, the steps would be spelled out clearly: flip those three switches, but not the fourth, punch in the year, then adjust those two knobs, but not the third, and depress the beveled silver button until it emitted its little buzz of confirmation. Get the sequence wrong and the machine shuddered, as if trying to shake out whoever was inside.
   It was getting late. She needed to get back home, sneak back into her bedroom, and stuff her clothes somewhere deep in her closet. No one had warned her about that, and it surprised her the first time – that she would come back smelling like the past. It seeped into her sweatshirts and stunk up her jeans.
   She tried another sequence. Wrong again. The machine trembled, and for longer than the last time. She dug her fingers into the armrest and waited for it to pass.

   The time machine didn't have any windows, but it did have a peephole. When the shaking subsided, she stepped up onto the narrow ledge and pressed one eye into the red-rimmed circle and closed the other. The time machine's shuddering was undoubtedly noisy, but all she could do was hope that the bushes she had landed in were softening the sound.
   From what she could see of the street, it was empty. Empty, except for a boy sitting next to a dog on a porch a few doors down. But he wasn't – oh. But now he was up. He was coming this way, and the dog was following. She held her breath. She waited for the boy to pass, but he kept walking toward the machine.

  When he pulled back the leaves and his chubby face filled the entire peephole, she let out her breath and cried out. She fell back from the peephole and fumbled around in the tight interior of the machine. The emergency button was here, somewhere, and it was orange, or red-orange – or was it yellow?
   There it was. Yellow. On the ceiling, just out of reach. One big jump and she'd be able to reach it. And then the time machine would disappear – poof! – and spit her out into a random year, simultaneously draining the battery, forcing her to survive on her own for a month, maybe two, while it recharged.
   "Dad!" the boy was yelling, on the other side of the metal shell. "Come 'ere! Look what I found!"
   Now or never. She jumped up. She hit the yellow button, wondered if it was something she'd regret forever, then felt the time machine lift and compress around her body before her feet could touch back down.

calliope

a little video for the calliope necklace, a new addition to the shop.

today

a couple shots from around the neigborhood.

recent etsy faves

This cowl, these buttons, this book, and this print.

pretty photos...

...from honeytree.

love these totes...

...from Jenna Rose.

chinese almond cookies

Has it really been three months since my last food post? I apologize. There will be more videos in the future, but for now I'd like to just share the above photos and this yummy recipe for Chinese almond cookies. My version of this recipe differs from the original in two ways: first, it uses twice as much egg (an accident, but it turned out well), and second, I dusted them with powdered sugar as a finishing touch.

Chinese Almond Cookies (yields 2 dozen)
adapted from All Recipes

1 1/3 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
24 almonds
powdered sugar

1. Sift flour into a large bowl. Mix in sugar, baking soda and salt. Cut in the butter. Add egg and almond extract. Mix well. (Note: my dough was too crumbly when I mixed it by hand, because the butter wasn't breaking up enough. I switched to my stand mixer and it fixed the consistency.)

2. Roll dough into 3/4" balls and place on a cookie sheet. Press an almond gently into the top of each cookie.

3. Bake at 325°F for about 12 minutes, or until the edges just barely turn brown. Let cool before dusting lightly with powdered sugar.

have a great weekend!

p.s. my new hobby is collecting old books. the hunt is half the fun.

give me a sign...

Loving these plaques from paulova ceramics.

the cutest moccasins...

...from freshly picked.

morning roses...

...spotted on my morning walk with Bodhi...

petit beast

My new favorite air plant shop.

bonjour! {part two}

I wasn't sure any of the videos I shot in Paris were going to turn out, because I'm used to filming with a tripod and multiple takes. But, somehow, I had just enough workable clips to stitch together the above video. (The music is by Les Chauds Lapins.)

And I have a few more photos to share, too:

A few more thoughts on Paris:

We bought Paris Museum Passes, which allowed us to stand in shorter lines and not feel pressured to see everything in a museum just to "get our money's worth."

After we got burnt out on sightseeing, we spent the rest of our time more leisurely: exploring the neighborhoods, searching for souvenirs, browsing the bouquinistes, and eating tarts and pain au chocolat.

The best view of the Eiffel Tower was at night from the Jardins du Trocadéro‎.

I can't stress how awesomely efficient the Metro is. Can Seattle have one? Pretty please?

Crowds can kind of ruin places that would otherwise be enjoyable. Everyone and their mother were taking photos of the Mona Lisa, touring Notre Dame, and shopping on the Champs-Élysées. One of the nicest places to visit was also the least crowded: the Jardin du Luxembourg, complete with a warm Nutella crepe.

The Musée d'Orsay had some of the biggest paintings I've ever seen!

