HEART CANADA! 20% OFF!

I heart Canada guys, it's an amazing country to live in and I feel blessed to be able to make my life here. And guess what? It's our birthday this weekend! Happy birthday Canada!

In honor of the holiday, please enjoy a 20% discount in both the etsy & big cartel shops all weekend long (till Monday, midnight) with the code: HEARTCANADA.

Tell your friends! Grab up the last of the Spring stock while you can! Special requests? Send me an email!

DIAMONDS IN THE PALM OF HER HAND

Some weeks ago I made a number of simple & supple 'diamond' leather clutches meant to sit like a slouchy jewel in the palm of one's hand. I sold some at Puces Pop and am listing the few I have left now for sale. See here for details.



Also!! I want to update and change some styles, specifically the Cubist Clutch (see below) and so I'm clearing out the pieces I have in stock now (not made-to-order items) for $60 each. I'm going to bump the price back up again in two weeks, so if you were looking for a cubist clutch to buy, now's a great time. Take note: I will likely not be making more of these styles once they are sold out!


OK! Talk soon.

OUTTAKES

I finally shot the Ursa Minor F/W collection this past weekend with photographer extraordinaire Francesca Tallone and our beautiful model Vanessa Vick. I'm so happy we pulled it all together - things were looking iffy for a couple days there at the end. Collection photos won't be up for some time but I did shoot some behind-the-scenes shots should you want a little preview. Thank you so, so much to Francesca, Vanessa, friends Steve Wiseman & Jody Zinner who graciously let us shoot at their apartment, and to R for shuttling me to & fro and generally putting up with me for the past two weeks (and ten years.) And now I'm getting sushi takeout and watching cop dramas in bed for the remainder of the weekend.

A CLUTCH OF CLUTCHES

Long time coming, as usual, I finally added my new mixed-leather clutches to the shop this weekend. We actually had some sunny weather (for a change) so I was able to take photos on beautiful Saturday afternoon between bouts of book-reading and wine-sipping on the back balcony. All this after a perfect morning spent with Genevieve eating dim sum and wandering down to Reborn in old Montreal to ogle Arielle de Pinto jewels. Just a wonderful day, really, I've been needing one of those.

Anywayyyyy....

I added 7 new cubist pouches to the shop, which you can view *here*. They are all made with favourite bits of leather I've been hoarding over the months and years, and all lined in a natural-coloured organic linen. My favourite-of-the-moment is the Pebble Pink which I am tempted to keep for myself, though I suppose I can always make another should I decide I need to.

Though  I have enough leather to recreate some of these (the Pebble Pink for example) others are one of a kind. Please get in touch if you have questions!

~Evening Grey~
 
~Pebble Pink~

~Lamb's Ear~

~Midnight~

~Neapolitan Cream~

~Whiskey & Water~

~Smokey Sage~

AD HOC

My friend Gini opened up a new shop, Ad Hoc, in her hometown of Penticton this week. She's stocking some great brands and I'm lucky that Ursa Minor has been included from the get go. If you live in or around the Okanagan Valley you must go check it out and say 'hi' for me, maybe pick up some local wine and certainly buy yourself something beautiful from her store. Congrats Gini, I wish you all the best.

CHANGE OF SCENERY

I took a little break from Fall design early this week to play around with some fun(er) projects. I needed a rest from tedious drafting and sampling and decided to make! creative! work! immediately!
I plan to take some better photos this weekend, but for now here's a glimpse of my latest. I hope to add a number of hand-dyed linen scarves and Springy leather pouches to the shop next week - time to add a little colour & pattern to my life.

ULRICA

{Ulrica Silk Duster in washed raw silk noil}

Fall sampling is actually, truly starting to happen, guys. I know I'm a million years behind but this is gonna get done - the middle is in sight.

MANUFACTURED SOLAR SYSTEMS

My little Montreal family doesn't celebrate Easter. Religion interests us, but doesn't inform our lives. We're happy to observe the beliefs of others, but that doesn't mean we've made them our own. What we do like though, and what I in particular cherish, is carrying on the personal traditions of our childhoods, reinterpreting and adapting them into rituals of our own.

