Santa Barbara Skies

I've been taking lots of pictures over the last few months, and I thought I would share some of the gorgeous skies we've had in Santa Barbara recently.

I took these pictures on a warm and clear Friday morning when I was walking some Etsy deliveries down to the post office last week. I love the way the clouds slumber on top of the ridge of the Santa Ynez mountains just north of town. I wish I could capture on camera their simultaneous solidity and ethereality.

On my way back from the postoffice, I stopped by Renaud's Patisserie and Bakery and picked up some gorgeous croissants for breakfast: pain au chocolate and one covered in almonds.

A few days later I was walking home and I didn't have my camera with me, but I just grabbed my phone to try to capture some similar clouds piling up on the corner of the ridge, behind the tower of a giant old movie palace called the Arlington Theatre.

Bookity Bookity Books

Some people might do a "what's in your purse?" post, but I incline away from bags and towards shelves. Looking over this post, I have concluded that I really need a study, some day. Or at least a home office that is not my bedroom.

If you click on the pictures, you can even read the titles

Books in the hall (some of these are PDK's and Ms. E's)

Living room shelves look better when decorated with books, right?

British fiction section in the living room

Dissertation books within easy reach in the hutch over my desk

For fun books, American poetry, and acquisitions that have no assigned location yet!

Don't even look at this -- this is the pile of library books I can't squeeze onto my shelves.

Library books, Irish books, and literary criticism

I love books, as you all well know!  When I first moved in with PDK, I took the opportunity to organize my books by (in descending order) genre, nation of origin, and alphabetically by author's last name.... since then, though, the organization has gotten a bit crazy as I moved some of the for-fun books out to make room for the dissertation books closer to my desk so they will be right at hand when I need them.


But somehow, I have decided I still have room for more! So, after walking down to the Santa Barbara Farmer's Market on Saturday, PDK took the groceries home while I stayed at The Book Den, a great used and antique bookstore that also does a brisk business online in downtown SB. Borders and Barnes and Noble closed down a couple months ago in town, but I couldn't really give a damn, because I don't think they did much for real readers anyways, other than undervalue books and treat them like a mass commodity, putting small publishers and small booksellers in dire straits. I am hoping that the demise of the big box chains pushes business back toward the independent bookstores in town... and encourages people to open new ones in towns that have been left entirely bereft of books.


My eyes had lighted on a sign in The Book Den's window on Friday night, when I went to the Town Hall meeting on Friday to learn about the potential solutions to California's budget troubles: "Pomes Dolar each -- 571 volumes of Poetry."  So.... I bought twenty-seven books of poetry for a smidgen less than thirty dollars. Oh my, am I now in heaven and in hell, because how am I going to have the time? But, I have a plan: If I get up an hour earlier every day (ugh), I can read a book of poetry with tea before I start the rest of my day. And, I hope it will put me in a readerly and writerly state of mind for the dissertation work ahead of me each day.


So, in celebration of Poetry Month and of books over all,  here is a small smackerel of the beauty and delicious indulgence that comes from small pieces of printed paper, folded and sewn or glued into covers and lined up on shelves (errr... or on the floor):


Books You Can Eat!  The International Edible Book Festival was held a couple weeks back, and I think my favorite was the Fahrenheit 451 submission from 2009! Check out the images in the festival's albums.

The Book Surgeon -- featured on My Modern Met (via The Good. The Bad. And The Internet)

Penguin's redesign of classics
I love this vision of Little Women -- the reference has to be to Jo cutting her hair, right?

Books as Jewelry! (via JunqueTreasures on Etsy)

There is a lot more out there, I am sure, but I am going to leave it at this, since I have reading and writing to do myself, as I am sure you do too! So I will just leave you with this link to an inspiring article in the poetry blog About a Word: Who I Read Before I Write. 

The Anatomy of a Soup

OK, so this blog post was supposed to go up over a week ago, and I had all these lovely pics arranged perfectly, but then I started to mess with the html to make everything line up nicely, screwed up my tables, and then accidentally erased everything. A sad emoticon cannot even begin to communicate my frustration and mounting inner rage.