I spent many hours studying French before this trip, but basically only ended up using "Bonjour," "Merci," and "Oui." Don't get me wrong – I wanted to speak more French, but I could barely understand the native speakers, because real people don't speak in simplified sentences like the people in language lessons do. (Most Parisians speak English, but I had been hoping that I wouldn't need to ask "Parlez-vous Anglais?" so soon.)

We took a nighttime boat tour with Vedettes Pont-Neuf. Sit on the top deck and bundle up!

We stayed in a studio in the Marais from Paris Vacation Apartments, and the accommodations & their staff were both wonderful. Walking through the city, St. Germain was another area that I liked the vibe of – that's where I'd want to stay if we ever go back.

Fig sorbet from Berthillon = yum!

happy friday!

Hope your weekend is just as fun as these illustrations by laura berger...

karine léger...

...painter + collagist.

bonjour!

Hi guys. I'm back! We had a great trip but I'm exhausted from all the traveling (I slept for about twelve hours last night and am still tired). Some thoughts on Paris: the baguettes are tasty, but the butter is amazing; the city smells good; the "rude Parisian" stereotype isn't true; the best spots in the city are where it's quiet; the Metro is awesome for getting around quickly; the gardens are beautiful; Les Simpson is fun to watch (Homer says "T'oh" instead of "D'oh"); as cliché as it might be, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre were two of my favorite things to see. Ready for a few photos? I have tons more than this, but here's a handful for now...

au revoir!

Paris (!!!) is coming up in just a handful of days, so I'm signing off to get things in order. (By the way, the shop is staying open, but orders won't start shipping until October 11th.) I'll be back with regular posts after our honeymoon, but in the meantime, here are some lovely blogs I recommend visiting... cannelle et vanille. eat sleep cuddle. hooray. jessica hische. lingered upon. matchbox kitchen. my suitcase heart. noodle 'n thread. oh happy day. one fine dae. rifle paper co. seesaw. wit & whistle.

Hope you have a great day.

(photo from here.)

and o design

fun little pieces from and o design.

of the fountain

love these stamped leather tags from Of The Fountain.

recent faves...

this art, these feathers, this photo, this dress.

sleeping in stripes

cozy + cute sleepwear from pop-lin.

love this...

claire's beautiful kitchen renovation.

jewelry of the month

I'm very excited about my new jewelry of the month club. Six months of silver and gold surprises.

fiction friday: my wife, the head

This post is part of Fiction Friday, a series born out of my ongoing desire to be a novelist. These stories are meant to be read independently. They are fictional vignettes inspired by glimmers from my life.

    Every time something goes wrong – which is often, now that Catherine is only a head – she asks me to write it down in the notebook. We’ll document it, she says, and then we’ll brainstorm how to avoid repeating the same mistake. By we, of course, she means me. But it’s okay. I get it. She has better things to worry about.
    Before the decapitation, Catherine engaged in horseback riding, Chinese Checkers, and wine tastings. She has refused to change this lifestyle, body or no body. Take the horseback riding. We'll drive out to the country, past the miniature rusted windmills and fields of toxic lavender, pay a ranch hand two hundred dollars for his least ornery mare, and Catherine keeps falling off the damn thing. But of all the bodiless heads you've met, she's the most determined, I'm telling you. She’s got a death grip on the saddle with those big square teeth of hers. It’s just tough, you know, with all that bucking, all that thrashing.
    In the notebook, I write: Research specialized saddles, and/or smaller horses.
    With a little creativity, Chinese Checkers is almost like the old days. Last week, I used a Sharpie to number each marble – there are six sets of ten, in shades of yellow, tangerine, white, violet, green, and black. Now, during our all-night matches, Catherine shouts out vocal instructions when it’s her turn. Who says you need arms to have some old-fashioned fun?
    Good sportsmanship still isn’t her forte. Lose a game and she’ll heave herself onto the board, splaying the marbles every which way. It’s my one pet peeve, you know? Fishing game pieces out from under the couch? And yet she continues to do it.
    Wine tastings are a different kind of thorny issue. After a couple sips, she’s smashed. She slurs, she laughs at anything, she droops her eyelids, revealing smudged mauve eye shadow. Another few sips and she becomes argumentative, rocking restlessly back and forth on the stool, her eyelashes batting furiously.
    "Do you want some bread?" I ask her. "They’ve got special dips here. You like balsamic vinegar, right?"
    "Don’t look down at me like that,” she says.
    We are at the new winery down the street. These days, there’s one on every block. Around our table – which is this huge oak masterpiece suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire – the other guests become hushed, nervous about our argument. I feel my cheeks flush. I clear my throat loudly and raise my glass.
    "To my beautiful wife," I say. This seems to please them. The clinking of glasses commences.

decoylab

Love these clocks + pins from decoylab.

things i like today.

this sepia print. these mexican wedding banners. these bath salts. this vase.

elephantine on facebook!

