all things girls can tell

special project: rowhouse pint glasses

each year, my neighborhood organizes a beer tour - it's basically a series of open houses where each house offers a different local, seasonal craft beer, along with oktoberfest themed foods + snacks. it's great fun, especially if you're like me + getting to peek into other people's houses + craft beer are two of your all time favorite things.

the planning commitee this year asked me to do an illustration for the pint glasses for the event. they mentioned that they had a drawing of a rowhouse in mind, since every house in our neighborhood is some derivation of pretty much the same model of traditional rowhouse. it was quite a bit of fun drawing out all the rooms + furnishings, which i think shows in all the little details in the illustration. i heard they weren't expecting a front / back section through all the rooms, but everyone seemed to love the drawing. yay!

drexel school farewell party

 

at the end of the block, south of my house, has stood this stately, decrepit, old school building. you can see its gorgeous arched brick openings with its dignified keystones from my backyard (here's a photo i took the summer before i moved in looking down the alley from my yard toward the school). as years have gone by, i knew that the likelihood of the school being salvaged and made into something amazing (the type of potential you're trained to see in such lovely bones of buildings in architecture school) was decreasing by the day.

as beautiful a relic as it is, it began to cross the line from lovely and abandoned to ominous and threatening over the past months. trees rooted themselves at the roofline, their roots weaving their way down the brick facade, causing a hazard to pedestrians and cars on the street. the fenced off areas of sidewalks attracted the grossest types of litter. it became an unfortunate eyesore at street level.

finally, the city put up demolition notices. our neighborhood association scrambled to arrange a meeting with L&I and our city council representative to learn what the impact would be on us and our houses during the project. so, we're now a week into what we're told will be a 5-6 demolition. i'm posting photos of the demolition (as i happen to walk by) in this flickr set.

close to home

 

my neighbor and friend, leslianna, has decided to embark on a pretty fun project for this month - for all of january, she's attempting to only eat food that she's purchased in our neighborhood. it's an effort to not only support the countless corner stores and several new restaurants throughout our neighborhood, but also a method of really getting to know all the resources available where we live. it's kind of amazing the wide range of things you can pick up here.

our neighborhood, newbold, is in philadelphia, of course, between broad and 18th st., south of washington avenue and north of snyder. you can read all about her culinary adventures in newbold here!

(the photo above i swiped from another neighbor, pineapplepalace on flickr, is our friends, sam + andrew, enjoying the best indonesian food ever, which happens to be one block from my house, at hardena)

collaboration and collecting ideas

this week's been flying by as i catch up from not feeling quite 100% recently. since i'm excited about what's going on, i figured i'd take a moment to share some highlights of what i'm working on.

• the studio's been shaping up nicely - a few work areas are all set up and have been printing like a crazy person for some upcoming shows (and to fill orders - yay!)
• mother's day will be here and gone this weekend, and i've been gearing up for some screen making with some diagrams for father's day that i'm absolutely tickled about. look for some really awesome and oh-so-manly diagrams making their way into the shop and the other shop and the other shop in time for you to give them to your dad. (he told me he wanted housewares for father's day, i swear). 
• i had such a lovely conversation with matt from 1000markets the other day about what's new with handmade online, what would be useful for 1000markets merchants, why blogging is vital to handmade and some really intriguing fine artists that are innnovating how fine art can be represented online. fascinating!

• leslie from comfortableshoes and i set up an exciting collaboration of our work. leslie makes supergood jotters and handmade books. i'll keep you posted on progress on this project - i can't wait to see finished results! (those are hers, above!)
• i've been working with the amazing community team at teachstreet, making great progress in developing resources for experts who list classes at teachstreet.com
• and there are a few garden spaces i've been so anxious to get going this year (if it ever stops raining in philadelphia...). cute erik has gotten the planters ready in the backyard, where i'm planning to put some perennials and herbs, and we've reserved a plot in the community garden a few blocks away, where we're hoping to try our hands at growing some veggies (and a few flowers). so exciting!
• we've had to postpone it a few times now, but a bunch of friends and i are completely determined to finally try the sandwiches at john's roast pork soon. while it may seem odd to list "eat a sandwich" as an ongoing project, john's is a bit tricky, because it's only open until 3pm and doesn't open at all on weekends. but we hear it's worth it...