But... I am determined!  I will not let html and blogger combine to defeat me. I will deliver a post with lots of lovely pictures, despite the fact that taking pics is kind of a challenge with my li'l point and shoot and the other fact that writing comes a lot more easily to me than visual aesthetics. To the post!  

<< biking home with fronds of fennel from the SB farmer's market >>

(Warning: very non-vegetarian material ahead)

Skiing in Tahoe for Spring Break

Found on Flickr --  by Scott Thompson

I am so excited! My friend Kevin, a whip-smart fellow grad student in English, has invited me and some friends to stay with him for a five days at his boyfriend's gorgeous house in Tahoe. Yay Kevin and his retired-at-30-and-bought-a-house-in-Tahoe-because-he-invested-ridiculously-well-in-the-tech-boom boyfriend!

I haven't been skiing since I was like 16, when my mother sweetly took me, my high school boyfriend, and my best friend up to the mountains. My family used to go up to the snow every couple years before that, so I am hoping it's going to be more like riding a bicycle and less like html coding, which I am truly slow and stupid at when I haven't done it for several years. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see if I can stay upright while charging down mountains. I love the thrill of speed on the slopes, and I will just have to not eat much in order to be able to pay for the ski rental and lift tickets for as many days as possible.  Otherwise I'll have to go cross-country skiing, which is cheaper but  no fun at all, as in my opinion it's like walking, but harder, whereas downhill is more like

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Thrifty Fun: A Clothing Exchange Extravaganza

A couple weekends ago, my friend Emily organized a clothing exchange among a bunch of her girlfriends. She hosted it at Oreana Winery, which she and her husband Christian run here in Santa Barbara, which was great because it meant there was tons of space and plenty of wine. I loved the Chardonnay that Oreana was serving that night, and it felt so cool and special to be in there after it had closed to the public! I had so much fun meeting Emily's other friends, trying on clothes, snacking on all the delicious food the women brought, and of course, drinking the Oreana wine! I took some snaps of the outfits I made with my new clothes each day I wore them, but I'm not much of a model and I am definitely still learning how to take pictures. I had so much fun at the clothing exchange, and felt like I had a whole new wardrobe for free afterward. I really recommend organizing a clothing exchange to any group of friends and acquaintances. It was a great way to meet new people, too.
This was one of my finds: a lovely,  swingy black skirt that is full and flattering and just the right length -- a hard combo for someone barely 5'2" to find! I wore it with dark purple tights and a t-shirt from threadless that I adore

I've been wearing all my finds over the last couple weeks and am totally giddy over all the new shirts, skirts, and shoes I found among the large piles. I put a lot of my clothes up for offer that I was always reluctant to just give to Goodwill (even though I hadn't worn them in five years) because it made me a little happier to give them to friends who clearly really liked the shirts, pants, and shoes that I liked but no longer wore. It was also kind of cool to see just how many different body types there are: shirts that would look great on one person would look unflattering on another, or a pair of strappy sandals that slipped off my heels were perfect on another woman with differently-shaped feet.

More pics after the jump!

We Saunter in and out of Art Shows

My household loves the Elizabeth Gordon Gallery (EGG!) in SB, primarily because we all adore the paintings of one of their mainstay artists, Sherri Bellassen. The more venal reason is because the owner of the gallery is very generous with goodies -- truffles, good cheese, lots of wine.... what else could a grad student ask for? Every time they have an opening, we trot down to it, but the one last weekend was special because it had Belassen presenting her newest work. I know little to nothing about fine art, but what I love about Belassen is how still her figures are, even though she is usually capturing them in motion (swimming, dancing), and how stylized they are. Also, being the daughter of a surfer, I love her paintings of surfers in the long hours of watching and waiting.

At the opening, we got to really spend time up close with the paintings, and I noticed the texture, the way that Belassen layered paint and left these interesting little squares open in the layers that showed other colors beneath, or even the canvas. From a distance, they looked just like little splashes or sparks, but they were so carefully planned in these perfect squares when we looked closely. My favorites were the divers and the surfers, but the hammock loungers also caught my eye.

Pssst... In the photo, I am wearing one of the pins I sell in my etsy shop.