Like elephantine jewelry? Introducing the facebook fanpage. Click 'like' to follow along with announcements + product updates + prehaps even a secret sale now and then....

something sweet

from Studio SloMo.

the mood that passes through you

pretty, pretty! mignonne handmade.

recent faves...

(...from switchblade & cookie, cassandra smith, independent reign, and studio snowpuppe.)

fiction friday: hobby

This post is part of Fiction Friday, a series born out of my ongoing desire to be a novelist. These stories are meant to be read independently. They are fictional vignettes inspired by glimmers from my life.

   It takes us six months to watch all the movies beginning with A, which we rent from the Video Isle downtown. Grace likes the westerns and the romantic comedies. Anything where someone saves someone else, either from a shotgun or heartbreak. I like the ones with ambiguous endings.
    By October, we have Beetlejuice in the DVD player, Ben-Hur on the coffee table, and five hours until Video Isle closes.
    "I give that an F," says Grace, during the Beetlejuice credits.
    "Really?" I ask. "I didn't think it was so bad."

    Grace starts to lose interest by the time we're mid-way through the C's. She complains that it's all we ever do anymore.
    "But we never went out in the first place," I point out.

    She takes me to a bar that she used to go to before I knew her. She says – over all the laughing and clinking of glasses – that what I need is a date. I say no. She says yes. She says she'll find someone for me here, fix me up. And then she's gone, vanished into some dark corner of the room.
    I order a seltzer from the bartender.
    Grace reappears with her hand hooked around the arm of a stranger. Grace announces that his name is Bill. She whispers in my ear, "He's a surgeon," and raises her eyebrows, like, ahem, look who just won the lottery.
    "Let me buy you a drink," says Bill.
    I point to the glass of mineral water fizzing on the bar.
    "Oh," says Bill. "How about dinner?"
    "Sorry," I say. "I have to return a movie tonight."

    Grace and Bill start dating. At first, she's out with him two nights a week, then three, then five.
    "You guys pretty serious?" I ask.
    "As serious as you and those stupid DVDs," she says.
    "Hey," I say. "You're the one who's missing out."
    "Right," she says.

    Somewhere around the time I finish King Kong, Grace announces that she's moving in with Bill. Her boxes are packaged by Kiss of the Spider Woman; her keys left on the linoleum countertop by Kramer vs. Kramer.
    "Grace?" I call out, but no one answers.

    The very last movie at Video Isle is one that Grace would have liked; I'm sure of it. I call her as the credits run. We haven't talked in years. She and Bill could be married, for all I know. She could have five kids, a house on the lake, a savings account longer than four digits.
    "Grace?" I ask, when a woman answers. "Remember me?"
    She does.
    "Have you ever seen Zorro's Fighting Legion?"
    I hear a sigh. "No," she says. "I haven't."
    "You would like it," I say. "Are you busy? Do you want to come watch it?"
    "Don't tell me you're going to start re-watching all those movies," she says.
    "I was thinking about it," I say.
    "I have to go," she says. "Goodbye."
    "Come on," I say, even though I hear the click of her phone cutting off. "Don't you love re-watching a movie? Hello? Grace? You know what I mean, don't you? You always see things you didn't notice the first time. Little details, or even big things, really big things. There's always parts you missed."

hand-carved stamps

(From extase.)

new in the shop...

(ithaca necklace and les diamants bracelet.)

suite one studio

(Pretty porcelain.)

write with moxie

(I want some of these recycled paper pencils, please.)

hard cider

(This hard cider packaging rocks.)

gift cards...

(...are now in the shop! They can also be emailed to the recipient for a last minute gift.)

whitney deal fall 2011

(Whitney just launched her new website and fall 2011 collection. Everything is so pretty!)

loving these...

(...clothes by Janey, made in Ireland.)

fiction friday: hands (part two)

This post is part of Fiction Friday, a series born out of my ongoing desire to be a novelist. These stories are meant to be read independently. They are fictional vignettes inspired by glimmers from my life.