When I was a kid Easter meant food. All holidays meant food but Easter meant food + chocolate + chocolate food hunts. It meant decorating sugar cookies. It meant spending time with family and undoing one's belt and relaxing. Cecil B DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments always played on tv and I was allowed a special pass each year to stay up late and watch. It fueled my love of extravagance & epic & magic and I looked forward to it every year, despite it's dated decadence, un-child-friendly subject matter and nearly 4-hour running time. And we always decorated eggs, always in the same way, batik-style with abstract wax patterning and repeated dying. Our own tiny Pollocks.

It's important to me, now that I'm so far from my family and the people who informed my development, that I continue to observe these rituals I love, despite having to form my own opinions about the holidays they surround. It's important for me to share these traditions with the people who are foremost in my current life. And it's important I still revere and acknowledge the magic and joy they once brought. And so I am continuing on.

DESIGNER Q & A

Hey! There's a little Q & A with me over on Victoire's blog, check it out **here** if you so desire. Learn all my deep, dark secrets (no just kidding, scroll on down to the previous post for those.)

Thanks for thinking of me ladies!

AND NOW, A RANT

{lovely, soothing lavender in blue glass before the *RANT* begins}

Hey, you know what's trickier than maybe you thought it would be? Getting older dudes. I always thought I would embrace aging like the hippie teen I sometimes still see myself to be. I thought I would come to love the changes in my confidence, social position, face, body and dress; that I would love myself just as I was. Here's the thing though - change seems to be happening in some fields, while willfully, cruelly skipping over others. Though I see all the worries, joys, frustrations, parties and passions of my youth writ large across my forehead, I certainly don't see them in my level of self-confidence, which seems to do nothing but deteriorate over time.

I kindof have this pact with my sister and my best bud Genevieve right now to write only honest, truthful posts on our blogs for awhile. It's hard to put yourself out there, perhaps unnecessary too (especially considering this is supposed to be a "work blog") but since my feelings permeate every aspect of my life and work, and since I don't seem to be blogging much at all, I thought I'd just try writing here.

So here are some issues I have about getting older:
1) It never occurred to me when I was 22 that my body wasn't always going to look the way it did then, certainly not with the amount of cheese I've eaten and booze I've drunk over the past decade. Willpower is not my strong point and a crepe complete & glass of wine will almost always win out over a trip to the gym. Now I have 10 years of pleasure, literally, under my belt but a body that doesn't feel totally my own. And can I do something about that? Sure. Will I? I don't know - it's so much easier to obsess over something that's not right than spend that time fixing it. Obviously I know the dreaded 'media' along with the industry I've chosen to work within have helped develop a rather unhealthy self-image. When women in their 50s look like Tilda Swinton, women in their 60s like Helen Mirren, it seems impossible to compete even as a 30-something. And the worst competition will always be my past self, which makes getting older hard because the ideals are so unattainable and the image of the past ever present.

2) At 19 I had the whole world within my grasp. The hard part is knowing now that I didn't know it then. Lately I've been thinking about why I chose to leave home at 17 to pursue a degree in fine arts. I know now that moving to a different city, attending university and facing all the wonders and challenges that brought was brave and probably as much newness as I could handle at the time. Looking back though I wonder why I didn't instead, say, move to New York, make art, meet people and start my life right off the bat. Thank god I had wonderful, supportive parents who allowed me to pursue my little dreams in the little way I did, but really - fine arts? What kind of idiot studies painting at university? If I could do it all over again I would've taken much greater leaps at an early age when I was supremely confident, blissfully unaware and didn't yet have a jaded bone in my body.

3) I remember my mother telling me something that my grandmother said to her, perhaps on an 80th birthday: basically you always feel the same, you always feel 24, but that face in the mirror just keeps changing. How can I reconcile my eternal, internal youth with a reflected visage that tells me I'm no longer fresh faced? How do people do this, deal with this ongoing physical change when inwardly one remains forever young? How do I stay true to all aspects of myself? Seriously, can someone tell me? Why is my self-worth so tied to my physicality?

