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it hasn't rained here for awhile, but this is the color i am dreaming in.

missing florida. missing e. counting down the days (1 and a half!) till i'm home.

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i had such a lovely three-day weekend. I rediscovered the joy of sleeping in, of another cup of coffee, of long sits by sunny windows and bits of exploring the neighborhood. but mostly i just recharged, and it was so nice.

i treated myself friday to catching up with the blogs of some of my favorite crafty women, and emerged from a long read with my mind humming with inspiration. i had been feeling for a long time a little blah in the sewing department... there was hand-sewing, yes, while i traveled and on the train, but it had been months-- pre-finals!-- since anything more exciting than a dish towel had come off of my sewing machine. (granted, it was a nice dish towel. but still.) seeing everyone's projects was just the motivation i needed to pull some fabrics off the shelf and get to work. and once i started, the energy just seemed to feed itself, and hours slipped by in that really good way that they do when you are consumed with something delightful. first up was a new bag, because it's summer. and i'd been eyeing amy karol's pleated bag pattern (in her book, bend-the-rules sewing) for absolutely ages. i bought this nani iro linen in tokyo, in the fabric district, and i couldn't bear to cut into it to do the contrast-color insets that the pattern calls for, but i think another one of these bags is in my future. so we'll see. also, the flickr set for this book is a-ma-zing.



the bag came together on friday and then came out with me for a long, sunny, sticky 4th of july walk around brooklyn, to fort greene for the brooklyn flea, where i ate pupusas with pickled cabbage and washed it down with a strawberry-rhubarb ice pop. this will not be the last ice pop of my summer, i am sure.



there was also the beginnings of a quilt, inspired quite directly by the beautiful work of erin + tracy. i had been making a quite different, really simple row-patched quilt, and i was stalled on it, in part because it was a bit boring. i took the strips i had pieced and sliced them randomly into bits, threw those bits together with a giant bag of scraps on my sewing table, and started pulling. and i am enjoying that so so much.



and a new pillow cover, a simple little cotton one, again with fabric brought back from tokyo. i love that sweet linen print.



and the other has been finished for awhile, but i haven't shown you yet-- an alabama reverse-applique hand-stitched jersey cover, stitched on planes and in buses through india and nepal. sewn together on the train and in long meetings, and now providing a very soft cozy spot for an afternoon nap.



a new bedroom curtain is cut out and halfway stitched. and another quilt is brewing. i caught up on npr, and jon stewart and steven colbert. i made yogurt in the crockpot. (that's my homemade yogurt in the top photo, with e's muesli and blueberries, on my makeshift breakfast table ;) ) and last night, a rhubarb oat walnut crumble, from my new favorite cookbook. (thank you for the rec, shari + melissa!) i even got a lot of work done, and now my interview notes from nepal are all typed up! wishing every weekend was 3 days long, and very much loving summer.

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i picked up my fourth roll of holga film this past weekend. with every shot i feel like i know this camera a little bit better, and yet still, i have have only a vague sense of what each image will be. there is something about these blurry, dreamy images that really captures my imagination, and i've been thinking a lot lately about why that is.

i am a very nostalgic person, and there are many things that appeal to me aesthetically because of that sense of nostalgia. i don't think i'm alone in this-- polaroid seems to be so much about that, the feeling that a photo could have been taken today or twenty or thirty or forty years ago. there is an erasing of time. holga has that too. light does funny, unpredictable things, focus is guesswork, and images are instantly aged, or ageless. so there is that. and there is beauty and also strangeness there. in the countryside of nepal, already coded as aged, these types of images do not have the same meaning that they do in the streets of brooklyn. (e used the word 'overdetermined,' and i think that i agree.)

i think the holga is also, for me, very much about getting away from a feeling that i need to document with photos in a very literal way. with digital, any little tweaking that i do is usually with the intent of trying to get the image "as it was" as much as possible. that is increasingly unsatisfying for a number of reasons... mostly because i don't think you can, really, and if you could, is that most interesting thing about the image? or is it more about, in the act of documenting, what the shot says about perception and memory? these holga photos in some way feel very true to the way my memories work. often blurry, distorted, with a shot of highlight. dark around the corners. unexpected. so much more so than with regular film, which i love for very different reasons that have much more to do with color and grain and texture.

i took the photo above on an overcast day, like so many days in june, on my walk from the train to home. but what it captures to me is smelling that honeysuckle in the dark, getting its heady scent before i could see it, then barely making out the shapes of the flowers by streetlight. it's blurry, but vivid.

there are some more holga images here.

what do you think?

