I found it

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in het regen

on ferry

light

linden

de blinde reiziger

The final one is a bookshop in Gent that also sells artists’ books, prints, some very ‘serious’ ephemera…I love it. It is owned and solely staffed, as far as I have made out, by a man in his 70s. Extremely crabby. Smokes in the back room. Does not like you to touch too many things. Or look too closely at the prints. Or, God forbid, breathe on anything. The last day we were in Gent it was pouring rain all day and I was walking with some friends and took them there, but only to look in the window, since I can’t imagine the looks and tttttt-tttt-tt! noises we would get for dripping on his floor.

It is kind of my ideal future shop, too.

I am making a project for 2012. It will have one piece every week. I will be able to show you soon (even though I don’t have the web-space set up, I have been doing the project. Pneumonia [! yes.] got in the way of my end-of-year plans). So far the year has been full of bad news. My friends says it is like a box of chocolate: you eat all the bad ones, then you know only good ones are left. I hope so. Anyway I have lots of plans, and two fingers to the bad news. I will make my own luck and I will be brave.

Happy new year!

#N30

cobblers

chestnuts

When the royal wedding took place in April and the whole country was shut down for a day no one said it would ruin the economy, despite the fact that taxpayers in the UK subsidised it. So why does a public-sector strike for one day bring up predictions of scuttling the economy? Strikers today are in public services (teachers, firefighters, nurses, construction workers), and all in areas which the current UK government has threatened with ‘austerity measures’. Basically, this means that these workers would get less money when they retire–and have to work to an older age, and pay in more each year, to get it. This is how the UK government wants to save money. Not by asking the financial sector to clean up its act, or asking people who make, say, over £60000/yr (the City is London’s financial district) to take a pay cut. By asking people who make these figures to lessen their pension. How fair is that? To me it is not right that a nurse might–at her peak–make less than half of what a banker does. But beyond my personal valuation of a nurse’s work over a banker’s, it doesn’t seem right to me that someone–anyone–should have to give up their post-retirement security (or have to work longer or pay more than other people to get it). I am sure there are people who would argue their own willingness to work til they are 70, or to work 80-hour weeks, or whatever it is. And someone else has already answered them better than I could. But I don’t want those things. I don’t want them for anyone else, either. I would like to live in a world where people can work until a reasonable age–maybe 60?– and then retire, and be taken care of. I don’t think that’s impossible. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of money. There does seem to be a lack of equitable ways to share it. So that’s why I’m in solidarity with the strikers here today. This isn’t only about the actual effects of these potential cuts. It’s also about the kind of society those cuts symbolise. I don’t want to live in that society.

Thank you for your words, below.
Thank you for looking at the things I make.
Thank you for reading as I write about my remarkable and ordinary daily life.
Thank you for being generous.
Thank you for thinking of me.
Thank you for suggesting things to me I wouldn’t have thought of.
Thank you for commenting and letting me read about your lives, too.
Thank you for being a community that is dispersed and distant but somehow very present just when needed.

small theaters

Films by Joseph Cornell.
Improvisations by David Shapiro.
I updated my layout here to be a bit simpler. Links are over here now and I’m going to try to update them more often. All my highest recommendations for distraction, all in one place.

persephone books

30% off orders in my shop with the code ALMOSTDECEMBER. Calendars ship free with code SHIPFREE11. Both codes valid til 2 December.

pépé and granddaughter

favorites

From The Good Machinery, who I originally found on flickr, and whose photos I really enjoy, this golden-legged horse.

Almost anything Cecilia Afonso Esteves makes. I have a Lunario; it is beautiful.

This camera case from Therere Workshop is really nice, if someone you know has a camera to fit.

My feet are always cold, and I really like high socks. Oh, and cable-knit? Ideal. These are made in Estonia. Add a pair of wool shoes for maximum warmth. I would bet 90% of people reading this also like long, beautifully knit socks. It would be a bet I would win. Take THAT to Ladbrokes.

I like this rabbit. I like her bicycle. I would really like to give this to a certain bicycling couple in my family. Hmm. Or any cyclists with a sense of whimsy, really.

I hear that Martha will have metallic scarves soon, for an undoubtedly shortshortshort time (she sells out FAST). They’ll be here and they’ll be well-made and beautiful.

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