Urban Ore

I recently signed up for another workshop at the San Francisco Center for the Book, in which I'll learn to make my own polymer plates, including how to hand draw - or etch - designs onto the plates. The class should have been last week but was post-poned until mid next month (happily, the day before a Yann Tiersen concert and not the day of, as I feared). Kind of par for the course in terms of how easy or fast it's been to get my letterpress up and running.

Still, just when I think progress will never be achieved, I'm wrong.

One setback has been, despite its heft, that the press is relatively delicate and must be bolted onto a sturdy surface so that it does not tip over and break. This means I've been needing a new desk or table, which we are going to put, for now, into an already crowded room. But new adventures often have these romantic (or not so) beginnings, right?

My husband and I have been meaning to go furniture shopping for quite some time now. The press table needs to support nearly 200 lbs., be something we can drill holes through, fit into our apartment, and, have room for storage beneath.

So yesterday, on a beautiful and warm day, we began in Berkeley at Urban Ore. I had never been there before, and for so many people I know, this place is a gold mine. For others, it's merely a place to donate items you no longer want or need. Urban Ore re-sells, and cheaply, just about anything you could imagine. We walked through a yard of toilets, doors and windows, old VCRs and electronics, a graveyard of cassette tapes, costume jewelry, tubing for light bulbs, you name it.... Amidst it all, we found the furniture and, immediately, a perfectly-sized, sturdy old desk.



It's perfect as-is, including the rings from coffee mugs that have damaged the paint, and ZOOLOGY UC stamped into the side. The desk is going to, at some point, get ink on it, and continue down a path of being well used and worn.



We found what we were looking for so quickly, we spent our time afterward just wandering around:

new workspace!

Well, not really a new space, exactly, but a new way to be in the same space.

My husband and I share an office/studio space in one room of our apartment. He takes up most of it with his music equipment, but I have my own little corner. After we moved in, I began tacking up photos and greeting cards as inspiration, along with vintage maps of Paris and San Francisco. Eventually, though, it began to feel messy: the wall, the desktop, under and around the desk...

 

Then, around Christmastime, I received a calendar as a gift when I ordered Little Italy by Jennifer Altman, which is a lovely book of travel writing, recipes, and Polaroid photos taken in Italy (my reigning favorite country, with France, Mexico and England close behind). The calendar turned out to be equal in quality and beauty to the book. So, although I had at first envisioned adding the current month's photo to my motley collection of images, I changed my mind and decided I wanted them all up, year round. It's not only time for new inspiration, but for some order.

Although I can't seem to keep my desk clean or organized, no matter how hard I try, I have at least uncluttered the wall. Healthy habits start somewhere, right?

merry christmas.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.
~Andrew Wyeth

this time, next year.

I am really missing Paris and London lately. Yesterday my husband said, "I wish we were in our little flat" - referencing a flat he rented 3 years ago with a view of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

This photo hangs near our bed so that we see it every day:


I understand it's snowing in Paris this year, but yesterday, three years back, my husband and I got engaged near the Seine river. It was very, very cold and clear and absolutely magical. He proposed on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, and we shared a bottle of champagne at a restaurant, funnily enough, called the Equinox.

On that trip, among the Christmas decorations we saw, were these flocked Christmas trees sold on street corners:


As far as I know, these trees were real. There is nothing like a real tree and the smell of pine or fir, which is one reason, I suppose, we've never bought an artificial tree. However, this year we were concerned about being "green" and attempted to buy a live, potted tree. We ran into several hiccups: (1) Local stores had limited quantities and tended to quickly sell out and/or despite all my work at the gym, I couldn't carry the tree without help (dirt is heavy); (2) We would need to find somewhere to donate the tree (I was told school districts were a good place to start); (3) Many of the trees were Juniper, which my husband is allergic to.

So. In the end, my husband went out to find a potted tree that he could carry on his own and came home with a cut tree - a lovely 6-foot Noble Fir. Christmas trees can be recycled and mulched into fertilizer, after all.

However, were I to go artificial next year (and I'm speaking for myself because I'm pretty sure my husband would draw the line at a "cashmere pink" tree), I might be inclined to go all the way, in the spirit of the Parisians, with one of these tinsel trees (sold at Target):




Or, to be really crazy, how about a tinsel palm tree?


Or, and I think my favorite, are these aluminum, vintage trees, which can be found on ebay.


I've seen some more modern versions in people's windows that are just frames strung with lights. A bit austere, but pretty at night.

And, I have to say, I missed out on the Bay Leaf wreath this year, but... not next year. This one is from Williams-Sonoma: