kristinsdóttir

One of my favorite books was published in 1987: Made in Sweden: Art, Handicrafts, Design. It’s by Anja Notini.

Leafing it through it last night, I found the page on Gocken Jobs, a textile designer for her family business, Jobs Handtryck, which has been producing hand-printed fabrics, mostly for home interior use, since 1944.

That’s one of Gocken Jobs’ designs shown here, a fabric called Rhubarb Green/Black, or “Rabarber,” actually, apparently available from the Skandium website.

Also, Nonchalant mom offers a lovely hand screened Madonna print from Jobs Handtryck. It would be nice framed as a gift. For a new mom, maybe.

Oh, dear. I just spotted the handbags created with Jobs Handtryck’s fabrics. And the prices. If I plugged everything into the currency converter correctly, it appears that just buying a meter of fabric from Jobs Handtryck would set you back about $150. Gulp.

Have I extolled the virtues of Do-It-Yourself design lately?

You may already know about Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone, created by Dotti Coon of Vancouver, Washington … if you don’t, check it out, especially her fantastic restaurant page, which lists restaurant menus, complete with the number of Weight Watchers points assigned to various dishes. Invaluable, especially as she tracks restaurants whose menus are not found in the Dining Out Companion created by Weight Watchers. Thanks, Dotti!

1. Take a slip-on hood like those worn by Muslim women (the ones I have I bought as part of several-piece sets from Veiled by Design but you can also buy them in a huge array of colors as part of a two-piece set)– of the items in this picture, the large bright orange one is the hood). Or take a snood like one of these from ModestWorld.

2. Pull on your snood or hood as if it were a headscarf or a veil, so that it’s on the back of your head, not covering your throat. Leave it further down on your forehead at this point so that you don’t pull it back too far in the next step.

3. Take a crocheted snood (I would strongly recommend a beaded one, like this from Lady MacSnood, as it looks less like something you’d be wearing if you worked at a cannery or something).

4. Pull the snood on over the hood, adjusting so that the hood and the snood start at the same place at the top of your head. Tuck the longer ends of the hood into the back of the snood. One reason using a hood works well is that the extra tucked-in fabric gives the illusion that there is a good amount of hair under the snood. This is more flattering than a flat-as-a-pancake snood.

5. Voila! You look pulled together and neat as a pin. And both the underlying hood (especially if it’s in a contrasting color, like red) and the beads on the snood contribute to a more polished look and give less of an impression that you’re about to gut a salmon.

Experiment. You can probably obtain a similar look in other ways, like putting a scarf under the snood, and so on.

I am at my all-time roly-poly-est.

Again.

Time for Weight Watchers.

Again. (I fell off the wagon last time)

Stop sending me chocolates. You know who you are.

“If you want to get noticed without screaming, consider wearing the color orange…”

Did you know orange was the official color used for last year’s campaign against disengagement in Israel? There was even a rule against wearing orange while praying at the Western Wall.

And gay rights groups have advocated the wearing of orange in support of gay rights. It appears this started back in 1999 (or was it ‘93?), when the organizing committee of the New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade refused permission for the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (”ILGO”) to march up Fifth Avenue in the parade. Protestors of this decision wore orange that day.

Somehow, I have missed all this symbolic use of the color orange.

Interestingly, back in 2002, Chief Justice Rehnquist of the Supreme Court was reportedly troubled when Roopa Singh, a broadcast intern working at the court, was spied wearing a deep orange scarf tied in a coiled bun at the nape of her neck. It seems wearing hats in court is against the rules at the Supreme Court, unless it’s for religious or medical reasons. And her headwrap qualified as a hat, apparently. No, she wasn’t wearing it for religious reasons. Yes, she removed it. And yes, she was cranky about it.

I bet the color didn’t help.

(Pic? From Forget Me Not Kids)

This book of daily readings is wonderful. For today, the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (our parish’s feast day), there’s a bit on marriage, pointing out how the church holds up the ideal that “two persons, choosing to become one flesh and one spirit in Christ will take each other for better or for worse, and forsaking all others, continue to grow together.” The emphasis of today’s reading is that we’re not to go into marriage thinking, “well, okay, this will work for now, I’ll just hang there for as long as we’re ‘into’ it. “

I’m looking forward to the wedding this weekend!

(that’s a coptic icon of the wedding at Cana, from the icons page of the website of the Coptic Orthodox Church Centre in England)

Georgia Scott took 4,000 photographs on a 32-nation, 53,000-mile journey to research headwraps … many ended up in her book, Headwraps: A Global Journey.

It’s probably no coincidence that I am fascinated by headwraps just now. Turns out that this summer and transcending into the fall line, head wraps have been spotted in glossy magazines on A-list celebrities…

(the pic? a tightly-wrapped head of cabbage leaves…with holes made by cabbage looper… fascinated? more info here)

Although t-shirts in their original form do nothing for me, transforming them is something I find very rewarding.

Need something to read, but They’ve cracked down regarding what They’ll let you can take on the plane? Don’t despair! The scarf book is just the thing!

(photo from Flickr, specifically, from The Life of Liza’s Photos)