Tag Archives: blog crush

Blog Crush: Cathy of California

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cathy of california blog crush

I know I’ve mentioned Cathy of California a time or two before, but she really warrants an official Blog Crush. Cathy Callahan is a vintage-crafts buff in Southern California with an apparently amazing collection of mid-century craft and fiber-arts books, which she shares images from. The blog is really that simple. Posts tend to be occasional and brief, but I experience every single one of them as a little burst of inspiration. I have her own book (“Vintage Craft Workshop”) on my wishlist, and I recently discovered that we have at least one mutual friend, so maybe I’ll wrangle an introduction one of these days. Meanwhile, I’m a devout fan.

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Blog Crush: vintage Jared Flood

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jared flood brooklyn tweed blog crush

If you read this blog of mine, you know I’m a big fan of Jared Flood’s yarn and pattern company Brooklyn Tweed. But what I’m particularly a fan of is Flood himself. I mean, the guy is a savant. I may not be a lace person, but I have a profound reverence for the depth and control and history and finesse and everything else that goes into a design like, say, Juneberry.  And his cables! Heart-stopping. (I am definitely a cable girl.) But on top of that, he’s an educator through and through, and I love to learn. His current blog — the official company blog, as it were — is a slight hazard zone for me and my to-do lists, since dipping even a toe into the archive can lead to a loss of hours (as I read up on woolen-spun versus worsted-spun yarns*, or imagine touching a Zimmermann original). But that’s nothing compared to his original Brooklyn Tweed blog. It may not be as pretty as the current blog and site, but that thing is a treasure trove of knitting knowledge. Before he became a purveyor of quality American-bred tweeds, his blog was more of a journal of his own knitting and design work, full of generous notes and guidance, e.g. his advice on plotting cable designs. And since it predates my yarn reawakening, it’s all new to me. So every once in awhile I go click a link or two at random out of the right column, carefully rationing the posts. That’s for the sake of my productivity and because I never want to run out.

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*I also like to read Clara Parkes’ “The Book of Wool” before I go to sleep, which has the opposite effect of merely counting sheep.

Blog Crush: Karen Barbé

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karen barbe woven patches

I can tell you it’s been eight weeks since I first saw this image, these little woven patches. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at it since then. It’s the work of Chilean textile artist Karen Barbé, and it makes my heart go pitty-pat, as does her whole blog. Barbé weaves, embroiders, teaches, and takes beautiful and amusing photos. Go forth and browse.

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Blog Crush: L.A. in Bloom

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heather taylor l.a. in bloom blogger marni for h&mIn my Evernote is one note that’s just a giant dumping ground of URLs I come across at busy moments that I want to come back to and dig around in. Wednesday night one of them leapt out at me: L.A. in Bloom. It took some scrolling through the blog for me to remember where I’d come across the link: It was a pin on Pinterest from what appeared to be a style blogger I’d not heard of before, about the Marni for H&M collection. And in the pinned image, she was sitting in a funky-cool armchair, dressed all in Marni, looking perfectly charming, and knitting. So obviously I wanted to know more.

It turns out Heather Taylor, the blogger in question, is a gallery owner and a knitter, and she’s recently taken up weaving — in a very ambitious way. From what I’ve seen so far, she blogs about food and books and flowers and art and fibery things, and she comes across in the blog just as charming as she did in that knitting-in-Marni image. I put her blog straight into my feed reader, and I’ll be digging deeper into the archives as soon as possible.

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Meanwhile, one of the posts that caught my eye was about a yarn store and weaving studio in L.A. by the name of Pets with Fez! Heather had just been there for the first time in January:

… a charmingly cluttered weaving studio Highland Park. Sadly for Angelenos, the shop is relocating to San Francisco this February and this is the last week to sort through the colorful selection of yarn, books and tchotchkes before they head north.

Wha-huh?! Anyone know anything about this? I need to go there if and when it reopens, but Google doesn’t seem to know anything. (Etsy at least has this video.)

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Blog Crush: Ana Kras

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ana kras bonbons hive lamp
Some of the best blogs make it hard to get a really good crush going because they’re posted to so rarely. I try not to fault Ana Kras — photographer, illustrator, and maker of such exquisite things as the fibery “Bonbons” and “Hive” lamp seen above — for being such a sporadic blogger, since the page on her site that is technically her blog is labeled “news.” She posts only when she has something to report. Also, there’s no RSS feed, so not only does she post rarely, there’s no way to be alerted when she does. It makes me sad. But the thing is: what’s there is so fantastic. I could visit once a week and be perfectly happy scrolling back through all the same images I saw the last time. I dare you not to fall into that rabbit hole right now.

Her most recent post highlights the fact that one of her lamps is hanging in the room that graces the cover of the current T Magazine. Which gives us a chance to talk about how UNFRICKINGBELIEVABLY cool that house is. Just watch this video. Xylophone dining tables! Secret bookshelf doorways! Musical stairs! And Ana Kras lights.

ana kras bonbons t magazine cover

Blog Crush: Wiksten

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Jenny Gordy's socks
(Photo: Jenny Gordy, Wiksten)

Last year when Flipboard added in Google Reader functionality I suddenly had blogs as the main course in my daily media diet again. That combo is hands down, for me, the very best way to browse the web. I fell back in love with some old favorites (101 Cookbooks, Emma’s Designblogg …) and began adding new feeds at a pretty steady pace. But it spiked when I took up knitting a few months ago. One of the first things I did was to go looking for inspiring knitters around the web, and now I’m ever on the lookout for more. The other day at Design Sponge, the designer of Odette (gorgeous), whose home was being featured, made a point of mentioning that the scarf in one of the photos was knitted by her friend Jenny Gordy, of Wiksten. So you know I clicked that link.

There are lots of beautiful blogs from beautiful makers of beautiful things, and this is no exception. But I don’t remember the last one that drew me so far into the archives. Gordy’s a designer through and through — a dressmaker who is also an exquisite knitter and now ceramicist. (Three of my favorite things.) And she’s actually got me thinking about knitting socks, which I never thought would interest me — the photo above and this post were enough to convince me. (Almost enough? I do love double-points.) As I bounced around in the archives, I discovered that she recently moved from Brooklyn to the midwest, and I think she may actually have grown up in the middle as well. Having grown up in Kansas City, and having been in California for quite some time, I’m increasingly aware of the instant — albeit subconscious — vibe I get from midwesterners. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t tell you how often I’ve hit it off instantly with someone only to discover later that we’re both from flyover land. And that might be at play here. Anyway, reading her blog felt like encountering an old friend I simply hadn’t met yet, which I think is what all the best blogs feel like. And it’s just thoroughly inspiring to me.

I really loved highlighting great blogs at Readerville and think I’ll try to do the same here from time to time. So there’s one for you: Wiksten.

(I’d love to hear about your favorites in the comments.)