One of my best friends came to visit Caryn and I for the weekend. We had a fantastic time, which she shared more about in her blog, It's Beautiful Here. It's always the best time when a visit involves Melanie, but this particular visit meant we had a chance to take her to the Riverside Arts Market, RAM for short. It's a market held in Jacksonville, beneath a bridge, and is home to vendors of all types, as well as various kinds of performers.

It was our first time visiting the market ourselves, so to have Melanie here for our first trip was a real treat. We met up with a friend of hers, who turned out to be charming and lovely, and were welcomed into RAM with some amazing chalk art. It was one of only two times I managed to snap a couple of snapshots, and even then it was only with my phone.

Though RAM was smaller than I expected, it was refreshing to get out into the cooler weather and walk amongst others, enjoy the smells of the food stalls, and squee over the many puppies that were everywhere.

After RAM we visited the San Marco neighborhood and popped in and out of a few stores in the area. The lions above sit in the center of the neighborhood, all elegance and poise.

The plan was to hit up Pulp, a small shop that offers some of the best frozen yogurt I've had the pleasure to taste. We managed to gorge ourselves on a brunch of belgian waffles and fruit at BB's just before then, however. There was very little room for anything else at that point. Very sad. I regret not having left room for dessert.

After browsing through a few shops, we made our way to a bakery and, though I was sadly disappointed, the others enjoyed their sweet treats. Still not sure how a peanut butter cookie or cheese danish could go so wrong, but it doesn't much matter anymore. Not when we were able to end our day on a high note, which involved DISCOVERING CASTLE OTTTIS!

Both Melanie and I snapped shots of the castle, which involved my climbing up a bank of sandspurs and ferns with her camera in hand. The castle itself was built as a landscape sculpture in the 1980s. Oddly, it's nestled within a neighborhood across A1A's edging the Atlantic ocean.

How many people could say that, on a leisurely drive down a coastal highway in Florida, they discovered a castle?

That entire day was full of so much more than what my everyday life consists of in the small town where I live. It sincerely felt like we spent an entire weekend in that single day. I was left both exhausted and elated.

Who doesn't enjoy receiving a truly heartfelt love note? Paper, and even electronic, testimonies from another person, driven to share their innermost feelings of love and adoration, can be many things--touching and warming, without a doubt. Sadly, in those forms, they are also subject to the elements, accidents, or many other unknowns beyond our control. Why not help those words become something more tangible, and a tad longer-lasting, that could also decorate your home or studio?

Alisa Burke, of Alisa Burke: Redefine Creativity, shared a tutorial on her blog for transfering a love note to a pillow.

How gorgeous are those pillows? I absolutely love them. It's a real shame that my sewing skills are extremely limited. What I really mean is that I completely suck at sewing and frequently stab myself. Even just trying to take a needle out of its packaging results in blood. Still, the pillows are on my list of things to attempt (to persuade someone else to make) at some time in the future.

Something tells me that doing something similar, perhaps in a quilt-block pattern, would be quite breathtaking. Maybe bolster pillows, a throw, upholstered headboard, or--OH! What about a large enough piece that could be framed as artwork? I bet that's something I could figure out without any unnecessary and pesky sewing skills.

If you recall, the mattress and bed frame for the guest room project have been purchased and/or selected. The mattress has actually already arrived (I love you, Overstock!), and the new date to pick up the bed frame from IKEA is this coming weekend (yay as-is section!). Crossing all appendages.

The only thing I can't get around is the pine of the frame; there's just no room for bare pine in our design plans. I'm typically a fan of the natural wood look, but because we won't be making any changes to the room itself, just what's going into it, we want to interject color via the bed.

Last week we took a trip to Target to peruse bed linens, review the current color trends, and feel up on the different thread counts. I'm very fond of clean designs that use a lot of white, but also take care to strategically place pops of color throughout. Seeing as we have two animals who've been blessed with dark fur, one of whom will most certainly sneak onto the bed every change he gets, white is absolutely not the best choice. I do not, however, claim to experience rational thinking at all.

Standing there in the linen aisle, I couldn't move beyond desparately wanting white linens. It's such a clean base to build up from and is the perfect contrasting color to so many others. Caryn, however, was holding up a cream-colored set for my opinion. I may have experienced an internal tantrum because I'm super grown-up and always compromise (ha!). She knows me well enough that I'm sure she sensed the hissy fit going on inside my head, so relented and into the cart went the white linen set (YAY). We'll deal with the animal hair in other ways, I guess, or we'll curse a lot and blame the other one for the poor decision-making.

We also happened to fall in love with a dove gray color while looking around. When we held the gray up to a nearby turquoise, the combination created some serious happiness inside. We kept and purchased the white set, but the gray is definitely going to find its way into the linens or decorating somehow.

Keeping in mind the white linens, we have agreed to paint the frame bright turquoise. Great thing about painting wood? You can always sand and paint again, or paint right over it, if you want to freshen the design up at a later point.

Here's the problem, though: what color(s) do we pick to accent the white and turquoise? I'm leaning toward a dove gray with a few pops of red. That could change later on. (I can sometimes be a fickle creature.)

In research mode again, Caryn found some patterns at Urban Outfitters that we think could work:

  

Can you imagine pops of red against those?

Other options would be:

• to crochet a full/queen blanket using a fingering/sock weight yarn; or
• buy a solid-colored coverlet, then crochet a throw for the foot of the bed.

Honestly, there are too many options(!) and potentially a lot of work for me. The blanket/coverlet issue is going to be the most difficult to settle on, I imagine.

