Lookbook

Huh. I've been poking around on Lookbook and realized I am older than everyone on there, apparently.  Also, the community in the forums seems a bit intense.  There's a lot of advice on how to get your look "hyped" and get fans.  It seems like perhaps not the best use of my time to worry about what a random fashionable nineteen-year-old in Stockholm thinks of my dress.  I do like it as a place to post photos of what I'm wearing, just for a record for myself, and to show my friends.  But trying to earn approval from strangers is really not something that interests me.

Fashion Website

I joined lookbook.nu, a place to post pictures of your outfits, and look at other people's outfits. I've been thinking about fashion a lot lately. I like to look at fashion magazines like Lucky, but right now I'm more excited by looking at how real people put clothes together than flipping through a magazine, where people are dressed by a designer instead of themselves and advertisers are exerting influence.

New Dress

I just bought a new BCBG dress from Macy's.  It was 60% off, and I am in love with it!  It's perfect to wear to work and feel stylish all day.  It's even cuter on me than it looks on the mannequin. :)

I wore it with black tights, flat black boots, and a little black cardigan.  I also want to try it with something in the opposite style, like big ornate earrings and colorful sandals.

Cross Stitch Finished

I finished my cross stitch with the quote from Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  Here it is:

I don't know if you can tell in the photo, but the green embroidery thread is the exact same green of one of the types of tea bag wrappers that Connie used on the frame.  

I have it in my office, right above where I have my electric tea kettle, mugs, and box of looseleaf tea.

Finished Await Your Reply

I finished Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, and it was great.  It's thrilling, fast-paced, and filled with real, true-seeming characters.  It deals with fascinating questions of identity, history, and reinvention, along with affairs in the Arctic, a dried up lake, magicians, and international thievery.  I only wish it could've been a little bit longer.

[Manasa: You would love this book!]

"Vision"

A short story of mine, "Vision," was published in the January issue of Midwest Literary Magazine.  Check it out here!  It's the second one down.  My story is on page 103.

An Old Project

I thought I'd post photos of my first reupholstery project.  I re-covered my kitchen chairs about a year ago.  Like the ottoman, their original state was perfectly unobjectionable, just a little boring.  Also like the ottoman, now they are awesome.

Before:

After!

Await Your Reply

I'm reading Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon right now.  I'm about halfway through it.  It's so good I want to take the book and smack someone on the arm with it, going "How can it be so good?!"  It's described on the back as a literary sort of thriller, which doesn't say much.  More specifically, it's the interwoven stories of three people, which I can see now are all eventually going to weave together.  Lucy is a just-graduated 18 year old who has run off with her history teacher to a motel in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska.  Ryan is involved with some shady dealing I'm not totally clear on - the book opens with him on the way to his hospital after his hand has been cut off.  And Miles is searching for his schizophrenic twin brother in a town north of the Arctic Circle.

It's so good! So intriguing!  It's got a lot of plot, but it's not one of those books where the characters exist to just move the plot along.  I actually care about them, and they feel like real people.