All that glitters...

...Is table lamps and shoes.
Or is it "are table lamps and shoes"? Either way, I have a pair of both in wonderful gold hues, and they do wonders for my room designing and costuming efforts, respectively.


A few days ago I schlepped a few items into a huge furniture consignment warehouse that just opened a few blocks from my home, and I plan to schlep a few more as soon as I can. From the same warehouse I purchased a vintage brass tea cart that I'd been eyeing since Thursday, and yesterday I spent a good 3+ hours polishing it. It looks gorgeous, but with some particularly stubborn tarnish that I think gives it character. Everything seemed to fall into place yesterday; I had been thinking about getting some new lighting for my room and, walking home from work, I found a pair of table lamps sitting by the curb as if they had stepped out of their previous home promptly at 8:30 to wait for me to walk by. They're a simple, elegant shape, and seem to be hollow metal that almost matches the tea cart in color. Sitting with them were shades that can easily be re-covered to match my design. I don't know yet if the wiring works, but if not it should be easy enough to replace. Hooray for street treasure!

And remember my shoe-covering efforts? 

Well, now I have a perfectly good excuse reason to abandon that effort, at least for now. From a thrift store in the city that was serendipitously holding a 50% off sale when I happened in, I found an absolutely gorgeous pair of gold brocade shoes in a very interesting style that looks like a variation of fancy 18th century shoes.

(They look a bit whiter in the photo than they actually are, but you can see the pattern really well here.)

I think I'll be able to wear them when I sing in the NJAVO chorus in October, depending on what the rest of my costume is. I shouldn't need an excuse to wear them, and believe me I'd love to have them on my feet every single day, but New York transit system and exhaust dirt would all too quickly change the beautiful gold to the ubiquitous grimy city brownish-sludgey color. Urk. So, they'll sit under my "mannequin" for a while.

New layout!

For personal enjoyment more than anything else (which seems to have been the point of the rest of this blog thus far, though I don't really mind), I've tinkered with the HTML and a few images used in this blog and designed a spiffy new layout. I think the new version is a bit easier on the eyes, meaning it doesn't have the back-to-back red and orange tones that could appear eye-gougingly saturated on some monitors.

The new theme is simpler yet more elegant, I think, and the subject of it has a certain resonance with me.
Bonus geek creds to anyone who recognizes the scene depicted in my new header.

Aside from the obvious cosmetic changes (background, header image), I did some tinkering under the hood and changed the column sizes so more text will fit in a page. The expanses of background space previously left untouched by words was driving me mad.

I might do a bit more tweaking over the next few days, but I'm very happy with how my renovation has turned out thus far. I can't stop staring at the gorgeous silhouette image I found for the header and the lovely black/white/burgundy color combination; I hope my further costumial endeavors can live up to the elegance the new design advertises.
I just put in an order for eight historical patterns at $0.99 each online, so a chance to test my skills should be arriving in the mail within a few weeks. In the meantime, there's plenty of other things to do.