I’m in love with this all natural, unscented cold-pressed soap made in Maine by the Rocky Top Soap Shop. As someone with sensitive skin, particularly on my legs, it’s so wonderful to find something really pure and moisturizing like this. It’s also nice to find soaps without the overpowering added scents that most soapmakers use.

I bought the rosehip soap, which is just lovely, along with the Rooibos Red shampoo bar and a shaving bar.

The shampoo bar has been fantastic, getting my hair clean without stripping it the way chemical shampoos do. And the shaving bar is a godsend for someone who gets a rash just looking at a razor. It has a super creamy lather and feels really luxurious.

Check out the Rocky Top Soap Shop for more!

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My friend Amy is selling these amazing hair and facial oils that she makes. I am a huge fan of facial oils because of the way they help balance your skin, can be made without nasty chemical preservatives, and are so easily absorbed.

Amy gave me a bottle of her nourishing facial oil as a birthday gift and I’ve been using it just about every night. It was perfect timing, because I’d just run out of my usual nighttime skin treat, which is just simple and pure jojoba oil. But Amy’s blend is way better. It smells wonderful and makes my skin super soft. It’s going to be a lifesaver this Winter, I’m sure.

Check out Amy’s oils if you’re looking for something nice and natural for your skin. I’m thinking about trying the hair oil next, since chlorine is doing bad things to my hair right now.

I love the illustrations printed on these cotton/linen dish towels by Lisa Rupp.

Until a few weeks ago, it had been a while since I’d done any serious swimming. I first got into it in grad school, when I took a swim class with a fantastic coach in UC Berkeley’s gorgeous marble-decked pool. Learning to swim properly has been more useful than a lot of other things I learned in grad school.

I guess a lot of people find lap swimming to be boring. But when it comes to exercise, I’ve learned that I love doing things that are solitary, quiet, and extremely challenging.

This is why I’ve gotten into running over the past year or so. I love having time to myself to just think and be alone. I love to carve out a chunk of the day to clear my head. But I also love pushing myself and learning to do things that seemed impossible before.

With both running and swimming, you have an almost endless capacity to amaze yourself and keep getting better, going farther. You just have to work, push, keep going. And you can measure progress in the things your body can do – how far you can run, how fast you can go – rather than a number on the scale. That is liberating.

I’ve taken up swimming in the last few weeks mainly to improve my cardiovascular health and help prevent all the muscle imbalances that can be exacerbated by running. Already, my hips and obliques feel less tight.

Still, I’m amazed that I used to swim a mile after work every day. And now, though I think of myself as relatively fit, just over half that distance leaves my legs a little wobbly.

But that’s the beauty of it, for me. I know I can get back there, and I know that all it takes is hard work. Not much else you can say that about in life.

{image above: an illustration by Enoch Bolles, via Fred Seibert}

Hi, friends.

I ended up taking an unexpected break from just-for-fun blogging this summer, I suppose. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that I’ve been knee-deep in working on my forthcoming sewing book. I imagine that any of you who actually care about such things read The Coletterie already, but if not… look! I have a book coming!

Boy oh boy, books are a lot of work. You probably know that already, as did I. But now I know it in a real, visceral way.

I also managed to contract pneumonia back in July, which was really pretty awful and took me down for the better part of a month. Pneumonia is no joke, guys! Yikes, I’m glad that unpleasantness is behind me. It was nasty, and when you couple it with my workload, I started to feel like I was drowning.

In spite of that little whine above, I really did find time to enjoy the meager summer we had here. Here are some lovely things I did this summer:

• Grew a crazy huge crop of tomatoes
• Went to San Francisco
• Visited the Oregon coast and drank beer
• Kept our house stocked with fresh flowers from the garden
• Went to Seattle
• Bought tickets to go to Argentina this December (!!!)
• Made a pretty dress to wear for a fantastic 4th wedding anniversary (see above)
• Ate Peruvian food for the first time
• Had fun visits from family
• Picked berries
• Did a lot of canning
• Cut my hair off (also see above)

I hope to find more time to write and share now that I’ve perked up a bit and finally feel like I can breathe again (literally and figuratively).

For my birthday (a couple weeks ago now), Kenn and I decided to take a little drive to Cannon Beach.

Being from southern California, the beach here is nothing like the beaches of my childhood, which were featureless but warm. Here in Oregon, the beaches are beautiful but freezing cold.

Kenn wore the shirt I sewed for his birthday. I made it in this fantastic Liberty print. The pattern is my own Negroni, of course.

If there’s one thing we have here in Oregon, it’s berries.

We took a little trip out to Sauvie Island recently to pick some strawberries. Caitlin suggested Sauvie Island farm and since I pretty much only go to farms that Caitlin tells me about, that’s where we went.

After about an hour in the hot sun picking fruit, our flats were full. It was hard to stop, there were so many red juicy clusters just waiting to be eaten.

