All Imperfect Things

Update and Kwaidan

Round two of trying to get back into the habit of blogging again. A very busy spring and beginning of summer has resulted in blog neglecting, as well as little time for painting and creating. Which has been a bit of a bummer since I seemed to be on a roll for awhile there. But it's ok, I'll get back into the swing of things soon enough.

I'm also going to start my 365 project over, starting July 1st. I have quite a few missing days due to being away and forgetting to keep a camera on me everyday (my cellphone takes crappy photos, so I don't even try to take anything with it). Plus I have a couple months or so of photos that I haven't even processed, and I was dreading having to go back, re-size, and upload all of them. Hopefully I'll have better luck the second time around though, this really is a fun little project so I don't want to quit on it.

And so this post doesn't go without pictures...today I ran in Barnes and Nobles for a moment before they closed, for no reason really, and I saw this really nice, beautifully illustrated, edition of Kwaidan...

 

 

 

It'll be fun re-reading these stories again, I love Japanese ghost stories!

Goddess

 

 

 

 

My book on Graeco-Roman clothing arrived a few days ago and it's quite lovely. I haven't had a chance to read through much of it yet but the photos and illustrations in this book are not only beautiful to look at, but will definitely be helpful to use as reference for drawing draped fabric, as well as just good reference for greek/roman costuming. There are plenty of photos and illustrations in here, large, bold, and beautifully printed. So as far as reference material, this book turned out to be just what I was hoping it would be. The layout of it is very nice too, very clean and structured.

I wish I could sew really well, If I could, I'd totally be making all kinds of soft flowy draped clothing, it's gorgeous to me. Probably wouldn't even be that hard, compared to more structured clothing anyway. Maybe one day I'll get around to learning how to sew better.

The Red Book and Ballet

While on one of my book browsing sprees, which I probably do far to often because my list of books to check out soon is getting ridiculously long, I came across this book, "The Red Book" by Carl Jung. Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and influential thinker, who, as Wikipedia states perfectly: emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, religion and philosophy. While I have heard and read quite a bit about him I've never read any of his books themselves oddly enough, though I do recall hearing a little about "The Red Book" as well. So when I found this I thought I'd do a little research and see what it was all about, and oh what a gem this appears to be!

 

Apparently in 1913 Jung started seeing visions and hearing voices, as a result of this he began to induce hallucinations and record everything he saw and felt into journals. Then he compiled these notes into a red leather bound book that he worked on for about 16 years. However it was never published until this past October. The published book also contains images of over two hundred paintings and his gorgeous calligraphy work.

As if this book wasn't enough to be excited over, I also found out his original journals are on display at The Rubin Museum of Art in New York until January 25th. Which is pretty cool since I'll probably be back in New York anyway for a short while next month, hopefully I'll have time to check this out.

 

On a different note, I was looking for some reference photos and ran across this neat little blog post which a bit of a behind the scenes look at the wardrobe department of the Scottish Ballet, pretty neat stuff. I use to take ballet and tap dance for little while when I was younger. Over the past year or so I've been thinking about getting back into dance, just for fun, and taking ballet again as well as modern. Had planned to start last month but decided to put it off until after the Holidays, when life settles down a bit.

And lastly this is so very random, but silly little things like this make me happy. I purchased something from Etsy (yes, I'm am Etsy and Ebay addict) a little while ago and they sent my stuff wrapped in the neatest looking wrapping tissue. It has more of an antique tea stained look to it in real life, the light pretty much washed out the color and texture in these photos.

I love this print though, I even sent a message to the seller asking where she got the tissue from, lol. If it were a little earlier in the month I'd be tempted to order some for wrapping Christmas gifts in, even though it isn't a holiday print at all, it does come in a red color that would look a little more festive, I guess. But anyway I just like gift wrapping and nice packaging, whenever I'm wrapping something for someone I'm always one to get a little carried away with it.

Skeleton Keys and Books

These pretties arrived in the mail the other day, 12 new skeleton keys to add to my growing collection. One tiny silver key is missing in this photo, don't know what happened to it, I think I must have dropped it somewhere. I have quite a few older skeleton keys that I'm saving for various projects. Since these are so lovely and bit more fancy than my others, I think I'm going to chill out one night with a movie and make some jewelry out of some of them. The rest, who knows, but I'm sure I'll come up with something

 

I think this one is my favorite, definitely using this one for a necklace! Maybe with some freshwater pearls or some light color quarts beads or something. I've really been into pastels and light airy colors lately oddly enough, I think this kind of color palette is going to show up in some paintings soon.

Which brings me to this book I found a few days ago while browsing through Barns and Nobles website while I was looking for something totally different...

 

I was looking for books on Native American tales and legends so I'm not quite sure how I wound up in fashion books, lol. But this looks really interesting, the book is called Goddess: The Classical Mode and it's by Harold Koda. Apparently it's from a 2003 exhibition at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Basically it explores the continually evolving influence of ancient Graeco-Roman dress through the ages. Being someone who is a big fan of both costume design and ancient Graeco-Roman fashion/dress I knew this was definitaly a must have book for me.

However looking at the few photos I was able to find online of some of the pictures inside the book, this looks like it'll be a really good reference book as well for drawing fabric and drapery. Which is something I feel like I have some trouble with and need to practice more. Unfortunately this book is no where to be found at Barns and Nobles or Borders in my area so I'll have to order it. But I'll post some more on it when I get it, I hope it'll be as good as it seems.

Lastly, speaking of books, is this not the almost perfect little reading nook? And I say almost because I think it would be even neater if it had a little window in there to look outside. But still, I think it's pretty fantastic and cozy. For a bookworm like myself I'd love to have cozy reading nook in a future home! Since it would be awfully tricky and impossible to do something like that in a tiny apartment, haha. I wish!