Half Dot Brooklyn

Waiting for his dad inside Bergen Street Comics before we head over to Brooklyn Larder to get some incredibly delicious baked goods.

Working on a couple of new accessories for the Half Dot shop.

Meanwhile, a few things I’ve seen recently ~

Made entirely from discarded materials found on the street,  Benjamin Van Oost’s Favela. The Jealous Curator makes me want to paint. And these wooden dolls. There’s a whole chapter in Todd Oldham’s Kid Made Modern about how to dress up some plain wooden spoons and blocks. An activity I’m looking forward to when mister baby can hold a paintbrush!

A couple of new (to me) places I’ve started tuning into recently:

Ink+Wit, for a good dose of letterpress and the goings-on in the world of print design

Junior Society – not your typical pretty-designy-children’s-products blog, this is a great place to go for ideas about things to do with the kids, and the vintage old school illustration bent to it definitely makes it easy on the eyes.

Caught up on quite a bit of reading in the waiting room this morning. A quarter of the way through Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, The Lacuna, and I find myself especially intrigued by her depiction of Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo in their most peculiar (and simultaneously fascinating) studio home.

Looking forward to seeing and reading this book, The City Out My Window, for Matteo Pericoli’s illustrations of the New York cityscape and what the likes of Mark Morris, Philip Glass, and Nicole Krauss have to say about their window views.

I am kicking myself, I truly truly am, at finding out about and then realizing that we will be on the other side of the ocean and miss this entire event. If we were here, I could quite literally put mister baby in the stroller and mosey on over to Books of Wonder to bump shoulders with some amazing illustrators — ahem, like Maira Kalman, whose work I absolutely adore. In case you’re wondering what all this is about, 18 renown childrens’ book illustrators have donated works of art to be auctioned to benefit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; they, alongside their peers, will be munching on wine and cheese at the September 10 debut at the Books of Wonder store, with doors open to all.

So I’ve decided, it’s full speed ahead with everything revolving around infant capelets. I need some catchy name for them. Hoodie-something. I just spent the afternoon going through the illustrations of Ezra Jack Keats. Lots of ideas.