Josh Ritter is the greatest

Last weekend I went to go see Josh Ritter for the first time in concert! After having two good friends totally obsessed/in love with him, and listening to Animal Years on repeat for weeks, I was still blown away by how great he is in concert. It was one of those rare moments that takes your emotions and melds them with those of a crowd and makes you forget your discomfort and all the petty stuff you were worrying about, transcendent in an experience.

Long-distance Love

On Wednesday, my boyfriend is leaving for 4 months for a far-away African country. He doesn't read my blog (I don't think? are you out there?), so I'm not going to say anything about him, because my main concern is, what about me? Barring taking out a student loan for a plane ticket, I'm going to have to start seriously cultivating more solitary pleasures. I spend a lot of my time with this young man, so having him gone always requires a bit of a lifestyle adjustment. On the good side, more time for friends, no one else's schedule to coordinate around, plenty of space to do whatever I feel like doing. On the downside, well, most of everything else.

So, two questions:
1. What are the forgotten joys of being pseudo-single, or of long-distance relationships?
2. Since he might not have the world's best internet connection, which means potentially no Skype, no phone calls, and no long internet time for chatting and long emails, are there creative ideas for communication? My friend thinks getting letters from Africa sounds awfully romantic, I think it also sounds awfully infrequent. I do, though, absolutely love the letters I got from him last time he went. There's something so much better about having a letter to hold and touch. As great as stumbling over a long-forgotten email can be (thanks gmail for saving everything ever!), nothing beats touching the letter that your far-away friend (and a dozen postal workers the world over) touched.
Image 1 via Naturally Nina, by Alexis Mire.
Image 2 via Design*Sponge, by Lauren Gallagher as a window installation for the San Francisco bookstore The Booksmith.

Here's some more posts from blog-land about letters that I enjoyed:

• from Design is Mine, which I had forgotten had such good stuff!
• cute french envelope tray via design*sponge, and also, circularly, from design is mine (blogs are so incestuous!)
• a GREAT one by Hollister Hovey on the lost art of letters. I was totally over her and her taxidermy and NYT article, but this resurrects my love.
• And, not letter-related, but, pretty pictures of girls by water from (oh, hello friend.) This is gonna be me, swimming in the lake all summer!
• I've forgotten 2 more: one of old letters found on ebay or something, and one from a blogger who spent the first year of marriage long-distance, yikes!
  

Memries...

I was reading on academichic about memento clothes: items that belonged to relatives and/or have special personal significance.

I tend to really hold on to stuff, so I have a lot of these items. The shirt in the picture above gets lots of compliments. My dad bought it for my mom when he was a graduate student back in the mid-80s. I loved my mom's old clothes so much that I was convinced that if I had children, they would like my stuff and so I should hold on to them. To that effect I have been wearing down my favorite cross-country t-shirt since I got in 7th grade. I think my brother has it (along with most of my t-shirts) now. I gave them to him with the express command that he not lose them, and I think for awhile he wore almost exclusively Chapin girls cross-country shirts. Sometimes I feel emotionally attached to things that went on long epic trips with me, or that I've had for a really long time. My mom gave me this shoulder bag in high school, and I carried my school books in it into college. I had to sew it up time and again, but even now, when I carry its ratty goodness around, I feel close to my mom and my high school self: simple, happy, low-maintenance, a bit of a hippie. This is a terrible picture of it, I took it in my room in college when I was playing around with the features on my camera (which is now lost to an encounter with honey inside the very same bag and lots of dust in Wyoming). And, the blanket was my mother's in high school. It's on my couch right now.
This is more playing with my camera settings. I love these orange shoes! They were a 17th birthday present from my mom. I picked them out. They were $20 which seemed like a really big deal to me at the time. I really was a low-maintenance kid! (wow, I don't have half of the stuff I can see in this closet: the "stripper boots," the cleats from frisbee days, the not-waterproof boots, some polyester dresses, ew! and oh look, the sweater I got at Gap in 8th grade and STILL HAVE! I thought I was a big deal for getting something at Gap in season.)

Even more Starry Night!

