Oh I'm so sad! I wanted to share this beautiful recording of Sure on this Shining Night, sung by baritone Nathan Gunn, but the site appears to be down. I'm going to post this anyway and hope that it will be back up soon. It's one of my all-time favorite art songs by one of my all-time favorite composers, Samuel Barber. (I've spent most of my life as a classical singer, and although I'm taking a break of sorts--long story--I still really love this music.)

Text by James Agee:

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

Last night we saw the new Herzog film, Encounters at the End of the World, and all I have to say is, I love this man and every new work I see makes me love him more. His latest is a documentary about Antarctica, to which he brings his usual combination of the philosophical plus a sense of humor and humanity. Definitely try and catch it on the big screen if you can--there are some amazing sequences of dives under icebergs and excursions in snow caves that would lose something on the small screen.

Photo from the Herzog website.

Sunday morning we bought a Vespa! It's been a longtime dream and the opportunity just fell in our lap and we couldn't pass it up. More photos soon!

It's been months since I've had time to knit and I've missed it! This weekend I finally finished a scarf I started in February--luckily, San Francisco is chilly all year long so I can still wear it, even in the middle of summer. I'm hoping to keep up with my knitting now, since I'm going to be an aunt in December and want to make lots of treats for my nephew to be! I'm thinking it's the perfect excuse to overcome my fear of amigurumi, which may mean conquering crochet once and for all as well.

This week we cranked out wedding invitations for my sister, Laura, and Martin, her fiancé. After seeing the save-the-dates we made for them, they decided to go with a lovebird theme throughout. (Which gave us the perfect excuse to trot out some of the vintage bird images we've been collecting.) We're so happy for these two lovebirds and can't wait to see them in September!

I have a weakness for TV crime dramas, so whenever I get a jury summons there's a part of me that's a little excited by the chance to see the courts in action. Of course, I try to remind myself that 1) all trials aren't as exciting as Law & Order, and 2) if by some chance I did end up on an exciting case, I wouldn't enjoy hearing all the brutal details of a real crime. But as soon as I arrive at the Hall of Justice, I get a little carried away by the 50s institutional architecture and the patriotic videos they make you watch. It's strangely reminiscent of elementary school, and I almost find myself believing in America the way I did when I was a kid.

But alas, the appeal to my sense of civic duty was in vain. I'm off the hook again until next year.

And while we're speaking of legal matters, this may be a fine time to inform everyone that we will not be at the Bicycle Film Festival Street Party as previously promised. The street party has been cancelled unfortunately, but there are still film showings galore. (Details here.) As for us, we should be at a few other local craft fairs in the not-too-distant future, so stay tuned.

Photo: whatimseeing.com

Maybe this will turn into a regular feature--certainly this post and this post could have fallen under the "little treat" heading. But for now, I just wanted to point out these awesome buttons that our friend Shannon makes, on sale here. (More cuteness by Shannon can be found here.)

And on a totally random note, our neighbor came over the other night and asked to borrow a cup of sugar. Which made me really happy. (I love it when cliches come true.)

As promised, here's our second post on Renegade, though I still don't think we've recovered enough to process it all. It was our first big fair and there was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears leading up to it, but it definitely was worth it. (We had no idea how much inventory to bring, and I think we kind of over-did it.) Still, we're pretty proud of how our circus-striped table came together, and it was really exciting to get our goods in front of such a large audience--as well as meet so many other crafters. (Maiden Love, WMP, Sweetie Pie Press, and so many more.)

But there's no rest for the weary! Steve and Matthew (en costume, above) are getting ready for an art show at Echo Curio in LA in August, and we're going to have a booth at the Bicycle Film Festival Street Party next weekend. And this weekend, Kelly of Little Paper Planes will be selling some of our prints and buttons in her booth at the SF Zine Fest. Luckily, we're not working at this fair, but we're looking forward to stopping by.

We're still a bit delirious from our weekend at the Renegade Craft Fair, but we did manage to pull it together enough to write a guest post for Poppytalk. You can see some of the many wonderful things that caught our eye here and here. (And we'll post more about our experience soon!)

We just finished putting the final touches on our goods for Renegade . . . typed text and white charcoal details and such. Now we just have to package it all up, which always ends up being more than we bargained for. But the end is in sight! If you live in the Bay Area we hope you'll swing by Fort Mason on the 12th & 13th and say hello! We're also excited to announce that we'll be doing a Renegade recap for Poppytalk. We'll be sure and let you know when our post is up!

Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary--I can't believe a year has gone by so quickly! And I also can't believe all that's happened in the last year. I have a notebook I've been carrying around since 2005 called "SC+MD's stationery adventure", and it's so great that we've finally made that happen--opening our Etsy store in January and participating in our first big craft fair this weekend. Can't wait to see what the next year has in store . . .

We just received the first item in our paper swap, organized by The Suburban Pen Pal and Radatrix. These clever "Sew-in-Love" cards from Bird and Banner made our day! Can't wait to see what else is in store . . . (We'll be mailing out our treats in about a week.)

Tomorrow we are taking a much-needed break from crafting to celebrate the 4th of July, at our friends' studio-on-the-bay in China Basin. This will be the 5th year in a row that we've gone to this party--the first year we had barely met and weren't even dating, then a couple years later this is where Matthew proposed, and then last year all of our family was in town for our wedding and came along. Hosts Tim and Paul will be moving to an amazing new studio in the Mission soon, so this will be our last 4th of July on the water with them. If you live in SF, you are welcome to stop by and experience the madness first-hand. (Details here.)