there's probably a handful of other projects i've neglected to mention here - things are just busy busy. but i've come to terms with the idea that i'm a person who's happiest when i'm being productive.

great press, my 'hood, and love letters for you.

woke up today to some pleasant surprises! thanks to two lovely ladies - marisa (also of forkyou.tv fame) for a really flattering write up on slashfood and the ever-awesome ginevra of typepad for featuring the girlscantell blog today! i'm so glad the typewriter seems to be a hit, and the kitchen diagrams are proving to be the most best thing ever. sometimes it's amazing to me that i finally get to do exactly what i love all day, everyday. so awesome.

in other news, i've been doing a good bit of walking around my neighborhood lately, which has been great. my friend, samantha (well, you may recognize her as a my lovely and talented tote bag model) and i did a walk-about as the town-watch committee of the neighborhood association (newbold represent!) the other day, and it was a great excuse to put my new camera to the test. we basically were looking for graffiti, vandalism, and neglected properties to report. we'll do a follow up walk around next week to see what the city's responded to, via the new 311 system philadelphia recently put into place. really, i need to start geo-tagging my photos in flickr, especially since they've added this slick "nearby" feature. so awesome.

also, have you signed up to receive the sneak peek / super specials / amazing discounts and deals newsletter from yours truly (that'd be me, sara girlscantell) yet? you can do that here! basically, you'll get to see new designs before they're released, and get special codes for things like buy one get one free (who doesn't love free?) and free shipping, etc. but mostly, i will write nice things about you. because you're swell.

50 diagrams in 2009: one: anatomical heart diagram!

just in time for you to snag one for your sweetie for the mushiest day of the year (or for yourself, since valentine's day is completely made up and overrated anyway, right?), i've drawn my first living (non nuts and bolts) machine: a human heart. i'm pretty pleased with the results of this one. since i'm totally squeamish (watching the cartoon video about getting wisdom teeth removed at my dentist last week almost made me ill), i wasn't sure i'd be into this idea, but i sketched it up to see how it'd be. and promptly fell in love.

i was thrilled to post it in my etsy and 1000markets shop this morning, yours for the taking. plus, the first person to buy an item with this diagram on it will get an extra special heart diagram gift (towels! or patches! or pot holders! i haven't decided yet!) along with their purchase!

don't forget to submit your ideas for new diagrams in the little box in the sidebar or submit your email address to join the superfun, never spammy loveletter list. i'd love to know what you think in a comment and check back every week for new designs! xoxo!

ps. isn't my fabulous friend (and neighbor, go newbold!) samantha a sweet tote bag model? not only is she the raddest, she was so helpful and awesome for helping me photograph the new totes. best. girl. ever!

parades, happiness, moving, bizness and busy-ness

this past week has been pretty crazy here in south philly. pretty much everyone seemed to forget it was halloween on friday in favor of celebrating our local heroes du jour, the phillies, of course. so, we walked down with janiedog to the victory parade on friday (well, it was about two blocks from cute erik's our house, so not going would have just been silly) and caught glimpes of pat the bat riding on the budweisers horse drawn cart (i'm still not sure how pat the bat got that honor...) and other fun spectacles. it's exciting being in the city when everyone's generally all really happy about something. nice.  (everyone except my old neighbor lady friend, who was pissed off that the parade prevented the halloween greeting cards she sent last week from being received on time...)

my parents came to help us move all my big pieces of furniture on saturday, so i guess cute erik and i officially live together now. yay! and on sunday, two of my favorite coworkers (past and present) came to visit and i showed them the site of the secret, amazing project i've been working on a bit lately with my stellar biz-ness partner.

so this week will be busy, busy, busy, as i'm still preparing for handmade arcade. i'm revealing two new diagram designs this weekend at the show! so if you're anywhere near pittsburgh this weekend, be sure to stop by and say hi! and the new goodies will, of course, be available in the girlscantell shop soon after the show.

mayhem and pumpkins

we had an amazing time at the game - no one sat all three innings that it took for the phillies to clinch the win and bring the first national championship to philly that the city's seen in 25 years. i like a good baseball game as much as (well, maybe a smidge more than) the next guy, but i didn't really grow up going to sporting events. i grew up in the middle of new jersey, equidistant from philly and new york, so there was no one team people cheered for in our town. aside from several dozen phillies games i'd gone to in the three years i've lived here and games i attended in school (i was a fierce virginia basketball fan when i was in college), i wasn't a part of the culture of sports.

so i had absolutely no idea how crazy the city would be when we won. and it was crazy.

there are lots of places with great documentation around the web of all the festivities of wednesday evening, my favorites being a slideshow from brian james kirk and neal santos and this slightly sobering blog, pleading for citizens of the city to take a little responsibility and help this freelance photographer collect money to buy a replacement car - his was flipped by revellers after the game.

now i'm getting as much work done as i can and waiting for cute erik to get back from his meeting to head out to broad street to take in the victory parade. 

in other news, i'm really very excited to be on the treating end of halloween this year - the past two years, giving out candy to the kids in our neighborhood has been really fun. i love seeing all the too cute costumes and i swear our neighborhood has the cutest little kids in all of philadelphia. we carved our pumpkins and have lights ready for the front step railing and bags of candy waiting to go.
enjoy!

go phillies, supercrafty plastic bags and perfect fall weather

i love how autumny and blustery the weather here is today. perfect for fall, and i can't wait to bake an apple pie later, to eat while we watch the phillies begin their run in the world series. (go phillies!)

as janie and i were out walking this morning, i was admiring the perfect weather and janie was, well, smelling things, since she's a dog and that's mostly all she does, and i guess we just caught the wind right (or wrong, maybe) and all of a sudden, there were literally over a dozen plastic bags, blowing around us. it was kind of funny, except that it was totally sad. why, neighborhood? why are there so many plastic bags just lying about? i really wish the corner bodegas had to charge some kind of plastic bag tax or something - the majority of the plastic bags whirling around us were those infamous little black plastic bags from the corner stores. whose lifespan basically consists of being made, shipped to the corner store, holding a purchase of usually one item (a bag of chips, a sugary fake juice drink, a beer) and then discarded onto the sidewalk after being used for about 90 seconds.

on the upside, picking up the littering bags makes it easy for me to never need to accept plastic bags when i'm out shopping (they are usually actually pretty clean, which makes sense considering they've only been used for a few minutes) to use for taking janie on walks.  i'd say about 95% of the time, i use my own bags when i'm shopping. but, if you don't have a dog, even if one of my neighbors cares enough to collect these bags (i snagged 23 of them this morning, and easily could have captured more), what will they really do with them, other than throw them away? (unless they're fans of the supercrafty, and knit with them or fuse them into better bags).

it just hits me sometimes how we use an awfully lot of plastic bags. i guess i forget this a lot, since my friends and i are pretty diehard bring your own baggers (my awesome friend, beth, didn't use a single store bag for any of her christmas shopping last holiday season - it wouldn't surprise me if she's been 100% plastic bag free this year). what can we do to get even the people who don't care to stop using plastic bags?

more and less.

i've been hard at work here at girlscantell world headquarters. ordering lots of goodies for my upcoming shows, doing lots of printing and listing lots and lots of stuff in the shop. look for good new stuff very soon!

lately, i've really been feeling the need to pare down things i'm involved with - i realized i walk around like a total spaz, and irritated when things don't fall properly in place with the many projects i have my hand in right now. so i'm going to take a step back and spend the fall focusing on making great girlscantell goodies (new designs! more often!) and developing better routines for working and exercising. i'm still very interested in making a space for people to make things happen, and i think it will come together in time (hopefully). other than that, things are going to take the back burner for a bit, so that i can be more productive with the few projects i really want to take on full-force, and enjoy my favorite time of year.

also, if i *were* shopping for some new hobbies, this amazing spinning wheel made from a bike wheel would be at the very tip top of my list. i've always been completely inspired by all the gorgeous handspun on etsy, and what an amazing use of bike parts. who wants to contribute to the "buy sara this amazing spinning wheel" fund?