   Dottie knocked on Iggy Stone's door at a quarter past seven. It had been two days since their conversation at the Co-op. Two days was plenty of time for Dottie to reconsider her offer, but nothing had happened in those forty-eight hours to convince her that she shouldn't drive across town to Iggy's one-story home.
    "Dottie," said Iggy, when the door opened, "it's nice to see you again."
    She followed him into the hallway, looking for a place to take off her shoes but seeing no opportunity to. She noticed Iggy was wearing his sneakers.
    "It's a lovely house," Dottie said. "It looks like you're all settled in, aren't you?"
    "I guess I am," said Iggy.
    "And you've been here for…"
    "Four months."
    "Ah," she said. "That's right."
    Iggy showed her the way through the house to the backdoor, which he held open for her to walk through first. The backyard was square, and bordered with a tall wooden fence. There was a path of round stones that led to a small dining table and two chairs. The rest of the yard was a tangle of green.
    "As I mentioned to you the other day," said Iggy, "I'm having a tough time telling the difference between what to dig up and what to leave. It all looks the same to me, you know?"
    Dottie crouched down and cupped her hand around a cluster of tiny flowers. She had to concentrate to not lose her balance. "But you do know these ones aren't weeds, right?" she asked Iggy.
    "Okay," he said. "But what about this?"
    Now he was kneeling, too, his long legs folded beside hers. He was pointing to a plant that at first she couldn't place the name of. In her mind, she flipped through the yellowing reference book that she kept on a low shelf at home. It came to her. "Mountain mint," Dottie said. "Funny, that's not often seen around here."
    They slowly continued around the yard. By the time they reached the side of the yard with the table and the chairs, the light was almost out of the sky. A lamp mounted to the back of the house had flickered on automatically by then, joined by the soft lights cast from the neighbors' homes. Dottie had sunk into such a trance of pointing out and naming the plants that she had all but forgotten her reservations about coming to Iggy's house. Spending this short about of time in his company, and him becoming less of a stranger to her, made those rumors in her head sound even more ridiculous. Iggy wasn't the kind of man who burned down a building, was he? Weren't people who did things like that angry, cynical, unpleasant? People like that weren't kind to middle-aged women in grocery stores, were they?
    "I've taken up too much of your time," Iggy was saying to her. "I didn't realize how late it'd gotten."
    "No, no, it's fine," said Dottie.
    They stood. Dottie's legs felt weak from kneeling for so long, as if all the blood had drained out of them. She rested a hand on the back of one of the chairs and glanced back toward the house.
    "I really appreciate you coming by. I hate to say it, but you're the first visitor I've had," Iggy admitted.
    "Oh?" she asked.
    "I know what people have been saying," he said, and then Dottie felt a speck of hope appear, then quickly disappear as he finished what he was saying: "I guess I don't blame them, really."
    "It's none of our business," Dottie said, her face suddenly burning.
    "It's late. I'll walk you out to your car."
    "No," she said. "I'm fine, thank you."
    He opened the backdoor for her, as he had done when they had first come into the backyard. Her pace quickened as she navigated through his narrow hallway and out the front door, down the two wide steps, and out toward her car that was parked directly in front of the house. Her keys were already in her hand. Before opening the car door, she paused, and looked over her shoulder toward the house. Iggy was standing in the living room, at the window, watching her go. He raised a hand, waving once before retreating.

kerry in blush

(Remember kerry? Now there's kerry in blush in the shop.)

the smallest cute paintings...

(...from coolranchstudio.)

sweet shirts...

(...from Kin Ship Press.)

photos for tuesday...

(SJ's photo album.)

Delizioso!

(At the top of my wishlist: this calzone mold from Williams-Sonoma.)

fiction friday: apartment

This post is part of Fiction Friday, a series born out of my ongoing desire to be a novelist. These stories are meant to be read independently. They are fictional vignettes inspired by glimmers from my life.

    For years afterward, this is what settled permanently into her memory: checks for the first and last months, the short dirty carpets, two sets of keys, one left in a cup on top of the fridge, the love seat she called about in the classifieds, the weekend she reupholstered it, the reverberating parties upstairs, the couple fighting downstairs, the sink that always clogged, the warm sweet scent of the nearby bakery in the mornings, buses thundering angrily down the street, people that yelled after them to wait, neighbors that flirted and laughed in the hallways, the purring of helicopters combing the city, the boyfriend who always called before coming over, him kissing her under her doorway on New Year's Eve, the month she had to call her father for money, the coin-operated washing machines left tacky from spilled detergent, the way the living room smelled like whatever she cooked in the kitchen, the fruit bowl piled high from the springtime trips to the farmer's market, the heat that suffocated the apartment in the worst of summer, the fraction of light that seeped through the blinds in autumn, and the stack of broken-down cardboard boxes she unearthed when the lease was nearly up, all her things barely fitting into them, crumpled bits of newspaper filling the leftover spaces.

the september mixtape

Something about a new month made me want to throw together a mixtape. Listen to it above or here!

The tracks: Keep The Dog Quiet (Owen Pallett). Where is My Mind (Emmy the Great). Heartbeats (The Knife). The Great Escape (Patrick Watson). Oublie Pas (Karkwa). Ants (edIT). Iron (Woodkid). Raincoats (Efterklang). Mary's Song (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis).

a place i would like to eat at.

Tenpenny, photographed beautifully by the talented Nicole Franzen.

pretty photos...

(...by vickie, sylvain-emmanuel, ana, and anabela.)