As we walked back, we tried to guess how much we’d picked. Maybe five pounds each? It turns out we were way off. We’d picked 20 lbs of strawberries. The rest of the weekend was spent in a frenzy of cooking and canning, hulling and freezing. I’m still astounded that we managed to eat or put up pretty much all of them

We had strawberry shortcake for brunch. I call it brunch because Kenn made a blackberry liqueur soda (with our soda siphon, how cool is that?). I think if you drink alcohol with your breakfast, you have to call it brunch or you just seem like kind of a drunk.

This is an Italian condiment called Mostarda di Fragole. It’s got a balsamic base with strawberries and mustard. We used it to marinate tempeh for sandwiches and it was pretty delicious. The recipe was from The Berry Bible, a very handy book to have when you are in a situation like this.

I canned some strawberry lemon jam. This recipe is from the Ball book, and they call it a marmalade. They lie, it’s totally a jam with some lemon. It’s delicious, though.

I also made and canned a strawberry jam with black pepper and mint. That was from Mes Confitures, a book full of luxurious and wonderful recipes that are sort of a pain to make. But worth it. That jam took three days and involved multiple masceration steps.

Aaaaand we had coconut macaroon pancakes topped with strawberry puree (garnished with a nasturtium from our yard). These pancakes are pretty amazing if you are a coconut lover like I am.

Last, I made a batch of strawberry ice cream. The recipe was from Chez Panisse Desserts, which has some of the best ice cream recipes I have ever tasted. They are very simple and fruit-forward and just perfect.

I hope you guys are getting out there and enjoying berry season, wherever you live!

{image: Twentieth-Century Pattern Design}

These beautiful floral designs are the works of the teenage girls who staffed Atelier Martine, a decor workshop founded in Paris in 1911 by Paul Poiret.

Inspired by the textiles developed by the Wiener Werkstätte, Poiret decided to hire artistically untrained girls with little means in order to produce designs that were informal and naive. The girls were sent out to study foliage and vegetation, taking trips to the countryside, markets, and botanical gardens. Poiret’s idea was to nurture the artists’ natural creativity rather than provide formal artistic training. Their incredible designs are reminiscent of folk art, bright and vivid and utterly striking.

Designs from Atelier Martine were translated into textiles and wallpapers, becoming hugely influential in the world of decorative arts for decades to come. All from the minds and hands of such young women.

{image: gouache on paper, 1912, les arts decoratifs}

{image: textile, 1925, the textile blog}

{images: printed japanese silk, 1913, MoMa; bluette, 1912, the textile blog; Les Pavots, 1912, the textile blog}

{images: linen fragment, 1920s, The Art Institute of Chicago; anemones}

{image: printed linen, 1923, The Met}

{other resources: Twentieth-Century Pattern Design, Art Deco Textiles}

… or is it a butterfly bush? I’m not 100% sure. I’ve seen about 18434920 times more bees on it than I have butterflies. It seems to lure the big fat buzzy bumblebees like nothing else. Not that I’m complaining, bees are awesome. But if any of you other plant-lovers out there can set me straight, I’d appreciate it.

I have been having fun with my lens extension tube set in the garden, which is how I took these macro shots above. Seriously, it’s such an awesome and dirt cheap camera accessory!

An extension tube is basically a ring of metal that sits between your camera and your lens, allowing you to get closer to the subject (and still focus). So you get a macro effect, but without a macro lens.

There are more expensive versions, some over $100, but they are all basically just a ring of metal, so I really doubt you’d need to pay more. This one is awesome, gives you three different lengths, and is under 15 bucks. So neat, huh?

The only drawbacks are that it is very tricky to focus, and very difficult to hold steady for a clear shot. You’re so close that every little movement seems magnified. A tripod would have helped, I guess.

I’ll share more photos from our yard soon. I love how alien and strange plants look so close up… these living things all around us that we so often fail to notice or understand.

I’ve been collecting smoothie recipes lately with pinterest and have so many new ones I want to try! This rhubarb smoothie is definitely a winner, and one I’ll make again, at least as long as rhubarb is in season. It’s tart and refreshing, but creamy and desserty too.

I modified the recipe quite a bit from the one linked above so I’m posting my own version. I got rid of the soy yogurt (I’m not a fan and don’t keep it on hand), plopping in some thick coconut milk and a bit of juice. I also added vanilla powder, but you could use vanilla extract. I think the addition of vanilla is really nice here. I also always use frozen banana in my smoothies.

You have to cook the rhubarb first and let it cool. I just stewed it up, let it come to room temperature, then stuck it in the fridge for an hour while I did yoga.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups rhubarb
2 T vanilla sugar (you can use regular sugar or another sweetener, I’m sure)
1/4 cup water
1 frozen banana (I always keep chunks of banana in the freezer)
2 T coconut milk (not light)
splash of lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of vanilla powder
almond milk

First, make the stewed rhubarb. Place the rhubarb, sugar, and water in a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Simmer it, stirring occasionally, for about 15 or 20 minutes, until the rhubarb has broken down.

Let the rhubarb cool, and chill it in the fridge. Put the rhubarb and next 5 ingredients in a blender, adding enough almond milk to get your smoothie to blend . Garnish with a sprinkle of cinnamon and enjoy!

The original recipe says this makes 3-4, but mine made more like 2 small servings.