I Love Lamp: Studio Redo Sneak Peek

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Steven's and my work studio has undergone a serious overhaul that makes me SO HAPPY. It's not quite finished (then again, what home improvement project ever is??) so I'm just going to give a small sneak peek of the before / halfway through / after: BEFORE: Rather cluttered and uninspired...

HALF WAY THROUGH: So many dust bunnies and so much stuff piled everywhere else in our apartment...

AFTER: Pristine beauty... with a bar!

There's a lot more organizing and moving back in to be done, so the space will fill with more color as we pack our shelves with paints and books-- those photos will come soon.

So here I am feeling all happy about having a beautiful space in which to work when I read THIS is Annie Dillard's book "The Writing Life" this morning:

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. When I furnished this study seven years ago, I pushed the long desk against a blank wall, so I could not see from either window.

Well shit.

Actually, I feel confident in disagreeing with her. I've worked in some windowless dungeons; I've stripped writing spaces bare of anything but a table, paper, and pencil; I mean, I had a studio in a radio station above a bus station in West Africa for god's sake, where I prayed to high hell that the monkish discomfort would lead to profound creativity. I'm sorry, but I WANT A ROOM WITH A GODDAMN VIEW.

Last year I wrote this piece for 20SomethingReads on this topic of the ideal writing set up.

“I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert,” said the author Paul Bowles of how and where he crafted his most famous book, THE SHELTERING SKY.

How romantic is that? It makes me want to chuck my laptop, trade it for a typewriter and head off to the Sahara to rent a simple room with billowing curtains and a quiet, whirring fan.

The only problem is, I’ve done that before. Not with the typewriter, but all the rest of it. I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert and you know what? It sucked. The heat was excruciating, the flies incessant, the food awful, and the loneliness completely debilitating. And I’m not a picky traveler.

Funnily enough, because hindsight in not actually 20-20 but all happy-blurry, rereading that here in my beautiful new studio I'm suddenly thinking, "Damn, maybe it would be really nice to write in hotels again..."

Yes, I'm nuts.

Glamping 2013

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So apparently when you get married you stop blogging. Or something like that. Either way I'm not having it. Anyway! This past weekend I went glamping in the Adirondacks with some pals to the same island we went last year. While the weather wasn't exaaaaaaactly on our side the whole time, we definitely still had fun.

(Not pictured: rain, black flies, cold gusts of wind.)

This year we took over both islands in the middle of Forked Lake. There were bad ass babies and kiddos (and their parents of course) on one island, and lots of swearing and morning beer on the other.

I'll let you guess which one Steven and I were on.

At this point I feel it's necessary to admit that I am listening to loons as I type this. Not the real loons we heard on the lake of course, but rather, a track called "Thoughtful Early Morning Loons By The Lake" on Spotify. And I'm not ashamed to admit I LOVE IT. It's always nice to bring a little bit of vacation home with you.

I Love Lamp: Granada Tile

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Ya'll know I love me some tiles. I've been especially in love with the simple French country style ones in my Moroccan host family's kitchen since 2004:

By the way, HOW CUTE IS MY HOST MOM AMINA?

Anyway-- before I get stuck in a caps-lock Morocco love fest: I was rather ecstatic to find the Grenada Tile Echo catalogue that not only has tiles like these but has this whole website set up where you can personalize each element by color! Yes, ECSTATIC over tiles. (Oops, there goes that caps-lock again.)

My favorite, of course, are the "Normandy" collection. I also like them softened with some grey details too:

And I kind of love the "Taniger" and not just because it's named after a Moroccan city... I went all green and blue for this one:

Naturally I wrote them to get a quote on what, say, 80 square feet would cost me and I got an oh so detailed response that essentially translated into: "Mother god, you like tiles but do you $2000 like them?"

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

"The Slow Death of the American Author"

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Scott Turow's opinion piece in the New York Times the other day called "The Slow Death of the American Author" obviously caught my eye.

It's about how recent changes in the book industry are seriously diminishing authors' royalties, which may sound greedy and whiney at first but come on now, do people want to live in a world where we never pay for culture so then people never devote their lives to creating it because they can't survive making it?

This is a topic that's dear to me as both a writer and a consumer. But I'd be lying if I said I had a very clear vision for how to fix this.

Check out the whole article here.

I Love Lamp: HONEYMOON EDITION!

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So it turns out Tuesdays are great for... ELOPING!

Steven and I went down to Brooklyn City Hall this week and put a ring on it. Two rings on it to be precise. Then we went straight up to Graham & Co in the Catksills for a quick honeymoon. (It would have seemed weird to just go back to apartment and what, answer some emails? Rent a movie?)

Graham & Co, in their own words, is "an update on the traditional weekend away" aka it's an old motel now entirely design-ified with reclaimed wood furniture, vaguely "ethnic" textiles, edison bulbs, and mason jars upon mason jars.

To be clear, I say this with love. They're so damn on-trend it's adorable.