Whoa! It seems that I've stumbled on a trendy trend with my obsession with galaxy prints! This pretty dope star print shirt is by Mara Hoffman, on stylist Masha Orlov, found on Refinery29. I couldn't find this star print shirt, exactly, on Mara Hoffman's website but BUT there's a bunch of other really cool prints, drapey dresses, very boho. And the intro to her website is a galaxy scene and then an explosion of inspiration pictures which could easily be MY inspiration pictures. Mara Hoffman = my style spirit animal?
Yeah, sexy space swimsuits!

More dope prints. The dirty hippie in me wants these so bad. Especially, um, the space print.

This triangle stuff is cool too, and I like the crazy billowy shape. On Project Runway, all the judges hated on Jay's short dress with the ruffles on the butt because "no woman on earth wants her butt to look bigger." FALSE, Heidi & Michael Kors, FALSE. Plenty of women (and men!) like a big butt, including this Jezebel blogger's mom. You should read that article because it's hilar, and also it lets you see the pictures I'm talking about. It's also totally culturally blind to assume that because skinny white women in 2010 don't like their butts, that no one ever does. Please.

Skeleton back, I dig.

Very cool, looks like nerves or electrical wiring.

Compared to what we've seen so far, this is tame, but I would totally wear it every day. EVERY DAY.

Soooo hippie. So mother earth. LOVE her hair, will recreate.

Almost too hippie, but I love the prints. On Project Runway, they got to design their own fabrics, "something every designer dreams of." But man, did they let that opportunity go to WASTE! Even Emilio's much-lauded graffiti logo print was kinda lame, and they all really disappointed me. If you get to design your own fabric, grow a pair and make a Rorschach ink-blot/neon fractal print, like this!

That's right. Only, isn't it freakishly off-center? I can't look at it for too long, it hurts.

Grandpa Bob

Here's my grandpa Bob looking dapper in Westby in the 50s. Doesn't he look great? I'm sad that I never met him. He was nicknamed Red for the usual reasons that people are called Red and he was the postman. I think I'll dye my hair red and dress classy to be more like him.

More Space Prints! Great Clothes Online! Great Blog! Tomorrow's Saturday!

I saw this awesome nebula-print tank top on Academichic. It's from All Saints, and they also have a bikini and one-piece swimsuit in the same print. I just looked around that site, which I had never seen before, and holy moley, I want everything there. Studded biker jacket, plaids, draping, crazy cuts, a gold dress, a fireworks print... I just watched like 5 episodes of Project Runway and everything on this site is super creative and interesting. And I was only looking at their "vintage" section-- the new stuff looks good too. Tomorrow I'm going to blow off reading and work on my sewing projects. Got to finish sewing the roses on my blue top that I started way back in December, at the very least, and tackle a pile of mending/alterations: a vintage dress I bought in Mississippi and love, only it's see-through and kinda frumpy on me, a huge men's striped button-down that's totally threadbare with a rip in the elbow, some old jeans that probably should just become cutoffs, polypropelene leggings that I was obsessed with until I melted them on the space heater (noooo!!!!) and now have big plans to cut up in some exciting way, a huge heavy turquoise circle skirt that I made with grandma but then got caught in a bike gear so it's permanently stained and also has some bizarre bleach spots that I'm going to ruche up in some way inspired by this skirt I posted earlier, something out of these too-small nehru collar kaftan-like things that I bought at Unique, and something out of a Japanese-garden watercolor silk shirt that I bought at Unique even though it is huge and ruffly and hideous, just for the fabric. Whew!

I meant for this post actually to be an endorsement of Academichic. It's three women PhD students somewhere in the Midwest, and I really relate to their concerns with looking professional, staying warm, dealing with bizarre temperature changes, and so on. Also, they're quite creative without being hipsters, showing ideas I hadn't thought of like unbuttoning a shirt and wrapping it with a belt and high-waist skirt (also picture above, wearing a cardigan as a wrap, and love that skirt!), wearing full skirts with blazers, and layering with dresses, something I find very difficult to pull off. They're also smart and quite thoughtful, discussing things like the cultural appropriation of Japanese floral motifs by Anthropologie, or how professional women project those two parts of themselves (professionalism and/or femininity) publicly through clothing. And, they can sew! Some altered clothing and some embellishment projects. This is one of the few realistic-fashion blogs that I find continually interesting. 5 stars!

Been in the Lowlands too Long

These pictures are some crappy ones we took with a disposable camera in Lucedale, MS. I'll just look at them and listen to Gillian Welsh. I miss the south so much!