I previously mentioned that we began moving forward with plans for the guest room rather quickly. It was only a few moments after we agreed that, yes, we were (a) crazy, and (b) totally going through with it, that we sat down in front of the laptop, researched mattresses, and made our first purchase for the project.

We knew we wanted to go with a memory foam mattress, particularly since our own mattress is a 10" Bodipedic with a 4lb density, and is easily one of the best purchases we've ever made. For the guest room, however, we chose an 8" memory foam mattress by Serta, purchased via Overstock (love).

Side note: my mother, who has a steel cage and screws in her back to support deteriorated discs, tries to visit in order to sneak a nap on our bed while I'm working, so that's a testament to its awesome powers.

I'm not sure why we didn't think to purchase a similar mattress for a guest bed before. Perhaps it was a subconscious choice not to make guests too comfortable? It's fair to say that we've probably screwed ourselves with that purchase, and, since the money has already been spent, it's a choice we'll have to live with. 

Here's a fun fact about my dear Caryn: she loves research. Even if she didn't, I doubt she could help herself. Because of that, I left her the task to find a bed frame that made the most sense for both us and the space. Without fail, she found an affordable frame via IKEA, which happens to be both simplistic and nice in its original state. What we like about the bed frame is that it allows for a wide variety of changes and improvements due to its clean lines and low price.

If you search IKEA Hackers, many people have purchased the same bed frame and their end products have been amazing:

 
_{Left: Heart Tree Home; Right: Manhattan Nest}

Look at that upholstery! I don't think we'll be doing any upholstering of the bed. If we do, maybe just the inset sections? The only thing I know right now is that I'm getting anxious for everything to begin arriving.

Update: Caryn and I are actually driving the hour and a half to the nearest IKEA tomorrow in order to pick up the bed frame (and maybe other little goodies?). How could we possibly turn down the opportunity to spend time inside that store?

via www.caryndrexl.com

I'm sometimes very biased; other times I'm very objective. Though Caryn is my fiance, there is work of hers that I don't always get or like, but, mostly, there are photos and entire series that I'm completely in love with. Yes, even if there are gigantic, dead, and totally from another land (seriously, Norway or somewhere else very distant), bugs involved.

She's such an amazing photographer. I wish the whole world could see, fall in love with, and buy, her work. Especially if it means I can retire early and live in the lap of luxury due to her talent.

Should I not admit that part?

We have a friend coming to see us in September for a weekend of hanging out and being awesome. The problem is that our "guest room" is currently being occupied by us. Long story short: master bathroom flooded out into the master bedroom and walk-in closet, leaving us to have all furnishings piled up in the living room, with our mattress on the floor of the spare/guest room. The property management company is taking their sweet time (it's been 2 months since I woke up and stepped down into the pond that was our room), but we hope it will all be tiled and carpeted within the next couple of weeks.

To keep ourselves distracted from the fuckery (hey, the cursing has begun!), we got to thinking about what we were going to do regarding the sleeping arrangements for our guest. We don't have plans to remain in our current house for much longer--maybe 6 months or so(?)--which means it's a little crazy for us to think about bed linens, color choices, and furniture. In reality, those are all things we'll have to pack and move when it comes time to leave. What are we doing to ourselves?

The problem is definitely one of our own making, but since neither of us are overly fond of offering guests the couch, we agreed to move forward with setting up a proper guest room. Seeing as we'll need all of the same things in our next home, we're generally okay with excusing the temporary insanity.

The basic necessities (mattress, bed frame), which I'll discuss at a later time, were, or will be, purchased right away. I think we acted as quickly (read: impulsively) as we did so we wouldn't talk ourselves out of it, then feel guilty when our friend had to make due with only a couch that they may not find comfortable. Whatever the reason behind the rush, I'm excited to have a project to focus on for a while.

_{Left: "Pond dreams" via Envelop; Right: "Fox boy with singing birds" via Envelop.}

Pillows above are some recent color inspiration that I'm really enjoying the simple act of looking at.

The next steps, though, involve what the pillows above represent--making a whole lot of much harder decisions. For example: what color palette do we want to go with; do we purchase a blanket/coverlet or do I crochet one; and how can we make the most of the space without doing too much work for a house we won't be staying in for much longer?

I've always been a fan of Tunisian crochet. Abalina, shown above, perfectly illustrates why such fanage (fan-age? lots of fanning? Me Big Fan) exists. The honeycomb texture is set off beautifully by the yarn, which is in shades of gold and creamy yellow, while the decrease into the simulated ribbing helps secure it in a stylish criss-cross construction.

Perfect when left to hang loose, or tucked into a jacket, it's never too early to pamper yourself. That's how I felt when I worked the prototype up in a Merino, Cashmere, and Nylon blend. It's a total hug; almost better than snuggling a puppy. Almost. Puppies rock.

You can pick one up here--a pattern for Abalina, I mean. I'm not giving out free puppies willy-nilly.

I'm fondly remembering the last installment of the Yarnography yarn and photo club I ran under The Yarn Side. It was a really fun club, with a great group of customers who all enjoyed the treats they received.

The final installment, shown above, was made up of two skeins of yarn, a small fiber batt, two sets of stitch markers, a professionally printed photograph from Caryn Drexl, and then 4 gorgeous art prints from the "Heartaches and Poetry" that came from the Best Art Studios Etsy shop.

You can see other installments from Yarnography here.

I should really do another project like Yarnography again.