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i've been feeling so energized about taking photos lately, after a little lull right after traveling. i think it was shari's visit + our day with brian + jen, and what felt like freedom to just take photos on the street all day (something i have trouble doing when i am alone). and then 3 days after shari left, e arrived, and we had such good photo walks. strolled the east village + the lower east side, 2 of my favorite places in new york, cameras in hand, just playing. and sunday was the pride march in new york! the weather was perfect, there were a million people on the streets, and i was inspired and filled with joy. we marched with my co-workers and other volunteers, and had such a great time. pride makes me so happy and optimistic. the world can be better. we are making progress. and it is good.

there are about a zillion weekend photos that i want to share, but it's been pretty nonstop around here. so here are my favorites from two weeks back, from the brooklyn photowalk. all 4 of us were toting film cameras, which made me smile. and it's been so fun to see images pop up on flickr, and see how each of us saw the same scene somewhat differently.

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thanks for the birthday wishes! it was a very very nice day. even being at work was pretty sweet, thanks to cupcakes from my fellow interns (chocolate mint, red velvet, + key lime) and the director of the ACLU leading the group in "happy birthday" :)

and then there was the sun. the first real, bright, warming sun in i don't even know how long. i put on my sunshine scarf in the morning and crossed my fingers... i thought i saw a little peek of blue sky and golden rays when i got off the train in manhattan... there was another little peek at lunch... and when i left, no doubt about it. the sun was out.


people were grinning on the street, y'all. it was fantastic. (it's been raining here for a long time). and it meant that when e took me out for birthday dinner, we got to eat outdoors, as the light turned gold to blue to darkness.

the best things we ate- clam + green garlic soup. maple + bacon roasted almonds. meatloaf with corn pudding. and for dessert, i had a cookie stack: raspberry thumbprint, salted peanut butter, and chocolate crinkle.

and now i'm 31. such an anticlimatic number (not nearly as exciting as 30, is it?), but this is going to be a huge year in so many ways. i'm working on keeping my eyes open + my heart open, and seeing where this year takes me.

261: photo school, 101

it's monday night and i'm still smiling from the wonderful weekend with shari + tom. i don't think you could ask for more delightful houseguests! we had a brooklyn foodfest and photofest all day with brian and jen, which was so good. so so good. i love a group of friends who will happily wait for you while you dash across the street to take a photo of something random that caught your eye! we were all toting our pentaxes so photos will be coming the old fashioned way.

after eating ourselves silly at marlow + sons (best. ever. roast. chicken. no joke. and salted chocolate caramel tart!), shari + i talked late into the night, about a topic close to both of our hearts-- photography, our process, + our desire to have a community of people that we could talk to about the images themselves. flickr is so much fun for socializing, but we also wanted a special space where we could really think about certain images, especially those that we had invested much of ourselves in. we wanted to know whether things were working, or not, and why they worked or didn't. we wanted to know whether what we wanted to convey in an image was getting conveyed to the viewer. a dialogue. and we both wanted to grow as photographers. we're thinking, and hoping, that some of y'all might feel the same way. so we started a little flickr group, "photo school, 101." i'll share the group description here:

This group is for folks who would like to work on their photography skills in a supportive, thoughtful environment. We're thinking the best of art school critique-- tell us what you think of your photograph, what you were trying to achieve, what you feel worked or didn't work, and why. The group is here to talk it through. We want active comments that engage the photograph in a constructive way, and will help each person in their own creative process. We are hoping that this is a group that will help us all grow.

amisha + shari

right now the group is invite only, so if you didn't get an invite, leave me a comment on flickr and i'll send you one. and if this is something that speaks to you-- and we both really really hope that it does-- please, post to the group. and comment on other people's photos. and hopefully this will be something great!

p.s. the photo above is my first submission, and it's here.

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it's friday and i am so glad. it's been a busy busy week... full with work and errands and dinners and a fancy dress party last night, and horizontal torrential rain in the morning with me in my silk dress and heels. oof. it felt good tonight to just lounge on the couch a bit, and tidy up to get ready for this lady's visit tomorrow. so looking forward to it and hoping that the weather cooperates for some photo walk plans! though if it rains, i think that there are some bakery-related plan Bs ;)



these photos some film from nepal-- both of these are in kathmandu. our first weekend in nepal was in kathmandu, where we did just a wee bit of sightseeing in the old town, then meetings with our full team of about 15 people. on monday morning, we all split up into 3 groups (students + profs in each one) to head out into the field. each group was in a different part of the tarai (the southern, flat part of nepal), where we worked with local NGOs and community leaders to meet with communities and conduct our interviews. it was absolutely incredible-- we were fortunate to meet with all different types of communities, and to work with remarkably talented and dedicated people who are so passionate about their work, despite considerable odds. i've posted photos from nepal on flickr, here, (still not done with the set, so i'll keep posting over there for the next few days) and next time i'll share some of my favorites from the field. i've also been thinking a lot about portraits, as many of my field photos are portrait shots, so that's something i'd like to talk through here.

have a nice weekend!