Baggu I *heart* U
Obsessed. I saw these new Duck Bags by Baggu this morning and fell in love. Maybe it’s their ability to be worn across the body aka every kid on a bike’s dream bag for a few groceries or bouncing around town. Or maybe it’s the vibrant colors—they are all just so gosh darn happy! Or maybe it’s just because they are simple, sweet and elegant. No matter, I want one. Now. Please?*
Also on the theme of bags— check out the collage bags that the participants of Jay McCarroll’s Mystery Bag Class created over at Spool this past weekend. It looks like everyone had fun, but sadly there appears to have been no Celebrity played. I guess they were there to sew…
*Take a peek at the HUGE collection of reusable grocery bags available over at Baggu, they come in every color of the rainbow and are perfect for keeping in your purse for that unexpected trip to the store.
Green Pad Living @ the largest Whole Foods in the Philly area
Continuing with my recent “green” theme, as of today, a new Whole Foods Market is opening in Plymouth Meeting and aside from the opening day madness (the store’s Facebook profile claims the Eagles’ pep band is playing?!) this new location is full of more than just groceries. It also houses a community center, touts a roof deck and the eco-friendly goods of the Philadelphia-based company, Green Pad Living.
Owned and operated by the husband/wife team of Darren Hengst and Jackie Giordano, Green Pad Living offers eco-friendly options for your home and bath. Their display (pictured above) at Whole Foods makes use of two pieces of GPL’s “eco-restored furniture” in addition to exhibiting a cross-section of their organic soaps, bath salts and reclaimed wood frames. You can also find GPL’s products at Green Aisle Grocery (owned by PW’s own food critic Adam Erace and his bro) on East Passyunk in South Philly.
Take the time to hop over to the GPL Blog and check out an awesome pictorial documenting the process of building the Whole Foods display. You can see how Darren built the green table using reclaimed wood from the rafters of a garage and salvaged posts from a barn as well as the how he refurbished the cream coffee table to take it from peeling piece of junk to store display unit.
Green Thumb Ring?
Does anyone else find this Growing Jewelry idea by Icelandic designer Hafsteinn Júlíusson to be a slightly overzealous attempt at breaking into the go green fashion craze? I mean, I am all for the recent trends toward eco-friendly fashion and really dig* the Growing Jewelry Store he installed at the Reykjavik Art Museum but I find the idea of actually selling this jewelry (that requires a spray bottle for watering) to the masses almost comical. Not to mention, if the Icelandic moss that is used in these rings is anything like the Irish moss I’ve been attempting to grow at home, it’s wicked fussy. At the very least, anyone thinking about purchasing one of these little darlings better not plan on washing their hands or going out on a sunny day whilst donning their finger foliage because based on my experiences in overwatering and over-lighting my sad excuse of a moss patch, such tendencies are death to the stuff.
In Júlíusson’s defense, site does warn against overwatering and suggests only spraying the moss with water once every five weeks. It also claims that the moss-in-a-ring is able to live up to 12 months (if not in my care). The good news is, even if the designer doesn’t care that these rings are going to result in mass moss death, he at least realizes that there are people like me in the world and has replacement moss available to Growing Jewelry enthusiasts via his web site.
*pun originally not intended but upon second reading by the author it was discovered and found wildly hilarious. (It’s okay if you think the pun isn’t funny, the author usually finds her jokes totally gut-wrenching while others find them to be only slightly entertaining at best, just ask her friends).
Kelly Lane (is in my ears and in my eyes…)
Okay, so I get the feeling that the above headline isn’t the first time someone has thought themselves witty by placing Pittsburgh clothing designer Kelly Simpson-Scupelli’s label, Kelly Lane, into a “Penny Lane” lyric. However, that headline actually sums up my current obsession with the collection of “eco-friendly” dresses, skirts and shirts rather well.
Thanks to the folks over at Handmade in PA for helping me discover this Pennsylvanian treasure. Her dresses make use of silhouettes spanning from the early 1960’s like the Raspberry Tisane Dress (pictured above) to the more daring and playful shapes of today, like the Ambrosia in Honeydew pictured below.
The key to the Kelly Lane line is Simpson-Scupelli’s ability to meld natural tones and splashes of pattern without letting her designs fall victim to the far too common “Hobby Lobby” look. You know what I’m talking about, the buttons and lace and 12 different patterns all thrown onto a single piece. Additionally, all Kelly Lane pieces are made from certified organic cotton, soy, bamboo and other “eco-friendly” fabrics so not only can you look good in them but you can feel good in them too. You can buy Kelly Lane online at Jute and Jackfruit as well as Hazel Boutique.
think globally, wear locally
SA VA workers sewing buttons on the line's 'Allison' jacket. All pics from SA VA blog.
