by Amber on November 20, 2012
“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself” – Jack Kerouac
I have never religiously written morning pages, but I always enjoyed coming home after a night out (technically morning), curling up in bed with a big glass of water and ‘spewing’ my thoughts on to the pages of my notebook. Charming, I know. In the morning I’d find paragraphs of unusable material, all hideously misspelled, but it let me sleep easy.
Things are changing though. Nowadays I find myself rising early on the regular, drinking verbena tea – quelle horreur – and jotting down a few lines. I am very lucky to do what I love for a living, but in ten years all I’ll have is a hard drive, if they still even exist, of PDFs, quaint status updates from 2012 and fuzzy images. It’ll be nice to have something solid, just for me, even if it is hardly fit for public consumption.
by Amber on July 23, 2012
“Even though I was on a budget, I could afford to go to the fresh food market and get baguette and cheese.
That kind of food is not really accessible to you in London. I really love that in Paris,
there is no division [in food] by social class.”
- Rachael Khoo, in an interview with the Guardian
A week-ish ago three glorious days in Paris. And certainly the theme of this trip was food, food, food. From watching Thom and his Dad tackle a plateau de fruits de mer, to another trip to Le Refuges des Fondus, and market trawling – we ate well and often. Every neighbourhood has its own little market, and there’s no stigma in buying just one or two pieces of fruit, or a bouchon de sancerre to snack on (it’s a tiny cheese named for a wine cork). Makes me hungry just thinking of it.
by Amber on April 30, 2012
You need to see London at night, particularly the theaters. But not just the night life. London itself looks best in the dark. It’s a pretty safe city, and you can walk in most places after sunset. It has a sedate and ghostly beauty. In the crepuscular kindness, you can see not just how she is, but how she once was, the layers of lives that have been lived here. Somebody with nothing better to do worked out that for every one of us living today, there are 15 ghosts. In most places you don’t notice them, but in London you do. The dead and the fictional ghosts of Sherlock Holmes and Falstaff, Oliver Twist, Wendy and the Lost Boys, all the kindly, garrulous ghosts that accompany you in the night. The river runs like dark silk through the heart of the city, and the bridges dance with light. There are corners of silence in the revelry of the West End and Soho, and in the inky shadows foxes and owls patrol Hyde Park, which is still illuminated by gaslight.
- from My London, and Welcome to It by A.A. Gill. Beautiful writing.
by Amber on January 31, 2012
“Negativity is the enemy to creativity. So if you want more ideas flowing, happiness in the doing, happiness in the doing, happiness in the doing. I love, capital L-O-V-E, building a thing that ultimately has to feel correct before it’s finished, and that feeling correct is like a drug. It’s like a thing that kicks you and makes you feel so good, You almost pass out. You fall off your feet.”
– David Lynch, to Melena Ryzik of the New York Times
by Amber on October 25, 2011
by Amber on September 29, 2011
Thoughtful career advice from designer Jessica Hische, illustrated smartly by Chris Piascik. Isn’t it lovely?
My procrastination techniques include – making coffee, organising my room, planning exotic holidays, writing fiction, watching Come Dine With Me while writing up notes… It’s all an endlessly inspiring loop though. Writing is my passion, and whether that manifests as writing perfume reviews (check!), crafting websites at a digital agency (check!), or noodling away at a cookbook (one day!) – it’s all good. Knowing what I really love to do is a real blessing. How do you guys while the hours away?
{via Fancy! NZ Design Blog}
by Amber on September 9, 2011
I am really looking forward to my first autumnal September. I remember visiting New York in October, and suddenly Halloween made sense; the end of harvest and darkening of days, not strawberries and 8pm sunsets. I’ve spent a long time in topsy-turvy land… It’s now time for scarves, crisp mornings and falling leaves.
by Amber on June 29, 2011
“I dropped out of law school when I was twenty-four and returned to my hometown of Santa Cruz, California. I did not have a plan but I did have a promise: no more “shoulds”. I was determined to follow my heart wherever it wanted to go.
In the following years I worked as a bicycle messenger, learned to garden, fell in love, sold my car and for the first time felt truly competent and at home in my own skin. I began to notice and be taken with my own physicality: the crook of my arm holding the shovel, my thighs tightening as I pedaled, my hands strong and stained by the day. These were common moments when function was unexpectedly beautiful. This, I determined, was a form of beauty I needed to capture and express.
So I began to make things, with metal, with wood, and eventually with fabric. And here, where the practical and the precious come together, was where my heart led me. I enrolled at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco for clothing design. Two years later I started Filly.”
- Emily Christensen, who makes beautiful, conscientious clothes under the label Filly.
Her house is pretty too.
