Across the Zooniverse

(Zooniverse illustration by Kaspuhl)

Walking home from a beer garden last night, I passed a little shop on Raumerstraße called Supalife. Pressing my face against the glass, the shop seemed to be teeming with creative life in the form of whimsical illustrations and wild creatures. Mental note was placed then and there to visit the next day, and so I did. It’s a small shop where I could lose track of time, poring over the various limited edition illustration books, hand-screened t-shirts, handmade toys, and amazing artwork (definitely not run-of-the-mill). A very awesome store indeed that often host shows for some very talented artists. One regret though is that Zooniverse t-shirt by illustrator Jörn Kaspuhl was not my size, though perhaps better are the huge Zooniverse pillows (electric green on white for me please) which make me purr with delight.

Fringeworthy

(Mishka via Sniff)

Fringe is making its due comeback, and I could barely muster will the will to resist these adorable Mishka shoes -handmade in Argentina with limited North American distribution. They’re like small pets for your feet, with neat fine fringe and a prim rosette; the vamp is scantily low cut revealing tons of cleav. Nothing vulgar, and the pumps are actually quite demure and better looking than the uninspired stock product shot would lead one to believe. Mishka is available at Billie in Montreal and probably few other places.

Paring down

(Image via design*sponge)

I have always had the fantasy of living a pared down, minimal lifestyle/livingspace. I feel I have always been blessed with the luxury of plentiful personal space and have accordingly filled up my allotment with tons of stuff. But being in apartments in more dense cities like New York or Tokyo, I have come to admire the creative thinking required of people living in tight quarters -a topic increasingly featured in editorials in Dwell and the like. The desire to have just the necessities, and have them properly tucked away in their right place with space absolutely maximized, is pulling me in.

The book Tokyo, a Certain Style has always been a good point of reference. The apartments documented in the little book belong to real people, they often aren’t pretty, but they are pretty incredible in that in a city where space per capita is among the lowest of any metropol, people know how to manage with a high personal possessions to low personal space ratio. It’s a book my cousin always has milling around and whenever I would re-encounter it, I would spend a long time poring over its contents and after, thinking about the idea of limited space and lots of stuff.

I will be spending some time in Europe, checking some things out and mulling over minimalism. The stops: Berlin, Cologne, Eindhoven. If a move overseas is in the stars, much paring down is in order as the Dutch live slim. This time ’round, I’ll be bringing a single small carry-on, but will inevitably return with an additional bag obese with goodies if I don’t watch myself -so I’ll keep my personal challenge in check. Blogging will hopefully be not too sporadic.