If you’d like a neat inside look into the process of starting up a fair-trade, good-wage-paying, hyper-local boutique in Philly, check out the SA VA blog. Owner Sarah van Aken and other staffers discuss the nuts and bolts leading to the opening of their store at 1700 Sansom on Saturday, from sheetrock to design to garment construction. Three quarters of the stuff at SA VA will be clothing made on site, as in next door, as Van Aken says she’s tired of lying awake at night worrying about her carbon footprint and tsunamis:
SA VA garment center
…and the place’s mission statement is full of other pretty excellent sounding stuff: creating 22 new fair-compensation jobs in Philly in the next two years, producing locally and using fair-trade and organic materials.
Vera blouse
Shopping at SA VA will be by “event,” encouraging people to shop for their clothes depending on their needs: “Workday,” “Night Out,” “First Date,” “Saturday” or “Dress Up.” Sizes range from 2 to 16, and price will range from $40 for a shirt to $350 for a hand-printed, hand-sewn coat or dress, which… admittedly a bit out of my price range, to be sure, but readers who already shop at, I dunno, J.Crew or Banana Republic or other mid-range stores might want to seriously consider outfitting themselves in clothes that are good for Philly.
Nearly finished space
Atomic Catwalk Craft Up Session #1!
Hey DIY/ETSY kids, remember that post I did a week or two back about Atomic Catwalk? Well, if you haven’t been in touch with Kim-Thao or anyone from B.A.N.G., this is your chance to connect and be a part of the Philly Fringe Festival! I recieved an email reminder about the first meet up:
This Thursday, the 20th, we will have our first design meetup at the PNA office, from 6PM-8PM. We are located at 251 South Camac Street, 19107 (between 12th and 13th on Spruce).
Bring your ideas, crafts materials, and your most outlandish accessories– be ready to create! Remember, we will provide the actual clothing. Bring your friends– we have a shortage on male models!
We have also just signed on to GreenFest Philly for Sunday, September 13. PNA will have a booth there, and will also be participating in the GreenFest fashion show. Additionally, for all interested artists, select works will be featured in the AxD gallery for a 2010 show.
I hope to see you all there!
NEAT THINGS: Morris Arboretum
So this past weekend, I had Friday off of work (which NEVER HAPPENS, by the way), so my boyfriend and I headed out to Morris Arboretum to see some trees and stuff.
To our surprise, there was a very nicely designed treehouse-type exhibit set to open the following day… I figured I’d take some pictures, because lord knows I hadn’t been aware of it and it looks super cool. I think anyone who played Myst back in the day (side note: did you know that they made an iPhone compatible version of Myst for six bucks? My mind is blown) will get some delightful deja vu.
All pictures by Emily G!
You can go in the giant nest AND you can climb on the rope nets, which is something I have been been dying to do since I aged out of the ones in King Arthur’s Court in Cedar Point 13 years ago.
And if you’re coming back via Broad Street, keep an eye out for the Beury Building at Broad and Erie, although it’s hard to miss. Inga Saffron once described it as “a lavishly sculpted 14-story tower that stands like an emaciated crack addict over the crossroads of Broad Street and Erie and Germantown Avenues.” Seriously, what’s the holdup on this lady’s Pulitzer, eh? The Beury Building is the canvas for one of the more impressive/juvenile pieces of graffiti in town:
Words to live by.
Savage Garden: making my big guns
So I tend to go out of town every once in a while during the summer. Unfortunately, not watering your plants for four days to a week and a half is not good for them at all.
There are a variety of self-watering planters for sale, but they either tend to be too small to hold big veggies or too expensive for me to get more than one. But the internet always provides.
There’s a royal ton of schematics for self-watering planters out there from various local-farming advocates, so I sort of cobbled a few of them together based on what what I already had and what I could get for free (I’m friends with a lot of science people who have an infinite supply of 5-gallon buckets and people who buy the big plastic bins of kitty litter, for example, so those are what I used. If you have a lot of plastic rectangle storage bins left over from college, I would use those).