4) When am I ever going to stop being selfish? I want children, possibly soon, but knowing I have to stop with the all-consuming introspection has me terrified. It makes me wish I'd just had a 'happy accident' years ago so I could quit finding reasons to put off obsessing over myself and be able to nurture another. Also? the older I get the more solitary I become. I LOVE time to myself, I LOVE privacy, I LOVE doing whatever I want whenever I want it (otherwise why grow up at all?) When am I going to become an actual grown-up though? Do I want to? Can I handle it? Why hasn't growing older given me answers to any of these questions?

5) What happened to my self confidence? I was never completely confident nor woefully insecure but I remember once feeling somewhat secure, empathetic, trusting my instincts and loving myself. As I grow older I question myself more and more. I don't trust things I never would've questioned 10 years ago. Am I just challenging myself, or is my life permeated by fear? 'Aging' hasn't lived up to my expectations of how I would feel about myself, my successes, the lessons I've learned, the things I've done. Isn't it supposed to get easier? Aren't I supposed to be able to present myself in a mature, concise way, to want to talk about my work, to know myself and show my best side to others? I still want to sit at the kid's table.

6) Why aren't I making any money (see: BFA, pursued dreams, hippie youth, etc. {oh....right}) At 16 one imagines that when they're 32 they will have some semblance of a lucrative career. As someone with one failed business already in their portfolio it's very hard for me to be starting again. Dudes, I'm working 16 hour workdays in a room, alone, in my home and earning an income which simply does not jive with my vision of future (present) me. It sucks to have self-worth tied to financial gains and industry respect but I can't help it, these are the things that make my life comfortable and desirable. I look at my contemporaries in other fields and wonder why age and experience have yet to pay off for me in any way. Hey! I'm talented! Hey, I work hard! Hey! I have an incredibly coveted job of which I am in complete control! Where is the security and $ I was hoping for?

7) Why is being a teenager so alluring when you're 30 but kindof !blah! when it's actually happening. When I'm 60 will I covet my 30s? When I'm 90 will I wish that I was 75 again (I'll warrant a guess that I'll still wish I was 17.) Lately I've been falling prey to all sorts of things that I would've (and did) shun back in the day when I was supposed to enjoy them. As a workaholic shut-in I watch a lot of internet tv, lately Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I thought was beyond lame when it came out and I was starting university. But somehow watching it now has brought me to multiple emotional breakdowns and I've been seeking out why. First, I think I love the routine, something to look forward to each time, a new episode, a new friend, an escape. Second I miss that thrilling, terrifying uncertainty - first love so strong it makes you sick, finding power in your youthful strength, challenges you've never faced before, freedom and ease of new independence. Also, vampire slayer! Hello! That trope of the extraordinary in the ordinary or vice versa, of which every human dreams. Third, the reality that sets in when I turn it off. I'm just ordinary in the ordinary after all.

8) I don't feel any closer to what I want, in fact I feel I don't know what I want at all anymore. Perhaps that's just time and age leading me down certain paths instead of having everything in the world open to me (which is easy - pick everything), but now I need to actually decide and that's damn hard work. Let's be honest, my life is lovely. I live in a city I love, with a man I absolutely cherish, I have a beautiful and comfortable home and life is taking its delightful course. I find, however, that in all this happiness and contentment I struggle to define myself and it's a chore having to work on myself after all this time when I thought I knew myself so well. Who am I?

9) Have you heard 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan'?

10) Ok, ok, things are fine, what can I say? But it's just awful realizing after all this time I've spent with myself that I continue to hurt and dream, to want, to disregard. I need things and I'm superficial and I'm not sure of myself or of the future. I'm hard on myself, I desire more of myself, I wonder: will I ever be enough? Will I make a mark? To quote a friend: "my enduring fear is that I am just someone, and will never be someone in particular". Can a mid-life crisis happen at 32 or is it just a sign that I need to push myself more & again?

I'm going to end this rant now, sorry for posting myself all over the internet. My diary will never forgive me.