I am revisiting my Mighty Life List from two years ago. I kind of forgot about it there for a while and I didn’t do anything on my list in 2013. So I’m re-focusing and I’ve broken out what I really want to accomplish this year. I’ve broken it out into my definite list (things that I not only want to accomplish, but feasibly could) and my ideal list (things I’d really like to do in 2014 but may require more money, time or energy than I may have this year). And then at the bottom I’ve added some things to the list (unsurprisingly many of them are weaving related).
Definitely
- Run a successful Etsy shop
- Learn to use my SLR camera
- Keep a consistent blog
- Only buy second-hand or cradle to cradle eco-friendly/sustainable clothing, or make it myself
- Live within my means
- Go four months without purchasing any magazines
- Be passionate about my job/Have a job I’m passionate about
- Start a gratitude journal
- Update and maintain the memory list I made for Ben
- Eat at the restaurant at the bottom of the hill on Newark Ave
- Have a picnic at Liberty State Park
- Go a month without eating at restaurants
- Take tourist photos of my own romance
- Send out a package to a friend once a month
- Visit Savannah
- Ride my bike whenever it is a viable option
- visit the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art
- Write a comic
- visit The Cloisters with Ben
- visit the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company
- Simplify my home, closet, ipod, bookshelf, craft table
- Run my own business
Ideally
- Meet Billy Joel
- Road trip across the US
- Sleep in a tree house
- Speak another language fluently (or at least conversationally)
- Learn to draw
- Live in another country
- Have enough money saved to feel comfortable
- Remove toxins from my food and environment
- Read and/or donate every book in my home
- Get another tattoo
- Work with a South American artisan
- Volunteer in another country
- Make, cook, wear, etc. one thing from each of my Pinterest boards a week
- Take a long train ride with Ben
- Attend the Penland School of Crafts
- be able to play five songs on the piano by heart (at least one be a Billy Joel song)
- learn Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant on the piano
- Volunteer at an animal shelter
- Teach a class
- Sew the Craftsy Sew Retro Bombshell Dress
- Bake a layered cake
- Take a workshop at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico or just visit San Miguel, Mexico
- Make a video of our Costa Rica trip
Added for 2014
- Always have a dressed loom
- Weave everyday
- Learn a new weaving technique – either tapestry weaving or weaving on a 4 harness floor loom
- Experiment with weaving things other than scarves
- Visit Guatemala
- Be on time (ideally early) to everything
- Take three M Dance classes a week for a year
- Cut out sugar
- Sew two Cooper messenger bags (1 for myself, 1 for Ben)
- Have 2,000 followers on Pinterest
beautiful bodega bags
I think bodegas in NYC are the biggest argument for an anti-plastic bag law in the city. If you are buying something from a corner bodega it is most likely something small and you are most likely only a block from your final destination. That’s the whole point of the bodega. It’s not a fully stocked grocery store. It’s an oh sh*t I forgot ___ and I need it immediately so I’m going to run to the corner bodega. Or it’s an I have a 5 minute lunch break where can I go? Or I’m just getting out of work at 10pm and am too hungry (or broke) to wait for Seamless.
And there’s literally one on every block. That’s why it’s called the corner bodega. You can carry that salad or that bottle of water or that frozen dinner a few feet to your office/apartment.
And yet everything you buy – even that single bottle of water – gets immediately placed in a cheap plastic bag. Every time. I’m on the anti-plastic bag bandwagon. I (almost) always have bags with me at the ready for my grocery store or Target or whatever shopping run on I’m on. And yet there are still times I take a plastic wrapped snack out of the corner bodega. Whether it’s because I’m not fast enough to tell the quick handed person at the register that I don’t need it. Or I’m in such a rush I don’t even think about it. Or I’m just being lazy that day. Whatever the reason I have ended up with many the bodega bags I don’t know what to do with. At home if I end up with a Target bag it’ll get re-used for cat poop or to carry my lunch in. But there’s no cat poop at work and I don’t usually have to carry my lunch home so these bodega bags go to waste.
That’s why I find these embroidered bodega bags so mesmerizing. In recreating these wasteful plastic bags into beautiful textiles, artist Nicoletta de la Brown took something so often hastily discarded and made them art.
The artist describes the series El Barrio Bodego as…
You can see more of Nicoletta’s work on her Baker Artist Awards page.
Brown Paper Bag via Weaving Hand