I can't wait to return some time this summer and get in on the pool and bonfire action!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

(Last two photos from Graham & Co website.)

I Love Lamp: Bathroom Art

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I like how people tend to let loose with their bathroom art. It's often where you find people's quirkiest stuff. I've had a hodgepodge of crazy stuff up in there for a while but I recently switched all to photographs from our travels. It makes me so happy to have all those memories smashed up against each other in a room I use every day.

I like brushing my teeth and thinking about that strange motel in Montana, that boat ride down the Niger river trying to get to Timbuktu, that day we spent drinking beers in the plaza of Villa De Lleyva in Colombia...

I had to hold onto one drawing though. It's still in our shower. Most people don't even notice it at first.

And when they see it, they think, "Is that what I think that is?" And they step into our tub to get a closer look and--

Yup. That's what it is.

P.S. That's a Steven original from a playbill we designed for a production of Dorian Gray.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

I Love Lamp: I GOT 'EM! I GOT 'EM!

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I GOT 'EM! I GOT 'EM! I GOT MYSELF 4 VERNER PANTON CHAIRS!

And I LOVE them. No really, I loooooooooooooooooove them! They're so sleek and comfy and bouncy. Every time I walk by them I smile.

The other two are acting as our desk chairs in our home office but this place is such a pit right now I cannot bring myself to photograph it. We've got big plans for up here though-- so get ready for a good Before & After some time soon.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Gotta Love A Good Photo Essay

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I Love Lamp: Cozy Linen Bedding

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It's snowing/raining/slushing/being generally miserable outside so all I want to do is go back to bed and snuggle up with my fresh linen sheets that honest to god smell like summer.

And yup, that's a C + S monogram. Thank you Mom!

Here are some other cozy linen beds via the oh-so-lovely My Scandinavian Home.

Sooooooo sleeeeeeeeeepy...

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Website Updates

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My apologies to anyone who was poking around the website last night and kept running into lots of "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" nonsense. But we're back! And now we have the following New and Improved sections: To Timbuktu>>>> All about Steven's and my book To Timbuktu.

Other Books>>>> About, errr, other books I'm contributing to.

Graphic Design and Typography>>>> Ok yes, these titles are rather self explanatory.

The Little Witch

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Reading the paper in bed this morning I came across the obituary for children's book author Otfried Pressler.

In 4th grade I became rather obsessed with his book The Little Witch and filled sketchbooks upon sketchbooks with my own version of the the Little Witch doing witchy things in Brooklyn, like flying over a row of brownstones and water towers on a broom.

I almost never read the obituaries (because I'm a wimp and I get really saddened by sentences like "He is survived by his wife of 58 years"), but I'm so glad that today I did since I have been racking my brain for YEARS to remember this man's name and the name of his series. (Which yes, is quite obvious-- but it almost seemed too obvious, you know? The Little Witch?)

Years later  I still ADORE these illustrations. The line work, the supposedly simple yet deceivingly sophisticated color schemes. I'm honestly tempted to start drawing her all over again!

And looking at these illustrations again, it's no surprise that years later I am enamored with Steven's nib pen work:

Thank you Victoria Stitch for tracking down this version of the book! All illustrations from The Little Witch are via her website here.

I Love Lamp: Chair, err... thing?

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This chair-thing:

Cool? Kind of creepy? There's something both delicious and yucky about it, right? Almost like it's growing in that corner and might continue to grow when you're sleeping until you wake up in the middle of the night and it's taken over your ENTIRE house and... no? It's just a weird Belgian bean bag you say, and that's all? Oh, ok. I'll take one then.

(Photo via Style-Files)

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

I Love Lamp: Getting My Doily On

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I had a birthday tea party last week and in preparation made a zillion crustless sandwiches and strung doilies EVERYWHERE.

I told Steven I would take them down the next day.

Three days ago.

I'm sure soon enough I'll get sick of all the frilly-ness. It really feels like you're looking up someone's petticoat. Oh my, how naughty!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Timbuktu is Retaken, Rebels Burn Manuscripts As They Flee

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It has just been reported that the Malian and French army force has taken back nearly every city once sieged by the Islamist rebels, including Timbuktu. However it absolutely breaks my heart to hear that before fleeing, rebels burned down the Ahmed Baba Institute which was home to thousands of important, ancient manuscripts.

The Ahmed Baba Institute was just down the road from where we lived and I conducted many interviews there during my Fulbright research. At the time they were in the process of digitizing these historical artifacts, so I am slightly hopefully that at least some of them have survived in this format.

All in all though, the news is devastating. While it's wonderful that there has been no reported loss of life in the retaking of Timbuktu, this loss of history is substantial.

By the way, these gorgeous photos are by my talented friend photographer Alexandra Huddleston who was working on a Fulbright in Timbuktu the same year as me. You can see more of her striking images of a disappearing life on her website here.

UPDATE 2/2/13:

Wait! It looks like most of the manuscripts were in fact saved! Luckily many people had anticipated that they were in danger and moved them to the capital or hid them in homes. This is SUCH a relief.