This is why I left WordPress >_<; The book preview won’t embed, so to check out my book you’ll have to click here. (It’s worth it!)

Happy previewing~

P.S. Looking for my new stuff? Visit me at *fruitpunch.

Check it out.

I have an announcement! It may upset some of you, shock others and/or create a general state of paranoia on the interwebs. Or not.

After some time thinking about this blog and where it started/where it is now, I’ve come to the decision to stop posting on Kankan. I’m not deleting the blog, although I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll be shifting any of the content in the future. Since I’m sure you’re staring at the computer screen scratching your face saying, “Whyy is this happeniNg?!” I’ve got some talking points to explain:

1) I wAnt 2 have ALL the InTerNet’s bAbies!!

1) That first #1 was a joke. I’m switching from the WordPress platform to Blogger because of HTML coding and Google Analytics.

2) I envisioned Kankan as something other than what it seems to have naturally morphed into – I think Kankan was a better name for what I was doing abroad and what I was attempting to accomplish here before the realities and restrictions of a 9-5 job were taken into account. I’d like to stop adding to the content here so that the posts I created focusing on different spaces/places are available and not buried underneath things that are related, but not necessarily going in the same direction. This is not to say that original content focusing on local treasures is going away…it’ll just be re-formatted, so to speak.

3) I’ve been looking into other publishing platforms (oo la la! tell me more!) and I have high hopes that the original content I created here, specifically that related directly to Charlottesville, will get a second life…but more on that later. Don’t want to jinx anything!

4) Let’s be real. No one knows what the hell this blog is called. It’s an issue. (But still a cute name!)

5) I just like it when lists are at least five points long. Point #5.

My new lifestyle blog, which I have envisioned as a lifestyle blog and which will be awesome, launches Monday. If you have subscribed to this blog, which I sooo greatly appreciate (three o’s worth of appreciation!) you will indeed have to re-subscribe to the new blog. But who doesn’t love signing up to get new emails in this day and age?

To make a long story short (after telling you the long story already), I got a new idea and I’m running with it – it’ll be fun! Scout’s honor.

P.S. Ok, that last part is a lie, I was never a boy scout. But it’ll still be fun!

I finally picked up some new flowers last weekend. They’re not much to look at, as I had to decide between buying enough to make some semblance of a bouquet and eating. I chose eating. I do like having flowers in my apartment, though, and one of these days I might get around to picking up more than a few stems…although the slim arrangement is also, in part, dictated by the narrow mouth of the bottle in which I choose to display it. I need a new vase…though this is rather pretty, no?

In other plant news, I decided to stop eating meat the other week after finishing Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t vegetarian, so it’s like I have to forge my own path or something. So far I’ve not had too much trouble avoiding land-based animals, but I haven’t given up fish since the Seafood Watch iPhone app handily informs readers what’s overfished and what’s aplenty. Bourgeois indulgence to the rescue!

My big moral dilemma is that, living as I do in a relatively rural area, I actually have access to meat that is raised outside the industrial agricultural system. (More than anything, although I am rather fond of animals and don’t necessarily want them to die, the environmental impact of meat eating is what convinced me to attempt a meatless diet once again – I can’t abstain from driving and declare oil, “like, the worst thing ever” if cow farts from my hamburger’s past life are a bigger hazard). What’s worse, my friend’s parent’s cow or Atlantic farm-raised salmon? *Le sigh* I realize, as one friend pointed out, that not eating meat, but still practically worshipping leather is a bit of a cross purpose. But…shoes! One day I’ll reconcile the issue, for now I’ll stick to vintage and veggies.

I met Anthony Friday night for a screen-printing workshop in John Sarah John’s multifunctional West Main St. shop of wonders. The Miami transplant has been in the screen-printing business for like, years (journalism!) and is so successful that he doesn’t even need a day job. Anthony spends his time scouting for new and interesting images (he majored in art history or something – journalism x2) and then, of course, prints them on fabric using his wizard powers. {An alternative explanation for how screen-printing happens may be inferred from the above pictures…an interesting factoid I recall is that the print is not, in fact, silk-screened onto the garment, but is printed using a mesh screen. The more you know.}

Sarah mentioned this workshop to me back in June, so I had plenty of time to plan my own screen-printing adventure. I originally figured I’d just have a t-shirt done, but while on vacation in New York I picked up some army surplus at Beacon’s Closet as well as the book Stylist: The Interpreters of Fashion. What do the two have to do with each other? Well, it was in my newly acquired book that I found inspiration in this Craig McDean portrait of Kate Moss, wearing an Edward Enninful-customized military parka:

And my finished product:

My interpretation involves no display of devotion to the British royal family, but it is rather evocative of McQueen with its morbid/romantic graphic – that X-ray is actually of some guy’s wife’s hand (that’s her wedding ring you see on the finger!) Underneath I’m wearing my Jimmy O and the Ready Ted’s band t-shirt from Low and my Lion pendant, courtesy of Judy at the Greenwood Country Store. The head is actually a belt buckle that I put on a chain – c’est fantastique, no?

P.S. Stop by James Anthony Apparel if you like what you see!

New York-based interior designer and fellow blogger Nick Olsen decorated an absolutely fabulous apartment featured in this month’s issue of House Beautiful. The space is roughly the exact same size as my apartment! Except it looks 10,000 million times better and is awesome. *Le sigh* The entire issue of HB is rather wonderful this month, with a focus on small spaces (the California bungalow featured is another favorite). Take a video tour of the Olsen-designed Brooklyn studio here!

Images by Bjorn Wallander for House Beautiful via Splendid Sass and If The Lamp Shade Fits.

P.S. Please to forgive the crap Photoshopping in picture 3 – quel horror!