busy busy

sneak peek of the new clutch design i have been working on:

it's zippered and folds over on itself with a snap closure, there is a slip pocket under the fold and two inner pockets.

take me to delicious town

i drove out to meet my bff in bklyn one night to pick up some stuff. after blabbing about whatever we decided to have something to eat. i remembered her telling me that there was an Ethiopian restaurant nearby when she first moved there. i really wanted to try it but there was also a BBQ place nearby (i heart BBQ, we both do) so we decided to scope out the Ethiopian joint and see if it was something worth giving up the precious space in our tummies that could've been filled with BBQ madness otherwise. there really wasn't much to debate it looked amazing, we could get BBQ anytime.

photo courtesy of Bati's website

the place is called Bati, located at 747 Fulton Street in Bklyn. it was really good, it's the only Ethiopian food i have ever had (yet), so i am no aficionado of African cuisine but we had an amazing time. it had the prefect amount of lighting, i hate eating in really bright places, i like ambiance, it was byob which was cool, our waiter was awesome and the food was great! i loved eating communally with my bestie and tearing off the injera to scoop the goodness into my face.

so i have been a little obsessed with our meal that night, for one thing, i'll eat meat, (the chicken stew was spicy goodness ) but i don't really like to eat too much of it. they had a variety of lentil, pea and chick pea dishes that i really liked and the collards were amazing! i needed to figure out a way to spice up my lentil and legume dishes so i started a search last saturday to find out more about Ethiopian dishes. i found out that there is a spice blend called berbere. i really didnt feel like going on a mad search to find all the spices to make a mix myself - i know laaaaazy! and cheap! hey, i am too busy sewing to be tracking down spices and grinding them up to make my own spice mixture. could i find it online?? could there be someone cool enough to make this blend on etsy?? oh there was!!!!!

step in emburke, a great spice shop i found on etsy: freshly made berbere!! and you get a really good amount i was scared i wouldn't get enough but it's a generous portion sure to keep me busy. smells amazing. put some on my tongue tastes amazing. now i just have to obtain some recipes.

annoying

you know what's annoying? when i wake up at 5am with great ideas about what i would like to write about and then i sit down here at my computer and completely forget.........

getting ready for the winter

every winter it's a struggle to find a hat that i like, is comfortable, not kiddie looking and doesn't let wind in my ears. so last year i bought a hat that was long and slouchy, it covered my ears, and was good but not tight enough around my ears. so i took what i liked about that hat, searched around at other hats for some inspiration and knitted this up by modifying an existing pattern i have for a ribbed hat:

it was pretty easy, if you like this hat and would like the pattern just leave me a comment!

faux leather and me

in trying to keep with a mostly eco product, and maybe someday all eco i am considering getting some faux leather. using organic canvas is awesome and i would like to keep using that plus some hemp. but adding some faux leather to my designs would be just splendid.
after months of research i have found two spots to get a more eco faux leather. although the best choice would be if they would start making it from plant cellulose. i couldn't find any like that.

turns out polyurethane is a better choice, but i also have found some that is produced in a less harmful way, which is a plus: no voc's and polyurethane breaks down and degrades unlike vinyl and pvc based pleathers. pleather sounds so uncool anyway. so what is the point of this early morning eco diatribe? i can't wait to dig into a new material and see what is possible, so far i have no idea how to sew faux leather, this could get messy.

fall handmade cavalcade a success!

my fellow {new new} team members put together a fall shopping extravaganza this past weekend. the fall handmade cavalcade was in beacon, ny (about 2 hours upstate) and it was fantastic. the best part of the cavalcade was travelling out of the dirty city and getting to know my teammates a little better. i don't get to see them in person too often so spending face to face time with them was awesome! and i met some girls from the hudson valley etsy team too, it was wonderous. also, i stuffed my face full of cookies and cupcakes so that in itself was worth the trip. here is my table:

printing elbow and much more.....

my elbow is killing me. i can only think that it's from a print job i did for a local church here. 200 shirts in one day all by myself, woe is me (it took me a couple tries to spell woe).

in other news, i'd like to share the process in which i make new screenprints. as you know they are mostly if not 100% inspired by my surroundings and in keeping with that here is the story about building houndstooth:
i really love the houndstooth pattern. i have a pair of flip flops from reef that are houndstooth patterened and they rocked, super rocked. but one of them broke......le sigh.
so i created a new pattern, it's houndstooth but the shape for the pattern is made from this picture of the dayton towers building in my town of rockaway:

so from here i used my trusty computer to create a houndstooth design and cut it out from a spot on the picture:

the next step was to take this and turn it into a pattern:

after that i printed it out on transparency film, and used the film to create a screen, which i used to screenprint this design onto my fabric and then i sewed my fingers to the bone to create bags like these:

and that's that!