I couldn’t find a step-by-step picture book-type explanation for idiots, though, because I do best with projects when I’m not left to improvise, so I decided to make one. It’s a slightly more complicated than “one bucket in another bucket,” but that’s the basis. It’s eventually gonna look like this (if it were made of of crappy neon lines):
The bottom bucket’s job is to hold water. It has a drainage hole in the side so that the water level never rises above the soil in the top bucket, cuz that will drown the roots. The wicking cup (just a classic red solo cup cut full of holes, in my case) is full of soil and is a bridge between the top and bottom buckets. Physics (or something) will slowly draw the water up from the bottom bucket through the cup as the top dries out, so you can leave it unwatered for a few days and it’ll be fine, plus you can’t overwater it. You refill the reservoir through the watering tube sticking out the top. Simple enough? Well, here’s how you do it.
YOU WILL NEED:
- two five-gallon containers (five gallons is pretty much the minimum for growing big veggies like tomatoes)
- a drill OR a nail and a lot of patience
- about two feet of rubber tubing about an inch in diameter
- EITHER a piece of copper tube about an inch in diameter (you can get these in the plumbing section of the hardware store) OR a 1″ hole saw drill bit
- a plastic cup with a base diameter of about 2″
- EITHER a piece of copper tube about two inches in diamter OR a 2″ hole saw drill bit
- A plastic garbage bag
- an exacto knife or scissors
- potting mix
- seeds or seedlings
Savage Garden: Week… 12? 13? Screw it, I’m going to Greensgrow
I have kind of failed at my project of growing plants from seeds in my apartment. Sad face. I’ve accepted that there’s not enough light for them to grow up strong, and furthermore I have a tendency to go out of town for a couple days and not want to be that “Oh, uh, can you maybe come over and water my plants this weekend? I”ll bake you cookies!” girl.
So I went to one measly wedding in Southern Virginia and that basically signed my already-sickly seedlings’ death warrants. Sorry, guys. Sun rolling high, sapphire sky, great and small on endless round, etc. If it’s any consolation, I feel really bad about it.
Anyway, I got another batch of seeds going which are doing much better because I can put them outside where the sun is. But just in case I mess those up too (and there’s a high probability that I will), I decided to hedge my bets and headed over to Greensgrow, the 3/4 acre urban farm post-industrial land smack in the middle of Kensington. I had heard many good things, and it’s also the only decent-sized nursery not out in the burbs or down by IKEA. From their website:
Greensgrow is THE nationally recognized leader in urban farming (don’t just take our word for it…) and is open to the public from early spring through Thanksgiving. A small but dedicated staff runs a multifaceted operation, including a nursery, a farm market, and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, proving that abandoned land is only abandoned if we choose to leave it that way.
Their CSA, in which you pick up a bunch of produce grown on the farm every week, filled up way back in March, but the farm stand will be opening May 28 if you’re in the mood for some locally-grown stuff; and of course there’s tons of pretty flowers and grasses and little teenager trees. I thought I’d post some pictures I took, because I had heard a lot of press about this place but had no idea what an urban farm actually looked like (hint: pretty big, with lots of bright colors).
And for those of you who don’t live in the area but visit occasionally, it’s a 15-minute walk from the Berks stop and about two blocks from Memphis Taproom. The address 2501 Cumberland St. kind of delayed my going for a while; I’m not super familiar with Kensington street names, and all street names I’m unfamiliar with sound way far away to my lazy ears. Placing it near a landmark removed my “But it’s faaaaaaaaaar!” excuse, and perhaps it will remove yours.
They’ve been around since 1998 and have been doing the farm stand since 2002. But before you shout OLD!, I’d just like to say what the heck, my friend who recently bought a house less than a mile from Greensgrow had never been there accompanied me yesterday and is now in love. Here’s a couple of pictures, more after the jump.
You can see rowhouses all around...
...on every side
IKEA rolls out solar
Yay, ever since taking apart some of those solar-powered garden lights and semi-successfully attempting to turn them into sun jars, I’ve been really interested in solar lights. And hey look, IKEA’s Summer 2009 collection turns out to have a bunch of solar options!
In that cute Swedish Chef way IKEA has of mashing together languages, the line is called SOLIG and SUNNAN.
Interestingly enough, this appears to be the first wave of a larger IKEA move to make green technology as affordable as they’ve made somewhat flimsy modern furniture. IKEA pledged $77 million over the next five years to investments in green startups last August; the resulting products (which will focus on solar panels, alternative light sources, eco-friendly materials, energy efficiency, and water saving and purification systems) will then be sold in IKEA stores.
This is seriously neat. The major thing standing standing in the way of mainstreaming alternate forms of energy is the affordability and the perception as it being a concern mostly of people who wouldn’t dreeeeeeeeeam of buying their groceries anywhere but Whole Foods. The absolute best way to get the ball rolling is to get the tech into IKEA and Target and WalMart, and onto people’s desks.
via MoCoLoco